“Maybe.”
I didn’t blame her for holding her cards close to her vest. I always did around her. “I hear the moon has a few openings, but we might need to weigh you down so you don’t float back to Earth.”
“Funny,” she said with a straight face.
Moving to the dresser, I leaned against it and took a bite of pie. I had a feeling I’d need every last sweet crumb to keep my bitterness at bay. “So, who was he?” When she looked at me with her perfectly shaped eyebrows arched, I added, “The man we married.”
She set her plate down on the bookshelf full of our childhood favorites. I shoved another piece of pie in my mouth as she crossed the room and stared out the narrow basement window.
“Hey.” She leaned closer to the glass, scowling. “Is that my scarf out there in the snow?”
And her hat, too. “We’ll have to ask Frosty later.”
She hit me with a glare. “That’s an expensive scarf.”
I smiled, my positivity gushing. “That’s too bad. Now quit stalling and tell me about our husband.”
She crossed her arms. “He was rich.”
“I figured that based on the amount of money he left us according to the letter.”
“And alone.”
That made sense, too. Why else would he have left gobs of cash to a woman hiding behind a false identity?
“Did you love him?” I asked.
She scoffed. “There’s only been one man I loved.”
Right, Rex. I gagged a little on Mom’s pie. What Susan saw in that pompous prick was beyond me. Sure, he was handsome, but below the surface everything was slimy and bloated, oozing with maggots.
“Why did you do it?”
“Do what?” She gave me a brittle smile. “Marry him or use your identity?”
“Both.”
“Why not?” she said, hiding behind flippancy.
“Don’t play games with me, Susan. Not here, not now. It’s just the two of us, and I deserve answers.”
With an exaggerated sigh, she left the window and dropped onto the edge of the bed. “Back in May, I met a man in an airport bar. I was on my way to Florida for a job with a gallery down in Key West. He was waiting for a flight to go meet with a client in St. Barts.”
“That’s an island in the Caribbean, right?”
She nodded. “We spent an interesting few hours during our layovers.”
I tried extra hard not to roll my eyes. “You had wild monkey sex, I get it.”
“Actually, we didn’t. There was some flirting, but we spent the time talking about our jobs. He was an attorney who specialized in estate taxes. The conversation was actually quite mundane. Shortly before it was time for him to board, he gave me his business card and told me that if the Florida job didn’t work out and I was interested in earning a lot of money in a short time, to give him a call.”
“And you believed him?”
“No, of course not. I went to Key West, but within a week, I was bored out of my mind. One night, after a couple of drinks, I found his number in my purse. When I called, he told me the job was still available and offered to pay for my flight down to St. Barts.”
“Let me guess. High-paid call girl?”
She tried to look offended, but I wasn’t buying it. “I asked if sex was involved and he said he didn’t think it would be necessary to seal the deal, but that I needed to bring some of my more alluring outfits and a fake identity.”
A Caribbean island, an estate lawyer, quick money. All of this seemed so unreal. Like something out of a James Bond movie. “Why my name?”
“I didn’t have time to get a fake ID. I knew your details, including your Social Security number from when you had it taped to your wall in your bedroom.”
I’d been sixteen at the time and trying to memorize it for job applications.
“To be honest, I never figured this so-called job of his would amount to much, or I would have chosen a better cover than hiding behind you.”
“I wish you had. What happened next?”
“The lawyer met me at the airport, took me shopping at some very pricey boutiques, and then dropped me off at a hotel, promising to return to take me to dinner in the evening. Later, I dressed the part and dined with him at a posh club. During the meal, he took me over and introduced me to one of his clients, an old man who was eating alone. Only instead of claiming I was his date, he said I was his sister and had come down there to heal after losing my husband to a long, ugly battle with lung cancer.”
She shifted, crossing her legs on the bed as though she was practicing yoga. “I caught onto the game and within the hour was sharing drinks with the old guy in the club bar, listening to him go on and on about his life.” She groaned. “And trust me, Hooch could talk about himself until my ears bled.”
“Hooch? That’s the name of the man we married?” It sounded like something Harvey would name a dog.
“It was his nickname. His real name was Herman Oleander Osmond Winchester, Jr., but he preferred Hooch for short.”
Okay, Hooch it was. “Was the lawyer there with you?”
“No, he left us so we could get to know each other. The next night, I went to dinner with Hooch on my own. This went on for over a week, me flirting and listening to the old geezer drone about his long life—he was ninety-two, so he had plenty of boring stories to tell. By the end of the week, I’d learned two things—Hooch was lonely for a companion and he had lung cancer, same as my fictitious dead husband.”
I moved over to the dressing chair, pushed her clothes aside, and settled in to see how this tale ended up with Mr. Peabody showing up on our doorstep on Christmas Day. “So, how long did it
