Lies That Bind (13 page)

She was going to tread lightly.

Cal walked in as she was closing the computer; he had just finished a stint at the gym, judging from the sweaty T-shirt peeking out from under his hooded sweatshirt. He knew his way around and poured them each a large cup of coffee before taking a seat at the butcher-block counter, his usual spot when he dropped in for a chat. He had grabbed a muffin as well, taking a large bite. Maeve started a cake batter, pulling a container of ganache out of the refrigerator, suppressing a shudder when she thought about the finger in the baggie.

“Where’s Devon?” Maeve asked. Maeve was unused to seeing Cal without his latest progeny.

“Sitter,” Cal said. “I needed to get to the gym,” he said, patting his trim midsection.

You wanted the younger wife, Maeve thought. That kind of decision comes with a hefty price tag, namely daily spin classes and dead lifts.

He looked up at the ceiling, changing the subject. “Listen, I did a search. No death certificate for Aibhlinn…”

He mangled the pronunciation. “Aveleen,” she said, saying the name phonetically. “Or Evelyn, if you want to Americanize it.”

“Right. I searched both. I searched by middle name as well.” He balled up the wrapper and held it in his hand. “There’s always the chance her name was changed. There’s always the chance she’s dead.”

Why he could not understand that it pained her to hear that her sister might be dead—after all, she had just learned about her—was a mystery to Maeve. She held her tongue, pursing her lips tight. She didn’t want to say anything that might push Cal away, make him not want to help her more.

“Is there anything else we can do?” Maeve asked. “To try to find her?”

Cal considered that. “Yes. Lots of things. But anything you undertake will take time and money,” he said, adding, “two things you don’t have a lot of.”

“You sound like you’re talking to a client,” she said.

“Maeve, your dad would have told you about her if she were alive,” he said. “I think she’s dead.”

“Stop saying that,” she said, and the catch in her throat caught him by surprise.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I just don’t know why…”

“I’d be invested? Want to find her?” she asked. “Take one minute, Cal, and think it through.” She had never thought him to be lacking compassion, but in this instance, his lack of understanding spoke to its absence in his personality.

“You’re just hurting right now,” he said.

True. It was an old wound, one she didn’t know she had.

“I don’t want you to hurt anymore.”

“Then help me.” She told him about her conversation with Margie. “Mansfield. Do you remember that place? The investigation?”

“Yes,” he said. “It was horrible there.”

“She was there. I don’t know where she might have gone after it closed.” “If she was still alive” went unsaid. She looked at him. “Help me.”

He didn’t answer but in that silence was his complete assent.

“One last thing,” she said, “and you can’t tell a soul.”

“Shoot.”

“Jo found a finger in the refrigerator the other night.”

He spit the last of his muffin into a napkin and let out a little gag.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I cleaned everything. Everything has been sanitized. And it was in a baggie.”

“Oh, I feel so much better,” he said, throwing out the napkin. “I’ve got to ask you, Maeve? Are you in the Mob?” He smiled but he looked a little wary of her.

“No,” she said. “Does this sound like a Mob thing?”

“Definitely,” he said. “What about your landlord? Is he mobbed up?”

“How would I know that?” she asked.

He went to the back door. “See if he has nine fingers next time you see him. That ought to let you know.”

CHAPTER 21

Good advice, Cal, she thought, as she sat on a darkened street in a wealthier part of town, watching cars drop by Sebastian DuClos’s stately home, stay for a brief moment, and then speed away into the night. She had left after dinner, whipping up something easy when she got home and eating with Heather, all in silence as usual, still no closer to figuring out what Billy Brantley had to do with any of this or where things stood with Tommy.

Heather was sticking close to home and that worried Maeve more than when she wanted to break free and explore the nighttime world of Farringville, like usual. She was in her room when Maeve got home from the store, and stayed there until dinner. After dinner she returned to her room, shutting the door, closing off the world outside.

Maeve called Jimmy Moriarty at Buena del Sol before she left, getting his answering machine. She tried to sound casual, light. But what she wanted from him was any information he may have had about Evelyn, any indication that Jack had told him something about the sister Maeve didn’t know she had.

Tired of sitting in the car, she tucked her gun into her pants, thinking again of why she felt the need to carry. Sean Donovan, she decided. He had stripped away the vestiges of security that she felt growing up around her wonderful father, leaving her paranoid, nervous. Afraid some of the time. Having a gun made her feel in control and like she could handle anything, even if it were totally at odds with how she felt about firearms in general.

She was different. He had made her so.

She backed the Prius up to the end of the street and, keeping to the side where there were no streetlights, walked along the road, the people in cars passing her not seeming to pay any mind to the small woman wandering alone on an otherwise deserted street. Was this middle age now? Did you become invisible to the general public? She wondered about that.

Sebastian DuClos’s house sat kitty-corner to the road, at an odd angle. Sideways, really. She waited until there was a break in the action and walked up the driveway, snaking around his car, the one with the noisy engine—a Jaguar, she could now see—and going to the back of the house, staying as far away as she could, and at the edge of the property, the Brantleys’ motion detector reminding her that when it came to security, most Farringville residents had her beat in spades. Her own house boasted a busted front porch light and a powder room window that anyone could enter if they had the desire.

The deck was raised off the ground and beyond it was a brightly illuminated kitchen where Maeve could make out DuClos and no one else. She wondered who was manning the front door, answering when the people driving the cars that were buzzing in and out of the street stopped to check in.

Or to buy, she thought.

There was no other explanation for the beehive of activity that was Wendell Lane, a street where there were only two other houses, both up the street and closer to the main road than the DuClos manse. He was perfectly situated; cars could drive up and not disturb the other residents, their houses tucked away in wooded areas far up the street. Maeve stood in the backyard, inching closer to the house to see if she could get a look.

She ducked under the deck. Beneath it was a weirdly lit basement, and as she crept closer, she wondered exactly what was happening down there. Tanning? Tomato growing? She couldn’t tell but, her body on alert, she heard the sliding glass doors to the kitchen open above her and footsteps on the deck just a few feet from her head. Was that garlic she smelled? She couldn’t tell. She held her breath, not daring to make a sound, plotting her getaway in case she was detected.

She pressed herself against the house’s brick foundation and waited, hearing the jingle of a dog’s collar and the click of nails on the wood above. She heard labored breathing, the hallmark of a bigger dog, as well as a gate opening on the stairs above, and the dog making its way to the grass below.

Oh, Jesus, she thought, hearing the heavy footfall and the jingling getting closer. She sprinted from beneath the deck, across the backyard toward the street, hearing the dog bark and begin its pursuit of her, the collar’s jangle, a warning to her, getting faster as the dog ran behind her.

“Bruno!” she heard DuClos call out, whether to silence the dog, call him back, or sic him on her, she wasn’t sure. But she ran like her life depended on it, hoping that even with her short legs, she could outrun the hound.

She crawled through a hedge, feeling the nip of teeth on the hem of her jeans, getting to the other side. She ran across the street, deep into the woods on the other side of the house, finally coming to rest against a fallen tree stump.

This is stupid, she thought, almost saying it aloud. In her head, she heard her father’s voice say the same thing. “You’re right, Maeve. This is stupid. Go home.”

She reached the car a half hour later, after she was sure no one would be looking for her, and drove away. When she was a safe distance from Wendell Lane, she did a search on her phone.

Huh, she thought. So that’s what they were. Hydroponic grow lights.

She’d learned a lot about her landlord tonight. Garlic lover. Dog owner. Tomato gifter. Pot grower?

CHAPTER 22

There was one pay phone left in town and it was next to one of the many nail salons in Farringville. Maeve pulled the car over and dialed 911, disguising her voice, adding a little accent for good measure, letting the police know that there was a tremendous amount of activity on Wendell Lane at the DuClos house, hanging up before the officer could ask any more questions.

When she got home, Maeve threw together a cookie batter, scooped them onto a sheet and put them in the oven, the smell of which wafted up to Heather’s room, making her emerge from her bedroom and break her silence. “Want a cookie?” Maeve asked when Heather entered the kitchen, handing the girl a warm cookie. She expected Heather to drift off after she got a few cookies, to continue her silent treatment.

Hmmm, Maeve thought, when Heather sat down at the table. Playing it safe. Being the good girl. All fine offensive strategies after the last few days. She looked for any sign that the girl was lovelorn, missing her boyfriend, but she seemed on an even keel, dare Maeve say happy?

No, she wouldn’t go that far.

“What happened to your pants?” Heather asked.

Maeve looked down. Bruno had taken a wide swath of denim with him after chasing her. She was just thankful it hadn’t included any flesh. “I don’t know.”

“You look tired,” Heather said.

The kid was right. Maeve was exhausted, but she wouldn’t tell Heather that part of the reason was because she had been running away from a dog down a deserted street. “Oh, I’m okay,” she said, picking the remaining cookies off the sheet and putting them on a plate. Ever since the day she cut school, Heather had lain low, giving her mother a wide berth, even as she stayed cloistered in her room. To Heather, Maeve was just crazy enough to do something supremely embarrassing, something that would require her to move to another school district, or worse, transfer to Catholic school. The girl had learned the hard way; don’t push her mother too far or she would find out exactly what she was capable of. Maeve tried not to think about a possible connection between Billy, Tommy, and Heather. Oh, and Sebastian DuClos.

“Where’s Tommy been?” Maeve said, ignoring Heather’s observation about her physical state.

“Not around,” Heather said.

“Where is he?”

“Lacrosse camp,” Heather said, looking down at the table, the cookie on a plate in front of her, anywhere but at her mother.

“Before school ends?” Maeve said. “Before Christmas vacation starts?”

“He wants to get a scholarship to Duke so he’s going to lacrosse camp,” Heather said.

Case closed. But to Maeve, it sounded like a lie. The school had a liberal policy when it came to student athletes, but letting a student go away on school time seemed out of character even for the Farringville school board. But if he was gone, Maeve was happy. Merry Christmas and all that. She couldn’t think of a better present.

“And why was Billy looking for you?” Maeve asked.

Heather shrugged. “Maybe to see if I was okay with that? I don’t know.”

Lies. Every single thing that came out of her mouth was a lie. “Do you have homework?”

“Do you have a sister?”

Maeve tried not to react. It was jarring to her to think that she did but it was also up to her to try to make it seem as commonplace as possible, even if it wasn’t, to her daughter. “I might.” She put the cookie sheet in the sink, running water over it. “How did you know?”

“I heard you and Dad talking.”

Damn those thin walls and drafty windows. Maeve had been right to lower her voice when she had spoken to Cal about Heather but should have been more careful about discussing Evelyn. It wasn’t that she didn’t want the girls to know; it’s just that she needed to find the right way to tell them, to explain that although people didn’t send their children away now, at one time, they did. Implicit in Heather’s statement was that she was angry that she hadn’t been told. “I didn’t want to say anything until I was completely sure.”

“And now you are?”

Maeve pulled out a chair across from her at the kitchen table. “No. Not entirely.”

Heather picked at the cookie. “Do you think she’s still alive?”

Maeve thought for a moment, tracing some letters in a pile of spilled sugar on the top of the table. “Yes,” she said finally. “I do.”

“You would know something like that, Mom,” Heather said. “Siblings know stuff. Sisters, especially.”

“They do?”

“Yeah. Like I know when Rebecca is missing home and not just because it says it on Facebook.” This was the longest conversation Maeve and Heather had had in months; Maeve stayed quiet while the girl talked. “So, I’ll text her and ask what’s up and she’ll tell me. Siblings know. Gabriela agrees with me.”

“She does?” Maeve said, hiding the aggravation that accompanied the utterance of Cal’s wife’s name.

“Yes,” Heather said. “Dad told her the whole story and she agrees with me.”

“You sound sure. About siblings knowing.” Her daughters were obviously closer than Maeve knew; that was the good news amongst all of the other revelations she had heard lately.

“I am sure,” Heather said. “It’s not telepathic or anything. Just feelings.” She finished eating the cookie and gave her mother her full attention, something Maeve was unaccustomed to. “Tell me the whole story. What you know.”