“There’s my sweetheart.” Roman sounded chipper as he greeted Eliza in the entryway. Too chipper. “I got the message you’d be late.”
“Sorry for the short notice,” Eliza said. “I hadn’t planned on meeting Anne tonight, but she said it was urgent. By the way, Anne was thrilled with the babysitter you sent her way.”
“No problem. Penny’s a nice girl, and she needed the work.”
“Win-win.”
“Certainly is,” Roman said. “Anyway, I have a little something for you.”
Roman changed the subject, dipping out of sight and retrieving something from the kitchen. When he returned, he had a bouquet of flowers in hand.
Eliza looked down, bewildered. “What are these for?”
Roman slid an arm around Eliza’s waist and drew her close. He placed a kiss on her forehead, then inched his way down until his lips were on her neck and Eliza’s body was seamlessly pressed against his. “I wanted to apologize for last night. I don’t know why we always get so heated talking about money. I’m sorry we argued.”
Eliza untangled herself. “You know I hate flowers,” she said, mentally adding the cost of the lush bouquet of Stargazer lilies in his hands and tacking it on to their mounting bills. “They’ll just die in a week.”
“Eliza.” Roman gave a playful tsk. “You’re worth it. You’re my wife.”
“Well, thank you.” She plucked the flowers from his hands and desperately tried to ignore her aching head. She hadn’t had hard liquor in ages. “Do you have company?”
“No, why?”
“There’s a car in the driveway.”
“The car’s mine.”
“You bought…” She cleared her throat. “A car? Without talking to me first?”
“It’s an investment. The value will only go up over time.” When Eliza still didn’t seem convinced, Roman’s eyes shifted from the flowers and back to her. “It’s just money. We discussed this last night. I need to have some freedom and not feel like you’re breathing down my neck with every expense.”
“How much was it?”
“I paid fifty, but it’s easily worth seventy-five.”
“Grand?”
“Of course grand.”
“Does it even run?”
“I drove it home.”
Eliza leveled her chin, looked into her husband’s eyes. “You have your G-Class, and now you have your Corvette. Pick one, please, and sell the other. There’s no sense in you having two cars.”
“I can’t use the Corvette as my daily driver.”
“Then sell it,” she said abruptly, feeling edgy, pushing the needle. He’d chosen the wrong day to be impulsive.
“No.”
“You must.” Eliza’s fists clenched as she stared down her husband. “We can’t afford it.”
“We just fought about this last night, Eliza. You’ve got to stop nagging me about money.”
“This isn’t nagging; this is it, Roman. Our bank accounts are dangerously close to empty.” Eliza let the flowers fall from her grasp as she balled her hands into fists. Immediately, she wished she’d kept her mouth shut, but she’d spoken the truth, and she could no longer ignore it. “We are broke.”
Roman’s gaze settled on her. A new expression appeared on his face, a satisfaction that caught Eliza off guard. Almost victorious.
“I know,” he said.
“You know what?”
“I know everything.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I know you’ve been funneling money into my checking account,” Roman said. “Quietly, as if I’m stupid enough to ignore the fact that the numbers on our bank account are dwindling.”
“This was a test?” Eliza’s lips parted as she sucked in a sharp breath. “You knew this whole time, yet you went and bought a car?”
“There was money in my checking account,” he said pointedly, a righteous anger sizzling below his brown eyes. “Why were you trying to keep our finances from me?”
“I—I wasn’t.”
“Honey.” Roman’s voice took on a sweet, soft tone. “I’ve asked you not to lie to me.”
“I tried to tell you that we didn’t have much—”
“You didn’t try hard enough,” Roman said. “You wanted me to think we were doing just fine. Why was that, Eliza? Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
Eliza froze and found herself wondering that very same thing. But she knew why. She hadn’t told him sooner because money was the one aspect of their marriage that she could control. She brought home the cash. Roman didn’t make diddly-squat teaching acting classes. It was Eliza who kept him fueled, made this lifestyle possible.
It was the one thing she brought to the table in their relationship. Eliza owed Roman a good life after what he’d done for her, and she could no longer deliver it. And that broke her heart.
“I understand if you’re upset,” Eliza said. “But I will fix this. I’ve already started.”
Roman seemed to sense he was being led into a trap, and he didn’t know the way out. “You’ve started to fix it? How?”
“I asked your parents for a loan.”
“You did what?”
“Tonight, before I met with Anne, I had dinner with your parents at the country club and asked them for money. It’s a business investment.”
“Without telling me.”
“It is my problem, my loan, my favor to ask of them.”
Roman shook his head. “You shouldn’t have done that.”
“Roman—”
“I mean it.” He backed away, his eyes taking on a new look that Eliza had never seen before. “You shouldn’t have done that, Eliza.”
TRANSCRIPT
Defense: We’ve been talking about motive, Ms. Sands, so I’d like to further discuss the restraining order the victim took out on you a few months before his death. What pushed him to do that?
Penny Sands: I don’t know. He was a psychopath. Why did he do any of it?
Defense: If I recall, that’s what he said about you when he spoke with the police.
Penny Sands: Then it’s my word against his, and he’s dead. I guess that means I win by default.
Defense: He stated that you continually tried to contact him, even after he asked you to stay away. Is that true?
Penny Sands: I had a pretty good reason to want to talk to him.
Defense: It’s noted here from the victim’s personal files that you had begun taking things that belonged to him. He recorded in a journal that you stole several items. Is this also true?
Penny Sands: I borrowed, like, a pen. It wasn’t a big deal.
Defense: Why did you take it at all?
Penny Sands: It was an accident. It’s not like he deserved any of his nice things.
Defense: Did he deserve to die?
Penny Sands: Someone thought so. Why don’t you ask the other woman he was sleeping with? I don’t think she was happy when she found out about me.
TEN