The Whole Lie (28 page)

I said nothing.

“But there's more, isn't there?”

I wondered how he saw through me so easily. I'd fibbed about how Vernon came to be following me, had made it sound like I just happened to spot him. Hadn't mentioned trawling. Hadn't explained in-cold-blood versus red mist.

I wanted to tell Randall. I wanted to explain. I wanted him to know it all, to tell me it was okay.

I said nothing.

“There's more,” Randall said, “but you won't tell me until you tell me. I get it. Still, just what you
have
told me … it's a lot. On your shoulders. It's too much.”

I said nothing.

“No ill effects from the gendarmerie?” he asked.

I told him about Wu. “Believe it or not, he hasn't even braced me yet on Vernon.”

“That can't be. Savvy Kane dies, her boyfriend dies, her boyfriend's
father
dies, and they haven't even put you in the hot box? Nonsense.” Randall stared at nothing for a while. Dale jumped on his chair back, sniffed Randall's head. “Is there any chance,” he finally said, “Vernon survived?”

“I watched him fall five stories in a two-ton SUV. It was pretty convincing.”

“Huh.” He was still skeptical.

“My guess,” I said, “the Vernon news is under wraps because it can only hurt Tinker's chances, which are looking worse every hour. Wednesday morning, you'll see a two-inch story about Vernon on page eleven of the
Globe
.”

“Huh.”

“You're not convinced.”

“Where was I?”

“Befouler. Viper.”

“Ah yes.”

By the time Savannah Kane met Blaine Lee at Best Buy in Greensboro, her son Max was five years old. Blaine went full head-over-heels in a way that maybe Savvy didn't—Margery admitted her son had never had a lot of luck with girls—but from the start, Savvy struck her as a decent sort and a good mother. A good
single
mother, working a succession of nothing jobs, and that wasn't easy.

My face went red. Savvy'd told me this, or had tried to, and I hadn't believed her—to me she was stuck as a biker-bar broad, a gal who hopped on the back of a stolen Triumph Bonneville and went on a speed-fueled tear with a drunk. A gal willing to blackmail her old lover with dirty pictures she somehow stumbled across—and willing to double-cross me, sucking me into an investigation she knew would lead to nothing.

Time for a rethink. Maybe Max had brought Savvy something she'd never experienced: serenity.
Nice time to accept that. Very helpful. She was only murdered two days ago.

Blaine was both a gentleman and a gentle man, according to his mother. Best of all, he and Max adored each other.

“Blaine popped the question,” Randall said. “Savvy said yes.”

“Then what?”

“Then they moved in with Blaine's folks. And everything turned to shit.”

On paper, it made sense. The idea was for the new little family to live rent-free while saving for a down payment on their own place. Vernon and Margery lived in a run-down but decent three-bedroom ranch house. There was plenty of room.

“Vernon,” I said. “What did he do to her?”

“Margery knew it was a bad idea from the start,” Randall said. “You see, he was very high on the move-in plan, always talking it up. That made a big blip on Margery's radar, because Vernon never offered to share anything with anybody.”

“What did he do to Savvy?”

“He got her in bed,” Randall said. “But first he got her…”

I pinched the bridge of my nose, anticipating it.

“First he got her drunk,” Randall said. He knew it hit me hard. Whatever you thought about Savvy, it was a fact she'd put together a good chunk of sobriety.

Nine years ago, when she'd walked into her first Barnburners meeting—I probably asked her two hundred times how she tracked me down, but she never did say—she'd already been sober four years. Had hooked into the prison AA/NA group in Kentucky. Said they'd saved her life.

That sounded familiar.

Charlene and I'd been aware of each other at the time, circling each other, but not dating. Me and Savvy clicked like
that
. Every night was like the motel room in Kentucky. Hell, I could practically smell grease dripping from that old Triumph Bonneville.

Going through all this—the whispering, the confiding, the planning, the lovemaking—stone-cold sober made it even better.

For me, anyway.

Savvy had grown restless. Savvy had stopped showing up at Barnburners meetings. Then she'd stopped showing up at my apartment. I knew now that was when she started in with Bert Saginaw.

I shook my head clear, focused on Randall. “There wasn't a lot to do in Level Cross,” he was saying.

Each morning, Blaine would head off to Best Buy and Savvy would put Max on the kindergarten bus. Three days a week, Margery worked a full shift in the church food pantry. That left Savvy and Vernon alone, watching awful daytime TV shows. Vernon started drinking at ten thirty, as he had for close to three decades.

“After a while,” I said, “Savannah drank with him.”

He nodded.

Two adults watching trailer-trash TV, drunk by noon. One of them a corruptor, according to his own wife, the other hating herself for drinking. You didn't have to be a genius to see how it went where it went.

Margery had walked in one time, she told Randall, intending to make a quick sandwich. She'd paused in the kitchen, had put an ear to the door of her own bedroom. Had heard Vernon berating Savvy, beating her down with words. He was telling her he'd understood her slutty nature right from the get-go, had seen she was dying to dump the AA nonsense and make it with a
real
man.

“What did Margery do?” I said.

“Margery walked out the kitchen door very quietly,” Randall said, “and made it a point to wash the sheets that night. As I said, Vernon beat the life out of her long ago. She's a husk.”

By the time Max popped off the bus each afternoon, Savvy was showered and made up and mostly sober. Her son saw something,
felt
something was different about mommy. Margery, who adored Max by then, could see the puzzlement in his eyes, in his attitude. But he handled it the way boys do: He said nothing, kept to himself more, gave Vernon a wide berth. And Blaine, puppy-love Blaine the car-stereo genius, never knew anything, never figured it out.

“Blaine knew more than he let on to his mother,” I said. “He had to at least suspect something was rotten. That would explain why he claimed not to know Vernon when I first met him.”

Randall nodded. “Possible. Very possible. Hell, he may have been planning to kill the old man.”

“The old man beat him to it.”

We were quiet awhile.

“Keep going,” I finally said. “Savvy must have told Vernon about Bert Saginaw.”

“That's how Margery sees it.” Randall nodded. “Pillow talk. Savvy let it slip that Max's biological father was a rich man running for office. Vernon got dollar signs in his eyes. He'd been playing short cons for decades, and he didn't mind telling his wife he was plumb wore out by the effort. He and Savvy would make their way up to the People's Republic of Massachusetts and separate Mr. Hubert Saginaw from a sizeable piece of money. Then old Vernon would return home to Level Cross, invest in a nice rocking chair, and declare himself a retired country gentleman.”

“And if Savvy refused to go along with the plan,” I said, “Vernon would blow the whistle. He'd sit his son down and tell him what a good lay his fiancée was.”

“And Max, who was just getting a taste of life with a daddy and a gramma, would be the first casualty.”

We were quiet awhile.

“So Savvy
had
to show up on Saginaw's doorstep and make like a gold-digger,” I said. “But it was a front. She was really just trying to keep a leash on old Vernon, trying to spare Blaine and Max.”

“Which would explain why you saw her following Vernon that day.”

I thought. “But why didn't she
tell
me? Why didn't she tell
me
?”

Randall tented his long fingers, looked at them. “Would you have believed her?”

I tried to tell myself the answer was yes.

“No,” I finally said.

He nodded.

I sighed.

“There's a problem,” I said. “All this only makes sense if the blackmail threat was that Savvy would go public about the kid. Which wasn't the threat at all.”

Randall nodded. “Those damn pictures. I spent the plane ride thinking about them.”

“I don't know how Savvy and Blaine came across them,” I said, “or who Saginaw's buddy from the pics is. But I did learn a few things.”

“So you've done something in the last thirty-six hours other than kill a man?”

“It's not funny.”

“It's not. Sorry.”

I told him. About Katy Stoll and the likely High Steppers link between Emily Saginaw and Shep.

I said nothing about Charlene.

I said nothing about how close I'd come to picking up a few hours ago.

When I finished, Randall whistled. Then frowned. Then twiddled his thumbs.

“The way I see it,” he finally said, “you're all done here. Or this close to it. You've figured out Shep snapped the dirty pictures of Saginaw, and you've already done right by Savvy Kane.”

“I knew you'd say that.”

By way of answer, Randall raised his eyebrows.

“I need to figure out exactly how this blackmail worked,” I said. “And exactly who was involved. I'm sick of being jerked around by rich people. I'm sick of hearing bullshit and semi-bullshit and half-truths.”

“Whole lies.”

“Huh?”

“Old Yiddish saying. ‘A half-truth is a whole lie.'”

We were quiet a minute.

I finally said, “Yiddish?”

Randall shrugged.

I'll never figure that kid out.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Woke the next morning with Dale purring on my back.

I felt ready. I felt
clean
. Popped up, deposited Dale in the warm spot. He didn't complain.

One good thing about living in a house full of Brazilians: No matter how early a riser you think you are, you never have to worry about waking people up. Even on Sunday, the kitchen and dining room burbled with Portuguese and knife-and-fork clanks. Maria cranked out ham and eggs as fast as she could, trying to keep up with a half-dozen guys—kids, cousins, cousins' cousins—who were fueling up. Her youngest son, who everybody called Dozen for some reason, helped by washing dishes on the fly. For some, Sunday meant a third job. For some it meant a fourth.

Show me a man who works harder than a Brazilian and I'll show you another Brazilian.

Before I could say no, Maria deposited a plate of ham and eggs and a cup of black coffee on the counter in front of me, kissed me on the cheek to boot. I ate standing up, nodded at Floriano as he made for the sink with dirty dishes.

He nodded back.

Awkward. Tuesday, pre-Savvy Kane, we'd been on the same wavelength, gung-ho about the new shop. Now we were in different places.

“How'd the week end up?” I said.

“Was good,” he said.

“That's good,” I said.

“Yes, good,” he said.

Maria watched all this, her mouth becoming a stern line. She fired a dose of Portuguese at Floriano, nodding in my direction a couple times. His face went red as she spoke. Finally he gestured surrender and leaned next to me on the counter.

“The shop took off like
that
,” he said, snapping his fingers. “Me and Tory talking about another lift in that third bay. Charlene says maybe we should move to a bigger place.
Already
.”

“Wow.” The battle inside me: pride at being part of it, embarrassment at not being a bigger part, resentment that Floriano and Charlene got to talk about expansion without me. “Is this what Maria told you to tell me?”

“What she told me to tell you,” Floriano said, “is … we been friends a long time, Connie. When you finish doing what you're doing, helping your friend, you come back. We'll have a bay for you.”

“Obrigado, amigo,”
I said, whacking his shoulder. Then I winked at Maria, who was doing dishes and pretending not to listen.
“Obrigado, amiga.”

She smiled just a little and nudged Floriano.

“One more thing,” he said.

“Yeah?”

“Maria says if you split up with Charlene, you a big dumb jerk.”

*   *   *

My plan: Start at Saginaw's place, then find Shep. Needed to nail down the connection between Shep and Emily. I was pretty sure it was there—but what did it mean? How deep did it run?

That was the angle Randall had kept picking at the night before, in Floriano's living room. “You're talking as if it's a lead-pipe cinch,” he'd said after we argued awhile, “but I'm not seeing it. Nobody knows AA better than you. Groups turn over all the time, am I right?”

“Sure.”

“So Shep and Emily both spent time at this High Steppers group in Natick. Who knows if they ever talked with each other? Hell, who knows if they even overlapped?”

I shook my head. “Shep's been a High Stepper forever. For him, the group's like the Barnburners are for me.”

“Okay. So stipulated. But still. Coincidence
does
happen, Conway.”

“Are we better off if we call it coincidence?” I said. “Or are we better off if we smell a rat and check it out?”

“Well.”

“Figure out the blackmail, figure out who killed Savvy,” I said. “That's been my motto. Thought the one would lead to the other, but I screwed up. Got the hard part first—it
seemed
like the hard part, anyway—but the blackmail's just sitting there.”