“He’d find out it was me. And it wouldn’t matter how big or small the secret was.” She leans forward, her eyes still on mine. “Do you think I’m telling you secrets, Bell? All my complaints about my husband, all the sad stories about my marriage, do you think I’m telling you anything the whole world can’t already see? Even the gossip columnists know it, but Travis has his connections. My little tragedies will never be printed, so I might as well sing them to whoever will listen. I can do that because my husband doesn’t care about those stories. Travis may not trust me, but that doesn’t mean I’m not trustworthy. I keep the secrets I’m entrusted with.”

“Because if you didn’t . . . he’d kill you?”

Again she looks away.

“Are you scared of him, Mrs. Gable?”

“Silly,” she says, her tone returning to the light notes of a few minutes ago. “Everybody should be scared of my husband.”

I nod and, given the change in her mood, turn back to the calendar. As I do so, I discreetly reach into my purse for my phone and turn off the record button.

Less than an hour later Travis arrives, and with barely a word to his wife he whisks me away to his “appointment.” We don’t speak on the limo ride up and out of the Upper West Side, through the nicer parts of Harlem, and then into neighborhoods that I know too well, but that Travis shouldn’t know at all. He’s on one side of the bench seat and I’m on the other, more than arm’s length from each other. He may like to leer but he has no interest in touching me here, in view of his driver.

So different from his brother. But I suspect that Travis finds his adventures through more troubling means.

Besides, he seems preoccupied tonight. He’s looking out the window, but I don’t think he’s seeing anything. I can almost hear him thinking.

“May I ask where we’re going?” I eventually say as we turn onto FDR Drive.

“To my meeting.”

I give him a sidelong glance, wondering if he’s being obtuse or purposely vague. I settle on the latter.

“Where is this potential client from?”

Travis shoots me a disapproving look.

“I only ask because people speak Spanish differently depending on where they’re from. People from Spain pronounce some of their consonants completely differently from people from Latin America, while Caribbean Spanish is a whole nother beast entirely.”

“You’ll understand his Spanish and he’ll understand yours. That’s all that’s important.”

I smile sweetly and stretch my legs out in front of me. Destroying Travis’s life is going to be such a pleasure.