Ditching David

by Jenna Bennett

  I picked it up and slit the envelope. It contained a statement, and when I unfolded it, I realized that David had a few hundred thousand dollars sitting in an account I knew nothing about.

  A few hundred thousand dollars I assumed he’d wanted to keep out of the divorce settlement.

  I dialed Diana’s number, of course, and when she answered, told her, “I’m at David’s place. His new place.”

  There was a beat of silence. “What are you doing there?” Diana wanted to know.

  “I’m thinking of moving in.”

  “Gina...!”

  I rolled my eyes. “I’m kidding. The funeral home needs a suit to bury David in, and I had to go get one. And since I was here anyway, I figured I’d take a look around.”

  “Of course,” Diana said. “Nice place?”

  “Very.” Part of me would certainly move in if I could. Unfortunately, the condo might not be mine. If the judge ruled for the prenup, I’d lose not only the condo, but the house as well.

  I tried to imagine Kenny moving in here, and Krystal into my house in Hillwood, and shuddered. “Do you know anything about a brokerage access account at Second Community Bank? With a quarter million dollars in it? In David’s name?”

  “No,” Diana said.

  “It’s not listed among the assets for the divorce?”

  “No,” Diana said. “Tell me about it.”

  I told her about it; where it was and what it said, and how I’d found out about it. “The balance was just under two-fifty at the end of the last statement cycle two weeks ago.”

  “Bastard,” Diana said.

  Yes, indeed. “He’s hiding assets, isn’t he? Just in case the judge throws out the prenup and I’m entitled to half of everything.”

  “Uh-huh,” Diana said. “Send me copies of everything you can find pertaining to that account, and to any others he may have had. If he had one, he probably had several. Send me anything that doesn’t look familiar to you. Anything in David’s name only. Or David’s with someone else. Someone other than you.”

  I glanced around. “There’s no office equipment here. No copier, no scanner, no fax machine. I can take pictures with my cell phone and send them to you. Or is it OK to take the paperwork out of the condo and back to the house? I can scan them from the office there.”

  “At the moment,” Diana said, and she sounded ready to chew nails and spit them out, directly at Anton Hess, “everything David owns is yours. The judge hasn’t ruled yet, and you’re still married. Take them anywhere you want.”

  Excellent.

  “I’ll see what I can find,” I told her, mentally rubbing my hands together. “I don’t suppose you’ve heard anything about anything?”

  Diana said she hadn’t. “What about you? Anything new on your end?”

  Rather a lot, actually. I told her about Jaime Mendoza stopping by yesterday afternoon, and my discovery that Daniel was in Nashville and not in California. “I called and told him. Mendoza. He said he’d look into it.”

  “Then I’m sure he will,” Diana said.

  “He said he was alone with a five-year-old.”

  “He has a son.” Her tone of voice was a clear warning to stop asking questions. “Anything else?”

  “After I spoke to him, I saw Jacquie having food and drinks with a guy named Nick. The waitress at Rotier’s said she’d seen them together before. And I’ve seen the guy, Nick, come out of Jacquie’s building once.”

  “Did you tell Jaime that?”

  I told her I hadn’t. “I’ll slip it into the conversation the next time I talk to him. He sounded busy last night.” Not to mention exasperated. I hadn’t wanted to try his patience any further. “I figure I’ll hear from him sometime today. He told me he’d let me know what happened when he spoke to Daniel.”

  “Then I’m sure you’ll hear this afternoon,” Diana said. “Get me that paperwork, Gina.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” I don’t know why I ma’amed her—she’s only a couple of years older than me. It was probably the tone of her voice: brisk and businesslike. “I don’t know how long it’ll take. It depends on how much junk is in this drawer. And then I have to take the suit down to the funeral home, before I can go back home.”

  “Take your time,” Diana said. “We’re not going back in front of the judge for a couple of weeks. That’ll give me plenty of time to dig into things.” She sounded like she was looking forward to it.

  I told her I’d get her everything as quickly as I could, and went back to digging through David’s non-existent filing system.

  * * *

  THIRTY MINUTES LATER I had statements not only for that account, but for a couple of others. David had a retirement account with almost a million dollars in it that I never knew existed, as well as a time deposit with another two hundred thousand. I had no idea where the money had come from.

  Or rather, it had come from the business, obviously. I’m sure David had earned it, fair and square. He isn’t the cheating type, not in that way. His salary was more than sufficient—obviously, since he’d managed to squirrel so much of it away without me noticing it was missing.

  And now I had my explanation for why he never wanted me to take an active hand in any of the household finances. I would have been happy to do the budgeting and balancing—I’d been handling my own meager finances before David married me, and you can take my word for it, a college student putting herself through school by waiting tables, knows all there is to know about stretching a dollar—but David had had an accountant who took care of things so I didn’t have to, and I didn’t question it. I just took the allowance they gave me, and spent it. Now I wished I’d paid more attention.

  But at least Diana knew about the extra money now. And David’s trying to keep it hidden might be enough to make the judge throw out the prenup. At least I hoped so.

  I tossed all the papers I wasn’t interested in back into the drawer and took the stack I did want with me into the bedroom, where I placed it on the king sized bed before going over to the closet.

  There was no paperwork here. I guess David hadn’t lived in the apartment long enough to accumulate more than a drawer’s worth of mail. I was surprised he’d had time for that much.

  The suits were hanging in a neat row, color coordinated from black to gray and then to navy. David had never been a brown person. Same thing for the shirts: from black to white, via shades of purple and blue, with the occasional pink or pale yellow thrown in for good measure. Some were discretely striped, but most were solid. The ties had a built-in rack of their own, and so did the shoes.

  For a second, I felt overwhelmed—how do you choose an outfit for your husband to wear into the ground?—but then I told myself it didn’t matter. He wouldn’t know the difference anyway. And we weren’t planning to have an open casket visitation. As Anselm Howard had pointed out, delicately, David hadn’t died peacefully in his sleep.

  In the end, I went with a tasteful, charcoal gray suit—the same one David had worn when he told me about Jacquie—with a deep purple shirt and checked tie. I grabbed a pair of black socks and shoes, and hesitated for a moment over the underwear drawer. Did Mr. Howard expect me to bring underwear?

  It wasn’t like the suit would chafe without it, under the circumstances.

  Then again, better to bring something he didn’t need, than for him to need something I didn’t bring. I pulled a pair of black briefs out of the drawer and added them to the pile.

  And then I gathered up the clothes, and the paperwork, and my purse, and left David’s love shack.

  * * *

  I HAD PLANNED to drop off the clothes with the funeral home’s front desk and beat a hasty retreat, but when I walked in, Anselm Howard was right there in the lobby, saying goodbye to another grieving family. A middle-aged mother and two grown children, all of them with swollen, red eyes and quivering lips, clutching tissues.

  A far cry from Krystal, Kenny, and myself yesterday.

  I averted my eyes, feelin
g guilty. Both about seeing their grief, and about not showing enough of my own.

  Mr. Howard sped them on their way and then turned to me, his eyes on the bag. “Is that for me?”

  I nodded, extending it. “Suit and shirt, socks, shoes, and underwear. I wasn’t sure whether you needed that, but...”

  “Better safe than sorry,” Mr. Howard said. He gestured me to follow him through the door at the end of the lobby.

  I did, although I had no idea why. My heels clicked on the concrete floors as we headed down the hallway, bypassing the offices, until Mr. Anselm pushed open a set of double, steel-reinforced doors at the end of the hall. Frigid air rushed out, and my skin prickled. A sickly sweet odor was almost, but not entirely, obscured by the smell of chemicals.

  I stopped dead, if you’ll pardon the expression. Mr. Howard stopped too, and looked back at me. When I didn’t speak, he said, “I thought you might want to see Mr. Kelly. Since the service tomorrow will be closed casket.”

  Oh, God.

  “Do I have to?”

  Mr. Howard blinked. “No. It’s optional.”

  But if I didn’t, he’d wonder why. Most wives probably wanted to say goodbye to their husbands. That was probably what the sobbing family in the lobby had just done.

  “Is he...” I hesitated, “presentable?”

  “As presentable as we could make him,” Mr. Howard said. “With a violent death, there is sometimes visible damage. That can’t be helped. But we cleaned Mr. Kelly up as best we could. I wouldn’t recommend changing tomorrow to an open casket viewing, but I believe you won’t see anything too disturbing.”

  Wonderful.

  There was no real way around it, though—not without looking like a very bad wife—and David’s and my private life, including the fact that we’d been separated when he died, wasn’t really any of Mr. Howard’s business. So I squared my shoulders and marched forward, into the cold smell of the embalming room.

  In the end, the experience didn’t turn out to be quite as bad as I’d feared. The room had a couple of big steel tables in the middle of the floor, and David was lying on one, covered by a sheet. Mr. Howard dropped the bag of clothes on the floor next to the table and folded back the top of the sheet. Or rather, the bottom. A pair of naked feet sporting a toe tag appeared.

  Mr. Howard clicked his tongue and put the sheet back, but not until I’d seen David’s name on the tag.

  Then the process was repeated on the other end of the table. David’s head appeared, with silver hair brushed back from his face and his complexion faded to a sickly gray.

  Other than that, he didn’t look too bad. At least not the parts of him I saw. Mr. Howard only folded the sheet back to just below his chin, so I guess most of the damage was farther south.

  There was some bruising on David’s forehead, mottling the skin; I guess maybe he’d hit his head against the steering wheel or the windshield in the collision. His eyelids were sunken and his lips thin and pale, but other than that, he looked like my husband.

  He didn’t look like he was sleeping. I’ve heard people say that, and it isn’t true. He looked dead. Quite definitely dead. And the part of him that had been David, was gone. There was no spark inside, to animate the features or raise and lower the chest under the sheet.

  “Here.”

  It wasn’t until I glanced over, and saw that Mr. Howard was extending a box of tissues, that I realized I was crying.

  “Thank you.” I took one and dabbed my eyes.

  “I’ll give you a moment alone,” Mr. Howard said, turning away.

  “No!”

  He turned back, looking surprised, and I added, a bit more calmly, “That’s not necessary. I’ve... seen enough.”

  And the last thing I wanted, was to be stuck here by myself with the bodies. There was another corpse on the other table, covered by a sheet—probably the one the grieving family in the lobby had visited.

  Mr. Howard looked doubtful, but said, “If you’re sure.”

  “I’m positive, thank you.” I took one last look at David, and turned away.

  “My pleasure,” Mr. Howard said. I could hear the rustling of the sheet behind me as he re-covered the body. “Let me show you out.”

  “I can manage.” And he probably wanted to get David dressed. I knew I’d like him to. “Through the double doors and straight down the hallway, right?”

  Mr. Howard nodded.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said.

  He inclined his head. And waited beside the table, with his hands folded, until I was out of the room. The last thing I saw, when I turned in the doorway, was what looked like Mr. Howard praying over David’s profile.

  Chapter 8

  I HAD TO get home to scan the various account statements to Diana so she could get to work proving to Judge Miller that David had been hiding assets from the estate. But on my way across town, the route took me fairly close to Music Row and the Hollingsworth & Kelly offices, and it occurred to me that no one might have told Rachel and Farley about the funeral arrangements.

  I knew they knew about David’s death, because Detective Mendoza had spoken to Farley and Martha. I assumed he’d spoken to Rachel, as well, although he hadn’t specifically mentioned it, and I hadn’t specifically asked. But unless they were in communication with Krystal or Kenny—and I doubted it—nobody might have told them when and where the memorial was to take place.

  I turned the car in a northerly direction and headed toward Music Row.

  * * *

  I HADN’T BEEN inside the Hollingsworth & Kelly offices for months, maybe as much as a year. I had no real business there, and the knowledge that Rachel didn’t like me, made me reluctant to invade her domain. In fact, David had explicitly asked me not to, because it made her crabby for the rest of the day whenever I went there. Since I’d had a look at her by that point, and knew that she wasn’t a threat to my marriage, I was fine with it. I didn’t particularly care about the business, or only insofar as it provided David’s—and by extension my—income.

  It still looked the same. A cozy lobby with sleek, gray sofas and vintage black and white photographs of the country music greats. Hank Williams Senior, Patsy Cline, Jim Reeves, Johnny Cash. David and Farley had never worked for or with any of them, but the pictures gave the impression they had. They also gave the impression that Hollingsworth & Kelly had been in business a very long time, when in fact, David and Farley had started the company twenty years ago. Patsy, Jim and Hank were all dead by the mid-1960s, which was about the time David and Farley started kindergarten.

  The front door was hooked up to a bell that rang in Rachel’s office, which guarded the sanctuary of David’s office, and it didn’t take long at all before she walked out into the lobby.

  She didn’t look good. She had always been a bit frumpy, but now her round face was paler than usual and her makeup had smudged. She was clutching a tissue. “I’m sorry...” she began, and then she recognized me and stopped mid-apology. “Mrs. Kelly.”

  The words sounded like they were squeezed out between two millstones.

  “Rachel. I’m sorry for your loss.” She seemed to be taking it harder than me. And I’m sure that’s why the look she gave me was full of dislike.

  “I wanted to tell you about the funeral,” I added. “I wasn’t sure anyone had.”

  She blinked. “No.” I guess maybe she’d expected me to be rude right back.

  “The visitation is tomorrow at ten. The service is at eleven. The graveside service is at one. The funeral home is Boling & Howard in Woodbine. The same place where David’s mother’s funeral was last year.”

  Rachel nodded.

  “He’ll be buried at Spring Hill Cemetery. Where his mother is buried. And his father.”

  Rachel nodded.

  “There’s a reception afterward, at the house. Three to five.”

  Rachel nodded.

  “I should probably tell Farley myself.” I glanced at the door to the inner sanctum. “Is he
here?”

  Rachel hesitated. For a second, I wondered whether she’d refuse to let me go in. But then she nodded. “I’ll take you back.”

  It was tempting to tell her I knew the way—which I did—but I squashed the impulse. This was her domain. David’s home had been mine. I could let her have this. “Thank you,” I said.

  She led the way into the bowels of the building, her sensible heels clicking on the floor. I followed, my less sensible heels clicking also, while I wondered why Rachel didn’t make a little more out of herself.

  She wasn’t a bad-looking woman. A few years older than me, and quite a few pounds heavier, but she had nice, thick, still-brown hair that she kept pulled back from her face in the most unattractive way imaginable for someone with a round face who’s carrying an extra forty pounds. It wasn’t a bad face, though, when she wasn’t scowling at me. She’d probably been a very pretty girl. Her eyes were big and green—they only seemed small because her face was puffier than it ought to be. And because she didn’t use any makeup to make them look bigger, I suppose. But she had good skin, and good hair, and good teeth, when she bothered to show them. It was a shame that she spent her life in ugly business suits with an ugly haircut to top them off.

  Naturally I didn’t say so. It was none of my business why Rachel chose to live her life the way she did.

  She stopped in front of Farley’s door and knocked. I waited for her to push the door open and announce me, but she waited until he’d told her to come in, and then she opened the door and stuck her head through. “Mrs. Kelly is here to see you.”

  There was a beat. Then— “Gina?” Farley’s voice said. He sounded shocked.

  “Yes, Mr. Hollingsworth.” Rachel stepped aside and waved me in.

  “Thank you,” I told her and crossed the threshold. She closed the door behind me with a soft click.

  * * *

  THERE ARE ONLY the three offices in the building. David’s and Rachel’s on one side of the hallway, and Farley’s on the other, along with the records room. He doesn’t want an administrative assistant, and I guess he doesn’t really need one. David had a social schedule that kept Rachel busy. Golf and power lunches with clients, and meetings with people he was trying to woo into becoming clients. Business dinners and charitable events. And of course Krystal and Kenny and Jacquie and me.