THE DEEP END Read Online Free PDF Page A

poured herself a glass of tea, took a sip then squeezed in a slice of lemon. “He packed a bag. He said he had a business trip.”
    The dread coiled in my stomach lifted its hooded head, ready to strike. I tried to drown it with another swig of wine. Getting wet just annoyed it.
    “Do you know where he went?” Detective Jones asked.
    Grace raised her eyebrows to the middle of her forehead. Short wrinkles marred her smooth skin. She rubbed her nose. “Los Angeles.”
    We all paused to consider the ramifications. Detective Jones probably thought about my husband getting off a plane in Los Angeles and boarding one to Brazil or Argentina or some other country where men were macho and it was easy to disappear. I didn’t think that. I looked at the late afternoon sunshine shafting golden through the window onto Grace and thought appearances could be deceiving. My angelic daughter was lying.
    “Did he say why?” Detective Jones asked.
    She shook her head. “No.”
    “May I use your phone?”
    “Of course.” I nodded to the wall phone with the stretched out cord.
    “The one in the study?”
    “Of course.”
    The angelic, lying stranger who’d replaced my daughter disappeared when Detective Jones left the kitchen. I leveled my gaze on Grace.
    She swallowed. “You won’t tell?”
    That she’d just lied to a police officer to protect her father? No. I wouldn’t tell.
    “Where did he go?” I asked.
    She inspected her cuticles.
    “Grace...”
    She rolled her eyes. Sighed with more drama than Streisand in The Way We Were, before giving in. “He said he had a lead on a new investment. Maybe he went to New York.”
    An investment? In New York? Henry owned a local bank. What the hell was going on? Then again, Henry could be holed up at a local hotel or on his way to Quebec or Paris or Bermuda. Who knew? Unlike Grace, Henry could tell a convincing lie.
    “Did he ask you to lie for him?”
    “Of course not.” Again with the raised eyebrows and itchy nose. She was so bad at lying she ought to give it up.
    I’d deal with her later. I was too angry with Henry to think clearly. My son-of-a-bitch husband had asked his teenage daughter to lie to me. Instead, she’d lied to the police.
    Grace went to the refrigerator, opened the door, and surveyed its contents. “I know what you’re thinking.”
    I doubted it. I was thinking about using some of Henry’s kinky toys on him. A bullwhip sounded about right. “Oh?”
    “You’re thinking Dad lied to me.”
    I wasn’t going to argue the point. Not with Detective Jones just down the hall. My gaze turned toward the door.
    “You should be nicer to him.”
    My gaze returned to Grace’s foraging back. Be nicer to my cheating, lying, on-the-run husband? Not likely. “Pardon me?”
    She turned, a container of chutney chicken salad clasped in her hand. “Did you think I meant Dad?”
    “Who else?”
    “Detective Jones. He could make our lives difficult.” She cracked the lid of the container, sniffed, and wrinkled her nose. “You don’t need to be nicer to Dad. In fact...” she pivoted so I saw only her back, “you should divorce him.”
    I closed my eyes for half a second, no more. When I opened them, sunlight still streamed through the windows, the copper pots hanging from the rack still gleamed, and the exposed brick wall still looked the way it always did—just a little wrong—too much scarlet, not enough crimson. My kitchen was the same. It was my world that was off-kilter.
    My daughter took a deep breath, one that hunched her shoulders, then she turned to face me. “I love Dad, but I don’t see why you’re still married to him.”
    This was not a conversation I wanted to have with a detective in the house. To be fair, it wasn’t a conversation I wanted have without a detective in the house. “It’s complicated.”
    My daughter, who was never at a loss for a smart reply, bit her lip. Her chin quivered. She scrubbed at her face with the back of her free hand.