Linwood Barclay - Far From True

I smiled. “Someone broke into your ex-husband’s home. After it became known that he’d been killed in the accident.”

Her eyes widened. “What kind of sick bastard does that? I’ve heard about something like that. Creeps who break into people’s houses when they’re at funerals. They know they won’t be home. People get home, all broken up over the death of a loved one, and their flat-screen TV and jewelry’s gone.”

“It wasn’t quite like that. This thief was looking for something very specific, in a very specific place.”

Felicia Chalmers blinked.

“Oh,” she said.

“I think whoever came into the house had a key, and knew how to deactivate the security system. Someone Adam or Miriam, or both, trusted.”

Felicia nodded slowly. “I see. And you’re wondering if I’m that person?”

“I’m wondering if you have any idea who it could be.”

“Well, it’s not me. I can tell you that much. Adam would surely have changed the locks after our divorce. I mean, probably. Although I don’t think he ever distrusted me. But once he married Miriam, I’ll bet she’d have wanted to be sure I could never get into that house.”

“You never tried?”

“Of course not. I had no reason. I probably still do have a key somewhere, but I can’t say whether it would work or not.”

“Could you find it?”

“Now?”

I nodded.

A sigh. She got off the couch and went into the kitchen. I could hear her rummaging around in a drawer. “Maybe I got rid of it,” she said, loud enough for me to hear. “Oh, wait. I think this is it. Oh, looks like I’ve actually still got two of them.”

She returned to the living room with a key held between thumb and forefinger.

“May I have that?” I asked. “I’d like to see if it actually works.”

Felicia hesitated.

“If you’d like to call his daughter, Lucy Brighton, to confirm I’m legit, that’s fine with me,” I said.

She hesitated another second, then decided it was less trouble to trust me than to take the time to learn the truth from Lucy. “Here, take this one. I don’t need it.”

I did. I slipped it into the pocket of my sport jacket.

“Let me try asking again. Why did you and Adam get a divorce?”

She studied me for a few seconds, then gave a what-the-hell shrug. “I couldn’t take it anymore. I just couldn’t.”

“Couldn’t take what?”

“The lifestyle.”

“I’m sorry. What lifestyle?”

“ The lifestyle,” she said.

Now I was the one shaking my head. “I don’t understand. Are you saying Adam Chalmers was gay?”

“No, no, no. Although I suppose he was bisexual to some point. I mean, you’d kind of have to be.”

“Wait, are you talking about wife-swapping?”

She frowned. “That’s what they used to call it in the dark ages. But that’s not a very politically correct term anymore. Made women sound like baseball cards. It’s not wife-swapping, but spouse-sharing.”

“Like group sex?”

Felicia looked at me like I was five. “Where are you from? Mayberry?”

“Enlighten me.”

“The lifestyle is when one couple meets up with another couple for sex. Okay, it could be three couples. Anything more than that and I guess it would be an orgy. Adam always liked to keep it to two other couples. You have six people, and there are quite a number of permutations, even more if the men are into men and the women are into women. Or at least give it a try. Everything consensual, more or less — at least that’s what they pretend. Everyone fooling around with each other, right in the open, no one going behind anyone’s back to have an affair. Supposedly. The openness, the freedom, actually makes relationships stronger. Gets the urge to stray out of your system. You indulge your fantasies with your partner’s blessing.”

“Supposedly.”

“Some spouses go along because it’s what their partner wants. They tell themselves they’re into it, too. But... not so much.”

“Like you.”

Felicia shrugged, knocked back some more wine. “You think it’s all out in the open, that that would eliminate the need for an actual affair. Why sneak around behind your spouse’s back when you can fuck someone else right in front of her? But with Adam, it was the secrecy he liked. That was the thrill. So even if he was banging his best friend’s wife right in front of him, the real thrill was to do it someplace else when he wasn’t there.”

“Is that what Adam did?”

She smiled sadly. “Oh, yeah. He had to see women outside the playroom. When I learned he was doing that, I’d had enough. I wanted out.”

“The playroom,” I said.

Felicia took a moment to size me up, wondering how much I knew. “You found it,” she said.

“Yes.”

She closed her eyes, as though trying to picture it. “It all seems so silly, when you think about it. And a little bit tacky, I guess. But Adam felt those activities deserved to be relegated to a special room. Like it shouldn’t taint the rest of the house. But it had to be hidden. He didn’t want anyone wandering in there by mistake.”

“I saw the DVD player. And the camera equipment under the bed.”

“Adam liked to record sessions,” she said, opening her eyes. “We’d play them back sometimes, with guests. Kind of like reviewing a football game play by play.”

“So everyone knew they were being videoed. The camera wasn’t hidden.”

Felicia shook her head.

“The DVDs are gone,” I said.

Her eyes widened. “What?”

“I think that’s what someone was after. Those DVDs.”

“Christ on a taco,” she said.

“That worries you?”

“Not me. Not personally. When we split up, Adam gave me any video he had of me, of us, either alone or with others.”

“How do you know he didn’t hold something back? Didn’t make copies?”

“Because I just know. Adam, for all his faults, was a more or less honest guy. At least with me. If he said he gave me everything, he did. And he never put anything online, never did computer files. He knew that kind of stuff always got hacked or sent by mistake. He liked hard copies, no pun intended.”

“And you destroyed them? The discs he gave you?”

“I did.”

“You’re sure?”

She scowled. “I told you.”

“Because I’m trying to recover those DVDs, or be assured that they’re no longer in existence.”

“Who for? No, wait, you already mentioned Lucy.”

I nodded.

“ She wants them?”

“She’d be happy knowing that they’ve been destroyed. She doesn’t have to get them back. But we need to know who took them to get that kind of assurance.”

Felicia softened. “Sure. Look, I’m telling you the truth. Adam gave me any discs from our time together and I smashed them into a million pieces. They went out in the trash years ago.”

“Who else was on them?”

I was thinking that if the couples participating in the lifestyle with Adam and Felicia were still taking part with Adam and Miriam, I’d have some likely suspects where the missing DVDs were concerned.

Felicia shook her head. “I know what you must be thinking, and I don’t think it’s going to help. There were two other couples we saw back then. One moved to Paris around that time — she got transferred — and I don’t think they ever came back. And the other couple, there was kind of a big falling-out because she was the one Adam saw on the side.”

“On the side.”

“Yeah. Any discs from back then that featured those people also featured me, so they’d have been the ones Adam gave me.”

“When you were married to Adam, did he ever trust another couple enough that he’d give them a key to the house?”