Good Little Wives

by Drake, Abby

• ISBN13: 9780061232213
• ISBN10: 0061232211
• Format: Paperback
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publications

Summary

While their husbands are out making money, making deals, and making . . . whatever, the trophy wives of New Falls are slipping not so quietly into middle age. Lauren, Bridget, Dana, and Caroline pretend to each other that their only problems are parties, plastic surgery, and which Mikimotos to buy. But behind the closed doors of their gracious homes there are broken hearts and broken promises . . . the stuff that gossip is made of. And the newest dish du jour is a whopper! The husband of one of their oldest friends, who dumped his wife for a newer model-a sexier, flashier, sleeker hairdresser-is found dead, his ex-wife, Kitty, standing over him . . . holding the smoking gun. Kitty claims she's innocent, and there are plenty of women around town who might want the rat dead. Now it's up to the women to discover where in their high-priced suburb a killer is hiding, and which good little wife has done something very, very wicked.

Excerpts

Good Little Wives

Chapter One

It started because of a facelift. A second face-lift, actually. Caroline Meacham, after all, was now fifty-two, and her first cosmetic surgery had been twelve years ago, a fortieth birthday present from her husband, Jack. Or for him, Dana's husband had chuckled back then at the thought that one of the trophy wives was beginning to tarnish in visible places.

Dana gripped the stem of the champagne flute. She stood with several ladies, semicircle, arced around Caroline, extolling the delicate work of Dr. Gregg (his first name, not his last, for none of the wives called him Dr. Rathberger).

"A teeny tuck here . . . another one here . . . ," Caroline explained to the women she'd invited for cracked crab and conversation at Caroline and Jack's palatial home in New Falls, New York. She'd dubbed the meeting her rite-of-spring luncheon for her fifty closest friends, though there was no doubt the real reason they'd gathered was to view the new lift.

"And my lips," Caroline continued. "Remember how thin they'd become?" The women—Dana, Bridget, Lauren, and three others Dana knew Caroline deemed unimportant—nodded as if they truly remembered Caroline's pencil mouth. "Well, Dr. Gregg—the man is sheer genius—took a touch of fatty tissue from the cheek of my butt, and see how he plumped up my lips?" She outlined the edge of her upper lip with the tip of a lightly frosted, manicured fingernail. She smiled.

"Amazing," Lauren said, her Mikimoto triple strand of pearls clasped tightly to her neck, masking a hint of early wattle that Dr. Gregg surely would excavate as soon as Lauren got up the nerve.

"Magnifique," Bridget added. They counted on Bridget to toss around French words and bring a flair of the EU to any party she attended. Despite that she'd been in America more than two decades, it was something her husband encouraged.

Dana would have liked to ask how much the surgery cost, but in New Falls, no one discussed money. She tuned out the chatter, looked around at the tall crystal vases of artfully drooping yellow tulips, at the Matisse by the long window and the Renoir over the mantel, at the cluster of petite-ribboned hostess gifts that spilled from the Louis XV table that had cabriole legs avec pied de sabots ("with hoof foots"—a favorite style of Bridget's). The gifts careened from the foyer into the music room where the ladies now stood, bundled in small groups of tennis partners, country club foursomes, and spa buddies.

There was Rhonda, who seemed over the top today, but apparently her doctor had just changed her meds.

There was Georgette, who'd recently learned that, for twenty-five years, her husband had been an undercover informant for the IRS, when all along she thought he merely had a mistress.

There was Chloe, Caroline's clonelike daughter, whose engagement ring was the size of Japan.

And there was Yolanda, who once had been their hairstylist, but now was one of them, sporting pink diamonds, a gift from her new husband, Vincent DeLano, who'd been married to Kitty—whatever happened to her, anyway?

There were pastel cashmere twin sets and massive solitaire diamonds (more carats than at Whole Foods) and peachy complexions and white, orthodontically correct smiles.

Dana sipped from her glass and wondered how soon they could leave. It wasn't the first time in recent weeks that she was simply bored.

As if reading her mind, Lauren spoke. "I hate to break up the party, but Bob's coming home on the early train and he's bringing Mr. Chang."

Yi Chang was the new head of Xiamen Electronics (ticker symbol, XmnE), which most of the women there understood, because they were wed to the men who ran Wall Street or at least perceived that they did.

"Well," Dana said, "the three of us rode over together, so I guess we're off." They kiss-kissed Caroline, waved to the others, and escaped without incident onto the front walk. They hiked around a string of European cars, clipped past a row of arborvitae and a lily-padded water garden, and climbed into Lauren's big Mercedes before Dana dared to say, "It has occurred to me that we just kissed Caroline's ass."

They drove off in silence until they reached the main road, at which time Bridget said, "Mon dieu, what have we become?"

Three streets from Caroline and Jack Meacham's, Kitty DeLano stood in the hollow living room of the ten-thousand-square-foot mausoleum that once had been hers, or rather, had been theirs, before Vincent had decided he liked a hairdresser better than he liked her.

She chewed the tip of a fingernail she could no longer afford to have manicured, realizing there really was a fine line between love and hate, sanity and insanity; a flimsy curtain that hung between man and wife like the veil of a bride, which, once lifted, revealed irreversible truth.

Vincent, of course, had given her everything, according to him: the boy and the girl from her womb, the furs and the jewels, the villa in Naples (Italy, not Florida), the too-large house in New Falls that was now empty of furnishings.

Most of all, he had given her status.

And while Kitty could do well enough without all the stuff (except for her kids, who had sided with him, because though they were grown up and successful, Daddy still subsidized their Manhattan apartments, their BMWs, their Visa cards), it was the status that could not be replaced.

She was no longer Mrs. Vincent DeLano.

She was no longer welcome in New Falls, not at the deli, not at the dry cleaner, not at Caroline Meacham's rite-of-spring luncheon.

And now Vincent lay at her feet, dead on the floor, a trickle of blood oozing from his left ear, a gun slack, still smoking, in Kitty's right hand.

Good Little Wives. Copyright © by Abby Drake. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

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Excerpted from Good Little Wives by Abby Drake
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