Liar, Liar

by Lisa Jackson

  “That’s another problem. I don’t think we can.”

  For the first time, O’Day noticed that the younger man seemed worried, his dark brows drawn together, the edges of his mouth curved down. “Why the fuck not?”

  “Because I went down and dusted off the windshield. The car’s not empty.”

  O’Day’s anger seeped away in an instant. Oh . . . shit. “What?”

  “There’s a driver behind the wheel,” he said. “Probably a woman. Hard to tell. Except for what’s left of the clothes. Just . . . just a skeleton really.”

  He let out a long breath, took off his hard hat, and rubbed a hand through the buzzed hair of his head. “Okay. Call the police.”

  “Already did,” Ramon said. “They’re on their way.”

  “The damned site’ll be closed for who knows how long.”

  Ramon shrugged and shot him a what’re ya gonna do? look.

  “I’d better take a look.” He did not need this. Not today. Well, not ever, really. Dreading the task, he tightened his hard hat back on his head and, girding himself, made his way down the steep grade of sand and dust to the bottom of the pit, where the car rested under a thick layer of grit. As Ramon had said, the windshield had been dusted off. As he peered through the streaked glass, he damn near jumped from his skin. His heart trip-hammered, even though he’d expected what he was seeing.

  But it was different seeing a skeleton with bits of hair poking out from a toppled blond wig. Her visage was hideous. Macabre. Black eye sockets in a ghoulish skull. Straight teeth, some showing fillings and a bit of gold, were set in a gruesome, blood-chilling grin.

  A clavicle and parts of her spine and ribs showed dingy white beneath some kind of black sequined dress. Gloves covered the bones of her hands, which were gripping the wide steering wheel.

  His skin crawled as the wind whispered over the pit, dust flying around him.

  Every ghost story he’d heard as a kid about the dead rising rushed through his brain, and for a second, he imagined one of those gloved, fleshless fingers reaching out to caress his cheek.

  And then he noticed the baby carrier, strapped into the back seat.

  Oh . . . no . . . The interior back there was so dark. He’d need a flashlight or more grit wiped from the windows before he could tell for certain.

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” he whispered, stepping back, feeling cold from the inside out. What the hell was she doing seated at the steering wheel, as if she were out for a Sunday drive, a baby with her?

  The back of his mouth turned dry, and for a second, his stomach clenched, threatening to turn inside out. He backpedaled up the hillside of the pit, sweating despite the iciness around him.

  It was all he could do to maintain his composure. “Tell everyone to stand back from the pit,” he told Ramon. “And, uh, we, um, we may as well let the crew take their breaks.” He was rattled, no doubt about it, and though it was only eight in the morning, he planned to get back to the office, reach into his bottom drawer, and find his bottle of Jack. He needed a drink. But it would have to wait. He was in charge here and had to remain cool, so he hitched up his pants and said, “Until the cops get done with whatever the hell they’re gonna do here, there ain’t a lot we can do.”

  “Could take a while for them to process everything,” Ramon said just as O’Day heard the sound of the first siren wailing in the distance.

  “Let’s hope not.”

  He waited, most of the crew standing around the pit, while the first cruiser arrived. The deputy took a look in the car and called in to the station, and within the hour, the place was crawling with cops, crime-scene tape strung across the fence, news vans parking outside the gates.

  “Swell,” he said under his breath. “Just terrific.”

  Two detectives showed up, the lead a tall, African American woman in a pair of sleek sunglasses, who was all business. “Show me,” she said to a deputy, who walked with her down into the pit. They examined the body behind the wheel without touching it. She and her partner discussed the situation and talked on their cell phones before climbing back out of the hole, and O’Day wondered how she could scramble up and down the sides of the pit and not break a sweat.

  Cool as a cucumber came to mind as she approached again and asked him the basics: What was the job? Who discovered the car? When? Simple stuff that either he or Ramon answered. She and her partner seemed about to drive off and leave the site in the hands of a crime-scene crew, but O’Day followed her to the car.

  “So how long will we be shut down?”

  “As long as it takes,” she said.

  “I’ve got a schedule.”

  “And I’ve got a murder investigation.” She flashed him a patient smile that he suspected didn’t quite reach her eyes, but he couldn’t tell with her reflective shades. All he could see was his own distorted face in the mirrored lenses.

  “We’d appreciate you speeding this through.”

  “We will, but we’ll be thorough. You understand that.”

  “Absolutely.” He was good with the cops. A couple of the guys on his bowling team had been with the Las Vegas P.D. Retired now. “Hey, tell me. There was only one person in that car, right? I mean I saw a baby carrier in the back seat . . . but I didn’t see any kid.” God, he prayed that an infant hadn’t died there.

  “Just one body, it looks like to me. But you know I can’t discuss the case.”

  “Right, right, but, do you think . . . I mean did the driver . . . was she buried alive?” He had to ask, had to know.

  She reached for the door handle, signifying the end of their conversation. But she hesitated and said under her breath, “Twenty years. What the hell?” To O’Day, she said, “I don’t think so.” She flashed a cold smile. “There appears to be a bullet hole in the back of her skull, so I’d guess she was dead before she was put into the car, or at least driven into the pit. But, really, that’s all I can tell you now.”

  “Wait a sec.” He was putting it together now. Hadn’t his wife and kid just read that book . . . the one about the woman who went missing here, what? Twenty years ago? And hadn’t she last been seen in some kind of tricked-out Cadillac? What the hell? There had been lots of talk about it lately, and now the press was here, Johnny-on-the-spot.

  He stared into those mirrored glasses and said, “Are you telling me that we just dug up fuckin’ Didi Storm?”

  CHAPTER 28

  Vera was struggling. It was obvious. She started rocking again, pushing against the carpet with the toe of her tennis shoe. “I didn’t read that book, even though Jensen wasted his money on a copy. Didn’t need to. I can’t imagine why a book on Didi would even be published. She was just another woman with loose morals who slept around and never made it big.”

  Remmi wanted to argue but held her tongue when she caught Noah’s eye and silent message: Let her talk.

  “She’s been gone what—?” Vera threw out a hand. “Twenty years or so? But she’s right here, isn’t she?” She pointed at the carpet and said bitterly, “Right here in this room. With us now. She’s like a bad smell, you know. No matter what, you can just never get rid of her!”

  “Maybe you didn’t want to,” Remmi said, and she saw Jensen’s total look of bewilderment.

  Vera shook her head. “Trust me, I never want to hear her name again.”

  Remmi wouldn’t let it go. “Even if you could make money off her?”

  “Are you kidding?” Vera actually recoiled.

  “What’re you talking about?” Jensen asked, but a light seemed to be dawning in his eyes.

  Noah said, “We know you were in contact with Trudie Crenshaw.”

  “Trudie who? Oh—wait, the woman who was killed?” Vera tried to act innocent, but it didn’t quite come off. “I just saw it on the news. She was supposedly the person who wrote the book, right?”

  “Wait a sec,” Jensen said. “This doesn’t make any sense.” He reached into the top drawer of a small table and pulled out a copy of I�
��m Not Me. “It was written by—”

  “Maryanne Osgoode,” Remmi said. “It’s a pseudonym.” When he didn’t seem to get it, she added, “An alias.”

  “Oh. Why?”

  “Anonymity,” Noah interjected. “But it didn’t work. The author’s dead. Murdered.”

  Jensen looked from Remmi to Noah and back again. “What do you mean murdered. Like killed?”

  Jensen had improved, but he was still no Rhodes scholar.

  “Gertrude Melborn Crenshaw. She was my mother’s best friend, and she married Mom’s first husband, Ned Crenshaw,” Remmi explained.

  “Whoa . . .” Jensen was processing slowly.

  “They were attacked at their ranch near Sacramento last night. She’s dead, and he’s in ICU, critical condition,” Remmi added.

  “Holy shit, why?” Jensen asked and stared at his mother.

  Noah said, “We’re hoping you can tell us.”

  “Me?” Jensen asked, seeming incredulous, as from the hallway the sounds of a baby cooing reached their ears. “How?”

  Noah said, “Your phone.”

  “What?” He gazed at Noah blankly.

  “Somebody might have used it by mistake. Say, when it was being charged?”

  Jensen’s eyebrows drew together, and he looked over at the recliner and the phone chargers attached to an outlet nearby. “What do you mean?” he asked.

  Vera broke in, “This is ridiculous! Jensen obviously has never even heard of Trudie Crenshaw. And I never met her. Or her husband, not even when Didi was married to him.” She stood abruptly and turned to Remmi. “I don’t even know why you’re here. On some kind of wild-goose chase. Trying to punish me because I wouldn’t let you run wild like your mother did. Let me tell you,” she said, winding up, “you’re lucky I raised you during those formative years when you were a teenager. It was me.” She thumped her chest with her hand, and the little cross danced. “I was the one who saved you from a life of sin and debauchery.”

  “Mom, whoa,” Jensen said, half-embarrassed.

  Remmi’d had enough. “How? With your pseudo-Christianity? Your holier-than-thou attitude?”

  “Shame on you!” Vera declared. “Shame on you, Remmi! Who put a roof over your head? Who cooked for you, cleaned for you? Saw that you found the Lord? And did we get a dime for our trouble, or even a ‘thank you’ from you for taking you in when you had no one? No!”

  She was nearly spitting now, the venom that had been seeping through her veins for years finally spewing.

  “Someone helped Trudie write that book,” Remmi pointed out calmly. “Someone who knew my mother inside and out. Someone who grew up with her.”

  “Not me. I never wanted to think about Didi again!”

  Remmi said, “When I lived here, you brought her up all the time. Just so you could tell me how awful she was. You never missed a chance to put her down.”

  “No.”

  “Yeah, Mom. You did,” Jensen broke in quickly. “You still do. You’ve always hated her.”

  “Not hate.” Vera shook her head rapidly. “No, no, no.”

  “Well, what do you call it then?” her son demanded.

  The question stopped Vera cold. “You didn’t know Didi! You don’t understand what it was like for me. I was the one who was responsible. I was the one who got good grades. I didn’t lie or smoke or drink, do drugs, run around, or anything. Mom and Dad could depend on me, but Edie—that’s what we called Edwina back then, before she adopted that ridiculous name!—Edie just took everything she wanted, did what she wanted, it didn’t matter who she hurt. Mom. Dad. Me. Billy. Her best friends. She was just horrid!”

  Gathering herself, her face a mask of disgust, Vera went on, “Edie stole other girls’ boyfriends and never thought a thing about it. Didn’t matter if it was her best friend. How she was so popular, I’ll never know. Well, with the boys, that was a no-brainer. They all loved fun-loving Easy Edie. But the girls? Why in the world she was popular with the girls when she was forever stabbing them in their backs, sneaking out with their boyfriends, doing . . . doing immoral things . . .” Vera glared straight at her niece. “It’s time for you to take off those rose-colored blinders and see your mother for what she really was: a wicked, wicked girl. Pure evil.”

  “Wow.” Jensen just stared at his mother.

  Vera’s eyes sparked with pent-up hatred and jealousy. “Okay. So it’s out there. No, I didn’t like her. She is a . . . a Jezebel!”

  “Was,” Noah said. “Not ‘is.’” He stared hard at Vera. “Do you know what happened to her? If she’s still alive?”

  Remmi didn’t move. Held her breath. For a second, it seemed as if the air had been sucked out of the tiny room.

  When Vera seemed to be at a loss for words, Remmi whispered, “She’s dead, isn’t she?”

  “I don’t know,” Vera said, coming back to herself. With a little less fire, she added, “I really don’t. But I would assume that since no one has heard from her in all this time, she’s gone.” She let out a slow breath as if trying to find her equanimity again. “You shouldn’t grieve too much if she is gone, Remmi, because she wasn’t a good person, I think you know that. It’s not for me to judge, of course, I leave that to the Father, but . . . oh, well . . . it doesn’t matter.”

  “It does. It matters a lot,” Remmi argued, unable to sit still and listen, to just take it about Didi.

  Now, the baby was no longer babbling but starting to cry.

  Jensen was on his feet in an instant and heading down the hallway.

  Remmi wasn’t finished. “And don’t lie to me about you not judging her. You judged her every moment of her life, just like you do everyone.”

  “I–I do not!”

  “What do you have to do with the book?” Noah asked her, apparently trying to get the conversation back on track.

  “Nothing—I don’t know anything—”

  “Give me a break.” Remmi jumped to her feet and crossed the faded carpet in two strides, kicking a plastic puzzle piece out of the way. “You talked to Trudie, gave her information on Mom, and—”

  Vera gasped and shook her head. She, too, was on her feet, apparently determined to stand toe to toe with her niece rather than cower in her chair. The empty rocker swayed as Jensen, carrying his son, returned to the room.

  The baby was in full-fledged wail, and he said loudly, “I need a bottle.”

  “In the fridge,” Vera snapped, turning back to Remmi. “I already told you I didn’t even know the woman. This Trudie. Never met her.”

  “What about you, Jensen?” Noah called out. “Your cell phone connected with Trudie’s. A little over a year ago.”

  Through the archway, Remmi saw Jensen as he opened the refrigerator, the now whimpering baby on his hip. Deftly, he placed a pre-made bottle in the microwave. “I don’t even know who you’re talking about,” he said over his shoulder.

  Noah pressed on. “The trouble is, we’ve got the phone records, and I’m sure the police do, too. So it looks like you, or someone who had access to your phone, dialed Trudie Crenshaw, then hung up when they realized they’d used the wrong phone and called back on a prepaid phone, a burner, supposedly untraceable.”

  “Supposedly?” Vera repeated as Jensen returned and sat in the recliner. He tested the bottle, dripping milk on his wrist, then, satisfied the formula wasn’t too hot, let his son start sucking from it.

  “There are ways to trace burner phones based on where the phone was purchased,” Noah said, and Remmi guessed that he was bluffing a bit. “The police will know.”

  Vera was wagging her head, but Jensen, holding baby and bottle, glared at her from the recliner.

  “Mom?” he said. “You know it’s a sin to lie.”

  “I never—”

  “That’s what Jesus told us, right? Isn’t that what you always say? Ten commandments and Psalms and proverbs . . .” He was looking at her, daring her to lie. When she opened her mouth, he said softly, “God and Jesus, they’re wa
tching,” and, at that moment, Remmi realized he’d been waiting for years to throw his mother’s admonishments back in her face. He was actually enjoying watching her squirm, a part of the old Jensen surfacing.

  “Proverbs 12:22, ‘Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord,’” Vera said, as if the words were torn from her soul.

  “Yeah, Mom, that’s it. God doesn’t like liars.”

  To Remmi’s amazement, a tear rolled down Vera’s cheek as some of her anger slid away. “It just wasn’t fair,” she squeaked out. “Edie had so much and I . . . we . . . we were the good ones, and we had so little.”

  A muscle worked in the corner of Noah’s jaw. “So how much was it worth to you?” he asked.

  Vera closed her eyes.

  “Jesus, Mom. Tell me this isn’t happening,” her son said. He stood up abruptly, the baby crying in his arms again. “Tell me you’re not the biggest hypocrite on the planet. That you didn’t have anything to do with those people getting shot!” His face was a mask of horror, and even though Monty started to cry again, Jensen didn’t pay any attention.

  “Of course not.” Vera walked to the front door, wrapping her arms around herself. “I don’t know anything about that. But . . . but the money.” She weighed her answer as Jensen waited, and finally she said, “I did get some money. Twenty-five thousand dollars. That might sound like a lot, but it’s really not, now that the book is doing so well . . . I got a pittance for all the trouble I went through.” She sighed and shook her head.

  Was it regret?

  Or an act?

  Noah asked, “So that’s it? You got twenty-five grand?”

  Vera looked at the floor. “I worked out a deal with Ned and Trudie.”

  “And now that Trudie’s dead?” Noah pressed. “What happens to her royalties from the book?”

  “I don’t know. Probably her heirs, I would guess.”

  “What if she doesn’t have any? What happens if Ned dies?” Noah pressed.

  She shrugged, but not convincingly, and she changed the conversation. “It’s terrible, the poor woman. I’ve told you everything I know. Yes, I worked with Trudie. Yes, I told her all about Didi’s life, the Missouri growing up part, a bit of sibling rivalry, but that’s it. I figured Edie owed me.” She met Remmi’s gaze. “Believe me, it wasn’t enough. Not near enough. All the money in the world wouldn’t make up for the pain Edwina put our family through.”