Perfect Lies (25 page)

“You’re convinced Lucinda did it?”

“I’m not saying that.” Huddleson held the door open for her. “I’m not coming out and saying that, you understand? All I’m telling you is that you can go back and tell your sister not to worry. This town knows what she’s been through. We know things instinctively—in our hearts—that strangers like these state detectives can’t know. Let them work their science. Let them run their tests. In the end, I believe it’s all going to add up to the same thing. We’re going to get her … coming and going.”

T
he Lindbergh’s cottage reminded Meg of the series of worn-down rentals she’d lived in growing up. On her way back from town, Meg caught sight of its fading white facade through the now leafless woods—and was drawn to it. She turned off the main driveway and followed the short dirt road down to the two-story shingled Cape where Clint and Janine had lived for the last ten years. Though the nearly hundred-year-old cottage was in need of a major overhaul, Clint had recently patched the roof in places and reinforced the gutters with metallic tape. Meg knew enough not to try the front of the house. In Red River, most of the front doors hadn’t been opened in twenty years. Instead, she went around to the side door that led onto a small porch attached to the kitchen. Janine, working at the sink, saw her before Meg had the chance to knock.

“Meggie!” Janine turned her name into a surprised little squeal. She wiped her hands on a dish towel and added in a more contained voice: “Everyone’s still up at the big house.”

“Actually, I wanted to talk to you, if you have a second,” Meg said, looking around. The kitchen was warm, sweet with the smell of something baking in the oven. Apart from that, Meg thought it was a depressing sight. She hadn’t been in the house for several years, and its state of repair had only deteriorated in that time. The linoleum floor was clean but heavily scuffed and the oval rag rug in front of the sink didn’t quite cover the area where pieces of the flooring had been ripped out for some plumbing repair and never replaced. The veneer cupboards were chipped in spots, pressed wood showing through like skin beneath ragged clothing. Taped with pictures of animals and flowers that Janine had cut out of magazines and old calendars, the refrigerator wheezed unevenly. An overhead fluorescent light gave the room a bright, slightly bluish cast.

“Sit here,” Janine said, pulling out one of four mismatched kitchen chairs for Meg. “It’s so nice, so unexpected to have you visit. I was just making some coffee, or would you rather have tea? The water’s boiling in any case so either one is just as simple as can be!”

“Is Clint around?” Meg asked.

“Why, yes, he’s upstairs washing up for lunch. We don’t get to have our noonday meal together here, you know, because usually I’m needed up at the big house. But Frannie took the girls so that Lark could help Hannah. Wasn’t that sweet of her? Do you want Clint? I could call him if you like, though he should be down any minute now. But I’ll call him anyway. Cli-int! Cli-int!”

Her high-pitched voice had an immediate effect. A door slammed above them. Heavy feet sounded on the stairs. Clint, his flannel shirt half unbuttoned, burst into the room. He was clutching a towel in one hand.

“What—?”

“Honey, look who’s here,” Janine said, beaming at her husband and then at Meg.

“I thought something was wrong,” Clint apologized, nodding to Meg as he buttoned up his shirt. “The way you were screaming, hon.”

“Clint’s such an alarmist,” Janine said, going to the cupboard and taking down three green glass cups and saucers; Meg recognized them as Red River Studio originals. “He worries about every little thing. Is coffee all right with you, Meggie? Or would you rather have tea?”

“Oh, no, thanks so much, I’m fine,” Meg assured her. Clint and Janine sat down across from her. There was an awkward moment when the only sound was that of spoons hitting glass as Clint and Janine stirred sugar into their coffee.

“What can we do for you, Meg?” Clint asked at last. His expression was one of concerned goodwill.

“I spent the last hour down at the police station. Going over everything again with Tom Huddleson. I guess he’s talked to both of you as well?”

“Oh yes,” Clint replied, stroking his beard. “Together. Separately. Tom. The state detectives. They’ve had an awful lot of questions. We’ve being doing everything we can to help. Though them taking over the studio has put a real serious dent in our plans. But, we understand they’ve got a job to do.”

“How do you …” Meg hesitated a moment, glancing from Janine to Clint “How do you see that job?”

“What do you mean?” Janine asked.

“I guess, what I’m asking is—are you convinced Lucinda killed him?” Meg asked Janine directly.

“I saw her with my own eyes with the pontil in her hands,” Janine replied, her voice falling to a whisper. “I was the one who first saw her.”

“So you were there?” Meg asked. “You were both there all the time? Would you mind telling me what happened?”

Clint and Janine exchanged a look.

“What’s your interest?” Clint asked. “We’ve been over this ground plenty already.”

“Yes, I know,” Meg said, stalling for a moment as she tried to think of a way to allay their concerns. “It’s just that … well, I haven’t really heard the whole story from anyone. And I can’t bring myself to ask Lark about the details. You know, with everything else she’s going through. All these questions Tom was asking me—well, I began to think I’d really like to know more myself about what actually happened. So I thought, maybe you two wouldn’t mind helping me a bit.”

“About what exactly?” Clint asked.

“Did anyone else come by the studio that morning? Besides Lucinda.”

“Well,” Clint tipped back in his chair, resting the back of his head in his cupped hands. “Okay, one more time: It was Saturday. Janine had breakfast with the girls and Ethan up at the big house and I went over to Yoder’s for my eggs and bacon. I like to hang out with the boys there sometimes, you know.”

“I got back to the studio before you, hon,” Janine said. “And I started in on the mailing list merge and purge. I remember because I’d been putting it off for so long and was proud that I’d finally just buckled down to it.”

“That’s right,” Clint said, sitting forward again. “You were at the computer when I got back from town. And a little while after that someone did come by. I thought it might be a delivery so I started to go into the studio but Ethan called out that he’d taken care of it.”

“Did he usually do that?” Meg asked. “Handle the deliveries on his own?”

“State police asked me the same thing,” Clint replied. “And what I told them was this: no, not as a general rule. Ethan expected us to do all the routine work. But I don’t remember it seeming like a big deal that he did it himself that day.”

“Did you see the car?” Meg continued. “Do you remember what it looked like?”

This time Janine answered. “I saw it. I got up and went to the side door and took a look. It was a sort of plum-colored car. A beemer, I think.”

“A BMW?” Meg asked, and Janine nodded. “Why’d you bother to check?”

She looked flustered for a moment, the color rising easily to her cheeks. “I guess because I wanted a distraction. Anything. I really didn’t want to do the mailing list. And I also wondered if it was Becca, if she’d come early for some reason. But Becca doesn’t own a beemer.”

“Becca Sabin?” Meg asked. “Was she a customer?”

“Depends on what you mean by that,” Janine replied. “Ethan sure had something that Becca wanted.”

“Now, hon,” Clint warned.

“I’m not saying anything that everybody in this town doesn’t already know. Has known for years. Becca was sick in love with Ethan McGowan. I mean, she was crazy with it. Even after he’d dumped her. Even after he told her it was over. She couldn’t give him up. She refused to believe that he didn’t want her. Someone as beautiful as her. But—”

“Janine, just stop it” Clint’s voice was sharp and sobering. “Meg doesn’t want to hear a lot of tired old gossip. And neither do I. There was the one delivery that morning. And then, a half-hour or so later, another car drove up—and as I recall, it went on to the big house. That’s it. That’s what I told the police.” Clint pushed back his chair and stood up. “Now, unless there’s something else, I’ve a lumber delivery to pick up in Montville.”

“No, really, thanks,” Meg said, her mind taken up with the news about Ethan and Becca. “You’ve been so helpful, Clint.”

“Now, hon,” Clint said as he fished a fist of keys out of the back pocket of his jeans, “I’ve a feeling Lark’s wondering what’s happening to you. Time to get a move on.” With a nod to Meg, he left.

“I’ll help you clear up,” Meg said, standing and starting to gather up the cups and saucers. It occurred to her that she’d get more out of Janine with Clint gone. She followed Janine to the sink.

“Oh, I can handle all this,” Janine said as she turned on the faucet. Meg heard the grumble of Clint’s pickup truck receding down the drive.

“I know what Clint was saying about gossip,” Meg observed, leaning against the counter as Janine washed the dishes. “But you knew, of course, that there was a lot of truth about Ethan and his—”

“Other women?” Janine asked with a nervous giggle. “Of course, I knew.”

“How did you feel about it?”

“That it wasn’t any of my business.” Her prim response didn’t jibe with her earlier venting about Becca. “Ethan was our employer. And he was a good one. He gave us this house to live in. He taught Clint the craft. We have nothing but gratitude for everything he did.”

“You know that others in this town feel differently?” Meg asked.

“I don’t understand all this talk against Ethan,” Janine said, staring at the stream of running water. “He was a good man. Thoughtful, generous. He took good care of us—and Lark and the girls, too. You know that, Meg.”

“Yes, I know,” Meg replied. “I also know that he had his passions. And that he sometimes couldn’t control them. Did he ever … approach you, Janine?”

“Me?” Janine turned to Meg, her face flushing a deep pink. “No. Absolutely not. He was always a gentleman with me. And doesn’t that tell you something? I mean, despite what people say, don’t you think that perhaps it was really these women who approached
him?
You know, he was so attractive. And some of them, like Becca, just couldn’t get over him. Lost all sense of decency.”

“Maybe,” Meg said, deciding it wasn’t her place to set Janine straight about her former employer.

“Meg, there
is
something that Clint didn’t see.” Janine turned off the faucet and reached over to dry her hands on the dish towel. “Something that I told Tom Huddleson, but nobody else.”

“Do you want to tell me?” Meg said

“It’s about the car Clint mentioned that drove by after the beemer,” Janine said. “The second one. It didn’t drive past to the big house like Clint thought. But it didn’t pull into the driveway, either. It went up and turned off into the woods where nobody would see it. But I saw it. I was watching. I recognized it, of course. I was expecting it.”

“And it was?”

“Can’t you guess? Becca.”

L
ark‘s studio was on the third floor of the house, facing north, a small, beamed room that had once been part of the attic. Its ceiling followed the steep slant of the roof. Lark had painted it a bright yellow and, with the first draft of the illustrations for her book tacked in progression to the wood supports that girdled the room, it gave off the bright slightly disordered cheeriness of a nursery. The final flight of stairs was uncarpeted and rickety, and Lark must have heard Meg’s ascent from her first step. But she didn’t turn when Meg, breathing a bit heavily from the climb, hesitated at the open doorway.

“Francine’s brought the girls home,” Meg told her. “And Janine came back with me. We put Fern down for her nap.”

“Thanks,” Lark said, dropping a paintbrush into a glass of discolored water. She arched back in her chair, stretching. “We finally got Hannah squared away. I saw Fran drive up. I can see all sorts of things from here. You have a nice talk with the Lindberghs?”

Though the dormer window that Lark’s drafting board faced was small, the view it offered was generous and broad; without the obstruction of leaf cover, one could clearly see the turnaround in front of the house, the studio, the scaffolding around the icehouse, and the Lindbergh’s front yard.

“You do have quite a view,” Meg said, walking across the room to stand behind Lark. “You sit here and watch Becca Sabin come visit with Ethan every afternoon?”

“Janine’s mouth has been flapping away again, I take it.”

“Lark,” Meg squeezed her sister’s right shoulder, but it was tense and unyielding, solid as stone. “Why didn’t you tell me?” Meg asked. The two sisters were alone together, just as they had been for most of their lives.

“Because I didn’t want you to know,” Lark said. “All the others were bad enough. But Becca … Becca and Ethan… that was just the worst.”

“Listen, baby,” Meg sat down on the little footstool next to Lark’s drawing board and took her sister’s hands in hers. “Talk to me now, okay? Tell me what happened.”

Lark looked down at their joined hands for a moment, then away into the middle distance out the window. With a deep sigh, she began: “Becca Sabin looked like trouble to me from the moment I first met her. She seemed so full of disdain for this town, despite the fact that Abe just loved it here. It helped a little that the house Abe had built ended up being featured in the pages of the
New York Times
magazine. That kind of thing—appearances, awards—mean so much to her. I remember that at the housewarming party Abe and Becca threw when the construction was finally completed, Becca had propped the magazine article open on the large glass cube they had for a their coffee table.”

Meg saw Lark frown as she paused, remembering the scene.

“It was late Indian summer weather that night—sultry, unsettled,” Lark went on. “The other women at the party had on the kind of thing I usually wear—you know, floral print dresses or black pants with silk shirts. But Becca! She was in full Manhattan regalia: a fuchsia-colored slip dress, a real curve-hugger. Bronze-dyed high-heeled sandals, a heavy gold chain-link necklace. The one thing she wasn’t wearing was a brassiere.