The Sinful Lives of Trophy Wives

by Kristin Miller

  I check my cell. No return text from Jack. My fingers hover over the Emergency button, and I’m about to press it when I realize I have no reason to be afraid. This neighborhood is protected to the extreme. Jack made sure of that when we bought the place. No one can get in. Whoever is in the yard must be someone trustworthy, someone who lives around here.

  As thoughts of Georgia’s death threat stream through my head, I tiptoe downstairs, turning off the lights as I go. If someone’s out there, I want to be in the dark, and I want them to be in the light. I want to be able to see everything they’re doing, while I remain hidden.

  When I reach the first floor, I pause in the pitch-blackness, listening, watching the yard. Then, when I think it’s clear, I creep past the couches, past the dining room table, and into the kitchen.

  I’d been right: the back door had been unlocked.

  Slowly, listening for any strange sound, I slide the lock into place. Then, when my pulse begins to slow, I crouch low and steal through the living area once more. But this time, the person’s not in the bushes. He’s striding across the lawn. He’s walking toward the back patio, holding something behind his back. I can’t see his face.

  Seized by panic, I stumble into the kitchen, scramble through the drawers for a knife, and clutch it in my fist. When I look up, the man’s gone. Not on the back deck or the lawn.

  My breath comes out in pants as I scan the yard, and the areas around the pool pinpricked with light.

  Where’d he go?

  The back doorknob jimmies.

  He’s trying the door.

  Flooded with awareness, I backpedal, watching the handle turn back and forth. Every sense heightens. I have to call the police. They have to know I’m home alone with an intruder. Clutching my phone in one hand and the knife in the other, I dial Jack and dart upstairs, taking the steps two at a time. Once inside the bedroom, I close the door quietly and lock it. Jack’s call goes to voicemail.

  I’m dialing the police when a single plank of hardwood creaks on the other side of the bedroom door.

  “9-1-1, what is your emergency?” the dispatcher chirps in my ear.

  I cup my hand around the bottom of my cell. “Someone’s in my house. Send help. Please.”

  “Brooke?” It’s Jack. In the room. “Where are you?”

  “Oh, thank God.” My knees buckle as I clamber to my feet. “It’s all right, it’s my husband,” I say into the phone, breathless. “I’m sorry to have bothered you.”

  When I exit the closet, Jack’s standing in the doorway, his hands hanging oddly from his sides. He’s wearing black pants and a gray dress shirt. A shadow…

  “What are you doing in the closet?” he asks. “With a butcher knife?”

  He doesn’t come closer or envelop me in a hug the way he usually does. Was he in the bushes? Is he acting strange because he knows I caught him?

  “I was scared. I was working, and saw someone outside, in the bushes.” I hold up my cell and hope he doesn’t notice my shaking hand. “I called you twice.”

  He stares, his blue eyes focused on the knife. “I left my phone in my briefcase.”

  “Oh.” That seems honest enough. “Did you see anyone in the bushes when you came in? Someone was at the back door.”

  “I was at the back door,” he says, incredulous. “That’s the door I’ve been using when I come home from work.”

  “And you didn’t see anyone else out there? Dressed in black? Tall?”

  “No, I didn’t see a single soul. Honestly, Brooke, I don’t know what’s gotten into you lately. First, you ditch me to stay with Georgia and Erin on the yacht, and now I come home to find you hiding out in our bedroom, wielding a knife. You’ve been acting very strange. I had a feeling Georgia would rub off on you from the start, remember? I told you that you shouldn’t be hanging around with a rumored murderer. Next thing I know, you’re going to be plotting my demise.”

  I’m not sure how my hiding in the bedroom translates to killing him in cold blood, but I don’t refute what he’s saying because I have been acting strangely. I haven’t been the quiet and demure Brooke that Jack knows and loves.

  “I don’t think psychotic behavior rubs off the way you’re suggesting.” Dropping my cell onto the bed and the knife to my side, I walk up to him and snake my free hand around his middle. He’s stiff and unyielding. “Besides, I wanted to stay behind on the ship for research purposes. Georgia and Erin don’t know it yet, but they’re inspiring my characters. It was for work, sweetheart.”

  “Good. I would hate to think you were befriending them. They’re the type of women who’ll smile to your face then stab you in the back. You know I have a talent for reading people, Brooke. I see right through Georgia and Erin, and at the core, they’re no good.” He eyes me wearily, then plants a fatherly kiss on my forehead. “All I know is that I’m glad you’re here, in my arms again, safe and sound. How did it go last night?”

  “Oh, God.” Pulling out of his arms and plopping on the edge of the bed, I spin the knife handle in my hand and recall the events of the night. “Robert’s gone.”

  “What do you mean, ‘gone’?”

  “He disappeared. Georgia doesn’t know if he fell overboard or if someone pushed him or if he took off as soon as we disembarked, but she hasn’t heard from him all day.”

  Jack swipes his hand through his silver hair. “Jesus, that doesn’t bode well. Did she call the police?”

  I nod. “But they won’t take a report until it’s been at least twenty-four hours.”

  “Poor bastard.” He heads to the closet and kicks off his shoes. “He probably thought he had at least a year until she killed him off. She’s getting faster and faster.”

  I look after him. “You think Georgia is responsible?”

  “It’s likely.” I hear him fussing with his shirt. “Her track record isn’t the best.”

  “But she looks genuinely scared. I don’t think she’s acting.”

  When he emerges from the closet, in baby blue boxers and a white T-shirt, he stops in front of me and stoops to kiss my cheek. “Everyone is acting, baby.”

  And then he leaves to sleep in his bedroom—the one he occupies down the hall.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  BROOKE

  THURSDAY

  Jack left for work early this morning without so much as a goodbye. Normally, I would’ve been peeved (he could’ve at least written me a sweet note), but I woke up with new, vibrant words whirring through my head. Forgoing coffee, which is not normal for me in the morning, I nearly run into the office, flip open my laptop, and start writing. I’m five pages in, right at the part where Grace’s fiancé’s body is discovered in the bay, when my phone bleeps with an incoming text. It’s Georgia.

  Police are on the way. Filing the missing person report. Come over?

  There’s no way I would miss this.

  Of course, I text back. Be right there.

  By the time I put on something nice, but not too formal—white jeans, blue polka-dot blouse, tall wedges—and stride into Georgia’s home, Erin’s already there, making herself at home in Georgia’s kitchen, whipping up something that smells like a bacon and veggie egg scramble. She’s wearing a candy-apple red apron that reads, wine not? She waves as I walk in, then goes back to chopping something with the largest knife I’ve ever seen. It’s definitely serial killer material, and I wonder what Erin’s slicing that requires such a sharp knife. Georgia hugs me tight, thanks me profusely for coming by, and then situates herself in the middle of the couch like a queen, her feet planted perfectly in front of her, chin raised slightly, hands in her lap.

  She doesn’t look like a woman who’s about to report her fiancé missing two days before their wedding. A normal woman would be rattling apart. But I’m quickly learning that Georgia’s far from a normal woman.

 
The night my father died, I was an emotional mess. Cried my eyes out. Vomited when my stomach cramps became too much to bear. My father had been out that night, drinking with friends from work. At least that’s what he told my mother when he rolled in after midnight. I’d stayed up with her watching Some Like It Hot, one of her favorite classics, and eating popcorn. He’d dropped his keys on the porch. Begun banging, banging, banging and hollering for us to open up. Mother told me to get to my room and put on my headphones. Listen to my music real loud. It was going to be a bad night. But between songs, in those few seconds of muffled silence, I heard the sound of skin meeting skin and the crack of my mother’s skull hitting what turned out to be our granite island.

  That was the night I learned how it feels to love and hate someone simultaneously. The night I learned how a butcher knife feels sinking into a man’s organs.

  But Georgia sits poised and graceful, like a raven on a branch with golden streams of early morning light slanting over her slick black hair. She appears undisturbed. Far from what I’d been when I lost someone I loved.

  Within minutes, the two police officers who’d come over before stride into the house and take their seats opposite Georgia. This time, Linard takes out his phone and asks to record the conversation. Then, when Georgia begins retelling the events of the other night, he taps out notes on his iPad.

  I notice Erin watching Georgia carefully from the kitchen. Erin doesn’t appear to be upset by Robert’s disappearance or the detectives’ presence, although her actions speak otherwise. Every few seconds, the hard chop of the knife drops onto the cutting block, and the detectives turn her way to make sure she’s all right. On another sharp chopping sound, I get a really good look at Erin. Her cheeks have a healthy, rosy glow, her lips are shiny red. It’s as if she put on a face-full of makeup this morning to prepare for the detectives’ arrival.

  Putting her best face forward.

  I remember Jack saying they’d smile to my face and stab me in the back and wonder if he’d been right. I should watch my steps more closely.

  I make myself busy by taking everyone’s coffee orders and tailoring the drinks to each person’s liking. While I’m puttering between the kitchen and living room, I listen carefully to the question-answer session.

  “If you didn’t sleep with your husband the whole night through,” Linard asks, “when did you realize he was missing from your bed? I’d like you to clarify that time line, if you could. We really need to get a bead on the last time someone saw him.”

  “Yes, of course. Robert went to bed earlier than I did, around ten, and then around midnight I joined him.”

  “And you’re sure he was beside you when you went to bed?”

  “I’m sure, Detective. We made love, went to sleep, and then after about an hour, he got up to use the restroom. I fell back asleep pretty fast, but he must’ve stayed up because next thing I know, I reach out for him, and he’s not there. I get up, hear something in the dining room, and find Brooke. That was around two, I guess.”

  I’d been listening all along, but my ears perk up at the sound of my name. And I know, unequivocally, that the first time Georgia told me about that night, she left out the part about Robert using the restroom. Why would she do that? Seems like something harmless that she would’ve mentioned. Unless it wasn’t harmless at all.

  I get the feeling she saw something that night too…

  “Would you mind telling us what you saw for the record?” Linard asks me.

  “Not at all.” As I get closer to the living room, Georgia pats the cushion beside her, and I feel a little like I’m snuggling up to a predator. “I was in bed, alone, and heard something banging against the side of the ship. I looked out, thought I saw something moving alongside us, but I really don’t know. It was dark. I got up, went out on deck, and I think, in the distance, there might’ve been a boat pulling away.”

  Without looking up from his iPad, Linard makes a soft sound of agreement.

  “When I came back in,” I go on, “Georgia was there. We talked for a minute, and then I went back to bed. When we woke up, she said he was gone.”

  “What did you two talk about?”

  She’d told me to sleep like the dead.

  I glance at her profile, the gentle slope of her nose, her full lips, and wonder if she’s capable of murder. “Nothing really. She asked me what I was doing up, and I told her. She wished me good night. That was it.”

  “What did you do after that conversation?” Pangburn asks Georgia.

  “I went back to bed.” She slides her hands beneath her thighs. “When I woke up in the morning, I talked to Raul about where Robert might’ve been—I thought perhaps he’d stayed in a guest room—and called the police.”

  Again, Linard makes a strange sound from the back of his throat. “What makes you think Mr. Donnelly would stay in a guest room? Had he done that before?”

  “Sometimes, after we fight, he sleeps away from me.”

  Linard locks eyes with her. “Had you fought that night?”

  “Yes,” she says quickly.

  “Before or after you’d made love?”

  Feeling the pressure, I swallow hard. Georgia doesn’t seem to flinch.

  “After, if you must know,” she says. “He was…having trouble, if you know what I mean. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, he gets upset, as you can imagine. He likes to blame his inability to perform on me. That night, it was probably from drinking too much earlier in the evening.”

  But she’d said Robert hadn’t drunk to excess. Does she know how her story just cracked like an egg?

  “I see,” Linard says, nodding slowly. “If your fiancé did get cold feet and take off somewhere on his own, do you have any idea where he might’ve gone?”

  Georgia seems to ponder this for a long while.

  “No,” she says finally. “No idea.”

  “Nearest relative, perhaps?” Linard presses.

  I’m sure he could look up this information on his own, but he’s asking Georgia purposefully, probably to determine exactly how forthcoming she’s going to be. It’s interesting watching Linard question Georgia. Like a spider readying its web with varying degrees of stickiness, hoping a fly buzzes through and gets caught on just the right part.

  “His parents live in New York, but he doesn’t talk to them anymore. He doesn’t have any siblings that I know about.”

  Eli and Andrew didn’t have close ties to family either, and I wonder if that’s her go-to for husbands. Is it because she enjoys being the only stable person in her man’s life? That way all of his attention is given to her? Or is it because no one will ask questions when he’s gone? And she gets to keep all the money for herself.

  “Friends?” Pangburn pipes in. “Cousins?”

  “Or mistresses?” Linard shrugs. “We have to ask.”

  Through the space between us, I can feel heat radiating from Georgia’s body. “Robert doesn’t have any mistresses, Detective, and he doesn’t have any extended family that I know about either. As for friends, I’m sure there are a few people at the yacht club he’d call acquaintances. He’s there often enough. But you’ll have to dig around on your own for that information.”

  As Linard rattles off questions pertaining to the yacht, I realize this might be my chance to search the office for more information. I have to find out what she’s hiding in that chest.

  There might not be a better time than this…

  “If you’ll excuse me,” I say to Georgia, rising slowly. “I need to use the restroom.”

  “That’s fine. It’s toward the entry, down the hall on the right.”

  Exactly where I thought it’d be. Toward the office, behind her, where she won’t be able to see me.

  Perfection.

  Checking to make sure Erin can’t see me from her position in the kitchen
, I steal inside and click the door shut behind me. Beyond the office walls, I can hear Erin clanking things around, and muffled conversation as the detectives and Georgia rally back and forth.

  I won’t have long.

  First thing, I head to the chest on the shelf. It’s in the same place it’d been in before. Setting the chest on the desk, I open the middle drawer to search for the key, the way Georgia had. Loose papers and pens and Post-its and paper clips litter the bottom of the drawer. I remove them in clumps and and set them on the desk. There. A shimmer of gold peeks from beneath a receipt. Snatching the key, I shove it into the lock and turn, lifting the chest’s lid. More papers, receipts. I scan the names and numbers fast, trying to make sense of something. Anything. I skim my hand along the inner edge of the chest, and brush against a tiny scrap of paper that’s fallen away from the others. Pinching it between my fingers, I hold it up to the light.

  5550143.

  It’s written in pencil with a delicate hand. A phone number without the dashes. As I grin, feeling victorious, a strange, skin-crawling feeling settles over my bones.

  I look up, and gasp. The tiny paper flutters to the floor.

  Erin’s standing in the doorway drying her wet hands on her apron, staring at me with a strange grin on her face. “What’d you find?”

  Forcing myself to stay calm, I slowly replace the papers in the drawer and close it. I do the same for the chest. I can’t play this off. She’s caught me reading Georgia’s personal documents. I’ll have to rationalize my actions…somehow. My mind races as she stares expectantly, waiting for a response.

  “Georgia asked me to open the chest to get her a number, but I don’t know what she’s looking for in this mess.” Forcing a smile, I shrug. “Next time I’ll tell her that someone else should do her bidding. Put this back for me, would you?”

  I hand her the chest, but when I think I have a chance to pick up the paper, she turns around, watching me. I kick the paper further beneath the desk.

  As I pass Erin and stride back into the living room, I can feel the weight of her eyes on the back of my head. Needing to keep my hands busy, I remove the detectives’ empty cups of coffee and take them to the kitchen sink. Erin seems to watch me all the while, and I wonder if she’s going to tell Georgia what she caught me doing in the study.