Lies That Bind (32 page)

Hit the road. That was the answer. Where had she gone?

Not my problem, Maeve thought. Not my concern.

Dolores looked at her. “I’ve got no one, Maeve.”

Welcome to the club.

“My husband is dead.”

Good riddance.

“My kids never come around.”

Wonder why?

“And now my sister has left. It’s not fair!”

Life rarely is.

When she saw that she was getting nowhere, she turned. “I don’t ever want to see you again, Maeve Conlon.”

The feeling is mutual.

Dolores exited the store quickly, stepping out onto the sidewalk, not seeing the red car that zoomed into the parking lot, missing her by inches.

“Careful,” Maeve said to the empty store. “Those red cars will get you every time. Ask your father when you see him in hell,” she said, because it was a red car that had taken her mother’s life.

She looked through the mail. Bills, flyers, magazines. And a postcard. She looked at the front; it was a photo of the White House. And on the back were three words.

I am sorry.

Margie Haggerty, it seemed, was heading south.

CHAPTER 54

That night, she followed Jimmy Moriarty from Buena del Sol to a rib place in town.

She got out of the car and walked across the parking lot, peering in the window and finding Moriarty sitting at the small bar in the front, drinking, oddly enough, a very pale glass of white wine. Sauvignon Blanc, if she had to guess.

She walked into the restaurant and was immediately accosted by the overzealous hostess, who she bypassed for a seat next to Jack’s old friend. He stared straight ahead, even though he knew she was there.

“I bet your father never told you that he once saved my life,” he said, taking a dainty sip of his wine. He motioned to the bartender to bring Maeve one, too. She settled onto a stool and stashed her bag at her feet.

“Saved your life? How, Jimmy? I didn’t even know you knew each other before Buena del Sol. My father never mentioned that. You never mentioned it.”

“He didn’t remember sometimes. Sometimes he did.”

“And you?” she asked.

“I guess it never came up, huh, Maeve?” he said. “How often have we really seen each other?”

Not a lot. But it was something that he should have told, she should have known. “So, how did he save your life?” she asked.

“Chasing a perp. It was bad in those days, back in the seventies. Streets were horrible,” he said, his eyes not on her but looking down the barrel of the past. “Your father and I were together only once, on this thing. Didn’t see him again until I moved into Buena del Sol.”

She thanked the bartender for her wine, pushing the menu she was offered to the side.

“Perp had just sold a big bag of dope to an undercover but that guy couldn’t reveal himself so we went in after him. Up eight flights of stairs. He made us on the fourth flight, I think.” He looked over at Maeve. “You should look at the menu. The fried pickles…”

“I know,” she said, holding up her hand. “They’re delicious. And fattening.”

He smiled. “Eat the fried pickles, Maeve. You’ve only got one life to live.”

She wanted him to go back to the story. It took another glass of wine to get him started again. “We ended up on the eighth floor and the guy went out the door but I didn’t see which one, so I ran the length of the hall and to the door at the far end when your father screamed my name.”

Maeve had never heard this story so she didn’t know how it ended or any of the intervening details.

“The door was to the fire escape. It was pitch black out. Someone had removed the floor grates so that anyone who ran out there would just fall through, all eight flights.” He went back to looking straight ahead. “If your father hadn’t called my name, I would have run out there, gone through the floor, broken every bone in my body. Probably would have died.”

“How did he know?” Maeve asked. “That there was no floor?”

He turned back to her; she could see it in his eyes that all these years later, the entire story, though true, mystified him. “I don’t know. And neither did he. He said he never even remembered calling my name.”

She tilted her head; had she heard him right? “Well, that’s impossible, Jimmy.”

“I’m just telling you what happened.”

It was another Jack story, burnished gold and only partially true through years of the embellishment of retelling.

“I was there, Maeve. It happened to me.”

“So, Jack had ESP? What?” she asked. She was not really a believer when it came to things unexplained. There was always an explanation, always a reason.

“He said your mother told him,” he said. “And she had been dead over a year at that point.”

She had to bite her lip so that she wouldn’t laugh. The guy was so intent on telling her this remarkable story, a story that he believed with all of his heart, that she couldn’t disrespect it and him. Jesus, Jimmy. Do you really expect me to believe that? she thought but didn’t ask.

“I don’t expect you to believe me, Maeve,” he said, seeming to read her mind.

“Why are you telling me this now?” she asked.

He chose his words carefully. “I just wanted you to know why I loved your dad like a brother.”

They sipped their wine without talking, her rumbling stomach breaking the silence. She ordered a plate of ribs and some fried pickles. When it came, she pushed the plate toward him. “Here. I can’t eat all of this.”

“Sure you can,” he said even as he helped himself to a rib and a pickle, putting them on the small plate the server had given them for sharing.

If she closed her eyes and imagined a time long ago, it was almost like sitting with Jack. But then, she’d open her eyes and see that she was just with another sad old guy who longed for his younger days, when he was on his own, when danger was a daily part of his life, and when he didn’t have to answer to anyone at an assisted-living facility that sometimes treated its residents like children.

She noticed that even though they talked the entire time they ate, he never asked once about her sister, if she had found her. She found that strange and unsettling.

“Are you my sister’s guardian, Jimmy?” she asked. It was worth a try. If Evelyn was alive, she had a guardian; she couldn’t think of anyone Jack trusted more than Jimmy Moriarty.

“No, Maeve,” he said sadly. “I do not have guardianship of anyone.” He chuckled, to break the mood, relieve her of the pained look on her face. “I can barely take care of myself! Just ask Charlene Harrison.”

She grabbed his arm, held on tight. “Jimmy, please. I’ve got nothing here, no one left besides my daughters.”

“And they should be enough, Maeve.” It was an admonishment, one she didn’t take kindly to. “Take care of them. Love them. They’ll be big soon and they’ll go away.”

“And that’s why I need my sister.”

“I don’t know anything about a sister, Maeve,” he said, but he couldn’t look at her when he said it. He let out a rattling cough, one that seemed to start in his toes. Maeve asked the bartender for some water. She put her hand on his back to steady him. She had pushed him far enough.

“That’s some cough, Jimmy.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Seeing the doctor tomorrow.”

“Let me know what he says.” She traced her finger around the bottom of her glass. “Did you give me that photo album, Jimmy?”

He considered his answer for a long time. “Yes, Maeve. I gave you that photo album.”

“Thank you.” She felt a sadness come over her, thinking that if she didn’t get answers from him now, she might never. “She’d be in her fifties now. I wonder if she’s short, like me.” She went in for the kill. “I wonder if she’s happy.” I wonder if she’s alive, she thought, but left that out.

His face gave nothing away.

She got up, threw some money on the bar for the drinks and their shared dinner and leaned in, giving him a hug. He smelled like Jack. He talked like Jack. He dressed like Jack. But he wasn’t Jack and as hard as she tried to imagine that he was, she knew the truth.

He knew the truth as well, but it was a different truth.

She walked to the car, her purse weighted down by the gun, and allowed herself just one little sob before she got in and drove home.

CHAPTER 55

Cal showed up shortly after she got home with a lockset for the powder room door. It wasn’t a moment too soon: Heather had been locked in there that morning and had almost broken her leg—according to her—jumping out the window over the toilet.

Maeve was still waiting to hear from Detective Fahnestock about the identity of the bones that had been found, if they had belonged to a female. The waiting was killing her. No amount of affection or comfort from Chris Larsson could take away the knot in her stomach, the pain in her heart.

Cal was fiddling with the lockset and the girls were now at Mickey’s. After a prolonged protest about the lack of food in the house, Maeve had sent them to Mickey’s with fifty dollars and a promise that they would bring her the change. It was walking distance; she had seen Rebecca’s driving skills first hand and had not been impressed.

Cal knew the whole story and listened intently. “I hope it wasn’t her, Maeve,” he said.

Another massive understatement from her clueless ex. “Me, too, Cal.”

Cal was wearing a tool belt, something almost as incongruous as the time Maeve had seen Gabriela wearing sweatpants. “A tool belt?” she asked. “Is this a job that requires multiple tools?”

Cal had never been the handy sort so Maeve was surprised he had any tools, let alone a tool belt. He studied the lockset and pulled out a long page of directions. She pulled out some cupcakes; he looked like he would need sustenance for the job. He fiddled with the pieces for a while and started to assemble the doorknob and its component parts. After a half hour, two cupcakes, and a prolonged spate of profanity, he instructed Maeve to go into the bathroom.

From her perch on the toilet seat, she continued her conversation with him. “So, not a dime to Rebecca this semester. She can eat in the dining hall and scrounge up old ChapSticks and use those before she gets another cent from either one of us.”

“Uh-huh,” Cal said, focused on his task.

“Twenty-five hundred dollars,” she said, shaking her head.

“Yep.” He clicked something into place. “Try it now.”

The room was so small that she could sit on the closed toilet lid and touch the handle. She jiggled it, attempting to let herself out. “Doesn’t work.” She looked around the bathroom. She needed to give the girls a list of things they needed to do in her absence; she was tired of being the only person in the house who noticed when they were out of toilet paper and when they needed to clean out the shower drain upstairs. Two girls with long hair equaled lots of potential plumbing problems. She would leave a toothbrush beside the list; the grout around the sink was in desperate need of a cleaning and who better than her lazy daughters?

Beyond the bathroom door, she heard Cal grunting and groaning, the strain of replacing the doorknob far greater than she would have imagined. He called in through the opening in the door where the knob would go, one of the components holding the door closed and locked. “Maeve, sit tight. There’s someone at the door.”

When he returned to the kitchen, he was accompanied by another man; Maeve immediately recognized his voice, the cadence that of someone from farther upstate than where she lived.

So Michael Donner wasn’t missing, just biding his time until he could come visit Maeve and either tell her everything he knew or kill her.

Her money was on the latter.

“She’s indisposed at the minute, Mr. Donner,” Cal said. “Oh,” he said, a little concern creeping into his voice. “Of course.”

A chair scraped away from the kitchen table and Cal sat down, his back blocking the view she had from the powder room and, if she was on the same wavelength as her ex-husband, blocking her from harm.

“No need for that,” Cal said. “Let me know what you need and I’ll get it.”

Maeve stood up in the bathroom, her bare feet making no sound on the tile floor. In a basket next to the sink were a variety of hair care products and appliances; she slid a travel curling iron into her front pocket. She got up on the toilet top and with one quick movement, opened the window above it, hoisting herself out as quickly as she could. Jo had been the champion gymnast in childhood, before she had gotten so tall; Maeve was the clumsy little person with no coordination but no one would have known that by the way she silently threw herself out the window, onto the picnic table, and then to the ground. The girls had been locked in the bathroom so many times now that they had an escape route all planned: the picnic table was beneath the window, and although Maeve was several inches shorter than her daughters, she landed easily onto its surface, her feet hitting a stagnant puddle of cold water.

It was cold out and she wasn’t wearing shoes. But she did two things before she entered the house again, as quietly and as stealthily as she could. First, she extracted the gun from beneath the seat of the Prius, the place she had returned it to after seeing Jimmy Moriarty. And then, she let the air out of the passenger-side tires of Donner’s car, the same one she had seen a few weeks ago in Rhineview when they had met the first time. She would have loved to blow it up, the same way she had destroyed Regina Hartwell’s old Rambler, but this was her neighborhood, her home. She wouldn’t bring evil to the place she loved.

But she was a little worried at how much she was enjoying thinking about blowing things up.

She had lived in this house long enough to know which floorboards creaked, which were silent. How to open the screen door without giving anything away. How to hug the banister so that no one would ever hear you on the stairs. She loved that element of surprise.

Michael Donner was standing in the opening of the kitchen, his gun trained on Cal’s trembling body. God bless the guy but her ex wasn’t cut out for home repairs or this kind of violent confrontation. Fortunately, he had Maeve for that, but even she jumped a bit when Donner pointed his gun at Cal and fired.