Chapter Four

"And why do you think that it ain’t the real story?” Griff asked. This was the question that he’d been puzzling over ever since he’d started reading the file, and it was a big one. Whatever the answer, it was enough for this woman to be here in this office, ready to drain her bank account in order to finally make it happen. This answer was everything to her and Griff was damn well going to hear it here and now. “Why don’t you believe that they’re really divorced and totally out of each other’s lives? Why do you think it’s all a sham? Why do you think that she’s got full access to the money they stole, or to at least part of it?”

“Because, like I said before,” Leeza said evenly, the anger back in her voice now. “She was happy.”

Griff cocked his blond head at her. “Still not following you.”

“I am,” Dallas said quietly. “I totally am.”

“Alright,” Griff said, all amiable charm. “So maybe break it down for the slow guy in the room?”

Leeza managed a tiny smile at that, and Griff grinned back.

“C’mon, seriously,” he said. “Explain it to me and use small words, OK?”

She huffed a small laugh. “OK, Griff. Two syllables max… that good?”

“Perfect.” He drank a bit of his beloved instant coffee, leaned his bulk back in the chair. “Hit me with it, Leeza. I really do want to understand this. I know it’s important to you and that makes it crucial to me.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I know.” She was silent, then sighed. “Well… put yourself in her place for a minute. You’re married to one of the richest men in the country, a man whose face is plastered across the covers of Forbes, Money, The Economist and Barron’s, and they all write these breathless, fawning articles about the man’s God-like money smarts. Every single picture of you together has you staring at him with pure adoration.”

Leeza paused, took a breath, dove back in.

“As a result of your wonderful hubby’s insane investment successes, you have this amazing, perfect life of luxury. You don’t work, you have very little education and no aspirations that way, you have no kids. You have nothing to do except play hostess at some cushy charity lunches, and attend hot yoga classes, and spend your husband’s money on clothes and shoes.”

“OK,” Griff said, thinking that this was a pretty accurate summary of Claire Worthington’s life as he’d imagined it, though he’d have added ‘take trips to the beauty salon’ to Leeza’s list of Claire’s daily activities. “With you so far.”

“Then one day, it all comes crashing down around your perfectly-coiffed blonde head,” Leeza continued. “An SEC investigation that’s been secretly in the works for three years. Criminal, federal charges laid against your husband for an elaborate Ponzi scheme. All the bank accounts frozen, all the assets seized, all five of your houses gone. Every lady-who-lunches that you’ve ever air-kissed is running for the hills, and their husbands are backing away just as fast. You’re a social pariah and you’re on your own and penniless, since your perfect hubby’s been deemed a flight risk and is languishing in some minimum-security country club masquerading as a jail. Right?”

“Right.”

“So what does Claire Worthington do? Quick as a flash – and with very little resistance from her husband, for reasons that I can’t quite figure out – she divorces Wilbur and disappears from the New York scene a year ago, seemingly without a single dollar in settlement. I mean, on the one hand, good for her, because fifty percent of nothing is nothing, and she’s nothing if not a piece of gold-digging arm-candy. Of course she dumped him in record time, and at first, I assumed that she just took off in search of greener pastures.”

“Uh-huh.” Griff nodded. “I figure that’s what she did, too. Went looking for meal ticket number two.”

“In which case, she’d be a wreck here in Denver. Right? Like… just what the actual hell does a woman like that know about making it on her own without a man to pay the bills? About finding and holding down a job? About living the kind of life that 99.9% of people in this city lead, and doing it all for a whole year while looking over her shoulder, terrified of being found out? Nothing, that’s what.”

“No argument from me,” Griff said.