Tell Me Lies (3 page)

He was closer now, and she realized he’d grown more than shoulders and height since seventeen. There was weight to C.L. now; he was solid, and his dark eyes under the thick fringe of his lashes were sure. He’d grown up.

Too bad Brent hadn’t.

Maddie took a deep breath. “Look, this is not my day to watch him, okay? I don’t know where he is. It’s been nice seeing you, but I have to go.”

“I can’t believe this.” C.L. frowned. For a moment, all his warmth went away, and Maddie took a step back. “There is no way anybody can disappear in this town. You’re his wife. You must know where he is.”

This Maddie didn’t need, her first romantic disaster commenting on her current one. “Look,
I don’t know where he is.
Now, go away.”

“All right, all right.” C.L. held his hands up to ward her off. “All I want to do is talk to him. Mind if I come in?”

“Yes,” Maddie said. “I mind a lot.” She shoved his foot out of the way with hers and slammed the door, surprising herself with how fast and how mad she was. Two men in her entire life, and they’d both taken her for a ride. Well, the hell with them.

“Maddie?” C.L. said from the other side of the door.

“Not now, C.L. Not now, not ever. Go away.” Maddie listened for a moment to see if he was gone, and then jumped when Em said, “Mom?” behind her.

Em stood there with her school list. “I heard you talking. Who was that? You look funny.”

Em. Every time she got to a place where she could make jokes and pretend it wasn’t happening, there was Em with disaster bearing down on her. She couldn’t do this alone anymore. “That was nobody,” she told Em. “Let’s walk over to Aunt Treva and Mel’s.”

“All right,” Em said, but her eyes were cautious.

Ten minutes later, Maddie stood in her best friend’s back doorway, trying to look mentally healthy while Treva blinked up at her, startled.

“Mel’s in the family room,” Treva said to Em, not taking her eyes off Maddie’s face. “Go find her.” Once Em was down the hall, Treva grabbed Maddie’s arm. “What’s wrong with you? You look awful. Is this my fault? I know I haven’t called. What’s wrong?”

“Brent’s cheating on me.” Maddie swallowed. “I have to leave him. Divorce him.” It was a lot more awful than she’d thought, saying it out loud, and she staggered back a step and threw up her brownie into Treva’s bushes.

“Oh, hell,” Treva said.

He tapped his fingers on the wheel, trying to get his thoughts back where they belonged. No matter how desirable she’d been standing in her doorway, all dark curls and warm curves and cool eyes that made him stupid, Maddie Martindale was history. And all he’d done was talk to her on her porch step, so there was nothing for him to feel guilty about, especially now that he wasn’t driving in a lust-fogged stupor. He was an adult in a car he’d paid for, and he had every right to be where he was and to talk to anybody he wanted.

C.L. looked around at the tall old houses, every one of them staring into the well of the street with dark windows, and slid a little farther down in the seat, wincing under guilty memories of toilet-papered trees and soaped windows and potatoes in tailpipes and cherry bombs in mailboxes. Then he caught himself. He hadn’t done anything wrong around here for almost twenty years. He was innocent. He could even get out of the car. The hell with Frog Point. He jerked on the emergency brake and got out and slammed the door.

The noise seemed to echo up and down the street. He lit a cigarette and leaned against the car door, wondering why he still had the feeling he was going to get busted for smoking. He was thirty-seven. He was
allowed
to smoke in public.

Across the street, a woman opened her front door and came out on the porch, jerking her head at him suspiciously, no doubt drawn out of her musty living room to see who he was and why he was parked on her street in the middle of the day when a decent man would be at work. She looked familiar, and then he recognized her and realized that he’d parked where he had from force of habit. Mrs. Banister. He’d spent most of his senior year parked right here in front of her house trying to seduce her daughter, Linda, and succeeding an amazing number of times. And now here he was, back one last time, betrayed by his instincts again.

C.L. straightened and waved at her to let her know he wasn’t some pervert or, worse, some stranger casing the joint to rip off her Hummels. She squinted at him and then stomped back inside, slamming the door. He couldn’t tell whether it was from recognition or heightened suspicion, and he didn’t care.

What he cared about was Maddie.

She’d looked unhappy and angry and lost when she’d opened the door, and she’d been brittle and smart-mouthed, not the smiling girl he’d remembered from high school. Whenever he’d thought of Maddie in the past years, he’d remembered her warmth, but she wasn’t warm anymore. Somebody had hurt her, and he had an idea who’d been doing the hurting and that made him mad. Somebody should have to pay for all this misery, and he was pretty damn sure that somebody was Brent Faraday.

And C.L. was also pretty damn sure he knew how to do it. His ex-wife, of all people, had handed him the weapon.

“I need you for this, C.L.,” Sheila had said on the phone when she’d called him the week before. “I need an accountant I can trust. You can take a long weekend, they love you at that firm you work for, they’ll let you take off as long as you want. You were a lousy husband, but you’re a damn good accountant.” After that come-on, he’d had no problem saying no when she said she was afraid her fiancé might be getting swindled, no problem saying no when she cried, no problem saying no when she offered to sign away her right to alimony since she’d have to give it up when she married Stan anyway. But then she’d said,
“Please,
C.L. All you have to do is come down here and look at the books and tell me if Brent Faraday is ripping Stan off by asking for two hundred and eighty thousand for a quarter of the company. Just yes, he is, or no, he isn’t, that’s all.”

And he’d said, “I’ll do it.”

He took another long drag on the cigarette, sucking in nicotine to blunt the memory. Sheila had said, “There’s probably nothing wrong. After all, it is Brent Faraday,” and he’d known there had to be a lot wrong. More than he hated Frog Point, he hated Brent Faraday, who got away with murder while Frog Point loved him, and Maddie married him, and C.L. got caught over and over again.

Thank God all that was behind him now. He was a solid citizen with a solid job and a solid future. He might finally be able to catch Brent at something, he was sincerely hoping he would, but his own days of worrying about getting busted were over.

C.L. was finishing his cigarette, getting ready to leave, when a squad car pulled up behind his Mustang, and a cop got out and came toward him.

“Nope.” The cop pushed his hat back on his head, showing off a lot of red hair and freckles, and grinned. “Mrs. Banister called in a suspicious man staring at her house, and Henry sent me over to find out if it was you. This is just like old times, buddy.”

“Vince, the old times sucked,” C.L. told him. “It may have slipped your mind, but back then you were running
from
the cops, not with them. I told Henry he’d lost his mind when he hired you.”

“Hey,” Vince protested. “That was a smart move. Henry knew I knew everything about juvenile crimes since I’d committed most of them with you. He was getting an expert. Now, face the car and spread ‘em, C.L. I gotta pat you down.”

“Up yours,” C.L. said. “Jesus, give a delinquent a little power and he gets delusions of grandeur. Did Henry really know it was me?”

Vince leaned against the car next to C.L. “Henry’s got X-ray eyes and ears, you know that. Plus, you’re the only stranger we got right now. Narrows down the field considerably. Give me a butt, old buddy.”

“And then you’ll run me in for bribing a police officer,” C.L. said. “Smoke your own.”

“I can’t.” Vince showed the first evidence of gloom since he’d pulled up. “Donna’s making me quit.”

“You’re whipped, boy.”

“I got two kids. I don’t want getting secondhand lung cancer,” Vince said, his natural cheerfulness returning. “But since they’re both over at the park cheating at softball right now, I guess one of yours won’t hurt ‘em.”

C.L. gave up and passed over his pack. “Cheating, huh? Good to know you’re bringing ‘em up right.”

“I’m just showing ‘em everything you taught me, C.L.” Vince lit up and took a long drag. “Damn, that’s good. Why does everything that’s bad for you have to be so damn good?”

C.L. thought of Maddie. “Because God has a lousy sense of humor.”

“It’s good to have you back, C.L.” Vince passed the pack back. “Not a lot of people around here’ll make jokes about God. Course, when you get hit by lightning, it’ll be what you deserve.”

“If it ever happens to me, it’ll happen to me here,” C.L. said. “I cross the city limits and God paints a target on my forehead.”

“And you so innocent and all.” Vince stood away from the car. “Well, I got to get back to work since I’m the only thing standing between Frog Point and crime. If you’re still around tonight about eight, stop by the Bowl-A-Rama and I’ll buy you a beer.”

C.L. opened his mouth to tell Vince what he thought of the Bowl-A-Rama and then stopped. Regardless of what he thought of orange plastic and bowling shoes, he liked Vince. It might be good to kick back with old Vince one more time.

And Vince knew almost as much about Frog Point as Henry did.

“You’re on,” C.L. said.

“Good. Bring the cigarettes.” Vince turned to go back to his car. “Try not to get into trouble while you’re here. I’d hate to have to arrest you.”

“Try,” C.L. said, and Vince laughed and drove away.

Well, gee, it was great to be back home. Everybody else got to grow up and get married and have kids and become steady citizens, but he was marked for life. The oldest living juvie in Ohio. Quite an honor. He felt like tp’ing Mrs. Banister’s house for spite.

And then he’d go see Maddie for old times’ sake.

“Forget Brent,” he’d say, “remember the backseat?” Except that wasn’t a great memory for her. Or him. The next day he’d gone to her locker to talk to her and she’d turned away.

C.L. winced at the remembered humiliation, still sharp after twenty years. Dumb, dumb, dumb. What was it about high school pain that lasted a lifetime? And how was it that he could ring a doorbell and see Maddie Martindale glaring at him, twenty years older and several pounds heavier, and instantly feel that pain again and feel so damn dumb again and still want her again?
It’s pride,
he told himself. It was pride saying,
Hey, I was inept because I was a kid; give me another shot, I’m better now, much better. Really.
Except he was pretty sure that if a miracle happened and he got her again, he’d still blow it just because it was Maddie. And a miracle wasn’t going to happen, and he didn’t want it to. The past was the past, and it didn’t matter anywhere except in Frog Point where what had happened twenty years ago was still news today, and Brent Faraday was still Most Likely to Succeed, and Maddie Martindale was still That Nice Girl, and he was still That Sturgis Boy who was such a Burden to his aunt and uncle. The hell with it.

C.L. straightened and took a final drag on his cigarette. He started to lean into the car to stub the butt out and then stopped himself. What were they going to bust him for if he threw it into the street? Littering?

He flipped the butt into the street and then froze as it landed on a leaf, seeing in his mind the leaf burst into flame, catching other leaves, the fire licking across the road, attacking cars and houses, blackened matchstick frames cracking and falling into the street as gas tanks exploded and raged, and then, at the end of the street, as the smoke cleared, Henry in his sheriffs suit, looking disgusted again.

The butt went out, and C.L. got back in his car, determined to get out of Frog Point before it made him certifiable instead of just temporarily crazed.

Caddie said when she was drinking microwaved hot tea and lemon in Treva’s kitchen. It was a lovely, messy kitchen, full of copper pans and kids drawings on the refrigerator and bright boxes that said “New!” and “Extra Crisp!” Howie had redone everything so it was now brick and gleaming wood and brass, but it was Treva’s kitchen, too, so everything was all jumbled together, and Treva stood in the middle of it, bent over a bowl full of white cheese on her butcher-block island, her frizzy blonde hair making her look like part of the chaos, a dandelion blown there by accident.

“I’m sure my bushes have new feelings for you, too.” Treva’s voice was tight as she picked up a spoonful of the white gunk from the bowl in front of her and a piece of manicotti from the plate beside her and tried to integrate them. Her hands were shaking, and she pushed too hard, and the pasta split and the cheese fell in a glop back into the bowl, spattering her skinny-ribbed red-striped tank top. “Hell.” She dabbed at the stain on her shirt with a dish towel. “Just
hell.”

“What are you doing with that manicotti?” Maddie said, stalling to avoid talking about the thing she’d come to talk about. “Cooking? This isn’t like you.”

“I needed to.” Treva gave up on the towel and picked up another piece of pasta. “You know how sometimes you just have to cook?”

“No,” Maddie said. “And neither do you. What’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong?” Treva waved the pasta at her. “You’re getting divorced and you ask
me
what’s wrong?”

“I think I’m getting divorced,” Maddie said. “I have to think this through.”

“Don’t think it through,” Treva picked up the spoon and went back to work, her hands growing steadier as she talked. “Just divorce the son of a bitch. I’ve always hated him anyway.”

Maddie jerked her chin up in surprise. “Hello? You were matron of honor at the wedding. You waited sixteen years to tell me this?”

“You were in love. It didn’t seem like a good time.” Treva abandoned her pasta for a moment to take a chunk of pale cheese from the refrigerator and hand it to Maddie. “If you’re finished barfing, you can help. Grater’s in the second drawer behind you.”

Maddie scowled at her. “There’s something wrong here.”

Treva dropped the spoon in the bowl again and braced herself on the butcher block. “I’m just crazy right now. I have a lot on my mind. And I hate him.” She focused on Maddie. “All right, enough stalling. What did he do this time?”

Maddie stood and got the grater and a bowl out of Treva’s cupboard. Then she began to grate the cheese into the bowl so she wouldn’t have to meet Treva’s eyes. “I found black lace crotchless underwear under the front seat of his car. It rattled me a little.”

“Oh.” Treva blinked. “Well, yeah. That would rattle me, too. Crotch-less underwear, huh?” She bit her lip. “Beth?”

“I don’t know.” Maddie grated harder. “They didn’t have a name tag. I don’t think I care. I mean, Beth didn’t make me any promises, Brent did. If I was a good person, I’d feel sorry for Beth.”

“Oh, cut me a break.” Treva went back to her manicotti. “I know you’re the original good girl, but that’s pushing it.”

“Okay, look, I don’t like her,” Maddie said. “She slept with my husband, and I still want to spit when I see her. But it was awful for her. She thought she was doing the right thing by coming and telling me, and it just blew up in her face.” She stopped grating to remember Beth’s face, blank with incomprehension as Brent told her it was over. “I think she loved him.”

Treva snorted and Maddie went back to grating. Grating was a pretty good anesthetic. You had to be careful of your knuckles and remember to turn the cheese, but when you were done, you had grated cheese. Not every form of distraction came with a by-product. From now on, she was grating her own cheese. “You need one of those plastic boxes with the grater in the lid,” she told Treva. “I think Rubbermaid makes it. Or Tupperware.”

“I have so much Rubbermaid and Tupperware now that I have to buy more Rubbermaid to organize it,” Treva told her. “I’ll probably die from fluorocarbon poisoning. Forget plastic and tell me you really are going to divorce the son of a bitch this time.”

Maddie flinched. “Maybe I’ll just kill him. Except that I’d screw that up, too. Maybe I could hire somebody to kill him. The paperboy hates him, too. Maybe we could do a deal.”

Treva pounced. “Do you hate him?”

Did she? She was furious with him for getting them all into this mess, but that didn’t mean she hated him. She wasn’t sure she cared enough about him to hate him. Dislike was in the picture, of course. “Only if he’s having an affair,” she told Treva. “If he isn’t having an affair, I only don’t like him. It’s the cheating part that’s going to make me want him dead in twisted wreckage on the interstate.”

“That would be good, too,” Treva said. “If we knew a brake line from a garden hose, we could cut his.”

“We could cut them both just to make sure,” Maddie said, grateful for any change of subject. “Except that would ruin Gloria’s life because she lives for the neighborhood grass.”

“I heard Gloria’s getting a divorce,” Treva said. “Call your mother and find out why. If I’ve heard about it, your mother has photocopies of the complaint.”

Maddie winced. “That’s the way it’s going to be for me, too, isn’t it? The wires will be humming, and people will be very sympathetic, and they’ll pat Em on the head, and her teachers will call and say they understand why her work has fallen off, and the kids will ask her about it on the playground.”

“Em will survive.” Treva stuffed another manicotti.

“I want more for her than survival,” Maddie said. “I want warmth and love and security. She loves Brent so much.”

Treva looked at her with visible contempt. “So you’re going to stay with a cheating scum for the sake of your child? Cut me a break.”

Maddie glared at her. “Hey, would you take Mel away from Howie?”

Treva stopped in midscoop, and her knuckles turn white as she gripped the spoon. “I would do anything to protect my children. But I wouldn’t stay with a man like Brent.”

“Then there’s my mother,” Maddie said. “A small point, I know.”

“Are you kidding?” Treva shook her head. “I wouldn’t want to explain
anything
to your mother. But if you think you’re going to keep this from her, you can forget it. That woman is Velcro for gossip.”

“And my mother-in-law. Helena’s never liked me much anyway. She’s going to blacken my name six ways to Sunday.”

“You’re younger than she is,” Treva said. “She resents it. Your mistake.”

“And then there’s the rest of the town.” Maddie went back to grating since anything was better than contemplating her future. “Frog Point is going to have a field day.”

“Over you? Not a chance.” Disdain sat strangely on Treva’s cartoon face. “Nobody would say anything bad about Maddie Martindale, the Perpetual Virgin of Frog Point. Not even a demon like Helena Faraday.”

Maddie jerked her head up at the venom in Treva’s voice. “What?”

Treva frowned her apology. “I’m sorry. But if you weren’t my best friend, you’d be pretty hard to take. To tell you the truth, this is kind of a relief.”

Maddie sat with her mouth open, trying to think of something to say. This was not like Treva. Treva laughed and made jokes and offered unconditional support; she did not lash out without warning. “Well,” Maddie said, stalling for time. “I’m glad it’s working out for somebody.”

Treva dropped her spoon and came around the butcher block to sink into the chair across from Maddie. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Forget I said that. You’ll be fine.” Maddie stared back bleakly, and Treva picked up speed. “You haven’t done anything wrong. Hell, you’re the perfect wife and mother. Besides, who cares? Jesus, Maddie, you can’t live your life to make this damn town happy.” Treva leaned back. “Although come to think of it, you always have, haven’t you? Clean in thought, word, and deed?”

“I don’t know about thought,” Maddie said, trying to recover from Treva’s onslaught. “Sometimes I have fantasies of standing downtown in front of the bank and screaming, ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck!’ just to see what people would do. Or running naked down Main Street. I really think about it, even though I know I’ll never do it.”

“I’d pay money to see it,” Treva said. “Actually, I wouldn’t pay money to see you, but I’d pay double to see people’s faces.”

“But I can’t do it.” Maddie put the grater down and leaned closer to make her point. “It would be stupid and pointless and embarrassing, and it would be awful for my family. It’s
easier
to do the right thing, you know?”

“Not for all of us.” Treva scooted her chair back so roughly the legs squeaked. “Some of us found it was easier to do the wrong thing, and we’re still paying.”

Maddie blinked at her, fighting her way through present trauma to past pain. “Is this about Three? Because nobody gives a damn that you had to get married twenty years ago.”

“Before graduation?” Treva went back to her butcher block. “Nobody will ever forget. I could find the cure for cancer, and they’d say, ‘Treva Hanes—you know, the one who had to get married before she graduated— discovered the cure for cancer.’ Nobody forgets in this town.” She shoved the manicotti pan to one side and began to wipe down the counter. “But they won’t touch you. You do everything right. You married your high school sweetheart and never looked at anyone else. Hell, they’ll put up a shrine.”

“Treva, have we got a problem here?” Maddie said. “Because this is not like you, and while-4-would love to be sympathetic, my life is in meltdown already. I need you on this.”

“Right.” Treva bit her lip. “Right. I’m sorry. I’ve just had such a lousy week. And now this. It’s just awful. I feel awful about everything.”

“Well, at least you got dinner out of it.” Maddie stretched to hand her the bowl of grated cheese and the rest of the block of Parmesan.

“No, grate the whole thing,” Treva said.

“For one pan of manicotti?”

Treva opened the refrigerator and gestured, and Maddie craned her neck to see past her. Five more pans of manicotti sat already stuffed on the shelves.

Maddie slumped back, appalled. “Treva, we have to talk. This isn’t good. What’s wrong with you?”

“You should talk. All I have is a lot of pasta. You have crotchless underwear.” Treva slammed the refrigerator door. “What are you going to do? Whatever it is, I want to help.”

Maddie opened her mouth to ask what was wrong again and stopped, blocked by Treva’s bland stonewall stare, the stare that had gotten Treva out of any number of confrontations in her life. Whatever it was that was bothering Treva was not going to be discussed. Period. Maddie gave up and went back to her own problems. “I’ll confront him when he gets home, I guess. I don’t know what to do. I don’t have any proof. I threw the pants away.”

Treva rolled her eyes. “You don’t need proof. This is divorce; not murder.”

Murder.
It had such a nice clean sound compared to
divorce.
“Wait,” Maddie said. “The day is not over yet.”