A Widow in Paradise & Suburban Secrets Page 3

  Finally Kenny said, “Yo, can I get back to work now? Maria’s in the weeds out there.”

  “Go ahead,” Baldwin said. “You, too, Drew. I’ll take care of the lady’s bill.”

  Dannie gave Drew and Kenny grateful looks as they filed past her out of the small office.

  Baldwin shook his head. He was clearly a man who hadn’t figured out how to use his power yet. “What the hell just happened here?”

  Dannie gave him a small smile. “You gave a hardworking mother a break?”

  Baldwin chewed on that for a minute. “I guess I’m a pretty nice guy, huh?”

  Wow, did he have issues.

  “The nicest,” Dannie said sweetly.

  Baldwin picked up the hundred-dollar bill and ripped it in half, and then in half again. “Go on. Get out of here.”

  “What about my drinks?” Dannie asked.

  Baldwin grinned. “Don’t worry about it. They’re on the two nimrods who just left.”

  Dannie pushed blindly through the club and out into the damp darkness of the parking lot, thinking only of escape. But when she climbed into the car her hands shook too badly to turn the key in the ignition.

  She started laughing uncontrollably. Didn’t it just figure?

  Turned out the answer to her prayers was counterfeit.

  THERE WAS NO WAY she could sleep.

  Dannie pulled the last of Roger’s suit jackets off its hanger and dug through the pockets.

  Empty.

  She threw the jacket onto the bed with the others she’d already searched. Out of nine suits—forty-five pockets in all—she’d found seventeen cents, three toothpicks, a receipt for a ten-dollar cigar and one fuzz-covered mint.

  She sank to the floor of the closet and buried her face in her hands. She had no idea what she was looking for. A business card from Joe Counterfeiter, maybe?

  It was almost morning. Thank God her in-laws had the kids. She didn’t think she could deal with dirty diapers and Saturday-morning cartoons after the night she’d had.

  Quincy wandered into the closet, flopped down next to her and started chewing on a hanger.

  Dannie stretched out, resting her head on Roger’s gym bag. She had to find something. Some sort of clue as to where the money had come from.

  Where should she look next? The attic? The basement? Roger’s underwear drawer?

  Or maybe she should just call Lyle.

  Lyle knew Roger as well as she did. Maybe better. They’d been best friends since they were in college. If Roger had been involved in something, Lyle would know about it.

  She fished her cell phone out of a pocket of the sweats she’d changed into when she’d come home from the bar. The time flashed in bright green on the screen: 5:19 a.m.

  Too bad for Lyle, because there was no way she was going to wait for a more decent hour. Still lying on her back, she punched in the speed-dial code for his home number.

  “Mungh?” Lyle slurred, his voice rough with sleep.

  “Lyle, it’s Dannie. Sorry to wake you, but I have to ask you something.”

  “Mmm. Dannie. What time is it?”

  “Early. Listen, was Roger involved in anything illegal?”

  “What?”

  She heard rustling, and imagined Lyle sitting up in bed in a pair of blue pajamas, fumbling for his glasses, his thinning brown hair sticking up.

  “What do you mean, anything illegal?” he said.

  She tapped the phone with her fingernail, debating how much she should tell him. “I found something…unexpected when I was going through Roger’s stuff. I’m not sure what to think.”

  “Like what? Drugs?”

  Dannie bolted upright, bumping her head on the shirt bar. “He was doing drugs?”

  “No! No, of course not.”

  “Then why did you say drugs?”

  Lyle exhaled into the receiver. “It’s just the first thing that came to mind, I guess.”

  “Oh.” Dannie flopped back onto the gym bag.

  “You want to tell me what it is you did find?” Lyle said.

  “I’m not sure.”

  “You’re not sure what you found, or you’re not sure you want to tell me?”

  “I’m not sure I want to tell you.”

  Lyle was silent for a few moments. “Dannie, you know you can tell me anything. I’m here for you. You can trust me.”

  “I know.” She pulled a string dangling from the pant leg of her sweats. It kept unraveling. “Okay. All right. I found some money.”

  “Money?”

  “A lot of money. But…”

  “But what?”

  “It’s not real.”

  “What do you mean, it’s not real?”

  “It’s fake money. Counterfeit.”

  “Jesus. How do you know?”

  Dannie twisted the string around the tip of her finger. “I tried to use some. Last night, when I went out with some friends. I gave the waiter a hundred-dollar bill, and the manager stopped me at the door on the way out of the club.”

  “What did he do?”

  “He read me the riot act. Threatened to call the police and the FBI and everything, but I convinced him not to.”

  “Did he take your name?”

  “No.”

  “So he can’t trace you? Doesn’t know where you live?”

  “I can’t see how he would.”

  “Good. Great.” Lyle’s breathing quickened on the other end.

  “Are you okay?” Dannie said.

  “Yeah. Of course. I’m just worried about you, Dano. I don’t want you to get in trouble.”

  Dano.

  That’s what Roger used to call her. Lyle had started using the name after Roger’s death. In fact, he’d filled the void left by Roger’s absence in lots of ways.

  He was the man around the house, fixing the things he could, finding others to fix them when he couldn’t. He was the date she always had. The shoulder she could always cry on.

  He was great in almost every way.

  The one exception was his discomfort around the kids. He just didn’t seem to know how to act around them, which wasn’t, she supposed, unusual for a forty-two-year-old bachelor. Otherwise he’d done a very respectable job of taking care of them.

  She’d be lost without him.

  Dannie knew Lyle would like to become more than a friend. He’d begun to introduce the idea, gently but persistently, over the past couple of months.

  She just couldn’t do it. It would feel as if she was betraying Roger. And as much of a jerk as he’d been, she still missed him. A lot.

  But although she couldn’t bring herself to get closer to Lyle, she couldn’t let him go, either. She needed the comfort he provided too desperately.

  “I’m coming over,” he said.

  “No, Lyle. Please. The kids are with Elizabeth and Albert, and I just want to sleep.” Dannie twisted the string tighter around the tip of her finger until it turned purple.

  Lyle hesitated. She could tell he was deciding whether or not to press the issue. Finally he relented. “Okay. But call me later. We should talk about all this.”

  “Okay. Will do.”

  She closed the phone and unraveled the string from her finger, letting the blood circulate. It throbbed with relief.

  She wished there was a string to unravel from her heart.

  DANNIE WOKE to the sound of the phone ringing.

  She opened one eye to find herself facedown on Roger’s suits on the bed. Quincy still lay in the closet, snoring, a mangled patent-leather pump between his paws. She checked her watch. Eight forty-five.

  She rolled over and grabbed the phone, clearing her throat before she spoke.

  “Hello?”

  “Is this Mrs. Roger Treat?” The voice was male. Calm, but intense.

  “Yes. Who is this?”

  “Does your husband belong to Main Street Gym?”

  “He did. But he passed away in February.”

  “We need to talk.”

&nb
sp; She rubbed her eyes. “Listen, if this is about his membership fees—”

  “It’s not about that. I have some information that might interest you.”

  Dannie sat up on the bed. “What kind of information?”

  “I’d rather not talk about it over the phone. Can we meet at the gym in half an hour or so?”

  “I don’t think so. I don’t make a habit of meeting men I don’t know in places I don’t know.”

  “You name the time and place, then.”

  She sighed. “What is this about again?”

  “Your husband. And my wife. And what they were doing together.”

  The blood drained from Dannie’s head. She felt woozy. She lay back down on the suits.

  “Mrs. Treat?”

  “Myrna’s Diner, on Bethlehem Pike. Nine-thirty,” she said, and hung up.

  Myrna’s was a functional brick box with functional square windows evenly spaced across the front of the building. Diners framed in each window could have been paintings in a gallery installment, with titles like Couple Arguing Over Patio Furniture, or Grandma Stealing Sugar, or College Students with Hangovers.

  Dannie wasn’t doing so hot herself. Too many Gladiators, not enough sleep. She slipped on her sunglasses and crossed the lot, taking the concrete stairs two at a time. She had no idea how she was going to recognize the caller, who she’d discovered was G. Loughran, according to her caller ID.

  An elderly man with a cane exited the diner, holding the door open for her with shaking hands. Chivalry was not dead. Just really, really old.

  Warm, greasy air leached out around her, luring her in. Dannie drifted through the door as if in a trance, drawn less by curiosity than the smell of bacon.

  Stress always made her hungry.

  She took a calming breath, telling herself that no matter what the outcome of this meeting, nothing would change.

  So she might have proof that Roger had been cheating on her again. So what? She’d known it on some level anyway. Having proof wouldn’t change the fact that he was dead. That she’d loved him, despite his flaws. That the kids had loved him.

  She really didn’t even know why she was here.

  She was about to turn around and leave when the hostess caught her.

  “Hiya. Seat for one?”

  “I’m meeting someone, actually.” Dannie scanned the tables. “I’m not sure what he looks like.”

  “Ah.” The hostess winked an eye thick with black liner and mascara. “A blind date.”

  “Not exactly. Do you have any single men?”

  “I wish.”

  “I mean at the tables.”

  “Oh! Gotcha.” The hostess pointed to a table in the far corner. “Just him.”

  G. Loughran. It had to be.

  The man was lean and rumpled, twisting a paper napkin between his fingers. His hair was thinning; his eyes bore the haunted look of a husband scorned.

  Dannie took a deep breath to bolster her nerve, but before she could move she heard a voice behind her.

  “Mrs. Treat?”

  She turned and found herself up against a solid wall of muscle wrapped in a pink T-shirt that read “Hair Technicians Do It with Style.”

  She looked up, into the most unusual eyes she’d ever seen. Light blue at the edges, deepening to green in the center. Warm and exotic and exciting, like a cruise to the Caribbean.

  His hair was blond and he would have been perfect, except that his nose was crooked, as if it might have been broken once, giving him a sort of bad-boy-surfer look. It was all finished off with a heart-stopping dimple on the cheek.

  He had to be gay. The universe seemed determined to play those kinds of jokes on women.

  His voice was low and rumbly, like distant thunder. And when he shook her hand? Lightning.

  Definitely lightning. And definitely not gay.

  “I’m a guy,” he said.

  “No kidding.”

  He gave her a quizzical look. “Guy Loughran. I called you this morning?”

  “Oh! Not a guy. Your name is Guy! Well, it’s fitting, isn’t it? I mean you’re tall, and with that voice, and you have…wow…really nice muscles and—okay, I’m babbling. I’m sorry. Can we sit? I’m really hungry.”

  “Sure.”

  Guy motioned to the hostess, who stood beside Dannie drooling slightly, clutching a menu to her chest.

  “Nice manicure,” Guy told the hostess. “Who did it?”

  “A girl at Kim’s Nails. Her name’s Terri.”

  Guy nodded knowingly. “She’s good.”

  The two chatted about local salons as the hostess led them to a table. Dannie thought how odd it was to listen to a man who looked like a professional football player talk so knowledgeably about hair and manicures.

  Obviously it didn’t bother the hostess. She giggled like a thirteen-year-old at her first school dance.

  Guy squeezed his sizable frame into one side of a booth at a window, and Dannie slid into the other. They opened their menus. Dannie wondered what they looked like from outside. What their title might read, if they were a painting. Maybe Man and Woman Stare at Menus in Awkward Silence. Or A Meeting About an Affair.

  A waitress wearing an itchy-looking blue nylon blouse appeared to take their orders. Fresh fruit, plain yogurt and orange juice for Guy, the logger’s breakfast for Dannie.

  “You can eat all that?” Guy asked, sounding impressed. Or was it repulsed?

  “I eat when I’m stressed out,” Dannie said defensively. “It’s a little trick my mother taught me. Food fixes everything.”

  “If you treat your body like a vehicle and give it only the best fuel, you’ll get the most mileage out of it,” Guy said.

  “Yeah, well. I don’t drive much. I just idle at the curb.”

  The waitress, who giggled almost as much as the hostess, brought a pot of coffee. Dannie nodded. Guy declined. Apparently caffeine wasn’t an acceptable form of fuel, either.

  “So what’s this all about, Mr. Loughran?” Dannie said when the waitress had gone.

  “Call me Guy.” He leaned in, staring into her eyes.

  A little shiver ran up her spine, and she entertained the notion of biting his full bottom lip.

  Until he said, “I believe your husband and my wife had an affair.”

  The spell was broken. She leaned back in her seat. “Really? What makes you think so?”

  Guy reached into the back pocket of his black pants and withdrew a folded a piece of paper. He spread it out on the table and pushed it toward her. It was a grainy photo, printed on plain white copy paper, of a man and a woman kissing beside a rack of free weights.

  “It’s from the Main Street Gym’s security camera,” Guy said. “I know the owner, and he was good enough to print this out for me.”

  The man’s face was clear in the picture, but only the back of the woman’s head was visible.

  Dannie nodded. “It’s Roger.”

  “And that’s Lisa,” Guy said. “And I’ll tell you something else. I think it’s still going on.”

  Dannie sighed. “I told you on the phone, my husband died in February. He was washed overboard from a fishing charter, and drowned.”

  Guy shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

  Chapter Four

  DANNIE FELT HER STOMACH clench. “That’s just…just sick.”

  Guy was silent.

  “How dare you disrespect my husband’s memory like that?” She stood, but Loughran grabbed her wrist.

  “Did they ever find his body?” he asked.

  Dannie wrenched her wrist from his grasp. “Are you crazy?”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, a note of pleading in his voice. “Just hear me out.”

  Against her better judgment, Dannie sank back onto the red leather seating.

  “I know this is a shock, but just listen.” He leaned over the table. His voice was low and even.

  “My wife worked at the Main Street Gym. She was a trainer. About a year ago she introduce
d me to your husband. I didn’t pay much attention at the time because she was always introducing me to people, but when I heard that a local guy had drowned in Cuatro Blanco, I remembered the name.”

  “Yeah? And?”

  “And it still didn’t mean much. But my wife had taken off two days before your husband drowned. And a couple of days ago, when I was at my mother-in-law’s house, I happened to see a package waiting to be mailed. To Cuatro Blanco.”

  “So what? I don’t understand what that has to do with Roger. I’m sorry your wife left you, but she wouldn’t be the first disgruntled spouse to run off to a tropical island.”

  “Look at the facts. My wife and your husband knew each other. They were probably having an affair. My wife takes off. Then your husband drowns two days later on some obscure island in the Caribbean, but they don’t find his body. And then I find out my mother-in-law is sending a package to that same obscure island. Don’t you think that’s a little odd?”

  The waitress reappeared with a tray. She set the lumberjack’s breakfast—two eggs, two pancakes, two pieces of toast and two slices of bacon—in front of Guy, and the yogurt in front of Dannie. They waited for her to leave before they switched.

  “I find you to be very odd, Mr. Loughran. You didn’t know my husband at all. You obviously don’t know how devoted he was to me and our children. He would never do something like you’re suggesting.”

  Guy stabbed a chunk of melon with his fork. “I’ve learned never to say never, Mrs. Treat.”

  Dannie shoveled a forkful of eggs into her mouth.

  “For instance,” he went on as he picked the blueberries out of his fruit salad, “I never thought The Who would get back together for a reunion tour. I never thought that after I earned a master’s degree in business management I’d be cutting hair. And I never thought that when I opened my safe one day, all my cash would be gone, replaced with counterfeit.”

  Dannie nearly choked on a piece of bacon. “What did you say?”

  Guy looked up from his breakfast. “What? About The Who reunion tour?”

  “No. The other thing. The counterfeit money.”

  Guy shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Go ahead. Tell me.”

  He leaned back and stretched one arm across the padded back of the booth seat. “I had money in a safe. Money I’d saved to put toward building my own salon. A day spa, actually. And then a couple of months after Lisa left me, I go to pay my contractor with that money, and he comes back a few days later and tells me it was all counterfeit.”