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“Damn it.”
She should have followed him when he left the office. Now the only thing she could do was wait for the doctor to return to his car.
Target was waiting, as well, but she still hadn’t heard from the trader’s wife. Then her phone beeped.I’ll send the recipe in an email tonight, the text said. The rendezvous were getting closer together; once a week was the norm, and he’d just seen her and they were already meeting again.
Will needed to know what was going on, so she sent him a quick text.Two active tails! Don’t wait dinner.
When the doctor didn’t return to his car by five o’clock, she waited for the trader’s GPS locator alert to beep. At five forty, his car left the train station and headed toward Target. Laura pulled into the parking lot at the same time the pharmacist arrived at her car. Parking three spots to the east of the Acura, Laura watched Jessica Rider unlock her car and get in. But when she didn’t leave, Laura thought she might be waiting for the trader to arrive, and sure enough, in five minutes, he pulled into the shopping center parking lot.
Quickly setting up her lens for a distance shot, Laura knew she only needed to capture a photo of them greeting each other with a kiss. It happened so fast, she almost missed it, too. The trader pulled up to the Acura, pushed the passenger door open, Jessica got in, and in seconds, they kissed, a quick peck on the lips, and Laura got a great shot.
Were they going to have dinner again? She watched them talking animatedly for ten minutes, and then the pharmacist got out of the trader’s car and back into hers. It was clear right away what was happening because he pulled out of the lot and waited for her on the service drive. The Acura pulled out and the trader followed it, and it didn’t take long for Laura to figure out they were headed to Jessica’s condo.
A final photograph showing the trader’s car behind the Acura at the gate of her development, and Laura was done with that case, for now.
She headed back into town to wait for the psychiatrist’s GPS to go off. The sun had gone down, and she was still waiting in the parking lot of the Organic Bonanza. Getting out her phone, she sent Will a text.You feel like waiting with me?
Her phone rang. “I’ll be right there with dinner.”
“Okay. You’re so sweet. I am starving.”
“Tacos.”
“Yum! I’m in the grocery store parking lot, right by the street.”
“See you in ten minutes.”
When Will arrived, they drove around to the public parking lot behind the storefronts, and in the shadowy space, they ate dinner together. She’d just finished taking the last bite of her taco when she saw a car, an older-model SUV, pull up behind the psychiatrist’s vehicle.
“Okay, the moment of truth,” Laura muttered, looking through the binoculars. “I can’t see a thing, so we’ll follow that car. Get the plate if you can see it. It looks likeU,T, orF. Can you see it?”
“UFZ 981,” Will said.
“Eagle eyes,” Laura teased, following the car as it made a left-hand turn toward the beach. The serpentine route it took ended up in the neighborhood known as the Canals. Slowing at the corner, Laura waited for the car to turn onto a canal street, and soon after, it pulled up into a garage, the door closing soon after.
She read off the address. “Now to find out who she is. I hope it’s not the woman I saw leaving with a kid. That would suck. Who has an affair with their child’s therapist?”
“A lot, according to stats. Therapists are the worst.”
“No way.”
“Oh, yeah. You look it up yourself.”
“Pathologists are lily white, I imagine,” Laura teased.
“I only know about myself, and I’d never betray you,” Will said, leaning over to kiss her. “And if I did, the car they drove would have to be nicer than that piece of shit.”
“Let’s go home. I’ll send the information to Jeri. Once I have a name, it should be easier to take the next step.”
Chapter 3
At about the time Pam and Laura were enjoying their morning coffee at their respective homes, Lisa Maddox was keeping her sanity by focusing on the needs of Ryan and her children. The three older children went to school during the day, and the nanny didn’t usually come in until noon. Getting the children dressed and fed and walking them to school would be a good diversion from her thoughts.
For the past year, Ryan had struggled with severe depression, and it was Lisa’s self-appointed job to care for him, to be his cheerleader, to offer escapes from the everyday tyranny of the urgent. The first thing she had done was support him in leaving his job at her late father’s historic architecture preservation firm in Manhattan that had ties to and was a continuous reminder of his past and a life that he no longer wanted to be associated with.
She’d met Ryan several years earlier, and the attraction had been immediate; she’d later say it was love at first sight for her. So, when Ryan’s mother had dropped the bomb that she’d had an affair with Lisa’s father and that Ryan and Lisa might be half-siblings, the flurry of DNA testing and heartbreak had ensued. They were brother and sister.
But they were in love, and after trying to stay away from each other, they’d given up and given in to love. After talking with an attorney, they’d decided to keep their shared paternity a secret. Incest was a class E felony in New York.
