Page 108 of Happy Wife

“I’ll go to Will’s office and see if I can find anything.”

“I will keep digging, too.”

“Won’t Fritz be at the office?” Este asks.

“Not this time of day. This is about the time he posts up at the bar at the club for his ‘afternoon meetings.’ Drop me by the house, Este?”

Este lobbies hard to come with me, but I hold my ground. I have to do this myself. I’m not sure if it’s the blinding rage of knowing that Fritz has a hand in what happened, or my own desperation to do something to find justice for Will. Either way, I hope Will would be proud of me for taking matters into my own hands. It’s what he would have done.

Get ready, Fritz. I’m headed straight at you.

Chapter42

I park out front of the Hall & Somerset office, taking note of the fact that Fritz’s car isn’t here, and head inside. Lenore is at her desk, scanning and filing the mountain of papers in front of her.

“Nora, dear, Fritz isn’t here.”

“It’s okay. I came to see if I could get some of Will’s personal things from his office. He has a few photos here that I love and wanted to take home.” It sounded good in my head. I hope she buys it.

“Of course. Let me get the key.”

Lenore leads me back to his office and unlocks the door. I walk inside for the first time since Will was found. I heave a dramatic sigh, hoping Lenore will observe my grieving widow act and give me some space, but my heart actually aches.

The main office phone rings from Lenore’s desk.

“Let me go grab that, and I’ll come back with a box for you.”

“Thank you so much.”

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised Lenore leaves me unattended. I had been expecting it to be a little harder to get time alone in the office.

But they all underestimate me. I’m just the young, dumb, pretty wife.

I watch Lenore turn the corner and know that my unsupervised time is limited. I open a few of Will’s filing cabinetssearching for anything to do with the Martinez case. Most of what he does is digital now anyway, but I’m hoping there might be one of Lenore’s perfectly cataloged hard-copy backups in the drawer that I can just grab. Coming up empty, though, I abandon the cabinets and turn back to Will’s desk, opening his drawers. I found that Post-it before; maybe there are other treasures here forme?

The top right drawer has a bunch of ties I had bought him for the next time he spilled coffee or chewed through the ink cartridge on a pen. I pull out my favorite one, pale purple with tiny dogs on it. My subtle hint that maybe we could have a dog. Will missed the intimation. The lower drawers are full of random files that I’m sure give Lenore a headache. But when I slide open the bottom right drawer, something catches my eye. There’s a folder with the logo from Mia’s school on it.

Odd.

Constance is the keeper of Mia’s stuff at school. That was decided on in the divorce. And this folder looks “school official.” I pull it out, flip it open, and find a bunch of papers about the Martinez case with Will’s sloppy handwriting all over them. There’s a page of what looks like phone numbers, or maybe account numbers. I am reading so fast and it’s all so jumbled and I’m terrified that Lenore is coming back in here—I can hear her squeaky pumps heading down the hallway.

I close the folder and shove it into my bag and start winding up the ties that I’ve pulled from the other drawer. Lenore walks in with a small box and a big box.

“Sorry about that—nervous client. I wasn’t sure what size box you needed?”

“Oh, the small one should work.”

I put the ties in the box, walk over to the shelf, and start pulling down some pictures, some awards of Will’s. None of these are things I even sort of need to memorialize Will, but that is beside the point.

I need to fill this box to hide what I’m sneaking off with.

I grab a photo of Will and Fritz. They’re younger and Fritz’s face is thinner—he looks almost fit. Both are smiling wide and full of vim and vigor.

“I always loved that one,” Lenore pipes up.

“Really? Why?”

“It was taken right after they won their first big case. They were so proud. It was a good day.”

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