Once Upon a Lie (25 page)

“How so?”

“There are about a hundred true-crime, fake-crime, police procedural, and other types of shows that could give anyone a step-by-step guide to killing someone and getting away with it,” she said. “Seriously. You need to stop this.”

“The police generally don’t like being told what to do.” Poole seemed undeterred in his focus on Jack. “Get him a lawyer, Ms. Conlon. A real one. One who hasn’t done mergers and acquisitions and isn’t emotionally invested in you or your father and who doesn’t look terrified by the thought of representing the old guy,” he said. “That would be my best advice to you.” He sat back down at his desk and flipped open a file.

The air in the room had shifted, and rather than feeling relieved that she was bringing her father home this time, she was more worried than before. Would they do this again? Would they keep him for a longer time, the next time they brought him in? She stared down at Poole for a few moments, his head bent over some photographs of Sean’s crime scene, in full view, she suspected, for her benefit.

Poole spoke without looking up. “Why don’t you tell me the truth, Ms. Conlon?”

Her breaking point had arrived. She leaned in close to him, the images that appeared in the photographs burning into her consciousness. “What do you want to know, Detective? That he broke my tooth? My arm? That it got worse than that and continued, in plain sight, until he left?” she asked. “That nobody did anything to stop it? Because being Irish,” she said, laughing a little, “means never seeing what’s right in front of your face, and even when you do, ignoring it for fear of bringing trouble to the family? Is that what you want to know, Detective?” She leaned in closer. “I have stories that would curl your hair. But the truth of the matter is, my father did not kill Sean Donovan.”

Poole stared at her, never blinking, her emotion so thick, it was as if he were afraid to do anything that would break her train of thought. The look on his face told her that he was afraid she would continue and give him details he didn’t want to hear. Or that she’d stop, relieving him of the reason he might hate Sean Donovan, too, even though he was charged with finding his killer.

She straightened up, immediately regretting her outburst even though she’d been whispering. No one else had heard it, the buzz around the station house continuing apace. “That’s the truth, Detective. All of it. What else do you need to know?”

When he spoke, his voice was hoarse. “Why we’re not looking at you.”

“If you’re not,” she said, “you’d be an idiot.”

She turned slowly and started for the door, noticing that Jack had a new audience, someone who seemed a little more enamored with the old guy’s stories of life in the Fiftieth back in the day, someone who was listening intently, his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his nondescript, conservative Dockers. She came up short, stopping by another detective’s desk, putting her hand on the corner to steady herself.

Doug’s shield was in full view, hanging on a chain around his neck, swinging a little when he threw his head back and laughed at something that Jack said. After a few seconds, he excused himself and walked out the door and down the hallway, never having seen Maeve, leaving her to wonder if he knew that she was the one who had come to get her father.

Jack beckoned to her from the doorway. “Let’s get out of here,” he said.

She moved forward, her legs filled with lead. Between the crime scene photos, her revelation to Poole, and the Doug of the Dockers sighting, she felt as if she were living in some alternate universe where up was down, black was white, and old men got sent to jail for crimes they wished they had committed but hadn’t.

CHAPTER 34

Maeve’s plan was to stay in the kitchen after she got back to the store, making it easier to be with Jo but not actually have to talk to her. She gave Jo a quick update on Jack’s potential incarceration, leaving out the part where she had revealed to Rodney Poole the one thing she wanted no one to know and making light of the fact that the detectives thought someone like Jack could commit murder. Jo was suitably horrified and said she had never reached Cal but had left a message with Gabriela, whom she delighted in calling the “überbitch.”

Maeve prayed that the afternoon would be busy, but not for monetary reasons. The busier the front of the store, the more unlikely it was that Jo could hang around the kitchen and shoot the breeze with her. Although she had been keeping secrets all her life, she knew the one about Doug was written all over her face, and Jo was perceptive, particularly when it came to Maeve. Jo would know something was up, and although she wouldn’t know exactly what it was, with a little hard work and pointed questioning, she would get the truth from Maeve in no time. She was that good.

Maeve stood in the kitchen, looking at her hands, wondering what they were supposed to do now. She had dropped Jack off after a quick lunch, immediately missing the chatter that he had kept up in the car for the entire ride home, thinking of the time when she wouldn’t hear his voice, or if she did, it would be the voice of someone completely without cognition. From the front of the store, she heard Jo talking to a customer, laughing uproariously, and selling the hell out of a large chocolate cake that was a few hours away from being discarded, its freshness rapidly fading like the afternoon light. Maeve picked up a knife and plunged it into the butcher-block countertop next to her prep area, taking satisfaction in the deep groove that was left when she pulled it out. “Goddammit,” she whispered to herself. “Goddammit to hell.”

She put the knife in the sink and pulled out the stand mixer, preparing to make a bread dough. It was a new recipe, but one that she knew by heart, having committed the ingredients to memory one night while sitting in front of Michael Lorenzo’s house, a copy of the latest
Bon Appétit
on her lap, a flashlight illuminating the words on the glossy pages of the magazine. She went over to the metal rack by the back door and pulled down some flour, noticing Jo’s bag, which was new, and a paper bag from the local hardware store. Peeking inside, she found a can of red spray paint, still sealed shut, and a sales slip indicating it had been purchased that day. She took it out and shook it, hearing the little ball rattling around inside the can. Interesting. She wondered what house project Jo was undertaking, if any at all. She put it back in the bag and replaced it next to Jo’s purse moments before Jo burst through the kitchen door, the giant chocolate cake in her hands.

“Mrs. Lorenzo’s outside. She wants to know if you’d write ‘Happy Birthday, Michael’ on this cake,” Jo said. Jo had lousy handwriting and was an even worse speller, so simple decorating tasks were beyond her skill set. She picked up a pastry bag with a small tip and pointed it at Maeve. “You’re on, sister.”

Maeve looked at her blankly.

“You remember them. The sad mother and the cute little girl from the birthday party a while back?” Jo wiggled the pastry bag under Maeve’s nose. “Writing on cakes? That thing you do?” Jo left the bag on the counter. “Poor kid. Fell off a swing or something. Her arm is in a sling.”

Maeve touched her own arm, rubbing tiny circles on her skin.

“Hey, are you still upset about Jack? The police?” Jo asked, getting another pastry bag, one that made blue flowers around the border of the cake, and placing it in front of Maeve. “They’re playing games, Maeve. There’s nobody in their right mind who could think that your dad, despite being the stud that he is, could kill your cousin. No one.”

“Well, the NYPD would have you think differently.”

“If they are that stupid, I give thanks that I’m dating a boring accountant. At least the guy is smart,” she said.

Maeve felt her stomach clench and she took a few deep breaths until the pain subsided.

Jo looked at her expectantly. “The writing? ‘Happy Birthday’?” she said.

Maeve picked up the smaller pastry bag and wrote the words Jo had requested, flawlessly, across the top of the iced cake. When she was done, she took the other bag and created florets all around the outside of the cake, top and bottom.

“Steadiest hand in the West,” Jo said, picking up the cake and going through the swinging door backward.

Maeve followed her back into the store, where Mrs. Lorenzo was kneeling beside a stroller that held the baby, Tiffany holding on to one of the handles with her good hand. The other hand hung down limply from the blue sling that her broken arm rested in, and when she turned at the sound of Jo’s reentry, Maeve froze, noticing a fresh and florid-looking bruise blooming on her cheek. She found her voice, but it was weak, asking Tiffany if she wanted a cookie.

Her face lit up and she attempted a smile, one that didn’t quite take given that the smile turned into a wince. She nodded and Maeve handed her a chocolate-chip cookie, one of the larger ones that sat on a white ceramic tray in the case.

“What happened to your face, honey?” Jo asked.

Tiffany opened her mouth to speak, but Tina did the answering. “She fell,” she said. “At the playground.”

Tiffany turned and focused her attention on the baby, breaking off half of the cookie and placing it on her lap. Her sister had fallen asleep but would have a chunk of cookie to drool over after she awoke. That simple act of kindness from the four-year-old caused Maeve to take a step back. There was something deep in that child that still had a capacity for love, and that, to Maeve, was breathtaking.

Jo made a face that made the child laugh. “You have to be super careful at the playground!” she said in a funny voice, making Tiffany laugh harder, even though it appeared that it hurt; she put her hand to her cheek protectively.

Maeve got a box for the cake and tried to find her voice again. Although she felt sorry for Tina’s plight, the fact that things were trickling down to the innocent little girl was making her blood boil. She was sure that the child’s new bruise was a result of her father’s violence; for some reason, beyond not acting to prevent what he was doing, Maeve couldn’t see Tina perpetrating any aggression toward her children. Coupled with her trip to the police station, she felt as if she would snap in two. Instead, she focused on assembling the box and gently putting the cake inside. Why didn’t anyone see what she saw? Why wasn’t somebody doing something to stop it? Thoughts rolled around in her head like pinballs, careening from one side to the other, but there were no answers available to her. The child wasn’t in school yet, so she didn’t have the benefit of some eagle-eyed school nurse, suspicious and interested only in protecting her little charges while diagnosing head lice cases and taking temperatures. And Maeve didn’t know if she had any friends with mothers who could spot the signs of abuse and who would care enough—the way Marcy Gerson did—to alert someone to the trouble. It was a small town, and one of its hallmarks was that everyone let everyone else live the life they chose, to the point where nobody was really watching out for anyone else, so disaffected had they all become. It was different from the way Maeve was raised, where people thought they were sticking their necks out, but only for the wrong reasons, giving Jack grief when Maeve wore knee socks instead of anklets for her elementary school graduation, or forgetting to fill out the paperwork to get her confirmed, something that came back to haunt her when she attempted to marry in the church. Maybe nobody went out of their way to interfere when it was heavy-duty, when someone was being beaten, abused, or worse, and that was something that Maeve just found wrong.

The wet pushed at the backs of her eyes, threatening to spill onto the box and leaving a stain that no one would recognize as tears but her. She swallowed hard, feeling exhausted and almost crushed until she looked over and noticed the little girl staring at her, attempting that same lopsided smile that seemed to cause her pain.

Maybe she had given Jo too much credit for her perceptiveness, because her friend didn’t seem to notice that Maeve was frozen, her voice choked and her body language indicating that she wanted to be anywhere but in the same room with this sad little family. Maeve pushed the box toward Tina. “That’ll be fifty even,” she said.

Tina plucked three twenties from her wallet and handed them to Maeve. “Thank you. I’m so glad you had a cake. I don’t know what would have happened if I had forgotten my husband’s birthday,” she said without a trace of irony.

Maeve gave her a tight smile. “I can only imagine.”

CHAPTER 35

The best thing to do, she decided, was to invite Jo to dinner that night. Although it was Sunday and not a night when the girls would be elsewhere, the minute dinner was done, they would vanish, going off to their rooms to do whatever it was that they did behind closed doors. Like a good, watchful parent, Maeve had never gotten them their own computers, preferring to keep the one desktop in an open area where she could keep an eye on what they were doing while listening to them fight about whose turn it was to use the machine. That night, neither seemed to have any homework, so after checking her personal e-mail and downloading a recipe for Ina Garten’s flourless chocolate cake so she could compare it with her own, she shut off the computer and went back into the kitchen to start dinner. Jo was expected in fifteen minutes, just enough time to start frying up some chicken cutlets and boiling water for pasta. It was also just enough time to rehearse her speech in her head, the one where she implored Jo not to ask Doug to do her taxes come spring. Something told her that he wouldn’t be much help.

She was pouring herself a glass of wine when Jo came through the front door, hanging her jean jacket on the newel post at the bottom of the stairs. “Chicken and pasta?” she asked. “I walked and I’m starving.”

Maeve cooked the same thing five nights a week. “You got it. Wine?” she asked, taking a glass from the cabinet over the sink.

“You know it,” Jo said, flinging herself into a chair by the kitchen table. “I’m hoping you don’t need me to set the table. I’m beat.”

“From what?” Maeve asked before remembering that Jo thought she was the hardest-working woman in America. But this time, it was different. Jo flushed a deep red. “From what?” Maeve repeated.