Lie Still (20 page)

I saw no reason to mention that I’d left the bookshelf door cracked open for the cops.

Our fingerprints, everywhere.

Let it all blow up.

T
iffany. Letty. Mary Ann.

Jenny. Lucinda. Holly.

All those
y
’s. All those boob jobs. All those strangling little secrets.

Southern sisters, linking arms, spinning and dancing a jig in my head until I couldn’t tell them apart anymore. One face, one body, one voice, one killer. A glittering, faceted diamond.
The club
.

Right now, in Caroline’s private little cave, everything that those women and a hundred others might kill to protect was being stuffed into evidence bags. Because of me. My mouth, meanwhile, was half-stuffed with a bite of Chef Joe Bob’s burger of the day. I had decided to order it the second I saw it lettered in hot pink chalk across the blackboard:
FOUR-CHEESE-BARBECUE-JALAPEÑO-BUTT-KICKER
. In New York City, Joe Bob could sell these for $20 apiece, if he laid them out on designer pottery with an organic sprig of something green and exchanged smoked Gouda for the pepper jack. Here at Joe Bob’s Diner on Clairmont’s Main Street, the cook in the black cowboy hat threw it on a chipped, white-on-its-way-to-gray diner plate, along with a sloppy helping of half-ripe tomatoes, dill pickle chips, and a glop of a questionable mayonnaise-based item that I assumed was slaw.

Misty picked at a Caesar salad with dark wilt and mundane croutons, clearly not a menu item where Chef Joe Bob put his creative powers to use. I wondered why she picked the town’s burger joint for our lunch date if she was the health freak she appeared to be. I’d never seen her eat anything but a lettuce-based entrée. She couldn’t weigh more than 105 pounds.

“Did you see the WFAA news truck setting up across the street?” I asked her. “A woman on the sidewalk told me they’re doing a piece on Caroline.” I gathered a handful of paprika fries, stuck them on a napkin, and slid them over to her. “Here, have some.” My not-so-subtle way of trying to get Misty to say something, anything about Caroline.

Misty shrugged, as if neither the fries nor the truck interested her. She displayed a stunning lack of curiosity about Caroline’s disappearance.

And what about the secrets in that box?
This baby is not my husband’s. Look under my bed. There is blood in my house
.

Melodramatic. Laughable, if it weren’t that Caroline was so twisted. Was one of those secrets Misty’s? Or was the whole thing a giant hoax and the entire club in on it?

“Do you know what
UDC
stands for?” I asked randomly.

“UDC?”
She rattled off a list. “University of the District of Columbia. United Doberman Club. United Daughters of the Confederacy. Unicorn Dunces Club. Take your pick.”

“I pick number three. United Daughters of the Confederacy. Although two and three could be the same thing. And four is an interesting concept.”

“Why do you want to know what
UDC
stands for?”

“I saw it on Letty Dunn’s charm bracelet. She certainly believes in her elevated place in the world.”

“Really, you think that? I think the opposite. I think she has no idea who she is. But then, I think most of us don’t.” Misty stared at my chin, motioning for me to catch the dripping burger juice. “You have a voracious appetite for red meat.”

“I know. It comes with the hormones. Mike says the next step for me is to dine with wolves at a fresh kill.”

Today, Misty had adopted the look of a rich suburban housewife. An all-white Nike jogging suit flashed against a new, deeper tan. The symbolic “diamond” dollar sign nestled in the hollow of her neck. I looked surreptitiously for scars. There was the faint outline of several on both inside forearms. If you weren’t looking for them, you wouldn’t notice. I wondered if she had used makeup on her body or had instead made a date at the spray tan shop operated by Letty’s cousin.

“I heard that Letty used to be a completely different person,” Misty said. “Before Harry. Did you know she was a model? A Miss Texas contender?”

“She mentioned it.” I tried to rub a spot off my iced tea glass.
It didn’t budge. The thick glass was so scarred from dishwasher use it was impossible to tell if it was clean. “That doesn’t mean she was ever a decent human being.”

Misty moved first, leaning over to brush her hand gently over the top of my head. Intimate. “You’ve got something in your hair.” A tiny, frilly pink flower drifted into my iced tea glass.

“I think it’s from a crepe myrtle,” I said stiffly. “I took a walk.”

I took a walk, all right. Less than an hour ago, I’d walked right out of Caroline Warwick’s basement door, camouflaged by a bounty of crepe myrtles, while cops flooded the house behind me. I’d walked briskly with Maria through the backyard, to the gate, made it without incident to my car, dropped her off at Brake-O, drove home to change clothes and then on to Joe Bob’s Diner for lunch. All of this, without going into early labor.

“Harry Dunn slept with at least three women the week before they were married. Including Letty’s sixteen-year-old sister and one of the bridesmaids. And it didn’t stop. Caroline knew.”

“So what? Half the town must know that Harry is a dog. He hit on
me
. I’d bet he’s hit on you.” For God’s sake, he tried to get a free blow job from Maria by the pots and pans.

“It was different with Caroline,” Misty insisted. “Harry hated her. She hated him.”

“Are you trying to say that Harry has something to do with Caroline’s disappearance?”

“I’m just saying it’s an area to explore. You might mention it to your husband.”

“Was your secret in that box?” I was barely able to tamp down my next question.
Was it about that little girl?

Misty pushed her crystal-studded Anne Klein sunglasses more firmly in place on top of her head. “Caroline hires professionals to spy on people. She keeps a file cabinet of dossiers.” Misty knew? Had she been in Caroline’s closet? I tried to keep
my face expressionless. I dug into the white glop. Marshmallow, not mayonnaise. Interesting. Not terrible. I took another bite to relieve some of the jalapeño.

Misty pushed aside her half-finished salad. The fries were limp and cold. “Letty tipped off the cops to an argument I had with Caroline the day before she disappeared.”

“I heard. That’s why you should be the last person to defend her. Letty’s a borderline sociopath.” An image of her knocking that vase to the floor sprung to mind.

“She wasn’t lying. Don’t you want to know what we were arguing about?”

“I guess.” My head was starting to hurt.

“You.”

I wasn’t hungry anymore. The burger was settling in a lump near the baby, who was probably setting up to kick it like a soccer ball. I was tensing, waiting for it, for whatever Misty was about to say. “That makes no sense,” I said.

“I told Caroline she should leave you alone.”

“You know about the rape?” The words shot out of my mouth before I could stop them.

“What are you talking about?” Misty’s confusion appeared sincere. “What rape?”

This was one of the most schizophrenic conversations of my life, and I’d played it all wrong. But now I had nothing to lose.

“Did your name used to be Alice?”

Misty’s fists clenched. Her face blanched white under her tan.

“I need to go,” she said.

She laid a $20 bill over the $14.59 check and stalked out, a cue we were done, maybe with everything.

T
he key turned a little too easily in the front lock, which should have been my first clue. But I was tired and distracted, my belly rebelling against the Butt-Kicker’s jalapeños and my unsettling lunch with Misty.

Two feet inside the door, I almost stepped on it. A mirror. Mike’s grandmother’s mirror. The same mirror that scared me to death the other night by reflecting the ghostly specter of my face.

I wondered when Mike had moved it from the bedroom to the front alcove of the house. Why he’d laid it flat on the entryway floor where I might trip on it. I stared down at my image in the antique glass. Slightly cloudy, as if one of me was imprisoned in another dimension.

Not a bad idea to hang it on this wall. It would open up the tiny space. Had Mike come home for lunch with a fit of decorating inspiration? Maybe he figured I was using the back door these days.

I gazed down at my reflection, wondering whether to try to move the massive mirror by myself. At least lean it against the wall. I lamented what a crappy housekeeper I’d become. The mirror was dirty. Smeared.

Kneeling, I realized the dirt spelled something. Three words. A love note from Mike? A wry comment on my seriously declining domestic skills?

The first word was see. At least that was definitely an s. The last word,
her
. I knelt to get a grip on the heavy frame and tilted the mirror up into the light so I could see better. The
s
vanished. The message was disintegrating.

Heavy gray dust. I was a worse housekeeper than I thought. The mirror smelled dank, like my great-grandfather’s sweater when I used to hug him.

Like cigarettes.

Or cigars
.

My breath, coming faster, blew the first word away. It tickled my nose.

This wasn’t dust.

This wasn’t a message from Mike.

But it was a message from someone. Someone deranged.

I knew I should run, but my eyes were glued to the damn mirror.

Concentrate, Emily. Hold your breath. The second word, before it disappears
. Or was it two words glued together?

The first letter?
A? F? T?
Seven letters? Eight letters?

The second word was
though
. I was pretty sure.

No,
through
.

First word,
see
. Second word,
through
. Third word,
her
.

See through her
.

I jumped back and the mirror fell from my hands, violently hitting the floor. The glass that had shone with the faces of Mike’s ancestors for almost two centuries now lay at my feet in pieces, like hundreds of tiny knives.

I backed out of the door, my hands fumbling inside my purse for my phone. I needed to call Mike. A dark curtain in my brain began to draw closed.

I clutched the outside of the doorframe, one foot on the porch.

See through her
.

Was the message a warning?

About Misty? About Caroline? Any one of the women in the club?

Who hates me this much?

My enemy, as always, was baffling. Inscrutable.

I slid down, the curtains on the stage swirling shut, the show over.

I
woke up on my front porch with my head in the lap of a stranger.

“Are you all right, ma’am?”

A man with his hands near my throat. I wanted to scream, but I’d lost my voice. Maybe stolen by the spirits I felt whoosh out of that mirror when it shattered. “Your husband and an ambulance are on the way, ma’am. I took the liberty of checking the emergency numbers in your cell phone. That’s a helpful little thing Verizon’s got in the contacts list, letting you put it right at the top. I got my kids’ phones all set up. And mine. I’ve got the diabetes.”

I heard the faint wail of a siren in the distance. I pressed a hand to my chest, as if that would slow the irregular flutter of my heart. Could this man be telling the truth? I’d seen a UPS van parked on the street when I pulled in to the driveway. The man gingerly holding my head was wearing a brown uniform shirt. But it was always the man in the van.

“I didn’t do CPR because your husband told me not to after I checked your breathing. The baby and all. By the way, I watched
you go down from my truck across the street, and you landed pretty good. On your butt. Then you kind of keeled over real gentle. Just like an angel laid you down. So you’re married to our police chief?”

It didn’t seem like a question he expected a response to. Even in the bizarreness of the moment, with this stranger’s sunburned, porous face peering down at me, I was reminded how Texans are the most natural people with the simile that I’d ever met.

Like an angel laid me down
.

“I’m going to close my eyes,” I announced.

“No, ma’am, I’m sorry, I can’t let you do that. Your husband made it real clear that if you woke up to keep you wide awake.”

Vehicles screeched up to the curb, sirens on mute. Blue and red lights flashed in the living room window like a patriotic Christmas display.

Footsteps, crunching up the walk. Mike’s voice saying, “I’ll take her.” Familiar tree-trunk arms lifted me up.

“You OK, baby?” His breath was warm in my ear.

“Which one of us are you referring to?” I put my arms around his neck. I breathed in his minty aftershave.

“Both.” He carried me down the walk to the ambulance while a cop I’d last seen this morning on a computer screen kept pace beside us. Two black-and-whites were parked at the curb.

“Ron,” Mike said. “Get the name of the delivery guy and his driver’s license, will you? He gets a free ride on tickets for a while. Find out what his favorite beer is while you’re at it.”