Lie in Plain Sight (34 page)

The petulant teen returned. “I know that now,” she said as if she were talking to someone of limited intelligence.

“Why did he take her? That other girl?”

Heather wasn't sure how much to say.

“Why?” Maeve asked. “And what did you find out? Anything?”

Heather was calm, and it was that calmness that troubled Maeve the most. She had been that calm, too, once, right after she had shot and killed a man who had made her early life miserable. “I didn't find out as much as I wanted to. As much as I needed to. I tried with Jesse but I didn't get anywhere.” She paused. “As you know.”

“This was never your responsibility, Heather,” Maeve said. She could have been talking to herself, the words washing over the girl without taking effect. And it wasn't lost on her that the advice she was giving was advice she should have been taking.

The newspaper lay folded on the kitchen table; Maeve had brought it in from the sidewalk but hadn't had a chance to read it. Heather reached over and unfolded it, revealing the story of why Mark Messer kidnapped two girls—one long deceased and beside whose bones Taylor had lived for sixteen days. It was creepy and horrifying, and if it was true, and Maeve wasn't sure it was, the local media not being above making things up for ratings and sales, it was something that she would never entirely believe because it was unthinkable.

She looked at Heather, whose expression was flat, emotionless. “This can't be true.”

Heather nodded. “But it is. He was trying to bring his sister back.”

 

CHAPTER 48

There were two things Maeve still didn't know and might never get the answers to:

Who Evelyn Rose Conlon's father had been.

Why, if there were witnesses, Tim Morehead got off months ago scot-free for raping a teenage girl.

Money, some people said.

Connections, said others.

True, Judy Wilkerson's father had been a chief in Farringville long before Suzanne Carstairs arrived on the scene, but did he really carry any weight anymore? Apparently so. They were an old Farringville family, and that, more than money, more than status, assigned you a certain credibility in this little tiny village.

Lack of evidence was a prevailing theme and theory among some townspeople, even with veiled references to the attack having been on Facebook.

He said. She said. No one knows the truth. They were good boys, people said. Their families were institutions in Farringville.

Yes, Taylor was back, but she wasn't talking, and as a result, the case was dead, despite Chief Carstairs's tenaciousness, her personal history, her willingness to take this as far as it needed to go.

Maeve wondered about all of it, but not that much, because trying to get her life back on track, back to a more normal rhythm, was all she cared about.

She kept a watchful eye on Heather, but there was nothing other than genetics to explain why her daughter felt that she had to become so deeply involved in something that was none of her business and way out of her league, not to mention incredibly dangerous. Maeve tried, and failed, to get her to understand that some things were better left to the professionals and that her involvement had just jeopardized everyone involved.

The same could be said for herself.

She put on a clean shirt and jeans, tucked her feet into a pair of clogs, and drove away from her house, not looking in the rearview mirror as she did, knowing what it looked like, bad paint job and all. She headed south.

You can go home again.

Whoever said that you couldn't was wrong. Maeve parked on her old street, where she and Jack had lived for so many years, just the two of them, happily for most of the time, despite what Maeve had endured, in silence, as a child. Maeve walked up and down the street, unnoticed, taking in the fall colors, the row of houses, the little well-tended yards. Her cousin's house was at the end of the street, and she assiduously avoided that. There were new people there now, but it still held memories of hurt, both physical and mental, and she wanted to avoid going down that prickly memory lane.

Poole had been surprised when she had suggested meeting at a place on the same avenue where her mother had died. Been killed, really. To say that she had died—after telling Maeve “Be back soon”—was an understatement. She had been mowed down by a drunk Marty Haggerty and left to die in the street, her clothing torn and tattered, a pool of blood surrounding her body. Maeve had heard all of the gory details, ever watchful, always hearing what she shouldn't as she lay in her bed, a floor above where the mourners had come to support Jack, but really to hear what had happened. One thing about her childhood neighbors: They loved a tragedy. The more tragic, the better.

“Will you be selling the house?” one had whispered, hoping to get in on the ground floor of the amazing deal that a brokenhearted Jack would make, only to be roundly rebuffed by her father.

“What will happen to the little girl?” another had asked, wondering if Maeve would be shipped off to live with a relative who was a mother with her own children, people not confident that a grieving Jack could raise a daughter while working as a policeman.

And then later, when what they thought was an appropriate amount of time had passed, “My sister … she lives in Poughkeepsie. Lovely girl. Beauty in her day. Makes the best Irish soda bread this side of County Cork.” But Jack wasn't interested. He had a woman in his life who needed his undivided attention, and that was his little Mavy, the most perfect girl in the world. It was just the two of them, and that was the way he liked it.

That, and he would never find a woman to love the way he had loved Claire, despite the child she had conceived with another man.

Poole was waiting for her in a bar on the avenue, one that Maeve remembered being kind of dodgy in her day but that had been turned into a proper pub, right down to the brass bar she was still too short to rest her feet on. She climbed up on a bar stool and ordered a glass of wine, remembering in that instant that Poole didn't drink.

“Sorry,” she said. “I forgot.”

“Not a problem,” he said. “About three years in, I decided that I was going to have a very boring life if I couldn't hang out in bars with the guys.” He smiled. “And the occasional girl.”

“Divorce final?” she asked.

“Not yet,” he said. “But that door has closed. She lasted as long as she could. I hope she finds someone who makes her happy.”

“Did she make you happy, Poole?”

He looked down. “I'm not sure anyone can make me happy.” He looked at her. “What do you think, Maeve Conlon? Your guy make you happy?” He realized, too late, what he was asking, that the relationship had ended.

She thought about it. “He did.”

A look passed across his face. “Sorry. I…”

“It's okay,” she said. But it wasn't. It never would be. There would always be that lingering feeling that the end of their relationship had been her fault alone. He had made her happy, but as Poole had once said, and she now believed about herself as well, there were no good parts with them, her and Poole alike. Just sadness and grief at what they never had a chance to be. Happy. Whole. Content.

He understood. She could see that. She could also see a glimmer of hope in his eyes, something she needed to shut down.

“That's not what this is about,” she said, reminding him. “It never was.”

“Wasn't it?”

She couldn't handle the weight of what he was implying. There were other, weightier topics to discuss. “My sister. Marty Haggerty?”

He didn't look surprised that she had figured out the truth. Something on his face told her he always knew she would. “I never wanted you to know.”

The bartender delivered her wine, an interruption that gave her a chance to gather her thoughts. Around them, the bar was abuzz with the after-work crowd, the people disembarking express buses and the commuter rail, darting into a warm place where they could slough off the stress of the day before going home to an even warmer, cozier house, she expected. She took a sip of her wine, looking down at the coaster that was placed beneath the glass.
HAPPY DAY!
it cried in a jaunty typeface. But it wasn't a happy day. It was never a happy day when you discovered that a sister you had only known for six months was the daughter of the man who had killed your mother. Maeve wasn't sure she would ever have a happy day again. “How did you find out?”

“That old lady? McSweeney?” he said. “I flashed the badge. Asked her what she knew. She knew it all.” He paused. “That day when we saw each other? I followed you to her house, wanted to see what you had up your sleeve.”

Maeve downed the wine and asked for another one.

“Easy there,” he said, pushing the empty glass toward the edge of the bar. “And how did you know?”

“My sister doesn't remember much. But she remembered being there. She remembered their house. It just made sense.”

He nodded. “You're a smart cookie.”

“I guess I should have known, Poole. I guess I should have guessed that this one would have a tragic ending, too.” She thought about it. She had known the minute that Evelyn had recognized the Haggerty house. She traced it back. That was the moment she knew but didn't want to acknowledge at the time.

“They're not all tragic endings,” he said.

“They're not?” she said, angry. “In my world, they seem to be.” She laughed. “I'm turning into Job, Poole, right before my very eyes.”

He leaned in, placing a hand on her knee. Anyone who was watching would have seen a woman with tears in her eyes being comforted by a handsome, kindly man, one who clearly adored the small woman and would do anything for her. He kissed her lightly on the lips, and she relaxed just a little bit, letting herself be taken into his warm embrace. “I'll help you get through this, Maeve Conlon,” he said.

“With one condition.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“That you stop calling me ‘Maeve Conlon,'” she said.

He laughed, the first real laugh she had ever heard him emit. “Deal.”

“Can I tell you something?”

“There's more?” he asked.

“There's a lot more. I'm responsible for more death than the actual angel of death, Poole.”

“Job. The angel of death. Been reading your Bible a lot, Maeve?”

She watched two other people at the end of the bar, laughing and chatting, and wondered why she and Poole couldn't be like them. “I don't know if you remember, but a guy died at the dam two years ago. In my town.”

He knew where she was going; she could tell by the knowing look on his face. “You were there.”

“I was.”

He waited for more.

“He was abusing his child. A little girl. Her name was Tiffany. He broke her arm.”

“Like your cousin did to you.”

She didn't remember telling him about that specific incident, but he knew somehow. That knowing was what they shared. “I couldn't stand it, Poole.”

“So you made him disappear.”

She did. And now, a little girl and her younger sister were living somewhere else, hopefully safe and sound. Maeve would never know.

“Good riddance,” Poole said. “Feel bad about it?”

Maeve thought about that. “Nope.”

“My warrior queen,” Poole said, the respect evident in his tone.

Her wine appeared, but she didn't drink it. “If I drink this, I won't be able to drive home,” she said, feeling the effects of the first, hastily consumed one. “Walk me to my car.” She threw some money on the bar and got up.

Outside, they kept a distance between them that would suggest that they didn't know each other, not ready to make what they felt public. Theirs was a tenuous relationship, one that would have to build over time. “I wonder where it was,” Maeve said as they walked along the avenue. “The exact place where my mother died.” She had thought about that a lot over the years.

“You don't want to know that,” Poole said from his spot in front of what Maeve had known to be a five-and-dime when she was a kid but was now a shop that only sold olive oil. She wondered how it stayed in business, if the people of this neighborhood needed that much olive oil to sustain them. “Some things you're better off not knowing.”

Maeve turned her back to the avenue and stood on the curb near the bus stop. “This is the bus I used to take to the city. The real city. Manhattan. I thought I'd live there one day. Who knew that I would move further away and that this was the closest I would ever get? That I'd be a kid here and never come back?” Behind her, down the street, the bus approached. People would get off and maybe go into the bar that they had just left, happy to be out of the “city,” even though they lived in its environs. That was a funny thing about the people in the boroughs; they never considered themselves part of the main borough where everything happened all day, all night. They considered themselves, their particular borough, different, distant from where everything else was happening.

“You were where you were supposed to be,” Poole said.

“So philosophical, Poole,” she pointed out. “You know, Poole, the whole philosophy thing aside, I think we might be made for each other.” She was only half kidding.

“How so?” he asked, even though it was clear that the proclamation made him profoundly happy.

“Somewhere in our shared pain, we might be able to find happiness,” she said. “I'm starting to believe that.”

He reached out to take her hand, and she let him, feeling her small palm nestled within his larger, calloused one. Working-man hands. That's what Jack would have called them.

There was her grammar school and the place where she got on the bus to go to high school. “That's where I busted open my chin,” she said to no one, remembering taking a step off the curb and hurting herself, Jack bundling her up and flagging down a police cruiser on the street and whisking her to the emergency room, holding her down as they put three enormous stitches in her chin. She sometimes looked at the scar and laughed. Of all of her scars, that was the only one that was visible, and it was one she had gotten all on her own.