The Stranger
Page 40

“Is that how you found out about the fake pregnancy?” Suzanne Hope asked. “Did that guy visit you too?”
He sat there, still feeling that chill. Suzanne Hope had her hair piled high in what might have started as a bun. A tortoiseshell hair clip kept what was left in place. A ton of bracelets adorned her right wrist, gypsy style, and whenever she moved, they jingled. Her eyes were big and wide and blinked a lot, the kind of eyes that had probably made her appear eager and animated in her youth, though now they looked as though she were awaiting a blow.
Adam leaned forward. “You said you didn’t pay the money.”
“That’s right.”
“Tell me what happened.”
Suzanne Hope stood. “Would you like some wine?”
“No.”
“I probably shouldn’t have any either.”
“What happened, Suzanne?”
She looked longingly toward the kitchen. Adam remembered another rule of interrogation, if not life: Alcohol lowers inhibitions. It makes people talk, and while scientists debate this, Adam was convinced that it was also a truth serum. Either way, if he accepted her hospitality, she would probably be more apt to talk.
“Maybe a small glass,” he said.
“White or red?”
“Either.”
She headed toward the kitchen with a bounce in her step that felt out of place in this depressing apartment. As she reached into the refrigerator, Suzanne said, “I work part-time as a cashier at Kohl’s. I like it. I get an employee discount, and the people there are nice.”
She took out two glasses and started to pour.
“So one day I go outside for my lunch break. They have these picnic tables in the back. I go out there and this guy in a baseball cap is waiting for me.”
Baseball cap. He swallowed. “What did he look like?”
“Young, white, skinny. Kind of a geek. I know this sounds odd, especially with what happened next, but he had a nice way about him. Like he was my friend. He had this smile that made me relax a little.”
She poured the wine.
“So what happened?” Adam asked.
“Out of nowhere he just says, does your husband know? I stop and say, excuse me, something like that. And he says, does your husband know you faked your pregnancy?”
Suzanne picked up one of the glasses and took a deep sip. Adam stood and walked toward her. She handed him the glass and then made a motion to clink glasses. He did so.
“Go on,” Adam said.
“He asked me if my husband knew about my lie. I asked him who he was. He didn’t say. He just said something about the stranger who reveals truth, something like that. He says he has proof I’ve been lying about being pregnant. At first I figured that he had seen me at Bookends or Starbucks, you know, like Corinne. But I hadn’t seen him before and something in the way he spoke . . . it just didn’t add up to that.”
Suzanne Hope took another sip. He took one too. The wine tasted like fish ass.
“So the guy says that he wants five thousand dollars. He says if I pay it, he’ll go away and I’ll never see him again, though—and this was really odd—he said that I couldn’t lie again.”
“What did he mean?”
“That’s what he said. He said, here’s the deal. You pay me five thousand dollars and stop faking the pregnancy, and I’ll go away for good. But if I kept up the deception—that was the word he used, deception—he would tell my husband the truth. He also promised it was a one-time payment.”
“What did you say?”
“First, I asked him how I knew I could trust him. If I gave him the money, how did I know he wouldn’t ask for more?”
“How did he respond to that?”
“He gave me that smile again and said that’s not what we do, that’s not how we operate. And you know, this is weird, I believed him. Maybe it was the smile, maybe not, I don’t know. But I think he was being straight with me.”
“But you didn’t pay, did you?”
“How did you know? Oh, wait, I already told you. Funny. At first, I started thinking, how am I going to get that kind of money? And then, when I stopped and thought about it, I thought, wait, what did I do wrong here? I lied to a bunch of strangers. It’s not like I lied to Harold, right?”
Adam took another sip, taste be damned. “Right.”
“Maybe, I don’t know, maybe I was calling the guy’s bluff. Maybe I didn’t care. Or heck, maybe I wanted him to tell Harold. The truth will set you free, right? Maybe that’s what I wanted in the end. Harold would see this as a cry for help. He’d show me more attention.”
“But that wasn’t what happened,” Adam said.
“Not even close,” she said. “I don’t know when or how the guy told Harold. But he did. He gave Harold some web link so he could see all the stuff I ordered from that pregnancy-faking website. Harold went ballistic. I thought it would open his eyes to my pain, but really, it did the opposite. It played into all his insecurities. All that stuff about not being a real man—it all came roaring to a head. It’s complicated, you know. A man is supposed to spread his seed and if the seed isn’t any good, well, it goes right to his core. Stupid.”
She took another sip and looked him straight in the eye.
“I’m surprised,” Suzanne said.
“Surprised about what?”
“That Corinne made the same choice. I would have figured that she’d pay the money.”
“What makes you say that?”
Suzanne shrugged. “Because she loved you. Because she had so much to lose.”
Chapter 25
Could it be that simple?
Could it all be a blackmail scam that went south? The stranger had gone to Suzanne Hope and asked for money in exchange for silence. She refused to pay. The stranger then told her husband about her faking the pregnancy.
Was that what happened with Corinne and Adam?
On the one hand, it made perfect sense. The Hopes had been blackmailed. Why couldn’t it have happened to Corinne and him? You ask for money, you don’t get it, you tell. That’s how blackmail works. But as Adam started on his way back home, as he let the reality of what he just heard roll around in his head, something about it all didn’t feel right. He couldn’t put his finger on it. For some reason, something about the obvious blackmail theory didn’t quite pass the smell test.
Corinne was driven and smart. She was a worrier and a planner. If the stranger had threatened her with blackmail and if she had made the decision not to pay up, Corinne, ever the perfect student, would have been prepared. Yet when Adam confronted her after the stranger’s visit, Corinne had been at a loss. She had no ready answer. She weakly tried to stall. There was no doubt in his mind that Corinne had been surprised.