Lie in Plain Sight (18 page)

Maeve signed it with a flourish. “You don't happen to know where she went, do you?” she asked. “Gabriela? Being her best friend and all, I'd think you'd know where she took off to with her son.”

“Even if I knew, I wouldn't tell you,” she said. “Home wrecker.”

Maeve sighed, knowing what it felt like to be the one cheated on. Although Jo had done her best to hate Cal as much as Maeve had during that time, she had been preoccupied with her own life. What would it have been like to have a woman like Tammy on her side? “I'm so sorry you feel that way, Tammy,” she said. Then, trying to get her back on the subject at hand—Gabriela—she asked, “So you don't know where she is?”

Tammy attempted to cry, but the Botox wouldn't let her; all she could muster was some bulging forehead veins and two quivering lips. “She's my best friend!”

Yes, Maeve knew that. “Well, I hope she comes back. For your sake,” she said. She wasn't sure her coming back was in Cal's best interest, though he was too dumb to realize that. She started for the door, the sneaker box and package of socks in her hands; Tammy had failed to put the items in a bag.

“New York,” Tammy said. “The city.”

Maeve turned. “What?”

“She's in the city. At a hotel. I don't know which one,” Tammy said. “I'm only telling you for Cal. No other reason.”

“I wouldn't expect you to have another reason,” Maeve said. “But thank you.”

“You did a horrible thing,” Tammy said, her final volley. “I hope you know that.”

Maeve did know that, and she also knew that a moment's gratification wasn't worth the grief she was getting—the guilt that she was going to feel for a long, long time—from this very upset woman.

“You broke the girl code,” Tammy hissed, getting in a final dig.

“Girl code?” Maeve asked.

“Yes. Girl code.”

I have left this earth, Maeve thought, and am now residing in an alternate universe, a place where grown people use terms like “girl code” and fail to see the hypocrisy of lambasting a woman who had a one-night stand with her ex-husband who was only her ex because his current wife had lured him away. “I am very sorry, Tammy, about the girl-code breaking,” Maeve said. “Thank you for the sneakers. And the socks.”

In the parking lot, Maeve didn't know whether to laugh or cry. The town had secrets, but it was also filled with lunacy, she was coming to find. She opened the trunk of the Prius and flung her purchases inside, then slammed the lid and turned around.

A man stood in front of her. “You're Maeve Conlon. I've been wanting to talk to you.”

In the fading sunlight, Maeve recognized him. “And you're Charles Connors.”

“Can we go back inside and talk?” he asked, much larger than Maeve, imposing in a way that he hadn't seemed on television.

“I'm kind of in a hurry,” she said, thinking about a glass of wine and nothing else. She had nowhere to be and no one to see, but he didn't have to know that. “What can I help you with?” she asked, steeling herself for the accusations that were coming her way about her role in Taylor's disappearance. What else could it be? A cake order? Unlikely.

“You made a cake for my wife's Junior League brunch a few years ago. Best thing I ever ate. There were leftovers, as you would expect,” he said.

Maeve didn't know how she would expect that, but she nodded anyway.

“You know. That crowd. Nary a carb touches their lips,” he said.

“Right. Carbs,” Maeve said.

In his right hand were his keys; in his left, a large gym bag that he placed on the macadam. “They loved what they did eat, the one bite or two.”

“Well, thank you for that,” Maeve said, turning toward the Prius again.

“Did you refuse to go get Taylor?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I didn't.”

“Because if you did—” he started.

“I didn't. That's a lie that's been going around town,” she said.

“Then we have something in common,” he said, turning to look at a group of teenage girls coming out of the gym, all long limbs and flowing hair, loud voices and energy.

“What's that?” Maeve asked.

“The lies,” he said. “A lot of lies are going around about me, too,” he said.

“People believe what they want to believe,” Maeve said. “We can't help that.” She wondered why she sounded so composed when the thought of people thinking badly of her made her want to scream.

“I saw you sitting in front of my house.”

“Oh, that,” she said. “I couldn't find a house that I was making a delivery to.” The lies came so easily to her that she scared herself.

“You were there for a while,” he said.

“Mr. Connors, what is it that I can do for you?” Maeve asked. “What do you want?”

He reached into his pocket. “Well, first, this,” he said and peeled off a wad of bills, handing them to Maeve.

“What's this?” she asked.

“That's the money that Trish stole from you.” Taking in Maeve's shocked face, he continued. “She told me. When she tried to get more money out of me. She told me that she took money from you to pay for Taylor's SAT tutoring. Tried to make me feel bad.”

“She must have been pretty desperate,” Maeve said.
And there you were, in your fancy house, driving your expensive car, while your baby mama stole money from a little bakery with an exhausted owner.
She tried hard to conceal it, but the disgust registered on her face; she could see it reflected in his eyes. She took the money and shoved it into the pocket of her jeans.

“No one will tell you this, because no one knows, Ms. Conlon, but Trish Dvorak should have been set for life,” he said.

“Clearly she's not,” Maeve said, wondering how in the space of two minutes, he could have made her pity Trish for reasons that went beyond the fact that her daughter was missing. “She's worried about college and maybe just living day to day.” You used her and threw her away, Maeve thought. You thought your money would be the end of it. She was good enough for you until she wasn't. Maeve wasn't sure why she came to that conclusion so easily or why she was siding with Trish. Girl code, maybe?

“She shouldn't be. Bad decisions on her part, all of them. She's a troubled woman, Ms. Conlon. More troubled than you know,” he said, picking up his gym bag. “You were right to fire her.”

“But I didn't fire her,” Maeve said.

“See?” he asked, smiling sadly. “Lots of misconceptions, lots of lies going around. You of all people should understand how that feels.”

“What am I misunderstanding, Mr. Connors?” she asked.

He didn't have anything to say on that subject. “I know you're in a hurry,” he said. “I'll let you go.” He turned and started for a car three away from Maeve's.

“What does your nephew know about this, Mr. Connors?” Maeve asked, going for broke.

“Jesse?” he asked, turning.

“Yes.”

“He's my son. And he doesn't know anything.” He pointed his key fob at the car, and the lights flashed. “Leave that one alone, Ms. Conlon.”

Maeve stood at the back of her car and watched him drive away.

She knew there was a reason she had never joined a gym.

 

CHAPTER 22

Her new sneakers hurt like hell, but it was only after trudging up a hill that she hadn't remembered existing on Crooked Hill Lane that Maeve discovered this. It was the next morning, the memory of Tammy's outburst and the weird conversation with Charles Connors still weighing on her. She walked past the Rathmuns' house, the trees still glittering with police tape that shimmered in the wind, and sat on a big rock at the side of the road to take off the right shoe first, and then the left, to find out just how big the blisters on her heels were.

Pretty big, as it turned out.

Start at the beginning, Poole had said. Well, the beginning was over, and now there was a new beginning where a car had been found but not Taylor. That new beginning inspired Maeve to renew her silent vow to herself and the girl to start again. To start at the new beginning.

Her car was a quarter mile away, but there was no way she was putting her new shoes back on, so she started for the car in a pair of her brand-new socks, glad that they had been on sale and that she could dispose of them later without feeling guilty about wasting money.

It was dark and it was cold and, as it turned out, a little wet. By the time she reached Kurt Messer's house, her feet were soaking wet and she felt a chill that she wasn't sure she would be able to shake, even once she could get to the store and turn on the oven at full blast. She got into the car and turned it on, using the bi-directional setting on the defroster to send warm air toward her toes, which were starting to get numb.

She was never prepared. She always had cold feet, or an extra layer on when one wasn't needed, or only broken hair ties at her disposal when her hair came loose and was flying around her head.

She wiggled her toes. They were starting to complain, a deep ache that set her nerve endings ablaze. She held them closer to the fan under the dash and waited a few more seconds, sliding down in her seat as she saw headlights approaching from behind her on the road, a vehicle making its way with a loud roar of an engine far bigger than the Prius's.

As it passed, Maeve got a look at it before it disappeared into the darkness and was pretty sure that it was Coach Barnham's truck.

She sat up straighter. He was heading away from the main village, away from the high school where he taught and coached, down a long, dark road that brought its travelers to the far end of the village limits and ultimately to a dead end. Maeve took off after him at a safe distance.

She loved her silent Prius. It made hardly a sound in the still air of the morning, and although it was white, it was dirty enough that it didn't gleam in the darkness like a shiny jetliner cutting through an inky sky. Satisfied with the likely forty calories she had burned while trudging along the deserted road earlier, she bit into a half of a stale muffin that sat on the seat next to her, marveling at how good it still tasted, two days later, and wondering if she was making a mistake by throwing out some of her unsold baked goods at the end of the day. She watched the truck take one bend after another, easily navigating the part of the road that went to dirt and gravel, where pavement hadn't been laid as there were no houses at that end. The truck reached the dead end and came to a stop right at the edge of a copse of trees. She held back, pulling into the last driveway on the road, backing in so that she could stay in the car and peek out at the coach and see what he was up to.

He pulled his kayak out of the bed of the truck and hoisted it overhead; Maeve was amazed that anyone would have the strength to lift a boat that had to be at least twelve feet long and sixty pounds over his head and walk, without stumbling, along a rutted path to the water. She lifted a lot of stuff during the day—bags of flour, tubs of sugar, unwieldy trays of cookies—but she couldn't lift something like that over her head and keep it there without wiping out, causing grave damage to the boat and her body. She watched him walk along a narrow path, disappearing from sight as he got closer to the water.

She looked balefully at the sneakers on the passenger seat next to her, sitting beside the crumbly muffin in its waxed paper bag, and picked them up, putting them back on her feet.

She stepped gingerly from the car. Yep, still painful. She walked to the edge of the bank that fronted the little body of water, an offshoot from the reservoir that circled Farringville and provided water for the village and its neighboring towns, looking in the murk for the boat or any sign of the coach paddling around. It took her a while in the gloom of the early morning, but she caught sight of him a few seconds later, making his way through the fog rolling up over the water, his back to her. In his hand was a long stick, which he put into the water, gauging its depth. He buried the stick and his arm up to the wrist, then, after a few seconds, pulled the stick out.

Maeve didn't know a lot about tides, high or low, and even less about kayaking, but she did know that putting a kayak in the water and then testing to see if it would float seemed like something an experienced kayaker wouldn't do. There had to be a tide chart online that could tell you that, right? What he was measuring for was a mystery.

Beneath her sore feet, the ground gave way with each step she took, the rains that had characterized the end of September and the beginning of October making it hard to gain purchase on the slippery terrain. Above her, trees, sporting the spectacular colors of a wet autumn, dripped droplets of dew onto her head as she traversed the slope that led down to the water's edge. She grabbed low-hanging branches to keep her balance, finally making it as close to the little lake as she wanted to, taking cover behind a tree, staying hidden, gripping a branch overhead to steady herself as the ground eroded under her fancy athletic shoes.

She scanned the lake, having lost sight of Barnham, the sound of paddling replaced by the sound of ducks splashing about. The kayak was gone, as was any sign that it had been out there, the water as smooth as glass. Beneath her feet, the ground crumbled a bit more, and her arms, which had moments earlier been bent at the elbows, were now straight up over her head, hanging on to the branch for dear life. Behind her, there was a noise not unlike the sound of rice being poured into a jar: the rocks on the steep incline shifting into new forms, making new rivulets in the dirt.

How had Barnham made his way so easily to the water? Why had he been measuring its depth? How had he disappeared so quickly?

The situation beneath her feet was getting more fraught and frantic with every passing moment. A sinkhole had developed, and as she clung to the tree branches, she looked around, noticing the smooth, paved path a hundred feet away that Barnham had used to get to the water. There was nothing to do but laugh, and she felt the hilarity bubbling up inside of her, her father's voice in her head:
You've really done it this time, Mavy.