Page 51 of The Thinnest Air
“I was wondering if you had a minute?” I try my hardest to be cordial.
She exhales, gripping the lapels of her bathrobe. “I’m getting ready for a date.”
“It’ll just take a sec.”
Her nose wrinkles, and she studies my face with a pause.
“I’m not here to accuse you of anything. I just wanted to ask a few questions ... things that only you’d be able to answer.”
“You want to grill me about Andrew.” Her lips draw into a sly smirk. “Come on in, honey.”
She leads me into the foyer, closing the door behind me before swaying to the bottom of a curved staircase. Erica motions for me to follow her, and we wind up in a master bath the size of my apartment.
“You know I did get a call from some detective a while back wanting to interview me, but when I called back, I got his voice mail and haven’t heard anything since,” she says, sighing. I don’t tell her about the affair. “I suppose I should be used to being an afterthought by now.”
A velvet chaise beneath a crystal chandelier centers the space, and Erica points for me to have a seat.
Moving toward a vanity and retrieving a tube of Chanel mascara from a table spread with high-end makeup and face creams, she swipes the wand over her lashes, giving them a little wiggle at the tips, and her eyes intersect with mine in the mirror.
“So what do you want to know?” she asks, a haughty half laugh in her tone. “You want to know if I think he did it?”
I take a deep breath and nod. “Yeah. Basically.”
“Andrew is a lot of things,” she says. “Materialistic. Conceited. The most insecure bastard you’ll ever meet.” She turns to face me. “But he’s not a killer. Or a kidnapper. He’s a smart man with too much to lose. Trust me, if he wanted to be done with your sister, he’d be done with her. He wouldn’t do something reprehensible. That would be ...beneathhim.” Turning back to her reflection, she slicks her lips with a bullet of lipstick in a shade of screw-me red. “I don’t care how much he loves her, he loves his money and his freedom more, and no woman is worth losing that. Not to him.”
Erica begins removing her curlers, letting her shiny auburn waves fall to her shoulders before combing them with a boar bristle brush. If I squint, she looks like a 1940s film star.
“That said”—her eyes find mine again—“the man has resources for days. And the entire Glacier Park Police Department worships the Price family. If he wanted to make something happen, he could. And he’d get away with it. He’s probably the only person who could.”
“So what are you saying?” My arms fold, and I sit straight up on the end of the chaise. Her bathroom is glamorous and everything shimmers, but it’s not welcoming. I wonder if all these shiny, sparkly things are her way of making up for her dull, unlikable personality. “First you say he wouldn’t do it. Then you said he could.”
She laughs, her manicured hand tracing her collarbone. “That’s exactly what I’m saying. He wouldn’t, but he could.”
Disappearing into a closet off the bathroom, she returns a few minutes later, a tight black dress hugging her body and a set of diamond earrings in her hands.
“My date’s going to be here any minute,” she says, head tilted as she places a stud into her earlobe. “Are we done?”
Refusing to have wasted my time, I rise, shoulders tight. “Do you think he had anything to do with this or not?”
Erica brushes a perfect wave off her shoulder. “How the hell should I know? He liked her. That’s all I know.”
“Did you ever see them interact? Was it ever strained, or was anything ever ... off?”
“Honey, you’re fishing in an empty pond.” She returns to her closet, emerging with a set of black stilettos with red bottoms and crystals on the heels, the same style my sister wore in New York a few years ago. I couldn’t believe she’d become one ofthosewomen, the ones we always swore we’d never be. “Every time I was around, the two of them seemed happy and in love—as much as I hate to admit it. Now as far as whether or not it was genuine or for show, I couldn’t even begin to tell you. Closed doors and that sort of thing.”
The doorbell chimes. I check my watch. “Isn’t five o’clock kind of early for a date?”
“Oh, darling.” Erica passes me, leaving a lingering cloud of expensive perfume. “He sent a car for me. I’m meeting him at his helipad in Salt Lake City. We’re going to Vegas for the weekend.”
Her heels click across the glossy tile, her brows arched as she waits for me to follow, and with the flick of a light switch, the chandelier darkens. Erica makes walking in stilettos look natural, and her soft palm slides down the smooth railing of the curled staircase as she descends to the foyer.
She doesn’t seem like a woman who gives a flying shit about her ex anymore. And especially not his wife. It’s undeniably apparent that she’s moved on.
Answering the door, she greets a man in a black suit and points to her luggage, which is placed neatly against a nearby wall. How one woman needs three suitcases for a weekend in Vegas is beyond me, but I’m not surprised.
“It was lovely meeting you ...,” she begins to say.
“Greer.”
