Surfers are trash. Literally, trash. They drip it everywhere they go, small vials of wax, ziplock baggies, cans of energy drinks, the pull cord of a surfboard. They drag lines through the sand, and set up boom boxes and disrupt the quiet to light bonfires and smoke weed and bang their sand bunnies.
At first, Frenchy thinks the woman is one of them. Someone who partied along the shore last night, wandered too far down, and passed out in the dunes. She sees the curve of the woman on her side, her long hair sandy, her body tucked up against the seagrass.
Frenchy pauses, her tennis shoes already caked with sand, and considers waking her and asking her to leave. Surely the woman won’t argue, especially when Frenchy points out that she’s on private property. Technically, that isn’t true, but none of the stray surfers and tourists ever argue with her when she says that.
Calling the police is another option, but they often dismiss her. It is, after all, public property, and people can sleep on the beach, despite how it ruins Frenchy’s day. Sometimes she gets lucky, and an officer is sent out. There’s that one beach patrol uniform who always stares at her breasts and does anything she asks, but she hasn’t seen him in ages.
She continues on, past the sleeping woman. Maybe she’ll leave on her own. After all, it’s almost seven. It’ll be hot soon. The woman will need to move to the shade, or will grow hungry, or will have to pee, and one of those things will force her into action. Besides, Frenchy has committed to her trainer that she will walk four miles today, and that will never happen unless she focuses on the task and dedicates herself, and look, here she is getting distracted and wasting time.
She heads north with a purpose, her arms pumping, and makes it almost thirty yards before the next item, a green tote bag, catches her eye. It looks expensive, and her steps slow to give it a closer look.
She’s right, it is a quality bag, though it looks like it’s been out all night. She crouches, tsking at the wet and sandy condition of it. She actually has this same one, but in blue. It’s almost empty, and she glances around, seeing a few items—a ChapStick, a tissue packet, a tube of sunscreen—almost buried in the sand. Gathering what she can find, she puts them back in the bag and stands. If this is the woman’s, it should be returned to her. It’s the perfect excuse to wake her up, and then Frenchy can continue with her exercise, and the beach will return to its quiet and empty solitude.
Decision made, she marches up the sand, her steps as quick as possible, given the heavy traction. “Hellooo!” she calls out. “Excuse me!” Nothing worse than scaring someone. And plus, you never know with these people. She could be a drug addict, or mentally unstable. Frenchy could bend over her and the woman could spring to her feet with a knife and haul her up the empty beach to Frenchy’s home. She could force her inside, rob her blind, and kill her.
It happens. Two miles up the road, it happened just last year.
“Hey!” Frenchy stands a safe distance away and waves her arms, the bag swinging from her left hand. “Miss! I have your purse!” It’s got to be her bag, right? What are the chances that two women both were on this beach last night?
She risks a step closer, then another. The woman doesn’t move. “Can you hear me?” Frenchy’s shouting now, and there’s no way the woman can’t hear her. She digs her white tennis shoes into the sand and climbs farther up the dune, at an angle where she can see the woman’s face.
Oh. Frenchy stumbles in the loose sand and falls onto her knee, the one that she had surgery on three years ago. She forces herself upright and stares, her dark lips falling open as she studies the woman’s slack expression, her eyes open, sandmites already milling around the glassy irises.
The woman hasn’t heard Frenchy and won’t care about her purse because the woman, just a hundred yards from the back of Frenchy’s home, is dead.
CHAPTER 44
MIKE
When I wake up, the house is still empty and the guest room bed is undisturbed, Lillian’s phone going straight to voice mail. I take a shower and then begin the old actions. First, I check her call history, which is light. One to Sam. Several to me. Any hope of syncing her affair timeline with phone calls fizzes out, as I realize that there have been no consistent strange numbers in the few weeks I’ve been monitoring her.
Again, my wife is smart, but the level of preemptive subterfuge in using an internet-based app to place calls—that I wouldn’t have expected. Maybe they only texted. I open that window and browse through that history, but again, no red flags.
The potential options are plentiful. They could have communicated through social media. That Twitter account of Lillian’s—though recently dormant—is an open portal of communication that I have never been fond of. Thankfully, she has never become one of those Facebook or Instagram moms, though again . . . maybe she has. My lack of attention to her is becoming alarmingly apparent.
I return to her call log, and the last few numbers she dialed yesterday are unfamiliar to me. I open a fresh internet browser and search them.
The first unfamiliar call is to a taxi company, which is interesting. My wife has a car app on her phone, one that alerts me to any usage. There would have been little need for a taxi, if she’d been too drunk to drive.
I type in the second number, then double-check and enter it again. I frown. It’s a hotline for a battered women’s shelter, which doesn’t make sense. Did Lillian meet someone and decide to help them out? That would explain the taxi and this call, though the first thing she should have done, in this circumstance, was to call me. Lillian isn’t equipped to help herself out of holes, much less others.
I scroll down to the next phone number, and something taps on the side of my skull. Intuition, rapping hard and fast, a tap-tap-tap that something is about to turn south.
I pause my wifely research and check my phone, then my email. There is a new message from the attorney, who reports that the video is now taken down, and the user account is blocked from posting anything else. I text the update to Jacob, then turn to the dark web and check my other accounts. All monies are still in place. My message portal is empty. Nothing to raise an alarm, yet I have the distinct feeling that I have forgotten something, somewhere—a loose thread I didn’t sew shut, a pothole I didn’t fill, a lie I didn’t sniff out and uncover.
I sit there for a moment, staring into nothing, and carefully retrace my steps over the last twenty-four hours, but there are no missteps there. I have been flawless in my execution, as I almost always am.
To be safe, I do a second mental examination, but get the same result. Forcing the worry out of my mind, I do an internet search on the third phone number.
It is for the Times, and I digest that information slowly, ticking my chair minutely from left to right as I try to work through who and why Lillian would call her former employer. Plenty of reasons. Paycheck had an error. To check on her benefits. Reach a coworker. Renew our subscription. No reason for that to raise a red flag.
Still, in the back of my head, my paranoia knocks even louder.
CHAPTER 45
LILLIAN
God, it’s a beautiful day. Everything seems brighter and happier, though fuzzy around the edges, and I applaud myself for jumping back into my medication. Why did I ever stop it? I break from my admiration of the fall leaves, which are starting to flutter from our backyard tree with slow and patient sweeps, when I hear Mike’s voice from the office. He hasn’t heard me come in, and I almost call out, but his voice is low and urgent and I tiptoe closer to the office door, curious who he is talking to. At the sound of his concerned tone, my stomach twists, like a vampire recoiling from the sun.