items would he have found there, with my name buried somewhere in the fine print? Everyone in Woodhaven knew, though they neversaid anything. It was considered such a scandal. Such a shame. But there was something about the casual—almost cavalier—way Mackenzie brought it up that I found oddly comforting. It occurred to me that he operated in the cutthroat, mega-business world where the kind of crime Richard had committed was, if not commonplace, at least not all that unusual.
Not something that would rip a marriage right off its foundations and sweep a lifetime of dreams into oblivion.
6
R ichard and I always agreed that you could never really know the truth about anyone else’s marriage. The newlyweds next door, for instance, who seemed so in love—
look, they’re still holding hands!—
but who ended up filing for divorce within the year. Or the elderly aunt who spent a lifetime grousing about her husband and then died of a broken heart a month after his final stroke. But we knew the truth about our own marriage. After being together for nearly two decades, we were still passionate lovers and best friends.
“I hope everyone has as much fun as we do,” he used to say to me as we lay together, happily spent after making love. And that’s what it always felt like to us—an act of love rather than one of mere sex. Something that only got better with time and experience. Along with this—or maybe because of it—we were blessed with two pretty, kind, and intelligent daughters. And Richard’s fortunes were rising at a company he loved: Lerner, Reese, and Hamilton, one of the world’s leading international accounting firms. He had made senior vice president of LRH’s Assurance Services Group bythe time he was forty-three, specializing in something called business risk assessment, with the possibility of even greater glory to come.
“They’re sending me to Hong Kong for the global conference in two weeks,” he told me about a month before our twentieth wedding anniversary. “John says he wants to introduce me personally to the managing partners. I think you should come with me, Alice. We’ll stop off in Paris on our way home and really celebrate.”
But my daughters needed me just then. Olivia, a freshman at the University of Virginia, was in the throes of her first serious breakup, and I’d planned a tour of colleges with Franny. So we decided he should go alone, concentrate on networking and making the best possible impression, and we’d do something wonderful together when he got back. Of course, I’ve wondered almost every day since what would have happened if I’d thrown my parental responsibilities to the wind and gone with him. Or was his invitation some kind of ruse, along with everything else? Surely it was already too late by then? The kind of complicated financial shenanigans he was up to would have taken months, maybe even years, to organize and implement. That’s certainly what the investigators thought when they questioned me—over and over again—about the days leading up to Richard’s disappearance.
“How many suitcases did he leave with? What did he pack? Did he have any cash lying around the house that he might have taken with him?”
I really didn’t know. I honestly couldn’t say. Though I’d spent each waking hour—and so many sleepless ones—raking over every last ember of memory. But all I could come up with was that he seemed mildly upset that I’d forgotten to pick up his dark blue suit from the cleaners the day before he left.
“Why do you think that was?” the investigator from the DA’s office asked me, leaning forward with his mini-recorder.
“Because it was his favorite?” I replied.
“This isn’t anything to joke about, Mrs. Hyatt,” the FBI agent told me. “This is an extremely serious act of criminal fraud that took a hell of a lot of thought and planning. We have good reason to believe he had help. And we are looking into every aspect of your
Not something that would rip a marriage right off its foundations and sweep a lifetime of dreams into oblivion.
6
R ichard and I always agreed that you could never really know the truth about anyone else’s marriage. The newlyweds next door, for instance, who seemed so in love—
look, they’re still holding hands!—
but who ended up filing for divorce within the year. Or the elderly aunt who spent a lifetime grousing about her husband and then died of a broken heart a month after his final stroke. But we knew the truth about our own marriage. After being together for nearly two decades, we were still passionate lovers and best friends.
“I hope everyone has as much fun as we do,” he used to say to me as we lay together, happily spent after making love. And that’s what it always felt like to us—an act of love rather than one of mere sex. Something that only got better with time and experience. Along with this—or maybe because of it—we were blessed with two pretty, kind, and intelligent daughters. And Richard’s fortunes were rising at a company he loved: Lerner, Reese, and Hamilton, one of the world’s leading international accounting firms. He had made senior vice president of LRH’s Assurance Services Group bythe time he was forty-three, specializing in something called business risk assessment, with the possibility of even greater glory to come.
“They’re sending me to Hong Kong for the global conference in two weeks,” he told me about a month before our twentieth wedding anniversary. “John says he wants to introduce me personally to the managing partners. I think you should come with me, Alice. We’ll stop off in Paris on our way home and really celebrate.”
But my daughters needed me just then. Olivia, a freshman at the University of Virginia, was in the throes of her first serious breakup, and I’d planned a tour of colleges with Franny. So we decided he should go alone, concentrate on networking and making the best possible impression, and we’d do something wonderful together when he got back. Of course, I’ve wondered almost every day since what would have happened if I’d thrown my parental responsibilities to the wind and gone with him. Or was his invitation some kind of ruse, along with everything else? Surely it was already too late by then? The kind of complicated financial shenanigans he was up to would have taken months, maybe even years, to organize and implement. That’s certainly what the investigators thought when they questioned me—over and over again—about the days leading up to Richard’s disappearance.
“How many suitcases did he leave with? What did he pack? Did he have any cash lying around the house that he might have taken with him?”
I really didn’t know. I honestly couldn’t say. Though I’d spent each waking hour—and so many sleepless ones—raking over every last ember of memory. But all I could come up with was that he seemed mildly upset that I’d forgotten to pick up his dark blue suit from the cleaners the day before he left.
“Why do you think that was?” the investigator from the DA’s office asked me, leaning forward with his mini-recorder.
“Because it was his favorite?” I replied.
“This isn’t anything to joke about, Mrs. Hyatt,” the FBI agent told me. “This is an extremely serious act of criminal fraud that took a hell of a lot of thought and planning. We have good reason to believe he had help. And we are looking into every aspect of your
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