She startled. Graham was standing in the arch between the living room and the hallway. “What?”
“That whatever this is, it has nothing to do with me.”
He stood there watching her. And for a moment it was as if she was seeing him for the first time. Her husband. The adulterer. The liar. What else?
“Selena,” he said. His voice was almost stern. “Say something.”
The world spun.
Then the doorbell rang, startling them both. When she opened it, Detective Crowe stood waiting there.
“Mrs. Murphy,” he said. “I think we’ve found Geneva Markson’s vehicle parked on your street. Did you know she’d left it?”
Selena shook her head, felt something catch in her throat. “No.”
She wasn’t even sure what kind of car Geneva drove; the other woman never parked in their driveway and she always used their second car, a late-model Subaru, to drive the boys around.
She followed the detective’s gaze and saw a white Toyota parked across the street. People had started to gather. A squad car arrived.
“Were you planning on going anywhere today?” he asked.
She shook her head. “I’ll work from home.”
“Your husband.”
Something about the way he said it made her stomach bottom out. “He’s—between jobs at the moment.”
Between jobs? That sounded shady. But the detective only nodded, polite, neutral.
“So, yeah, he’ll be here, I mean.” Graham stood in the dark of the hallway, stiff, frozen.
“We may come back with more questions,” said the detective. Was there something in his tone? “We’d appreciate it if you could both be around.”
“Of course. We’ll be here.”
She closed the front door as he walked down the path.
“Selena,” said Graham.
In the kitchen, her phone was buzzing. She walked away from her husband, slipping instantly into crisis management mode. She’d call her mother and ask her to take the boys for a few days until this all worked itself out. Then, she’d call Beth and tell her what was going on—as little as possible. Will was a lawyer; he would be her next call. Not that they needed a lawyer. But they might. William was famous for saying that if the police show up at your door and you don’t call your lawyer, you’re basically handing over your rights. It sounded dramatic, very lawyerly. Until it sounded like solid advice.
When she picked up the phone, there were a string of texts from yet another unknown number.
Hey, girl.
How’s your day going? Time for a drink after work tonight?
It’s Martha, by the way.
From the train.
FOURTEEN
Anne
Anne let her finger drift over the diamond bracelet on her slim wrist. A Tiffany Victoria line bracelet. Small, the lowest carat count. But still. More than ten thousand, for sure. Closer to fifteen. The sun coming in from the windows caught on the gems and cast rainbow shards of light on the walls, on the ceiling. It should have been enough, the payout from Kate. The look on her face. But somehow it just wasn’t.
“Do you like it, darling?” said Hugh. She loved that even though he’d been caught, that surely his whole life with Kate hung in the balance now, he still couldn’t resist her. The power of that was delicious.
“I love it,” she gushed. “It’s beautiful.”
The grift. The con. It was almost an old-fashioned idea, the stuff of noir novels and black-and-white movies.
The Nigerian prince seeking help from afar: Give me your bank account and I’ll transfer my wealth, pay you handsomely for the favor! The shell game: Next time you’ll get it! The pigeon drop: Hey, buddy! Did you drop your wallet? Whoa—look at all this cash. There were a hundred ways to separate a fool from his money. Except it was never about the money. It was about the thrill, the intimacy of being taken into someone’s trust, of extracting from them a thing they didn’t even know they wanted to give. And they did want to give it.
You can’t con an honest man. That’s what Pop always said.
That was true without being the whole truth. Anne had a bit of revision. You can’t con someone who doesn’t want something, who wasn’t willing to wade into a gray area to get it. You can’t con someone who is a stranger to desire, to need.
Take Hugh for example. He thought that he’d seduced Anne. But in a way, hadn’t she led him to it, gently, delicately? Even though she’d come to the firm, ostensibly, to work, to go straight, as Pop liked to say. Hadn’t she seen an opportunity pretty quickly, maybe even subconsciously? She