Steven was gone again, this time for a one-day meeting in Albuquerque where the parent company for a chain of resort spas was buying an “all-natural” aloe-and-shea-butter-based cosmetics business. “It seems like a perfect marriage,” he said over an early dinner before he took off for the airport.
Dana said, “Oh, like ours.”
They hadn’t spoken about the issue of a new lawyer for Kitty. If Michael had told him that she indeed had planned to go against Steven’s wishes, no one had told her.
Still, there had been a decided chill in the dining room, and she was glad he was leaving.
“I’ll take the red-eye and be back Saturday morning,” he said. “In time for the gala.”
Right, she thought. The freaking gala is this weekend.
He kissed her cheek and he was gone and she retreated to the family room.
Sam was out; he’d mumbled something ambiguous about following up on a lead, though Dana wondered if he’d gone to see Chloe—the only one in New Falls over twenty-one who did not have a chart on Dana’s family room walls, except Elise, but she wouldn’t kill her father, would she?
Dana scanned the potential murderesses, the cast of their real-life whodunit. The evidence again suggested that Kitty hadn’t done it, so who was left?
Lauren?
Caroline?…Bridget?
The fact was, any of them might have.
Lauren had an affair.
Caroline knew a hit man.
Bridget had too many secrets, including if the father of her daughter was husband number un or deux.
They’d all been friends many years. Had their trust—like hers and Steven’s—really been on tenuous ground? But wasn’t communication between women usually more honest than between women and men?
She surveyed Sam’s data, his notes, his charts. One loose designer thread after another.
She pondered this way and that, then pondered some more. Then Dana realized there was only one way left to get at the truth:
The wives of New Falls needed to do lunch.