Lethal Little Lies (Jubilant Falls Series Book 3)

Lethal Little Lies

By

Debra Gaskill

© 2013 Debra Gaskill

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1490312262

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the express written consent of the author.

Cover design © 2013 Scott Shelton and Rebecca Gaskill

This is a work of fiction. The situations and scenes described, other than those of historical events, are all imaginary. With the exceptions of well-known historical figures and events, none of the events or the characters portrayed are based on real people, but were created from the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

Prologue: Kay

              After eighteen years, I wanted to believe that Marcus never been unfaithful, but right at this moment, all the evidence was against him. Eighteen years of marriage to the love of my life and today we’re strangers.

              The phone calls, the weekends gone—I want to believe he’s reached the success with this first novel that he’s always wanted, but something down deep said this wasn’t about literary success, this was something else entirely.

              I’d read his book—there were more than a few steamy scenes, scenes that certainly hadn’t come out of our bedroom. We hadn’t had sex like that in years. Were those scenes the product of a very active imagination? Or another woman? Nothing else would have driven us this far apart.

              Not that we didn’t have sex, but it was predictable, married sex, not passionate, not spontaneous. Now that the kids were gone and the house was empty, we could be spontaneous. But that wasn’t going to happen.

I drew the collar of my jacket up closer around my neck and kicked my booted foot at the snow that drifted across the bike path. If he knew I was here this late walking, he’d be furious.

              Like he thinks there’s someone still out there who wants to hurt me.

Oh please, if there was ever a more ignored woman on earth, it was I. I could walk down Detroit Street stark naked at noon and no one would notice.

              Not even Marcus.

              Now he’s working on his second novel and it’s like I’m not even there. He doesn’t talk to me while he writes and, if he’s not doing that, it only takes twenty minutes in front of the TV before he’s snoring in the chair, an equally fascinating way to spend an evening.

              Every time he sat down to work on that next stupid novel, I’d drive over here to the bike path—day or night—and walk until I thought he was done, till I thought he would be willing to put the laptop away and look at
me
, spend some time with
me.
But it didn’t seem to work that way and my walks became a way for me to hide my disappointment and mask my isolation.

              I looked up and watched the snowflakes drift from the sky, silently adding to the slick whiteness over the bike path’s black concrete.

              It wasn’t like I didn’t want him to be successful—he’s been trying to write a novel since we began seeing each other all those years ago. When the first one came out and the reviews were good, I was so proud of him.

Not that it made a big pile of money, but that’s never been the issue with Marcus and me. It’s a goal he’s always wanted and I was proud of his accomplishment.

              Now, after that first flush of fame—the fans, the promotional weekends away, the phone calls to the house —I wasn’t so sure.

              At least he said they were fans. Then why did the same person call time after time? I wasn’t stupid. Infidelity ruined my last marriage—I’d seen all these signs before.

              What was it about me that drove the men in my life into other women’s arms?

              His contract called for a second book, which he was now deep into writing, and as a result, ignoring me on a wholesale level.

              These days were our time to travel, to get away, take some time off from my office and his newspaper, which shouldn’t be hard. Since the economic crash, the paper began instituting furloughs, unpaid weeks of work that he agonizes over, not because we’re in any kind of financial pinch, but all the younger reporters on staff don’t have any other options.

              “Marcus, honey,” I wanted to say, “we can do a lot, but we can’t save everyone.”

              Even I’d learned that much in nearly twenty years.

It was just over a year since the crash and it didn’t look like the newspaper business was in any kind of shape to improve anytime soon. There were rumors of a fourth furlough and he was obsessing over that as well.

              And what am I supposed to do? Hire these young reporters that filter in and out of that newsroom, staying until they got enough experience to move on to other newspapers? And hire them to do what? His idea was to hire a crew of furloughed reporters to clean the rental properties.

              “Nothing big that requires any kind of serious skill,” he joked at the time. “We are, after all, journalists.”

We
. His choice of pronoun made me think he identified more with them than with us.

              Well, maybe this time I’d show him. PJ had called me Friday at work, said he needed to talk something over, that he was having trouble at school and wanted me to come up to discuss it with him.

              PJ was just probably obsessing over the second B-minus he’d ever gotten in his academic career. It wouldn’t be any big deal for me to drive into Collitstown in the morning, catch a plane to Boston, then drive to Cambridge and see what was up. We could have some quality mother-son time; I could see some sights, do some thinking and then maybe head home.

              I’d left a note for Marcus on the kitchen counter. It said I was very unhappy, that I’d left to think things over, that although I was going to MIT to see PJ, we’d need to have a serious talk when I returned.

              I didn’t really want to leave him, but I sure didn’t want to keep living like this, essentially roommates who happened to wear matching rings.

              I knew Marcus. He wouldn’t even see the note until he got out of bed the next morning. I’d be on my way to Logan Airport by that time.

              He would spend the night writing until his eyes crossed, then he’d stagger to bed, not wondering if I was home or not. Or even checking to see if I was waiting in the driveway until I saw the lights in our home office go out. I’d done that on more than one occasion.

              Brushing a strand of red hair from my face, I turned on my heel, and headed back toward the parking lot. There were steps behind me. I turned to see a big beefy man in a stocking cap, down coat and sweat pants, walking his German shepherd on a heavy lead. He walked purposefully, swinging his arms, his breath coming in locomotive bursts of frosty air with each step.

              We nodded at each other as his steps eclipsed mine. He walked into the night, the snowflakes and darkness enclosing him as he and the dog walked on.

              I neared the car and pulled the keys out of my pocket.

              Suddenly, I felt something sharp in my back and a man’s arm hooked around my throat, cutting off my efforts to scream—and breathe.

              “Get in the car,” he hissed in my ear. “Get in and drive.”

Chapter 1 Marcus

            
 
At least the first novel was successful.

              I couldn’t say much about anything else in my life right now.

              It was snowing outside, another miserable Sunday night in another cold, Jubilant Falls' winter. I stood up from behind the old partner’s desk, the one that had belonged to Kay’s physician father, and walked to the window.

              I pulled the heavy curtains back and sighed, watching the snowflakes fall into the night silence.

              Kay was gone, as usual.

              She said she left to give me time to work alone on the second novel, which my publisher wanted by May 1.

              I had my doubts—on both counts. Kay wasn’t leaving me alone to encourage my muse and I wasn’t going to have the novel done, not even a first draft, by May 1.

              The characters were flat, the plot seemed stilted and improbable and there seemed to be a wall of ice that ran down the middle of our queen-size bed that never seemed to thaw.

              So what was standing in my way, in my marriage and my creative endeavors?

              Why she even loved me seemed a miracle. I wasn’t handsome— I was short balding and bowlegged. I knew I was lucky to have that beautiful redhead by my side.

              After nearly eighteen years of times that were equally beset with strife and celebration, we had come to some sort of crossroads that I didn’t understand. It started with the first book.

              My novels always took over my life—there were five unpublished novels in boxes in the back of my closet, ones I’d finally given up on. But then suddenly, I got lucky.

              But Kay still didn’t understand that my nights with a laptop at the partner’s desk were not the same as a night with a leggy blonde, or a freckle-faced redhead whose pied beauty inspired poets of old.

              Maybe it was the weekends I went away to sign books even for a few hours at a bookstore, or the four-day mystery writer conferences where I spoke on the literary tradition of the journalist as a sleuth.

              The phone calls from fans were a little jarring. I sent my little book out into the world; folks read it, liked them and started calling the house to tell me so.

              So many called that we had to change our home phone number. Kay hated that.

              Feeling what I thought was Kay’s jealousy, I played down the success. After that, fan phone calls came only to the newspaper and I did what I could to steer them away from the newsroom.

              Maybe it wasn’t the book—maybe my marriage was just complicated.

              Or maybe this was something every couple went through when they found themselves facing an empty nest.

The kids— Andrew, Lillian and PJ— were grown and gone,               PJ just a few months ago to his first year of college.

              We started our marriage with the three of them. Andrew and Lillian were the children of Kay’s first marriage to Major Paul Armstrong. PJ was also the Major’s, following a brief fling with a South Korean woman; Kay adopted him after the Major’s death. They filled our days and nights with all the usual parental crises and events. I’d be lying if I said I was the most welcome of stepfathers at first, but we’d all come through it OK.

              They have glowing futures in front of them. I had a good part in raising them. They call me Dad—except for Lillian, who began to call me ‘Father’ after her first year at Barnard. They are truly my children, except their biology.

              I am proud of them. I love them. I guess I missed them, in that way that a parent misses adult children, knowing you’d done right by them, providing them the keys to a right life, a good life, but realizing that leading their own lives meant they weren’t here as often as you’d like.

The absence of other people was a good thing. Kay’s mother, Marian James, long my nemesis, was gone. A stroke claimed her, right before we’d married.

We live in her house now.

              I hate this house. Hate the over-furnished, over-styled home that remind me more of a whorehouse in the Big Easy than the house of a relatively successful journalist who wrote a moderately well-accepted crime novel and whose wife headed up one of the most lucrative businesses in Jubilant Falls.

              Maybe it’s the stress of our jobs.

              This was not the year to be in newspapers. Although the newspaper, the
Jubilant Falls Journal-Gazette
is still family owned, our publisher, Watterson Whitelaw had been forced to institute quarterly unpaid furloughs when car dealerships in town cut back on advertising and even the Japanese auto parts plant at the edge of town began lying people off.

              Our editorial assistant, the septuagenarian typist Millie Johnson, a part-time reporter, a copy editor and a full-time page designer were the first ones shown the door.

              Advertising wasn’t at the same levels I remembered in the past, but then our editor Addison McIntyre answered any questions on how advertising was doing with the same rhetorical question: “Does it
look
like the ad reps are having a fucking field day, Marcus?” She locks herself in her office and breaks the building-wide ban on smoking on a fairly regular basis these days.

              Still, I hate to see the younger reporters struggle with what essentially was a pay cut they didn’t deserve. I remember how little money I had when I started out and knew they struggle not only with low pay, but also with uncertainty that the J-G will fold up and die.

              I worry about it, too, but for me, it was more philosophical than financial. I had options the others don’t have, options that hold me up and hold me prisoner.

              I remembered the two-bedroom apartment I’d lived in, with the thin, threadbare sheets covering the sagging double bed, the dishes that didn’t match and the couch with the broken fourth leg propped up with two bricks and a paperback crossword book.

              Why did it seem I had so much more then than I do now?

              I let the heavy red curtain fall from my hand and turned away from the window. The blue laptop screen stared back at me, six words at the top of a page the only progress I’d made in four hours.

              The grandfather clock in the hall chimed ten. I pushed the power button on the laptop, closed it as the screen went blank, and wandered down the hall, past the kitchen to the living room. The light above the Jenn-Aire stove was still on. Kay turned it on when she left, no doubt to make certain there would be some sort of light in our blacked out marriage when she returned.

              I stopped at the mahogany Queen Anne sideboard. Three engraved crystal decanters holding whiskey, vodka and brandy sat next to matching old-fashioned tumblers on a silver platter. I poured myself a generous whiskey and sat down in one of the leather wing chairs flanking the white Louis XIV sofa.

             
God, was there ever a more ugly, uncomfortable room?
I slugged back the whiskey and stood up long enough to pour myself another. I belted that one back, filled the glass again and poured the third shot down my throat. No sense in sitting back down. Why not go for a fourth? How about a fifth? The room began to tilt. I tried to set the empty tumbler back on the sideboard and missed by just a hair. The glass hit the floor with a thud, but didn’t break, leaving a few golden drops soaking into the thick white carpet.

              I belched and the room began to spin. I kicked the tumbler under the sideboard and staggered back down the hall to the bedroom.

              It didn’t matter if Kay came home or not. I’d still be alone.

******

              Sometime in the night, I must have gotten undressed and under the covers. The cold dawn of the Monday’s winter morning shot painful light into my eyes. I rolled over and squinted at the other side of the still-made bed.

              This time she hadn’t come home.

              My throbbing head still couldn’t take the cold light. Shading my eyes with my hand, I staggered across the room to the master bath and felt for my bathrobe on the hook behind the door.

Maybe if I had something to eat I’d feel better, I thought.

              I found my way down the hall to the kitchen. The light was still on, just as Kay left it last night. I was reaching up into the cabinet for the coffee when something on the counter caught my eye.

It was a folded sheet of paper with my name on it. I unfolded it and read.

Marcus,

              I’m gone. Please don’t try to call me. I don’t know what’s happened between us to lead us to this place, but I feel like I’m married to a stranger. I know we loved each one once, but I don’t know if that’s true any more. I just need some time to think. I went to Cambridge to visit PJ. When I come home, we’ll talk.

                                                                                                  Kay

              I sank against the counter.

              I’d lost her.

              After all the years I’d waited to win her back, I’d gotten complacent. After eighteen of the best years of my life, she was gone.

              The phone on the wall rang. The caller ID showed the
Journal-Gazette’s
number. Reluctantly, I answered.

              “Marcus, where the hell are you?” It was Addison. “Did you forget that Graham Kinnon and Pat Robinette are on furlough this week?”

              Kinnon was our police reporter; Robinette was our photographer.

              “I’m sorry Addison…. I-I overslept.”

              “You sound hung over.”

              “OK. You got me.”

              “Well, there’s a bad accident out on Brock Road. EMS has notified the medical helicopter. I’m tied up putting the live pages together and can’t get to it. Do you think you can drag yourself out of your booze-induced haze long enough to go take a goddamned picture and get some basic information for a story?”

              “Give me twenty minutes. I’ll be there.”

              I dressed quickly, grabbed my keys, dashed out to the garage and stopped short. Kay’s pearl-white Lexus sedan was there, but my car—a battered old maroon Chrysler minivan—was gone. Wherever my wife had gone, she’d taken my car. Shrugging, I got into the Lexus and drove to the scene of the accident.

              Once on scene, I learned a teenager texting his girlfriend while driving had gone left of center and struck an oncoming SUV. The SUV rolled three times; the Impala the teenager was driving went into a cornfield across the road, landing on its roof, heavily damaged. I drove up a parallel road, parked at the closest intersection, and managed to get a photo of four EMTs carrying the injured boy on a stretcher toward the medical helicopter as a Plummer County Sheriff’s deputy examined the damage.

              Two passengers in the SUV had been securely buckled in and suffered only minor injuries. The driver, a 47-year-old man from the next county, had an outstanding warrant for felony non-support. After he was treated and released, he would be booked into the county jail.

              To add to the fun, his 19-year-old girlfriend was found to be in possession of a small amount of marijuana, and a pot pipe. She would face a judge later this week.

              The teenage driver, who’d had his license for six weeks and was on his tardy way to Shanahan High School, was airlifted to Collitstown to the local trauma hospital in serious condition and, as I was told off the record, asking the paramedics why he couldn’t feel anything below the shoulders.

              I made certain everyone’s name was spelled correctly, and extracted a promise from the deputy to have the accident report faxed to the newsroom before the end of his shift and I went into work.

              I made it back to the newsroom in time to get the photo and a caption on the front page. I would write the follow-up story this afternoon for tomorrow’s edition.

              The rest of the day was typical of how things had changed since the furloughs had been instituted. At the main newsroom computer station, where Addison put the live pages together— pages one, two and three—she and the assistant editor Dennis Herrick would do the advance pages like the lifestyle page, the opinion page and, today, the food page.

              Downstairs, the graphics department built the comics page, the monthly community calendar and the classified advertising pages, along with building the meager amount of ads that were coming in.

              As police reporter, Graham would have been on call to pick up anything that happened overnight; due to this week’s furlough, Addison and I were splitting the difference. She picked up Graham’s police reports this morning, since in my hung-over state; I’d missed that assignment.

              Elizabeth Day, our purple-haired education and feature writer, caught a lot of the other day stuff I couldn’t, in addition to her school beat. We all did whatever typing that Millie had once done and answered the phones.