The First to Lie

by Hank Phillippi Ryan

  Once on the sidewalk, a fierce gust of wind hit Ellie so hard she felt her eyes tingle.

  At least she didn’t have to feel guilty for not warning Meg about the sabotaged tires. Meg didn’t have tires.

  Her moon boots padded silently on the layer of snow. No one else on the street this morning, and even the scraggly, bare-branched municipal trees, their surfaces embellished with white, seemed to shrink into themselves with the cold. Everything seemed airbrushed, hard edges removed, wrapped with a layer of cotton. Her own car was parked halfway down the block, one in a row of identical white lumps.

  A pinged alert on Ellie’s phone signaled Xavier’s arrival time had “adjusted,” giving her three more minutes. She stopped a few feet before approaching her car, scanned the sidewalk and the street for footprints to see if someone might have tampered with it recently. If it had happened last night, their prints in the snow would be long gone. As the three of them had chatted at Meg’s, it had snowed intermittently. Will had finally pretended he’d gotten a call from his wife. “Gotta shovel,” he’d lied.

  The snow fell in earnest as Ellie tried to fall asleep, staring out her window and wondering about her goals and her future, Blinker curled up beside her.

  No footprints. She used a gloved finger to examine the left front tire, smoothing away the icy white on the sidewall and wondering if she’d even recognize if anything were amiss.

  Ellie stood, fingers frozen inside her gloves, face raw, tears welling from the wind or fear. Her quest to protect women from a predatory and greedy company had led to this bleak and lonely morning searching for imaginary vandalism—

  “Ellie? What’re you doing?”

  Meg stood on the sidewalk, a black tote bag slung over one shoulder of her black parka.

  Ellie straightened, brushed the snow from her gloves. Her guilt returned, full force. Meg might not have tires, but if Ellie was in danger, Meg was too.

  “Is something wrong with your tire?” Meg persisted.

  “Meg? Remember that lawyer who called me the other day? When you answered the phone?” Ellie hopped back onto the sidewalk as a cab sloshed by, spattering slush in its wake. She began with a lie. “He called me late last night.”

  And then, the truth. She bullet-pointed the whole thing for Meg: the police, the sidewalls, the slow leaks.

  “You think it’s Pharminex?” Meg looked around, apartment to apartment, as if to check whether anyone was watching them. “And that’s why you’re looking at your tires?”

  “Yeah,” Ellie admitted. “Not that I’d know what to look for. And yeah, I called a ride share to get to Channel Eleven. This is freaking me out, Meg.”

  “Don’t blame you, sister.” Meg pulled out her cell from her parka pocket, yanked off a glove, tapped the screen. “I called a ride share too. It’s on the way. You could cancel yours, if you want? And come with me?”

  * * *

  Ellie sat behind the driver of the black hybrid SUV, Meg in the back seat beside her. Nora’s undercover work for Pharminex would have to wait. She needed to be Ellie today.

  She’d accumulated enough research to make a powerful paperwork case against the company, but that wasn’t enough for a television story. Without Nora Quinn as her whistleblower, Ellie had slammed into an obstacle. Then Meg’s incompetence had provided another obstacle by losing the interview with Abigail. Ellie needed one or the other: Nora or Abigail. Since Gabe knew of her ruse, Nora was no longer an option.

  “Traffic,” the driver grumbled as he pulled toward Columbus Avenue. “Tunnel is closed. For the snow.”

  “Of course.” Meg scowled, defeated. “Hey, before I forget. Have you talked to Nora Quinn? She’s okay, isn’t she? I mean, if she was talking to you, maybe she’s in Pharminex’s sights. Should we warn her?”

  “Good idea.” Ellie fidgeted with her seat belt. She hated sitting behind the driver; she couldn’t see out. Now he seemed to be taking a shortcut.

  “I could find her,” Meg offered. “Want me to snoop around?”

  “No, thanks.” All Ellie needed. “I’ll contact her.”

  The Uber made a turn she wouldn’t have made. But she’d only been in Boston two months, so what did she know?

  “Ellie? Can I ask you a weird thing?” Meg had turned in her seat and looked at Ellie, concerned. “What if Will was sent to trap you? Trap us? He knows where we live. And you had that break-in. Pharminex is on to you, Ellie. They’re on to us, and we ought to tell this guy”—she pointed at the driver—“to take us right to the cops. Tell the police everything.”

  “The police know,” Ellie said. Meg might be smarter than Ellie thought. She wasn’t sure of Will—Gabe—herself. “I’ve talked to them. They’re on it.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me that?” Meg’s voice went up, taut and demanding. “Don’t you think I have a right to know?”

  Ellie saw the driver check them out in the rearview. Poor guy must hear all kinds of bizarre discussions.

  “I’ll tell you when we get to the station, okay?” Ellie cocked her head toward the driver, trying to signal the need for privacy.

  “Got it,” Meg said. “Oh. Is that you or me?”

  “Is what you or me?”

  “It’s me.” Meg pulled out her phone. “Text,” she said.

  Ellie hadn’t heard anything, but maybe Meg had the sound off. Then her own phone vibrated. She grabbed it from her bag. Gabe. She had to signal Meg was there. “Hey. Hi, Will.”

  “Can she hear you?”

  Ellie glanced across the seat. Meg seemed deep into her texting.

  “I’m fine,” Ellie said, trying to sound as if she were answering a different question. “And probably not. I’m in an Uber with Meg. We’re on the way to the station. How are you?”

  “Listen,” he said. “Does the name Mary Grace Thibodeaux sound familiar?”

  Ellie’s heart twisted in her chest. “Who’s that?”

  “You sure she can’t hear?”

  Ellie glanced across the seat. “Will says thanks for last night.”

  Meg put up an acknowledging hand. “Uh huh, no prob.” Her eyes stayed trained on her texting.

  “Go ahead,” Ellie said.

  “Remember you showed me the photos of the Armisteads’ house? There were cars in the driveway, and I ran the plates. My employer has guys, like I said. And so—no Mary Grace Thibodeaux?”

  Meg was leaning over the back seat talking to the driver, pointing out the windshield. Ellie rolled her eyes. She had known the guy was going the wrong way. Maybe Meg had been checking her GPS. Thank goodness.

  “Who’s that?” Ellie said again.

  “Mary Grace Thibodeaux is the owner of that white car.”

  The blood drained from Ellie’s face. “The—”

  “Ellie. Listen. Mary Grace has a nickname. Lacey. Does the name Lacey Thibodeaux mean anything to you? Or Lacey Grisham? Sometimes she used that name.”

  “Used?” Ellie latched on to the word. “Is she dead?

  Out the window, Ellie saw they were on the Expressway. A white jet flew low across the overcast sky, descending on its flight path across Boston Harbor to Logan Airport. They passed a massive white-bladed windmill on the right, and on the left, a huge rainbow-painted gas tank. They were going the wrong way. Seriously the wrong way. She’d intervene in a minute.

  “Call me,” Gabe said. “When you’re alone.”

  “But why are you telling me this? What’s this—person—got to do with—”

  “Ellie? Was there anyone else at Armistead’s when you were there? Any sign of another woman?”

  “No,” she said. “Didn’t seem like it. You think, um, that person is somehow significant?”

  “Just call me,” he said.

  And the line went dead.

  Meg yanked out one earbud. “What’d he say?”

  “Oh,” Ellie searched for an answer. “You know, thanks for last night, all that. Loved your cookies. No biggie.”

  Ellie looked out the
window again. The highway exit they’d just passed was marked Braintree, Quincy, South Shore. This was wrong.

  “This guy is going the wrong way,” she said.

  “Nope. He’s not.” Meg’s perky smile surprised her. “Guess who was just texting me?”

  “Who?”

  “Abigail,” Meg said. “And our happily flexible Uber driver is not going the wrong way. He’s headed to her house. She’s half an hour away. And yay, me. I’ve convinced her to talk.”

  CHAPTER 53

  ELLIE

  She’d lied to Gabe. Of course she knew of Mary Alice Thibodeaux aka Lacey Thibodeaux Grisham and, later, Lacey Vanderwald. Looking for someone who might give her what she needed, Ellie had researched all the Vanderwalds. Lacey had seemed like a dead end, a Vanderwald wannabe who’d faded from public attention after her husband died.

  As their SUV wove through the rush-hour traffic, Ellie rested her forehead on the car window. The traffic toward the city was at a standstill, as usual on a Tuesday morning, and was now doubly congested because of the snow. They passed a massive motorized billboard, electronically flipping from an ad for the Encore casino, all fireworks and roulette and cleavage, to a mother-and-child Pharminex ad—WOMEN’S WELLNESS IS WHO WE ARE—to a promo for the new Channel 11. ON THE AIR SOON, the billboard promised, and then the news anchor team’s permanently smiling faces rotated away, back to the casino.

  Lacey Thibodeaux was a Vanderwald by marriage, Ellie knew. She’d seen photos of her on Google. There were surprisingly few for someone who, according to a local paper’s wedding announcement, had been fully embraced as part of the “new generation of Vanderwalds.” Had she missed some recent ones?

  She pulled out her phone, typed the name into Google Images.

  The photos appeared, one by one, exactly as Ellie remembered. In the first, Lacey’s face was glamorously obscured by a swoop of gossamer bridal veil. A tiny rectangular photo of Lacey in a lineup of other Tri-Delts in her college yearbook (and now online all these years later) showed a plump-faced wide-eyed Southern belle with cranberry lip gloss, a tumble of auburn curls and aggressive eyelashes. At her husband’s memorial service, Lacey’s face had been protected by black netting. Ellie zoomed in on the picture. Under the hat, Lacey’s auburn hair had been lightened to what looked like strawberry blond.

  Had Gabe seen these same photos? Because of the car registration, clearly Gabe suspected Kaitlyn Armistead was Lacey Vanderwald. Ellie closed her eyes, merging faces in her mind, trying to see if that could possibly be true. She’d talked to Kaitlyn, one-on-one, without a shred of suspicion that she was someone whose photo she had previously studied online. But she was the right age. Ellie shrugged, as if she were speaking out loud. Maybe five years older than Ellie herself. But unlike the current situation in her own double life, most people were who they said they were. Too bad the Armistead photo album was missing.

  She stared at the pictures, keeping the screen tilted away from the still-texting Meg.

  Why would Lacey Vanderwald be in Boston? For the Vanderwald gala, Ellie assumed, now just twenty-four hours away. But why would she have visited James Armistead? Ellie tried to weave a story in her head, to see if she could come up with a reason. Lacey might have been dispatched by the Vanderwalds to Armistead to apologize. Or maybe offer a financial settlement? She wrinkled her nose. Neither of those seemed likely.

  She looked out her window, lost in thought, as the highway out of Boston changed from garish billboards and cinder-block industrial to frost-capped wetlands, an occasional shorebird swooping through the concrete-colored sky, the thick stands of trees, branches bare, many of them snapped and broken, victims of the past winter’s storms. Journalists were storytellers, tellers of true stories, but how to logically explain Lacey Thibodeaux being at Kaitlyn Armistead’s home? As Ellie had said to Gabe, it was all about which speculation became the truth.

  The car chunked over a pothole. Ellie glanced at Meg. She was oblivious, deep into her phone.

  So. Say grieving and beautiful young widow Lacey Vanderwald was still connected to the Vanderwald family. Maybe they’d marshaled her sorority-sister sweetness and powers of persuasion to convince victims—victims as damaged and broken as those roadside trees—to settle their damage claims. Maybe Lacey, protecting her inheritance, had helped to broker those settled lawsuits Ellie was trying to uncover.

  Could it be? Maybe Lacey had signed onto the Vanderwald greed and avarice when she’d said “I do,” joining the Pharminex mind-set as well as the Vanderwald family. Lacey and her husband never had children. Ironic, when Lacey’s new family was supposedly the pharmacological bestower of motherhood to needy women everywhere.

  Ellie widened her eyes. Wrote the story another way.

  What if Lacey Vanderwald had gone to James Armistead’s not as an emissary of the Vanderwalds but as their enemy? To try to convince him to join a crusade against the company?

  Ellie shook her head, dismissing that. Too complicated. Risky.

  What if Kaitlyn Armistead herself was Lacey Vanderwald? Maybe she had tried to start a new life as someone else, only to have her past catch up with her. If so, had her husband, James, known that?

  And if that was true, Lacey Vanderwald was now dead. Just like her Vanderwald husband. Leaving Brooke, the daughter, as the only remaining Vanderwald heir.

  But Ellie—Nora—had seen Kaitlyn. Close up. Talked to her. She closed her eyes, trying to imagine, in retrospect, if there was any resemblance. Context distorted everything.

  Or maybe …

  “Ellie, yoo hoo,” Meg said. “Are you taking a nap? Want to brainstorm questions for Abigail? We’re almost there.”

  “Meg?” Ellie asked. “What’s Abigail’s last name? Her real last name?”

  The SUV veered off onto an exit, taking the curve so hard Ellie had to hang onto the strap to prevent herself from falling onto Meg.

  Meg chewed at a pink-painted fingernail. Shook her head. “I can’t tell you.”

  “Why not?”

  “She’s—her—um. Her family is—inflexible, I guess you could say. She doesn’t want them to know what happened to her. If you meet her and if she wants to, she’ll tell you.”

  “If?”

  “She’s skittish. She’s damaged enough, you know? It’s difficult for her to keep it all together. She still feels that loss every day. She says.” Meg smoothed back her ponytail, keeping her hair away from her face. Not one bit of gray, Ellie saw. The woman had to be, what, pushing forty? Under her wig, the roots of Ellie’s own auburn hair were threatening to add salt to the cayenne.

  “She might even want to stay back in her room while she and I record. And you stay in a different room.” Meg scrunched up her face, as if she hadn’t wanted to reveal that yet. “If she does, no big deal. We do it the same way as before, you on speaker and me shooting the video on my cell.”

  “Oh, come on.” Ellie tried to swallow her frustration. “If she’ll talk to you and trusts you, she’s got to trust me. What’s the difference?”

  “She feels like she knows me,” Meg said. “The whole thing is fragile. And she’s afraid of Pharminex too. That they could ruin her life. Or, you know, kill her, like maybe they did Kaitlyn and Lydia.”

  “What? How would she even know about those people? Meg? Did you tell her?”

  “Of course not,” Meg said. “And I didn’t say she did. Know. I’m just saying—she would be afraid of that.”

  Ellie pressed her lips together, quieting her brain as the SUV stopped for a light. There were homes, now, lining the streets—wood and siding triple-deckers, painted a half-hearted spectrum of white to gray, all with front stoops and unstained wooden balconies, some with snow-laden planters hanging forlornly from hooks. A rickety convenience store took up the corner lot, its lopsided windows plastered with off-kilter lottery signs and beer ads. Ellie didn’t know, really, what Pharminex would or wouldn’t do. Proof of that: her car, still parked on her own street.

  �
��We need this interview, right?” Meg persisted. “The gala is tomorrow. Tomorrow! Maybe we can get her interview on the air. Like a tease of what’s to come. We’re five minutes away. Come on, Ellie. You can’t back out now. This is our big chance.”

  CHAPTER 54

  ELLIE

  Ellie watched the SUV drive away up Fogarty Street, leaving her standing with Meg on the front stoop of number 348. The triple-decker was a fading carbon copy of its neighbor, with weary lace curtains in some of its shutterless windows. Scraggly thick shrubs divided the lots, an almost successful attempt at privacy. The downside of ride shares, she thought as she surveyed the unfamiliar neighborhood, was that she and Meg couldn’t depart here until another one was summoned and arrived. Seemed efficient in the downtown bustle of Boston, but not so much in whatever town this was—Braintree, Ellie gathered from the signs. She’d never been here before.

  Meg was heading up a half-shoveled front walk, just enough snow pushed aside for a single-file approach or departure. A row of saucered terra-cotta pots, each one coned with snow, lined the shoveled half.

  “Think we’ll be okay getting back?” Ellie asked.

  “Oh, sure.” Meg turned to her as she walked. “I asked the driver. You saw me talking to him, right? I had to change our destination. Like I said. Yay.”

  “Okay.” Ellie faced a panel of black-buttoned doorbells, its upper left screw missing, with mottled paper squares hand-numbered 1, 2 and 3. No names. “Which bell is it?”

  “No bell.” Meg lifted one of the terra-cotta pots, then set it back into place. “Damn.”

  “What?”

  Ellie scouted up the street, then down, fearing Neighborhood Watch, or maybe nosy residents who’d be wondering what two women were doing messing with the flowerpots in someone else’s yard. But not a curtain fluttered. And driveways were empty of cars, each one with a dark asphalt rectangle showing where the vehicle had protected it from the snow.