You Don't Own Me Read online

  A table nestled close to the stage was marked with a reserved sign. A bouquet of heart-shaped balloons was tied to the back of one of the chairs, and a purple boa was awaiting Laurie on the tabletop, but otherwise it was a perfectly respectable scene. As soon as the waitress took their drink order, Jerry and Grace took to the stage and serenaded Laurie with a rendition of “Chapel of Love.”

  “Goin’ to the chapel, and we’re . . . gonna get married.”

  Laurie could not stop smiling. She didn’t notice the man who walked through the front door, took a seat at the bar, and began to watch her.

  36

  The man flicked the edge of the parking lot claim ticket with the edge of his finger, reading the small print he hadn’t had time to review when he hastily decided to leave his white SUV with the attendant. Ten bucks per half hour; twenty-eight bucks would get you from two up to twenty-four hours.

  He wondered to himself whether anyone had ever been stupid enough to pay thirty bucks for an hour and a half. Probably. He of all people knew how gullible other people could be. There had been a time when he never would have stopped to worry about the price of a parking spot in Manhattan, but those days were gone now, along with everything—and everyone—else.

  The bartender finally made his way to the man’s end of the bar—he was near the front door, but not so close that Laurie Moran might spot him if she were watching for another friend to join what appeared to be a party.

  “What can I get you?” The bartender was a mangy-bearded hipster in a checkered shirt and suspenders. He probably paid his entire salary to share a trendy apartment in Williamsburg, but looked like he was one washboard shy of playing in the band on that old TV show, Hee Haw People are so silly, the man thought.

  He ordered a Johnnie Walker Black. Even though he knew he should remain clearheaded, he also knew that he didn’t have the willpower to walk into a bar and not have a drink. It was one of her main complaints back when he still had a woman in his life. You’re mean when you drink, she used to say.

  One Scotch became two and then three as he watched Laurie Moran, so happy with her friends. Two of them—the younger woman and a skinny guy—had sung a song for her about going to the chapel and getting married and being in love until the end of time and never being lonely again. What a bunch of nonsense.

  They were opening presents now. The first couple of gifts must have been gag gifts in light of the laughter that erupted at the table when she unwrapped them. The third present was big, wrapped in a messy bundle of paper. It was a large leather duffel bag. He heard Laurie’s friend—the woman around her same age—say something about it being for the honeymoon.

  Then they handed her a notebook-shaped box. It was robin’s egg blue, tied with white glossy ribbon. It had to be from Tiffany. Back when he was part of a happy couple, she used to love seeing one of those blue boxes. Good going, she would whisper, usually with a kiss.

  From his spot on the bar stool, he was able to make out the gleam of a crystal picture frame when Laurie opened the box. The way she beamed over it told him the frame must contain a photograph of her with her fiancé.

  The happy couple. They don’t deserve to be so happy. It isn’t fair.

  The Laurie-aged friend gave the bride-to-be a hug and asked for the check, and then Laurie began to stack all of her presents as well as her briefcase inside the new duffel bag. It was efficient. Sensible. One bag to carry everything home.

  She was going to be missed, he was certain of it.

  37

  A little more than a mile away from Laurie’s engagement party, in the offices of Dr. Steven Carter on Fifth Avenue in the Flatiron District, Kendra Bell took the cotton-wrapped ice pack from Mrs. Meadows and placed it on a metal tray. The light blue cotton was speckled with tiny spots of blood from the Botox injections that Steven was now inspecting.

  “Looks great,” Steven said as he approved his work. “You’ll have those little bumps like bug bites for just a couple days, but then you’ll be good as new. Remember to keep your head upright for the next four hours, preferably six. Don’t apply any pressure, so no baseball caps, helmets, or turbans.”

  Mrs. Meadows let out a giggle at that one, as most of the patients did. “But what will I do without my favorite turban?” she joked.

  “And this is the part everyone likes best: no workouts for the next twenty-four hours. You want the product to stay inside the muscle, not get sweated out.”

  “Oh, not to worry, Dr. Carter. I haven’t seen the inside of a gym for the last twenty-four years, let alone hours. It’s one of my finest accomplishments.”

  Steven snapped off his latex gloves and tossed them next to the ice pack. All of it would go into a medical-waste disposal bucket.

  Mrs. Meadows gave a quick wave as she hopped out of the treatment chair, adding a blown kiss for Kendra. “See you next time!”

  Once she was gone and on her way to the reception desk to pay, Steven pulled the treatment room door closed. Their final appointment of the day was finished, and they were officially off the clock. “So what was the gossip this time?”

  Mrs. Meadows was one of their favorite patients, full of personality and moxie. Some of the patients were wary of Kendra, and two of them had even insisted on being seen by a different assistant. But, if anything, the whiff of scandal on Kendra only made her a more attractive gossip buddy for Mrs. Meadows, the name she absolutely insisted on.

  “She has a new man,” Kendra announced. “This one’s only thirty-two years old.” That made him less than half the age of his seductress.

  Steven shook his head. “Poor boy has no idea what’s coming his way.”

  Some might worry about a younger man taking advantage of an older, wealthy widow, but Mrs. Meadows was no victim. She had left a long trail of ex-boyfriends in her wake. “I already had my one great love,” she liked to say. “Now I prefer a frequent change of faces.”

  Steven’s tone suddenly grew more serious. “I haven’t wanted to raise the subject, but is everything all right with that television production? I could see how concerned you were about the way they might present the story.”

  Kendra’s first instinct was to clam up. The last thing she needed was another person prying into her secrets. But Steven had been such a good friend to her, and she sure did need a trusted confidant right now.

  She quickly decided which bits of information to share and which to keep to herself.

  “It turns out that Caroline disclosed some information that doesn’t present me in the best light,” she said.

  Steven’s expression twisted into a disapproving scowl. “But she’s practically family at this point. Where’s the loyalty?”

  Kendra waved her palms, trying to set aside his outrage. “She’s so devoted. That’s why she told me every word she said to the producer.”

  “Such as?”

  “It doesn’t matter, because I know I’m innocent. In the end, there’s only so much damage they can do to me.” Even as she spoke the words that were meant to comfort both him and her, she remembered her promise to the Beehive man—the horrible man she knew only as Mike. She had sworn on her children’s lives that the producers would never know about him. But now Caroline admitted that she had told Laurie about her habit of stashing away piles of cash that continued to this day. It was only a matter of time before they grilled her about the reason.

  And that terrible quote that Caroline had provided: Am I finally free of him? She had been so unhappy in that marriage. Broken, desperate. A shadow of her former self. Even so, it was shameful to say that.

  She had been so miserable that she had wished her own husband—the father of her children—dead. It was hard to imagine, and yet she had unmistakably heard the words in her own voice. That outburst, plus the unaccounted-for cash, combined with whatever negative testimony the police could patch together, would be enough to put her in prison for life. Bobby and Mindy would be raised by their ice-cold grandparents, groomed to be miniature vers
ions of them.

  She couldn’t allow it. She’d pay Beehive Mike whatever amount he wanted to keep his mouth shut until the end of time.

  She was pulled from her thoughts by the sight of Steven, staring at her with nothing but adoration.

  “I can’t thank you enough for all that you’ve done for me and the kids, Steven.”

  “I’d do anything for you, Kendra. I love you.” She could see that he was surprised by his own words. “Like family,” he added, giving her a quick hug before opening the door to leave.

  She knew his feelings ran deeper than that, but—as ridiculous as it seemed—the only man she had ever loved was Martin Bell. But that was before she truly knew him, before he had acted as if he owned her. Was it possible that with Steven she might have another chance at trust and love?

  38

  Laurie was opening gifts at her surprise party by the time Senator Daniel Longfellow poured himself a glass of Cabernet in the kitchen. His wife was preparing dinner for the dogs. Because of Lincoln’s food allergies, he required a mix of prescription canned food and kibble made from rabbit and squash. And because Leigh Ann was convinced the dogs would notice if they received differential treatment, that meant Ike received the identical recipe.

  The senator noticed Leigh Ann glance at his glass, but she didn’t comment. It was rare for either of them to drink wine on weekdays. It was a rule they’d both adopted not long after they met, when they realized they were imbibing a bit too frequently given the demands of their studies at Columbia. “Dry weekdays” then became part of their routine—one of many they had adopted to maximize both their health and their productivity.

  But the visit from the Under Suspicion producers had him in the mood for a glass of wine. “I think it went okay,” he said to Leigh Ann. “How about you?”

  “I can only speak for my part of the conversation. They seemed quite reasonable. I got the impression, though, that she didn’t know much about the original police investigation. That surprised me.”

  Daniel took a sip of his wine. “Then you underestimate the number of chips I had to cash in to make sure that the police left our name out of the entire case. Apparently the commissioner meant what he said when he assured me that the investigating detectives saw no reason to involve us any further.”

  He had worked so hard—no, they had worked so hard—to get to this place. When he was first elected to the state assembly, he was certain he’d go to Albany and accomplish all of the sweeping changes he had called for during that first, energizing campaign. But he was only one of one hundred fifty members of the assembly, and the entire place was mired with gridlock, patronage, and cronyism. He had barely learned his way around the capital before it was time to start hustling for campaign donations and locking down ad buys again. The political pundits kept calling him a rising star, but there was nowhere for him to rise to. The state senator and governor weren’t going anywhere. He was stuck in place in what was supposed to be his “starter job” in politics.

  Not to mention, the place where he was stuck was a place Leigh Ann hated. Behind very closed doors, she called Albany “All-Boring” and reminded Daniel on a daily basis how much smarter they both were than his elected colleagues. Because of the commute between the capital and the city, for all practical purposes they had a long-distance marriage for large parts of the year.

  And then suddenly, thanks to a cabinet appointment for one of New York’s two U.S. senators, the sky opened up, and rising Daniel Longfellow had a place to go. After completing the remaining two years of the previous senator’s uncompleted term, he had been handily elected in his own right three years ago. He enjoyed a nearly 80 percent approval rating statewide, which was unheard of in these divided times. And most importantly, at least to him, he believed he was actually making a difference. He tried to ignore all the chatter about pursuing an even higher office. Every day, he tried to use the power of the office he currently occupied to improve the lives of ordinary Americans, just as he had promised.

  But sometimes he felt as if he might never be able to put the dark phase of their past behind him. When Alex Buckley had called last week asking him to meet with his fiancée about the Martin Bell case, he felt the reemergence of a panic he hadn’t known for the last five years. Maybe I should have told the police the full story when they first asked about Martin Bell, he thought. After surviving a war, I should have been tough enough to let the chips fall as they may. I’ve tried to live my entire life honorably. I made one mistake, and sometimes I think this guilt might just put me in the grave.

  Trying to calm his nerves, he told himself that Leigh Ann was probably right, as she almost always was. Their answers had seemed to satisfy Laurie Moran, just as they had satisfied the police after Bell was murdered.

  “Do you think I should have someone from the office call to follow up?” he asked. “We could mention the possibility of a defamation suit if they were to repeat Kendra’s suspicions on air.”

  She looked at him as if he had suggested flying to the moon on a bicycle. He knew that Leigh Ann loved him—almost as much as he loved her—but he also knew (and adored the fact) that his wife didn’t suffer fools.

  “And give them a story about a senator trying to silence a widowed mother?” She placed the dogs’ meals into their personalized feeders. “Don’t give them fire when there’s no smoke. Our statements made it all well and clear: Martin Bell was just a man on the board with me, an old childhood acquaintance.”

  They both knew that wasn’t exactly true.

  39

  Laurie glanced at her watch. It was already nine o’clock. They had been having such a fun time at the piano bar that she had completely lost track of time.

  She started to signal for the check, but Charlotte quickly grabbed her hand and pulled it down beside her. “First of all, brides-to-be do not pay for their own parties. And second, you can’t go yet. I heard that couple over there ask the pianist to play ‘Schadenfreude’ from Avenue Q. From the gleam in their eyes, I think they have something hilarious planned.”

  “I wish I could stay. This has been such a blast, but I’ve got to get back home for Timmy.”

  “I assumed your dad was with him tonight when we made drink plans,” Charlotte said.

  “Nope. He had a dinner thing to go to, but Timmy was over at a friend’s working on a science project and was eating over there. The plan is for the parents to walk him back to the apartment at nine-thirty, so I really have to scoot.”

  “Such a good mom,” Charlotte said, giving her a hug before signaling for the check.

  As Charlotte fought off Jerry’s and Grace’s attempts to kick in for the bill, Laurie began to stack the gifts they’d brought inside the duffel bag Charlotte had given her. It was a new addition to the Ladyform line, and the leather was thick and buttery. Charlotte had made a point to say it was for the honeymoon, but tonight, it was perfect to transport all of these presents. As much as Laurie loved the bag, her very favorite gift was the framed photograph of her and Alex. It was from the set of the first episode they had filmed together. Even though their relationship was strictly professional at the time, the camera had managed to catch the obvious feelings between them.

  As a final step, she tucked her briefcase into a gap at the side of the bag. “This thing is ginormous!” she said, showing off her accomplishment of fitting everything neatly inside.

  They had just risen from the table when the pianist announced the next number. It was the funny song from Avenue Q that Charlotte had anticipated. An enthusiastic couple two tables down jumped up. Their friends cheered as they made their way to the stage. Charlotte looked at Laurie with pleading eyes.

  “Seriously, I’ve got to go. You guys stay, though. I can tell you want to.” She hoisted the duffel bag over her right shoulder, making clear that she was fully capable of lugging it to a cab on her own.

  Charlotte sat and signaled for Jerry and Grace to do the same. She gave a quick final wave to Laurie and mouthe
d “good night” as the piano began to play.

  As Laurie walked toward the exit, she felt the thud of her bag bump someone at the bar and yelled out an apology over the music.

  Outside, she had her back to the door as she monitored 46th Street for an available taxi. She was cutting it close to get home before Timmy, and it could be tough finding a cab this time of night in the theater district. She thought about ordering an Uber, but her phone was in her briefcase, which was zipped inside the giant bag over her shoulder. The last thing she wanted to do to her beautiful new duffel was drop it on a city sidewalk.

  Her mind eased as she spotted the lit medallion number of an approaching cab. She took two steps out from the curb and raised her left hand enthusiastically. Please, she thought, do not let this be the night some jerk appears out of nowhere to steal my ride home.

  She sensed motion behind her and, on instinct, waved her hailing hand even higher as the cab began to slow. My cab. This is my cab.

  The impact was fast. And hard. It felt like she had been head butted by a professional football player. Before she knew it, she was falling onto the street, the skin on her left calf scraping against the rough concrete. She screamed as she saw headlights approaching at eye level. The cab’s tires made a skidding sound as the car came to a sudden halt, stopping just in time not to hit her.

  She scrambled to her feet, losing one of her sling-backed heels in the process. Her bag was gone. She spotted a man dressed in dark pants and a hoodie running toward Eighth Avenue, her bag in his right hand, and began to yell.