Crooked Little Lies (24 page)

It was almost dark when she pulled into her driveway. The only light came from the fixture mounted high on the garage, illuminating Drew’s basketball hoop, the apron of scuffed concrete in front of it. Lauren sat for a moment, listening to the engine tick as it cooled. Her hip ached, and she felt leaden with exhaustion. Curling her fingers over the steering wheel, she bent her head to her knuckled grip. Her eyes burned when she closed them. She thought of Annie.

What might have happened by now? Lauren found her phone, but her call went straight to Annie’s voice mail. Lauren didn’t leave a message.

She went into the house, flipping on the light in the mudroom, dropping her keys and purse on the chest, and when her purse tipped off the edge and fell to the floor, she left it there, intent on reaching the study. But even as she hunted through the litter on the desk and searched the drawers and the credenza and the contents of the wastebasket, she knew she wouldn’t find the permits or the contract, and she didn’t. Because Jeff was wrong. They were exactly where she had said, in a folder, in his briefcase.

She felt some measure of satisfaction, returning to the kitchen, and she thought of calling him, but something held her back. He would find them on his own if she waited, and no words from her would be necessary. He’d apologize. He never had trouble saying he was sorry. And in the end, she had more to be sorry for than he ever would.

Near ten o’clock, Lauren tried eating a bowl of Drew’s cereal, the Honey Nut Cheerios he loved, but after a few bites she poured what was left down the drain. She called the hospital, and when she told the nurse she was Mackenzie Wilder’s mother and that she was calling to check on her daughter, the nurse reported, briskly, that Kenzie was fine, that her
father
was taking wonderful care of her. It was the nurse’s emphasis on the single word
father
that defined for Lauren, in a way no torrent of words could, her every parental failure and shortcoming. What decent mother, one who professes to care deeply for her children the way Lauren did, forgets her own daughter, even for a moment?

Lauren set the landline receiver back on the base, and because she couldn’t rest, she paced through the house, twitching the drapes closed in the great room, pausing to glance again into the study. She went upstairs and looked into the children’s rooms. Kenzie’s room was tidy, but the floor in Drew’s room was strewn with his belongings. Lauren began gathering his dirty clothes, something she ordinarily didn’t do. She tossed socks and jeans, a pair of baggy shorts and a couple of T-shirts into the laundry basket. She held up a short-sleeve shirt by its collar, not recognizing it. It was soft, some kind of faux-silk blend; the pattern was a tropical wash of greens and blues, not Drew’s usual low-key style. She thought he must have bought it the last time they’d gone to the mall. She remembered he’d asked if he could take off on his own, meet her and Kenzie later. It occurred to her that he was taking longer to dress before school, too, and recently hadn’t Jeff told her he’d caught Drew shaving?

Lauren sat on the edge of Drew’s bed, sliding her palm over the shirt. She had no memory of him wearing it, but he must have. His scent rose out of the folds, a mix of Jeff’s purloined aftershave, overtones of growing boy, minty chewing gum, the faint tang of sun and sweat. Her son needed her, but she wasn’t there for him. If, on any given day recently, he had gone missing like Bo Laughlin, she doubted she would have been able to tell the police what he’d been wearing. She hadn’t been paying attention.

There’s this girl Drew likes? But her folks won’t let her go near him because of you.
Kenzie’s accusation drifted into Lauren’s brain and hung there like smoke.

Lauren embarrassed her, Kenzie had said; Lauren made her and Drew sick.

Shame bent her over her knees, and then with its pulse hammering her temples, it sent her back downstairs to the bedroom she and Jeff shared. Crossing to the bathroom, she paused outside the door. She had avoided it until now, afraid she would find that more Oxy had appeared there. Afraid if it had, she would take it, down it like the elixir of hope, of deliverance and redemption it had become to her in the aftermath of the accident.

Margaret had insisted then that Lauren was brave. And months later, when the family confronted Lauren about the Oxy, Margaret was there, too, but while the rest of them—Jeff, Tara, Kenzie, and Drew—went on and on about how badly Lauren had wrecked their lives, Margaret stayed in the background. Only after the family left Lauren alone to consider their ultimatum,
Get help, or we’ll take the children
, did Margaret come forward, and again holding Lauren close, she’d whispered, “You’ll get through this.”

“How?” Lauren asked. “My family hates me.”

“No, they’re afraid for you. You’ve always been the strong one.”

“Not since I fell. I hurt, and my brain doesn’t work right, and I’m scared it never will again, scared all the time.”

“You raised Tara, for heaven’s sake. You ran your mother and father’s business. You were barely twenty. Do you remember?”

It was true. After her parents died, Lauren had done those things. But this was different, she told Margaret. “I can’t fight the pain alone anymore. I’m too tired.”

“You aren’t alone, sweet. I’m here, and I’ll be here to remind you every day, every hour if need be, of just how brave you are. All right?”

But it wasn’t all right, because Margaret wasn’t here. She had died of leukemia a few short weeks after Lauren’s intervention. Lauren hadn’t even known she was sick. At Margaret’s funeral, one of her sons had said she hadn’t wanted to worry Lauren. She had believed she would beat the disease anyway.

Lauren stood motionless in the bathroom doorway now, remembering.

So much for faith, for bravery and blind courage.

It was after midnight before she could make herself cross the threshold and enter the bathroom, and she was marginally relieved when she saw nothing incriminating or alarming there, not until she went into her closet and found the documents. The permits and contract for the Waller-Land job were on a shelf, slotted between a couple of her handbags, as if she’d tucked them there while hunting something to wear. Or maybe she had thought she would change purses? She picked up the papers, leafing through them, hands shaking, frowning, trying to remember. Three pages stapled together that she didn’t immediately recognize turned out to be an asbestos-notification form. Lauren carried the folder out of her closet and sat down on the edge of the Jacuzzi. Jeff had mentioned finding asbestos in the building. It meant the bid would have to be renegotiated, if it hadn’t been already. The presence of hazardous waste would add a substantial amount to their fee. Precautions would have to be taken; a proper means of disposal would need to be arranged. There were transportation issues. All of it was government regulated and subject to enforcement by law. It was a huge headache. Lauren knew this, but she didn’t remember this paperwork or any discussion about it. Yet flipping to the last page, she saw that she had signed the form along with a notary, someone named Elizabeth McQueen at Cornerstone Bank.

Lauren felt as if she were drowning. A sound raked her backbone, her ribs, something like a howl of confusion, protest. She clenched her jaw against it.

From a distance, she heard the tinny sound of her cell phone ringing, and she thought of not answering. But what if it was Jeff, calling to tell her Kenzie had taken a turn for the worse? Or Tara, calling to say something terrible had happened to Drew?

But it wasn’t either of them.

Instead, it was Annie Beauchamp.

“Lauren,” she said in a small, quavering voice, “we found Bo.”

20

N
o one had to tell Annie it was over. She knew even before JT texted her.
Come back to town
, his message read. He hadn’t wanted her joining a search team in Cedar Cliff in the first place, but she had said it was either that or she’d go look for Bo alone. “You’re as hardheaded as your mama was,” JT had muttered. He’d gone with a different team, some guys Sheriff Neely knew who had dogs. Annie went with a group led by the sheriff.

It was before dawn and still dark enough that they were using flashlights to walk a heavily wooded area around ten miles north of Charlotte Meany’s house when Annie felt something go through her, a sensation of dread that was physical, like an electrical charge. It was sharp enough to stop her in her tracks and make her look around. The other team members were huddled in a knot, all looking back at her. Then her cell phone beeped with JT’s message, and reading it, she knew.

Sheriff Neely drove her back to Cedar Cliff in his patrol car. She was sure he had all the details, but he didn’t say much. None of the search-team members did. She doubted they wanted the responsibility of giving her the terrible news. Or maybe JT had asked them not to.

There were a half dozen or more people standing around the sheriff’s office when she arrived, but Annie had eyes only for JT. She knew the worst of it from his face, the ruin of his expression. She went to him, and his arms came around her. She pressed her face against him, smelling him, the bitter tang of his grief, the heavier musk of exhaustion and surrender that rose through the layers of his clothing, his flannel shirt and nylon jacket. She felt him rest his chin on the top of her head.

“Somebody murdered him, Annie.”

She froze on hearing the reality framed in words. Her breath stopped. Even her heart paused.

“They shot him and tossed him alongside an old ranch road like he was nothing. Yesterday’s trash.”

“No.” She shook her head against JT’s chest.

He tightened his embrace. “He was rolled up in an old rug. That’s the part I don’t get. Who would do that? Take the rug right off their floor?”

“Can we see him? Where is he now?” Annie backed out of JT’s embrace.

“Folks?” Sheriff Neely was there at her elbow. “Why don’t we go into my office?” He asked Darlene to bring them coffee.

“How about a sandwich?” she said.

But JT shook his head. So did Annie. Her brain felt swimmy. She wondered if she was dreaming and resisted an urge to see if her feet were touching the floor. Her throat ached. She put her hand there briefly, then lowering it, she was surprised to feel something wet and cold nuzzle the cup of her palm. She looked down into Rufus’s warm brown eyes. Somehow the sight of him comforted her. She kept her hand on his head, and searching the room, found Cooper standing near the building’s entrance, hands in his jean pockets, watching her. Against her will, her heart leapt. He seemed to be asking for permission to approach, and even as a voice in her head said no, she nodded.

“I’m so, so sorry, Annie.” He waited to speak until he was close enough to her that she could feel his breath on her face. Something inside her, some internal resolve, began to loosen.

Tears brimmed her eyes.

He thumbed them away and gathered her into his arms. And she let him. It was his kindness, his unremitting strength that was her final undoing. Her tears flowed, and she seemed incapable of making any effort to restrain them. They scalded her cheeks, soaking his shirt. She was aware of him murmuring softly to her, but if there were any words, she couldn’t pick them out. Her ear against his chest caught the vibration of his voice, the sure and steady rhythm of his heartbeat, and the sounds soothed her. Gradually her tears abated, and she straightened, feeling shaky and self-conscious. But the undertow of her grief hadn’t dissolved. She took the tissue Cooper produced from somewhere and wiped her face.

Rufus came and sat beside her, and she patted his ears absently, grateful for the weight of his warmth when he leaned against her leg. She looked at Cooper. “How did you know?”

“Sheriff Audi. JT called him after he heard from you yesterday. I was with the team that found Bo.”

“You were? When did you come here? I didn’t see you.”

“I didn’t want to bother you.”

Because of the last time they’d spoken, Annie thought. At the café, after the trip to the morgue, when she’d told him he didn’t know anything about her life or Bo’s. She’d been rude—out of pride, out of the need to protect herself.

Someday you’re going to have to trust somebody again, or you’ll always be alone.
Cooper’s prediction from that day passed through her mind. She caught his gaze. “Were you the one . . .”
who found Bo?
She didn’t say the words, but Cooper didn’t need them.

“No,” he said. “One of the deputies, Roger something. He’s standing over there.” He pointed out a man in uniform, talking to Darlene. “I was in the vicinity, though, close enough that I heard him call out that he had something.”

“Where?”

“Around twenty miles or so northwest of here. We were pretty far off the highway, on a ranch road, I think. Something private like that. Hard to tell in the dark, you know?”

“What would Bo have been doing there?”

“You need to speak with Sheriff Neely.” Cooper nodded in the direction of the sheriff’s office.

Following his gaze, Annie saw that JT was already there, sitting in one of the straight-backed chairs in front of Sheriff Neely’s desk, the same one Lauren had sat in yesterday. The chair Annie had sat in was empty, waiting for her.

Cooper took her elbow as if he meant to guide her there, but she said, “No, I can’t do this now,” and leaving him, she walked rapidly across the room and out of the building, and once outside, she bent at the waist, gulping the chilly new-morning air, drawing it into her lungs breath by breath as if she were starving for oxygen. Gradually, the tight bands that circled her chest eased, and she straightened, but she wasn’t free of it. The nightmare, the god-awful thing that had happened to Bo, that thing that involved the word
murder
.

She sat on a bench, and pulling her cell phone from her pocket, she called Lauren’s number, not pausing to think of the hour. When Lauren answered, Annie said her name, “Lauren?” and then “We found Bo.”

“Oh.” The syllable slipped out on an audible puff of air.

“He’s dead,” Annie said. “Someone shot him.”

“What? No!” Lauren protested.

A silence fell that lasted several moments, fanning out between them, as useless as a bird’s broken wing.

“Oh, Annie.” Lauren finally broke it. “I’m so sorry. Where are you? I’ll come. You shouldn’t be alone.”

Annie closed her eyes, thinking how her mother would have said the same thing. Thinking of how much Lauren reminded her of her mother. But maybe she only imagined the resemblance. Maybe she wanted her mother so badly she was willing to forget her doubts about Lauren, her sense that for all her seeming kindness and compassion, she was unstable.

Annie said she wasn’t alone, that JT was with her. She didn’t mention Cooper. “I’m still in Cedar Cliff at the sheriff’s office,” she said, and then stopped before she could say she’d run out of the building, run out on Cooper and JT, because she was a wimp, a fraidycat, too scared to hear the details. She wasn’t aware of the pause until Lauren broke it.

“Annie? Do the police know who did it?”

Annie realized she hadn’t even thought about who the murderer was. “He was wrapped in a rug and left beside the road like trash,” she repeated what JT had said. “They think he was killed somewhere else, that whoever did it was trying to cover it up.”

“But why? Who would do such a thing?”

Annie explained about Leighton, how she hadn’t known he was a drug dealer until Bo showed her the proof. She described her shock. “I never saw so much money, except maybe in a bank vault.”

“What happened?” Lauren asked.

“Leighton found out, and he threatened—what if he did this?” Annie bent sharply over her knees.

“Annie, Annie, no. Don’t get ahead of yourself. Okay? Would Bo have—would he have had a reason to be with a guy who was dealing drugs?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he thought he needed more money than he had to go to California. Bo would have been desperate to go there; he’d have done anything.”

“But what are you saying? That he sold drugs and that’s where the cash he had came from?”

“Nothing’s for sure. Detective Cosgrove did say they can’t find Leighton or this other guy who’s a drug dealer, too. Leighton’s partner, I guess, Greg Honey. Evidently Bo knows—knew both of them. I should go—”

“Greg Honey? Bo knew Greg?”

There was something in Lauren’s voice, an underscore of alarm that made Annie say, “Do you know him?”

The silence lasted a beat too long.

Annie straightened. “Lauren?”

“I have to go. I’m so sorry.” She spoke in a rush. “Take—take care, okay?” A moment passed, brittle with regret, or so it seemed. “God, I’m so sorry.” Lauren said it again, and this time, it sounded like a prayer.