Chapter 8
Paulette
“All right, you can sit up now,” the doctor said. “Do you need some help?”
Paulette nodded and held out her hand. “I’d appreciate it, Dr. Rodriguez. Thanks.”
Whenever Paulette got on her back nowadays, it took a lot of shimmying and rocking back and forth to get upright on her own. If she stayed down for too long, she started to feel faint, thanks to the baby resting on a major artery.
The joys of pregnancy, Paulette thought with exasperation.
“One, two, three,” Dr. Rodriguez said after taking her hand in a firm grasp. She hoisted Paulette from the examination table with a soft grunt. Paulette sighed with relief as she sat upright and gazed around the examination room. Several magazines on parenting and newborns sat on the ledge near the window facing the hospital parking lot. A chart on the wall showed a dilated vagina during the stages of labor. Several plastic fetuses sat on a shelf near the door.
“Well, Mrs. Williams,” the doctor said before glancing at her chart, where she scribbled a few numbers. “Your labs look pretty good. You’re starting to experience some swelling in the legs and ankles, which is normal at this stage in the pregnancy. Just keep an eye on it.” She glanced at the chart again. “Yep, everything looks fine, but . . .”
Paulette frowned when she heard the “but.”
“The baby is measuring small for twenty-two weeks,” Dr. Rodriguez said, pursing her full lips and narrowing her brown eyes at something on her chart. “Smaller than I would like.”
Paulette’s hands instinctively flew to her stomach, where her son now squirmed, perhaps sensing his mother’s anxiety. Paulette had considered herself lucky that she was still so small. It made covering up the pregnancy a little easier than she had hoped, being this far along. To cloak her changing body, she had switched from billowing wool winter sweaters to loose-fitting halter dresses and sheaths accompanied by shawls now that the weather was warmer. Besides Dr. Rodriguez and herself, no one else seemed to know she was pregnant. But now it turned out Paulette’s small size meant she wasn’t quite as lucky as she’d thought.
The doctor sat down in her rollaway chair. “You’re not gaining much weight, either. Are you eating well, Mrs. Williams? You aren’t skipping meals, are you? Some women get so concerned about pregnancy weight gain that they can be a bit too restrictive with their diets.”
“I’ve been trying to eat, but I haven’t . . . well, I haven’t had much of an appetite.”
Dr. Rodriguez inclined her head. “Why’s that?”
“I’ve been a little stressed out, I guess,” Paulette said softly, releasing a nervous laugh as she rubbed her stomach again.
“Stressed out about what?”
Keeping my pregnancy a secret, my marriage falling apart, and my husband possibly killing my lover, Paulette thought. You know . . . the usual.
“Just . . . stuff,” she said, in no mood to unburden herself to her OB/GYN. “Lots and lots of stuff.”
Dr. Rodriguez nodded, making her springy curls bob.
“Well, whatever that stuff is, please learn to let it go or take care of it. We don’t want it to affect your health or the health of your baby.” She placed her chart on the desk next to her and gazed at Paulette. “For now, I’m going to order an ultrasound with a specialist to confirm that everything is okay with the little one. After that, we can decide what steps to take.”
“What do you mean, ‘steps to take’? What . . . what steps, Dr. Rodriguez?”
“Well, if the specialist thinks you’re experiencing intrauterine growth restriction and that’s the reason the baby is measuring so small, we might consider bed rest or a stay at the hospital, where we can do intravenous feeding. We’ll just have to see.”
Paulette blinked. “W-what?”
She didn’t know how she could possibly explain a stay at the hospital or bed rest to Antonio or anyone else without revealing her pregnancy. She rubbed her stomach more furiously now and the baby squirmed even more. Her lies and secrets were getting more and more complicated and now she ran the risk of losing not only her marriage, but also her infant son.
The doctor rose to her feet and smiled. She reached out and grabbed Paulette’s hand. “Hey, I didn’t tell you this to make you stress out all over again. The bed rest and intravenous feeding are just possibilities at this point. Let’s see what the specialist says and then make a decision. All right?”
Paulette gradually nodded.
“I’ll see you at your next appointment and keep your chin up. If anything comes up, we’ll take care of it.”
“Thank you, Dr. Rodriguez,” Paulette whispered as the doctor stepped out of the exam room, closing the door behind her.
Paulette pulled into her driveway a half hour later, just as her mother-in-law opened the front door and shut it closed behind her. At the sight of her, Paulette rolled her eyes. The older woman had had a key to Paulette and Antonio’s home since they had moved into the four-bedroom colonial. Paulette had asked Antonio to take back the key to give them more privacy, and he did for a while. But since the affair, Antonio seemed to disregard all of Paulette’s wishes and requests. It looked like Reina Washington had full access to their home again and she was taking full advantage of it.
“Well, well! Look who’s here,” the large woman exclaimed sarcastically before throwing her rattan tote bag over her shoulder. Reina was decked out from head to toe in a plum-colored top, capri pants, a wide-brimmed hat, and ill-fitting ballet flats that squeezed her fat feet so tightly that they looked like two brown, plump sausages on an open spit. In her current getup, Reina vaguely resembled Barney the Dinosaur.
“I left some brisket and biscuits in the fridge. Tell Tony he can heat it up for dinner.”
Paulette opened her Mercedes car door and stepped onto the asphalt. “Why don’t you tell him yourself?” Paulette wanted to say, since Reina spoke to her son daily, but Paulette prudently kept silent. She didn’t want to argue with Reina. She just wanted her to leave.
“I wondered if you were out grocery shopping since there doesn’t seem to be any food in that house but”— Reina glanced at Paulette’s empty hands—“that don’t seem to be the case.”
“Hello, Reina, it’s always a pleasure to see you,” Paulette said flatly, slowly climbing to her feet and shutting the car door behind her.
“Uh-hunh,” Reina grunted before looking her up and down. “So, do you plan to buy groceries someday, or is the only home-cooked meals my Tony gets gonna be the ones that I bring to him?”
“When I have the time, I’ll go shopping. I’ve been a little bit busy lately,” she said as she stepped around the older woman and headed to her front door. “Trust me. He isn’t starving.”
“I guess young women these days don’t consider it their responsibility to take care of their husbands and their homes,” Reina said loudly over her shoulder, “but in my day, you weren’t much of a woman if you couldn’t do that.”
Paulette stopped midway of inserting her key into the front door. Her jaw tightened.
“I told Tony you weren’t gonna be much of a wife. ‘Sure, she can sit around and look pretty, but that’s just about all she’ll do.’ Yep, that’s exactly what I told him.” Reina dropped a hand to her ample hip and narrowed her eyes at her daughter-in-law. “And I was right. You don’t take care of my boy. He seems less happy now than he was before he married you. If you ask me, he’d be better off cutting you loose.”
Paulette clenched her keys in her hand. It took all her breeding, all the years of her mother, Angela, encouraging her to “behave like a lady at all times,” to resist the urge to hurl her keys at Reina’s big, fat head. Instead she turned and painted on a syrupy smile. “It was nice having you over, Reina. I guess you’ll be leaving now. Drive safely, okay?” she said in a false, chirpy voice.
She then opened the front door and slammed it shut behind her, not giving Reina a chance to say anything else—insulting or otherwise.
Paulette locked the door, tiredly set her purse on the polished foyer table, and walked into the spacious kitchen, unwinding her shawl from around her shoulders. She exhaled and opened the stainless-steel fridge in search of lunch, following her doctor’s orders to finally eat something.
“What does Mommy want to eat, bean?” she asked her son as she rubbed her belly and scanned the metal shelves. “There has to be something in here!”
It turned out that Reina had greatly exaggerated. Though the fridge wasn’t stocked with lots of food, it wasn’t exactly empty, either. Paulette managed to find a loaf of multigrain bread, lettuce, several slices of deli ham, slightly hardened Swiss cheese, and a jar of mayo that had just enough left for her to make a decent sandwich. Five minutes later, she walked into her living room and fell back onto the couch with a sandwich in one hand and a glass of apple juice in the other. Just as she set both on the coffee table and raised the remote to turn on the flat-screen television over her fireplace, the doorbell rang. She sighed heavily and slowly hoisted herself to her feet. It rang again.
“I’m coming!” she shouted.
She glanced longingly at her sandwich before grabbing her shawl, draping it around her shoulders, and making her way to the front door. She drew back the curtain near the door and gazed at the front steps, surprised to find a man in a drab, navy blue suit standing there. She unlocked the door and stared at him uneasily.
“Yes?”
He was short with a sweaty bald head and ruddy cheeks that made it look like he had just finished running a mile, but he really had only been standing still for the past two minutes. His suit looked even worse up close. It was wrinkled and made of a cheap polyester blend that Paulette would never wear. His laced-up black shoes also looked cheap, though they were at least polished.
“Mrs. Paulette Williams?” the man asked gruffly. His blue eyes scrutinized her with laser-like intensity, making her unease multiply tenfold.
“Y-yes. May I help you?”
He reached into his suit jacket pocket and pulled out a wallet. He flipped it open and showed his ID. “Ma’am, I’m Detective Joe Nola with the Mannock County Sheriff’s Office. I’ve tried to reach you by phone, but had no luck. Have you not received my messages?”
Paulette swallowed audibly. Yes, she had gotten Detective Nola’s voice-mail messages. He had called three times in the past two weeks. Every time she heard them on her cell phone, she promptly deleted them. She knew why the detective was calling her and she had no interest in talking to him.
“Well, regardless,” he said, closing his wallet and tucking it back into one of his suit jacket’s inner pockets, “we’re still investigating the death of Mr. Marques Whitney. We’re following up on all leads. Do you mind if I come inside and ask you a few questions, ma’am?”
No! Go away, her mind silently screamed.
“Uh, Marques Whitney? Umm, I-I don’t know how I could help you, Detective. I just . . . I just knew him from the gym,” she lied.
The detective squinted at her and she immediately looked away.
“Well, we have information to the contrary, Mrs. Williams.”
Her eyes snapped back to his face, zeroing in on those cold blue eyes. She frowned. “Ex-excuse me?”
“I’d really like to speak with you and ask you a few questions, if that’s all right.”
“Tell him that you want to talk to a lawyer first!” a voice yelled frantically in her head. “Tell him that unless you’re being charged with something, you don’t want to be part of his stupid investigation. Hell, just tell him that you’re busy!”
But she didn’t make up an excuse or tell him to go away. Instead, she slowly nodded and opened the front door even farther before motioning him to come inside.
“All right, but please . . . can we make it quick? I was just about to eat lunch.”
“This won’t take much of your time, Mrs. Williams,” he said, before stepping inside her home. “I can assure you of that.”
Maybe the detective knows something I don’t, she thought as she watched him shrewdly scan the room around him, like signs of some crime were painted on the walls or hanging from the windows like silk drapery. She had been wondering for months whether Antonio had murdered Marques. It had eaten her up inside and made her doubt the man she loved the most. Maybe the detective could shed some light on the mystery that had been plaguing her. Maybe he could finally calm her fears.
“Would you like some water or tea?” she asked, shutting the door behind him. “I could—”
“No, that won’t be necessary.” He stalked toward her suede sofa and plopped down. He pulled out a notepad and began to flip the pages.
“Please, have a seat,” she murmured sarcastically before walking into her living room and sitting in one of the armchairs facing the sofa.
“So you say you knew Mr. Whitney from your gym?” he asked, taking out a pen and scribbling on his notepad.
“Yes, he was . . . he was one of the trainers there.”
“Was he your trainer?”
“Uh, no.” She reached for the glass of juice that sat on the coffee table. “Just a trainer at the gym. I ran into him a few times, I guess.”
“Uh-huh.” He flipped a page in his notepad as she sipped her drink. “Is there any reason he would be calling you then? We saw your cell phone number appear several times in his phone records, especially on the night of the murder.”
Paulette almost choked on her apple juice. She painfully swallowed the bit that clogged her throat. “Uh . . . he called me?”
“Yes, he called you several times. Three times that day, to be exact.” The detective dropped his notepad and stared at her. His wrinkled face drew tight. “Do you want to revise what you told me earlier? Is there anything else to your relationship with Mr. Whitney besides him being a trainer at your gym?”
“Stop the conversation now,” the voice in her head cautioned again. “Tell him to leave. Pick up the phone and call your brother Evan. Tell him everything and ask him to recommend a lawyer for you.”
But she couldn’t do that. Evan knew about Marques, but he didn’t know about Marques’s murder or that she suspected Antonio might be involved. She didn’t want to drag her brother into this mess.
I’ll be honest with the detective, she thought, tired of lying, tired of the mountain of secrets. I’ve got nothing to hide from him! I didn’t do anything wrong! I’ll just tell him the truth.
She lowered her glass back to the table and loudly cleared her throat. “Okay . . . he . . . he was more than a trainer. Marques was an . . . an ex-boyfriend of mine. We knew each other when we were teenagers. We met up again at the gym and got . . . reacquainted.”
“Reacquainted?”
She nodded.
“So you rekindled the friendship, then?”
Paulette forced a smile. “I guess you could say that. Yes.”
“Had you been to his apartment?”
“His apartment? Umm, let me think.” She pretended to look up at the ceiling and contemplate that one.
Paulette had been at Marques’s dingy apartment more times than she cared to remember and each time she left in tears, tormented by what she and Marques had done in his bedroom. But the detective didn’t need to know that little detail.
“Uh, yeah,” she said. “I had been there a few times.”
“Were you there on November twenty-fourth? The night of the murder?”
“No!” She emphatically shook her head. “No, he called me and we talked briefly, but that’s about it. I was home the entire night.”
The detective nodded, scribbling in his notepad again. “Well, that answers all my questions. I’ve taken up enough of your time, Mrs. Williams. I should be on my way.”
She inwardly breathed a sigh of relief as she watched him rise from the sofa. She immediately followed suit. “Let me walk you to the door, Detective.”
See, that wasn’t so bad, she told herself as she watched him stride across the living room’s hardwood floor and back into the tiled foyer. I was worried for no reason!
The detective reached for the brass door handle, then paused. He suddenly turned to gaze at her again, tilting his bald head. “Mrs. Williams, why didn’t you tell me the truth when I first asked you about your relationship with Mr. Whitney?”
“Well”—she gazed down at her hands and began to twist her wedding ring around and around on her finger—“I’m a married woman, Detective Nola. I didn’t tell my husband that I’d become friends with Marques again. It would have been too . . . awkward. He’s my ex. Remember?” She looked up at the detective. “I’m sorry I wasn’t more upfront about it, but you . . . you understand, right?”
He squinted again, not looking the least bit understanding. “Do you know when your husband will arrive home today, Mrs. Williams?”
She blinked. “M-my h-husband?” A wave of heat shot over her body. She started to shake a little. “Why do you want to know that?”
“I’d like to talk to him. You said you were home the night of November twenty-fourth, but I need someone to verify your whereabouts. He would be the best man to do that, am I right?”
Her pulse started to race. Someone to verify her whereabouts? Oh God, she thought, now panicked. She had been home the entire night—but Antonio hadn’t. He had been gone for hours, including during the time frame when Marques had been murdered.
“I don’t know when he’ll be home, to be honest. He works long hours lately. He’s . . . he’s trying to get promoted at his engineering firm,” she said weakly.
“If that’s the case, I’ll leave this with you,” the detective said, handing her a business card. “Tell him to give me a call ASAP.”
“Yes. Of course!” she cried with a grin. She took the card from him. “I’ll let Tony know as soon as he gets home.”
Though the truth was, she’d rip the card into a million little pieces, dump them in the trash can, and hoped never to see the detective again.
Paulette watched as the detective opened her front door. “You enjoy the rest of your day, Mrs. Williams.”
“You, too,” she piped before shutting the door behind him. Paulette drew back the curtain and watched the detective as he walked back to an unmarked Ford Taurus. She watched him until he climbed inside his car and pulled out of her driveway.
When the Taurus disappeared, she lowered her hand to her stomach and walked across the living room. She gazed at her sandwich, then turned away, no longer hungry.