The Widower's Wife: A Thriller (35 page)

He’d disabled it. I had to shut off the car.

The poison weighed on my extremities. I leaned on the vehicle as I sidestepped around to the driver’s side. The keys were in the ignition. The vehicle’s locks were engaged. I grabbed the door handle anyway and pulled, desperation overtaking my good sense. I kicked the car door. Nothing I could do would help. Blood rushed to my ears, blocking out sound. I felt so woozy.

Another coughing fit sent me to my knees. I half-crawled to the garage door and pulled, trying to force it up with the little strength I had left. Lights exploded behind my eyes. The door didn’t budge.

A choking sound stifled my sobs. I had to find something to break the door down. An axe? A wrench? All that stuff was in Tom’s garage, not mine.

I cursed myself. In my haste to save my child, I hadn’t planned. And Tom was a planner. He’d figured out how to get rid of me without alerting the neighbors. He would poison me, put me in the trunk, and dump me somewhere. Then he’d run off with Lena and my daughter.

Tears clouded my already warped vision. Eve had been a monster. Perhaps Lena would be kind. I said a silent prayer for God to protect my child and took in my final view: the stark garage, the Toyota, the red rope dangling from the hinge of the garage door.

A giggle burst from my lips. Manual override.

I stood on my tiptoes and swatted at the cord. My fingers wrapped around it on the third try. I yanked. A switch flipped, though I barely heard it over the coughing fit caused by the added physical exertion. Again, I crouched beside the garage door handle and pulled, using all the strength in my thighs to wrest the door open.

The door rose several feet. Fresh air filled my nostrils, water to the dehydrated. I ducked beneath the door and hobbled outside.

My coughs intensified as I emerged from the gas chamber, forcing my eyes closed. When I could finally open them, I saw two police sedans in my driveway and the investigator’s car. I hadn’t imagined the voices. Where was Sophia?

The front door hung wide open. I stumbled toward it, still doubled over from the coughs now brought on by the painful invasion of breathable air. I entered my house and scanned for my daughter. An Asian woman and the investigator stood in the foyer, in front of my husband. Tom had untucked his
button-down shirt. Such sloppiness wasn’t like him. The gun had to be hidden inside his waistband.

The cops turned as I entered. I pointed to my spouse. “He has a gun. He tried to kill me.”

Tom’s expression morphed from annoyed to angry. Furious. He stepped back into the dining room and reached to his hip.

“Gun. Gun!” The Asian woman’s stance changed as she shouted. Her hip angled back and her weapon emerged in one fluid motion.

Tom reacted by withdrawing his own pistol. He pointed it at me, over the shoulder of the investigator standing just in front of my hunched form.

“Put the gun down,” the Asian woman shouted.

“It’s over, Tom,” I said. A strange giddiness had replaced my fear. He wasn’t going to get away with it. “You can’t shoot me. They know everything.”

Tom looked down the gun sight. His finger was on the trigger. “They’re here about Eve. Routine.” He appealed to the cops. “This woman broke into my house.”

“I’ve been talking to investigator Ryan Monahan for weeks.” I directed my words to the private detective though he wouldn’t turn to hear them. His attention was on the pistol in my husband’s hand. “I came to check on Sophia and he tried to kill me, Ryan.”

At the mention of the PI’s name, Tom’s eyes opened from their focused slits. The woman shouted again for him to drop his weapon. Ryan angled his body in front of the cop, shielding her side while allowing a clear shot over his shoulder.

“Put it down!” the woman shouted.

The terror in Tom’s eyes ebbed. He lowered the gun toward his stomach. “This woman is nuts. She broke in.”

My fear of being shot was replaced by dread that my sociopath husband would somehow talk his way out of this, maybe make the cops believe that I was a crazy stranger or that I’d faked my death in hopes of taking Sophia away from him without a custody battle. He was such a good liar.

“I’ve told them everything,” I shouted. “Ryan knows what you did on the boat. He knows that you and Eve planned it all for the insurance money. He knows you shot Eve. You can’t kill me to shut me up. He already knows everything. It’s over. This whole time, you’ve been the idiot. You’ve been thinking you were getting away with it while Ryan was gathering evidence I gave him. You’re going to rot in prison.”

Tom’s eyes darted from the female officer to the investigator and me. Resignation flickered on his face, followed by a rage that distorted his features. “You two were playing me this whole time?” The gun began to rise. It went from Tom’s hip to his waist to his chest. “Fuck you both.”

A bang pierced the air. I shut my eyes, wanting my last sight to be the back of my lids and not a bullet. Smoke and screams overwhelmed my senses.

The hysterical voice was my own. My lids fluttered back. I feared seeing blood on my shirt or Ryan lying in front of me. Instead, Ryan was standing beside the female cop, his arm around her shoulder. My screams died. I stepped toward the dining room.

Blood was splattered on the chandelier. Tom lay beneath, bent backward over the dining table, a quarter-sized hole punctured in the center of his forehead. Cabernet-colored liquid pooled beneath his skull, seeping into the surface. That stain would never come out.

43

December 4

R
yan sat on the Bacons’ front steps, head dropped between his knees. The adrenaline coursing through his body had nothing to do except twist his stomach and spike his blood pressure. Sweat rolled down his face, despite the near-freezing temperature outside. He thought he might be sick.

For the second time in his life, he’d found himself in a gunfight without a weapon. He was furious with the failure of his statistics-educated gut for not alerting him to the possibility that Tom might attack his arresting officers. Tom had acted out of character. Until hours ago, he’d been smart. Careful. The kind of killer who forced suicide notes and made certain he’d had fake alibis in place.

Premeditated murderers didn’t get into shootouts with law enforcement. Something had pushed all Tom’s buttons, made him lose control. Or rather, someone.

Ryan looked up from the stone beneath him. Steam wafted from the headlights of the police cruisers crowding the driveway. Their light and the glow from the lit-up house illuminated the Bacons’ property in the dark, turning it into a strange movie set. At the center of the action was an ambulance with Camilla and the little girl huddled together on a stretcher. The ambulance’s open pewter doors framed their picture. Vivienne leaned against the Bacons’ garage, beneath the outdoor torches. The detective that had taken his statement moments ago was now taking hers.
She’d be blameless. She’d demanded that Tom drop his weapon multiple times.

Ryan’s gaze returned to the maid. She cradled Sophia in her lap. The girl’s head was buried in her chest. Someone had draped a blanket over the two of them, which Camilla had turned to mostly cover the child. Two local officers fidgeted beside the vehicle, clearly holding back from getting Camilla and Sophia into the waiting squad cars. They needed to question them separately, and nobody wanted to snatch some poor kid who had lost both parents in the space of four months from the arms of a familiar adult.

Ryan placed his hand on the side of the house for support and stood. He needed to talk to Camilla before she went to the local station. Undocumented immigrants sometimes disappeared after talking to cops.

He limped down the driveway to her huddled figure. Before he could speak, David came running. Though Vivienne’s partner was backlit by headlights, Ryan could see the excited expression on his face.

“NYPD picked up Lena at work,” David said. “I just got off the phone with them.”

“And?”

“They asked her about Tom. Showed her pictures of Eve. She said that Tom had told her Eve was becoming erratic and obsessed with him.”

“Of course he told her that.”

Ryan continued toward Camilla. He might not get another chance to talk to her.

David’s hand landed on his shoulder. “Wait, your company will like this.” A smile spread across his overearnest face. He spoke too loud for Ryan’s liking, as though he wanted all the cops to listen in. “Lena admitted that she wasn’t talking to Tom on the boat when his wife died. She’d hung out with him earlier in the day while Ana was at the beach by herself. The potheads
did
mix up the time. Lena claims that she lied because Tom told
her that he’d confessed the affair to his wife and she’d jumped. Lena didn’t want to be vilified in the news.”

Camilla knew Ryan was coming for her. He could see her in the ambulance lights, tracking him from behind those ridiculous glasses. Her expression was pained. “Thanks, David,” he coughed. “I’ll take the statement under advisement.”

He nodded to the local cops as he passed and then sat on the edge of the open ambulance, feet still planted on the asphalt. Camilla blinked acknowledgement.

“Soph,” she whispered into the blanket, “I have to talk to this man.” She looked up at the female cop, now hovering nearby. “She didn’t see anything.”

The woman gave an apologetic smile and reached into the vehicle for the girl. “We still have to ask her some questions.” Her voice became high and Mary Poppins-esque. “Would you like some hot cocoa? I think we have some.”

The girl nuzzled into the sitter’s chest.

Camilla cooed into her ear. She brushed her cheek with her fingertips until the girl looked up. “I’ll be right there.” She tapped her chest. “I’m your Auntie Camilla. Okay? I won’t let anything happen to you. I’ll come right away. Okay? Auntie Camilla will come right away, like I always did when I watched you.”

The girl nodded. Camilla carried Sophia to the edge of the ambulance and passed her through the open doors to the female cop. “Auntie’s a term of endearment.” She seemed to volunteer the information to answer the woman’s confused expression. “She’s been through a lot. She wants her mom.”

Camilla joined Ryan on the ambulance floor. Tears tumbled down her cheeks as she watched the woman take Sophia away.

“What will happen to Sophia? Will she go to Ana’s parents?”

“In time. She’ll probably spend a couple weeks in a foster home while the authorities work out how to get her to Brazil.”

The sitter bit her bottom lip. Her eyes welled. “I’d gladly take her. But I don’t have any documents.”

Ryan understood her dilemma. If Camilla had overstayed a visa and left the country, the United States might bar her entry for ten years. “Ana’s parents can come get her.”

She stared into her lap. “They don’t have money.”

A flush of guilt heated Ryan’s face. He’d introduced himself to Camilla as someone investigating her former employer’s death. He’d never made it clear that he was working for an insurance company. “Ana had a substantial death benefit. Sophia will get a lot of money. And with Tom dead, it will go to Ana’s parents to take care of their granddaughter.”

She swiped at her eyes again. The tears fell so fast that she had to lift her glasses to wipe them before putting them on again. “But I heard that cop say there’s a woman claiming Ana jumped.”

“Tom told the women in his life a lot of things, most of it untrue.” Ryan knocked the ambulance’s metal floor, giving his still jittery hands something to do other than shake. “Tom killed Eve. He didn’t do that to cover up allegations that his wife jumped overboard. Ana didn’t plan to be murdered and it was her policy. The company will have to pay the base amount.”

Sobs broke Camilla’s voice. She wiped her eyes on the blanket and then tried to put the thin, blue fleece over her shoulders. He took the corner from her and helped drape it over her back.

“How did you know that Tom had a gun?”

Camilla sucked in her breath. “I saw on the news that Eve was dead. The anchor called it suspicious. It made me fear that Tom was going crazy and could hurt Sophia. I came over and he invited me inside. He was so . . . calm.” She shuddered. “And . . . I lost it. I told him that the police must know he killed Eve and Ana, and it was just a matter of time before you guys came for him. Next thing I knew, he had a gun. I woke up, trapped in the garage with the car running, keys locked inside.”

Ryan nodded slowly. Tom had tried to kill Camilla the same way he’d murdered his mother. Why not, since he’d gotten away with it before?

Camilla’s breath came out in thin puffs of condensation.

“I’d come to save Sophia and I put her in more danger. I’m horrible. What if he . . .”

Ryan draped an arm around her shoulder. “Sophia will be okay.”

“How does a kid get over this?” She lifted her large glasses to wipe her face. Her watery eyes were big and familiar—and brown. They looked like Sophia’s.

Camilla’s head dropped back into her open palms.

“Lies.” Ryan touched his fingers to her chin, encouraging her to look up again. “She’s not even four. Memory can be ephemeral at this age. There’s no need to traumatize her with the truth. She didn’t see Tom get shot. Way I see it, she doesn’t need anyone explaining anything other than her parents died in an accident.”

Camilla held her head up. She stared at the house, lit up like Christmas by the crime scene investigators inside. Tom’s body was just visible through the front windows, splayed across the dining room table.

“Lie,” she whispered. “I can do that.”

Ryan looked into her determined brown eyes. He bet that she could.

44

December 24

S
ophia would be home for Christmas.

She skipped beside me, her bouncy motion sending the child-sized suitcase careening from one side to the other on the terminal’s iridescent floor. A smile sparkled on her diamond-shaped face. She was taking her first plane ride to see her grandparents for the first time. They loved her, and they lived by the beach. It would be warm there since Brazil’s summers coincided with the United States’ winters. And, per tradition, she would wear a white dress and spend New Year’s Eve splashing in the water. It was all so exciting.