Free Die Again Tomorrow by Kira Peikoff Page B

sure.”
    He produced a napkin from his pocket and handed her the pen. She signed her name a little unsteadily and added the logo of interlocking W ’s that stood for Wild Woman.
    â€œAwesome. My kids will love it. Your show was the best thing on all summer.”
    She managed a smile. “Thanks.”
    Life was fine. All she had was a slight case of fame. No reason to be paranoid.
    Right?

CHAPTER 10
    Joan
    12 days before, New York
    Â 
    A fter four months of spying on her husband, Joan was no closer to answers. Greg from afar seemed no different than Greg at home. He remained tense, distracted, edgy. It’s work, he would tell her. Work is killing me.
    When he wasn’t in the ER, he was at his charity office putting in fourteen-hour days. Through the gym’s windows, she might watch him pacing on the phone, or talking to his sexy assistant, but nothing damning enough to constitute betrayal. Mostly he sat and stared at his computer. She never saw him cry again. That mysterious episode disturbed her, but she couldn’t confront him without admitting her own duplicity.
    One thing she could do was help out their struggling son, whether or not Greg approved. Time was running out. In the last few months, the economy had full-on crashed—just as the doomsayers predicted. In August, a major bank collapsed. In September, Adam’s investment account—his future down payment—went up in smoke in the stock market, just as he was trying to close on a house in Kansas.
    Now it was an unseasonably hot October, and her poor son was confined to a six-hundred-square-foot apartment with his very pregnant wife and their rambunctious toddler.
    But that wasn’t even the worst of it.
    Just this week, she’d been babysitting at Adam’s place, half distracted by an entertaining new reality show called Wild Woman, when Sophia tripped over a doll house cluttering the small living room and broke her ankle. She would be fine when the cast came off, but all Joan could think was: that place has got to go.
    She didn’t care anymore about Greg’s rigid stance. They still lived like kings, and their son’s family was hurting. Nothing else mattered.
    Greg didn’t know what she was planning. She was going to surprise him after it was too late to back out.
    If you can have secrets, she thought, then so can I.
    Â 
    Â 
    A gust of cool air-conditioning welcomed her as she stepped inside the office of Corcoran, a real estate agency on 80th and Broadway. The sleepy receptionist perked up, taking in Joan’s three-carat diamond ring, her silk chiffon white dress, and her red-soled Louboutin heels. Her blond hair was curled in loose waves around her face.
    The receptionist smiled at her. “Hi, how can I help you?”
    â€œI’d like to speak with an agent,” Joan said. “About buying an apartment.”
    â€œOf course, right this way.”
    Joan followed her down a hall lined with pictures of extravagant apartments—floor-to-ceiling windows, magnificent city views, marble Jacuzzi tubs. They turned into a corner office where a woman about her own age was at a computer, clicking the keys with long manicured fingernails. When she smiled, her thick foundation broke into tiny cracks around her lips.
    After introducing herself, Joan sat across from her and explained what she was looking for—a two- or three-bedroom apartment in the neighborhood for her son’s growing family, preferably in a doorman building with an elevator, very bright, and kid-friendly.
    â€œOh,” she added, “and not more than fifteen blocks from Eighty-sixth Street. I don’t want to have to take a cab to get there.”
    The agent’s first question rolled off her lips. “And your budget?”
    Joan ran a quick calculation in her head: If she could put one hundred fifty thousand dollars toward a ten percent down payment, then . . .
    â€œNot more than one point five,”