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“Just leaving,” I say, and after hurrying out, I rush down the hall and grab an elevator to the ground floor. Disembarking, I decide on the spur of the moment to sit and have a cup of tea someplace rather than head directly to the train station. I need time to think, to get my head around this whole stupefying thing.
As I stand in the large marble lobby, searching on my phone for the closest Starbucks or coffee shop, I hear the clomp, clomp, clack, clomp, clack of approaching stilettos. Instinctively, I glance up. The woman sporting the black, pointy shoes is headed directly toward me with all the precision of a drone strike.
“Skyler Moore?” she demands as soon as she reaches me. She’s in her forties, I guess, about my height, and though her brown hair is the same short length as mine, it’s expensively cut and styled, with one lock falling slightly onto her face, which is part of the look, it seems.
“Yes?” I say warily.
“Don’t pretend you don’t know me. I’m Chris Whaley’s wife.”
My heart takes off at a gallop. How is this happening?
I try to make my face sympathetic. “I’m sorry for your loss,” I say and shift position, starting to go around her.
“You should be sorry for a lot more than that. You were fucking my husband, weren’t you?”
“No, I wasn’t,” I blurt out. It’s the truth, at least in the present tense.
“Why don’t you have the guts to admit it?”
I make another move to escape, but she takes a step to the right, blocking me.
“Let me by,” I say, the words strangled.
She raises her chin, almost like she’s pointing a weapon, and stares hard at me with brown eyes that are almost abnormally large.
“You’re just a tramp, aren’t you? You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
I finally brush by her, unable to avoid having our shoulders touch.
“Oh, please, go ahead, scurry away like a little mouse,” she calls out to my back. “But guess what? You haven’t seen the last of me.”
8
Now
IDON’T LIKE TO THINK OF MYSELF AS A COWARD, BUT AT THIS MOMENTI’m the definition of one. Instead of telling Jane Whaley to “go to hell,” which I should, I do scurry away, like the mouse she claims I am.
Just as I’m about to reach the door of the lobby, I notice that we’ve aroused the attention of a couple, both college-aged, standing against the far wall. They stare at me, their expressions pinched in what seems like disapproval. A second later I see Jane Whaley join them, and I realize they’re not nosy passersby. They must be C.J.’s twins.
I nearly burst out of the building and onto the street. There’s no way I can stop for tea now. What I need is to get back to the train station, though I’m certainly not going to wait for an Uber in front of the building and chance another run-in with the witchy widow. I start walking fast in what I think is the general direction of the station.
After checking behind me to make sure I’m not being followed, I finally exhale, though I still feel rattled.
What did she mean when she said I hadn’t seen the last of her? Is she planning to harass me about the money?
And something else is bothering me: Why she was standing in the lobby just now. Bradley Kane insisted she hadn’t been given my name, but she clearly was, and she also knew when I’d be exiting the building. Could it have been Kane himself who tipped her off?
About two blocks away, I check behind me again, but there’s no sign of her or the kids, just a few Lululemon-clad women with fancy shopping bags, ambling along the sidewalk. I slow to a stop, catch my breath, and after noting the address of the clothing boutique I’m standing in front of, I dig my phone out of my purse to order an Uber.
“Ms. Moore?”
It’s a woman’s voice, coming from the road on my right, and I nearly jump, thinking Jane Whaley followed me after all. I look up to see a black town car with tinted windows idling just beyond the row of parked vehicles along the curb. But it’s not C.J.’s widow staring at me from the lowered window in the back seat. It’s his mother.
“Do you have a minute?” she calls out.
“I’m sorry,” I say, feeling a rising panic. “I need to catch a train.”
“Please. Only a minute of your time. I’d like to speak to you one-on-one.”
