by Nora Roberts
She’d met Richard through her voice, when he came into the little club in Memphis where she was lead singer with a band they called Horizon.
Nineteen years old, she thought now. Not old enough to buy a legal beer in the club, though Ty, their drummer who’d been a little bit in love with her, used to sneak her a bottle of Corona when he could.
God, it felt good to sing again, to dance. Other than lullabies, she hadn’t used her singing voice in months. She rolled through Adele, straight into Taylor Swift, then fumbled with the remote to mute the volume when her phone rang again.
Still smiling, still dancing, she answered.
“Hello.”
“I’m looking for David Matherson.”
“I’m sorry, you’ve got the wrong number.”
“David Matherson,” he repeated, and rattled off the phone number.
“Yes, that’s this number but . . .” Something lodged in her throat. She had to clear it, grip the receiver tight. “No one by that name lives here. I’m sorry.”
She hung up before he could say anything else, then hurried to the safe, carefully entered the combination.
She took the manila envelope to the desk, and with stiff and shaky fingers, opened it.
In the envelope she kept the identification she’d found in the bank box, the ones with Richard’s face smiling out.
And one set of identification was in the name of David Allen Matherson.
She didn’t feel like singing anymore, or dancing. For reasons she couldn’t explain, she was compelled to check all the doors, check the alarm system.
Despite the waste of electricity, she left a light burning in the foyer, left the second-floor hall light on. Rather than go to her own bed, she slid in with Callie.
And lay awake a long time praying the phone didn’t ring again.
• • •
THE FURNITURE COMPANY sent a crew who packed up two guest rooms, the foyer, and the dining room, where Shelby hadn’t had a meal since Richard’s accident. After some haggling, she’d agreed to sell the master bedroom suite to the private buyer.
She wiped out the time payment, paid off a second credit card.
Two down, ten to go.
The house felt even bigger and less friendly with so much of the furniture gone. She had a nagging itch at the base of her spine to get gone herself, but there were details yet, and they were her responsibility.
She had an appointment at one-thirty with the book buyer—made at that time so she’d have Callie down for her nap. She tied her hair back, put on the pretty aquamarine dangles her grandparents had given her for Christmas. Added some bronzer, some blush because she looked too pale. She changed the thick socks she liked to wear around the house for good black heels.
Her grandmother claimed heels might pinch the toes some, but they boosted a woman’s confidence.
She jumped when the doorbell rang. The book man was a solid fifteen minutes early, time she’d counted on to put coffee and cookies out in the library.
She rushed down, hoping he didn’t ring again. Callie slept light at naptime.
She opened the door to a man younger and better looking than she’d expected—which went to show, she supposed, about assumptions.
“Mr. Lauderdale, you’re timely.”
“Ms. Foxworth.” Smoothly, he held out a hand to clasp hers.
“Come in out of the cold. I’ll never get used to northern winters.”
“You haven’t been in the area long.”
“No, just long enough to go through a winter. Let me take your coat.”
“I appreciate that.”
He had a strong-looking stocky build, a square-jawed face, cool hazel eyes. Nothing, she thought, like the thin, older, bespectacled bookworm of her imagination.
“Donna—Ms. Tinesdale—said you might be interested in the books I have.” She hung the sturdy peacoat in the foyer closet. “Why don’t I take you right into the library so you can have a look?”
“You have an impressive home.”
“It’s big, anyway,” she said as she led him back, past a sitting room with a grand piano nobody played, a lounge area with a pool table she still had to sell, and to the library.
It would’ve been her favorite room, next to Callie’s, if she could have made it cozier, warmer. But for now she had the fire going, had taken down the heavy drapes—also in the to-sell pile—so the winter sun, what there was of it, could leak through the windows.
The furniture here, the leather sofa in what she thought of as lemon-pie yellow and the dark brown chairs, the too-shiny tables would all be gone by the end of the week.
She hoped the cases full of leather-bound books no one had ever read would be gone, too.
“Like I told you on the phone, I’ll be moving before much longer, so I’m inclined to sell the books. I’ve already packed up the ones I want myself, but these—well, to tell you the truth, my husband bought them because he thought they looked good in the room.”
“They look impressive, like the house.”
“I guess they do. I’m more interested in what’s in a book than how it looks in a cabinet, I guess. If you’d like to take a look at them, I can make coffee.”
He wandered over, took out a book at random. “Faust.”
“I read how a lot of people buy books this way, by the foot? To decorate.”
She wanted to clutch her hands together, had to order herself to relax. She should be used to this by now, she thought, it shouldn’t still make her nervous.
“I guess I think it’d be nicer—more appealing to the eye, to my eye,” she corrected, “if they weren’t all the same. The bindings, the height. And I guess I have to say, I wouldn’t be one to curl up in front of the fire and read Faust.”
“You’re not alone in that.” He slipped the book back in place and turned those cool eyes on her. “Ms. Foxworth, I’m not Lauderdale. My name’s Ted Privet.”
“Oh, did Mr. Lauderdale send you to take a look?”
“I’m not a book dealer, I’m a private investigator. I spoke to you on the phone a couple nights ago. I asked about David Matherson.”
She took a step back. Heels or not, she could and would outrun him. Get him outside, away from Callie.
“And I told you, you had the wrong number. You need to go now. I’m expecting someone any minute.”
“I only need a minute.” With a smile, he lifted his hands as if to show her he was harmless. “I’m just doing my job, Ms. Foxworth. I tracked David Matherson to this area, and my information . . . I’ve got a photo.” He reached into his inside jacket pocket, holding his other hand out and up in a gesture of peace. “If you’d just take a look. Do you know this man?”
Her heart hammered. She’d let a stranger into the house. She’d gotten careless, having so many people going in and out, and she’d let him in. With her baby sleeping upstairs.
“You let me think you were someone else.” She put a whip in her voice, hope it stung. “Is that how you do your job?”
“Yeah, actually. Some of the time.”
“I don’t much like you or your job.” She snatched the photo out of his hand. Stared at it.
She’d known it would be Richard, but seeing him—the movie-star smile, the brown eyes with hints of gold—hit hard. His hair was darker, and he wore a trim goatee she thought made him look older, just like the identification from the bank box. But it was Richard.
The man in the photo had been her husband. Her husband had been a liar.
What was she?
“This is a picture of my late husband, Richard.”
“Seven months ago, this man—going by the name of David Matherson—swindled a woman in Atlanta out of fifty thousand dollars.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know any David Matherson. My husband was Richard Foxworth.”
“Two months before that, David Matherson swindled a small group of investors in Jacksonville, Florida, out of twice that. I could go back,
go on, including a major burglary in Miami about five years ago. Twenty-eight million in rare stamps and jewelry.”
The swindling, after what she’d learned in the past weeks, didn’t shock her. But the thievery, and the amount of it, had her stomach twisting, her head going light.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I want you to go.”
While he tucked the photo away, he kept his eyes on hers. “Matherson was most recently based out of Atlanta, where he ran real estate scams. You lived in Atlanta before coming here, didn’t you?”
“Richard was a financial consultant. And he’s dead. Do you understand? He died right after Christmas, so he can’t answer your questions. I don’t know the answers to them. You’ve got no business coming in here this way, lying your way in and scaring me.”
Once again, he held up his hands—but something in his eyes told Shelby he wasn’t harmless at all.
“I’m not trying to scare you.”
“Well, you have. I married Richard Foxworth in Las Vegas, Nevada, on October 18, 2010. I didn’t marry anyone named David Matherson. I don’t know anyone by that name.”
His mouth twisted into a sneer. “You were married four years, but you claim you don’t know how your husband really made his living? What he really did? Who he really was?”
“If you’re trying to tell me I’m a fool, get in line. Made his living? What living?” Overcome, she threw out her arms. “This house? If I can’t get it sold and fast, they’ll foreclose. You want to claim Richard swindled people, stole from people? Almost thirty million dollars? Well, if it’s true, whoever hired you to find him can get in line, too. I’m digging out from the three million dollars in debt he left me holding. You need to go, you go tell your client he’s got the wrong man. Or if he doesn’t, that man’s dead. There’s nothing I can do about it. If he wants to come after me for the money, well, like I said, there’s a line, and it’s long.”
“Lady, you want me to believe you lived with him for four years but you never heard of Matherson? You don’t know anything?”
Anger swallowed fear. She’d had enough. Just enough, and that temper lit her up like a flash fire. “I don’t give a good damn what you believe, Mr. Privet. Not one single damn. And if you pushed your way in here expecting I’d just pull a bunch of damn stamps and jewelry out of my pocket, or hundreds of thousands in cash to send you on your way, I believe you’re a stupid man as well as a rude one. Get out.”
“I’m just looking for information about—”
“I don’t have any information. I don’t know anything about any of this. What I know is I’m stuck here in this place I don’t know, with this house I don’t want, because I . . .”
“Because?”
“I don’t know anymore.” Even the temper faded now. She was just tired. “I can’t tell you what I don’t know. If you have any questions, you can talk to Michael Spears or Jessica Broadway. Spears, Cannon, Fife and Hanover. They’re the Philadelphia lawyers handling this mess I’m in. Now, you’re going, or I’m calling the police.”
“I’m going,” he said, following her as she strode out and went directly to the closet for his coat.
He took out a business card, held it out to her. “You can contact me if you remember anything.”
“I can’t remember what I don’t know.” But she took the card. “If it was Richard who took your client’s money, I’m sorry for it. Please don’t come back here. I won’t let you in a second time.”
“It could be the cops at the door next time,” he told her. “You keep that in mind. And keep that card.”
“They don’t throw you in jail for being stupid. That’s my only crime.”
She pulled open the door, let out a little yip at the man reaching for the doorbell.
“Ah, Mrs. Foxworth? I startled you. I’m Martin Lauderdale.”
He was older, with eyes of faded blue behind wire-rimmed glasses and a trim beard of more salt than pepper.
“Thank you for coming, Mr. Lauderdale. Goodbye, Mr. Privet.”
“Keep that card,” Privet told her, and skirting around Lauderdale, walked down the cleared front walk to a gray compact.
She knew cars—after all, her granddaddy was a mechanic, and she took careful note of this one. A Honda Civic, in gray, Florida license plates.
If she saw it in the neighborhood again, she’d call the police.
“Let me take your coat,” she said to Lauderdale.
• • •
BY THE END OF THE WEEK the library and the master bedroom stood empty. She sold the pool table, the piano, Richard’s workout equipment and countless odds and ends through Craigslist.
She had one of the ten remaining credit cards down so close to payoff she could taste it.
She stripped the remaining art from the walls, sold that as well, and the fancy coffeemaker, the fancy bar blender.
• • •
AND WHEN SHE WOKE UP on the morning of what should have been the first day of spring to six inches of snow and still falling, she wanted to crawl back into the Princess Fiona sleeping bag currently serving as her bed.
She was living in a damn near-empty house. Worse, her baby girl was living in a damn near-empty house, with no friends, with no one to talk to or play with but her mother.
Four and a half years before, on a simmering October evening out West, she bought a pretty blue dress—Richard had liked her in blue—spent an hour blowing out her hair because he liked it smooth, and walked down the aisle of the silly little chapel carrying a single white rose.
She’d thought it the happiest day of her life, but it hadn’t been her life at all. Just an illusion, and worse, just a lie.
And every day after that, she’d done her very best to be a good wife, to learn to cook the way Richard liked, to pack up and move when Richard had the whim, to dress the way he liked. To make sure Callie was washed and fed and dressed pretty when he came home.
All that’s done, she thought.
“All that’s done,” she murmured. “So why are we still here?”
She went into her old dressing area, where she’d started some halfhearted packing in the Louis Vuitton luggage Richard had bought her in New York to replace the duffel bag she’d stuffed with clothes when she’d run off with him.
She packed in earnest now, then breaking a hard-and-fast rule, she set Callie up with Shrek and cereal in the kitchen while she packed her daughter’s things. Following one of her mother’s hard-and-fast rules—never call anybody but the police, the fire department or a plumber before nine in the morning—she waited until nine on the dot to call Donna.
“Hi, Shelby, how are you?”
“It’s snowing again.”
“It’s the winter that won’t die. They’re saying we’ll get about eight inches, but it’s supposed to go up to about fifty by Saturday. Let’s hope this is the last gasp.”
“I’m not counting on it. Donna, there’s not much left in the house here but me and Callie. I want to take the TV in the kitchen, the under-the-counter one, home for my grandmother. She’d just love that. And the big flat-screen—any of them. There’s nine in this house, I counted. I just want to take one home for my daddy. I don’t know if maybe the buyers want the others? I know the deal’s not final, but we could make the sale of the TVs contingent on it. Honestly, I don’t care what they want to pay me for them.”
“I can propose that to them, of course. Let them make you an offer.”
“That would be just fine. If they don’t want them, or only want some of them, I’ll take care of it.”
Somehow, she thought, rubbing at her aching temple.
“But . . . when I get off the phone with you, I’m calling a moving company. I can’t get Callie’s furniture in the van, not with the boxes I’m taking, and the suitcases and her toys. And, Donna, I’m going to ask you for an awful big favor.”
“Of course, what can I do?”
“I need you to put one of those lockbox things on the house
, and for us to do whatever the paperwork is that’s coming if this goes through, by mail or e-mail or whatever it is. I need to go home, Donna.”
Saying it, just saying it, eased the knots in her shoulders.