Tell Me Lies (26 page)

Except Brent was dead.
You’re a widow,
she told herself.
Remember that.
At least she looked the part from crying at the service station.

Em and Phoebe were watching C.L. work, Em handing him tools, wiping at her tearstained face with the back of her grimy hand. “This one’s almost done,” he said, smiling at her. “It’s going fast because Emily’s helping.”

Em nodded and squeezed her eyes shut, but a tear rolled from each eye anyway, and she smeared them away again. C.L. ignored them and kept on working, while Maddie dropped a kiss on the top of her head.

“I love you, baby,” she said to Em, and Em sniffed.

“Em’s a great helper,” C.L. said. “She always knows what I need.” He looked up at Maddie. “You okay?” he asked, and she thought,
No, my baby’s in pain, and somebody’s trying to get me.

She should tell him about the money. She should tell somebody about the money. “Oh, look,” she could say. “I just found almost a quarter of a million dollars in the back of my Civic. No, I don’t know a thing about it. Why?”

She had to think this through.

Maddie nodded to C.L. and said, “Fine,” and thought fast.

There was no place in the house to hide that much money. Whoever had put it in the Civic had the right idea. Car trunks. But not her trunk because she didn’t have one, and not Anna’s or her mother’s.

She went in the kitchen where her mother was cooking and leaned against the sink to look out the window to the driveway. C.L.‘s bright red Mustang winked back at her from beyond Anna’s station wagon.

It wasn’t the best of all possible places, but it was a place.

“Did you get it taken care of?” her mother said, and Maddie said, “Just about.” She moved to leave and kissed her mother’s cheek. “What are you making?”

“Soup,” her mother said. “People will stop by. Esther and Irma already brought casseroles. Oh, and that nice Vince came by to pick up some money. I didn’t know anything about it, so he’s coming back later.”

“Money?” Maddie’s heart lurched. How had Henry found out about the—Oh, right, the forty thousand in the golf bag. “Right,” Maddie said. “It was something of Brent’s.”

“Is that why he was killed?” Her mother’s voice trembled on the last word. “Money?”

“I truly do not know, Mother,” Maddie said. “Try not to think about it.” Then she went out to the car.

Anna’s station wagon blocked C.L.‘s car from the back porch. Maddie reached over his driver door and popped his trunk lid and then went around and shoved all the junk—his jack, jumper cables, blanket, flashlights—off the top of his spare. She flipped the cover back, pulled the spare out, and threw it in the back of her mother’s car. Then she took the Barbie duffel full of money from her mother’s trunk and emptied it into C.L.’s wheel well, putting the gun back in the duffel when it fell out. Then she threw the cover back over it. She scattered his junk across it again, slammed his trunk lid, and took the duffel with the gun to the house.

Her hands were shaking. The whole thing had taken less than five minutes, but it had also taken five years off her life.

“You okay?” C.L. said as she went past.

“Hard day,” Maddie said, and went back inside.

The phone rang, and when Maddie picked it up in the hall, it was Henry asking for C.L. C.L. came in and said, “Right. I’m coming.” He hung up, took a quick look around for her mother or Em, and kissed her. “Gotta go. I’ll be back later to put the lock on the front.”

“Wait a minute,” Maddie said. “Take the money in the golf bag. That way Vince won’t have to come back with it.”

“Forty thousand in a golf bag.” He shook his head. “In the future, we’ll be investing differently.” He kissed her again, lingering a little this time, and then went out the back door, and she heard him say something to Em before he went down the steps.

Well, there went the money. Easy come, easy go.

Maddie turned and saw her mother looking at her from the kitchen door. “What?”

Her mother tried to look stern, but she was too upset. “Maddie, how long have you been carrying on with that man?”

Maddie sighed. “I kissed him for the first time in twenty years on Friday night. If you can call three days ‘carrying on,’ that’s how long it’s been.”

Her mother’s face sagged. “Maddie, that’s awful.”

“I’m sorry, Mom,” she said, moving toward the back door and Em. “We should have waited until I got the divorce.”

“Is he why Brent hit you?”

Maddie tried to look outraged. “Mother! I told you. I ran into a door.”

Her mother turned back in to the kitchen. “I’m not as dumb as I look, Maddie. I knew you didn’t run into a door. Everybody in town knew you didn’t run into a door.”

She was going to have to do something about her mother, but Em came first. Maddie went out the back door just as Phoebe scrambled out of Em’s lap and ran off into the yard. Em followed her, her shoulders sagging. Maddie followed, too, and sat on the picnic table to watch them.

Three days ago she’d sat here with C.L. Brent had been alive. Her life had been a mess, but not like this, not with her daughter brokenhearted. Em came trailing back, her face lost, and Maddie realized that if Em had taken the divorce like this, she could never have gone through with it. She could never have done this to her child. “Come here, baby,” she said, and Em crawled up beside her on the table. “I got your dog books and your Barbies. Everything’s in the house.”

“Thank you,” Em said, and burst into tears.

Maddie pulled her into her lap and rocked her back and forth. “Just cry,” she said. “Cry and cry. I’ll hold you.”

“I was scared last night,” Em sobbed. “I knew something was wrong. I want my daddy back.”

Guilt flooded over Maddie; while her child had been afraid, she’d been laughing in bed.
No good time ever goes unpunished,
she thought. She should have known being that happy in Frog Point was a sin. And even that wouldn’t be bad if she’d been the one paying for it. But it was Em who’d suffered alone, Em who had been afraid and hadn’t had her mother to comfort her.

“I don’t want to stay at Mel’s anymore,” Em said.

“You don’t have to,” Maddie said.

“I don’t want to go out to the farm anymore.”

“We won t.”

“I just want to be here. With you.”

“I won’t leave you again,” she whispered into Em’s hair. “I’ll always be there for you, I swear. I’m so sorry, Emmy. I’ll always be there, I promise.”

C.L. was history. He had to be. She couldn’t have Em hearing rumors along with everything else she was going to hear. Em had to come first. Maddie and C.L. were adults, they’d survive if they didn’t have each other, but Em couldn’t make it without her mother. Maddie was all Em had now. C.L. had to go.

“Oh, Em,” Maddie said, and began to cry, too.

“Sit down, C.L.,” Henry said, and C.L. knew that what was coming wasn’t good.

“She didn’t do it, Henry,” he said. “She did not do it.”

“He was shot at the Point in his own car,” Henry said. “Her fingerprints are all over it—” he held up his hand as C.L. started to protest— “which they would be since it’s her car, too. His are there, and a lot of smeared ones that aren’t going to do us much good, and then there’s one other set, on the steering wheel and on the front and back door handles, that we’re looking at, so that could be a suspect, too.”

C.L. sat down. “Or it could be me. We took the Caddy to the Point Friday night. Did you find a lot of buttons in the backseat?”

“As a matter of fact, we did.”

“Those are mine,” C.L. said. “It’s these cheap city shirts. They just fall off.”

Henry looked grim. “C.L., this isn’t funny. If those prints are yours, then we only got three people in that car.”

“Or three people who are careless and one person planning a murder,” C.L. said.

“Then where did that person go?” Henry said. “Bailey swears nobody drove or walked by the company that night after Brent drove up.”

“And you believe him?” C.L. shook his head. “Anybody with five bucks can buy Bailey. Which reminds me, he was blackmailing Maddie about being at the Point with me. You might want to mention that the next time you talk to him.”

“That fool,” Henry said, dismissing Bailey. “There aren’t any footprints in the mud of the road. That drive gets soaked. It was raining when the Caddy pulled up to the Point because we’ve got tire marks. But there aren’t any footprints going down the drive.”

“So the shooter walked along the gravel sides,” C.L. said.

“Bailey didn’t see anybody,” Henry repeated.

“Or through the woods,” C.L. said. “Big deal. It’s an easy walk.”

“The only footprints there are small. Probably a woman’s. We’re going to have to look at Maddie’s tennis shoes.”

“Great,” C.L. said. “Do it. She’s innocent. Her tennies will be as clean as her conscience. Then you can start looking for the real—”

Henry picked up a report and slapped it down on his desk with a crack that must have made Esther prick up her ears outside the door. “C.L., will you pay attention here? We got a man who was cheating on his wife, and beating her up, and stashing a hell of a lot of cash in a safe-deposit box. Then he gets killed, and when I call to tell the widow she’s a widow, she’s in bed with another man. Now you tell me, who do you think did it?”

“You’re forgetting it’s Maddie,” C.L. said.

“Listen to yourself, will you?” Henry said. “That woman’s got you so twisted you don’t know which way is up.”

“I know she didn’t kill her damn husband,” C.L. said, stung by the accusation because it was the truth. “If you’re so sure, why aren’t you arresting her?”

“Because I don’t have a murder weapon,” Henry said. “And I don’t have any proof she walked down that hill. And I still don’t know why a big healthy guy like Brent Faraday let somebody put a gun behind his ear and shoot him without making any kind of a fuss. There’s a whole hell of a lot more I don’t have, but for right now, she’s the best I’ve got.”

“What about the mistress?” C.L. said, grasping at straws. “He was going to leave her, too. And what about his embezzling partner? He was going to leave him holding the bag. Hell, Henry, you’ve barely started. You go after the real bad guy and stay away from Maddie.”

He got up to go and Henry scowled at him. “Never mind me, you stay away from that woman. She’s dangerous.”

C.L. sighed in exasperation. “Henry, she is not going to shoot me. She didn’t shoot her husband and she’s not going to shoot me.”

“I’m not talking about that,” Henry said, “although it’s a damn good thing to keep in mind. I’m talking about the way you’ve been acting around her. You keep your pants zipped and your mind clear, you hear me?”

C.L. leaned forward, speaking very clearly so Henry would understand he was serious. “Henry, I am going to marry her. We’re going to live next door with Em. She’s family now. Stop worrying about her and start worrying about the creep who killed Brent.”

“You haven’t learned a damn thing about women since you were ten years old,” Henry said, clearly disgusted.

“The hell I haven’t,” C.L. said, fervently hoping he had.

Em had to be kept safe, which meant Maddie had to be above reproach; no more C.L. and no getting arrested.

But staying out of jail wasn’t going to be easy if somebody was out to get her. Somebody had planted the money and the gun in her car. What could anybody gain from seeing her arrested? Anything she would inherit from Brent would just go to Em, so it couldn’t be money. She’d lose Em if she went to jail; could it be that? Maddie entertained a brief fantasy of Helena Faraday framing her for Brent’s murder so she could raise Em and take control of Brent’s estate, but it was ridiculous. First of alt, Helena would have to have known about the money, and Maddie was sure that was something Brent hadn’t shared with his parents. Then Helena would have had to fight Maddie’s mother for custody of Em, and anybody’s money would have been on the Martindale side. Helena was vicious when it came to money and power, but she couldn’t hold a candle to Martha Martindale when it came to hanging on to family members. It couldn’t be Helena.

So it was somebody outside the family, but somebody who knew them well enough to know Maddie’s car had been wrecked and was in back of Leo’s. Which meant most of Frog Point. And the only general reason to frame Maddie was to point suspicion away from the real killer.

So it probably wasn’t anything personal. That was some comfort.

Maddie put her face in her hands. She didn’t know enough. She didn’t know where the money had come from or whose gun it was or anything. Did that mean she should turn it over to Henry? “Do not tell that man anything else,” C.L. had said to her when he’d come back with the locks. “He has the extremely dumb idea in his head that you might have killed Brent. We’re calling a lawyer, and you say
nothing
to Henry until then.”

It was a toss-up. Saying nothing was easy, but carrying the knowledge around was hard.
What’s best for Em?
Maddie thought, and decided that if the money meant there was even a slim chance of Em losing her right now, it wasn’t worth it. She’d think about it later.

But she had to think about the gun now. She had to hide that damn gun.

Double-checking to make sure her mother was resting in the living room, Maddie took the duffel bag into the kitchen, and opened the refrigerator. Two casseroles rested on the bottom shelf, and she picked out the sleazier one because it was in a deeper dish. She took a Ziploc bag out of her drawer, got the gun out of the duffel using a paper towel, and zipped it into the bag. Then she grabbed a big spoon and scooped out the center of the casserole. It was Spam and whole wheat noodles.

Maddie looked at it in disbelief. Somebody thought this would be a comfort? Although, actually, it was, since nobody in their right mind would ever try to eat any of this glop. It was a perfect hiding place. She dropped the gun into the scooped-out place and covered it with the stiff top layer of crunchy noodles and burnt Spam. She patted the potato chips back into place, stuck the whole thing in the refrigerator, and then closed the door and shoved the extra casserole down the garbage disposal.

She could give the casserole to Treva later with several other dishes to freeze for her. Freezing wouldn’t hurt the gun, and having the gun out of the house meant it couldn’t hurt her. Relieved of that worry, she went upstairs and crawled into bed next to Em.

“It’s all right, baby,” she said to her sleeping daughter. “I’m not going anywhere.”