Lies That Bind (27 page)

“Maeve,” Margie started in protest, but stopped when she saw Maeve’s face. “Okay, fine. You’re scaring me a little bit.” Finally, Margie could tell that what she saw in Maeve’s eyes was pure, unadulterated hatred and it was completely terrifying. The bigger woman leaned back, trying to get away.

“I am?” Maeve asked. “I’m scaring you? The Peace Corps volunteer? The former cop?” She pushed the last remaining items off the desk, those that hadn’t tumbled to the floor in the first go-round. “I’m going to be completely honest with you, Margie. I have no one left in the world with the last name Conlon. I have lost my mother, my father, and now a sister I didn’t know I had. You,” she said, putting her finger in the larger woman’s chest, “are toying with me. And,” she started, stopping herself. She wanted to say, “I hurt people who do that,” but instead, she fell silent. The less said, the better.

She had so many questions she wanted to ask Margie, but her judgment was clouded and she couldn’t think straight. Maeve fell silent for a moment, something that seemed to make Margie even more nervous. She fidgeted behind the desk, her clasped hands shaking a bit. The knocking at the office door persisted, punctuating Maeve’s anger in rapid staccato raps.

She tried another tack. “Your sister was the mean girl, Margie. I thought better of you,” she said. “For a while, anyway. But then you stole my key.”

Realization dawned on Margie’s face. She hadn’t thought that Maeve had anything against her, her memories not as indelible as Maeve’s.

Maeve walked away, opening the deadbolt and letting in a frantic black man who took in her wild-eyed expression, the angry flush of her cheeks, and stepped aside. It was only when she was in the stairwell, the pungent smell of bodega food wafting up to greet her, that she realized the black man had been Rodney Poole.

She took a minute to collect her thoughts, settling heavily onto a step in the stairwell. She didn’t like this feeling. It felt portentous, like she had to do something to release what was building inside of her. Something dangerous. Something bad.

She didn’t know how he got out of the building before her or how he did it without passing her on the stairwell, but Poole was waiting for her on the sidewalk, staring blankly at a group of very distressed and vociferous mourners going into the funeral home. The late Tia Blanca was well loved; that was evident. When Maeve burst through the front door onto the street, he waited until a very loud 1 train passed overhead before talking.

“You threaten her?” he asked.

“Yep,” Maeve said. “And I messed up her office.” She laughed; that sounded ridiculous, as if messing up Margie’s office was just retribution for her lies. She looked at the IHOP parking lot across the street and saw that her car was empty, the girls inside the restaurant, most likely diving into the plate of pancakes she had hoped they would, even though they had talked about having dinner later. She took a few deep breaths. “She knows more than she’s telling me, Poole. And it’s pissing me off.”

“You getting that feeling again, Maeve?”

She looked up at him. “That feeling?”

“The one where you want to kill someone?” he asked.

She calmed herself, bringing her breathing back to normal, her heart rate to a reasonable pace. “I don’t know,” she said, which was the truth.

“Be careful,” he said. “Margie Haggerty knows how to use a gun and her way around the streets. I was afraid you’d lose your head. That’s why I came.”

“How did you know I was here?” she asked.

He hooked a thumb toward the bodega. “I told the owner to give me a holler when an angry little white woman showed up. Best ten bucks I ever spent.” He shoved his hands into the pocket of his baggy coat. “And you are one little angry white woman.” He reached out and fingered the arm of her parka. “Pink coat is a nice touch, though.” He smiled. “Sounds to me as if she’s not going to be much help to you, so just leave her alone. You can do this on your own.”

“I can?” she said, letting the self-doubt that she didn’t exhibit in front of anyone else out in front of him. “Hey. Cutting off someone’s finger?”

“That’s what you’re planning?” he asked.

She shook her head, laughed a little. “No. Who cuts people’s fingers off? To send them a message?” she asked, thinking of that little finger in her refrigerator. If anyone would know, it would be him. Chris Larsson, for his attentive wooing of her and his light and sweet personality, didn’t seem to have the chops to figure out its owner, where it had come from.

“Sounds Mob to me. Drugs.” He looked at her. “People who want to send a message without going too deep.”

She knew all of that but had hoped he would know more.

“You got a finger that’s missing, Maeve Conlon?” he asked.

“Found one.”

His face darkened. “Be careful. I don’t like the sound of that.”

“I will,” she said. “I always am.”

He smiled, giving her a little nod. “I want you to be careful always. To use your head.” He changed the subject back to the missing woman. “That’s how you’ll find her.” He looked around, seeing who was on the sidewalk and if they were listening to his advice to the small woman in front of him. “You’ll find her, Maeve Conlon. I’m positive.”

He walked away and as she waited for the light to change, she thought about what he had said.

“I’ll find her,” she said out loud to no one and everyone at once.

CHAPTER 47

Maeve was surprised by both how little and how much people told her when she started calling the group homes on the list. Maeve wasn’t surprised to learn that Cal had called the places in the county with the smallest population—Hamilton County—but hadn’t gotten any further. He got credit for looking but hadn’t tried all that hard. She started with Dutchess because it was the county in which Mansfield had been located but it also had the largest number of group homes. No wonder Cal had chosen to start his search north of the town.

The first few calls yielded nothing in terms of real information; two of the places even hung up on her before she got out her initial inquiry. When she reached the sixth place on the list, she got a kindly woman with an accent that spoke to the life she had lived upstate, who sympathized with her plight but explained kindly that no group home director in their right mind would give her the information she needed, because they were bound by strict laws that protected their residents. Earlier that day, Chris Larsson had called and let her know that he had run up against the same brick wall when he had called a few names on the list.

Maeve knew the rules. She tried to appeal to the woman’s softer side, something that Maeve knew she had; her voice, her inflection said it all. She wanted to help Maeve but couldn’t.

“Those people have been missing a long time,” the woman said. “It’s like they vanished off the face of the earth.”

“Yes, it is.”

“I’m so sorry, Miss Conlon,” she said before hanging up. “I’ll say a prayer that you find your sister.” Before she hung up, she said softly, “She’s not here, honey. I’ve been here a long time. I don’t think she ever was. Or your friend Winston.”

Maeve’s next call was to Doug, who was working. “Maeve, it’s not a great time to talk,” he said. He was out of breath. “I’m on my way to a call.”

“I’ll make it quick,” she said.

“What do you want?”

“Regina Hartwell. Anything?”

“Nothing,” he said, his panting getting louder and more furious. “No parking tickets, no arrests, nothing to suggest she’s anything but an upstanding—”

And the phone went dead.

Maeve wondered if Poole had been with Doug, if he now knew about her loose blackmailing of his partner. She was getting nowhere and she was getting frustrated, two things that didn’t bode well for her mental health.

In the basement, she went through Jack’s things again, tearing through the boxes to see if there was anything else to indicate the existence of a sister, to point her in the right direction, but there was nothing. She could no longer go back to Buena del Sol, Stanley Cummerbund now living in Jack’s apartment.

She called Jimmy Moriarty again, knowing that he wouldn’t return her calls.

There was only one way to handle this and that was by going back to Rhineview. While the girls slept, she assembled all of the things she would likely need, her headlamp and shovel included. Her gun. She put everything in a bag next to her bed so that she would be ready to go when the alarm rang early the next morning.

She couldn’t deal with Rebecca and the empty bank accounts right now; she had too much to do. She had to think. She had logged on to the school account to make sure the tuition was paid and up to date; paying tuition was Cal’s responsibility and well, she knew how much he thought he had on his plate and how that could contribute to his dereliction of duties when it came to paying the bills that needed to be paid. But everything was fine.

Maybe she was going about this the wrong way; maybe she should widen her search. She got into her bed and dragged her laptop onto her knees and looked up any information she could find on the missing people, the dozen who had been lost when Mansfield closed. She searched through articles. The woman she had last spoken with was right: it was like they had vanished off the face of the earth.

There was a Facebook page started by one of the families, and on it, they asked for any leads, any sightings; photos of their missing relatives were on the banner at the top of the page. Maeve’s sister wasn’t in one of those photos, but was it possible that she had gone missing anyway? She guessed anything was possible. Maybe Jack hadn’t included her in the group that was missing; he could be like that, keeping things quiet. Keeping a few secrets.

“Don’t want to be a member of any club that would have me as a member,” he would say, even though being a member of the New York City Police Department was like being a member of a club, the men (in those days) sticking together like glue, helping each other out, watching each others’ backs.

Apparently, Margie hadn’t gotten the memo on that one, if the stories about her fall from grace were to be believed.

So, two possibilities existed: Evelyn was one of those missing.

Or Jack had known where she was.

CHAPTER 48

It was Saturday, early morning. She had five days remaining to figure things out, the store opening again on Wednesday.

She focused, figuring out her next steps. Vacation—from the store, from the search—had reinvigorated Maeve. She had stopped at the hardware store and bought a thick, metal carabiner, all the better to hook the shovel that Jo had given her to a belt loop on her jeans. The headlamp was dangling around her neck and her gun was tucked in the pocket of her pink down coat.

She was ready.

She realized, on the drive up, that she felt better than she had in months. She pulled up to her hiding spot, sliding the Prius in and locking it, keeping herself under the cover of the trees as she jogged slowly but deliberately toward her destination. The Rambler was gone from the front of the house and it only took her a few minutes of good, old-fashioned reconnaissance to wander around the property and look in a few windows to ascertain that the house was empty. She stayed away from the barn today; the house was more interesting to her on this cold morning, especially since it seemed like no one was home. She knew that what she had planned next would constitute breaking and entering but she didn’t care in the least. She had been lied to by so many people for so long that she didn’t care.

If she got caught, she would lie her way out of it. The house had been on fire. She had broken in to make sure no one was trapped inside. Something like that, but maybe a little bit more artful in its detail, its telling.

She tested the back door and found that it was unlocked. She forgot; she was in the country now. Inside of her still beat the heart of a city girl, the daughter of a cop. She was supposed to lock her doors, everyone was. She remembered most of the time, and when she didn’t, she could hear Jack’s voice in her head telling her to be careful, to make sure that she was safe.

As she already knew, inside the house was as dilapidated as outside, and bad smells—a conglomeration of rotten food, dirty clothes, and filthy conditions in general—came together in a way that made her eyes water. It was hard to imagine a place that smelled worse than a couple of dead cats but Regina Hartwell’s house did. Maeve stepped over a stack of newspapers, yellowing and old, and into the kitchen. Dishes were piled in the sink and the water dripped on plates that had crusted food on them. A box of rat poison sat next to a toaster oven encrusted with grime. It was like an episode of
Hoarders
come to life.

Maeve shivered in disgust.

If Regina Hartwell sold the place, or whatever happened to it after her death, it would be a teardown. Judging from the trees that outlined the property, there were several acres to be had here, maybe more if the line extended beyond the forest to the back of the place. There was no saving this place. Its time had come and gone. In its place would be gleaming new condos or a development with fake Tudors. That’s the way things went now.

Maeve didn’t know if she had the guts to go much farther into the space, afraid that the stuff that covered every flat surface would rise up and enclose her, suffocating her before she had a chance to escape. At the far corner of the kitchen were tanks; she recognized them as similar to those she had seen at Buena del Sol.

Oxygen tanks.

Mrs. Hartwell, if Maeve had to guess, had emphysema or what was now called COPD on the ads that touted relief from the symptoms. That breathing, the raspy voice, didn’t come from anything but someone who had smoked themselves into a few steps short of lung cancer. She didn’t know how to tell if the tanks were empty or full and didn’t want to take the time to figure it out, so she carefully picked her way through the kitchen and into the living room where the smell of musty upholstery and cat pee hit her nose like a sack of hammers.

Thank god for turtlenecks. She unfolded the material at her neck and pulled it up over her nose, breathing in the scent of freshly laundered clothing and her body wash, hoping that it was enough to stave off the horrible odor that permeated the living area. How did anyone live here? she wondered as she made her way through the house. The living room faced the front of the house and offered a great view of the road beyond; Maeve would know if Mrs. Hartwell returned and would have ample time to make a getaway out the back of the house and into the woods. She’d find her way eventually back to her car. She felt better knowing that there was an escape route.