Chapter 23

 

I drove north on Rio Grande Boulevard, passed the turnoff where I’d followed Zayne and her friend to the river party, and continued into a pastoral area where the old-time small properties and shacks had been bought up and merged into estates favored by the state’s successful business people. Now, McMansions sat surrounded by ancient cottonwood trees and acres of tended grass. I started watching addresses, fairly certain I knew which was the Lorrento place.

The property had originally been acquired and the ten-thousand-square-foot house built by a real estate developer with a flair for the magnificent and good connections in the media. After he got involved in a condo project in Mexico that went bust, he’d been forced to sell his bucolic retreat and move to the less spacious, but equally prestigious, Tanoan country club neighborhood. There, the houses were big but jammed so close together it was hard to appreciate their grandeur. It would have been hard to give up the quiet and surrounding natural beauty for that, I imagined.

The Lorrentos had come along and bought it for the relatively bargain price of four million, something I knew only because the broker who handled the transaction was a friend of a friend and he couldn’t keep quiet about his brushes with the rich and famous.

I spotted a white rail fence that ran alongside the road for about a half-mile before it curved inward and met with an entrance. High, wrought iron gates blocked the way but a keypad and small speaker mounted on a brick pedestal told me what I had to do. I pressed the intercom button.

“Marcie, it’s Charlie from RJP Investigations. Ron Parker sent me over.”

No words came through the little box but I heard a whirring noise and the gates began to roll back. The paved drive was a good quarter mile long, bordered by thousands of purple and yellow pansies and more of the white rail fencing. Beyond the fence, on my left, stood a trio of thoroughbred horses, their brown coats gleaming in the sunshine. One looked up as my Jeep passed, but the others only continued to nibble at the grass. I briefly wondered if they had any purpose or were merely here to make the rest of the estate look good.

The acres of green and the long driveway served basically as a framework for the house itself, three stories of red brick, white shutters and two-story columns holding up a portico and impressive veranda. Very traditional if you lived in the Midwest—completely dramatic here in the Southwest where everything else was either stucco or adobe.

I spotted Marcie standing at the front door so I followed the circle, which looped to the left, and parked under the portico. Somehow, I was certain my seven-year-old Cherokee was the crummiest vehicle ever to have filled that space.

Marcie waited at the top step until I caught up with her, then she led me into the house. I wondered whether she remembered me from the day she’d come into our office in a tirade. I followed her through the two-story entry hall, a floor expanse covered in black and white marble tile with a round pedestal table in the center that held a bouquet of spring flowers to rival anything found at the White House.

A maid was dusting an elaborately carved console table near the curved staircase. I was trying not to look dazzled by the amount of gold rococo ornamentation and size of the crystal chandelier overhead as Marcie led the way into a sitting room. She strode to a pair of tall windows at the far side of the room, but I held my ground near a white sofa. If she thought her home—impressive to the point of gaudy—or the silent treatment would somehow influence my opinion … well, I couldn’t see the point.

“Ron says Bobby is doing all right,” I said. “If you were wondering.”

When she turned I saw her eyes were red-rimmed and her nose a brilliant pink.

“Oh, god, I can’t believe I did that.” She reached for a tissue box on a gold end table and lowered herself to the edge of a chair.

I followed and sat on the sofa. “What happened?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” She dabbed delicately under each eye, but the mascara damage was already done. Her hair most likely had been styled this morning but had gone over to the wild side now. She wore bright purple workout attire and matching Nikes.

“You have no memory of the events?”

“Well, not that. I remember. I got up early and did my workout in the gym on the third floor, then went to the kitchen to make a smoothie. Bobby was in there, staring into the fridge like he’ll do sometimes for, like, an hour. He said something, got that sweet tone in his voice and I almost hugged him. Then I realize he’s on his phone and he says, ‘I’ll see you soon, Darla.’ Darla’s my best friend!” Her voice broke and she trailed off into sobs.

Ouch.

“Yeah.” She sniffed. “I slammed the fridge door on his hand and asked how long he’d been fooling around with her. ‘Awhile,’ he says, and I just got so angry. They say sometimes you see red—well, I did. I grabbed the nearest thing, which was a cast-iron skillet our chef had left on the stovetop, and I swung. Oh, god, I really didn’t mean to hurt him.”

“Really? Because if that was my husband, I would have meant to kill him.”

She gave a little smile and a tiny hiccup escaped.

“Ron said the police came?”

“The maid came running in when Bobby fell, and there was blood and everything. She asked what should she do and I didn’t know, so I guess she called 911. An ambulance took him away. I mean, he was conscious, moaning and cussing and all, but he said he didn’t want to press charges so the police went away.”

I wondered if the football player would change his mind once he was thinking more clearly.

“I don’t know what’s gone so wrong with us, Charlie. Bobby and I used to be the best couple. We’ve known each other since college in Texas. He was so sweet to me. I mean, he was a football star there, too, and all the girls were interested in him. But he just let that roll off. We were an item and stayed together through graduation. He got drafted by his favorite team and we moved, and married life was wonderful. He started bringing in big money and I had so much fun setting up our first house.”

“That was in California?”

“Yeah. He was my first real boyfriend. I’d dated a little in high school but I saved my virginity for the right man. Bobby was the one. We moved a couple of times when he changed teams, then there was the injury and he decided to retire. Actually, we made the decision together and we picked Albuquerque because it’s a nice city and we could get out of the pro-ball limelight. It seemed like a good way for us to start over, live in the country, start a family …”

“But there’s still some bad stuff going on, obviously.”

Marcie nodded and sniffled again.

“His cheating is bad—I’m not minimizing that,” I said. “But why the retaliation? Why sell his prized rings?”

“We seem to be in a vicious circle, Bobby and me.” She slumped back into the chair and stared into the space between us. “He wasn’t the only one. We got into this social whirl. There were parties, lots of flirting, other guys made moves toward me and I dallied a couple times too. I guess they gave me the kind of flattery Bobby was dishing out to his other women. It didn’t seem so wrong. It was a tit-for-tat kind of thing.”

“If he was going to hurt you, you’d hurt him right back.”

“Yeah, I guess. It’s just the other women were strangers to me. It hurt, of course, but not like it did when I heard Darla’s name.”

“You hired our company to find out if he was cheating, but it sounds like you already knew he was.”

A long sigh. “I knew this time was different. He was happier than I’d seen him in a long time. I was worried he’d found someone he would leave me for.”

“You knew it was Darla, even before this morning, didn’t you?” I shifted on the sofa and faced her directly, forcing her to make eye contact. “Isn’t that why you sold his Super Bowl rings? Before—the other affairs—they were little hurts. But this was a big hurt and you wanted to hurt him back in a big way. Retaliation never works to make someone love you.”

She looked toward the fireplace and her eyes welled up. “I know.”

“So? Where will it go from here?”

She turned back toward me. “No, I meant I know who has the ring.”

A wave of frustration washed over me. Couldn’t she have said this from the start? I stood up, nearly upending another big flower arrangement, and paced to the fireplace. When I faced her, it was all I could do to put a gentle look on my face.

“Marcie, what do you want out of this whole deal—save your marriage, get out, stick with Bobby no matter what … move on? You’re sending such mixed signals here, I don’t know what you want from us.”

She slumped deeper into the chair, staring at the expensive carpet with a zombie-like fixation.

“Okay then,” I said, moving toward the door. “You figure it out and when you get your act together, I hope it all works out for you.”

Seeing that I was ready and willing to walk out brought her back to life. “Wait. Um, I’m not really sure how it’s all going to work out … but I need to find the ring for Bobby. It’s the right thing to do.”

Well, that was a refreshing attitude, anyway.

“You said you know who has it. Call him and say you need it back.”

“It’s not quite that simple.” She was twisting the gigantic diamond ring on her finger.

I walked back to the sofa where I’d been and sat down again. “Tell me all about it. And this time it had better be the whole truth.”