Perfect Lies (36 page)

By the time she got back to the house, Abe was up and drinking coffee in the kitchen. He was freshly shaved and neatly dressed: corduroys, a tweed jacket, blue shirt, and a darkly patterned tie that she had given him years ago as a birthday gift. And though it touched her that he had thought to wear that particular tie, the morning’s brightness had begun to fade. Meg had conveniently forgotten that he was going to spend Christmas with Lark and the girls and then attend the opening party at Clint and Janine’s new studio.

“Ah, the beautiful snow queen from the north,” he said looking at her closely. How had she failed before to notice that cleft in his right cheek when he smiled?

“You’re still going into town?” Meg asked. “The road’s impassable—there’s at least two feet of snow out there.”

“I’ve a plow on my pickup,” Abe replied, an apology in his tone. “And I promised Lark. But—just tell me. Would you rather I stayed?”

Of course, you idiot,
she wanted to snap back, but Abe had this maddening way of bringing out the best in her. Especially this morning.

“No, really—you’re right to go.” Abe had handled the legal aspects of the Lindberghs’ new enterprise. “And besides, wouldn’t people think it odd if you didn’t show up?” She walked over to him and pretended to adjust his collar and tie, though it was just an excuse to be near him.

“Probably,” Abe said, putting down his coffee mug. “I’m sorry. You know I’d rather stay here, but Lark just called to make sure I was coming, and I accepted her invitation way before—” He stopped himself and shrugged, smiling down at her.

Meg followed Abe out to the garage after he’d put on his overcoat and snow boots. They were restricted by heavy wool and down, but he took her into his arms, backing her up against his truck.

“You,” he said, kissing her neck. “Do you feel the way I do?”

“I don’t know. Do you have a door handle jammed into your back?”

“Oh.” He stopped, switched their positions, and started kissing her again, with renewed urgency.

“Abe?”

“What? I should stop this, right?” he said, taking a step back as he kissed the top of her head. “I do feel the same way.”

It was cold in the garage, and their breath came out in little puffs, like smoke signals. And what they were trying to tell each other was also like smoke signals—the disconnected words, freighted with too much meaning.

Meg tried to eat some breakfast after Abe left, but without Abe’s banter and reassuring presence, the soaring rooms made her feel overly exposed and somehow vulnerable. The snowscape, which had earlier seemed so beautiful, now felt oppressive. Gauzy cloud cover replaced the patchy sunlight. By eleven o’clock, the day was completely overcast.

Once again, she called her apartment to check her answering machine. There were two new hang ups. No messages.

The snow started again a little after noon. Meg had been trying to read a novel, but found herself distracted by the thickening white landscape. She stood at the living-room windows and watched the horizon approach: the ridge of mountains fading, the tree line disappearing, and finally just a swirl of white—like static on an old television set—taking over the world. The day began to darken at three o’clock, the slow early evening collecting in the shadows behind the stairs. Again, she felt the essential coldness of the house, the sense of being exposed and—in some strange way that she knew was just her imagination—watched. She tried to build a fire to keep herself company, but it refused to take hold.

The first shrill ring made her jump, literally, a reflex action, her heart pumping wildly. She hadn’t realized that there was a phone on the side table next to her. With the second ring, she laughed a little in relief. She was starting to see and hear things that weren’t there. She wondered if she should answer after the third ring. It could be Abe, or even Lucinda—trying to reach her here. The message machine kicked in on the fourth ring. Meg recognized the voice immediately.

“I know you’re there.” Becca paused, waiting for the phone to be picked up.

“Listen, to me, Abe, I know you’re
there.”
The words were a little slurred. Meg heard ice clicking in a glass.

“Okay, okay. You go ahead and play your little games. But I’m telling you, you’re not going to get away with it. Do you hear me, you bastard? I’m not going to let you get away with it.”

Becca began to cry, the sobs echoing across the living room, the sound of deep, unstoppable grief. Meg fought down the impulse to pick up the receiver and try to comfort her. Becca was still sobbing as she said, “I thought it would be better for me if I kept my mouth shut, at first. But when Meg Hardwick told me that she didn’t believe Lucinda killed Ethan—that was when I began to think that maybe the police had figured it out, too. I didn’t want to lose your help, Abe—God knows, you’re the only real financial support I’ve got. But I’m not going to lie for you either. You bastard, I saw you. I came back to try to get him to reason with me, listen to me, and I
saw
you. Standing over his body like fucking St. George slaying the dragon. Just like you said you would. I’m telling you one more time—Hold on a sec—Who’s there? Listen, I got to go, but I’m warning you Abe. You tell them, or I will.”

N
o, it couldn’t be. Impossible. Not Abe. Not the man she had come to know and love. Throughout the terrible days after Ethan’s murder, he had been so supportive. Concerned. Not just to Meg. He’d made such an effort to help Lark out at the house, playing with Brook and Phoebe, driving Meg to see Lucinda. Steering Boardman Lucinda’s way. Listening. Advising. Standing beside Lark at the graveside, his arm around the shoulders of the new young widow. No, it couldn’t have been Abe. No one could be that duplicitous. Becca was simply hysterical—angry, jealous, out of her mind with grief. This was just her way of getting back at the world.

Meg could feel Abe’s comforting arms around her. The touch of his lips. She’d been moving around the house as she sorted through everything Becca had said … the trail of cause and effect… truth and lies. She put on her parka and boots. She had to keep moving, to do something, to find someone. To stop Becca’s accusation from circling around and around in her head: I
saw you there, Abe.

She found herself outside. Stumbling forward into the blizzard. The world was dizzy, whirling with white, and behind the snow, evening was closing in. She thought she was walking uphill, toward the spot where she had stood just that morning, when everything had seemed possible.

Love … need … passion … jealousy … hate. In most lives, these were emotions that ebbed and flowed, channeling in and out of the heart, shifting and ever-changing. But what if the passion—and the jealousy—kept building and need grew and wasn’t satisfied … and hate became a constant? Meg tried to imagine loving one person enough to kill another. She remembered the fury in Abe’s voice at Lark’s dinner when he and Ethan almost came to blows. Again. They had fought with their fists before—Lark had recounted the scene to her—that night at the party when Ethan and Becca had writhed against each other on the dance floor. But, no, it couldn’t be. Not Abe. Becca was a sick and unhappy woman. She was lashing out blindly—accusing, blaming—in the hope of easing her own pain.

Meg hadn’t even thought about being cold before she realized that her fingers and toes had gone numb. She stumbled and almost fell against a stone wall that she hadn’t remembered seeing before. An ice-coated power line drooped like a necklace between two poles and then looped off into the thicket of evergreens weighted with snow beyond the wall. She wasn’t on the mountaintop. Two warm pools of light swam before her. She was so disoriented that she didn’t realize they were car lights until the truck was almost on top of her.

“Meg! For chrissake—” Abe was lifting her up from where she had fallen. She saw now that she was at the bottom of the hill in the middle of the driveway. Before she had a chance to react to his being there, he had her back in the car and was rubbing her hands vigorously between his own.

“Where did you think you were going?”

“I was looking …” her words came out in a shiver, “for you. Abe—I was so worried …”

“It’s turning into a really bad storm,” Abe said. He put the truck in gear. “I left the reception early when I realized it had started up again. Told Lark I had to get back. It’s crazy for you to have started out in this.”

Abe built a roaring fire as soon as they got back to the house and made Meg stand in front of it, wrapping her in a throw blanket.

“You’re still shivering,” he said. He was standing behind her as she faced the fire, his arms circling her waist. “I’m going to run and get another blanket.” It was when Abe was upstairs changing that the phone rang again. To Meg’s ears, it shrieked through the downstairs rooms. Abe picked it up after the first ring. As quietly as possible, Meg lifted the receiver in the living room.

“—a terrible thing. I can’t believe this is happening.” It was Lark, her voice breathy and frightened.

“But how? When?” Meg could hear Abe simultaneously on the phone and distantly from upstairs—his voice urgent and angry.

“At the apartment she’s renting near Montville. Whoever it was beat her up pretty badly. The police think her attacker left her for dead. She’s in the Montville ER.”

“Oh my God. Do you have any idea why?”

“It had to be because of what she was going to tell me. Becca was at the reception early on—before you got there. And she told me she had something important to tell me about the murder. But she’d been drinking and I didn’t pay it much mind then. But any number of people could have overheard.”

Meg waited until Abe had hung up before she put down the receiver. She then heard him play back Becca’s message. Meg hadn’t thought to erase it. She wanted to trust him. She needed to believe in him. There was a long silence upstairs after the cheerful beep-beep indicating that the message had ended. Then Meg heard Abe coming slowly down the steps. She turned to face him. His face was ashen, his eyes dark and disturbed. For some reason—in her fear and confusion—she found her gaze fastened on the tie she had given him so many years ago: the rich dark, crisscrossing patterns in the silk. Something about Abe’s clothes, Meg found herself thinking, something about Becca and his clothes.

“Why didn’t you tell me Becca had called?”

“I was going to,” Meg told him, her mind on this other question, this piece to the puzzle. “But it seemed so bizarre…”

“It’s not true.” He stood before her, but she didn’t look up at him. She found that she couldn’t take her eyes off the dark blue and deep maroon diagonals. “What Becca said—it’s not true, Meg. I don’t know what’s possessed her. She began about a week ago—I guess after you spoke to her—leaving me these messages. I think it must be the drugs, or her state of mind. But she now claims to have seen me there—in the studio—it’s just absurd. Insane. Apparently she’s starting to tell other people the same thing. And now—I can’t believe this—that was Lark calling to tell me that Becca has been attacked. Someone apparently tried to kill her. I don’t know what’s going on.”

“I think I do,” Meg said suddenly, looking up at him. Of course, she understood it now. And she could see how Becca had made such a mistake—a nearly fatal one.

“What do you mean?”

“Becca wasn’t lying. She actually does believe she saw you.”

“What are you talking about?”

“It’s going to take a little while to explain,” Meg said. “And I don’t have it all worked out. I’ll tell you what I can in the car.”

“We’re not going out there again—not in this blizzard.”

“Yes, we are. We have to. If Becca was attacked, then I’m afraid Lark is going to be next.”

The three small-paned windows that faced the road glowed a warm welcome as Meg pushed against the heavy oak door of the icehouse and found herself in a small entrance hall. She followed the light. The large room, stained a rich hunter green, was lined with shelves displaying the Red River Studio glassware. A huge bouquet of dried flowers—pale blue hydrangeas, dusty pink echinacea, wands of bright red berries—sat on a wide wooden counter that also held a cash register. Two long banquet tables flanked the refurbished room. The white cotton tablecloths that covered them were slightly askew, the tops littered with the remains of the reception: dozens of Red River champagne flutes, crumpled cocktail napkins, leftovers hardening on a cheese board. Francine’s large coffee urn sat on the far corner of the table on the right, its top removed, its electrical cord dangling like a loosened necktie from its base. A new large wood-burning open hearth lit the icehouse with the special glow of fire—a soft, flattering, flickering light that made the empty room seem filled with life. Meg could almost hear the clink of glasses, the murmur of voices.

And then she did actually hear a sharp groan. “Damn,” Clint said as he rose from behind the counter, rubbing the back of his head. He saw Meg and froze. His flushed face suddenly drained of color.

“Clint?” Meg took a step toward him, and then stopped. She hadn’t spoken directly to him since the afternoon she visited him and Janine at his house. She’d known Clint for many years, but he’d always been on the sidelines of her visits to Red River—a kindly, quiet presence with whom she really had nothing in common except her family. But he clearly adored Meg’s nieces with an unabashed delight that made Meg feel as though she could see right into his heart. She’d watched him spend hours with Brook constructing a miniature wooden cottage for her collection of bright orange salamanders—then dutifully help her bury the same when Brook left the little home on a radiator overnight. When everyone else had wearied of one of Phoebe’s endlessly repetitive made-up games, Clint could be counted on to hop around behind her in a circle clucking like a hen or ask “Who’s there?” until even Phoebe’s interest flagged.

“What’s going on?” He’d regained his composure and strode towards her with a quickness that belied his heavy weight. He’d taken off his jacket, but Meg could see that he was still dressed for the reception in a starched white shirt, too-short but neatly pressed wool slacks, and the kind of brightly patterned suspenders that were briefly a craze among Wall Streeters. “Are you okay? You look frozen. C’mon—get over here.” He guided her to the stove, his large right hand cupping her elbow.