Lies That Bind (26 page)

“You’re never here,” Heather said again. “Where do you go?”

Where did she go? How would she explain it without sounding like a complete lunatic? She kept it simple because, in reality, it was. “I’m looking for my sister.”

“But what about us?” Heather asked.

Maeve thought it was less about her looking for her sister, less about them wanting to spend time with her, and more about the fact that she was gone when they needed her. They were grieving, too. She had forgotten about that.

As if to confirm her thoughts, Heather started crying. “I miss Grandpa.”

The toast started smoking in the appliance. Maeve popped it up before wrapping Heather in a hug. She felt her own tears come but wasn’t sure if it was because she missed her father or because she missed her sister. A sister she had never known. On the face of it, it did sound crazy, but she was stubborn like that.

Or tenacious.

Depended how you looked at it.

Heather’s outburst gave her a chance to calm down, to step out of herself and the bottomless well of anger that had built, if only for a minute. She had been mad at Heather for being the kind of girl who went for the Tommy Brantley kind of guy and she had to let that go. She grabbed some tissues from the powder room and handed them to Heather. “How about this? I need to run an errand in the Bronx”—Well, she thought, that was one way to put it—“and then we’ll hit the big mall on the Thruway on the way home. We’ll go out to eat.”

Heather let out a shaky breath, the kind that came after an extended bout of crying. “Cheesecake Factory?”

Maeve pushed her daughter’s dark hair off her face. “Sure. Cheesecake Factory.” She reached over and closed the photo album on the table. “Go tell your sister.”

The element of surprise was her best and closest ally; she wouldn’t call Margie Haggerty and tell her she was on her way. She waited while the girls got ready and plotted what she would say to the woman, someone who she had forgotten many years ago and who she hoped to forget again soon.

She responded to a text from Chris Larsson asking if he could see her that night, telling him that she was spending time with the girls. He would understand, she hoped. He had a son. The kid might not be as needy as her own progeny but that was to be seen. Maeve hadn’t met him yet, the boy spending time with his mother.

Before they left town, Maeve stopped to get cash. Sliding her ATM card into the machine, she watched as all of her accounts came up: her savings, her checking, Rebecca’s savings, Rebecca’s checking. Cal had insisted that one of them be on Rebecca’s accounts so that if they wanted to deposit money while she was at school, they didn’t have to bother sending a check; they could just transfer money for books, necessities, or even food when she couldn’t take the dining hall anymore. Maeve hadn’t checked the accounts in a long time but glanced at them now just in case Rebecca needed money before she went back to school, something she would never tell her mother, preferring to suffer the indignities of generic shampoo and cafeteria turkey tetrazzini instead, parceling her money out with Scrooge-like frugality.

Maeve hit “Savings.” There wasn’t a dime in the account. Behind her, the door to the bank opened and someone smelling heavily of grease and oil came in. She went to “Checking.”

Nothing.

When Rebecca had left for school, she had had just shy of twenty-five hundred dollars total in her savings account, the money she had saved from birthdays, graduations, and working. Her checking held only a few hundred dollars, something Maeve considered her “walking-around money,” the funds she would use for coffee and lip gloss and anything else she might have a hankering for at school.

Maeve rechecked both accounts. The man who had entered the bank cleared his throat noisily. “You refinancing your house, lady?” he asked. “On the ATM?”

Maeve turned; it was the head of the DPW, Marc Foster. “Hi, Marc. I’ll just be a second.” She noticed that his hand was damaged but resisted the urge to ask him if he had lost a finger.

“I’m sorry, Maeve,” he said, seeing his future of free coffee and scones ruined with one cranky comment, “take your time.”

While she wanted to stare at the screen and see if the numbers that she expected would magically appear, she couldn’t; someone else entered the bank. She quickly withdrew a few hundred in cash for the boots and dinner and went back to the car.

The girls sat in silence, Rebecca in the front, Heather in the back. She looked at both of them but their faces gave nothing away.

She opened the passenger-side door. “You’re driving,” she said to Rebecca.

“In the Bronx?” Rebecca said, whining. The sound of it got under Maeve’s skin in a way it wouldn’t have before the discovery of the missing money.

Just what had she done at school? Was it something horrible, something shocking? Did she have a drug habit? As Maeve settled in as a passenger, she tried to think of what would make her daughter spend her entire life savings in one semester.

Beside her, Rebecca was still protesting being pressed into service as a driver but Maeve ignored her, her thoughts on childish spending sprees and just what exactly she would say to Margie Haggerty, trying to keep her more murderous thoughts at bay.

CHAPTER 46

Rebecca had come late to the driving thing and had gotten her license only a month before going to college, and that newness of skill showed when Maeve directed her into the IHOP parking lot on Broadway, right across from the funeral home where she had been several times as a child, Jack’s devotion to wake-going with his young daughter being something of an oddity, she had learned years later. She thought everyone went to wakes every week with their father, paying respects to people she barely knew but who seemed grateful at the Conlon family’s attendance at whatever “viewing” was taking place that particular day.

Rebecca eased the car, with a great deal of moaning and gasping, into a tight space between a minivan and a brand-new Lexus.

“Good job!” Maeve said. “See? That wasn’t hard.” At least it’s not as hard as I’m going to come down on you when you finally tell me what happened to all of your money.

Rebecca brushed her dark hair off her face. “It was really hard.” She handed the keys to her mother. “I’m not driving home.”

In the backseat, Heather was listening to music, oblivious to her sister’s attempts at navigating city streets. “You want pancakes?” Maeve asked. “I’m not sure how long I’m going to be but you can get pancakes if you want.”

Heather pulled her earbuds from her ears, suddenly able to hear what was being said. “I could go for some pancakes,” she said.

That was Rebecca’s cue to take the opposite stance. What had just seconds ago seemed like a great idea had lost its luster in the wake of her sister’s wishes. “I don’t want pancakes.”

Yes, siblings know … how to drive each other crazy. She needed no further proof than her own spawn, packed tight into the little Prius with her.

Maeve shoved twenty dollars into her older daughter’s hand. “Have coffee then.”

Something in her tone alerted Rebecca to the fact that this conversation was over, the great pancake debate done for the day. She eyed her mother warily. If siblings knew, daughters knew even more, and were especially aware of when their mothers had been pushed to the limit.

Maeve pointed to a spot across the street. “I’ll be right there, in that building next to the funeral home. If you need me, call me.” She opened the car door. “I won’t be long.”

Maeve wiggled out from between her car and the Lexus, careful not to let her door hit the other car, and walked across the street to a storefront next to the funeral home. Margie’s business was on the second floor, over a bodega, just like Poole had said. Maeve wasn’t sure what she was expecting, but the small office with the glass-fronted door looked like it hadn’t seen much traffic in a while. It was cluttered and small. The sign on the door said
MARGARET HAGGERTY, ATTORNEY,
and below that
Hablamos Español!

Inside, a desk for a receptionist sat empty, a thin film of dust on the top indicating that it hadn’t been used in a while. Behind a partition, Maeve could hear Margie discussing a case with someone in fluent Spanish. Maeve’s Spanish wasn’t halting but whatever Margie was discussing with her client seemed to have to do with a fall from a ladder. Maeve looked at the out-of-date magazines on an Ikea coffee table in the waiting area; she had had the same one until the bolts fell out and the top almost broke one of her toes. She wondered if the string of expletives she had used at the time would sound as dramatic in Swedish as it had in English and decided that it probably wouldn’t.

The client brushed past Maeve in the tight office; she was a compact Hispanic lady who appeared to have been crying vigorously, a wad of paper towels pressed to her eyes. Margie peered from around the corner of the partition and blanched when she saw Maeve, quite a feat considering her pale, Irish complexion. She had looked the same way—guilty—the day Maeve had “lost” her key.

“Maeve.” She gripped the side of the partition, white-knuckled.

“Margie.” Maeve didn’t have time for pleasantries. “So Regina Hartwell is your aunt. On your father’s side, is it?” She walked back to the door to the office and turned the deadbolt above the doorknob. “Why didn’t you tell me that? And what else aren’t you telling me?”

Margie backed up until she was at her desk. Maeve came around the partition and surveyed the workspace, which she found dark, messy, and completely unprofessional. No wonder Margie was helping workers with comp cases in a down-on-its-heels neighborhood. Maeve couldn’t imagine anyone less desperate than a day laborer in this area would want Margie’s services. This was no high-level law firm with lots of cases. This was one woman trying to scratch out a living after being disgraced in her former career. “Is it just you here? Really fancy, Margie,” Maeve said. It looked like a one-woman operation, but Maeve wanted to make sure some partner wasn’t out to lunch or getting pancakes for themselves across the street.

“Just me,” Margie said, unable to hold Maeve’s gaze. Had she had a brain in her head, she should have lied and said that there was someone else, someone who would be back soon, but it was clear to Maeve that Margie didn’t find her nearly as threatening as she should.

Maeve sat down on an old thrift-store chair. “So, Regina Hartwell. Spill it.”

When it was clear to Margie that Maeve wasn’t going anywhere, she started to talk. “Yes. Regina Hartwell is my aunt. My father’s sister. She lives in Rhineview. Always has.”

“And worked at Mansfield.”

Margie swallowed. “Yes.”

Jesus, that was easy. Maeve wondered what else she could ask. Just where was Jimmy Hoffa? And did Lee Harvey Oswald act alone? Who was Deep Throat? “What happened after the place closed?” Maeve asked. Someone was knocking on the glass in the front door, the pane sounding as if it were going to shatter.

“I’ll be right there!” Margie called. She looked back at Maeve. “She lived in Rhineview. We rarely saw her. She was a foster mother to some kids. Developmentally challenged.”

“Legally?” Maeve asked. “As in, she adopted them? There were records?”

Margie looked confused. “Of course,” she said definitively. She thought for a moment. “I think so,” she added, now not so sure.

Maeve thought about the children who went missing after the place closed, of her friends at the support group. “How many?”

“I don’t know. I was young the last time we went up there,” Margie said. “Maeve, I really don’t remember. I was little. My father and Regina stopped talking before he died. I didn’t see her very much.”

“I’ve been up there. She won’t talk to me.”

“Did you tell her I sent you?” Margie asked.

“Yes. Yes, I did. Should I not have?” Maeve said, getting a little tingle of pleasure when she saw Margie’s concerned expression, her fear.

Margie shook her head. “No. There’s no love lost between our families.”

The Haggertys had a way like that. “What else aren’t you telling me, Margie? And why didn’t you tell me that Regina Hartwell was your aunt?”

“I’ve told you everything.” Margie pushed a coffee cup out of the way and pulled a sheet of paper off a pile on the desk. “And I didn’t tell you because I figured you would find out eventually. I didn’t actually think it was relevant.”

“Are you an idiot?” Maeve asked. She was starting to think that that might be the case. “It is entirely relevant.”

“You don’t like me. I know that.”

“And why would that be, Margie?” Maeve asked. “What could you have possibly done to make me not like you?” The knocking at the door was in time to the beating of Maeve’s heart.

“I don’t know, Maeve.” She looked terrified. “I have no idea.”

“No idea.”

Margie held firm, something, a memory, giving her more resolve than she had had when Maeve walked in. “Nothing.”

The frustration that Maeve felt at getting nowhere with Margie was growing exponentially until it felt like another entity in the room.

Margie handed Maeve the piece of paper. “I can help you, if you want. Find other things out. Here’s my fee sheet,” she said, “which lists my hourly rates and expenses. I can help you on the legal side of things, if you need me to.”

Maeve held the sheet of paper in her hand, a buzzing beginning in her ears that made her head hurt. “You want me to hire you?” she said.

“I can help you.”

The knocking, which had paused to give the knocker a chance to rub his or her sore knuckles, started again. Combined with the buzzing in her head, it made Maeve feel as if she were going to punch a hole in the wall. Instead, to release some of the rage that felt as if it were bubbling just beneath her skin, she swept her arm across the desk and watched in wonder as everything crashed to the floor, a cup of cold coffee splattering all over the far wall.

Better that than taking out a gun and shooting Margie in the face or wrapping her hands around her throat, which was her initial inclination. “Margie,” she said slowly. “I’ve got a kid in the car downstairs who probably spent a few grand on shoes and Starbucks, so I’m in no mood for this little dance you seem to want to do today.” Maeve’s mind went to the Frye boots that Rebecca had worn to her grandfather’s funeral, brand new but with that broken-in look that cost a lot of money to achieve.