Page 112 of Don't Tell Me How to Die

“There’s got to be something, Maggie. Go through the house again. And if you can’t find anything there, search his office at the hospital.”

“He’d never put anything that private in his office,” I said. “Too many prying eyes.”

“What about the boat?”

The boat. Alex’s private little retreat. Another simple but brilliant Johnny Rollo idea. As soon as he said it, I knew he was right. Johnny, of course, could read me in an instant.

“You look like Wile E. Coyote when the light bulb goes on over his head,” he said.

“That’s a laugh riot, Johnny,” I said. “When I’m dead, see if you can work it into the eulogy.”

I drove to the marina. When Alex bought the boat and gave me the first official tour, he proudly pointed out its cool secret storage compartments. One, which I made him promise he would never show the kids, was the gun case under the bunk beds.

I got down on my hands and knees and ran my fingers along the bottom of the teak bed frame until I finally found a seam. I pried at it gingerly, somehow irrationally reluctant to sacrifice a fingernail to save my own life. No luck. And then I remembered what Alex had said.

“Even if the kids do spot it, they might try to jimmy it, but it won’t budge. You can’t pull it open. You’ve got to tap the hidden switch.”

Tap, don’t pull. But tap where? I wish I’d paid more attention when he showed me. Starting at the head of the bed, I began hitting the wooden base with the heel of my hand. I worked my way along, and the more I tapped, the more I felt like an idiot. And then I heard the electronic click, and like the bottom of a cash register, a drawer slid out from the base of the bed.

The gun was still in there. I took it as a minor victory. At least Alex wasn’t ready to shoot me in my sleep. There was also a wad of cash and an envelope marked private and confidential that had been mailed to Alex at the hospital.

I took out the contents. First a photo of Alex, me, and the kids that had run on the front page of theHeartstone Gazettethe day after I was elected mayor. Someone had written the words “Perfect Family” across it in red Sharpie.

Next came a packet of about a dozen pages stapled together. On the cover the sender with the red Sharpie had scrawled “Not So Perfect Wife.”

I turned the page. My stomach wrenched as I stared at the printed screenshot of me, naked, straddling Van, my back arched, my head tilted up, my mouth wide open as the surveillance camera captured my sexual frenzy in midscream. The date and time were digitally burned into the corner of the image lest Alex wonder where he was at the exact moment I was violating our marriage vows.

I was loath to look at the rest, but I flipped through the pages. More of the same. Different times, different days, different positions. Every one of them grounds for ending our marriage.

SIXTY-NINE

“I’m terrified,” I said to Johnny.

“I know what you’re going through,” he said.

“I don’t think so,” I said, “because if you really understood what I’m going through, you’d know that this is the last place on the planet I’d want to meet you.”

“What are you talking about?” he said. “We’re at an abandoned rock quarry. There’s nobody around for miles. It’s as private as private gets.”

“Except this particular rock quarry kicks up a lot of ugly memories. The last time I was here was twenty-six years ago. I got drunk with Misty, and by the time we got home, her loving father had murdered her mother and her brother, and if she hadn’t snuck out of the house, she’d be dead too.”

“Ignore it. That’s just your brain putting crazy-ass thoughts in your head.”

“Johnny, my life is in danger. It’s my brain’s job to put thoughts in my head—crazy-ass or otherwise.”

“Maggie, I promise, I’m not going to let anything happen to you. What did you find on the boat?”

I looked down at the ground, the same way I’d seen so many defendants do as they struggled to say, “Guilty, Your Honor.”

“Pictures,” I murmured. “Me and Van.”

“So, Alex had a PI tailing you.”

“No. Van and I were too careful for that.”

“Then where’d the pictures come from?”

“Last year Van’s friend Sean Kennedy landed a big job in the UK. He left the country, put his house up for sale, and he asked Van to keep an eye on things till it was sold. As soon as I saw the pictures, I recognized the three vintage Marine recruitment posters that Sean had hanging over the bed. That place was our safe hideaway from December until the broker sold the house in April.”

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