The Wild Zone (9 page)

She’d recognized the car immediately as the one that had tailed her the night before, the one she’d assumed belonged to a detective hired by her husband. Then she recognized the men from the bar, saw Will in the backseat. “I saw them struggling with a map,” she told Dave. “They were obviously lost. I was just trying to be helpful.” I was just trying to get away, she thought. She’d run across the street with only that in mind. She couldn’t afford to waste any more time. “Take me with you,” she’d been about to cry. Instead, what emerged was, “What are you doing here? You have to leave. Now.”

Dave smiled, sat down beside her, took her hand in his. “Your hands are ice cold,” he noted.

“Are they?”

“Are you cold, sweetheart?” He put his arm around her, pulled her tight against him.

“A little.”

He started rubbing the side of her arm. She winced as he pressed down, hard, on one of her sore spots. “Oh, I’m sorry, darling. Did I hurt you?”

“No. It’s fine.”

“Because you know how much I hate hurting you. Don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, what?”

“I know how much you hate hurting me.”

“Almost as much as I hate being lied to. You’re not lying to me, are you, darling?”

“No.”

“You’ve really never seen any of those men before?”

“No. Of course not.”

“Not even at the Wild Zone?”

“The Wild Zone?” Dear God, what had they told him?

“The good-looking one with the blond hair? The personal trainer,” Dave clarified. “You haven’t been hooking up with him?”

“What? No.”

“Don’t tell me it’s that stupid-looking one in the driver’s seat. Please tell me you have better taste than that.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I haven’t seen any of those men before.”

“So, they just happened to be driving through Coral Gables and stopped in front of our house, looking for the Miracle Mile.”

“That’s what they said.”

“Which any idiot could find blindfolded.”

Suzy said nothing. It sounded lame even to her ears.

Dave’s arm snaked its way around her neck, his hand massaging the top of her spine. “You know one of the best things about being a doctor, Suzy?” he asked. “People respect you. They think that because you’re a doctor, it follows you’re an honorable man. So they tend to believe whatever you tell them.”

Suzy nodded, although his arm wasn’t allowing her much room to maneuver.

“For example, if I were to tell people, the police for instance, that my wife had been moody and depressed of late, they probably wouldn’t be too surprised to learn she’d taken her own life. Which is one of the other nice things about being a doctor,” he continued, almost cheerily. “I know how the body works. And what it takes to make it stop working. Do you understand what I’m saying, sweetheart?”

“Dave, please—”

“Do you understand? A simple yes or no is all that’s required.”

“Yes.”

“Good.” He relaxed his grip. “Because it would truly break my heart if something were to happen to you. You know that, don’t you? Again, a simple yes or no will suffice.”

Suzy closed her eyes, pushed the word from her mouth. “Yes.”

“Good. Now, why don’t you slip into something sexy? Seems your husband’s feeling a little amorous.”

Suzy pushed herself off the sofa, walked silently toward the bedroom.

“Hurry back,” she heard him say.

NINE

“J
EFF
,
PHONE FOR YOU
,” Melissa called from behind the reception desk that was tucked near the entrance to the small boutique gym.

“If you’ll excuse me,” Jeff said to the middle-aged woman in the black leotard and turquoise jersey. “Why don’t you do a couple of minutes on the treadmill? I’ll be right back.”

“I told him you were with a client,” Melissa apologized, “but he says it’s an emergency.”

The old-fashioned black rotary phone was barely out of Melissa’s hand before Tom’s voice was bellowing in Jeff’s ear. “She’s with a goddamn lawyer,” he was shouting.

Jeff looked anxiously over his shoulder to check on whether his boss was hovering. But Larry was busy with a ponytailed young woman on the elliptical machine. Still, he’d have to be careful. You weren’t supposed to take personal calls at work. Larry might have been only a couple of years older than he was, and he was pretty laid-back, as far as bosses went, but he was still Jeff’s superior, and Jeff didn’t want to lose this job. Elite Fitness, located above a bakery, wasn’t too far from his apartment, and the clientele was nice. Not half as snooty as the last place he’d worked. “Who’s with a lawyer?” he asked, his voice low, barely audible over the loud rap music blasting from the nearby speakers.

“Who do you think? Lainey, that’s who. Who the hell else would I be talking about?”

Jeff decided not to remind Tom about the weekend. “Please tell me you’re not following her,” he whispered, holding one hand over the mouthpiece, his eyes darting between the large machines at one end of the room and the benches and free weights at the other. He shifted his position, trying to avoid both the direct noontime sun pouring in through the large front window and the mirrors that were pretty much everywhere. Despite the air-conditioning, it was pretty warm in the long, rectangular room, although the pleasing aroma of freshly baked bread wafting up from the vents did a nice job of masking the smell of sweat that permeated the wood floors.

“Of course I’m following her,” Tom said impatiently. “How else would I know where she is? First thing Monday morning, and already she’s talking to a goddamn attorney.”

“Tell me you don’t have a gun.”

“I don’t have a gun.”

Jeff knew immediately Tom was lying. “Jesus, Tom, you can’t keep doing this. You’re gonna get yourself killed.”

“Anybody gets killed around here, it’s not gonna be me.”

“What about your job?” Jeff asked, deciding to try a different tack.

“Not to worry. I called in sick.”

Jeff felt the dull thud of an incipient headache at the base of his neck. He didn’t have the patience for Tom right now. “Look, I can’t talk now. I’m with a client.”

“I go over to her parents’ house around nine o’clock this morning,” Tom continued, as if Jeff hadn’t spoken. “I figured I’m being polite, you know, not getting there too early. Lainey’s just leaving the house, she’s dressed all nice, so I know something’s up. I mean, why is she all dressed up so early on a Monday morning? Where’s she going? So, I decide to follow her, find out what’s going on. She drives over to West Flagler, goes into this bright pink building that looks like a giant bottle of Pepto-Bismol. I check the directory. All lawyers, man.”

“Okay, so she’s talking to a lawyer. That doesn’t mean—”

“It means she’s gonna file for divorce. It means she’s gonna try to take my kids away from me. Those kids mean everything to me, man. You know that.”

Jeff decided this probably wasn’t the best time to point out that Tom rarely spent much time with his children. “Look, why don’t you take a few deep breaths and try to calm down. Then call your boss, tell him you’re feeling better, and go in to work. It’ll take your mind off Lainey.”

“I won’t let that bitch take my kids away from me.”

“Just hold tight. Don’t do anything stupid. Wait and see what happens in a few days.”

“I know what’s going to happen in a few days. I’m gonna get served with divorce papers, that’s what’s going to happen.”

“Maybe not. Maybe if you don’t go flying off the handle, if you stay calm . . .” Jeff stopped. This was Tom he was talking to, he reminded himself.

“Maybe you could talk to her,” Tom said.

“What? No way.”

“Please, Jeff. You gotta help me. It’s your fault I’m in this mess.”

“What?” What is Tom talking about now? Jeff wondered as he watched Caroline Hogan reduce the speed of her treadmill, thinking that for a woman of almost sixty, she was in remarkably good shape. “How the hell do you figure that?”

“If it hadn’t been for you and that stupid bet at the bar . . .”

“Hey, it was
your
idea to go chasing after Suzy.”

The receptionist cleared her throat, her eyes motioning to her right.

“So what time works best for you?” Jeff asked loudly as Larry walked by, his young client trailing after him, her ponytail swaying from side to side.

“Hi, Jeff,” the girl, whose name was Kelly, said, a big smile on her pretty, heart-shaped face.

Jeff returned her smile as Tom’s voice boomed against his ear. “What are you talking about?” he asked.

“Certainly. Why don’t you check your schedule again and get back to me? I’m sure we can work something out.”

“What the hell’s going on there?”

“I’m afraid I don’t have any openings until seven o’clock.”

“Are you shitting me or what?”

“Look,” Jeff whispered when Larry and the girl were comfortably out of earshot. “I told you I can’t talk. My boss is watching.”

“Who gives a shit? You don’t think this is more important?”

“I’ll call you later. In the meantime, go home, calm down, stop following her. You hear me, Tom? Are you listening to me?”

“I won’t follow her.”

“Okay, good. I’ll talk to you later.” Jeff hung up the phone, finding it fascinating that someone who lied as often as Tom did was still so bad at it. He handed the receiver back to Melissa. “Thanks for the heads-up.”

“Anytime. Oh, your eleven o’clock canceled.”

“Everything all right?” Caroline Hogan asked, stepping off her treadmill and walking toward him, the front of her turquoise T-shirt sprinkled with coin-sized beads of perspiration, manicured red fingernails dabbing at her moist upper lip.

“My eleven o’clock canceled,” Jeff said dryly. “And a friend of mine’s wife just left him.”

She arched one carefully plucked eyebrow, her forehead wrinkling ever so slightly.

A spot the Botox missed, Jeff thought, guiding her toward a nearby exercise bench and directing her to lie on her back.

Caroline Hogan lay down and arranged her chin-length, curly blond hair on the white towel beneath her head, her still-shapely legs dangling over the end of the narrow bench, her Adidas runners resting on the light hardwood floor.

“How fast did you go on the treadmill?”

“Six-point-five.”

“Not half bad for an old broad.” The words were out of Jeff’s mouth before he had time to edit them, and he was grateful when he heard Caroline laugh. She had such a nice laugh. Not too harsh, not too girlish. Substantial. Genuine. Not like Kristin, whose laugh was surprisingly tentative, or Lainey, whose laugh always sounded forced, both women laughing almost in spite of themselves. “He’s better off without her,” Jeff said, placing a twelve-pound weight in Caroline’s outstretched hands.

“I assume you’re talking about your friend whose wife left,” Caroline stated, bending her elbows to lower the weight to the middle of her forehead and then bringing it up into the air again, without needing to be told. She’d been coming in twice a week for the last three years, warming up on the treadmill and then working out for an hour with a trainer. Her previous trainer had left for New York two months ago, and Jeff had been hired to take his place. Caroline knew exactly what was expected of her, a quality Jeff liked in a woman.

A quality sadly lacking in Lainey Whitman.

Although surely she’d known what she was getting into when she married Tom.

“Arms straight,” he reminded Caroline. “Bring them up a little higher. That’s good, Caroline. Do another eight.”

“Why’d she leave?” Caroline asked.

“Who knows?” Jeff shrugged. “Why’d you leave
your
husband?”

“Which one?”

“How many have there been?”

“Just two. I left the first one when I caught him in bed with the nanny—trite, but true; the second one died of cancer four years ago, so technically, I guess,
he
left
me.
”

“Think you’ll ever get married again?”

“Oh, I hope so,” Caroline said, sounding like a teenager, as Jeff took the weight from her hands. “I always liked being married. What about you?”

“I’ve never had the pleasure.” The word “pleasure” stuck in Jeff’s throat. Sometimes, often when he least expected it, he could still hear his mother and father screaming at each other behind the closed door of their bedroom. Not much pleasure in that. He pointed to the floor. “A set of push-ups.”

“It’s so easy for you men,” Caroline said, getting down on the floor and extending her legs straight out behind her, pushing up and down with the palms of her hands.

“Slower,” Jeff cautioned. “You think it’s easy for us?”

“Isn’t it?”

“In what way?”

“With women,” Caroline grunted.

Jeff looked toward Melissa, whose slightly embarrassed smile revealed she’d been watching him, and then over at Kelly, who gave him a discreet little wave with the fingers of her left hand as she prepared to hoist two ten-pound barbells to her chest. “I guess,” he said, imagining his mother reflected in the large mirror behind her.

“Who were you with this time?” his mother demanded, her voice an accusation.

“I wasn’t with anyone,” came his father’s testy reply. “I was at the office.”

“Yeah, sure. Like you were at the office last Thursday night, and the Thursday night before that.”

“If you say so.”

“I say you’re a no-good son of a bitch, that’s what I say.”

“Takes one to know one.”

“Okay, come down a little farther, Caroline,” Jeff said loudly, using his own voice to block out the sound of his parents’ fighting, the way he used to when he was a little boy. “That’s better. Do another ten.”

“Why are you shouting?” Caroline asked.

“Sorry. Didn’t realize I was.”

“Everything all right?” Larry asked, walking past, muscular arms bulging from beneath his sleeveless white T-shirt, Kelly following dutifully after him, although her eyes followed Jeff.

“Music’s a little loud,” Jeff said.

“It is, isn’t it?” Larry agreed. He walked over to the far wall and turned it down. “How’s that?”

“Much better,” Jeff lied. In truth, he loved loud music. Especially rap and hip-hop, the kind of music that got not only inside your head but underneath your fingernails and in between your toes. The kind of music that usually obliterated all conscious thought.

When he was a little boy trying not to listen to his parents screaming at one another in the next room, he’d turn his radio up as loud as he could, singing along with Aerosmith or Richard Marx, and if he didn’t know the words, making them up. Hell, he even sang along with Abba.
You are the dancing queen.

Ellie had loved that one. His sister was three years older than he was, and sometimes, when their parents were going at it, he’d run into her room, and they’d put on the radio and he’d sing, and she’d dance, sometimes grabbing him and twirling him around and around in circles until, exhausted and dizzy, they’d collapse in a heap on the floor, the room continuing to spin happily about their heads.

You are the dancing queen.

That was before their mother had pulled them out of their warm beds one wintry night, throwing their coats on over their pajamas, then bundling them into the car in the bitter cold and driving down the highway, without even making sure their seat belts were fastened, crying and sputtering words he didn’t understand but knew were bad just from the way she was spitting them at the windshield. And then driving for such a long time before pulling into the parking lot of a motel on the outskirts of town and dragging them out of the car, making them trudge through the snow without their boots, the bottoms of their pajamas trailing through icy, cold puddles, everybody crying by the time they reached door 17.

“Do seventeen more,” Jeff said now.

“What?” Caroline pushed herself up onto her knees. “Seventeen more? Are you kidding me?”

“Sorry. Just wanted to see if you were keeping track.”

“Oh, I’m keeping track all right.”

“Have a seat at the edge of the bench.” Jeff reached for a twenty-five-pound bar as Caroline held up both hands. He lowered the bar into her open palms, her long, red fingernails curling around it. “Hands out a little wider. That’s good. Okay, exhale on the way up. Try to keep the arms straight.”

The child Jeff took a deep breath as he watched his mother’s hands pummel the motel room door. “Let me in, you bastard,” she yelled into the cold night air. “I know you’re in there.”

And then the door to room 17 opening slowly, and his father standing there, wearing only his boxer shorts and a loopy grin, a woman sitting up in the bed behind him, a sheet gathered up under her chin. But before he had time to wonder what his father was doing with this strange woman in this strange place in the middle of the night, his mother was already pushing him and his sister out of the way, screaming that the woman was a filthy whore, and snatching the sheet away from her, so that her naked breasts were fully exposed, and then lunging at her, scratching at the side of her face with her long, red fingernails.

Just like Caroline’s, he realized, watching the bar in Caroline’s hands go up and down, up and down. Was that what had triggered these unwanted memories of his mother? Or maybe it was the conversation he’d had on Saturday with Will.

Did his mother really have only a few months left to live?

“Stupid bitches,” he heard his father mutter, a look of bemused indifference on his face as he watched the two women wrestling on the motel bed.