Lie in Plain Sight (16 page)

“She walked to school that day and most days,” Chris said. “Her car was at the apartment.”

“Parking has always been an issue at that school,” Cal said, an indictment evident in his voice of someone or something that offended his delicate sensibilities about teenagers unable to park their rides.

She didn't know why Chris had come to her house rather than texting her this development; she suspected it had something to do with the way they had parted, but she didn't ask.

Maeve rolled her eyes in Cal's direction, hoping that he would busy himself with blowing his runny nose and not get within punching distance of Chris, who was becoming, clearly, as tired of Cal's insinuations into Maeve's life as Maeve was.

Chris didn't stay long after giving Maeve that news, and watching him go, she wondered if she would ever see him again. He had become depressed over the last several days and now seemed angry, a side effect of his inability to solve the case, or of seeing the woman with whom he had spent so much time comforting her sobbing ex-husband.

Maeve took Cal's hand and led him to the door. “As much I would like to help you, I need you to leave.”

“Now? With everything that's going on with me?” he asked.

“Yes. Particularly now.” She opened the screen. “I'm not your friend. I'm the woman you left with two children for another woman. I am not your confidante.” You're lucky you're still alive, she thought. Do you know how easy it would have been to kill you? Hide your body so that it would never be found? But for some reason, the girls still adore you, despite your breaking their hearts as well, and I couldn't do that to them. “Despite my complete lapse in judgment, Cal, I need you to go and not come back unless it has something to do with the girls.”

Under the porch light, he looked younger than when she had first met him, vulnerable in a way that she would have found heartbreaking if she were swayed by vulnerability. But all she felt was numb. She closed the door and leaned back against it, waiting to hear the sound of the minivan leaving the front of the house, her street, and then the neighborhood.

Upstairs, alone in her room, a thought went through her head, chilling her to the bone: This girl is not getting found. She wondered how badly Charles Connors had wanted to keep his paternity a secret from the world, if he could have done something to harm his own flesh and blood.

She texted Poole.
They found her car.

I know,
he texted back. She wondered how that could be and decided she didn't want to know; Poole's reach was beyond her comprehension.
What do you need, Maeve Conlon?

Not sure,
she texted.
Can I get back to you?

You can,
he wrote back.

She texted him some sketchy details about her meeting with Mrs. McSweeney, asking if he had had any luck locating information about Evelyn's biological father. In addition to thinking about Taylor, she thought about Evelyn, about who her father might have been. It wasn't lost on her that paternity had become a dominant theme the last few days, starting the year before when she found out about Evelyn for the first time. The text Poole returned took a few seconds longer than she was used to, and she stared at her phone, willing a positive response.

No
was his one-word answer.

She turned off her phone, and it was only when she woke up at four in the morning that she realized she had fallen asleep with her clothes on, the phone clutched in her hand. She bounced up quickly, knowing that she had a mission, had found that hobby that Cal always bugged her about. Some women played tennis. Others were in book clubs. She did other things, things she couldn't talk about over a glass of wine with the girls, things she would never tell Chris Larsson.

She showered and dressed in no time flat, figuring she could do what she needed to while it was still dark and before she had to open the store. On her way to the car, she opened the coat closet and grabbed the headlamp that Jo inexplicably had given her a few years earlier for Christmas. She'd thought about tossing it during her last de-cluttering phase; now she was glad she hadn't. That and the shovel her friend had bestowed upon her on another holiday made Maeve wonder about her friend's gift-giving tendencies.

The Prius made its way silently through the quiet streets to her destination. She pulled into the same spot where she'd parked a few days earlier when she had spoken with David Barnham. This time, instead of walking straight ahead, she put on her headlamp and walked to the left and found the Rathmuns' house easily, yellow police tape ringing the trees at the front of the house, a depression in the soft mud where the car had been, the tracks visible in the beam of light that the headlamp provided.

She wasn't sure why she needed a visual, but she did. If this was the last place Taylor had been, surely it held some kind of clue as to where she had gone, maybe even a hint toward with whom. Maeve walked the dark road first one way and then the other, back toward the car, not seeing anything that would lead her in the right direction, the direction that would help her find Taylor.

She passed one long driveway and then another, the houses out here farther apart than in the old part of town where she lived. A car drove up behind her, and she broke into a jog, trying to give the impression that she was an intrepid and determined runner, hoping that the jiggling above the waistband of her yoga pants wasn't visible to the driver. The car slowed and then pulled around her, a fancy foreign job with vanity license plates:
HOTT #.

Classy, Maeve thought, as she stopped jogging at the bottom of one driveway, bending over at the waist to catch her breath. She didn't feel very hott right now; the short jog had her wanting to throw up on the street. She looked up at the big houses that sat at the top of the ridge overlooking this bucolic neighborhood, wondering how long it had taken, how much banging and sawing and hammering had gone on before the houses had been built. Had it been a blessing to these older homes below to know that the noise of the stone yard would be gone, only to be replaced by the sound of people splashing in pools and having large parties on their expansive lawns?

A noise not unfamiliar to anyone with a garbage can on wheels got her attention—someone coming down the long driveway. Instinct told her to turn, the light from the headlamp catching the owner of the garbage can by surprise. The man, bathed in the white light, let out a startled cry at the sight of her.

“Maeve?” he said. “Is that you?”

She aimed the headlamp at the street and tried to figure out who it was. The voice was familiar but not one she heard often enough to identify.

“It's Kurt. Kurt Messer,” he said. “Are you okay?”

“Oh, Kurt,” she said, relieved. “Just out for a jog.”

“In clogs?” he said, pointing at her footwear with his free hand.

“These?” she said, lifting one foot. She had to think fast. “You've caught me! It's really more of a walk than a jog.” She kept talking. “Garbage day? Ours gets picked up on Monday.”

“Yes. Forgot to put the can out last night.”

“That's what kids are for, right?” she said. “Although mine aren't very good at remembering, either.”

“Mark moved out last year. Got a place in the village,” Kurt said. “So it's just me here.”

“Well, at least you've got in an ‘in' at the DPW,” she said. “That ought to help if you get overrun with garbage.” She was babbling, and she knew it. She closed her mouth and then smiled insipidly
. See, old man? It's just the crazy baker from down in the main village.

“Be careful out here, Maeve,” Kurt said. “They found that poor girl's car last night.” He shook his head. “She went right past my house, but I didn't see a thing.”

“It's awful,” Maeve said. When it was clear that they had nothing else to say to each other, Maeve started down the street.

“Mark loved the cupcakes!” Kurt called after her.

“Thanks, Kurt,” she said, and in order to keep up appearances—and support her lie—she jogged down the street toward her car, where one more visual sweep confirmed that Mr. Barnham was at home, the red truck in the driveway, and no one else seemed to be around.

Maeve stood and looked around. The dam was to her right, the woods to her left. “Where did you go, Taylor?” she whispered in the morning air. But all she heard was the rustling as the wind whipped through the trees, their leaves changing from the vibrant green of summer to the even more vibrant hues of autumn.

 

CHAPTER 20

“I owe you an apology.”

Maeve looked across the counter at Chris, Jo having practically fled at his arrival in the store. Maeve had filled her in on what had happened the night before, and by the contrite look on his face, it was clear that he had a few things he wanted to get off his chest, things that Jo had no interest in hearing but would surely want to know about after he left. That's how their friendship worked. Jo gave her privacy when she needed it but relentlessly peppered her with questions about the details later on.

“Is there somewhere we could go to talk?” he asked.

Maeve swept a hand in front of her. “This, my friend, is all I've got.”

Jo had been listening at the kitchen door. “Go! I can handle it!” she called from the other side.

“There's your answer,” Maeve said, stripping off her apron. They walked out to the front parking lot; she saw that he had come in a police car. “Should I get in the back?” she asked.

He looked at her across the hood. “Have you committed any crimes? Anything you'd like me to know? Something to get off your chest?”

If he hadn't smiled at the end, she would have thought he knew something, but it was clear he was teasing. “Do you want to push my head down so I can get in the backseat?” she asked.

“Just get in,” he said, laughing.

The inside of the car smelled like old gym socks with a layer of nicotine on top. “Who smokes?” she asked.

“Chief Carstairs,” he said. “But she's a closet smoker. She doesn't think we know, but as you can see, or smell, it's not a secret.” He headed toward the river.

She didn't wait until he pulled into the parking lot to ask him the question that had been troubling her since the night before. “I have to ask you something.”

“Shoot,” he said. “No pun intended.”

“So you became a cop but you didn't think you'd ever have to do anything as unpleasant as find a teenage girl? You aren't that naïve, Chris. I know you aren't.” She folded her hands in her lap. She didn't want to touch anything in this mess of a car; a grease-covered bag from a local takeout place lay on the floor at her feet.

He pulled into a spot that offered them a great view of the river and turned to her. “I was exhausted. I was…”

“Scared?”

“Yes. Scared,” he said. “What if we don't find her, Maeve? What does that mean?”

“Well,” Maeve said, choosing her words carefully, “it means that a family will never be whole again.” By the look on his face, she could tell that she hadn't chosen her words carefully enough. “I don't know what you want me to say, Chris. It's the truth.” She looked away, out her window. “I know how I felt knowing that my sister was out there somewhere but not knowing where, and I didn't even know I had a sister until last year.” She turned and faced him again, grabbing his hand. “This is someone's child.”

He put his head on the steering wheel and sighed for so long that Maeve was afraid he was going to cry. She couldn't handle comforting two crying men in as many days. But when he looked back at her, he looked composed, less stressed. More determined. She took the opportunity to find out more.

“So what do you have?” she asked.

“We think she was taken. The father was contacted. For ransom.”

“And Trish? Anyone contact her?”

Chris raised an eyebrow.

“Right,” Maeve said. “Not likely she could raise the ransom.”

“Exactly. Connors made a ton of money.”

“Right. The stone yard. The sale.”

“Didn't make a lot of friends with that one, but it was his to do with what he wanted, right?”

“I guess.” She looked out the window at the water. “You're a local. How did you feel about it?”

“Lots of jobs just vanished. That wasn't a good thing.”

“Anybody with an ax to grind?” she asked.

“How much time do you have?” he asked. “Tons of people with an ax to grind. That old trailer park out at the edge of town?”

“Yeah?”

“I'd say that there are about fifty suspects right there,” Chris said, immediately regretting that he had gone there; he grimaced before shutting his mouth and looking out his window. “Guys who lost their jobs and never recovered financially from that. Their wives and girlfriends. Their kids, even.”

“What was in the car?” Maeve asked. She wanted to know more; changing the subject to what he had discovered actually seemed the best way to go.

He didn't hesitate, telling her everything without the caveat that it was confidential. He trusted her. “Blood on the steering wheel. A fingernail.”

“A struggle. She didn't go willingly.”

“You either know a lot about kidnapping or you watch a lot of police shows,” he said.

“Police shows.” It was clear to Maeve what had happened. “She was taken.”

“That's what it seems like.”

“Anything else?” she said, his willingness to talk her entrée into finding out everything he knew.

“Backpack was still in the car. On the front seat. Nothing in her school notebooks to indicate that she was thinking of leaving or that she felt like she was in danger.”

She went for broke. “The boys. Donnell. Morehead. Connors. What do they have to do with this?”