Crooked Little Lies (29 page)

“Okay, I guess now’s as good a time as any, but before we go, there’s just one more thing I want you to see.”

Lauren watched as Cosgrove reopened the folder, his manila envelope of horrors.

The photo he pushed across the table toward her, a grainy black and white, showed part of a street, the hoods of cars nosed into parking spaces. It was a moment before Lauren recognized the scene, and when the sense of it gelled, a frisson of unease tapped up her spine. “Where did you get this?”

“Do you recognize the location?”

“It’s Prescott Street, outside Kim’s Needle and Book Nook.”

“Yeah. Do you recognize anything else? You see the SUV with the hood up? Could that be your Navigator?”

“Where did you get this?” Lauren repeated.

“There’s a surveillance camera nearby. We took the still from the film footage. But we also have a couple of witnesses who saw you pull into the space.”

“On Wednesday when I came into town to help with the search for Bo, they saw me driving my Navigator?”

“Yeah.” His gaze was penetrating, watchful.

“There was an Altima in that space when I went back. Jeff said I drove it into town.”

“But the picture, the film footage, and the witnesses say otherwise.”

“But that means . . .” She trailed off. She couldn’t begin to wrap her mind around the meaning.

Cosgrove slid a second photo toward her, its quality as poor as the first one. “Do you recognize the guy with his head under the hood?”

The image of the man was too blurry to distinguish more than the fact that he was doing something to the engine, tinkering with it, the way Jeff had tinkered with her Navigator on Tuesday evening when it wouldn’t start. But Lauren didn’t want to think about that, either. She said, “I don’t know who that is.”

“Well, it’s your husband, Jeff Wilder. On Wednesday, while you were at the community center, he tampered with your car, pulled a few wires, then contacted the dealership, had them bring the loaner and switch it out with the Navigator.”

“How do you know?”

“The evidence, film footage, witnesses.” Cosgrove ticked through his list.

Lauren barely heard him. “It could be Danny, the kid who brought me the Navigator. When I went back to Kim’s and didn’t find it, my first thought was that he’d stolen it. Maybe I was right after all.” In her excitement, she bent forward. “He took it for a joyride. Isn’t that what they call it?”

Cosgrove only looked at her, and she got the sense he was waiting for her to run out of words, enthusiasm. She was loath to do either. “There’s no way you can tell who that is from this picture. You can’t even see—why would Jeff do that? We’d already paid for repairs once.” Lauren’s voice rose, as if its very tenor would make her denial true.

Cosgrove shuffled his “evidence” back into the folder and stood up. “If you’re ready, I’ll take you to see him now. You can ask him. He’s just down the hall.”

Lauren stood, too, and fought a wave of dizziness. “Is Tara with Jeff?” It made sense that they would be together if this was about taking the children. But somehow that seemed unlikely now.

Cosgrove said it was possible Tara might be detained.

“You mean arrested?”

“It depends.”

Depends.
Dr. Bettinger’s word, Lauren thought, following the detective down the corridor, the one he used when he couldn’t say for sure.

Cosgrove paused outside the door of another interview room only steps away from the one he and Lauren had left, and when he looked at her, she saw caution in his glance, as if he might be warning her to enter at her own risk.

“Ready?” he asked, and before she could say no, he turned the knob.

Jeff said, “Thank God,” when he caught sight of her, and he came immediately around the table to hug her, but it wasn’t a relief, having him close. It wasn’t a comfort, and she stepped from his arms quickly, feeling as leery of him as she might a stranger. She couldn’t help it, and yet her reaction was disconcerting to her.

“I’ll get y’all some coffee,” Cosgrove said, and he left before Lauren could say she didn’t want any coffee, before she could say,
Don’t close the door. Don’t leave me alone in here
. She kept her back to Jeff.

He said her name, and she turned on him. “What is going on? The police picked Tara and me up at her house. They brought us here in separate cars. I thought it was about Bo, because you shot him. My God, Jeff—” She broke off, feeling the shock again as if it were new, fighting to withstand it. “How could you? And then you tried to hide—you left him, left him on the road. You would treat a dog better, or at least until now, I always believed you would.”

He came toward her as if he might embrace her again, but she held her hand up, palm out, stopping him. “No,” she said. She could not tolerate his touch now. “You’re playing some kind of game with me, and I want to know what it is.”

“Let’s sit—”

“You brought his notepad into the house. It fell out of your pocket, or maybe you put it there deliberately, because you wanted me to think I was the one. You wanted me to believe I was involved, that I’d done something to Bo. Why would you do that? The police already knew it was you and Greg. What were you trying to accomplish?”

“Calm down, okay?”

“Calm down? Are you kidding? I’ve spent hours today scared to death, getting grilled by detectives about everything from Wick Matson and some resort property to a bank account I’ve never used. There’s so much—so many things that have happened lately. I’ve been so scared I was losing my mind, what little I have, but it was you, wasn’t it? You were trying to make me doubt my own sanity.”

“If you’ll just let me—”

“Don’t say I’ve forgotten or it’s my brain injury or I’m on drugs. Don’t say any of that. Don’t talk to me about
my
issues, Jeff—that you discussed with Detective Cosgrove,” she added, insult riding in her voice. It seemed a small thing by comparison, but it hurt her that he would talk to a virtual stranger about her.

She put her hands to her head. “This can’t be real.”

“Look, can we at least sit down?”

But she wouldn’t, although he did, perhaps thinking she would follow suit.

“I know you’re pissed, but I can explain,” he said, and for one wild moment, her heart soared with a vain hope that an explanation was possible. “Will you sit down? Please?”

She pulled out the chair opposite him and sat, stiffly, jaw clenched in a mutinous knot. The room was a duplicate of the one where she had sat with Cosgrove, and she was sitting where he had, with her back to the door. The mirrored wall was on her left now, but she was only subliminally aware of her surroundings.

“Tara must have told you the shooting was an accident,” Jeff said. “It was probably Honey’s bullet. He couldn’t get enough of shooting that goddamn gun.”

“Oh, my God! Please tell me you aren’t trying to lay blame—”

“It happened so quick.” Jeff snapped his thumb against his middle finger. “Like that. Why the hell was the kid there, anyway? That’s what I don’t get.”

“His name was Bo, and it doesn’t matter why he was there, Jeff. It doesn’t even matter that he was shot, as tragic as that is. That was an accident. Even the police know it, or they will. The terrible thing, what is so despicable, so beyond comprehension, is that you covered it up. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? They arrested you. I can’t even imagine what it took, what was going on in your mind to do such a thing.”

Jeff’s face hardened. “I’ll tell you what was going on. Our fucking lives were over, that’s what was going on.”

“I don’t know what you mean. If you’d only reported it—”

“That wasn’t going to change the fact that the kid was dead, and with the cops involved, one thing was going to lead to another, and the shit would hit the fan, just like it is now. That’s what I was thinking.”

“What shit, Jeff?”

“There’s a lot you don’t know.” He kept her gaze, and there was something relentless in his eyes, some kind of awful anguish and desperation.

Lauren couldn’t look away, although she wanted to. The blood in her veins felt like sludge, like ice.

He said, “You won’t like it, but you’ve got to understand I had no choice.”

Did he mean about the shooting? Hiding it? Lauren waited.

He plowed his hands over his head, and she had the sense he was hunting for the words to make her understanding happen. He found her gaze again. “We were going to lose the business, the house, everything if I didn’t do something, and this opportunity—Wick brought the deal to me, over a year ago, before you came back to work, when you were still so—”

“What deal, Jeff?” But even as Lauren asked, she was putting it together, remembering the Nautilus resort brochure and the way Cosgrove had questioned her about it.
You don’t know Matson in the capacity of real estate developer? You don’t know that the Nautilus is his project?
You haven’t bought shares?

“Wick has this fantastic beachfront property on the Gulf Coast near South Padre Island. His granddad left it to him. Wick wanted to develop it. Put up a swanky hotel, get somebody famous to build a golf course. He started getting investors. I was one of them. It looked solid, you know, and we made money at first. Everybody was happy. We kept getting new investors, more than we could handle really. But more important than that, Wilder and Tate was back to even again. The mortgage on our house was current. We were getting a handle on all the medical bills. You know how we had to drain the kids’ college funds?”

She nodded.

“Well, I was able to start new accounts for them. I was going to tell you. I wanted to surprise you, make it into a celebration.”

He paused as if he expected a response, but even if she were capable of speech, Lauren didn’t know what she might have said.

“So, we were getting this dividend out of the project every month. The way it worked—the more you put in, the bigger the return. Sometimes I was getting over 18 percent. It was like taking candy from a baby.” Jeff’s eyes shone. There was a fine film of sweat across his brow, his upper lip. He sounded thrilled but in a feverish way.

Watching him, Lauren thought, I don’t know this man. Even his appearance seemed altered. “But was it ever built, Jeff? Was it ever more than a paper dream?”

“See, that’s the thing. The EPA got involved. They said the land was contaminated. Well, not the land but the water supply or some shit. Something about injection wells in the area. I never really understood it.”

“That ended the project, then? The investors got their money back?”

“Not exactly,” Jeff said, and he told her how Wick continued to sell shares. By then, Jeff was selling shares, too. “People would hear me talk about it, about the return on investment. They couldn’t wait to give me their money.”

“But how could you keep taking it? Didn’t they know the resort wasn’t going to be built? Didn’t you tell them?”

“The deal wasn’t entirely dead. Wick kept working with the EPA. He swore we’d find a way around all the government bullshit, that the Nautilus would eventually open for business.”

“Oh, Jeff, how could you believe anything he said—but even so, you weren’t honest with those people. You took their money under false pretenses.”

“I know what you’re saying, Lauren, but moralizing now? What good is it? And trust me, if we hadn’t had that money coming in, we’d be on the street with the kids. Is that what you want?”

Lauren blinked up at the ceiling, hunting for sense, coherence, some familiar ground, but all she could come up with was another question. “How could you do all this without my knowing?”

“You did know. You saw all the cash running through the Cornerstone account. Where did you think it came from?”

It was the way he said it, with the conviction of absolute truth that tripped her, but only for a moment. “Oh, please.” She bit off the words. “I’m not that far gone. The only thing I ever saw from that account was the e-mail they sent you about a new sign-in process. I never saw statements or knew there was any activity until Detective Cosgrove showed me a list of deposits and withdrawals. I don’t even remember opening the account. I had to ask you about it. You were annoyed—”

“But you could say it was yours, that you made the deposits, wrote the checks. Your name is all over it. You’re the primary.”

“Why would I lie?”

“Look”—he bent toward her—“as good as the Nautilus deal was a few months back, it’s not so good now. The investors haven’t been paid anything for over a week, and for around five weeks before that, they’ve only gotten part of what’s owed them. And by them, I mean us, too. Then, recently, I found out Wick’s been bleeding cash out of a couple of the partnership accounts. While I’ve been running around like a crazy man trying to find new investors, he’s been robbing me—us—”

Lauren interrupted, “Are these partnership accounts other bank accounts? Is my name on those, too?”

“No. They’re accounts Wick and I opened jointly. It’s complicated, Lauren. A venture like this—you have to move money around—”

“But it’s not legal; nothing you’re telling me is, right.” Lauren searched his gaze, hunting for a sign of the Jeff she knew, the man who was too smart, and more than that, who was too honorable to be caught up in what this so clearly was, some scheme, a way to rob people. She couldn’t fathom what had changed for him or inside him or where she’d been when it happened, and it sickened her. She felt like a person drowning, grasping for sense, any handhold.

His face closed against her; he didn’t want to hear it—the moralizing, he’d called it. And he was right in a way. What good was it now?

“The thing is, folks are pissed,” he said. “I’ve gotten threats.”

“Threats?”

“Yeah, you don’t fuck with people and their money, you know? Some of the investors want out; they want their original investment back. I don’t have it, not for all of them. Plus I think somebody found out about the EPA bullshit and tipped law enforcement. These Lincoln County guys keep saying they brought me in here to question me in regard to the shooting, but they’re asking a whole lot of other questions, and now they’ve questioned you, too.”