Over His Dead Body

CHAPTER 12

BEFORE CASSIE WENT INTO HER HUSBAND'S OFFICE for the first time, she called the hospital to see if there had been any change in his condition. It was half past ten on Sunday night, and she wanted to give him one more chance at returning to his life before she entered his world and took command of it. She was frightened by the responsibility of having to do it, terrified of what she might find. Money had never been her thing. She didn't know what to do about it, how to handle it. She'd never had any of her own. She'd been told to trust, and so she'd trusted.

Her stomach felt like a volcano, erupting intermittently in hot, dizzying waves of anxiety. It bubbled up again after the kids left. Her life had become a mystery she had to crack. How could she have let the big questions slide? She and Mitch used to be happy. They used to have fun. Why hadn't she confronted him more directly when the fun stopped? Even now she still couldn't help feeling that it wasn't right for her to search for the health insurance, the will, the simplest things about their lives with which she should already be thoroughly familiar.

On the phone, the night nurse told her Mitch was still holding his own. Those words pretty much summed up their marriage. After Cassie hung up, she put Mark's special cream on her stitches, wound sterile gauze around her glasses, and carefully eased them on. Then she went into Mitch's office and opened his file drawers one by one.

What she found in them hit her like an atom bomb. First thing: Mitch had a bank account at the Bank of the Cayman Islands with a May balance that topped a million and a half dollars. The statement reassured her that he'd told her the truth when he'd said she never had to worry about money. On the other hand, there was a balance of less than two thousand in their joint Chase bank account. She didn't know what day he deposited money for household expenses, or how much it was, but she didn't worry about it. She could get money easily; he owned the company.

He had a balance of $523,000 in his pension fund. It didn't seem like much after a quarter century of harping on her to save for it. A little note of alarm buzzed in the back of her head about the money he'd stashed outside the country. What was that about? On the other hand, the life insurance policy she found seemed adequate. The various pieces of it added up to a cool $3 million. If he died, she'd be a wealthy woman, better off than she was now. However, the date on the policy was old and the premium bills were not in the house, which led her to believe he might have a newer and bigger one whose premiums he paid from the office. At the moment everything they had was in his name, and she couldn't put her hands on a nickel. Their affairs were as clear as mud. She was sure somewhere there was more than this.

She opened the filing cabinet and plunged into the accounts in Mitch's name for which she had her own card. There was nothing surprising there. The picture of their joint life jibed pretty well with her knowledge of it. She herself used the family resources sparingly, almost ascetically, always mindful of Mitch's constant admonitions about sensible spending. And Mitch in turn faithfully, and fully, paid off all the expenses of the house and all the bills that she incurred every month. Virtually none of his personal expenses appeared on these charges. The house had a small mortgage, but their life, considering Mitch's income, was modest indeed.

The first discrepancy came out with the spending habits of the fictitious Cassandra Sales. Cassie discovered that her fictitious self had two of her own American Express cards, as well as accounts at Tiffany's, ABC Carpet and Home, Bergdorf Goodman, Saks Fifth Avenue, Bloomingdale's, Neiman Marcus, Fancy Cleaners, a Chase Platinum MasterCard, several gold airline MasterCards, and two Visa Platinum Card accounts. Mitch kept a separate file for each one right here under her very nose. This was both gross stupidity and colossal nerve on his part. Clearly he'd understood her character well, and she'd had not the slightest inkling of his.

A whole life was documented in the receipts: Prada dress, aubergine, $1,500. Armani suit, gray, $3,400. Lavender silk tank, $850. Armani dress and coat, mauve wool, $4,500. Chanel silk scarf, $350. Bergdorf Shoe Department: mauve suede sling backs, gray leather pumps, $575; black crocodile loafers, $1,250. Escada red leather coat, $3,900. Escada red leather bag, $850. Escada red leather shoes, $495. Bliss Spa: La Mer face products, $890. Microbrasion treatments, $150 times ten. Salon de Daniel: peach satin robe and gown, $1,200. La Perla uplift bra, $125. Matching panties, $65. Hermès handbag, $8,600. Louis Vuitton luggage, $10,000. It went on and on.

Cassie was stunned, could hardly absorb what it all meant. It took her until past oneA.M. to look through the purchases of just the first five months of this year. She couldn't believe it. Couldn't believe it! Eighteen thousand dollars for a string of pearls at Cellini. Where was that? Boiling lava filled her stomach and throat, and still she could not process this appalling picture of a life in her name that she didn't have. It was beyond her powers of imagination. It was like a horror story, a made-up nightmare for shock TV. Not only that someone else had been enjoying the fruits of her husband's labors, but worse than that the woman had taken Cassie's very own identity, the financial credit she was due. And the woman had used it with absolutely no restraint. Cassie didn't know that people like this existed.

The real Cassie was frugal. She did not buy ten thousand dollars' worth of clothes every month at Escada and Prada and Armani. She did not get her nails and hair done every three days at Fred's on the Miracle Mile, did not buy expensive lingerie at Danielle in the chic and costly Americana Mall in Manhasset, so close to home. She did not have her clothes cleaned at Fancy in Locust Valley. She did not use the expensive Martin Viette Nurseries in Old Brookville for her plants. The real Cassie had not bought new carpets or furniture for their house in twenty years, much less in the last few months at ABC Carpet and Home. She had not bought silver or dishes at Tiffany's, nor would she even dream of spending three thousand dollars at Williams-Sonoma for nothing, nothing at all. The extent of the spending of the fictitious, but nonetheless very real, Cassandra Sales exposed the habits of a pathological shopper, a thief with staggering ambition. Moreover, her debts were steadily building up, for Mitch had paid nothing beyond the interest on all those charge accounts. That interest had to be very considerable. And to this already stupefying debt only a few weeks ago, Mitch had added even more when he used the Cassandra Sales MasterCard to pay the Sales family tax bill.

In all the years of her marriage Cassie never considered that her husband might be unfaithful to her. Why not, she didn't know. After seeing the fake Cassandra Sales bills, Cassie checked Mitch's American Express business file. Here, she found that he was in the habit of spending from twenty-five to fifty thousand dollars a month on hotels and luxury items in places where she hadn't known he'd gone. Even about this he'd lied. In January he'd been in the Caribbean; in February he'd been in Australia, Hong Kong, and Thailand; in March at Grand Cayman Island (probably depositing more money), and all this time she'd been a jerk, alone at home.

This new knowledge about her husband triggered a long-forgotten memory. After a few years of marriage, Mitch's lovemaking dramatically improved after a business trip to Paris. Overnight he'd acquired a sudden interest in things he'd never done with Cassie before. She was thrilled and wanted more. She'd teased him in what she'd thought was a friendly kind of way that he must have been inspired by another woman. She was interested, intrigued, fantasized competition, and was excited by the possibility. Mitch's response, however, had been denial all the way. He had been so vehement that he could never even look at another woman that Cassie had been lulled into letting the intriguing suspicion drop out of her mind.

Mitch had piled on the scam of their marriage so heavily that he'd destroyed her ability to see. He'd been a fog machine. He'd lied to her about everything, every single thing. He'd never given her an opportunity to compete for him, to share any of the fun. Instead of just divorcing her-letting her be jilted and go on with her life-he and his girlfriend had made her an object of contempt. They'd stolen her. It was a stunning feat. No wonder Marsha had looked at her that way. No wonder Mark looked at her that way. They all knew. Everybody in the world knew.

For hours, Cassie ransacked her husband's files and still couldn't find anything like a will, or a living will. Maybe there was no will. Maybe it was in Parker Higgins's office. When Cassie could no longer see straight, she sat at Mitch's desk with her heart pounding out a new fear. What else could the fake Cassandra Sales steal?

It was two in the morning when it occurred to her to start calling to cancel the cards. It was then that the nightmare started to spiral. Not one of them would allow her to cancel her own cards. They were in her name, but she was not the cardholder. Mitch was the cardholder. Only he could cancel the cards. And he was in a coma. She went to bed and tossed around all night, wondering what to do. At around four, she closed her eyes and began to dream.