“I’ve grown to like her,” the stranger said.
“Me too.” Ingrid pulled her blond hair back with both hands, forming an imaginary ponytail and then letting it free. She did that a lot. She had the kind of long, too-straight hair that constantly fell in front of her face. “There’s a certain zest for life there, you know?”
He knew exactly what Ingrid meant.
“In the end,” Ingrid said, “we are doing her a favor.”
That was the justification. The stranger agreed with it. If the foundation is rotten, you need to demolish the entire house. You can’t just fix it with a coat of paint or a few planks of wood. He knew that. He understood it. He lived it.
He believed it.
But that didn’t mean that he relished being the one to work the explosives. That was also how he looked at it. He was the one who blew up the house with the rotting foundation—but he never stuck around to see how or if it was rebuilt.
He didn’t even stick around to make sure that no one had been left inside the house when it went up.
The waitress came over and gave the ladies the check. Everyone dug into their purses with care and produced cash. The woman who had the linguini did the math, dividing the bill up with precision. The two Crabfest eaters pulled out bills one at a time. Then they each opened their change purse as though it were a rusted chastity belt.
Heidi just threw in some twenties.
Something about the way she did it—with care and ease—touched him. He guessed that the Danns were okay with money, but who knew in today’s world? Heidi and her husband, Marty, had been married twenty years. They had three kids. Their oldest daughter, Kimberly, was a freshman at NYU in Manhattan. The two boys, Charlie and John, were still in high school. Heidi worked various makeup counters at the Macy’s in University Heights. Marty Dann was a vice president in sales and marketing for TTI Floor Care in Glenwillow. TTI was all about vacuum cleaners. They owned Hoover, Oreck, Royal, and the division where Marty had worked for the past eleven years, Dirt Devil. He traveled a lot for his job, mostly to Bentonville, Arkansas, because that was where Walmart’s corporate offices were.
Ingrid was studying the stranger’s face. “I can handle this on my own, if you’d like.”
He shook his head. This was his job. Ingrid was here because he would need to approach a woman and that sometimes looked odd. A man-and-woman couple approaching someone? No worries. A man approaching another man in, say, a bar or American Legion Hall? Again no worries. But if a twenty-seven-year-old man approached a forty-nine-year-old woman near, say, a Red Lobster?
That could get tricky.
Ingrid had already paid the bill, so they moved quickly. Heidi had arrived on her own in a gray Nissan Sentra. He and Ingrid had parked their rent-a-car two spots away. They waited by the car, key in hand, ready to pretend that they were about to get in it and drive off.
They didn’t want to draw attention to themselves.
Five minutes later, the four women exited the restaurant. They hoped Heidi would end up alone now, but they had no way of knowing for certain. One of her friends could walk her to the car, in which case they would have to follow Heidi back to her house and either try to confront her there (never a good idea to confront a victim on their own property—it made them more defensive) or wait until she headed out again.
The women all bid one another adieu with hugs. Heidi, he could see, was a good hugger. She hugged as though she meant it. When she hugged, her eyes closed and the person she hugged closed hers too. It was that kind of hug.
The three other women headed off in the opposite direction. Perfect.
Heidi started toward her car. She wore Capri pants. Her high heels made her stagger a little after the drinks, but she handled it with practiced aplomb. She was smiling. Ingrid nodded a get-ready at the stranger. They both did all they could to look harmless.
“Heidi Dann?”
He tried to keep his expression friendly or, at worst, neutral. Heidi turned and met his eye. The smile dropped off her face as though someone had attached an anchor to it.
She knew.
He wasn’t surprised. Many somehow did, though denial also worked big-time when the stranger called. But he sensed strength and intelligence in her. Heidi already knew that what he was about to say would change everything.
“Yes?”
“There’s a website called FindYourSugarBaby.com,” he said.
The stranger had learned that you had to leap directly into it. You didn’t ask the victim if they had time to talk or if they wanted to sit down or go someplace quiet. You just launched.
“What?”
“It purports to be a modern online dating service. But it’s not. Men—supposedly wealthy men with disposable income—sign up to meet, well, sugar babies. Have you heard of it?”
Heidi looked at him another second. Then she turned her gaze toward Ingrid. Ingrid tried to smile reassuringly.
“Who are you two?”
“That’s not important,” he said.
Some people fight it. Other people see that it’s an irrelevant waste of time in the big picture. Heidi was in the latter group. “No, I’ve never heard of it. It sounds like one of those sites married people use to cheat.”
The stranger made a yes-no gesture with his head and said, “Not really. This site caters to more of a business transaction, if you know what I mean.”
“I don’t know what you mean at all,” Heidi said.
“You should read the material when you have a chance. The site talks about how every relationship is really a transaction and how important it is to define your roles, to know what is expected of you and what is expected of your lover.”
Heidi’s face was losing color. “Lover?”
“So here is how it works,” the stranger continued. “A man signs on, for example. He looks through a list of women, usually much younger. He finds one he likes. If she accepts, they start negotiating.”
“Negotiating?”
“He’s looking for what we call a sugar baby. The website defines that as a woman he’d maybe take out to dinner or escort to a business conference, that kind of thing.”
“But that’s not what really happens,” Heidi said.
“No,” the stranger said. “That’s not what happens.”
Heidi let loose a long breath. She put her hands on her hips. “Go on.”
“So they negotiate.”
“The rich guy and his sugar baby.”
“Right. The site tells the girl all sorts of nonsense. How everything is defined. How dating like this means no game playing. How the men are rich and sophisticated and will treat her well and buy her gifts and take her to exotic overseas locales.”