“And you kick it under the table?” Ria says. “Knowing we’ll find it?”
“No. I take it.” Jane looks at Ria. “I take it with me. I don’t leave the phone lying there for the cops to find. I take it with me, so the police have no idea it even exists. The police would never know it exists. That’s the point of a burner. You can’t trace it back to an owner.”
“So why kick it under the table, knowing we’ll find it?” Ria says.
Jane throws up her hands. “He wanted us to find it. He didn’t want to be too obvious about it—he didn’t want to put it in a gift box with a bow on it. He made it look like he was trying to conceal it by kicking it under the table. But like you said, he had to know we’d look under a damn table right next to the crime scene.”
Ria nods. “He wanted us to find it.”
“He wanted us to find it.” Jane chews on that. “He wanted us to focus on the person on the other end of those text messages, Lauren’s boyfriend.” She looks at Ria. “Holy shit.”
“So maybe it wasn’t the boyfriend who did this,” says Ria. “And maybe we should no longer be referring to the offender as a he.”
Jane runs her fingers through her hair. “You’re blowing my mind here at the end of a long day,” she says. “I need to think about this.”
“Didn’t mean to complicate your life,” says Ria.
Jane smiles at her. But the smile doesn’t last long.
“So maybe Lauren wasn’t the only one in this love affair who was married,” she says. “Maybe Lauren’s boyfriend was married, too. His wife finds out about the affair, kills Lauren, and puts the whole thing on her cheating husband.”
Ria’s turn to smile. “The fantasy of every woman who’s ever been cheated on,” she says. “Kill two birds with one stone.”
60
Thursday, October 27, 2022
I’m probably just being paranoid, with everything about to happen. Maybe the guilt I’m feeling over what I’m about to do to Vicky is skewing my perception.
But it sure feels like Vicky has been different. More solicitous. More affectionate.
She got into bed with me last night. Usually, I’m early to bed, early to rise, and she’s the night owl, in bed well after midnight, sleeping until eight or nine.
But last night, she came to bed with me.
“Want some company?” she said.
I didn’t know what to do. I felt so conflicted. I’m with you now, Lauren, in every way but officially, and so I felt suddenly like sleeping with my wife would be cheating on you.
Oh, how things turn. And how awkward and painful it was when I made up an excuse about not feeling well.
But I’m just being paranoid, right? It’s just a coincidence that now she’s suddenly taking an interest in me again.
It must be. Vicky couldn’t possibly suspect a thing.
61
Vicky
Nobody pays attention to a woman in workout clothes, power walking through a neighborhood, headphones on, even if nobody recognizes her, even if she tends to stop on the sidewalk outside a particular house every day. For men, it’s different. Strange men who linger are creepy, potential stalkers, someone to keep an eye on. A woman? A woman can walk a regular route every day and nobody will notice.
From what I can tell, nobody’s noticed me all these weeks, casually passing Lauren’s house, sometimes stopping briefly but just briefly, looking down at my phone like I just got an important text that stopped me in my tracks. I’m just a harmless female, after all.
Sometimes I drive by her house instead of walking, but a car is different, more noticeable, more likely to arouse curiosity. I only use the car at night, and only for a few minutes.
During the daylight hours, though, like right now at eight-thirty on a Thursday morning, passing her house on foot is the preferred option. And, of course, I can rig my route so that I circle back and pass her house a second time if need be.
Lauren the Gold-Digging Skank, to her credit, has not altered much of her daily routine, even with the changing of the seasons. At eight-thirty every morning, she goes for a three-mile run through Grace Village. She still keeps a regular tennis appointment at ten-thirty in the morning, every weekday, at the Grace Country Club. She still has lunch with her tennis partner and then meets a foursome for golf at one.
It’s enough to exhaust me just thinking about it. But Lauren the Gold-Digging Skank has to keep that nice, tight figure of hers, doesn’t she?
I wonder what the plan is once the weather really starts turning, the way the weather can turn in Chicago. Was she planning to bundle up and keep hitting those tennis courts and playing eighteen holes of golf? At some point, you’d think she’d have to call off those outdoor sports, if nothing else when the snow starts arriving.