The Secret Lives of Doctors' Wives

“So, they’re at Pierce’s?”

They stared at each other. Or the police have them was the thought that ran through their minds.

Rosie lay back down on the chaise longue and stared up at bright spots of blue through the trees. “I never thought people we actually know—respectable people—got themselves murdered. Handsome, wealthy plastic surgeons, not even jerks like Pierce, don’t get hacked to death by some knife-wielding maniac.”

“Too bad for Pierce the murderer didn’t read your little rule book.”

“This whole thing is making me sick.” Rosie shivered. At the same time, the more stories she read about his glamorous ex-wives, including Yolie, the more she began to feel ignored, invisible. It was a feeling she’d experienced growing up poor in East Austin. She hated it.

“I was his fiancée. But do I merit so much as a footnote?”

“Be careful what you wish for, sweetie-pie.” Yolie flipped a newspaper page and then sighed in disgust. “Where do these yokels get their information? ‘Austin has lost a self-sacrificing missionary…’ Self-sacrificing, my ass. Those surgeries he did in Central America on all those kids with cleft palates were all about his precious image.”

“You don’t know that for sure. I went with him on lots of those trips.”

“And you never doubted his motives?”

“He was a doctor with valuable skills. I just assumed—”

“When are you ever going to wake up? Pierce was so aware of appearances,” Yolie continued. “When I started gaining the weight, he was on me all the time about it, taunting me about other women, wanting me to do liposuction. All he ever cared about was making money and getting his name on the front page while squiring some stick-thin stacked bimbo around.”

Very conscious of her C-cup boobs that Pierce had enhanced, Rosie glared at her.

“Sorry.”

“He taunted me because of my low-class background,” Rosie said.

“Looks like he finally played his little games on the wrong woman.”

“So, who do you think killed him?” Rosie asked.

“Lots of people probably weren’t exactly thrilled with him. But to kill a person with a knife, you’ve got to get up close…and get ugly.”

“There was that guy who sued him because he wasn’t thrilled with his penile implant.”

“Not to mention Pierce had four wives, and God knows how many other women. And that’s just his sex life, which wasn’t really all that hot, now was it? But who stabs a lousy lay? I mean, why bother?”

Yolie’s analysis was making Rosie increasingly uncomfortable.

“And then do you ever wonder why Pierce was so hard to get to know?” Yolie continued. “Remember how he used to have to control every damn conversation? When we went out to dinner, we always had to discuss some bullshit story he’d read in the New Yorker instead of real life. Intelligent conversation, he called it. Whatever it was, it was impersonal as hell, and he had to be in control. I was married to him for a lot of years, and I don’t think I ever really knew him. Do you ever wonder if there was anything there…beneath his external glamour? It was scary, in a way.”

“What are you saying?”

“You don’t just get murdered for no reason. What if there was some dark secret in his past? Or a secret vice or addiction? I mean, why was he always as closedup as a damn clam—if he wasn’t hiding something?”

“That’s so melodramatic.”

“Hey, getting your head nearly chopped off is pretty melodramatic.” Yolie stabbed a fingernail at a front-page article. “It says right here he grew up in Beaumont. He never said a damn thing about Beaumont to me. Did he ever talk about his childhood to you?”

Rosie shook her head. But then, she’d never talked about her childhood, either.

“So, he’s either a blank disc or there are plenty of secrets on the old hard drive,” Yolie said. “He had a quick temper and a sharp tongue and the endearing quality of abusing his women when he was in a certain mood…at least verbally. That we know. Then there’s the drinking. Not to mention his mysterious disappearances.”

“Are you going to the memorial service?”

“I’ve got a son by the arrogant bastard and no alibi. Of course I’m going! In situations such as these, appearances are everything.”

“Alibi?” Rosie’s heart jumped to her throat and began to thump.

“The cops are going to want to know where everybody was if his killer doesn’t walk into the police station and hand them the bloody knife. Except for talking to you on my mobile, you and I’ve got zip for an alibi.”

Rosie shivered so hard her teeth chattered. “At least you weren’t actually there! You’ve been happily divorced from him for years. That’s hardly a motive.”

“I hated the son of a bitch. Does that count?”

“I, on the other hand, ran out of his brilliantly lit mansion braless and pantyless on the night he died. Anyone, a neighbor, a jogger, might have seen me. What if he or she misinterpreted what he saw? What if the cops find my bra and panties?”

“Then your underwear is hanging out in plastic Baggies. Call Joe. First thing Monday.”

Feeling too hot, Rosie got up and dived into the pool. She didn’t come up until her lungs were burning for air.

If Michael had her underwear in plastic Baggies and he found out about Carmen, which he would if he hung around at all, he’d nail Rosie just to get revenge.

Unless she solved the murder for him.

Six

A former linebacker for the University of Texas A&M, Joe Benson loomed behind his polished mahogany desk like a sleek, dark bear who looked slightly embarrassed to find himself all dressed up in a three-piece power suit. He had hooded black eyes, heavy brows and a strong jaw. His glossyblack hair might have curled if hadn’t been clipped so close to his scalp. Not that his hushed office, his attire or his military haircut were enough to dispel Rosie’s feeling that he wasn’t quite tame. Still, at least he was sober.

“So, how long have you been living with Yolie?” he asked, his curious voice oddly soft for so large a man.

Control. This man was into control. Just like Pierce had been.

“I don’t see what that has to do with—”

“Right. It’s just that she’s such a great woman.” His eyes lit for a second or two at some forbidden memory before he caught himself.

“Yolie told me you two used to date before you married Bridget and adopted Jennifer.”

“Did she now?” His smile was quick and a little uneasy. Then his cheeks reddened and the smile vanished.

No way would Rosie repeat what Yolie had said on the matter.

I never could figure out whether he was attracted to me or to my big house and money. He’s extremely ambitious, you see, but then that’s what makes him good at what he does.

“Well, no hard feelings. Bridget’s great, and Yolie’s like a sister to me now,” Joe said, a little edgily.

Bridget was an ice cream heiress with a large fortune. Joe was her fourth husband. Yolie said Bridget, who seemed all fluff, had had him sign an airtight prenup.

“Yolie mentioned you were in some sort of a jam.”

“Well…not yet. Hopefully, not ever.”

“If I were you, I’d trust her judgment. What’s wrong?”

Without further preamble, Rosie told him about her involvement with Austin’s front-page murder victim. She repeated a few of the most damning things she’d said to everybody about her revenge fantasies. Joe’s frown deepened when she told him about her bra and panties.

When she finished, he propped his big brown hands together and leaned forward. “Rule number one. Don’t say anything to the police unless I’m there.”

“But don’t they have the right to question me?”

He held a finger against his lips and shook his head. “You let me worry about doing right by the police, little girl. All you need is rule number one.”

Little girl? She was forty. Not that she was about to admit her age.

“But…”

At his dark frown, she fell silent. She hated it when terrified patients and their families kept asking her the same questions over and over again.

“I don’t like it that you know Nash, who’s in charge. Or that he took the call about your missing granddaughter. You dumped him, you said. Judging from the time frame, he’d already been at the scene. Obviously, he was suspicious. He could be holding a grudge.”

“From high school?”

“Did you kill the good doctor?” Joe asked, his eyes boring into her, which gave her a worse feeling than when he’d pinched her.

“Of course not!”

“You just told everybody in this town you wanted to.”

“I was joking.”

“A lot of people are going to think it’s odd that you saw him the same night he was murdered. That’s quite a coincidence. Cops don’t like coincidences. Neither do juries.”

Rosie squirmed as droplets of perspiration tickled her spine. “If I had stabbed him, trust me, I would have aimed a lot lower.”

Benson winced. “I wouldn’t share that with anybody else. Understand?” After her nod, he sucked in a long breath. “So, is there anything more you think you should tell me before we call it a day?”

Again she remembered being panicked in her Beamer that night, racing past the fancy houses carved into the limestone cliffs and oak trees of Westlake Hills, each fake palazzo more outrageously posh and ridiculously overdone than the last one—mock Tudors with skylights, Tuscan villas constructed out of plywood.

“Any little detail? A car parked out back? A cigarette butt on the drive? Anything?”

She remembered how she’d heard something in the next room when Pierce had been about to make love to her. She’d made him go check it out, so she could run. But why load Benson down with too much information?

“There is something?” he said, seeing through her.

“Not really.”

He insisted that they go over everything again. Their meeting went fifteen minutes longer than the designated hour, but he never hurried her. Why would he, at his hourly rate? He simply listened, nodding thoughtfully from time to time, looking increasingly dissatisfied as she repeated her story. Once in a while he jotted a note to himself.

She finished with a question. “Is it okay if I go to his memorial service?”

He sat up straighter and shook his head. “I think you should be as inconspicuous as possible. Do what you normally do. Don’t change your habits. Don’t act too interested in this case.”

“That’s going to be hard.”

“Go to work as usual. Since you weren’t in his life on a regular basis before his death, I wouldn’t go to the service. Oh, and watch your mouth from now on. And I’d avoid reading the papers.”

How could she act like she wasn’t involved, when she was? Pierce had deliberately drawn her into his life again. Why? Had he been afraid? Had he known who was in the next bedroom? Had he known he was in danger? Had he been protecting her? Himself? Or had he really wanted her? Was that why he’d been so angry when she’d accused him of using her in his marriage battles?

When Joe pushed back his chair, she got up silently.

He came around the desk and took her hand. She felt lighter, somehow, after talking to him. It was as if she’d seen a priest and confessed.

Her relief was unwarranted. So far, he’d done nothing but listen. But then the most important emotions in people’s lives were often based on illusions, like her messy relationship with Pierce.

She let Joe pat her hand even though she wanted to yank it away. “You tell Yolie I said hello, you hear? And call me first thing when Detective Nash contacts you.”

“You really think he’ll—”

“With any luck he’s got the murder weapon and the murderer behind bars as we speak.”

“But if he doesn’t—”

“Sooner or later he’ll send a man with a badge to knock on your door. When he does—”

“Rule number one,” she replied meekly, even as she wondered if she should wear gold beads to Pierce’s memorial service.

No, severe white cuffs against black would have just the right stark touch; as would her two-carat, fake-diamond ring. No way could she appear ringless around all his ex-wives, who had so many carats they could barely lift their hands.

“If only all the rest of my clients were as obedient as you,” Joe said.

She smiled, and he grinned as if he was very pleased with himself.

No sooner had Rosie stepped out of the firm’s offices than she was rethinking Benson’s advice.

Not go? She’d never forgive herself if she didn’t go to Pierce’s service.

Rosie was shaking her head back and forth as she observed Yolie’s reflection.

“Okay, sweetie. You win.” Yolie looked glum as she replaced her red frilly dress in the closet and pulled out a sober black one.

“Good decision,” Rosie said. “You did say that, in situations like this, appearances are everything.”

Yolie’s scowl deepened at being bested with her own words. She looked very cross indeed as she unzipped the more conservative choice and stepped into it.

“Happy? I look like a nun now,” she growled as she turned toward Rosie. “A F-A-T nun. I wish you’d be as smart as me and do what Joe told you to do.”

“I don’t see why I shouldn’t go to Pierce’s memorial service. I was engaged to him!”

“Not something to brag about, sweetie! And it’s just too damn bad for you everybody in this burg knows it.”

“And I was there at his house right before—”

“That’s the point! Nobody is supposed to suspect that, you obsessed idiot! You need to lie low. Book a session with Nan or maybe catch a movie.”

Rosie guessed now wasn’t the time to confess she’d just canceled her session with Nan because it conflicted with Pierce’s service. And she didn’t plan to make any more appointments, either.

Where had therapy gotten her, anyway? She was forty, single, a slumlord, and now possibly a murder suspect. It was time she realized she was a grown-up in the big, bad world, time to come to grips with the fact she had to fly solo.

“I want to know who killed him. I feel…like since I was there, I’m somehow responsible. Maybe I should have looked around downstairs. Maybe I could have prevented—”

“And what if you had? Then you’d be in a cardboard box today, about to be sprinkled on your favorite mountaintop, too.”

“You could have a small point,” Rosie conceded.

“So, let’s look at this from the bright side. You got what you wanted. He’s dead. So, forget about him. And quit reading all those newspaper stories.”

“I have this feeling I’ve missed something, and that I should make it right.”

“Let it go. Let him go. Use that overdose of compassion and curiosity you were born with on your patients. Folks who stick long noses into hot flames get nose hairs singed.”

“Right,” Rosie said, looking down at her watch. “But if you don’t hurry, we’ll be late.”

“You’re still going? Did you hear anything I said?”

When she straightened and began buttoning the white cuffs of her black dress, Yolie let out a howl. “Lady Long-nose, you bought a new dress! You did!”

Fortunately, Darius and Todd honked from the drive just then, distracting her. Yolie raised the window and hollered down to them to hold their horses, she’d come when she was damn well ready.

“So, you finally convinced them to go,” Rosie said.

“Not easy, let me tell you. They’re as hardheaded as their father. Would you button my neck?” As she turned her back to Rosie, Yolie began spritzing her golden hair so that it stood on end. “Pierce was hardly the saintly father the papers made him out to be. But how would it look if his sons didn’t go?”

She picked up her purse and scooted out the door. “There’s nothing like death to turn us into hypocrites, is there? I’ll be so glad when this is over and I can quit pretending I’m a grieving ex-wife. Weird role, isn’t it?”

Over? Rosie’s temples grew hot as a weird sensation of panic swamped her. Feeling hopeless, she trailed Yolie down the stairs.

When would it be over—for her?

Seven

The chapel was a grandiose, high-ceilinged room with tall stained-glass windows on all the walls. A floodlight shone down on the altar and the golden urn that contained Pierce’s ashes.

Oh, my God! Was that Mirabella Camrett, her next-door neighbor, in the very front row? Had she even known Pierce?

Oh, no. She was turning around!

Zippy lyrics of a contemporary Christian song seemed to roar in the sanctuary as Rosie ducked behind Todd and Yolie, who were threading their way down the aisle, through the throngs of people and extra chairs that had been crammed at the ends of each pew.

A little more than a year ago Rosie had attended this church with Pierce on the Sundays he hadn’t been on call. They were to have been married here. Instead she’d hacked her wedding cake to pieces and had chased him around with fistfuls of icing and a knife.

She’d forgotten all about that until now.

A knife. The memory brought a shudder.

Show your joy to the Lord with dancing.

The crowd was bigger than she’d expected. Maybe it was only natural that the notoriety and mystery surrounding Pierce’s death had attracted more than just family and friends. The mourners’ mood, although somber, was also edged with that curious excitement that goes along with scandal and murder.

Trying to be discreet, Rosie lowered her lashes. There had to be three thousand people assembled. Their jewels and silk and smooth faces made her feel a little old and dowdy, or at least most definitely past her first youth.

Her stomach went hollow. While a lot of faces were vaguely familiar, there were many more she did not recognize. When she looked closer, she saw lots of Pierce’s former patients, his staff and partners, other doctors and nurses and members of the medical community.

Doubtlessly, they recognized her, too. Not that they caught her eye or spoke.

Men in dark suits lined the walls. Just as she was wondering how many were police and how many were funeral directors, she spotted Michael in a black suit that was so rumpled, she wondered if he’d slept in it on a stakeout.

Suave, he was not. His broad back was glued to the wall as if he needed its support. Beneath his dark tan, his face was gray. His eyes were closed, with a look of fatigue rather than spiritual conviction. Indeed, he seemed so battered that despite his tough appearance she felt sorry for him.

Her heart hammered as she imagined him poring over blood and gore. Was Pierce’s murder getting to him? Or was it just his life?

Michael was a rougher, less elegant sort than Pierce. Maybe his father’s violent death had hardened him. Maybe growing up poor had done it.

Being a cop couldn’t be an easy job. Maybe he’d never had soft edges. For as long as she’d known him, he’d had a core of steel. Still, even with his eyes closed and his skin ashen, he oozed testosterone.

Quickly, before he opened his eyes and misconstrued her interest, she tiptoed faster and caught up with Yolie. Why hadn’t she headed their little parade up this aisle? She would have sat them down long ago so they wouldn’t call attention to themselves.

Clearly, Yolie wanted to flaunt her presence at Pierce’s funeral, as well as his sons’. Why was it so important to her that everybody see her grieve? Was the killer here, too, driven by his own agenda?

When Yolie saw Kylie Rae Carver, Pierce’s second ex-wife, sitting all by herself, she shot her former rival a Texas-size smile and then slid in beside her.

Rosie jerked her by the sash.

Normally, the two ex-wives avoided each other like they would a contagion. When Yolie kept sliding toward Kylie, the black satin ribbons came undone and flowed over the pew.

Kylie, who lived in their neighborhood and walked her poodle in their park, couldn’t be more than forty-one. She was razor-wire thin and looked years older than she was. Pierce had always said such unkind things about her, too.

My worst wife, and that’s saying something. Drug addict. Alcoholic. Poodle nut. Nymphomaniac. And now a lez.

Whether she was any of those things was anybody’s guess. Rosie had always been dying of curiosity to know. Kylie never drank in public. But as Pierce had pointed out, she did have those fleshless legs that alcoholics sometimes have.

Once, Rosie had asked Yolie if there was such a thing as a lesbian nymphomaniac.

Yolie had laughed. “In his wet dreams.”

“But Pierce always said Kylie hit on him even after their divorce, and told me that if I was smart, I’d keep my distance from her, too.”

“Liar liar, pants on fire. He just didn’t want you two talking. The bastard’s secretive. Not that she’s ever said more than boo about him to me. When forced to see each other, we always stick to safe subjects like our poodles’ latest neuroses or bowel habits. The truth is, I’d give anything to talk to her and to Vanessa, especially Vanessa—since I sort of ended up dealing with Darius, who wasn’t the easiest kid.”

Vanessa had been Pierce’s first wife, as well as Darius’s mother. The marriage had ended when she’d hanged herself in their newly decorated shower one gorgeous fall morning right after she’d driven Darius to private elementary school. She’d put the trash out, said hi to her neighbor and tidied up the house. Then she’d taken that final shower.

“Not that I really need to talk to Vanessa. The facts speak for themselves. Wife number one kills herself. Kylie drinks and gave up men for good, and me, wife number three, gets fatter than a house. Maybe you never made it down the altar with him, sweetie, but he did a number on you, too. You hyperventilate every time you gain an ounce, and I see the way you’re always looking scared when you get around a mirror, like you’re afraid to look. And that lifting the chin thing you do lately…not to mention the boob job you let him talk you into. What does that say about him? About us?”

As if Rosie had wanted to analyze that.

Kylie smiled coolly at Rosie without speaking, and then stared ahead in the direction of the urn, her tired face going blank again as she studied it. She did, however, resume singing, “Dancing With My Father in the Fields of Grace.”

Naturally, Rosie couldn’t help noting that Kylie’s diamonds were even bigger than Yolie’s or that real diamonds sparkled better than her own fake stones. Had Pierce bought every woman he’d ever known serious jewelry but her?

Arranging her plump, bejeweled hands in her lap so that every ostentatious diamond blazed to full effect, Yolie was overcome with sniffles every time she looked at the urn. While everybody else sang, her wet, glazed eyes grew fixed on that object. She sobbed and then dabbed dramatically at her running mascara, diamonds flashing, of course. Kylie’s face grew stonier with every sniffle.

Was Yolie for real? For all her usual show of bravado, did she still care about Pierce? Was that why she’d never married again? Why she’d never really had a serious relationship with a man unless you counted the handsome young hunks, like Xavier, who had paraded through her bedroom’s revolving doors? Not to mention Vicenzo, whom she’d met in Italy. Or was she faking this torrential flood for the sake of appearances?

Rosie stared at the urn, hoping Yolie’s deluge would inspire at least one tiny tear for Pierce.

Dry-eyed, she watched as the preacher stood up and lamented the violent death. Anecdotes about Pierce’s life—his adult life—were recited in glowing detail. Friends got up and spoke. Not that their eulogies captured the Pierce Rosie had known.

Was it just her? Or had Pierce concealed his real self from everybody else, too?

Fortunately, the service moved right along. Soon everybody was singing “Amazing Grace” and then saying the Twenty-third Psalm in unison. When the impersonal service was over and people were starting to get up, Rosie suddenly felt compelled to do something, anything, to make Pierce seem real and alive to everybody.