“He’s hardworking, he’s considerate, he’s honest, he’s decent. He doesn’t do drugs, he doesn’t drink too much, he doesn’t gamble, he doesn’t beat me or my kid or the dogs. He drives carefully, he plays golf rarely and badly, he cooks acceptably, he cleans diligently. He’s not rich, he’s not important.” She leans forward. “But I just don’t understand what any of this could possibly have to do with John’s kidnapping.”
Santos smiles, trying to project sympathy, to communicate that she understands that Ariel is a woman who loves her husband, who trusts him, who’s worried about him, who’s in a bad situation. All of which is why the detective looks reluctant, like she doesn’t want to ask this next thing that she needs to ask, this question that Ariel didn’t see coming: “Can you think of a reason why your husband’s sister would be here in Portugal?”
CHAPTER 24
DAY 2. 10:11 A.M.
Time seems to stop.
“What?” Ariel manages to croak out. Her pulse is pounding and her head spinning at this revelation. Or accusation. Or suspicion. “What did you say?”
“Your husband’s sister.” Moniz has taken over again. “Do you know why she would be here, in Lisboa?”
“No.” Ariel shakes her head. “Why would you ask that? Is she here?”
“Are you aware that your husband has changed his name?”
Crap, Ariel should have mentioned this. “Yes.”
“Do you know why?”
Ariel understands that something important has shifted: The cops are treating her not completely like the victim of a crime.
“His original family name was hard to deal with,” she says. “To pronounce. For Americans.”
“That is what he told you?” Moniz glances down at his notes. “Reitwovski,” he pronounces carefully. “Did your husband tell you at what moment he made this name change? And why?”
“After his military service—John was in the army—he wanted to launch a new professional life with an easier name.”
“But his sister, she did not change her name, did she?”
“I don’t know.”
“No,” Moniz says. “On the twenty-one of June, Lucy Reitwovski, resident of Morocco, is arriving on a flight from Marrakesh to Madrid. Since then, she is not departing Spain by airplane. Not unless she is doing this using a different name.”
“What does Madrid have to do with Lisbon?”
“It is a short day’s drive by car from Madrid to Lisboa.”
“Okay. But so is—I don’t know—Barcelona. Bordeaux.”
“But Lucy Reitwovski’s brother is not kidnapped in Barcelona. Or Bordeaux.”
Ariel is torn by two competing imperatives: to end this off-the-rails interview right now, or to try to learn more about these cops’ suspicions, theories, accusations.
“What are you suggesting?”
“We are not suggesting anything,” Detective Santos reinserts herself, trying to defuse the situation. “We are asking questions.”
“Why would you think that Lucy is here?”
Neither cop responds, leaving Ariel to guess: credit-card receipts, car-rental GPS, toll-collecting technology, surveillance and security cameras, cell phone triangulation, positive-ID eyewitnesses. There are many possible pieces of evidence.
Ariel turns her attention to Santos. “Is Lucy here? Do you know this?”
Santos doesn’t answer, and Moniz resumes the questioning: “Do you know of any reason why Senhora Reitwovski would be here?”
He maintains eye contact, which Ariel feels like she shouldn’t break off, even though she isn’t clear on who’s challenging whom about what in this faceoff.
“No,” she says, “of course not,” in the sort of cadence and tone that’s meant to sound dismissive, self-righteous even. But Ariel knows she’s not on solid ground. These cops have obviously been investigating John’s life, which means they’ve also been digging into Ariel’s. She doesn’t know the entirety of what they could have unearthed about John, but she’s well aware of what they could’ve discovered about her.
“Your husband, does he talk to his sister often?”
“Often? I don’t know about that. More than never.”
“Or email? Or text-message?”
“Maybe. To be honest, it’s not something we discuss.” Ariel winces, regretting that “to be honest,” which is what people tend to say when they’re not.
“Maybe you remember that we don’t live together full-time? So I don’t know whom he talks to, or when. I don’t quiz John about his calls.”
“Oh yes. I do remember.” Moniz glances at his notepad. “And on your husband’s previous visits to Lisboa, is he meeting his sister here?”
“What?” Ariel feels panic coming on. “Are you kidding me?”
“Kidding? No, I am not kidding. Morocco and Portugal are very close to each other. Is this a coincidence?”
Ariel feels like she’s going to throw up. “What are you saying?”
“Do you know what Senhora Reitwovski does for work?”
“Not exactly.”
“No?” He looks incredulous. Or fake-incredulous. “Is it not true that Americans are always talking about their work?”
“Listen, what the hell is going on here? What have you learned? Is Lucy in Lisbon?”
“You and your husband do not share a banking account, is this correct?” Moniz asks.
Ariel takes a second, trying to calm herself down before answering. “That’s right. We haven’t been married all that long, we haven’t gotten around to it.”
“But you will?”
“I guess.”
“So this number here”—Moniz turns his notepad to face Ariel, and taps his pen on a string of numbers—“and this one here, these are both your bank accounts?”
What the hell is this? “Yes, the top one is my personal. And that’s my business.”
“This is not much money, in your business account. Is that normal?”
The balance is perilously close to zero, the result of stocking up and staffing up for the summer, and especially for this Black Friday–ish weekend. The shop is always just one bad season away from insolvency, but every year the bottom line is rescued by some unlikely savior, books that don’t even seem possible until they’re overnight sensations—adult coloring books and irresponsible-parenting screeds, female-friendly soft-core porn and Instagram-friendly poetry. Books that increasingly seem like anti-books, these are the ones that emerge out of nowhere to keep the lights on. But just because it happened last year, and the year before, doesn’t guarantee it’ll happen this year.
Recently, the shop’s most worthwhile innovation has been the espresso machine, which looks like an Italian sports car parked on the big old slab of stained and chipped marble, which itself was a discard from someone’s kitchen renovation that Ariel reclaimed from the town dump’s reuse center. The books that line the shelves are becoming loss leaders for the shop’s real profit center: selling white flour, adulterated with butter and sugar and eggs. Plus of course coffee, which in the summer is often poured over ice for fifty cents more. All of which is why Ariel has to consider the offer from the Brooklyn hipster, with her nose ring and her Tesla and her pile of cash from her tech start-up’s buyout.
“At this moment,” Ariel tells the police, “there’s an unusually low balance.”
“And can you tell me, please, this number? What is this account?”
Ariel hesitates. “That’s a trust.”
“I am sorry?”
“A trust. An account that I’m the manager of, but not the ultimate owner.”
“Who is the owner?”
“My son will be the owner, when he becomes an adult.”
“But you are able to withdraw this money?”