Once Upon a Lie (19 page)

“And what gives you the right?” he sputtered finally. “What makes you think you’re right about any of this?”

She thought for a moment. How to put this? She went with the easiest answer. “If I was wrong, you would have told me why. But you have no excuse. No reason.”

“Maybe I don’t want to give you a reason.”

The bartender put her wings in front of her, and Maeve pushed them in front of Lorenzo. “I don’t have an appetite anymore. Here.” She pulled a twenty out of her purse and left it on the counter. She noticed that his hand was now on the knee that she had squeezed. “Think about what I said,” she said, smiling, not in the business of threatening someone, regardless of whether or not they were in a public place like Mookie’s, where she knew every waitress and most of the bartenders.

“Or what?” he said, not content to leave well enough alone.

She stopped, her hand on the back of his stool. “Or nothing,” she said, which was a lie. She already had a recipe all planned out, but surprise was its main ingredient.

CHAPTER 25

Heather probably wouldn’t be talking to her, something that Maeve was used to, post-grounding. When Maeve got home after work on Monday, though, Heather was chattier than usual, telling her mother that Jack had called and wanted a call back and giving her details about her day at school, down to how delicious the wonderful lunch her mother had packed for her was and which she admitted she had enjoyed heartily.

She knows the joints are gone, Maeve thought, and held back a smile. Nothing to get her kid talking about the mundane, the stuff Maeve loved, more than having had her mother beat her at her own game. There would be a new hiding spot, but Maeve would find that, too. The look on Heather’s face, when she wasn’t busy chattering away about the yoga class she was now taking to fulfill her PE requirement, asking her mother what her favorite pose was, was one that said it all: “Well played, Mother. Well played.”

They had a conundrum, however. Heather couldn’t bring up the missing ticket stub—the one thing that indicated to her that her mother had been riffling through her drawers—without Maeve bringing up the joints, and Maeve couldn’t bring up the joints without Heather bringing up the missing stub. Because even though the kid was a pig, she knew where her stuff was. It appeared to Maeve that they wouldn’t speak of either, but the satisfaction that she took from appropriating three sizable joints without her daughter being able to ask about them could not be expressed in words.

“Did you eat?” Maeve asked. “I didn’t go shopping today, but I could make you an omelet.” She looked around, not seeing any sign of her older daughter. “Where’s your sister?”

“Where is she ever?” Heather asked, rolling her eyes. “Library.”

In Rebecca’s case, there was no reason not to believe that she was really at her favorite hangout—the Farringville Library—her desire to get out of Farringville so great that she used every extra moment that she had to study so that she could go to the college of her choice. Maeve never reminded her that Vassar wasn’t that far from the little village where they lived, but to Rebecca, it signified freedom and a way out of a life she saw as one-note and going nowhere. Maeve respected that. It was Heather she worried about, Heather who once proclaimed that she “would never leave” and seemed to run with a crowd who felt exactly the same way. All Maeve needed was to raise a “townie.”

Maeve cracked a couple of eggs into a bowl and heated a frying pan while she whisked them together with a splash of water. “Do me a favor and dial Grandpa’s number, would you?” she asked Heather, who was deep in thought over a page of history homework that required her to glance back and forth between a huge textbook that must have been a delight to lug home and a notebook beside it. Heather handed her the phone just as she poured the eggs into the pan. Jack answered on the second ring, not giving her a chance to identify herself; his caller ID had already done that.

“Well, I’m off the hook!” he said.

“You are?” Maeve asked. “About what?”

“Sean. The Dutch elm disease,” he said. She couldn’t tell if he was kidding or not, but to make herself feel better, she went with the idea that he was. “I was at the Yankee game.”

She looked over at Heather guiltily, her head still tucked in her history book. “You were?”

“I was,” he said. “I must have gotten a bug up my ass about it. I guess I thought I would go down and see the game. Moriarty must have driven me to the train station.” He chuckled. “Or I walked. There’s always that possibility.”

“When did you remember this, Dad?” she asked.

“When I found the ticket stub on my refrigerator door,” he said. “It was right there, the entire time. Don’t know how I missed it.”

“I don’t either, Dad,” she said, feeling discomfort form in her stomach, a mushy ball of deceit seasoned with guilt. Even though she knew that getting her father an alibi was the right thing to do, at the moment, it seemed unseemly and ill conceived.

“Tell that dunderhead of an ex of yours that it’s all fine now. I’ve got proof of where I was.”

“Dunderhead?” That was a new one on her.

“Yes, dunderhead. I would have been better off being represented by Atticus Finch, and he isn’t even real.” He let off a few obscenities, letting Maeve think that he had known all along just how much trouble he could have been in without an alibi to call his own. “Sweating, pulling at his collar, he might as well have said, ‘Hang ’em high, coppers. Old coot is dirty.’”

Maeve had to smile at his diatribe in spite of the fact that she had thought Cal had been the man for the job, at least in the short term. “He was a corporate lawyer, Dad. He might have been a bit out of his league if this went any further, but I think for what you needed, he was fine.”

“I don’t think they were really serious about me,” he said.

That was a pretty astute observation, one that coincided with the dunderhead’s assessment. “No?”

“No. Jeez, even if I wanted to kill the kid,” he said, referring to the middle-aged Sean, who to Jack would remain always, in his mind, young. “I just don’t have the energy anymore to pull off that kind of caper.”

She wanted to tell him that murder was more than a caper but let him go on.

“He was a bad seed,” he said, not the first time she had heard it. “I hate to say it, Maeve, but I’m not entirely sorry that he’s gone. I don’t remember why exactly, but I’m not sorry.”

“Just don’t ever tell anyone else that, Dad. Please.”

“I may be forgetful, but I’m not an idiot,” he said, making it known that he hated when she adopted a parental tone with him. He dropped his voice to a whisper. “Heck, maybe I did kill him. Now wouldn’t that be a kick in the head?”

She was silent.

“Maybe during the seventh-inning stretch,” he said, laughing.

“This isn’t a time to be joking,” she said, watching as the eggs burned around the edges, the smell jolting her out of the state she was in. She put the phone in the crook of her neck, knowing that she would regret that, a pinched nerve in her neck her chronic ache, and tried to fold the omelet over once. “Dad, I have to go. I’ll call Cal and let him know about the stub.”

Heather’s interest was piqued. “Stub?”

Maeve focused her attention on the frying pan. “Yes. Stub. Grandpa was cleaning out some drawers and came across something he thought he had lost.” She waited to see if Heather would bring up the missing stub from her dresser, but she didn’t.

It didn’t take her long to change the topic. “Can I have cheddar?” she asked.

“You can have whatever you want,” Maeve said, realizing that she couldn’t broach the subject of the joints with Heather now that she had overheard the conversation with Jack. Instead of what she had planned—a maternal checkmate, because there is nothing that mothers love more than dropping the hammer unexpectedly—she had a stalemate, which was far less gratifying.

Maeve handed her the plate, disappointed that her “say no to drugs” speech would have to be shelved for the evening. “Toast?” she asked.

CHAPTER 26

The next time she saw Rodney Poole, he brought his partner along for the ride. Maeve didn’t know why, but she didn’t think Detective Colletti found her as charming or talented as Poole did, even though she seemed to be enjoying the chocolate cupcake that Maeve handed her as soon as they were introduced. Jo, who was now back at work and bringing her special brand of laziness to her job, was trying desperately not to be alarmed by the presence of two cops in the store, but at the same time, she couldn’t drag herself away from the action. She wiped the same spot on the counter over and over, her eyes alternating between the two detectives and Maeve.

Poole knew the lay of the land, indicating that they should go back into the kitchen. Detective Colletti finished her cupcake, eyeing the remaining ones in the glass-fronted case. Maeve put an assortment on a plate and led them into the kitchen area, offering them stools to pull up and putting the cupcakes between them.

“Coffee?” she asked.

“This isn’t a social call,” Colletti said, even though she was pulling the wrapper off her second cupcake. “But I’ll take one. Light and sweet.”

While Poole always looked sad, Colletti looked angry, making them an interesting pairing. She was a big woman, taller than Jo and about fifty pounds heavier. Today, she was packed into a pair of dark-washed jeans and a leather bomber jacket, giving her the appearance of a modern-day Amelia Earhart, right down to her expensive aviator sunglasses, the ones pushed up on her head and holding back a cascade of black curly hair. Maeve felt small and a little weak in her presence, but at this point she had nothing to fear from a woman who wanted to eat cupcakes and drink coffee. She went into the front of the store, avoiding Jo’s gaze, and poured two cups of coffee, making Detective Colletti’s the way she wanted and Poole’s the way she knew he liked it.

Poole took out his pad and a pen and flipped through some pages. “So we heard from your father’s lawyer and we understand that Mr. Conlon may have an alibi for the night in question?”

Phrasing the sentence in the form of a question, he didn’t sound all that convinced.

“Yankee game?” he said, looking up at Maeve.

“So it would seem. Something big happened that night, but I wouldn’t know what that was. I’m a Mets’ fan,” she said, attempting humor to cut the tension. “Once he remembered, he seemed very excited about having been there.”

Poole took a turn at questioning that Maeve didn’t expect, but she tried not to let it show. “And where were you that night, Ms. Conlon?”

“Home. Alone.” She held his gaze to convince him that that was the truth. Why would she lie about that? It would have been much easier to come up with an alibi that he could investigate and never disprove.

“Watch TV?” he asked.

“Probably. What day of the week was it again?” she asked.

“Saturday.”

“
Cupcake Wars
followed by
Chopped,
” she said. “The guy who owned the dive bar in New Paltz won.” She immediately regretted that last statement, thinking that she was laying it on a little thick.

“You have a good memory,” Colletti said in between mouthfuls of chocolate cupcake.

“I watch a lot of Food Network,” Maeve said, giving a little shrug. Nobody said what they were all thinking, which was that she could have watched it after the fact. The detectives didn’t say anything and she didn’t offer anything further, but she knew what they were thinking because she was thinking exactly the same thing. “I watch a lot of Food Network,” she said weakly, her voice barely a whisper.

Colletti turned to Poole. “Would it be bad if I got a dozen cupcakes before we left?” she asked.

“You have to pay for them,” Poole said.

“I don’t have any money,” she said, holding out her hand. “I didn’t bring my wallet.” Curiously, Poole pulled out a worn leather wallet and handed her two twenties. This seemed to be a common occurrence between the two of them, and neither looked remotely uncomfortable with the transaction.

Maeve was kind of stuck in place, and it wasn’t until the detective waved her newfound wealth in the air that she asked her what kind of cupcakes she’d like. When she went into the store, Jo was standing at the far end of the counter, holding a box in her hand, ready to fill the order. Jo had her usual deer-caught-in-the-headlights look, the one she got when she was nervous. Detective Poole obviously made her anxious, a feeling that he didn’t engender in Maeve.

“All chocolate with chocolate icing,” Maeve said.

“Are they still interested in Jack?” Jo asked in her usual loud stage whisper.

“You tell me. You were listening at the door,” Maeve said.

Jo rubbed the top of her head self-consciously, something she had taken to doing since the stitches had come out. “You?”

“I guess we’ll find out,” Maeve said, helping Jo put cupcakes in the box.

“Why are you so calm?” Jo asked, affixing a Comfort Zone sticker to the top of the box.

“Because I didn’t do it,” Maeve said. “The truth will set you free and all.”

She could feel Jo’s eyes on her back when she went into the kitchen. “Will that be all, Detectives?” she asked, handing Colletti the box of cupcakes.

Poole snapped his notebook shut. “For now,” he said. The sadness in his eyes had been replaced by something else, something she couldn’t identify. Maybe it was consternation at being partnered with a woman who never had cash. Or the fact that he had lost his person of interest once Jack had unearthed the ticket stub from the Yankees game.

She kept her eyes on him and not on the purse on the shelf by the door, the one that still held the gun. Today she would figure that out, she promised herself. Right after she made a birthday cake for fifty.

“You know,” Poole said right before he left, “we could find out who your father was sitting with at the game and ask them if he was actually there.”

Colletti stood to the side, nodding enthusiastically. That proposition would keep her from eating cupcakes, something she seemed intent on doing the minute she and her partner left the store.