Crooked Little Lies (27 page)

How Lauren hated him, a man she scarcely knew. She imagined slapping him across his fat face. She could feel the sting of his flesh on her palm, the way such an assault would jar her arm, and she relished the sensation. “I don’t understand any of this,” she said. “How did you know to ask me about the rug?”

Cosgrove ignored her question. “Your husband was at your grandparents’ farm last weekend, wasn’t he, along with your sister and Greg Honey?”

“Yes, but I don’t see what that has to do with—”

“Were you there, Mrs. Wilder?” Willis asked.

“No. I told you before—” She paused, trying to remember, if she actually had told them about the headache that had kept her home.

“Told us what?” Cosgrove wanted to know.

“Maybe it was Sheriff Audi I told—I had a headache and didn’t go.”

“You were here alone, then? At home all weekend, after your meeting with Laughlin?”

“It wasn’t a meeting. I told you, I only stopped to see if he needed help.”

“Oh, right.” Willis smiled. “I remember now. She’s the Good Samaritan, isn’t she Jimmy?”

“Why are you here?” Lauren was tired of the game. “If you’re going to arrest me, just do it.”

“We aren’t ready to arrest anyone yet, Mrs. Wilder,” Cosgrove said.

“No,” Willis cut in, “but I’d sure like to know why she thinks she’d be the one. Wouldn’t you, Jimmy?”

Cosgrove didn’t respond, but neither did he take his eyes off Lauren.

She felt the brunt of their gazes, watchful, expectant. As if they were waiting for her to say something incriminating. It was like any number of things she’d seen on TV, on one of the crime shows or the ID channel, and something she had gleaned from watching all those shows warned her not to say more. She cupped her elbows.

Cosgrove scootched a bit to the front of the sofa, and he smiled, but it was window dressing. “When was the last time you talked to your sister?”

Lauren’s heart dipped. “Tara?” It was all she could manage.

“Look,” Willis said, “you need to tell us what you know.”

“Should I get a lawyer?”

“Why?” Willis asked. “Have you done something criminal?”

Had she?
She couldn’t think, couldn’t find air for speech. Her mind felt broken. She felt as if she had been handed a puzzle with dozens of pieces and a set time to work it. The clock was ticking, the task impossible. The silence filled up with the noise in her head.

Cosgrove and Willis kept talking to her, asking the same questions again and yet one more time:
When did you last speak to your husband? Your sister? What did you do the weekend they were at the farm? Where did you go? Did you ever see Greg Honey and Bo Laughlin together? Did you spend time with Greg Honey and Bo Laughlin? Did your husband? Have you or your husband ever used or sold drugs? What about Greg Honey? Ever know him to use or sell drugs?

She answered but only for herself, explaining how she’d become addicted. She told them where she’d bought her illegal Oxy, and it wasn’t from Bo. She didn’t elaborate, and they didn’t ask her to. She felt as if they already knew everything she was telling them.

“Do you own a handgun? Does anyone in your family?”

Lauren stared at Willis. “No. I mean as far as Jeff and Tara are concerned—they don’t have a gun. We don’t like them, as a family.”

“What about Greg Honey? Does he own a handgun?”

“I don’t know. I doubt it. He’s not the type.” She stopped to consider.
But no.
She had no right, no responsibility to tell the police, of all people, the thing Greg had discussed in confidence at a 12-step meeting. His legal history would be a matter of record anyway. Let the cops find it out on their own. She would bet money they already had.

“What do you know about this?” Willis opened the folder again, taking out a set of papers, stapled at the top.

Lauren didn’t need a closer look to see that it was the asbestos-notification form, what looked like a copy, but she took it from him, flipping to the last page to find that her signature and that of the notary, Elizabeth McQueen, was still there. She looked at it more closely this time. And what she saw stopped her breath. She locked eyes with Willis.
I don’t know anything about this.
That’s what she wanted to say. She could imagine his sneer if she did. “Is this a crime-scene photo, too?” Her sarcasm tasted flat.

Not even Willis was amused. “Is that your signature?”

She studied it again. “It is, but something about it isn’t—”

“Isn’t—?” Cosgrove prompted.

“It looks like my handwriting, but I don’t think it is.”

Willis snorted and slapped his knee.

“Are you saying it’s forged?”

Lauren met Cosgrove’s glance. “Exactly what are
you
saying, Detective? What does this form have to do with drugs or Bo or the rug you found him wrapped in?”

“What would you say if I were to tell you that there’s little to no asbestos in the Waller-Land building, yet your company, Wilder and Tate, collected some two hundred thousand dollars in cash from Mr. Kaiser for its removal, just this morning, in fact.”

“I don’t believe you.” She didn’t really know what she believed, did she?

“Really? You signed the permit. That’s your signature.”

“I don’t know that it is,” Lauren said, and she wondered how she managed to speak, her mouth was so dry. She wondered if Jeff had asked for another survey, a second opinion. It wasn’t unheard of. She should remember. God, how she hated this, the way her mind dragged.
Pick up, pick up . . .

“Are you familiar with Cornerstone Bank? Isn’t it true you have an account there?”

She looked at Willis. “Yes. I mean, I’ve never been there, but—”

“So you don’t have an account there? Which is it, Mrs. Wilder?” Willis was smiling now.

Cosgrove said, “When we visited the bank earlier and talked to Paul Thibideaux—he’s an old college buddy of your husband’s, isn’t he?—anyway, he’s the vice president there at Cornerstone now, and he told us Jeff made a deposit today into your account, an amount that almost exactly matches the sum that was collected from Mr. Kaiser under the table, so to speak, to take away the phantom asbestos along with the rest of his building.”

“Are you saying that Jeff collected money from Mr. Kaiser for work that doesn’t need doing?”

“I think that’s about right.” Cosgrove kept his glance level.

“In other words, Mrs. Wilder, the whole thing with the asbestos was a scam.”

Lauren looked at Willis. “That’s ridiculous. I don’t know where you get your information—”

“You signed the form that indicates you were acting as the property owner’s—that would be Mr. Kaiser—acting as his agent. Its existence is a matter of record, most notably Ms. McQueen’s, the notary’s, record. In addition, she made copies, one of which you’re holding.”

Willis waited.

Lauren said nothing.

“Come on, Mrs. Wilder. You signed the thing. Don’t play dumb now. You must have known.”

“I didn’t.” Lauren knew how it sounded.

“The money was deposited into your account.” It was Cosgrove’s turn to intimidate her.

“The joint account—” Lauren began.

“No,” Cosgrove said. “It’s only in your name. Mr. Thibideaux verified that. Your husband can sign checks and make deposits, that sort of thing, but his position is secondary, per your request.”

Lauren touched her temples. “None of this makes any sense.”

“Let me ask you this.” Cosgrove inched forward, bracing his elbows on his knees. “Do you know anyone by the name of Wick Matson?”

“Wick? He’s a heavy-equipment contractor we—well, Jeff—”

“When was the last time you saw him or spoke to him?”

“I don’t know. Jeff had lunch with him last Tuesday.”

“You didn’t eat with them?” Willis asked.

“No.” She remembered Jeff’s dark mood when he’d come back that day, the same day she’d had car trouble. He’d gone into his office and closed the door, shutting her out. “What is going on? I don’t understand.” A sensation of hysteria rose quickly from the floor of her stomach; she felt it loosening her grip, the hold she had on her self-control. She thought when Cosgrove and Willis stood up, they were going to dangle a set of handcuffs in her face and place her under arrest.

But they didn’t.

They turned to go.

Lauren escorted them to the front door and saw them through it.

When Cosgrove paused outside on the porch, so did her heart, but he only told her she should let them know if she heard from Greg Honey.

Willis spoke up. “Also, you’d be wise not to leave town, Mrs. Wilder,” he said, and he saluted.

As soon as she shut the door, Lauren went into the kitchen, picked up her cell phone, and dialed Jeff’s number. It went straight to voice mail. She tried again with the same result. “Where are you?” she asked after the beep. Clicking off, she put her fingertips over her ears and dragged them back through her hair. “What is happening?” she whispered.

It was when she picked up her phone again, intending to call Tara, that she noticed she had a text message from her and one from Jeff. She read Jeff’s first:
Ran into some trbl w/Kaiser. Call u when I can. Love you.

Liar,
Lauren thought.

Tara’s note read:
K at A’s. No problem. Talk tomorrow.

Lauren stared at the tiny screen a moment, and then she typed a response to Tara’s message:
The police were here. I’m coming over—now!
and in answer to Jeff’s text, she wrote:
Cops were here. I know about trbl. We need to talk! I’ll be at Tara’s
, and it was hard to see clearly enough to type through the haze of her fear-fueled fury. But she was glad for the anger, for how it burned through her panic and cleared her mind.

26

S
he had her keys and her cell phone in hand, ready to walk out the door, when Tara texted back:
Police???!!! Why? What did they want? Where is Jeff? Do you know? He’s not answ’ing his phone. OMG!
And something about the message, beyond the words and their import, jolted Lauren beyond anything that had gone before. It took every ounce of her will to go from the house to the car, and even as she walked, she could feel the world, the one that was known to her and beloved, the one she had sought to recover, crumbling once more beneath her feet.

She went by Wilder and Tate first, praying to find Jeff’s truck there, but the parking lot was empty, the warehouse locked up tight. She thought of driving out to the Waller-Land building and decided it made better sense to go to Tara’s first. Driving there, her head felt hollow and her pulse ticked, a clock marking time.

Could she be hallucinating?

If only she were dreaming, it would be such a relief, like running warm water over her hands when they were chilled.

As if she’d been watching, Tara opened the back door before Lauren reached it. Her hands flew to her mouth, and the sound, what began as an awful sob—of grief, of outright terror—these were plain on her face—was stifled, and all that came out was a small cry.

“TeeRee, my God! What is it?” Lauren stepped over the threshold, gathering her sister into her arms, rocking her. And it wasn’t that she forgot the hostility that strung itself as tightly as barbed wire between them. It was simply that love, the habit of caring, of soothing, was stronger just then and acted like a buffer.

It had been the same when, the year after their parents died, Tara, who had been all of seventeen, had come home and confessed to Lauren she was pregnant. Lauren’s mouth had fallen open. She couldn’t have been more shocked if Tara had taken a shovel and struck her with it across her forehead.

“We haven’t even talked about sex,” she had said.

“Well, you don’t have to talk about it to do it,” Tara said.

“How far along?” Lauren asked, but to herself she was thinking,
My God
and
What now?
and
How could you be so stupid?
Whether she meant herself for not realizing it might happen or Tara for letting it happen, she wasn’t sure.

“Maybe six weeks,” Tara answered, and then she began to cry, and Lauren reached for her. It was what their mother would have done, offered comfort first, a lecture later.

In the same way she had then, Lauren waited now for Tara’s breath to settle before releasing her, and they went into the kitchen. Tara found a tissue, and Lauren switched on the small lamp Tara kept on the countertop.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t keep the kids. I just wasn’t up for it,” Tara said.

“They’re fine for now. It didn’t seem wise to have them here anyway.”

“Jeff won’t pick up when I call. Do you know where he is? Will you call him?”

“Why? What is going on? The police are looking for him and Greg. You wouldn’t believe the things they told me and the questions they asked. It’s like they think I’m guilty of—They have a photo of the rug, Tee, the one from Grandma’s house. They said Bo’s body was found wrapped in it.” Lauren paused, giving Tara time to speak, and when she didn’t, Lauren said her name, “Tara? Come on! You’re scaring me.”

She blew her nose and splashed water on her face. “Let’s make hot chocolate with Baileys, okay? And sit down.”

“No—”

“Trust me,” Tara said. “You’re going to need it.”

“Okay, but no Baileys for me.” Lauren knew Tara was buying time, but she went along. She didn’t know how they managed it, measuring the hot-cocoa mix and water, her hands and Tara’s were shaking so badly.

They sat in the breakfast nook.

Tara opened two sugar packets, adding them to her cup as if the chocolate needed sweetening. She stirred her spoon round and round until Lauren thought she might scream, and darting out her hand, she clamped her fingers around Tara’s wrist.

And that’s when Tara said it, said, “Oh, my God, Lauren, we shot Bo. It was Greg or Jeff—one of them killed him.”

27

L
auren stared at Tara. In her mind, she tried to find a way around it, the meaning of the words. Her brain had put them in the wrong order, or it had heard wrong altogether, as it was inclined to do nowadays.

Tears welled in Tara’s eyes. “It was an accident. You have to believe that, okay? They didn’t mean to shoot him, but you know, you can’t see the road from behind the barn. They thought it was safe.”

“Who? Who thought what was safe?” Lauren still wasn’t buying it; there must be a way to hear that this had nothing to do with her or her family. She watched Tara’s mouth. The tears that collected and pooled in the corners, dripped from her chin. They speckled the backs of her hands.

“Jeff and Greg found the gun. Grandpa’s gun? Do you remember it? Jeff said it was a Colt .45. Vintage. Probably worth something.”

“Vaguely,” Lauren answered. He’d kept it in a box in the old Hoosier cabinet in the barn. Lauren remembered Jeff talking about the Hoosier when he’d called her on Saturday morning, the morning she’d been so worried he knew about the Oxy she’d found in the study. He’d said he’d been sorting through the tools inside the cabinet. He hadn’t mentioned finding a gun.

“They wanted to shoot it. I thought it was a stupid idea.” Tara wiped her face, raked back her hair, and her gestures seemed rough and hurtful. She asked if Lauren remembered the way the land behind the barn sloped to the road. “There are those limestone ledges there,” she said. “That’s where they set up their targets, old glass jars and cans. I was in the kitchen, opening a bottle of wine. I made a tray with cheese and crackers. I thought if I took that and the wine to them, they’d quit.”

Tara left her chair and went to the kitchen window to look out. At what, Lauren didn’t know. The only thing visible was Tara’s own reflection, a near white, almost featureless oval, floating in a rectangle of glass as gleaming and black as oil.

“I was too late,” she said. “Bo was down there dying even before I got the tray out the door. Jeff and Greg might not have even known he was there if I hadn’t joined them. I’m the one who heard him. A whimpering sound. I thought it was an injured animal.”

“But how, TeeRee? How did they not see?”

“You don’t remember how thick the brush is along there? Even in daylight, it’s almost impossible to see the road. And it was getting dark. The light was almost gone.”

They shared a silence.

Lauren broke it. “Which one of them—?”

“I don’t know. They were both firing the gun.”

“Bo was whimpering, you said, so he was alive when you got to him?”

“I almost didn’t pay attention. For a moment, I thought it was only the wind, but then I heard him say
please help me, please help me
. It was awful.” Tara turned from the window. Tears welled in her eyes again; she brushed them away. “I went down the slope as fast as I could and found him. There was already blood under him, so much blood. I never saw—”

“Did anyone call 911? Did you go for help?” Lauren asked, even though she knew that if they had, she wouldn’t be sitting here listening to a horror story.

“We couldn’t get a signal, and then—then Jeff and Greg—they both—” Tara sat down and closing her eyes, rocked herself.

She needed a tissue, but Lauren couldn’t move.

“I don’t want to tell you the rest,” Tara said. “I don’t know how.”

“You left him there. Is that it? The three of you left Bo there to die?”

“No! I tried CPR, but Jeff said I was making him bleed worse. We kept trying to get a signal, Greg and I did. I told Bo to hang on, but he couldn’t—” Tara’s voice broke on a little sob. Her throat worked when she swallowed.

“How have you kept this to yourself?” Lauren asked softly.

“It was Jeff, and I’m not just saying that. I know I’m not his biggest fan, but the way he acted—he was just manic and crazy, shouting at us that we weren’t going to involve the police, and if I chose to, I’d be sorry.”

“He threatened you?”

“More like guilted me. He said I should consider you and the kids, how if what happened got out and he went to jail, it would destroy your lives, and did I want that on my conscience.”

“That doesn’t sound like him, Tee.”

“I know. He can be an asshole—sorry.” Tara made a face. “He thinks you’re still so fragile. He was in superprotective mode, I guess. It was weird and horrible, the whole thing—”

“It was an accident, though!” Lauren bent forward, disbelieving, adamant. “Hiding it only made it worse. Jeff—all of you—should have known better!”

“I did everything I could, Lauren.”

Tara’s voice, her wild-eyed gaze, were feverish, hectic, but Lauren was in no frame of mind to soothe her.

“What about Greg?” she said. “Did he go along with covering it up, too?”

“Yes, but at least he had a—an excuse, I guess you could call it.”

“Because he killed another man.” Lauren didn’t think twice about giving away Greg’s secret, the one she’d harbored since hearing him confess it during the 12-step meeting last summer. Confidentiality no longer seemed an issue.

“You knew?”

“I’ve been worried about you ever since I found out, but everything we say in meetings is supposed to stay in meetings.”

“He said going to prison was his wake-up call, his come-to-Jesus, what made him get off heroin. He was in there five years for manslaughter.”

“Did he tell you how it happened, that he was high on heroin when this guy tried to rob him, and he shot him? He said he could have walked away, but he didn’t.”

“You can tell he feels sick about it, though. He told us prison was hell, that he’d rather blow out his brains than go back.” Tara locked Lauren’s gaze. “He put the gun to his head.”

“For all you know, he was high when he did that.”

“No, I don’t think—”

“He’s slipped up before, TeeRee. Twice in three years that I know of. He was partners with some guy—another dealer that Annie, Bo’s sister, dated. Leighton something. The police are looking for both of them.”

“Greg took off as soon as he and Jeff—once they took away the body. I don’t know where he went.”

“That’s the part I can’t believe!” Lauren got up and, needing distance, went to stand behind her chair. “How could you roll Bo’s body up in our grandma’s beautiful rug?”

“It wasn’t me!”

“But you let them.” Lauren’s voice was shrill. Rounding her chair, she sat down again.

“I couldn’t stop them. If you’d been there—”

“You have to go to the police.”

“No!” Tara’s head popped up from her hands. “You can’t, either. I wouldn’t have told you if I’d thought—”

“Tara! For God’s sake, a man—Bo Laughlin—is dead; his family is sick with worry. You can’t let this go on. I can’t believe you agreed to cover it up in the first place.”

“I told you I didn’t agree, and anyway, how can you of all people preach to me?”

“Really? That’s how you want to play it?” Lauren took her cup to the sink, rinsed it, and shut off the tap, hard; then picking up a hand towel, she turned to Tara. “Fine. We’ll do it your way. So you can consider this
your
intervention, all right? The one where I say you either go to the police or I will. Hmm? The way you said to me at my intervention that I could either get help or you—you and Jeff—would see to it for me. Remember? You threatened to take my children if I didn’t do as I was told.”

Tara didn’t answer, but Lauren didn’t really give her the chance. Things, details were coming together in her mind. She was angry now. It was difficult to be articulate, yet she tried to put words to what was only half-formed sense. “This whole entire week—” she began, stopped and started again. “The things I’ve been thinking, blaming myself for—scaring myself over—my God, I even thought I might have done something to Bo myself.”

“I’m not following.”

“Jeff went along when I thought I had brought the notepad into the house. How could he do that?” Lauren folded the towel in half, running her fingers along the crease. She ought to feel relieved, she guessed, to know beyond doubt that she’d had no part in Bo’s death, but she didn’t.

“What notepad?”

Lauren looked at Tara. “You lied to me last night. You weren’t hiding Greg, but you knew. You knew what happened, that Bo was dead and how.”

“I didn’t want you involved. You’ve been through so much.”

“You didn’t want me involved? Are you kidding? We’re family, Tara—you, me, Jeff, the children—” Lauren’s voice, her mind faltered at the thought of them, Drew and Kenzie: What would she tell them?

“I’m sorry. I just—I don’t know what I—”

“How am I supposed to trust you now?”

“I guess the same way I trust you even though you lied and lied to me when you were drugging yourself.”

Lauren tossed aside the towel. “I thought Greg was back on heroin and that’s why you were acting so weird. I thought he killed Bo in some drug deal and you were hiding him, and I was scared to death for you and for Drew when he was here. Then I thought maybe you had cancer or something. You knew I was worried sick about you, and all the time, you were covering up this—this terrible—”

Was it real? Did it happen the way Tara said? Did Greg and Jeff really—dear God, how would she tell Annie?

“Do you think I’ve slept since then? Or eaten or been able to work this entire week?”

“Do you think Annie or Bo’s dad has slept or eaten?”

The silence banged down hard, a judge’s gavel, an indictment. Then, abruptly, Lauren laughed, and the sound was ugly, truncated. “I planned to ask you to help me do a fund-raiser for Bo. Can you imagine? The only reason I didn’t mention it is because you were sick.”

Tara turned her mug in circles.

Lauren leaned, stiff-armed, on the counter. “No wonder Jeff didn’t want me volunteering. God, what a fool I’ve been.” She was remembering yesterday, at the hospital, when he’d blamed her involvement with Annie’s family for the neglect of Lauren’s own.

Some fucking stranger.

That was how he’d referred to Bo. And he’d known Bo was dead and where Bo’s body was, the body he’d dumped on that no-name ranch road. It was monstrous, despicable. And then his act, that holier-than-thou performance at Kenzie’s bedside—his perfect-father routine—

I’m working my ass off . . . trying to keep us together
. . .

What is going on with you?
He had asked her at the hospital. Asked her in a way that made her feel she was the ruination of
him
.

When he had killed Bo and covered it up. He had let her be targeted by the police.

Tara stepped toward her.

Lauren thrust up her hand, palm out. “You have to make this right,” she said. “You and Jeff and Greg have to go to the police.”

“Well, last I looked, I’m the only one still here.”

Lauren sat at the table and put her head in her hands, fighting for composure, for clear-mindedness. It did no good to wonder how her sister and her husband and a man she thought of as her friend could, in so short a time, have become criminals who were wanted by the law. She looked at Tara. “Even if we can’t find them, you still have to go to the police. Bo’s family needs to know what happened to him. You can understand that, can’t you? If you don’t, I mean it, Tara, I will.”

“You would turn me in, your own sister, but you wouldn’t tell me Greg was a murderer?”

“The two things are not the same. There’s no question now of violating anyone’s right to keep their past mistakes private. I think the police know already. Maybe not all of it but something. They have the photo of the rug. They went by the warehouse, looking for Jeff. It’s only a matter of time until they put it together.”

“I didn’t even hold the gun, much less shoot it. I don’t know where they tossed it or where they took the body.” Tara averted her face, jaw trembling. “I couldn’t stop them—couldn’t save him.” She looked back at Lauren, and her eyes were fierce. “I tried! I tried to make his heart beat, make him breathe, but he—he—” She clapped her hands over her mouth.

“I’ll go with you, TeeRee.”

She didn’t answer.

“Can’t you see that you will never have peace unless you make this right? It doesn’t matter what Jeff or Greg do.
You
can’t live with this. I know, because I know you and how you’re made. This will end up breaking you.”

“I’m afraid, Sissy.”

Sissy.
When had Tara last called her that? After their parents died, Lauren thought, when she’d been so young and lost, and Lauren’s sense of Tara then, the memory of her grief, her vulnerability was so visceral and real that Lauren couldn’t stop herself from going to Tara and gathering her little sister in her arms. “We’ll get through this together,” she said. “I’ll be right here beside you every step of the way.” It was the same comfort she had offered Tara all those years ago, during the long and terrible nights when, except for Margaret, they had been so alone in the world.

They were in the Navigator, leaving Tara’s house for the sheriff’s office when the unmarked brown sedan pulled across the driveway, blocking their exit. Tara turned around, and Lauren watched in the rearview mirror as the detectives, Cosgrove and Willis, got out of opposite doors. Both men seemed to be waiting. Within a few moments, another car, a patrol car with its siren off and its lights flashing, came down the street, and in its wake, a second squad car appeared. Without the warning shriek of sirens, their approach seemed covert, even lethal.

Within moments, four uniformed deputies had joined the detectives. A low sound of voices ensued, accompanied by a minimum of hand gestures. Sidelong glances were directed toward the Navigator. One deputy had braced his hand on the butt of his gun.

Panic sat in Lauren’s gut, as hard and cold as stone.

“Oh, God.” Tara let her head fall against the seatback.

Lauren took her hand. She couldn’t bring herself to say it would be all right. That was Jeff’s line, and it had turned out to be a lie.