Page 115 of Happy Wife

“This is going to blow over.”

I hope.

“And you can leave whatever you want to leave here and all you have to do is call if you want to come over. You can stay anytime.”

Mia nods, wiping away the tears. “I’m going to grab a few things from upstairs.”

Twenty minutes later, I wave at Mia as her Uber backs out of the driveway.

I’m just like June Cleaver—if June’s husband was also murdered and she allowed her stepchild to rideshare to school.

In my defense, I had offered to drive her to school, but we both decided that it was better not to have any of Constance’s friends spot me in the carpool line. So, instead, I paid for the Uber and watched her leave.

There are a few dutiful reporters waiting just over the bridge, and I can’t help but wave at them. They look bored today, but that’s because there hasn’t been any news on Will’s case since word of the murder weapon leaked. True to form, Lindy had delivered a monologue worthy of Hamlet.

What a fucking absurdity this all is.

I am about to head back inside for a shower when I see Perry’s gray sedan pull into the driveway. I wait for him, and we walk into the house together.

I pour him a cup of coffee as I tell him everything that Autumn told me.

“That sonofabitch,” Perry says.

It’s the first emotion other than totally calm and pleasant that I have seen out of Perry since I met him. And I know how he feels: rage the fire of ten thousand suns.

“It took a lot of convincing, but Autumn is willing to go to the police. I told her to wait. We have to have more. These people will find a way to explain what little hearsay we have into nothingness and Fritz’s life of debauchery and dishonesty will go on uninterrupted.”

“Well, I think I have it.” Perry pulls a laptop out of his computer bag and opens it up. “Through a bunch of digging and a few favors, I found something that I thought you should see.” His screen lights up with PDFs of account records from a credit union I’ve never heard of. “Did you or Will ever open accounts here?”

“It’s not saying much, but I’ve never even heard of the place,”I tell him. “Will’s never done any banking other than with Bank of America. He had a whole soapbox spiel about major national banks. It’s one place he really didn’t count on the ‘little guy,’ or so he said.” I’m scanning the accounts and stop when I see that there is one in Mia’s name. “What the hell? There’s one in Mia’s name?”

“It looks like there are three large lines of credit also taken out, one in your name and one in Will’s. And, well, it looks like all the credit’s been spent and the payments against the loans are past due. Someone borrowed about two million dollars in both of your names, using the firm as collateral for the loan.”

“What the actual fuck, Perry? These aren’t ours. Will doesn’t owe this kind of money. Wehaveway more than that. Which I realize is not a very humble thing to say out loud. But it’s the truth.”

“Dean had found one of the accounts and the account number matched the one you sent me yesterday from Will’s office. If you and Will didn’t open the accounts, we need to find out who did.”

Fritz.

Autumn’s comments about overhearing Fritz and Will fight over money take on new meaning.

For all the things Fritz has done that might be socially dodgy and a little bit dicey in the world of business and trial law…this is so much bigger. This isn’t just the threat of malpractice for handling a case poorly. This is wire fraud and financial crimes. This is federal prison. If Will knew about this, he would have turned Fritz in immediately. And Fritz knew it. I think about the rage on his face that evening at the club when he thought I might stand in the way of his complete control of the firm. Fritzreallydidn’t want anyone to have any reason to go looking into the firm and its finances. His double-dealings would have surfaced all too quickly.

It’s like watching the last piece of a puzzle slide easily into its rightful place. Will sensed something wasn’t right—Fritz meddling in the Martinez case probably didn’t help—so he hired Dean to dig into Fritz’s debts and accounts. Then, once Fritz realized Will was onto him, he killed Will in a Hail Mary attempt to maintain the shiny façade that had shielded him from trouble or consequences for his entire life.

“It has to be Fritz.”

“Forgive me for asking such a simple question, but if you allhave plenty more than what was borrowed, wouldn’t the Halls be sitting high on the hog, too? Weren’t they equal partners?”

I imagine two million dollars to be a very different sum in Arcadia. In Winter Park, though, two million dollars—especially to someone like Fritz—would be a Band-Aid, not a windfall. Fritz must have been in pretty deep somehow.

Perry rubs the back of his neck. “I am happy to keep digging on my own, Nora—”

“No. I think we have enough now. I’ve got Autumn ready to talk and we don’t have time to let her think and change her mind. There’s just one more thing.”

—

Perry pulls his gray sedan into the credit union parking lot as a clerk unlocks the front door, post-lunch. Perry and I had spent most of the drive devising a plan for me to get the information we needed. He’s going to wait in the car, and I’m going to go in with my best “recently widowed” performance.

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