“Don’t worry,” she said, feeling a shiver run down her spine. “I’m just going to throw some things in a bag, and then I’m gone. My mom lives over on Cortez. I’ll head over to her place. You couldn’t pay me to spend another night here, now that I know what’s been going on right under my own nose.”
“I could hang around,” Pete Strivecky said, gesturing in the direction of the house. “Make sure he doesn’t try anything tricky.”
“He won’t,” Grace said. “He’s a douche bag, like you said, but he’s not a dangerous douche bag.”
He turned to go.
“Officer Strivecky? Pete?”
“Yeah?” he said, pausing at the edge of the pool, glancing down at the submerged Audi.
“Do you mind if I ask how old you are? You look too young to be a police officer.”
He laughed. “I get that all the time. It’s the red hair and freckles. I’m twenty-six. Been on the force for three years now.”
“Twenty-six,” Grace said wistfully. “So young…” She nodded her head in the direction of the house. “Seems like a long, long time ago.”
“Yes ma’am,” he said.
She had an idea. “Hey. Send me a photo of your bathroom after you’re done, will you? For the blog? I’d love to see how it turns out.”
“I’ll do that,” he said. “And you take care.”
* * *
An open bottle of Chivas Regal stood on the kitchen counter. She could hear the sound of the television coming from the media room. The door was firmly closed, but he’d turned up the volume on the surround sound, and she recognized Bruce Willis’s voice. He was watching one of the Die Hard movies again. For Ben, watching the bad guys blow up buildings and try to shoot down airliners just never got old.
She ran up the back staircase to their bedroom. On her side of the his-and-hers bathroom suite, she peeled out of her sopping wet shorts and T-shirt, stopping only to drape them neatly over the towel bar beside her Jacuzzi. She grabbed a cosmetic bag from a drawer in her dressing table and swept in some random toiletries: her shampoo and conditioner, deodorant, and her vitamins. Her hand hovered over the Clomid pill bottle. She’d been scheduled to start her second round of the fertility drug at the start of her next period, in two weeks.
It had taken Grace two years to talk Ben into seeing a fertility specialist. An only child herself, she’d always wanted children. Ben claimed to want them, too, although he didn’t see why they couldn’t just “wait and see” if she’d get pregnant what he called “the natural way.” Finally, two months ago, he’d relented. “Now or never,” was the way Ben looked at it.
“Never,” Grace said now, tossing the pills into the trash. She wondered if he’d already started sleeping with J’Aimee when she’d begun taking the Clomid. But she couldn’t think about that right now. What was done was done. And she—and Ben—were done.
Standing in her walk-in closet, she dressed quickly in a pair of white jeans and a favorite navy-blue knit top. She slid her feet into a pair of Jack Rogers sandals. Opening a suitcase on the top of the island that housed her folded clothes, she dumped a handful of random things: panties and bras, some shorts and tops, and a pair of jeans. She threw her running shoes and socks on top of the clothes, then zipped the suitcase.
Grace stepped into the bedroom and looked around. One last time, she told herself. At the silver framed photos of her and Ben in happier times, at the paintings she’d collected and hung on the walls, at the gorgeous custom-made linen drapes. It was the nicest room she’d ever owned, and she was getting ready to walk right out of it.
She found her purse on the tufted velvet bench at the foot of the bed and slipped the strap over her shoulder. Picking her suitcase up, she made her way back down the stairs. She stopped in her office, shoving her laptop computer and a handful of file folders into an oversized tote bag. She dumped her camera bag on top, hefted the tote onto her other shoulder, and made her way awkwardly to the kitchen door.
The Chivas bottle was gone from the kitchen counter and the door to the media room was still closed. From within, Bruce Willis was kicking ass and taking names.
Grace paused by the door. She raised her hand to knock, but changed her mind. She went out the kitchen door, walked to the garage, and got into her own car, a four-year-old Subaru. “Now or never,” she whispered aloud.
3
Grace was idly switching channels on the big wall-mounted television at the Sandbox, her mother’s bar on Cortez, a spot only seven miles, but light years, away from Grace’s house on Sand Dollar Lane.
“Leave it on channel four,” Rochelle said. “Please.”
Grace gave her a look. “You know I always watch the morning news on four,” Rochelle said. “I hate that weather guy’s hair on channel eight.”
Grace gave a martyred sigh and did as she was told, turning back to her mother’s favorite channel, just in time to see a reporter standing in front of her very own front yard.
“Holy crap,” Rochelle whispered. “Is this what I think it is?”
“Good morning,” said the reporter, a black woman who’d been a local television mainstay for as long as Grace could remember. Camryn Nobles. Grace stared at the television. How the hell had Camryn Nobles gotten past security?
“I’m at the exclusive gated community of Gulf Vista on Siesta Key, where police were summoned this morning to what they termed an escalating case of domestic disturbance. But what makes this story newsworthy, in fact, fascinating, is that the principals involved in the incident are a nationally known domestic goddess—and her husband—or is it safe to say, soon to be ex-husband?”
The camera panned to show a pale-pink stucco two-story Spanish colonial revival mansion with red tile roof sprawling across a
