Lies That Bind (16 page)

“You look good, Jo,” he said. “Feeling good?” he asked, looking over the tray to pick the one he wanted. Marble with chocolate icing was the winner.

“Feel great,” she said. “Missing some of my less honorable pursuits,” she said, holding two fingers up to her lips and pretending to inhale, “but there’s time for that after the baby’s born.” She exited the kitchen and went back to the front of the store.

“What brings you here?” Maeve asked as she organized the mess on her little desk in the corner.

“Well, first, a question, and then some bad news.”

“Bad news?” she said, her mind going to his search for death certificates.

He shook his head, reading her mind. “No. Not that. I haven’t found anything.”

She exhaled. “Good. Then ask the question.”

“What are you doing for Christmas?” Cal asked, breaking off a huge piece of cupcake and shoving it in his mouth. There were more where that one came from and he wasn’t averse to having two or three at a time. Maeve recollected that his record was six, unbroken by anyone she knew.

She thought about it. The girls were set to spend the day with him after opening presents at her house; a bottle of crisp Sancerre and a plate of cheese followed by a viewing of
Love, Actually
was likely on her menu for the day. She didn’t tell him—it didn’t need to be said—that she’d be alone. That was a given. “Oh, you know. Catching up on television. Relaxing. Sleeping.”

“Would you come to dinner? At my house?” he asked, giving the plate of cupcakes his undivided attention, all the better to hide his discomfort in articulating a really unusual plan. “We’re having filet and some kind of potato that Gabriela swears is an old family recipe and that she knows how to make by heart.” He chuckled. “Being as I’ve never seen her cook anything, I’m getting a backup tray of potatoes from Leonardo’s,” he said, referencing an Italian deli a few towns over.

“It won’t be awkward?” she asked.

“It will be totally awkward,” he said, smiling, “but I’d, well, we’d, love it if you were there.”

She wasn’t so sure about the “we” part of loving the plan, but she accepted it. She thought about it. If she went, she’d be with the girls. She wouldn’t be alone. Maybe she wouldn’t think about Jack, about Evelyn. About just how alone she really was.

“I accept,” she said.

“You do?” Cal asked, surprised.

“I do,” she said. “Just tell me what you want for dessert and I’ll bring it.”

“Cupcakes,” he said, biting into his second. “Lemon bars. A pecan pie.”

“Anything else?” she asked.

“Nothing,” he said. “Nothing at all.” He finished his cupcake while she washed some dishes in the sink. “This is going to be great.”

“And the bad news?” she asked.

He grimaced. “The insurance check has been cashed so we can’t put a stop on it.”

Her mind went back to Tommy Brantley’s visit to her house.

“Are you locking your doors?” Cal asked, bringing up a topic that had been a sore subject when they were married. She never locked the doors, her memory of sitting in the rain in the backyard always in the back of her mind. Her kids would be able to let themselves in always, even if they had forgotten their own keys; that’s the way she wanted it and that’s the way it would stay.

“Most of the time,” she said.

He knew she was lying but fortunately didn’t go into full-on guilt mode. “Well, there are people out there who are desperate and do things like look at the obituaries to find out when people are going to be out of the house at funerals.”

“You gave me the check after the funeral,” she said.

“You know what I mean,” he said testily.

She really didn’t but she didn’t let on.

“Can we find out who cashed it? Where?” she asked.

“I’m working on that,” he said, showing an initiative that she found refreshing.

“Okay. And one more thing,” she said, Cal cutting her off.

“Yes. Rebecca. I’m leaving this afternoon. I didn’t forget,” he said, his tone petulant, as if his track record was impeccable where it came to the girls.

After he left, she ran through the possibilities for where the check had gone, and kept coming back to Heather’s grungy boyfriend. They had a lot to discuss when she got home, even though delving into the topic would be painful. Maybe Heather would see now why Maeve wasn’t so enthusiastic about her choice in men. While scrolling through a funny text from Chris Larsson she thought about the latest developments in her life.

Christmas at Cal and Gabriela’s.

Three grand gone missing.

A sister who may or may not still be alive.

A boyfriend?

She wasn’t sure what order to put that list in.

One day, one thing, at a time, she concluded.

CHAPTER 28

Maeve drove up to the mall later that night to pick up a few Christmas presents for the girls. There were the special socks that you could only get at the Gap for Heather and an iPad case that Rebecca “had to have!” or else she would die, or something equally dire. She was bone tired but she wanted to get this errand out of the way and crossed off her list.

Rebecca had come home earlier and gone straight to her room after a brief conversation with her mother. Maeve tried to fill her in on Evelyn and how she was doing her best to find her but Rebecca was only half listening, seeming to have swapped her gentler personality with the more difficult one of her younger sister. She was “exhausted,” school having used up every ounce of energy she had. She was too tired to empty the dishwasher, even, something that Maeve wondered about. Just how much energy did it take to put dishes from the appliance into the cabinets?

A lot, apparently. Rebecca was still in her room when Maeve left.

Washing some pots at the sink after Rebecca had disappeared, she watched Heather out of the corner of her eye, devouring the meatloaf that Maeve had made at the store and brought home.

“How was school?” Maeve had asked.

“Great,” Heather said, more cheerful about the subject than was necessary.

“Really?”

Heather had known where this was going. “I was there, I went to class, I have finished my homework. I haven’t left the house in days.” And with that, she had eaten the last of the meatloaf.

“Why is that? Why don’t you leave the house anymore, except to go to school?” Maeve asked.

“Homework,” she said. “Any more questions?”

Just one. Maeve didn’t push it by asking about Tommy specifically. “You know I had a check in my room and now it’s gone. Do you happen to know where it went?” She would give her one more chance. She watched Heather’s face for any sign that she knew, didn’t know, or was lying. The girl’s expression gave nothing away. She looked her mother dead in the eye. If she was lying, she was damn good at it.

“I don’t. How much was it for?” Heather asked.

“Three thousand dollars,” Maeve said, looking away. She had lost this staring contest, Heather never breaking eye contact.

Cal had called earlier to say he had nothing to report on the case of the missing check, not who cashed it, not where it had been cashed, and Maeve had had no opportunity—or inclination, really—to have the conversation with Heather about why Tommy may have taken it. She had called the bank and confirmed that it hadn’t been cashed through her personal accounts nor any of the store’s accounts.

On the way back from the mall, Maeve rehashed the conversation, thinking of any verbal or physical tic that might have indicated that Heather had had something to do with the check’s disappearance, but there had been none. As she drove through the village, taking in the lights in the store windows and the greenery that lined the streets in large pots, the thought that her father wouldn’t be with her this year deflated her completely. She hadn’t done anything this year to get the store ready for the holidays; it was all she could do to keep the cases filled with the treats that people came to expect from her and The Comfort Zone, to keep ample stock of Jo’s old linguistic nemesis, the
bûches de Nöel
. She passed the local restaurant that Chris Larsson had originally suggested for their first date, its large windows revealing happy diners at every table, a warm glow coming from inside the main dining room, twinkling lights visible in the bar. She headed down toward the river and hung a right, on her way home finally after an inordinately long day, the only kind she seemed to have anymore, her energy gone, her spirit for anything having vanished.

The power of positive thinking. Or just complete denial. Maeve wasn’t sure which it was when it came to Jo’s passionate devotion to Doug and the choices he made.

Maeve hadn’t had a hankering for wings and a glass of wine in a long time but when she saw a very familiar Ford Taurus sitting outside of Mickey’s, the local tavern around the corner from her house, her mouth suddenly watered for the taste of hot sauce and cheap Chardonnay.

Jo’s husband Doug drove a very specific kind of car, the kind of car that no self-respecting middle-aged guy would drive: a bottle-green Ford Taurus station wagon. Maeve gave Jo unrelenting grief about the car, the polar opposite of something that Jo would consider “cool,” but Jo defended her husband’s choice of vehicle, saying that it was “practical” and would be “helpful once the baby was born.”

She found Doug sitting at the bar, chatting amiably with a blonde whose black roots were evidence of a delay in getting to CVS for a box of hair dye. The tenor of their chat also spoke to his familiarity with a local denizen that Maeve wouldn’t have expected Doug—he of the self-described “crazy work schedule”—to have. There was a seat on his right, putting him in the middle of his friend on the left and Maeve on the right, once she sat down. Really, she looked like more than a friend and the thought of that made Maeve see red.

“Doug! Hi,” she said, sliding onto the stool at the corner of the bar. Maeve wondered how he survived as a detective; one look at her and his cheeks turned red, his eyes wide at her appearance. Guilty as charged, she thought. She couldn’t imagine him interviewing anyone, trying to deceive a suspect into telling the truth. He could barely hold her gaze as she alternately stared at him and then at the woman, who she recognized as the manager of the local Dunkin’ Donuts. “Tammy, is it?” she said, leaning across Doug and extending her hand.

“Tamara,” the woman said, staying put.

Maeve glared at her. “Nice to see you, Tamara.” She looked at Doug. “And you? How are you?” she asked.

He stared into his beer.

“Could you excuse us, Tamara?” Maeve said. “Doug and I have some important business to discuss.”

Tamara looked as if she were searching her pickled brain for a snappy retort but when she couldn’t come up with anything better than “Bitch, please,” she sidled off in a haze of cheap perfume and misplaced indignation.

The bartender, someone Maeve had known for years, took her order, leaving her to think about what she wanted to say to Jo’s husband. The guilt was written all over his face, but guilt for what, she wasn’t sure. Being out? Chatting up Tamara? Something worse? She cut to the chase. “Tell me you’re not stupid enough to be carrying on with someone who a) hangs out here and b) lives in your own town?” Maeve asked. There was a “c”; she just didn’t know it, her mind clouded with an angry film. “Who works at Dunkin’ Donuts?” Oh, there it was: c.

He looked at the Brooklyn Lager sign hanging above the bar for far longer than was necessary. “No, I’m not that stupid,” he said, but he wasn’t very convincing. He reached down and smoothed the front of his ubiquitous Dockers khakis, the only kind of pants that Maeve had ever seen him wear. He and Jo had honeymooned in Bermuda; had he worn Dockers there the whole time as well? Her guess was that he had.

“Then what are you doing here? And why am I taking your wife to birth class, and to buy cribs and diapers and onesies? What exactly are you doing?”

He continued to stare at the sign. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

Maeve’s drink arrived and she drank half of it before she spoke again. “This is a fine time for a midlife crisis, Doug.”

“It’s not a midlife crisis, Maeve,” he said.

“Then what is it?” she asked, downing the rest of her wine and signaling for another. She lived around the corner; if she had to, she’d leave the car, walk down the hill, and get it in the morning.

He finally turned and looked at her, leaning in close. “I’m not sure I can go through with this.” He sighed, and in that sigh lay a thousand indications of his dissatisfaction and woe.

It was all she could do not to reach out and grab him by the neck, strangling the life from his body while everyone in Mickey’s watched. She hadn’t meant to telegraph her intent, but it must have been clear; he backed away from her, his eyes growing wide.

“I wouldn’t expect you to understand,” he said.

“Oh, you wouldn’t?”

“No,” he said.

“A whining man is not attractive, Doug,” Maeve said. “Tamara would have let you know that if I didn’t have the opportunity to first.”

“It all happened so fast,” he said. “I was married and having a baby before I really even thought about it.”

“And you were powerless to stop it?”

He looked at her, his eyebrows arched. “Have you met Jo?” He stared back into his beer. “She’s like a whirlwind.”

But in a good way, Maeve thought. She’s the best thing that ever happened to you, you ungrateful snot. Maeve asked the bartender for the wings to go; the girls would find them in the refrigerator and eat them, regardless of the hour.

“Don’t tell Jo,” he said. He hung his head. “It’s just a phase. I think.”

Maeve thought about that. “Okay,” she said. “But on two conditions.”

“What?”

“First, you get involved. You go to birth class. You set up that goddamned crib and make the nursery all pretty.”

“I can do that.”

“And if I call you and say I need your help, you’ll help me.”

He looked suitably alarmed. “What kind of help?”

Had she just blackmailed a cop? Or just an immature man-baby who didn’t realize what his responsibilities were? Whichever, she felt not a whit of guilt. “Any kind of help,” she said, realizing that being able to have him do some of the things she couldn’t, from an investigative standpoint, would be most helpful. She didn’t know if she’d ever need his help, but wasn’t it nice to have him in her own back pocket? “Now settle up and get home to your wife. You have birth class tomorrow tonight,” she said. “Seven o’clock.”