Ladies' Night (4 page)

Am I really discussing paint colors with a cop? Within an hour of my life imploding?

“Great,” the cop said. He reached into his pocket and brought out a business card. “Hey, uh, I’m sorry about tonight. Don’t quote me, but I kinda don’t blame you for what you did with his car. I mean, what kind of douche bag does something like that?”

“The kind I’m married to, apparently,” Grace told him. She took the card, and he held up his flashlight so she could read it. “Officer Strivecky.”

“Pete,” he said. “My cell phone number is on there, if you need me again tonight. I’m on shift until seven, okay?”

“Okay,” she said, touched by his kindness. “Thanks for not arresting me.”

“You’ve got a place to go?” he asked. “It’s really not a good idea for you to stay here.”

“Don’t worry,” she said, feeling a shiver run down her spine. “I’m just going to throw some things in a bag, and then I’m gone. My mom lives over on Cortez. I’ll head over to her place. You couldn’t pay me to spend another night here, now that I know what’s been going on right under my own nose.”

“I could hang around,” Pete Strivecky said, gesturing in the direction of the house. “Make sure he doesn’t try anything tricky.”

“He won’t,” Grace said. “He’s a douche bag, like you said, but he’s not a dangerous douche bag.”

He turned to go.

“Officer Strivecky? Pete?”

“Yeah?” he said, pausing at the edge of the pool, glancing down at the submerged Audi.

“Do you mind if I ask how old you are? You look too young to be a police officer.”

He laughed. “I get that all the time. It’s the red hair and freckles. I’m twenty-six. Been on the force for three years now.”

“Twenty-six,” Grace said wistfully. “So young…” She nodded her head in the direction of the house. “Seems like a long, long time ago.”

“Yes ma’am,” he said.

She had an idea. “Hey. Send me a photo of your bathroom after you’re done, will you? For the blog? I’d love to see how it turns out.”

“I’ll do that,” he said. “And you take care.”

*   *   *

An open bottle of Chivas Regal stood on the kitchen counter. She could hear the sound of the television coming from the media room. The door was firmly closed, but he’d turned up the volume on the surround sound, and she recognized Bruce Willis’s voice. He was watching one of the
Die Hard
movies again. For Ben, watching the bad guys blow up buildings and try to shoot down airliners just never got old.

She ran up the back staircase to their bedroom. On her side of the his-and-hers bathroom suite, she peeled out of her sopping wet shorts and T-shirt, stopping only to drape them neatly over the towel bar beside her Jacuzzi. She grabbed a cosmetic bag from a drawer in her dressing table and swept in some random toiletries: her shampoo and conditioner, deodorant, and her vitamins. Her hand hovered over the Clomid pill bottle. She’d been scheduled to start her second round of the fertility drug at the start of her next period, in two weeks.

It had taken Grace two years to talk Ben into seeing a fertility specialist. An only child herself, she’d always wanted children. Ben claimed to want them, too, although he didn’t see why they couldn’t just “wait and see” if she’d get pregnant what he called “the natural way.” Finally, two months ago, he’d relented. “Now or never,” was the way Ben looked at it.

“Never,” Grace said now, tossing the pills into the trash. She wondered if he’d already started sleeping with J’Aimee when she’d begun taking the Clomid. But she couldn’t think about that right now. What was done was done. And she—and Ben—were done.

Standing in her walk-in closet, she dressed quickly in a pair of white jeans and a favorite navy-blue knit top. She slid her feet into a pair of Jack Rogers sandals. Opening a suitcase on the top of the island that housed her folded clothes, she dumped a handful of random things: panties and bras, some shorts and tops, and a pair of jeans. She threw her running shoes and socks on top of the clothes, then zipped the suitcase.

Grace stepped into the bedroom and looked around. One last time, she told herself. At the silver framed photos of her and Ben in happier times, at the paintings she’d collected and hung on the walls, at the gorgeous custom-made linen drapes. It was the nicest room she’d ever owned, and she was getting ready to walk right out of it.

She found her purse on the tufted velvet bench at the foot of the bed and slipped the strap over her shoulder. Picking her suitcase up, she made her way back down the stairs. She stopped in her office, shoving her laptop computer and a handful of file folders into an oversized tote bag. She dumped her camera bag on top, hefted the tote onto her other shoulder, and made her way awkwardly to the kitchen door.

The Chivas bottle was gone from the kitchen counter and the door to the media room was still closed. From within, Bruce Willis was kicking ass and taking names.

Grace paused by the door. She raised her hand to knock, but changed her mind. She went out the kitchen door, walked to the garage, and got into her own car, a four-year-old Subaru. “Now or never,” she whispered aloud.

3

Grace was idly switching channels on the big wall-mounted television at the Sandbox, her mother’s bar on Cortez, a spot only seven miles, but light years, away from Grace’s house on Sand Dollar Lane.

“Leave it on channel four,” Rochelle said. “Please.”

Grace gave her a look. “You know I always watch the morning news on four,” Rochelle said. “I hate that weather guy’s hair on channel eight.”

Grace gave a martyred sigh and did as she was told, turning back to her mother’s favorite channel, just in time to see a reporter standing in front of her very own front yard.

“Holy crap,” Rochelle whispered. “Is this what I think it is?”

“Good morning,” said the reporter, a black woman who’d been a local television mainstay for as long as Grace could remember. Camryn Nobles. Grace stared at the television. How the hell had Camryn Nobles gotten past security?

“I’m at the exclusive gated community of Gulf Vista on Siesta Key, where police were summoned this morning to what they termed an escalating case of domestic disturbance. But what makes this story newsworthy, in fact, fascinating, is that the principals involved in the incident are a nationally known domestic goddess—and her husband—or is it safe to say, soon to be ex-husband?”

The camera panned to show a pale-pink stucco two-story Spanish colonial revival mansion with red tile roof sprawling across a swath of emerald green lawn dotted with colorful beds of tropical flowers and half a dozen black-and-white Sarasota County sheriff’s deputy cars, as well as a fire truck, an emergency rescue ambulance, and a large black tow truck. A traffic helicopter from the Tampa CBS affiliate droned overhead.

“You’re a media event,” Rochelle said, and Grace shot her another look.

“If this palatial house and grounds look familiar to many of you,” Camryn Nobles said, her voice lowering to a confidential tone, “it’s because this is the home of lifestyle blogger Grace Stanton, who writes the wildly popular Gracenotes blog. The house has been featured in numerous national publications, and Ms. Stanton has been a frequent guest on network shows like
Oprah, Ellen,
and, yes, even the
Today
show, and of course our own
Suncoast Morning!
where she’s been practically a fixture over the past two years, as a lifestyle expert.”

Now Camryn was talking again, strolling around to the side of the house, down a long coral-rock driveway toward the rear of the Stanton mansion.

“Grace Stanton is a successful interior designer and a hometown girl who grew up in modest circumstances in nearby Cortez,” Camryn said. “After moving to South Florida and marrying, she had a thriving design practice before moving back here to the Suncoast in 2009. Husband Ben, forty-four, was an advertising executive who gave up his career two years ago in order to devote all his energies to maximizing his wife’s burgeoning lifestyle business. Grace and Ben Stanton are fixtures on the local social scene; in fact, they hosted a charity party for the local children’s shelter right here in this lovely poolside setting back in October. But authorities say this bucolic scene turned ugly sometime after midnight. Here’s the tape police have released, of the panicky 911 phone call they received at one fifteen
A.M.
from Ben Stanton. And we want to apologize to our viewers, in advance, for the somewhat graphic language in this tape.”

“Yeah, I’m gonna need some assistance here. My, uh, my wife, she’s out of control.”

The female 911 operator sounded bored. “
Sir, are you in physical danger?”

“What? I don’t know. She went crazy on me. I’ve never seen her like this. Look, I think you better get an officer over here before she does hurt somebody.”

Shrieks were clearly audible in the background. And then came Ben Stanton’s muffled voice.

“Grace, what are you doing? This isn’t funny. Are you crazy? What the … Get the hell away from there!”

In the background came the sound of a car door slamming, then a high-powered motor revving, tires squealing across pavement. And then, a loud splash.

“
Christ! Grace, what the hell have you done? Jesus H!…”

“Sir? Do you have a life-threatening situation there?”

Stanton’s voice, when he came back on the line, was grim.
“If she hasn’t already drowned, I’ll kill the bitch myself.”

“Turn it off, please,” Grace said, turning her back to the television.

Rochelle dialed down the volume, but she kept watching.

Camryn was back on camera, walking toward a patio area lined with a lush hedge of sea grapes. Graceful coconut palms and hibiscus shrubs were scattered about the patio, which included a fully outfitted kitchen and thatch-roofed tiki bar.

The reporter gestured in the direction of a two-story, three-bay garage. “The police won’t say what sparked the altercation between Grace and Ben Stanton last night, but I spoke off camera to a neighbor who claims to have overheard what she termed ‘a spirited exchange’ between the married couple last night. That neighbor says the source of the problem was Mrs. Stanton’s stunning twenty-six-year-old female assistant, who has been living in a garage apartment on this property for some months now. The neighbor also says that in the early morning hours before dawn today, that assistant, whose name we aren’t divulging, fled in terror through that hedge,” Camryn pointed to the sea grapes, “wrapped only in a beach towel.”

“Neither of the Stantons were available for comment at airtime,” Camryn went on, still walking toward the patio, “But despite the lack of witness statements, or cooperation from the parties involved, there are some simply inescapable conclusions we can draw about what went down here last night.”

The camera pulled back to show a three-car garage, with all three parking bays empty, and then panned over toward the swimming pool, a shimmering free-form turquoise oasis set on a patio of more coral rock. The shallow end of the pool had coral rock steps that descended into a separate, enclosed whirlpool spa. And the deep end?

Camryn Nobles stood at the edge of the pool and looked down, the camera following her gaze. A lime-green canvas beach umbrella floated tranquilly on the surface of the water, as did four chartreuse vinyl lounge cushions. Totally submerged and barely visible beneath the water was an ominous-looking oblong black form.

“And that,” Camryn said, her voice somber, “appears to be Ben Stanton’s 2013 Audi Spyder convertible, which retails for approximately 175,000 dollars.”

*   *   *

Rochelle Davenport pointed the remote control and finally, mercifully, clicked it off.

“You really drove a car worth 175,000 dollars into the pool?” Rochelle asked her daughter.

Grace shrugged. “I doubt he paid that much for it. Knowing Ben, he worked some kind of advertising trade-off with the dealer.”

“This is just so unlike you,” Rochelle said. “I mean, I don’t blame you for what you did, but it’s just so not you.”

“Temporary insanity,” Grace said. “That’s the only explanation I can think of.”

“You could have drowned,” Rochelle said. “Did you think of that? You’d have left me a childless widow.”

“And then Ben could have collected on that two-million-dollar life insurance policy we bought last year,” Grace muttered. “I gotta change that.”

“It was a dumb thing to do,” Rochelle insisted. “Seriously.”

“I couldn’t have drowned. The top was still down,” Grace said, suddenly returning to her normal, logical self. “I guess it got kind of hot in that garage, while she was…”

“Giving him a blow job?” Rochelle said helpfully.

“Yeah. In the front seat of the Audi.”

“I also can’t believe Ben just let you drive it into the pool,” Rochelle said. “How exactly did that happen?”

“I can’t discuss that right now,” Grace said, staring moodily into her iced tea glass. “It makes my head hurt.”

Rochelle reached behind the bar for the industrial-sized bottle of ibuprofen she kept there, shook two into her hand, and handed them to her daughter.

“Thanks,” Grace said, swallowing the pills. “Have you got any food around here? I’ve always heard that heartbreak kills your appetite, but I haven’t eaten in twelve hours, and, I swear, I could gnaw my arm off right now.”

Rochelle pushed one of the plastic laminated menus across the bar.

Grace looked down at the Sandbox menu, which, as far as she knew, hadn’t changed in at least fifteen years. “Buffalo wings. Stuffed potato skins. Stuffed potato skins with Buffalo-wing sauce. Onion rings. Fried oysters. Fried shrimp.” She looked up at her mother. “Seriously? How are you still alive, eating this stuff all this time?”

“I don’t eat this crap,” Rochelle said, nonplussed. “You kidding me? I’d be big as a damned house.”

She allowed herself a satisfying glance in the mirror over the back bar. At fifty-nine, Rochelle was proud of her still-trim figure. She took good care of herself, slathered herself with sunscreen before taking her two-mile walk along Bradenton Beach every morning, colored her hair a soft brown at home, and allowed herself a single glass of heart-healthy red wine or the occasional beer most evenings. She’d quit her pack-a-day smoking when Grace was still a baby, and her doctor said she had the bone density of an eighteen-year-old.