The Widower's Wife: A Thriller (15 page)

One of the chefs, a large man with that scraggly beard popular with the hipster set, eyed Ryan’s jaunty approach. He announced his purpose before sidling up to the big guy. “I’m looking for a Jake. Harry said I could find him out here.”

Paul Bunyan in an apron glared at him. Ryan itched to pull the badge from his wallet. He forced himself not to. Just because it had impressed the hostess didn’t mean that these guys wouldn’t
balk at talking to a guy with dime-store identification. “I’m investigating a woman’s disappearance.”

“Oh?” The bearded man slapped the black-shirted boy on the back. “You got the wrong guy,” he laughed. “Jakey don’t mess with the ladies. A dude disappears . . .”

The bartender chuckled. “Once they’re with me, they don’t disappear.”

Ryan remained near the door. He didn’t want to interview this guy in front of all his joking buddies. Jake walked over like a movie star, head held high, casual body language. His defined arms bulged from a tight black shirt that would have looked Jersey Shore, if not for the guy’s slender torso and pop star facial hair. Ryan got the feeling that bartending was what this guy did in between casting auditions. Without wannabe Broadway stars, New York’s restaurants wouldn’t have employees.

The bartender stopped a few feet from Ryan. “You’re here about that woman on the cruise ship, right?” Jake slipped a thin black pipe between his lips and inhaled, waiting for an answer. Ryan watched the e-cig glow. He didn’t know if those things were any less dangerous than cigarettes for smokers, but he appreciated the lack of secondhand carcinogens.

“Expecting me?”

“Kind of.” Jake inhaled again. “I thought when I saw her on the news that someone might want to know about that night.”

Ryan pretended to know what he was talking about. “In the bar.”

“Yeah, it was kind of crazy.” The guy rubbed his tight beard with the fingers not wrapped around his inhaler. His forearm tattoo flexed into view, a black-and-white image of a guitar, melting in Dali-esque fashion. Above it was French script:
L’amour et la folie
. “Love and madness.”

“What exactly happened?”

Jake took another drag on the dog whistle. “Well, nothing that I think I had to report to the police, because, you know, two consenting adults . . . or kind of.” His free hand went to the back of his neck. The e-cig dangled from the side of a guilty smile.
“Michael comes to the private bar downstairs every other week or so with a pro. The fancy kind. You know, girls with an escort service who are dressed nice, look like catalog models, so you can’t tell right off, but they’re too young to be all over some geezer.”

“Okay.” Ryan’s mind raced to figure out where Jake was going with his story. “So Ana was all over him and you thought she was a hooker?”

“No. I mean, she wasn’t on him at all. But I thought, given his history, maybe she was new or something and didn’t get that they’d be doing their thing down there. So when she started screaming—”

“Screaming?”

Jake removed the e-cig and rotated it between his fingers like a nervous baton twirler. “Shortly after I uncorked the bottle and made myself scarce in the back room, I heard her shouting for him to get off of her.”

Statistics flooded Ryan’s head. One in every four women was the victim of sexual assault. More than 80 percent of the time, the assailant was someone the victim knew. Sexual assault survivors thought about suicide four times as often as the average person.

“Did you see what happened? You didn’t go in?”

Jake rubbed a palm over his face. “Well, I didn’t mean to be standing in the storeroom holding my dick while some woman was fighting off date rape or whatever. I just thought at first that she was role-playing. I mean, with Smith, they’re always hookers. I didn’t realize until I saw the news reports that he’d gone after a married woman.”

Jake took a drag off his e-cig. “I think she escaped the worst of it. I heard him yelling about his balls, as though she’d taken the shine off his jewels.” He pointed with the device. “You know, you should probably ask for the video of that night.”

It was against the law to tape people without their knowledge, but establishments did it all the time. As long as the restaurant posted a sign in some prominent yet easily forgotten place, the police were happy for the security cameras to keep running. One
never knew when footage could come in handy. “You guys film the bar? The whole thing or just the entrance?”

“I don’t know for sure, but I’m supposed to flash the bottle labels at the corner of the room so they’re caught on camera. Gretchen, the manager, would know more. I’m sure she still has a record. She keeps things for like six months in case the members dispute bar tabs or don’t remember using the club.”

Ryan asked Jake a few more follow-up questions, chief among which was if he would tell his story to the real cops when the time came. The bartender promised he would as he handed over a card with a headshot and e-mail.

Just as Ryan pocketed it, he heard the door open behind him. A woman marched out into the alley. The click of her heels shouted her anger.

“Speak of the devil,” Jake muttered. He slunk back as his boss stormed over. She flashed a fake, hospitality smile that belied the venom in her voice. “Is there a problem?”

“Not yet.” Ryan faced her. “I need to see a tape of the private bar for the night of August eighteenth.”

The woman frowned at her employees. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Ryan tilted his head to the side. Did she really plan to play this game with him? “I think you do. And I don’t think a restaurant wants to impede any investigation into a missing person.”

The manager’s hands hit her hips. She leaned on her back leg and gave him a disdainful look. “Who are you, again?”

“I’m investigating Ana Bacon’s disappearance.”

“Oh. We’re always happy to help the police.” Her voice dripped with sarcasm. “May I see your badge?”

The satisfied smile in her eyes told Ryan that she knew he wasn’t a real cop. Had his leather jacket and khakis given him away? Many detectives went around in monkey suits all day. Ruined it for every other plainclothes cop.

Ryan pulled out his wallet and flipped back the panel to show the metal. The manager held open her palm. He reluctantly held the badge close enough for her to scan the letters.

“You’re a private investigator?” Her tone went up at the end, but her expression was triumphant. She wasn’t asking.

“I’m with Mrs. Bacon’s insurance company.”

She looked down her snub nose at him. “Any footage of our guests is taken with their permission for the express purpose of verifying use and consumption of private bar amenities, not for sharing with outside companies.”

“A woman is missing.”

She feigned concern. “Certainly, if anything we have is pertinent to your investigation, you can come back with a warrant and we’ll be happy to assist you. Until then . . .” Her lips pursed, conveying the same message as a raised middle finger. She stared him down for a moment and then called each member of the staff by name, as though shouting for dogs to get back in the house.

“Don’t get rid of anything,” Ryan warned. “I’ll be back with my friends at the NYPD. You don’t want to face an obstruction charge.”

She nodded, as though patronizing a child. “Well, as I said, till then.” She followed her employees back into the restaurant. Ryan heard the door lock.

He exchanged his damn-near-useless badge for the phone in his jacket pocket and hit number two on speed dial. Vivienne Wu answered on the third ring. “Monahan! How’s my favorite PI?”

“You don’t know any other PIs, Wu.”

“Touché. How about this one? How’s my favorite ex-partner?”

“Good. But I need your help—and your badge.”

18

August 22

T
he insurance agent didn’t have a clue. Mr. William Murray stifled a smile as his eyes climbed the spiral staircase to the left of our foyer and then traveled up the taupe wall to the double height ceiling and the hand-carved, wooden chandelier lording over the entrance. I’d designed the whole house to have an understated elegance, like a beautiful, wealthy woman relaxing at home in worn designer jeans and a silk tank. Not intimidating. Still rich.

My deliberate choices were not lost on our visitor. Dollar signs seemed to sparkle in his brown irises as I led him through the kitchen, past Sophia watching
Sesame Street
on the family room television, and up the back stairs to the office. I’d terminated the daycare that morning with a voicemail. No need racking up more debts that we couldn’t afford.

William had a young face and dimpled chin beneath a prematurely balding scalp. He looked earnest. Honest. A fat bumblebee unknowingly caught in a glistening spider web. I was the reluctant black widow.

Defrauding an insurance company was wrong, but I’d run out of right options. We hadn’t paid the mortgage in months. My salary had covered the minimum payments on our credit cards, but I couldn’t charge anything more on them, and now we would default on everything. The bank was already threatening to put the house into foreclosure. The couple thousand left in our
checking account wouldn’t pay motels for long, and it would be difficult to rent anywhere with our credit shot to hell. It could take months for me to land another job, assuming Michael didn’t trash me to other fund managers. And once I was employed, creditors could garnish up to 25 percent of my wages, making it nearly impossible to support my family. On top of all that, my dad’s health, if not his life, depended on getting two hundred more dollars before the end of the month.

As Tom said, robbing an insurance company was a near victimless crime. Insurers were like buildings in San Francisco, built to withstand systemic shocks. A five-million-dollar loss wouldn’t even register on their Richter scale. And he knew ISI would pay. They’d delivered on his parents’ policy after their car crash.

I led William to the office. It sat above the garage like a trilby hat. Beams connected in sharp peaks at the ceiling. Drywall wrapped the corners, adding feltlike softness to the room’s sides.

Tom lounged on a charcoal chesterfield beneath a large skylight. Rain pattered on the glass above, adding a film noir soundtrack to the gray-lit setting.

My husband had donned suit pants and a button-down for the meeting, as if planning to head to the office later. His shirt collar lay undone, creating a triangle that pointed to his defined chest and svelte torso. He looked like the kind of man that played recreational softball and jogged on the weekends, a man with a resting heart rate in the low fifties, no history of diabetes, and plenty of disposable income. An insurer’s dream.

Tom motioned to a plush armchair on the opposite side of a low, wooden coffee table. “Thanks for seeing us on such short notice.” He flashed one of his Wall Street smiles.

William leaned over the table to shake my husband’s hand. A business card emerged in his fingers like an ace up his sleeve. He handed it to my husband and settled into the offered seat, dropping several inches lower than Tom’s perch on the firm sofa.

“Not a problem.” William joined in Tom’s conspiratorial smile. “Happy that you called.”

I sat beside Tom, erect and silent. The model wife of a politician, ready with my
Yes, dears
and agreeable head bobs.

“Here we are planning a short vacay, first one without our daughter, and I realize we don’t have life insurance.” Tom bit his bottom lip and shook his head, as if shocked by our oversight. “I mean, we should have gotten a policy years ago, but we definitely can’t both get on a plane without any protection.”

William folded his hands on his knee. “Accidents are rare. But you’re right. They happen. It’s certainly wise to have something in place in case of—”

“You don’t have to sell me.” Tom squeezed my hand. He leaned forward, as if readying a confession. “My parents died in a car accident. If they hadn’t had their insurance policy, I would have lost everything. I still feel foolish that I exposed Sophia and my wife to such a risk.”

William nodded like numbers rolling in a slot machine. He opened the satchel resting beside his chair.

I patted Tom’s knee. Though I knew he was playing a part for the insurance agent, discussing his parents’ death had to hurt. He still rarely talked about the crash that claimed their lives, even with me. And he’d never put up anything of theirs in the house, though I knew he had a locked box from his father in his closet.

I felt the need to defend my husband from his own criticism. “Well, it’s easy to not think about death, especially in your thirties. I mean, how many people die so young?”

“You’d be surprised.” William pulled several folders from his bag and placed them on the coffee table. Each boasted pictures of young couples holding the hands of toddlers. Clever marketing.

“Cancer, motor vehicle accidents, plane crashes, terrorism.” William rattled off the leading causes of untimely demise as though he’d pressed play on a tape recorder lodged in his throat. “Thirtysomethings don’t die of old age, but there are risks that you need to protect your family from.”

Fear mongering: the go-to sales tactic of insurance salesmen and television journalists. Perhaps William wasn’t as naïve as he seemed. Good. His attitude lessened my guilt.

“I agree.” Tom released my hand and picked up a folder. “That’s why I think both my wife and I should take out five million of protection each.”

A smile wrinkled at the edge of William’s firm expression. He folded it back inside like straightening a piece of paper. “Well, we certainly can offer that kind of protection if you fall in a low-risk category, which you both should.” William opened a folder with the company name, Insurance Strategy and Investment. He withdrew a stack of papers. “We would need medical histories, of course, and some family records: parents’ health, that kind of thing. But given your ages, I don’t foresee any problems. I would recommend a whole life policy. The premiums are higher but you can—”

“No offense, but I think a hedge fund can do a bit better investing the money than the average insurance company. Fewer restrictions.” Tom sat back and draped his arm over my shoulders. “My wife and I are really seeking coverage for the unthinkable. I know from my parents that you can’t be too careful.”