CHAPTER 19
SHE BASKS IN the cool breezes coming off of Lake Michigan, while the sun warms her bare shoulders. No need for a hat to cover her hair, either. After another go with a home-bleaching kit this morning, as well as a few rounds of toning shampoo, her locks are as close to Phoebe-blond as they’re going to get, and free of their dark roots. The summer dress she chose for today’s outing is knee-length, with thin spaghetti straps and a bold geometric print in jewel tones that both flatter her figure and pop brilliantly against the turquoise-water backdrop.
After doing some quick studying on fashion, including designer brands and common faux pas, she’s made sure her strappy silver Louboutin heels are not an exact match for her small white Fendi purse. Inside that purse are all manner of credit cards and a driver’s license identifying her as Phoebe Eleanor Miller, age thirty-two, a resident of 4115 Gooding Lane. Nadia wasn’t exactly thrilled to have gained six years in age, but she was amused to discover her zodiac sign has switched from Scorpio to Gemini, a sign represented by twins.
Now that the dust has settled a bit, she’s had time to process this new life. It’s the ultimate fruition of Nadia’s dream, to make her way up here and assume her rightful place in the family she never knew she had. She has the house, the money, the clothes, the makeup and hair, and all the supporting documents to show for it. But in spite of the simple pleasure this brings, and the relief to be out of her car and the immediate danger of the cops finding her, she’s never felt more cheated and sad, not to mention guilty over the role she very likely played with her meddling. It hits her a little at a time, like drips from a leaky faucet.
Because of everything that’s happened, she can’t be a Noble out in the open, as herself. She gets to have the lifestyle, but only in exchange for waking up every day a fraud, an avatar for a dead sister who never knew she existed. She has to assume Phoebe’s fashion and way of life, both of which are different from what Nadia would have chosen for herself if given the opportunity. None of it feels like hers. She wonders if it will in time, if the pink clothes and painful shoes will feel less like a costume. If a full erasure of her former self will occur, simply because it must if she wants to stay out of prison, or worse.
It may begin to happen someday, and she will have to decide if that’s really what she wants. But first, the questions around Phoebe’s death must be answered. And given what she’s learned about the people next door after her hours of digging, she only has more questions. Though also a few ideas. She doesn’t like living so close to the Napiers right now. Every window in that house feels like a prying eye.
Today started a bit more low-key. She didn’t come downstairs to find a stoned Wyatt cooking up a stack of pancakes, thank goodness. Instead, she was up before him, and after she finished with the last of her research, she went out to retrieve coffee and bagels, keeping a close eye on the Napier house while coming and going. When she got back, she caught herself peering from the same set of blinds Phoebe used to watch Nadia through every morning, and a wave of unexpected grief hit her. She’s still trying to muddle her way through.
It was nearly noon when Wyatt finally exited his room. She didn’t ask where he’d gone yesterday. That would have been a wife’s question, and Nadia is no one’s wife, no matter whose name she goes by now. But she does know he came in well after midnight, and his inability to eat more than a few bites of his bagel this morning, while being thirsty enough to drain three glasses of water and a large coffee, signaled he’d likely been out drinking. At least he was in an agreeable mood, even if he was quiet. When she asked him to pick a place where they could go and discuss things today, somewhere neutral, somewhere that didn’t have a fog of murder and pain hanging over it, he chose the year-round carnival and tourist-choked destination of Navy Pier. At least it’s cheery, and the views are great. They could use a bit of that right now.
But he’s even more pensive than before they arrived. After failing to talk him onto any of the rides, she says, “Hey, are you going to make me drag it out of you or what?”
He looks at her. “What?”
“The stick up your butt, for starters. Talk to me.”
His expression remains pensive, and Nadia’s beginning to think he’s going to keep quiet, but finally he speaks. “We used to come here together a lot when we were dating.”
She sighs. “This does not sound like neutral territory.”
“There aren’t many truly neutral places in this city when it comes to Phoebe and me, but I figured this would be better than some of the others, because I loved it more than she did. She didn’t care much for crowds, even back in our younger days. But I couldn’t afford to take her to five-star restaurants or the theater like she was used to, either. It was hard dating a princess.”
“It couldn’t have been all bad if you married her.”
He grins. “You’re right. It was hard dating a princess, but it was also exciting. She was smart, intense. Fun as hell. She was well traveled when we met. Taught me a lot. Everything felt like an exotic experience. It’s hard not to be drawn to someone so bright, even if deep down you feel so dull by comparison.” He runs his hands through his hair. “Yeah, maybe coming here was a bad idea.”
Nadia wants to be annoyed with him for dragging them all the way here when he had to know it was going to bring up painful memories, but she understands his need to grieve, to reconcile the good with the bad over the last fifteen years of his life with this woman. She felt much the same way when her mother died. There were a lot of reasons to resent Vera. Her judgmental nature, her constant negativity, the way she sometimes seemed so helpless that it made Nadia feel more like the mother than the child in the relationship. But mostly it was the cowardice Nadia resented—staying with that old drunken farmer when she could have tapped the Noble cash cow at any point to buy them a better life. She probably would have ridiculed the women who are now coming forward after Daniel’s death to talk about the abuse they experienced, never mind that she was one of them.
But that doesn’t stop the pain of her loss from creeping up on Nadia at the most unexpected times, or nullify the good things, like her wicked sense of humor, the generosity of her heart, the loyalty she showed to everyone she cared about, even if it was to a fault. Nadia doubts she’ll ever stop hearing Vera’s voice in her head during her most self-critical moments. She spots a bench overlooking the water and leads him there to sit. “Look at me,” she says.
She doesn’t much care for what she sees. It’s a handsome face. She noticed that about him from the beginning, but even in the few days they’ve known each other, the stress has cut deep lines around his eyes and mouth, aging him well beyond his years. He also seems grayer at the temples and in his growing stubble. A shave would help, as would a yearlong nap.
“I’m Phoebe.”
He shakes his head. “No you’re not.”
She grabs his hands. “Shut up. Right now, I’m Phoebe. I look like her. I have her ID in my purse. I’m wearing one of her stupid dresses, and we have the same shitty paternal DNA. I am more her than anyone else can be, and I want you to tell me exactly what you would tell her right now if you could. You said after we buried her that she’d know what you were thinking, but I think it’s time for you to open up.”
He hangs his head. “I know what you’re doing.”
“Good. So play along and be the patient for once. I’m giving you an opportunity no one ever gets. Sure, you can scream at a pillow or a wall, but it doesn’t beat venting your spleen onto an actual person. So let’s have it.”
“Okay.” He takes a deep breath and looks her in the eye, though Nadia can see it’s hard for him to hold that gaze. “You were right. I stopped seeing you. But I’m not sure I ever saw the real you, until that last day. And then it was too late . . .” He pauses and looks down at his feet long enough that Nadia is beginning to wonder if he’s finished, but then he continues. “A lot of my f
riends told me, when they could see I had it bad for you, that I was wasting my time. Look out for her, they’d say. She’s cold. She’s a mess. You won’t get far with that one.
“I didn’t see any of that, though. I saw strength and independence. I saw this gorgeous package filled with a million tinier packages that I couldn’t wait to spend my whole life opening up, and I felt so goddamn special that out of all the guys in the world you could have had, you picked this nobody to do that. But at some point, I stopped opening those gifts and you stopped presenting them to me. I don’t know which came first, but it doesn’t matter now. Neither of us was perfect. But I’m still going. I’m going to find out what really happened. I’m seeing you, and I’m probably going to spend the rest of my life trying to make this right. Your kid sister is helping. I think you’d like her.”
He lets go of her hands and turns back to face the water.
Nadia spends the next few minutes processing this intimate glimpse of Phoebe, now fully understanding the sadness she felt earlier when she peeked through the blinds. The thought of all those tiny gifts remaining unopened forever, when she could have had the chance at a few of them herself if she’d only mustered up enough courage to knock on the door sooner, is overwhelming. “Did that help?” she asks, her voice hoarse.
“I think so. But I don’t want to do it again.”
“That’s fair.”
She takes a breath and moves on to the bigger thing she’s been holding on to. From her purse, she pulls out a folded sheaf of papers she printed off, containing the results of her digging on the Napiers last night.
Wyatt pages through them. “Ron and Vicki are from here originally, huh? Interesting.”
“Yes. But they met out there, apparently. I’m guessing he tapped some old contacts here when everything out west fell apart.”
“Fell apart how?”
She gestures toward the papers. “Keep reading. It’s in there.”
He flips through a few more sheets. “Wow. Ron lost his medical license in California?”
“Looks like he had a few malpractice suits. One girl ended up paralyzed during a spinal surgery that should have been simple enough, at least for him. Another person died after a botched procedure. But it looks like all of them were eventually dropped. I assume they were paid off, but that didn’t stop the state board from dropping the axe on him. For all I know, there might be more than what I found on my initial dig. This was enough to give me the general idea, though.”
“Yikes. I should be surprised he was hired out here, but I’ve seen more than a few Teflon-coated quacks, even in my less prestigious end of the health profession. The higher up the food chain they get, the more they protect each other. Even when people are getting hurt.”
“This probably explains some of the tension in the Napier marriage too,” Nadia says.
“I agree.”
“You’re lucky he didn’t amputate a finger while he was stitching you up the other night.” She grins a little to signal it was a joke. Wyatt smiles, but he also subconsciously covers his still-bandaged hand, as if he doesn’t want to think about it.
“He also strikes me as a drunk,” Wyatt says. “He smelled like a distillery the other night. I’m sure that doesn’t help family matters much.”
“Yeah. Did the alcoholism cause the malpractice or vice versa?”
He shrugs. “That’s anyone’s guess. Did you find anything on her?”
“Weirdly, no. She’s a bit of a blank on the search results, apart from your standard social media accounts, none of which were remarkable, at least from what I could view publicly. I couldn’t find any real employment history or credit.”
“It’s not as strange as you might think if she’s been a stay-at-home mom all these years. Vicki is what, late thirties? She has an eighteen-year-old son, so that means she was a mom and married around age twenty. There’s your blank spot.”
“That’s kind of sad. I didn’t get an alpha-homemaker vibe from her.”
“It’s not sad if that’s what she and her husband agreed on when they started their family.” He sounds a touch defensive. Was this a point of contention between Phoebe and him? This doesn’t seem like the right time to poke that particular bear.
“You’re right. But I’m sure it’s not helping her stress levels now. She put all her eggs into her husband’s basket, and it turned out to have a giant hole in it. I watched my mom do the same thing.”
“We’re only getting part of the picture, so all we can do is speculate.”
“It’s funny you mention speculation. That brings me to the most interesting part of this. I looked up the property records for the house they’re living in. And it turns out, they don’t actually own it.”
He shrugs. “So they’re renting. Ron lost his job, they needed to move fast. Not enough time to buy.”
She elbows him. “I’m insulted you think that’s all I have. After a little more digging, I was able to track down the owners in a nice little retirement community in Buffalo Grove. Talked to the wife this morning. Very sweet lady named Imelda Johnson.”
He nods. “Yeah, I know her. We didn’t speak a ton, but we would exchange pleasantries if we were both out getting our mail at the same time. I never even knew they’d been planning to move out until they were already gone. I’d been preoccupied, I guess. How did you get her to talk to you?”
“Pretended I was a location scout for a movie. It wasn’t hard. In my experience, old people are happy to talk to just about anyone. They’re lonely. The woman practically told me her whole life story.”
“I’m impressed.”
“Well, according to my new best friend, Imelda, they’d never had the house listed for sale or rent. Vicki contacted them directly, said she’d fallen in love with the area and wondered if they’d be interested in parting with the house for a generous sum. Imelda saw it as some kind of divine intervention, as she’d been trying to talk her husband into assisted living for months.”
“What did Vicki offer her?”
“Twenty thousand on a rent-to-own agreement. The Napiers are supposed to be paying them five grand a month.”
Wyatt opens his mouth as if to respond, and then frowns. “And they didn’t actually know each other before this?”
“Nope. Now, why do you think they would pick this one house out of all the houses in Lake Forest or the surrounding areas they could have found to live in?”
“You think they were trying to get close to Phoebe.”
“Bingo. And get this. Sweet little Imelda wanted me to get a message to Miss Vicki as soon as I could. Apparently they’re late on this month’s installment, and Imelda hasn’t been able to reach anyone. The poor woman was about to drive over there herself, but I told her I’d take care of things.”
Wyatt is shaking his head. “This just keeps getting weirder and weirder.”
“You saw the inside of that place. Frat houses are better furnished. They’re broke.”
“But why Phoebe? What’s the connection there?”
Nadia shrugs. “That’s where I came up empty. None of my digging pointed to any clues. If I had to guess, I’d say maybe something to do with Daniel. His death has brought all kinds of people out of the woodwork.”
“You included,” Wyatt remarks, though not unkindly.
“True. But I think I could find out more if I can just get a little closer to them.”
“I don’t like it.”
“I don’t, either, but I also have no reason to think that whatever scheme they’re working on is going to stop just because Phoebe is dead. If anything, it might escalate the situation. One or all three of them could be sitting over there in a constant state of panic. We can’t ignore this and hope it will go away.”
He sighs and stands up. “Okay. I think that’s plenty for us to chew on for now. Let’s go somewhere else. A pla
ce with drinks.”
“Another not-quite-neutral place?” she asks.
“The area around the pier has changed a lot in the last few years. I figure we can walk until we see something we both agree on. Something nice and gentrified, like an Applebee’s or a Guy Fieri joint.”
She laughs. “That’ll work.”
They’ve traveled about a hundred feet when Wyatt takes her hand. Before she can react, he mutters, “Two o’clock. Ferris wheel ticket counter.”
She looks over and her breath catches in her throat. All three of the Napiers are standing in line. Jake, who was facing their way, abruptly looks back down at his phone.
“What are the odds?” she murmurs.
“You think they tailed us here?”
“Come on. Of course they did. What are the chances two sets of jaded neighbors from the suburbs trekked all the way to a giant downtown tourist trap at the same time?”
“You’re probably right. I’m just surprised we didn’t notice them on the way.”
Nadia rolls her eyes. “Yeah, no way we could have missed a dark gray SUV that looks like every third car on the road. We wouldn’t have spotted a tail in that traffic anyway.”
“Just keep walking.”
Nadia has no intention of following those orders. Instead, she raises her hand and waves. “Vicki! Hey, girl!”
“What are you doing?” Wyatt growls.
“Can’t win the game if you don’t play. Come on.”
Vicki spins around on her sneaker-clad heel, her face blooming quickly into a grin identical to the one she wore the other night when she answered the door. “Oh my God! Hey, neighbors!”
Nadia leads Wyatt over, and despite his earlier protest, he doesn’t break his stride. When they reach the Napiers, Nadia goes into hug mode first this time, fully embracing her role as this woman’s bestie. Would Phoebe have done that? Maybe not, but there’s no room left for doubt. If Phoebe wasn’t a hugger before, she is now. It’s called having a new lease on life. “How crazy is this, running into you here of all places? So great.”
The Other Mrs. Miller Page 21