When the service was over, Harold Foster got up abruptly and cut in front of other mourners to be among the first out of the church. Maybe he was one of those people, Anna mused, who left the baseball game at the top of the ninth. Wanted to beat the rush getting out of the parking lot.
Anna wanted to get out of there as quickly as she could, too, and scanned the church looking for a less crowded exit path. But before she could settle on one, she heard a voice behind her.
“Sad, huh?”
A chill ran the length of her spine. Anna knew the voice. She turned to find Gavin Hitchens standing there in jeans, a sport jacket that was frayed along the lapels, and a loosened plaid tie.
She’d not seen what Paul had done to him. His arm was in a sling, his forehead bandaged. Anna guessed he was favoring one leg, as he had one hand firmly gripped on the back of a church pew for support.
“Gavin,” she said.
“Some cop came by, asking weird questions about Paul, but he never said he was dead. But then I heard about the drowning.” He shook his head. “A real tragedy.”
“Stay away from me.”
She started to turn away when he said, “I’ve got some good news, though.”
Anna held her spot.
“The charges got dropped.” Gavin grinned. “They gave that dead soldier’s dad three voice recordings to listen to, and he couldn’t pick mine out. Plus, the coffee shop surveillance video’s time code is all fucked-up. They can’t tell for sure when I was actually there. So, there you have it.” A broad smile. “I’m an innocent man.”
“There’s a big difference between not guilty and innocent,” Anna said.
“But I was thinking, we could still have our sessions. I liked our little talks.”
Anna was about to turn away, unable to endure his smug expression another moment, when she saw Arnwright sidling up behind him. Gavin saw her looking beyond his shoulder and turned to see the detective.
Arnwright exchanged a nod with Anna, leading her to think he wanted to speak with her, but that wasn’t the case.
“Mr. Hitchens,” he said.
“What’s up?” Gavin said breezily.
Arnwright smiled. “Guess whose surveillance system’s time code is working just fine? And crystal clear, too?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“A house in Devon,” Arnwright said.
Gavin started to pale. “Uh, what?”
Arnwright appeared to be struggling to keep the smile from growing into a grin. “Yeah. Seems some folks lost their dog. Got the whole thing on video.” Arnwright looked Anna’s way. “Nice to see you, Dr. White. You have a nice day.”
She felt herself being dismissed, but she walked away with a sense of relief. Maybe Hitchens was finally going to get what was coming to him. Her encounter with him had delayed her enough that she was now among the last to file out of the church.
Anna found herself trailing behind Charlotte and Bill. They walked with heads lowered, shoulders touching. Soon, they’d be outside, where many were waiting to say a few words, if not to Charlotte, then to Hailey and her son.
She worked to push Gavin Hitchens out of her mind. If she had to, she thought, she’d get a restraining order. She’d talked to Arnwright about that.
Anna had already decided against offering any more words of comfort or regret to Charlotte. Her visit the day before had not gone well. Once Anna had cleared the church doors, she headed for her car. She had left her father in the care, once again, of her retired neighbor, but she didn’t like to take advantage.
As she trailed Paul’s friend and widow, Anna had her chin down, close to her chest. If she’d been holding her head high, she might have failed to notice Bill reaching out a hand to hunt for Charlotte’s.
He found it, and when he did, he did more than simply hold it. He laced his fingers in with hers in a gesture that struck Anna as more than comforting.
There was something almost intimate about it.
Well, it’s a difficult time, Anna thought.
Almost as quickly as he had found Charlotte’s hand, he let it go and thrust his own hand into his pants pocket.
But then he turned to Charlotte, leaned in closely to whisper something in her ear.
Two words.
Anna was close enough that she was able to make them out, although even as the words were whispered, she questioned whether she had heard correctly.
Yet they had been as clear as if Bill had whispered them into her own ear and not Charlotte’s.
“It worked,” Bill said.
Fifty
Yes, Charlotte thought. It did.
But just because they’d pulled it off didn’t mean they could start getting careless. What the fuck was Bill thinking, reaching for her hand like that, whispering in her ear, with people all around them. Sure, he’d be expected to console her, but he needed to dial it back a bit.
This was when they had to be the most on their guard.
Charlotte was already worried that she’d made a mistake, going out and getting all those empty boxes at the liquor store. The way Dr. White looked at them had made Charlotte nervous. She hoped she’d explained herself well. The truth was, she’d been itching to start packing up Paul’s stuff from the moment she and Bill had decided what they were going to do.
But they had to be careful.
Which was exactly why she had been declining Bill’s calls since Paul’s death. It didn’t look good for them to be talking. Sure, the occasional phone conversation could be explained, should they ever be asked. But the smarter course was to not talk on the phone at all. That was also how Charlotte had wanted it in the months leading up to Paul’s so-called death by misadventure. Even though Bill and Charlotte worked together, only so many calls could be attributed to real estate.
There were plenty of opportunities for them to talk at work. In person. Those kinds of interactions didn’t leave a trail.
And, of course, there were all those empty houses.
Not every home that went on the market was occupied. Many people who’d put their places up for sale had already moved. Some were homes that developers had built on spec, awaiting a first buyer.
When you slipped into a house like that for a fuck, you didn’t have to worry about the homeowner coming back early.
Most of these empty houses had been “staged.” Furniture was moved in to make the place look lived-in. Books were put on shelves. Magazines fanned out on coffee tables. Pictures hung on the walls. A bowl of fruit—preferably plastic—on the kitchen table. Maybe one bedroom was done up as a nursery, another as a teenager’s room, with sports posters on the wall. And they’d dress up a master bedroom, too, with a king-size bed and fancy linens and assorted throw pillows.
Charlotte and Bill had access to many such places.
Not only was it a hell of a lot cheaper than going to a hotel—and to play it safe they’d have had to go to one well outside Milford—you didn’t have to use a credit card. Nor did you have to worry about why your car was parked out front of your coworker’s house.
They often joked about how much more convenient it was to have an affair when you worked in real estate.
The other thing they joked about, at least up until Kenneth Hoffman had nearly killed him, was how nice it had been of Paul to bring them together. Putting in a call to his old college friend, now working in real estate, to see if he had any advice for his wife, new to the whole business of buying and selling houses.
“Send her around,” Bill said. “I’ll see what I can do.”
Charlotte went to the agency for a visit. Bill took an instant liking to her and was very interested to learn that she had been, at one time, an aspiring actress.
“That’ll serve you well here,” he told her. “You’ll find yourself working for a seller and a buyer, working both sides, and they both have to believe all you care about is getting the very best deal you can for them. Some performance skills will come in very handy.”