“I’ll be back by noon,” Anne said. “Can I bring you something from the café?”
Her mother didn’t bother to look up. “I’m making breakfast for your children. Homemade, as it should be.”
Anne stopped in the living room, smacked four kisses across the heads of each of her babies. They didn’t bother to look up. She was running late, but she paused in the doorway and glanced back, scanning one last look over a living room with happily playing children.
With a very unladylike arsenal of curse words coupled with a lead foot, Anne managed to make it to Santa Monica only fifteen minutes after she’d agreed to meet her friends. She pulled into a parking spot half a block away and strode toward the outdoor café that would put a major dent in her very slender wallet.
She stopped at the picket fence before the restaurant. The place maintained an aura of rustic ambiance, though Anne knew for a fact that it was brand new. The materials had been roughed up to look worn, the wicker chairs supposed to look like something out of Country Living when really, they’d likely been purchased from an overpriced boutique catalogue.
But it wasn’t the decor or the sunny day or the sight of her friends that stopped Anne in her tracks. It was the sight of a uniformed cop standing by the table. The look of horror on Penny’s face. The deadened stare in Eliza’s eyes as she looked at the officer and murmured four awful words.
“I’d like my lawyer.”
God, no, Anne thought. This can’t be happening.
Penny raised her gaze then and caught sight of Anne. Their eyes locked in nervous trepidation. Anne couldn’t bring herself to unfreeze from her position. She merely stared back at Penny, wondering if their lives had spiraled wildly out of control.
Was it possible that their dirty little secrets were about to become very big twisted truths?
THIRTY-THREE
Two Weeks After
February 2019
Eliza blinked as she rounded a corner on the famous hike, pausing to wait for Anne to catch up. The sun beat hard on her shoulders. She’d put sunscreen on, though why she’d bothered, she wasn’t sure. They were coming for her. She wouldn’t see the light of day except for in the prison yard if the police had any say in the matter.
“I really…” Anne gasped. “I really…don’t…think we should be doing this. You might be recognized.”
“We should act exactly the same as we did before,” Eliza said. “We have nothing to hide.”
“Eliza—”
“We’re almost there.”
Eliza squinted ahead to where she could see the peak of the Runyon Canyon trail, LA’s hottest hike. Celeb sightings were frequent on these trails. It was not a place to spend time if one was trying to stay out of the spotlight. But Eliza wasn’t trying to stay out of the spotlight. She was trying to live her life.
“Damn it, slow down,” Anne said. “I’m fat. I can’t keep up with you.”
“You’re not fat,” Eliza said, though even she knew it sounded mechanical. She was just too focused on sweating out her frustrations with the investigation to pay all that much attention to Anne’s fitness complaints. “It’s good for us. Plus, I’m trying to make a point. I won’t swap out my friends because of a stupid rumor.”
“Maybe it’s not—”
“The top is just ahead. You can do it.”
“For crying out loud, Eliza! Stop. Just stop.” Anne threw her hands up in the air. She was sweating, her face pink, her arms glistening under the toasty afternoon temps. “Just stop.”
Eliza spun around, wiping her brow with the edge of her tank top. “What?”
“I am hiding something.”
“What?”
Eliza felt the first tingles of wariness creep down her scalp at the look in Anne’s eye. Roman had been dead for two weeks. The police were in the middle of a full-fledged investigation, and it seemed their only suspect was Eliza.
It’s always the wife, she thought dryly. These last few weeks, when the panic had tiptoed up Eliza’s spine and grabbed hold of her consciousness, the only thing that calmed her was to remember that she was innocent. And even if she wasn’t completely innocent, there was no evidence to put her in an orange jumpsuit.
“I lied to the police.”
“Why would you lie?” Eliza shifted to the edge of the path to allow a young, gloriously fit couple to power by. “And why are you telling me this now?”
“I didn’t know what to do. Everything happened so fast, but now… The weight of the secret has been killing me.”
“What did you do, Anne?”
“I didn’t do anything. But on the night Roman was murdered, Mark didn’t come home.”
Eliza let out a huge sigh tinged with relief and frustration. “What the hell, Anne? You scared me. Is this about Mark’s affair again? I’m telling you, there’s not—”
“It’s not about the affair,” Anne said. “It’s about Roman. I told the police that Mark was home with me. As you know, they’ve been asking everyone for alibis.”
“Right…and?”
“And that was a lie.”
“He was probably with—”
“He might not have been with her,” Anne said. “I don’t know where he was.”
“You don’t think he had anything to do with Roman’s death, do you?” Eliza eyed the path with skepticism, but they were alone. “Just because your husband is an adulterer doesn’t mean he’s a murderer. Sorry, but I think you’re being paranoid. He didn’t have any motive to want Roman dead.”
“What if I told you it’s not paranoia?” Anne swiped at her forehead with the back of her wrist. “What if I told you there was a reason?”
“Mark has only met Roman a handful of times. Why would he ever want Roman dead?”
“Trust me on this,” Anne said. “He’s not the only one. I wanted him dead, too.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Eliza, your husband made some bad choices,” Anne said. “I didn’t kill him. But what if my husband did?”
THIRTY-FOUR
One Month After
March 2019
Roman Tate was dead. Now, Anne’s marriage was dead. She couldn’t take the lies anymore. She had suspected the end was coming for some time and had ignored all the signs. She hadn’t wanted it to be true. But now that she had to wonder if her husband was a crooked cop, an adulterer, and a murderer all in one, she was beginning to see things in a different light.
“I’d like you to get rid of it,” Anne said with a flick of her wrist at the movers. “Now, please.”
“But—”
“The garbage is fine,” Anne said firmly. “Even better, put it in back by the bonfire pit. We’ll burn it.”
The mover looked toward Anne’s old, mangled vanity. A sign of everything that had gone wrong in her relationship with Mark. What had once been quaint and quirky had grown ragged and old, smudged with the fingerprints of children and the wear and tear of a busy household. While Anne had grown unhappy with the steadily deteriorating state of her vanity, her husband hadn’t seemed to notice anything wrong at all.