The Trophy Wife by Diana Diamond Read Free Book Online Page A

looked. There was no door, just the most basic kind of enclosure. “And there’s a table for your meals.” Emily followed her eyes in the other direction. A folding metal chair was positioned next to an aluminum camping table. “I’m not a chef and the guy upstairs can’t even boil water, so you won’t be getting a menu. But you won’t starve.”
    â€œPlease, can I have some water …”
    â€œThere’s a sink in the bathroom.” The woman had already started toward the stairs. Emily saw a floral blouse over designer jeans and flats. “I’ll bring down some paper cups.”
    There was a brief flash of light as she opened the door and then darkness at the top of the stairs when she closed it behind her.
    Emily vaguely recognized her. Not the woman who had just left her, but a blonde-headed version who had appeared in the paperwork of the Urban Center. A grifter who had swindled twelve thousand dollars and then claimed that she needed a public defender. The center had provided one and the lawyer had gotten the woman off on a technicality. Her name was Rita. Rita Lipton, followed on the rap sheet with a string of ethnic aliases that announced everyplace from Park Avenue to Calcutta. Emily remembered laughing at her gifted imagination. She wondered what name she was signing to her bad checks now. And the change in her appearance was equally creative, but Emily guessed that hair dye and cosmetics were tools of her trade.
    She sat up and was immediately dizzy. Her head felt heavy and the bed began to bob like a small boat. She clutched at the edge of the mattress and then swung her feet one at a time onto the floor. It was icy cold; a plain cement floor that had been painted a light gray. There were scuff marks along the walls where furniture or other heavy objects had been dragged. Electric outlets poked through the paneling, along with switches that controlled the lights buried translucent panels in the ceiling.
    She could see what had been done. A basement—maybe even a garage—had been finished off with a drop ceiling and wall panels. The bathroom had been started but never completed. Judging by the scuff marks, the space had probably been used for storage and then emptied out in anticipation of her arrival. “Home, sweet home,” she managed wryly.
    She pushed herself to her feet, wobbled, and then held onto the headboard to steady herself. It was a heavy wooden bed, probably out of an institution, with vertical rungs connected to a slightly curved crosspiece to form a headboard. It sat in the center of the room, completely out of place, as were the camping table and chair and the single wooden Adirondack lawn chair with a green canvas cushion. A place to eat, aplace to sit down, and a place to sleep, she thought. All the essentials.
    Emily walked slowly toward the bathroom. A toilet with a cracked seat cover. A roll of paper hanging from a wire coat hanger that had been nailed to one of the exposed studs. A basin bolted between a pair of studs with a single cold water tap. All the essentials.
    The nightgown was tight on her and seemed a better fit for the extra slim figure of the woman. The plaid pattern was unflattering. But then Emily realized that she wasn’t wearing any underwear. She had been attacked in the shower and wrapped in the shower curtain. That was probably how she had been carried from the house, passed around “like a sack of mail” and transported to the cellar. The ill-fitting nightgown, she saw, was a gesture of kindness. The woman could just as easily have left her in the shower curtain, or even worse, stark naked.
    Slowly, Emily circled the walls, looking for a door in the paneling that might lead into another room. Maybe a furnace room or a workshop with a tool bench. But there was none. In fact, the barrenness of the area made it a perfect prison cell. There was nothing that could be used as a weapon. No window or