The week that had passed since the shooting was just the time it’d taken for Frank’s life to change drastically.
Nancy was home for good now, though there were still several doctor’s visits a week, and Frank had been playing the role of the dutiful nursemaid—changing her bandages, helping her in and out of the bath. In the downtime, he cooked for Nancy, fetched snacks and drinks. Most of the time, she seemed very grateful. And when the pain became too much for Nancy to bear, she still didn’t take it out on Frank—not really. Even though she still cried over the shooting and, even more often, over Frank’s affair, she seemed to have forgiven him. She said as much the first time she came home from the hospital: “If the good Lord had it in his heart to forgive,” she told him, “I have to find it in mine.”
But the more forgiving Nancy was, the more resentful of her Frank seemed to become. It wasn’t that he felt guilty, exactly. It was that she was a walking, talking reminder of the trouble Frank had gotten himself into.
It’d been a week, too, since Frank had seen Suzanne—a week full of furtive phone calls, which he’d had to sneak out of the house for. A week’s worth of guilt trips and accusations from a mistress he’d started to tire of, but couldn’t let go of, in part because he was afraid of the questions she’d ask.
Frank had done nothing to tip Suzanne off about his plans to do away with Nancy—in that regard, he’d been so very careful. Suzanne would never suspect him of planning an actual murder. But together, Frank and Suzanne had spent more money than any small-town accountant like Frank could have earned. Suzanne had never asked Frank about it directly. Then again, she’d gotten used to the very comfortable lifestyle that Frank had provided her. If he were to cut her off, there’s no telling what questions she’d ask.
Suzanne wasn’t stupid. And, Frank knows, she wasn’t above making threats.
“Honey,” he said when Suzanne called for the sixth time that week and asked why he was there in Texas and not with her. “Where else could I be? Nancy’s been shot. We’re lucky she’s alive!”
“Oh, Frank,” said Suzanne. “How am I supposed to compete with that?”
If there’s any good news, it’s that it’d been a few days since Frank had heard from Michael Wall, the detective who’s handing the investigation. The last time they spoke, Wall assured him that Carrollton PD would track down Nancy’s assailant. But Wall didn’t seem to have any actual leads—and that’s fine as far as Frank was concerned. There were no witnesses to Nancy’s crime. Nancy’s own description of the assailant was vague: a white man in his twenties. Strong jaw. Facial hair. That’s pretty much half the population of the Dallas metropolitan area. And, Frank knew, that wasn’t even where the assailant was from.
But if Frank was at peace with the investigation, he couldn’t find peace within himself. Sometimes, Frank couldn’t help but snap at Nancy. And even when he did manage to hold everything in, his wife told him that he seemed distracted.
What could Frank say to that? He was distracted. While Nancy had been watching her shows, Frank had been bent over his laptop, glued to the spreadsheets he’d been fiddling with for months. His old bookkeeper—the one who had the nerve to ask about certain discrepancies in his books—was long gone. Frank let her go, he told Nancy. Ever since he told his boss, Richard Raley, that he’d have to cut back on his travel, there’d been a lot less work coming in. But what that meant now was that Frank had to do the books himself. And no matter how hard he tried to finagle the numbers, he’d siphoned too much money out of Raley’s accounts to make it all square in the spreadsheets.
Night after night, he stayed up in his home office, his face lit by the dim glow of the laptop. Night after night, the numbers didn’t square. And then, one night, he logged on and found that he’d been locked out of one of his accounts. He tried one password, and then another. Then he tried another account.
He needed those accounts. There were still millions of dollars to account for, to hide. He typed in more passwords—every one he could remember.
Still no go. Frank’s chest tightened a bit. His throat went dry. But there wasn’t much more he could do in the moment. Nancy’s calling for him again, asking for a refill on her sweet tea.