Tell Me Lies (20 page)

She definitely couldn’t escape her grandmother.

Grandma Lucille sat swathed in bilious sea green chiffon under peach-pink sheets in her pale peach-pink room, looking like a bad parody of the flapper she’d once been. Her shoe-polish black bob framed her withered pixie face where only her sharp little black eyes were the same as they’d once been, tiny, shrewd, and hard as obsidian. Maddie hadn’t inherited any of her gran’s advantages, she’d been told a thousand times sitting in this room, not her pretty face, not her adventurous spirit, not her kick-ass spunk. But since Gran had long ago become the biggest pain in the butt the family had ever known, Maddie wasn’t unduly upset by this lack of genetic similarity. “You wouldn’t believe how it was when I was growing up, Maddie,” her mother used to tell her when she was little. “She
humiliated
me. I would never do that to you.”

Looking at Gran now, Maddie sent a silent thank-you to her mother and renewed her determination to pass the same lack of scandal onto her daughter. The last thing she wanted to be was the Gran of her generation.

Although traits were supposed to skip a generation. And there was C.L. and the Point. If she kept on the way she was going, she’d definitely be the Gran of the nineties. She had to get a grip on her life. But first she had to get this visit over with. She crossed the room, ignoring her grandmother’s snarls that Maddie was putting on weight and looking her age, and parted the peach-pink linen-look drapes that led to her grandmother’s small terrace.

“Too much light.” Gran’s voice was scratchy and sharp. “Bad for my skin. Yours, too, but you’re hopeless.”

Maddie compromised on half-closed drapes, knowing if she’d left them closed, her grandmother would have moaned that there wasn’t enough light.

“So, Gran,” Maddie said brightly as she came to sit beside the bed. “How are you?”

“I’m ninety-five, how do you think I am?” her grandmother snapped.

You ‘re eighty-three,
Maddie wanted to tell her, but she fought the impulse. Getting into an argument with Gran was the personal equivalent of a land war in Asia. “Well, I’m hoping you’re doing fine,” Maddie said. “You look wonderful.”

“That’s because I don’t go around sitting in bright sunlight like some people I know.” Gran leaned forward. “That Janet Biedemeyer next door? The woman’s a wreck. She looks like alligator luggage. Put a handle on that woman’s back, she could fly cargo. And she’s twenty years younger than I am if she’s a day. If I’d—” Gran stopped and squinted at Maddie. “What the hell happened to you?”

Maddie stifled a sigh. “I ran into a door, Gran. It’s fine.”

“Ha!” Gran leaned back against her pillows, delighted. “Hit you, did he? I thought he looked the type.”

“No, Gran,” Maddie said as sternly as she could fake. “Brent did not hit me. I tripped and fell against the edge of an open door.”

“Sure. That’s why there’s those cuts on your cheek from his ring,” Gran said, and Maddie sat up a little. “Oh, yes, now you’ll pay attention. Well, you’ve come to the right place for help.”
Oh no, I haven’t,
Maddie thought, but her grandmother went on. “I’ve been there myself. Now, here’s what you do—”

“Grandpa
never
hit you,” Maddie said, forgetting to be diplomatic in her outrage. “I don’t believe it. You should be ashamed—”

“Not your grandpa,” Gran broke in, exasperated. “He never lifted a hand to me.” Gran grimaced, as if there was something about his lack of violence that still annoyed her. “I’m talking about my first husband.”

Maddie sat back. “I thought he was your first husband.”

“Nope.” Her grandmother sat back, too, now in control. “My first was that worthless fathead Buck Fletcher.”

Maddie tried not to grin. “Buck? You married somebody named Buck?”

“Beats Brent,” her grandmother sneered back. “What a world with a name like that in it.”

Don’t get her started,
Maddie told herself, and ducked the argument. “I can’t believe you were married before and nobody ever told me.”

Her grandmother shrugged. “He died before you were born. I didn’t mourn much, I can tell you.” Her grandmother cackled and then zeroed back in on Maddie’s face. “You can’t use makeup for squat, child.”

“Thank you, Gran,” Maddie said, wishing she could follow Gran down the attractive side trail of Buck-the-secret-first-husband but pretty sure it would lead to shared reminiscences of abuse, just what she didn’t need. “I brought you candy.” She leaned over to open her bag and let the red glass pendant swing forward.

“Thank you,” her grandmother said automatically, one claw stretched out to take the gold box Maddie fished from her bag. “Esther Price. Good.” She tore the red ribbon off the box of hand-dipped chocolates. “Small box.”

“I’ll bring another next week,” Maddie told her. “I always do.”

“You’re a good girl, Maddie.” Gran bit into the milk chocolate turtle that sat on the top of the box. That was another irritating thing about Gran: she always took the turtles and then spit the nuts out. One went sailing across the room even as Maddie had the thought. “Good,” her grandmother said, and then she refocused on the pendant. “Pretty necklace.”

“This?” Maddie held up the red glass slab. “It’s a family heirloom. From Brent’s family.” She tried to look enthused about it. “It’s one of my favorite pieces. I—”

“I’m not going to be with you much longer, you know,” Gran said weakly, sinking back against the pillows, the box of chocolates in one hand, the mutilated turtle in the other. “I’m old.”

No kidding,
Maddie wanted to say, but she nodded instead, working to look sympathetic. “Well, you certainly don’t look old,” she lied. “You look better than I do.” Unfortunately with the current condition of her eye, that one was marginally true.

Gran sniffed. “I could go anytime.” She put the half-eaten turtle back in the box and put her free hand over her heart. “Anytime.”

“Oh, gee, Gran,” Maddie said. “Is there anything I can do?”

“That necklace would go good with this nightie.” Gran patted the bilious green chiffon.

The red glass would look ghastly with that nightie, but then, so did Gran. “Well, I don’t know, Gran,” Maddie said. “It was Brent’s mother’s—”

“
That
woman.” Gran forgot to look fragile as she sneered. “Helena Faraday never had a well-dressed day in her life.” Gran snorted at the thought and then remembered she was at the point of death and sank back against the pillows again. “I’m sure she won’t mind if you loan the necklace to your dying gran, Maddie. After all—” here Gran paused to look pious, giving, and beatific, all of which were beyond her “—you’ll get everything when I go.”

“Well, if you think it will make you feel better,” Maddie said, having had enough Sarah Bernhardt for one visit. She pulled the necklace over her head and passed it across to her grandmother, who strung it around her own neck and went back to eviscerating the turtle.

Maddie stood up. “Well, you’re looking much better, Gran, so—”

“Sit down,” her grandmother ordered, all weakness gone. “I haven’t told you the news.”

Maddie sat down, looking longingly at the Esther Price. If she had to listen to nursing-home scandal, she should at least be eating chocolate, but her grandmother would do her bodily injury if she tried.

“Mickey Norton is flashing again.” Gran put down the half-eaten turtle and picked up a chocolate cream. “Abigail Rock two doors down gets all upset, but at least Mickey’s still trying. That Ed Keating down at the end of the hall doesn’t even get out of bed anymore. It’s terrible the way men fall apart as they age.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Maddie said, thinking of C.L. “Some of them get better.”

Gran snorted again. “Like your husband?”

“I’ve really got to go, Gran,” Maddie said, standing up, and Gran said, “Sit down,” and she did, listening to all the scandal her grandmother had stored up for a week. Fortunately Gran had a machine-gun delivery, so she could do the week in half an hour.

“And now there’s you,” she finished. “Look at you, all beat up. Everybody in this place knows you’re my granddaughter. There goes my good name.” She looked forlorn for a moment, and then picked up another cream.

“It’s not your name,” Maddie pointed out. “It’s Brent’s. It’s a Faraday scandal or a Martindale scandal. They’d have to go back three generations to make it a Barclay scandal.”

Her grandmother leaned forward, incensed.
“And you think they won’t?”

Maddie drew back a little. For the people in this home, three generations was yesterday. “You’re right. Sorry about the eye, Gran. I shouldn’t have come. I won’t come back until it’s all healed.”

“Ha!” her grandmother shouted. “You think they won’t notice that, too? You come back here next Sunday, just like always. Learn to use makeup by then. The scandal. Ha!”

Maddie stood up to go.

“Sit down!” her grandmother said.

“Can’t.” Maddie began her sideways shuffle to the door. “Gotta go. Next week, I promise. ‘Bye, Gran.”

“I’ll be dead by next weekend.” Her grandmother picked up another cream, this one with a walnut on top.

“You look great in that necklace, Gran,” Maddie said, and closed the door behind her. As she turned away, she heard the walnut bounce off it.

She stood on the back porch, her key in her hand, and stared stupidly at the open door. The door routinely popped open if it wasn’t slammed shut, but she’d locked everything before she’d left.

Brent.

She nudged the door with her hand. It swung open the rest of the way, and she walked tentatively across the threshold.

Everything looked the same. Maybe she hadn’t locked the door after all. She remembered slamming it to make sure it had closed—no, she had locked it. She was sure she had locked it.

“Brent?” she called, her voice quavering a little. She put her purse on the counter and went into the living room. Everything there looked the same, too, except for the desk.

The drawers were crooked, just a little, all of them a little off center. Maddie went through all of them. The safe-deposit key was gone.

Brent had come to get the safe-deposit key. And Em. He’d come back tonight and take her unless she stopped him.

She went to the hall and picked up the phone and dialed the police station. “I’m not sure,” she said, when the dispatcher asked her what was wrong. “But I think the prowler was here.”

If she could convince Em to stay at the farm one more night, they’d be even safer.

It didn’t seem like too much to ask.

When the police left, she searched the house, looking for more evidence that Brent had been there. He was everywhere, having lived there for so long, his magazines and his work shoes and his pocket change, and she wanted him out, completely out, now. It was time. She dragged a couple of cardboard boxes from the garage and began to pack his things.

Three hours and several boxes later, she was down to his closet in their bedroom. She opened the last two boxes and dumped his clothes in, not bothering to fold them. Some things were missing as she packed: his favorite cotton shirts, his jeans, a lightweight suit, his bowling shoes. He’d packed, she realized as she pulled his things off the hanger. He’d already taken what he wanted. She pushed the last of the clothes into the boxes and dragged the boxes out to the open garage with the rest of his stuff. Then she went back upstairs to clean his sports junk out of the back of the closet.

His baseball bat, she put to one side. She could use it on Brent if he came back. The bastard had
packed
already. She’d known he was going to leave her, but somehow knowing he’d packed made her madder. She yanked out his golf bag and it tipped over. A dozen golf balls rolled across the floor and the clubs clattered out. Not her day.

Maddie propped the bag up and tried to stuff the clubs back in, but they wouldn’t go all the way, so she dumped them out and then wrestled the bag upside down to see what was stuck in the bottom. A small package fell out.

For a while she just sat on the edge of the bed and looked at the package on the floor. God knew what was in it. Pornography? Cocaine? At this rate, it could be Jimmy Hoffa’s ashes and she wouldn’t be surprised. Nothing could surprise her anymore.

When she unwrapped it, it was money, four packages of hundred-dollar bills. Forty thousand dollars. It was like Monopoly money, only it was real.

“What the hell has he been doing?” she said out loud, and then thought,
Get-away money.

The sound of someone pounding on the door downstairs woke her out of her stupor. She pushed the four bundles of money under the mattress, threw the wrapping in the trash, and ran downstairs.

“What took you so long?” C.L. asked when she opened the door. “I thought you were dead.” He sounded half-serious.

“I was thinking.”

“I warned you about that.” He pushed his way in and tilted her chin up to look at her. “Your face looks better. Sort of.”

“What do you do for a living?”

“I’m an accountant.” He shut the door behind him. “Em’s still at the farm, right?”

“Right—” Maddie began, and then he kissed her, shutting off all speech, his lips warm on hers, his arms squashing her against him. She leaned into him to prolong the kiss because it felt so good and so few things had felt good lately and because for all her highfalutin‘ speeches about waiting to avoid the scandal, she’d missed him. It was hell being smart when what she wanted to be was Gran.

Then his hands moved down her back and she broke the kiss and moved away before he got her in more trouble. “Stop that. Somebody will look through a window and see.”

C.L. drew her into the living room. “You and I need some time alone. Henry said you had a prowler.”

Maddie tried to remember where they’d been before the kiss. “You’re an accountant?”

C.L. sighed. “What’s wrong with being an accountant?”

“Nothing. I just hadn’t pictured you as an accountant.” Maddie thought about it. “Actually, I hadn’t pictured you employed.”

C.L. leaned back away from her. “Thank you very much. Now, about your prowler—”

“Why are you so interested in this prowler?”

C.L. looked exasperated. “A stranger breaks into the house of the woman I love, and you’re surprised I’m interested?”

“He might not have been a stranger,” Maddie said, ignoring the “woman I love” bit as a complication she wasn’t ready to deal with. “I locked the doors last night, so whoever got in either knows how to pick locks or had a key.”

C.L. sat up again, interested. “Who has keys?”

“My mother, Treva, and Brent.”

He met her eyes. “My money would be on Brent.”

Maddie nodded. “Mine, too.”

“What would he be looking for?”

“I went to the bank yesterday,” she said. “I looked in our safe-deposit box.”

“Go on.” C.L. seemed tense, as if he were listening very hard.

“There are two tickets to Rio in there and two passports.”

C.L. whistled. “Ducking out on you, is he?”

Maddie nodded. “The tickets are for Monday. The other passport was Em’s.”

He winced. “That must have been a shock.”

“I took Em's passport out and ripped it up. He might have come back to look for it. And the safe-deposit key is gone.” She thought about the clothes he’d packed. “And so is he, I hope.”

“Hold that thought,” he said, and leaned down and kissed her, brushing his lips across her so lightly he made her shiver.

“I like it when you do that,” she whispered, and he said, “Good. I’ll do it all the time.” He kissed her again, slower, and just as she was feeling very warm, a car door slammed outside and he started. “This town,” he said, and pulled away from her to look out her window. “Not your mom. Some washed-out blonde next door.”

“Gloria.” She hated it that he’d pulled away, but she was relieved at the same time. “I think she might be the one Brent’s sleeping with.”

C.L. squinted out the window. “Jesus, why?”

“You always say the right thing,” she said, but he’d moved on.

“You stay here with the chain on. I’ll go check with Henry to make sure he knows to watch that safe-deposit box.”

“Hey,” Maddie said. “Don’t screw this up. I want him out of here.”

“You and I may, babe,” C.L. said as he headed for the door, “but there are a lot of people who want him to stay and explain a few things. It’ll be easier for all of us if he does.”

Maddie followed him. “C.L., there’s something going on here I don’t know about, isn’t there?”

“Don’t ask me,” he said. “I’m a stranger here myself.” He kissed her again, hard this time, making her clutch at him, but he glanced guiltily over his shoulder after he did it. Then he was gone before she could ask him anything else.

Maddie watched him drive away, and thought,
Later for you, buddy.
She’d use her womanly wiles on him, and he’d tell her everything. Once she got past her own struck-dumb-by-lust part.

She went back upstairs and counted the money under the mattress again. Forty thousand dollars. Why hadn’t he taken it last night? He’d have to come back for it. He couldn’t have forgotten it.

What if the prowler wasn’t Brent?

It made no sense. It had to be Brent; nobody else could use the safe deposit key.

Just go away,
she thought.
I want you out of my life.
Then she remembered the pills. Had she already gotten him out permanently? Oh, hell.

She stuffed the money back under the mattress and grabbed her bag. It was only a mile to the pharmacy. She could make it before they closed.