Anything But Mine (33 page)

CHAPTER THIRTY SIX

I
t had been a brutal week, and by Thursday afternoon, Vince was exhausted and missed his wife. Picking up his desk phone, he dialed Jen, explaining that he was going to fly out to Southampton. “I’ll be there as soon as I can. I should arrive in time for dinner.”

“Be careful, Vince. The weather is pretty nasty.”

“Really?” Looking out his office window, he said, “It’s cloudy here, but that’s it.”

“Well, we have snow and freezing rain here. And the temperature is dropping into the teens, so it’s all going to freeze over. Are you sure you want to risk it?”

“Al won’t fly if it isn’t safe,” Vince said, referring to his long-
time
pilot. “If I can’t fly, then I’ll drive out.”

As they spoke, he heard an alert sound from his cell phone and, looking down, he read a text message from his pilot. “You’re right. Al just texted me. We can’t fly out because of the weather, so I’ll just drive out instead.”

“Why can’t Lou drive you out?”

“He’s on vacation,” he reminded her.

Jen furrowed her brows. “But, Vince, you hardly ever drive yourself, and the roads are getting icy.”

“It will be fine, Jennifer. I have to bring the Lamborghini out to your uncle for servicing, anyway.”

“That car isn’t meant to be driven in this type of weather,” Jen said, unconsciously wrinkling her brows. “Just be careful, and drive slowly.”

“I’ll be careful, my love. See you later.”

“Wait, Vince, I have to ask you something. Do you have any idea where the file with the lease for the store’s upstairs tenant is? I can’t find it anywhere, and he wants to renew his lease in the next day or two.”

“I don’t know. Call Seth. He has a copy of all the real estate files.”

“Seth is out of town,” Jen replied. “I can’t reach him.” Leafing through the files in her home office, she continued, “I’ve looked everywhere but I can’t find it. I know it was in the boxes I packed and brought out here a few months ago. I wonder if the box with all the real estate information was mistakenly placed in your office here. Can I go in and look for it?”

“No! Absolutely not,” Vince shouted. “You are never to go into my office, do you understand me?”

“What’s the big deal, Vince? I just want to see if that box was put in your office by mistake.”

“Jennifer, let me repeat myself,” Vince said in a stern voice, as beads of sweat formed on his forehead. “Do not go into my office.”
God forbid she finds the box with my files on her. It would be a fucking disaster.
He glanced at his watch and mentally calculated how long it would take him to get to Southampton if he left right away. “I’ll be there in a couple of hours, and I’ll help you look for it then, okay?”

“Okay, Vince, but I really need to find that lease quickly. I don’t want to lose my tenant.”

After hanging up the phone, Jen again searched her own home office for the real estate files, but couldn’t find them. Pulling on her parka, she drove to Knit Hampton, where she searched the file cabinets again, despite not being able to find the paperwork there earlier in the day.

Just as she was about to head out the door and go back home, her tenant came in and told her that if he wasn’t able to sign a renewal lease immediately, he would be moving to another location in the village. Although Jen implored him not to move, and explained that she would be able to provide him with a renewal lease within a week, he was adamant that he wanted to sign a new lease right away.

After assuring him that he would have the new lease by Saturday, Jen sank down in her desk chair.
Without that tenant, the store loses money,
she thought. It was important to her that the store operate in the black, and even more important to her to prove to Vince that Knit Hampton was a viable business and not just a vanity project.
I’m not going to ask Vince for a loan to keep the store going,
she said to herself.
I have to find that file.

“Call me on my cell phone if you need me,” Jen said to Allison and Carly, before reaching for her parka and exiting the shop through the back door. Heavy snow continued to fall, and Jen slipped on an icy patch of pavement as she was getting into her SUV, only avoiding a fall by grabbing onto the door handle of her car.

The icy roadway made the short drive back to Fair Fields treacherous, and her SUV slid as she rounded the curve on Pond Lane by Lake Agawam.
Thank goodness no one else was on the road
, she thought.
I would have had an accident.

Once home, Jen made herself a cup of hot cocoa and tried to warm up by the fireplace in the kitchen.
Where could that box be,
she asked herself over and over. Finally, she realized,
it has to be in Vince’s office. I’ve looked everywhere else.

Jen walked down the hallway towards Vince’s office, debating what to do.
I know he doesn’t want me in there, but I need to find the box with my files. And I can’t wait for him to get here to look for it,
she thought as she gingerly turned the knob and entered her husband’s office.

Switching on the light, she nervously looked around the one room in the house she had been forbidden to enter. Jen glanced at the neatly stacked papers on his desk, before opening the desk drawers. Not finding what she was looking for, she sat in Vince’s leather desk chair and wracked her brain as to where else she could look.

Just as she was about to leave the room, she noticed a small cabinet below the built-
in
bookshelf.
Could my box be in there?

After trying the handle and finding it locked, she rifled through Vince’s desk until she found a small key. Nervously, she inserted it into the lock, and turned it until she heard a click and the cabinet door opened.

Peering inside, she saw two small white banker’s boxes. The one nearest the front was labeled “old financials and tax returns”. She pulled it out and placed it behind Vince’s desk, then reached in and pulled out the second box, relieved to see it was marked “Jennifer” in Vince’s handwriting.
I knew I’d find it here,
she thought.

Jen pulled the box out of the cabinet, and sat down on the floor beside it. She removed the lid, and was surprised to find manila folders, each labeled with dates in Vince’s handwriting, as well as a checkbook binder, a notebook, and a laptop computer. Confused, she thought,
this isn’t mine.

She put the lid on the box and placed it back inside the cabinet, before standing up and walking out of Vince’s office, closing the door behind her.
I wonder what’s in the box with my name on it,
she thought, as she walked down the hallway towards her own home office.

Curiosity got the better of her, and Jen raced back down the hallway to Vince’s office. She sat on the floor next to the cabinet, opening the door and pulling the box out. Taking a deep breath, she lifted the lid, and removed one of the manila folders.

“What the…,” she said under her breath, as she opened the folder, shocked to find it contained photos of her running with Drew that appeared to have been taken a year earlier on one of her trips to San Francisco, and from a distance.

She pulled out another file folder, finding more photos of her and Drew, this time taken at the Ritz-
Carlton
in San Francisco.
What the hell?
There was also an e-
mail
from “
[email protected]
”. As she read the e-
mail
, she realized that Vince had hired investigators to report on her activities while she was on the west coast.
He didn’t trust me. He spied on me.
Checking the date Vince wrote on the folder, Jen realized that it corresponded with her trip for the photo shoots at Organic Beauty just before she was attacked in her apartment.

Her hands shaking, she pulled out the folder corresponding with the date she was attacked. “Oh my God,” she cried out, as she saw multiple photos of herself tied up, face down and unconscious on her bed, with her pants pushed down around her hips. “Oh my God,” she repeated. “This is one of the photos that was in the package left on my driveway that I thought was from a stalker,” she said aloud. Trembling, she thought,
why would Vince have all of this, unless, unless…no, that’s not possible.

As she flipped through more files, each containing photos and e-
mails
from investigators, she became more and more nauseous and her heart began to race.
No, no…this can’t be right,
she thought.
Or can it?

When she finally looked at the checkbook, her worst fears were confirmed as she found a check for $25,000 made out to someone named Tony Candela for a “job well done” the day after her attack. She continued searching through the checkbook, and noticed multiple checks made out to Collette for $10,000, always on the first of the month, starting long before their wedding, and long before Catherine and Luke’s wedding. “He told me he met Collette for the first time at their wedding, but he lied to me. He was sending her monthly checks since the time I was attacked,” she said aloud. “I have to get to the bottom of this.”

Pulling out the laptop computer, Jen opened it and hit the power button. Trying to guess Vince’s password, she typed in her name, but when that was incorrect, she typed in her name and birthday, and was wrong again.
I only have one more try before the account is frozen,
she said to herself. She carefully typed in “JenniferVince”, and was relieved when she was able to log in.

Opening the web browser, she went to the browser history, and located her husband’s private e-
mail
account. Clicking on it, she was surprised to see it wasn’t password protected, and was even more surprised to see multiple e-
mails
from private investigators and from Collette.

Jen’s jaw hung open in shock as she read through Vince’s e-
mails
. She was appalled to learn the true nature of Collette’s business –
that
she was a high-
priced
call girl –
and
was sickened to discover that Vince had been paying Collette to sleep with Drew and keep him away from New York and from her. After opening more e-
mails
, Jen learned that Vince had retained a private investigator, Frank Webb of Bay Investigations, to track her whenever she was on the west coast, and that he had assigned Brad Wesley to follow her every movement in New York.

Finally, she searched back through the e-
mails
until she found the one that confirmed the check payable to Tony Candela was indeed payment for attacking her in her apartment. Her heart was beating rapidly, and she was barely able to breathe, as she tried to comprehend everything she just found.
All this time I thought Vince was my hero. But he isn’t my hero, he’s my stalker.
She tried to compose herself, but found that she couldn’t, as the enormity of her discovery hit her, and she picked up the phone and dialed Vince’s cell phone number.

The further east Vince drove on the Long Island Expressway, the worse the weather was, and by the time he reached Exit 70, the roadway had become slick with ice. He had just maneuvered the Lamborghini onto Route 111 when his cell phone rang. “I’m less than an hour away, my love,” he said as he answered Jen’s call.

“You sick, sick bastard,” Jen screamed at him. “I know everything you did to me. Don’t you dare come here –
I
never want to see you again!”

Vince’s blood ran cold, and he felt his chest constrict. “What are you talking about?”

“I found your box, the box with all the files and photos of me. I know everything,” she said, seething with anger.

Although he could barely breathe, Vince still managed to bellow at his wife. “You went into my office? I told you not to go in there.”

“And now I know why,” Jen shouted back at him. “You’re a sick, crazy bastard. There was never any stalker. It was you. You paid someone to attack me, to try to rape me. And then you paid Collette to seduce Drew, and to keep us apart. You just had to have control over me, didn’t you? Why, why? Oh, my God,” she wailed, before dissolving into uncontrollable sobbing.

“Jennifer, please, stop,” Vince pleaded. “I love you. I did it because I love you.”