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Kong.”
    “Can’t.”
    This was getting really annoying.
    “Is there anyone at the airline who can?”
    “No.”
    “How
can
I get information about the seating arrangements?”
    “You can’t.”
    “Because . . .” Miranda prompted.
    “Because the passenger manifest is not a public document.”
    “Because . . . ?”
    “Look, Mrs. Smith.” The agent abandoned the monosyllables with a vengeance. “The only person in this universe who can answer these questions for you is your husband. I suggest you ask him.”
    Miranda flushed and put down the phone. Then because she was apparently a glutton for punishment, she dialed American Express’s customer service number and gave the answering agent Tom’s credit card number. The woman’s “We’re here to help” tone lasted about five seconds.
    “Are you reporting the credit card stolen or not, ma’am?”
    Miranda rubbed her forehead. “Well, I don’t actually know that it’s been stolen. I’m just trying to understand why there’s no activity on it.”
    There was a silence and then, “Could it be because no one is using it?” The words themselves were inoffensive. The tone was not.
    And of course the customer service agent was right. Anyone with half a brain knew that credit cards left their own breadcrumb trail. Tom had watched all the same
Rockford Files
reruns she had. She was wasting her time trying to find him on her own.
    “I don’t suppose you can tell me whether another account has been opened under the name of Thomas J. Smith?”
    “No, I certainly cannot.”
    Miranda hung up the phone and began to gather her things. She’d been wrong to come here. Wrong to try to keep Tom’s desertion to herself. Stupid to think she could track him down. She couldn’t pay her bills on time or get a simple answer out of a customer service agent. Her own husband didn’t think she was worth hanging around for; what made her think she could keep a leaky old ship from sinking?
    Much better to go home, lick her wounds, maybe cry herself another little river. If she left now, she could ask Gran to bring over some soup and be tucked into bed in time for her favorite soaps. And then she’d call her daddy.
    Clutching her laptop to her chest, she slung her purse over her shoulder, and stood. There was a commotion at the office door and she looked up to see Carly sprinting toward her with Helen St. James on her heels.
    “Mrs. Smith, she won’t—”
    The bookkeeper stepped around Carly and squared off in front of Miranda. “I don’t know what’s going on here, but you have no right to—”
    Miranda studied the bookkeeper. She watched the French manicure flash before her eyes, thought about the number and tone of the E-mails Helen St. James had sent to Tom, considered the woman’s proprietary attitude. She’d just taken a ton of attitude from two different customer service agents. She was in no mood to take any from a woman who might have been sleeping with her husband and, for all she knew, had a hand in damaging the business.
    “I don’t have the right to what?” Miranda asked Helen St. James. “Ask for figures from bookkeeping? Try to determine why Fidelity National is worried about our receivables?”
    She heard Carly gasp and turned to Tom’s assistant. “That doesn’t leave this room.”
    Carly nodded, her eyes wide.
    She’d wasted their last encounter assessing the bookkeeper’s manicure, but she’d come here today to try to figure out what was going on; she was not going to let
this
woman stand in her way.
    “Tom Smith is the president of this company. You are only—” Helen began.
    “His
wife
.” Miranda straightened her shoulders and concentrated on projecting, just as she taught her girls in the Miss Rhododendron Prep class to do when answering those stressful onstage questions during pageants. She spoke slowly and clearly, maintaining eye contact with Helen St. James, intent on communicating absolute certainty, hoping neither Helen nor