The Secret Lives of Doctors' Wives. Ann Major

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      “Since he’s dead, I think you’d better get your story straight before you say something really stupid to Nash. Make an appointment with Joe. Besides being my next-door neighbor, he’s an old, old friend of mine.”

       Translation: a favorite lover.

      “You remember, he came to the Christmas block party.”

       And got soused on the bourbon-laced eggnog and left a bruise the size of an apple on my left butt cheek when he pinched me.

      “Just don’t talk to the police without him being there. He knows his stuff.”

      “The police?” Rosie squeaked. “You really think they’ll…that Michael will think…that I…”

      “I think it’s wise to consider worst-case scenario.”

      Rosie swallowed. No sooner had Yolie said that than the image of her own slender neck on a chopping block sprang up in her mind.

      “A high-profile murder like this? The cops have got to pin this on somebody, sweetie-pie. Who better than the girl who tried to mow him down with her Beamer? Don’t you think it’s odd that he died on the night you say he wanted you back?”

      “Okay, he got me naked.” A shiver of remorse traced through Rose Marie. “I got cold feet, though. We had a fight. When I left, I…I couldn’t find my bra and panties.”

      “So, they’re at Pierce’s?”

      They stared at each other. Or the police have them was the thought that ran through their minds.

      Rosie lay back down on the chaise longue and stared up at bright spots of blue through the trees. “I never thought people we actually know—respectable people—got themselves murdered. Handsome, wealthy plastic surgeons, not even jerks like Pierce, don’t get hacked to death by some knife-wielding maniac.”

      “Too bad for Pierce the murderer didn’t read your little rule book.”

      “This whole thing is making me sick.” Rosie shivered. At the same time, the more stories she read about his glamorous ex-wives, including Yolie, the more she began to feel ignored, invisible. It was a feeling she’d experienced growing up poor in East Austin. She hated it.

      “I was his fiancée. But do I merit so much as a footnote?”

      “Be careful what you wish for, sweetie-pie.” Yolie flipped a newspaper page and then sighed in disgust. “Where do these yokels get their information? ‘Austin has lost a self-sacrificing missionary…’ Self-sacrificing, my ass. Those surgeries he did in Central America on all those kids with cleft palates were all about his precious image.”

      “You don’t know that for sure. I went with him on lots of those trips.”

      “And you never doubted his motives?”

      “He was a doctor with valuable skills. I just assumed—”

      “When are you ever going to wake up? Pierce was so aware of appearances,” Yolie continued. “When I started gaining the weight, he was on me all the time about it, taunting me about other women, wanting me to do liposuction. All he ever cared about was making money and getting his name on the front page while squiring some stick-thin stacked bimbo around.”

      Very conscious of her C-cup boobs that Pierce had enhanced, Rosie glared at her.

      “Sorry.”

      “He taunted me because of my low-class background,” Rosie said.

      “Looks like he finally played his little games on the wrong woman.”

      “So, who do you think killed him?” Rosie asked.

      “Lots of people probably weren’t exactly thrilled with him. But to kill a person with a knife, you’ve got to get up close…and get ugly.”

      “There was that guy who sued him because he wasn’t thrilled with his penile implant.”

      “Not to mention Pierce had four wives, and God knows how many other women. And that’s just his sex life, which wasn’t really all that hot, now was it? But who stabs a lousy lay? I mean, why bother?”

      Yolie’s analysis was making Rosie increasingly uncomfortable.

      “And then do you ever wonder why Pierce was so hard to get to know?” Yolie continued. “Remember how he used to have to control every damn conversation? When we went out to dinner, we always had to discuss some bullshit story he’d read in the New Yorker instead of real life. Intelligent conversation, he called it. Whatever it was, it was impersonal as hell, and he had to be in control. I was married to him for a lot of years, and I don’t think I ever really knew him. Do you ever wonder if there was anything there…beneath his external glamour? It was scary, in a way.”

      “What are you saying?”

      “You don’t just get murdered for no reason. What if there was some dark secret in his past? Or a secret vice or addiction? I mean, why was he always as closedup as a damn clam—if he wasn’t hiding something?”

      “That’s so melodramatic.”

      “Hey, getting your head nearly chopped off is pretty melodramatic.” Yolie stabbed a fingernail at a front-page article. “It says right here he grew up in Beaumont. He never said a damn thing about Beaumont to me. Did he ever talk about his childhood to you?”

      Rosie shook her head. But then, she’d never talked about her childhood, either.

      “So, he’s either a blank disc or there are plenty of secrets on the old hard drive,” Yolie said. “He had a quick temper and a sharp tongue and the endearing quality of abusing his women when he was in a certain mood…at least verbally. That we know. Then there’s the drinking. Not to mention his mysterious disappearances.”

      “Are you going to the memorial service?”

      “I’ve got a son by the arrogant bastard and no alibi. Of course I’m going! In situations such as these, appearances are everything.”

      “Alibi?” Rosie’s heart jumped to her throat and began to thump.

      “The cops are going to want to know where everybody was if his killer doesn’t walk into the police station and hand them the bloody knife. Except for talking to you on my mobile, you and I’ve got zip for an alibi.”

      Rosie shivered so hard her teeth chattered. “At least you weren’t actually there! You’ve been happily divorced from him for years. That’s hardly a motive.”

      “I hated the son of a bitch. Does that count?”

      “I, on the other hand, ran out of his brilliantly lit mansion braless and pantyless on the night he died. Anyone, a neighbor, a jogger, might have seen me. What if he or she misinterpreted what he saw? What if the cops find my bra and panties?”

      “Then your underwear is hanging out in plastic Baggies. Call Joe. First thing Monday.”

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