Harris. I rested a hand on the back of the nearest booth for balance as I turned to catch another glimpse. The couple sitting beside me looked at me curiously, so I bent over my heel and made a show of adjusting my strap while a woman eased out of Harris Mickler’s booth. Her high heels clicked down the hall and disappeared into the ladies’ room. I lingered for a moment, attempting to listen to Harris’s conversation a few feet away, but it was over quickly and he pocketed his phone. Flagging the nearest bartender, he ordered two glasses of champagne and returned to his seat. I rushed for the bathroom, surprised to find my heart racing as I slipped into an empty stall.
What was I doing? This was ridiculous. I was ridiculous. So Harris Mickler was stepping out on his wife. So what? Plenty of men had done it before. Including my own husband. As much as I hated him for it, I could never imagine killing him. Not even for fifty thousand dollars. Yet here I was, spying on a man I’d never even met.
I relieved my bladder as quickly as I could, washed my hands, and opened my purse to reapply my lipstick, pausing at the sight of Patricia Mickler’s note crumpled in the bottom of my handbag. I should flush it right now. I should shred it and wash it down the sink.
The lock on the stall behind me snapped open and I quickly shut my purse.
Harris Mickler’s date bent over her smartphone, her long blond hair hanging like a curtain around her face, over the shoulders of her dove-gray suit. I smeared on a fresh coat of lipstick, watching her in the mirror as she dialed and pressed the phone to her ear. A stunning diamond ring glittered on the fourth finger of her left hand, flanked by a diamond-encrusted wedding band.
“Hey, babe,” the woman cooed into her phone as I tucked my lipstick back into my purse.
Maybe she was one of Harris’s colleagues from work, I told myself. Maybe they’d just closed a huge deal and had come to celebrate.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” she said. “I have a client meeting. It’s running later than I thought. There are leftovers in the fridge, and Katie’s allergy medicine is on the counter. Do you mind putting the kids to bed for me?”
Okay, so Harris was definitely cheating. With a married woman.
Big deal. He may have deserved a raging case of gonorrhea, and if he was beating his wife he definitely deserved to be in jail, but nothing I’d seen so far suggested Harris Mickler deserved to die. I adjusted my wig-scarf in the mirror and checked the time on my phone. It was early. I could still charge a few cartons of Chinese takeout to Steven’s account, bring dinner home for Georgia, and forget this ever—
Harris Mickler’s date leaned against the counter and raised her voice. “It’s an important client, Marty! What do you want me to do?”
I slipped out of the bathroom and the door drifted closed, muting their heated argument. I hurried down the corridor back into the bar just as Harris Mickler’s waiter set two bubbling champagne flutes before him. I caught the flash of Harris’s crisp white shirtsleeve as he tucked a folded bill into the waiter’s hand. When the waiter turned, something slid from Harris’s palm into one of the glasses. The white pill glowed against the golden bubbles, fizzing as it wafted to the bottom of the flute.
Head down, I walked fast past Harris’s booth and slipped into an empty space at the bar. The angle was too sharp to see Harris Mickler’s face, but near enough to see his arm as he swirled the glass. I hardly noticed the bartender step in front of me to take my order. I was out of cash anyway, and I craned my head to see over his shoulder as Harris switched the position of the champagne flutes.
The bartender leaned into my field of vision. Julian smiled when our eyes caught. I tried to catch discreet glimpses of the restroom door down the hall. The woman would be coming back any second. What should I do? Tell Julian? Ask him to swoop in on their table? Track down the woman in the bathroom and tell her what I had seen Harris do? Any of those would make me a witness. I’d have to wait around for the police to come and take a statement. They’d ask me who I was and what I was doing here. I’d have to explain why I was wearing a wig and a stolen dress and calling myself Theresa. I’d have to explain why I was the subject of a police manhunt, because I had failed to pick my children up from my sister’s house.
Georgia, I thought.
Georgia was a cop. If Georgia had been there, what would she do? Every scenario that came to mind involved a service weapon or handcuffs, or some knowledge of jujitsu. I had none of the above.
“Change of plans?” Julian asked with a curious tilt of his head.