Once Upon a Lie (21 page)

“I think Heather is running with the wrong crowd,” he said, concern etched into his handsome features, a storm brewing behind his eyes. Around them, the street flooded with costumed children and their protective parents, happy voices filling the air.

“I think Heather
is
the wrong crowd,” Maeve said, annoyed that he was late to the party, as usual. “You can only blame things on other people’s kids for so long, Cal, until you have to look at yourself and your parenting style.” She corrected herself. “Parenting styles.” No need to leave herself out of this; in some ways, she was as much to blame for Heather’s slide into juvenile delinquency, what with the fervor she had devoted to clearing her father’s name of her cousin’s murder and the amount of space that took up in her already crowded brain. “So it took finding the pot to get you to this point?”

He got that weird look on his face again and in the space of a few seconds turned a red she had never seen. Cal didn’t blush, but at this moment in time, he was sporting a severe flush.

“What?” she said, looking for a sign of what could have made him so uncomfortable.

“Nothing.” He turned and looked at the house as if it were a safe haven from the impending storm that was his ex-wife’s anger.

Finally, it hit her. “It was yours.”

“I have a chronic pain in my back!” he said, backing up a little. She didn’t know what her face looked like, but if he was backing up, it must not have been good.

“And I have a chronic pain in my ass, but you don’t hear me complaining about it all the time,” she said, “or getting high to deal with it.” She looked up at the sky, hoping for answers to all of the questions that she had. “It’s called lumbago, Cal, and it affects every single person over the age of forty.”

“Lumbago?”

“Yes. Lower back pain.”

“Sounds like something Jack made up,” he said, the word rolling around on his tongue. “Lumbago?”

She snapped her fingers in front of her face. “Can we focus on the matter at hand?” she asked. “The one that doesn’t have anything to do with your middling health problems and your organic solutions?”

His face turned dark. “They are not ‘middling,’” he said. His hands went to his lower back as proof that he suffered more than any man should.

“Okay, so you keep pot in your house where your teenaged daughters can find it. Check that: one teenaged daughter.” Rebecca wouldn’t look for it, nor would she do anything with it if she did find it. “That needs to stop,” she said, her mind going to the gun in her purse. At least she didn’t keep it in her house; she just toted it on her errands around town and had it within reach at the store. What kind of message does that send? she thought, thinking of glass houses and such but keeping her peccadilloes to herself. What kind of woman tracks a wife and child abuser like prey, following him to assignations and plopping down next to him when he’s out for a beer? A woman with a sense of justice, she told herself, but she couldn’t quite make the argument convincing, even to herself.

“Where do you suggest I keep it?” he asked, reflecting, a second too late, that that probably wasn’t a good question to ask the mother of his first two children, who was about as angry as he’d ever seen her. “I’ll stop. I’ll stick to traditional remedies.”

“Yes, I’ve heard there are these people called ‘chiropractors’ whose only job practically is to cure lower back pain. You may want to see if you can find one,” she said. “As a matter of fact, I think our mayor moonlights as one.”

He put a hand up to stop her. “Enough. I get it. I’m sorry. Is that what you want to hear?” he asked.

Yes, it was, as a matter of fact. But not for the pot; that was minor compared to everything else. She wanted apologies for the myriad other offenses that he had committed since they had met twenty years previous. She was smart enough, however, to know she would never get them.

When she left, they were on fairly good terms again but wary of each other, he of her anger and she of his bad judgment. They had never even gotten into the discussion about where Heather might have come across a significant amount of marijuana in his house; Maeve didn’t want to know how easy it was to find things in Cal’s new abode. Even if the pot had been hidden well, one intrepid fifteen-year-old had found it and taken it with her—for what purpose, however, was still the question. Smoking? Selling? A combination of both? It made her realize that she had to keep the gun in her possession. Heather probably wouldn’t touch the gun if she found it, too afraid, hopefully, but Maeve couldn’t take that chance.

CHAPTER 29

Jo was sprawled across the counter, the
Day Timer
’s blotter—the source for all things local and illegal—front and center. “What was the name of the people who had the birthday party here a few weeks back? The one with the dad who was a real ass? The Ed Hardy model?”

Maeve made a grand show of pretending to forget. “Loretto?” she said, wondering how Jo thought it was okay that she was loading the beverage case while Jo took a break, coffee and all, not a thought given to helping her supposed boss.

“Was it Lorenzo?” Jo asked, leaning in close to the paper, her arms folded under her chest. “Says here that the police were called to the house. ‘Domestic dispute.’”

Maeve hesitated and then continued putting cans of seltzer into the refrigerated case. “Really?” she said. “When?”

Jo scanned the paper. “Last Saturday night.”

Maeve dropped a can of soda on the floor and watched it roll under the counter. “Last Saturday?”

Jo looked up from the paper, unconcerned about the can rolling around by her feet. “Yeah. Why?”

Maeve decided to go with the truth insofar as it wouldn’t indict her entirely. “I saw him at Mookie’s. I was picking up some wings.”

“And what? He didn’t look like he was going to go home and beat the stuffing out of his wife?” Jo asked.

“Is that what it says?” Maeve asked, returning to the mindless task of stocking the soda case, her mind on Mrs. Lorenzo and the poor little girl who lived in that house.

“In so many words,” Jo said. “Blah blah blah, police called, wife refused to file a complaint…”

“Then who called the police?”

“Neighbor.” Jo folded up the paper. “Funny. Guy didn’t look like an abuser.”

Maeve’s grip tightened around the can in her hand. “And what does an abuser look like?”

Jo straightened up, tossing the paper into a recycling bin by the kitchen door. If Maeve’s tone had come through in her question, Jo hadn’t picked up on it. “I don’t know. Sinister? Evil? That guy was just your garden-variety schlub as far as I could tell.”

Maeve slammed the case shut and picked up the empty carton on the floor. “See, that’s the thing, Jo. They look just like the people we love,” she said. And sometimes, she wanted to add, they start out as people we love absolutely before they turn on us. Jo had been through enough, though, and Maeve didn’t need to remind her that sometimes we were wrong when choosing whom to love.

Jo’s apron was off and she was halfway through the kitchen door when she asked if they were all through for the day, her assumption being that they were.

“Go ahead,” Maeve said. “I’ll lock up.”

Jo hesitated, her back turned. “Eric’s getting married.”

Maeve wasn’t sure what the appropriate response should be, so she stayed silent.

“Yeah. Married. To the woman he was texting the whole time I was in the hospital. After my surgery. During my chemo. The one he moved into my house last week.”

“I’m sorry, Jo.”

She let out a rueful laugh. “Don’t be sorry. I’ve got Doug, king of the Dockers. And maybe you can open up my head again and I can get a second date with Dr. Newman.” She rested a hand on her head. “She’s pretty and she has big boobs.”

“They always do, Jo.” Maeve surveyed the sodas, stacked neatly, in the refrigerator. “When is he getting married?”

“A couple of Saturdays from now,” she said. “I went to get my bike out of the garage and saw a discarded invitation in the mail. They’re apparently doing an outdoorsy sort of thing in the backyard with a tent and shit.” She gave a little laugh. “I’m praying for rain or snow.”

“Find out when it is and we’ll go away,” Maeve said, wondering, the instant it came out of her mouth, how she would make that happen. With only one other employee besides herself, taking that employee away would mean that the store would be closed for the better part of two days.

Jo waved the suggestion off. “And close the store? That’s not going to happen. We’ll stay here and work, and maybe when the day is done, you’ll come over and we’ll smoke the other joints, if I haven’t smoked them by then.”

“How about a cheap bottle of Chardonnay?” Maeve suggested. “The big bottle? The one with the kangaroo on the front?”

“You’re on,” Jo said. “We’ll tie one on. Should be great,” she said, disappearing behind the kitchen door. Maeve heard the back door slam shut behind her. Jo had a date with Doug and needed sufficient time to primp, according to her.

She wondered why Jo had waited the entire day to tell her about Eric’s marriage but didn’t spend a lot of time on it; Jo did things her own way and in her own time. Maeve unearthed the paper from the recycling bin and turned to the blotter, knowing that at best, the details would be sketchy, and at worst, nonexistent. As she scanned the feature, glossing over the numerous rabid raccoon sightings, she determined that it was somewhere in between. The most interesting part, however, was that the neighbor who had phoned in the complaint was none other than Marcy Gerson, the mom whose presence at soccer games one could not ignore, her cheering so intense that Maeve always opted for a bleacher seat as far away as possible from the loudest woman she had ever encountered. Reading the blotter, though, she had a newfound respect for her even if she knew Marcy would probably sue the editor of the paper for printing her name. At least she was trying to let someone know what was going on in the house. That, or the disturbance had kept her awake, something that would not be tolerated in a suburban neighborhood.

Tomorrow’s game was home after a spate of away matches. Maeve knew where she’d be sitting.

Maeve locked the front door of the store and went into the kitchen. The presence of someone other than Jo brought her up short.

Rodney Poole was sitting at the end of the table, close to the back door, her purse right next to his left elbow. “I hope you don’t mind,” he said. “Your co-worker let me in. I wasn’t trying to be rude.”

She stayed at the far end of the table. “You weren’t trying, but you were,” she said. “Rude, that is.” She threw her apron toward her purse, the balled-up fabric falling right on top of it, just where she wanted it to land. “I thought we were done with this,” she said.

He raised an eyebrow and she wondered what she had seen in him that night when they had been fake speed dating. “This?”

“Yes, this. My father. Sean’s murder. The whole thing.” She put her hands on the counter to steady herself. “It’s over. You don’t have a suspect in my eighty-year-old father, so you need to look elsewhere.”

He took that all in, his expression never changing.

“And speed dating, Detective? What in God’s name was that all about?” she asked.

“Your cousin was a complex man,” he said, really not an answer to her question.

“That’s one way of putting it,” she said.

“And there’s more to this story than you’re letting on,” he said. “But I just can’t figure out what it is.”

“And there’s more to your story than you’re letting on,” she countered.

“I told you before. There is a connection between your cousin and someone who participated in speed dating. That’s all I can say.” He pulled out his notebook. “Now. Why don’t we spend a little bit of time talking about your relationship with your cousin?” he asked.

“We were not close,” she said slowly so that there was no way he could misinterpret her intention. “He was older and doing his own thing for the whole time my father and I lived in the neighborhood.”

“You were neighbors, correct?”

“Yes. We were neighbors. That’s it. We were not close,” she repeated. Slow your breath, she told herself, modulate your voice; don’t give anything away. “You know who you should talk to, Detective?” she asked. “His wife. The one who probably didn’t know that he was speed dating, if that’s what was going on. Or the one who knew what he was doing and wanted to kill him for it.” She was on a roll. “Or maybe one of his business partners. Surely there’s someone there with an ax to grind.”

Rather than look annoyed, as she thought he should have, Poole looked amused. “Thank you,” he said, jotting some notes down in his notebook. “Those are avenues we never would have thought of. What was the first one again? Interview the wife?”

She smiled in spite of the fact that she was sitting with a homicide detective, a man who was within arm’s reach of the gun in her purse. “Would you like a cupcake, Detective?” she asked, figuring that in the time it took her to plate a cupcake, she would be able to regain her emotional equilibrium.

“Sure,” he said, taking out his wallet.

“It’s on me,” she said, going back out to the front of the store, plating two chocolate cupcakes, and bringing them back into the kitchen. “I don’t have any coffee left,” she said, watching him slowly take the wrapper from the cake, an action that reminded her of how flirtatious he had been at the speed-dating event and how a little shiver of excitement had traveled up her spine at hearing his description of a date. Even though she felt as though her childhood had made her better at reading people, she wondered if she had misread him, if she had missed the signs that he had just been toying with her. She didn’t think so, but that playfulness, that familiarity, was long gone; their relationship now centered around murder, cupcakes, and the occasional cup of coffee.

“Your father told us that he hated Sean. That once he beat Sean so hard that he broke his nose?”

Maeve stopped what she was doing, then put the cupcake that she had been unwrapping for herself onto the table and pushed it away. “I didn’t know that,” she said quietly, and it was the truth. “Did he tell you that?”