Now You See Her

the beach who was seriously thinking about calling it quits. I was sick of it. Being a cop, Key West, people, partying. I don’t know, being alive, everything. It all seemed so meaningless and stupid.” He smiled down at me.

“Then I rolled up and looked into your eyes, and I haven’t been inside a church since my Communion, Jeanine, but it felt holy, you know? Like God sent me an angel down from heaven. After I got to know you and realized how incredible we were together, I knew it was true.”

“Not an angel, a mermaid,” I said, sniffling.

“Exactly,” Peter said, wiping a tear off my nose. “You’re the first thing in a long time, maybe the only thing ever, that actually makes me want to get out of bed and floss my teeth and balance my checkbook. You understand? I’m not Alex. I’m not some asshole. I’d do anything. I’d die before hurting you. I’d burn this shit-heel, sunburned tourist trap to the ground, if you wanted me to. I’d—”

“Oh, Peter,” I said, crying as I kissed him. “I know. I’m sorry. My Saint Peter, my love,” I said, burying my face in his shoulder.

Chapter 18

ON FRIDAY NIGHT, exactly one week before our trip to Palm Beach, I was sitting on the couch, thinking about going to bed early. But at the last second, I decided to throw caution to the wind and put my flip-flops on and head out to the island’s only Blockbuster, half a mile away on North Roosevelt Boulevard.

Peter was pulling a double, directing traffic at some road construction on the Overseas Highway up in Big Pine Key, so I was flying solo. Being much more of a classic movie buff than he was, I decided I couldn’t waste the home-alone opportunity to indulge in a late-night Alfred Hitchcock double feature. I snagged The Birds and North by Northwest off the shelf.

I was a foot out the door when I hit the Unlock button on my car key fob and heard the faint bloop- bloop.

No, wait, I thought as I suddenly spotted my battered blue Vespa at the curb. What was I thinking? I’d taken the moped. Our new Toyota Supra was still with Peter at work.

I stopped and stared down at my car key fob, confused. Why had I heard the car beep, then?

I scanned the parking lot as I thumbed Unlock a second time. I turned to my left as the double bloop sounded out faintly again.

What the heck? It seemed to be coming from across the street.

I stepped past my Vespa to the edge of the sidewalk that rimmed the strip mall’s lot and hit the fob one last time.

In a parking lot directly across North Roosevelt Boulevard, a parked car’s lights went on and off with the familiar electronic bloop.

I stared across at it. It was sleek, black, brand-new. What the hell? I squinted at the Florida license plate. Yep, it was ours. It was our Supra.

But why was it there? I thought. Shouldn’t it be parked at police headquarters? Shouldn’t it be at Peter’s job?

Then I made the mistake of reading the lit sign on the building behind the car.

A sickening numbness sprouted in the pit of my stomach and began expanding upward, outward, filling my chest like a swallowed balloon.

BEST WESTERN, the sign said.

Chapter 19

CARS WENT BACK AND FORTH on North Roosevelt as I stood there, staring at the shiny black hood of Peter’s car sitting in the Best Western parking lot.

OK, I finally thought as my shock eased up slightly a long five minutes later.

Slowly now, I urged myself.

Think this through.

I tried. Nothing would come. It was fruitless. There wasn’t anything to think about. Even an idiot like me knew what finding your husband’s car in a motel parking lot meant.

One word surfaced in my swirling mind. It made sense that it had four letters. As I stood there, it was as if each one was being struck into the surface of my brain with the heavy-handed pound of an old-fashioned typewriter.

L-I-A-R.

Peter was a liar.

There was no construction job at Big Pine. No overtime. I also figured there was no DEA assignment and never had been. Peter had lied about the other night and about all the other double shifts over the last two months.

As I stood on the sidewalk in the dark across from the Best Western, the thing that struck me most—more than hurt, more than even anger—was the sudden knowledge of exactly how vulnerable I was.

Because my whole life revolved around Peter, I realized. The house was his, and so were the car and the boat. In the last two years, my six-dollar-an-hour, off-the-books catering job had paid for what? Some clothes from the Gap? The occasional meal?

I had nothing, I realized. Not even the University of Florida academic scholarship I had blown off when brilliant old me decided to throw caution to the wind and pull a Jimmy Buffett and take that last plane out.

I’d put all my chips on Peter, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out that his car across the street meant that I’d lost big time.

No, wait a second. Correction, I thought, cupping my stomach.

It wasn’t just me who had lost big time.

So had my brand-new baby on board.

Well, what did you expect, Jeanine? screeched my next thought.

This new internal voice was my mother’s, I realized. The unforgettable tone was her black, drunken raging that occurred more and more after my dad’s death.

Are you really that stupid, Jeanie Beanie? What kind of cop would cover up a man’s death? What kind of cop would get rid of a body? An Eagle Scout? Did you really think you could make a bloody mess and not have to pay for it? And while we’re on the subject of bloody messes, what’s up with the machine pistol you found on your handsome husband’s boat?

A hair-raising pulse of terror gripped the back of my neck like a claw. I reared back until my shoulder blades found the video store’s wall. I started sliding down it until my butt touched the cold, hard concrete.

The traffic went by obliviously on the dark street as I covered my face with my hands like a toddler trying to make herself disappear. At that moment I realized something for the first time.

It had somehow completely escaped me.

I had taken everything Peter had told me about himself at face value.

I really had no idea at all who Peter was.

Chapter 20

IT WAS ABOUT ten soul-annihilating minutes later when one of the motel’s ground-floor rooms opened and a