The Better Liar

by Tanen Jones

  I held the phone to my chest. “What?”

  She tilted her head at me. “Don’t play possum. I know what you’ve got planned.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I held still, trying to read her face.

  Mary walked over to me and flopped down on the carpet, cross-legged. “Sure you do, Leslie. Who’s Frank Clery?”

  My heart pounded so loudly I could hear it in my ears. I felt color flood my face. “I don’t know.”

  She poked me in the side and I flinched. “Come on, give it up. Blue eyes, no chin, does that disgusting lizard thing with his tongue?” She imitated this, flicking her tongue out like a snake. “Nasty.”

  “I have to go,” I heard myself say.

  Mary shook her head a bit sadly. “No, you don’t. You’re staying right here until you tell me who Frank Clery is. Or if you want, we could wait for the burner to charge and I’ll show you the texts you sent to him in February.”

  “What are you, a cop?” My voice was hoarse. “Are you going to call your married police officer friend, tell her what I did? What we did?”

  Mary set her hand on my knee. I flinched away. “I don’t want to hurt you, Leslie. I just want you to tell the truth for once. It costs you nothing.”

  “Why do you care?”

  “Because I’ve been trying to figure out what you were up to since I saw you in Henderson,” she said patiently.

  “What I was up to?” I felt dizzy. “You mean in Vegas?”

  “In a minute,” she said. “First, Clery.”

  There was barely any light coming in through the blinds. There wouldn’t be until noon. Mary’s face blurred in front of me in the half dark, her features seeming to shape-shift.

  “He’s a pawnshop owner,” I whispered.

  She smiled and patted me on the leg. “What else is he?”

  I swallowed. “He does things. For money.”

  “You have to be more specific.” She leaned back on her palms.

  “He kills people.”

  “Right.” Mary observed me in silence for a second. “I thought at first maybe you’d hired him to kill Dave. But I was wrong, wasn’t I?”

  I felt the idea like a blow to the chest. “No! No, I’d never— I love Dave.”

  “You do, don’t you? It took me a while to figure that out. You love him so much.”

  “Yeah.” My mouth was dry.

  “He’s a good man. I tried real hard to find something on him, some reason you might want him dead. For a while I thought he was cheating on you.”

  “He…” I didn’t finish.

  “Oh, so you thought so too?” Mary nodded. “He sure did talk to Elaine a lot. And sent her quite a bit of money. Was that what made you think so?”

  “Not just that.” I bit my lip.

  “Well, it turned out that wasn’t it.” She smiled. “Elaine’s his dealer.”

  She phrased this carefully and with a kind of glee; I recognized that she thought it was some sort of bomb. But—“Dave doesn’t do any drugs,” I told her.

  “Dave might as well not do any drugs.” Mary snorted. “He smokes weed around the back of the house when you’re in bed sometimes. And he buys it for his dad’s back pain and his sister, who’s too square to know any drug dealers.”

  “No…” I thought of Cadence saying Dad needs a Dave visit, and Teri’s quelling look. They knew.

  “He’s terrified you’ll find out about his little vice,” Mary said, “on account of how your sister is a junkie. He begged me not to tell you.”

  I’d told him on our first date that I didn’t tolerate drugs; that I’d never marry anybody who did. He’d promised to give it up. For me.

  “He loves her,” I said. “He lied to me, to go over there.”

  “To buy weed,” Mary said. “He loves you.”

  “She’s better than me,” I said, my voice cracking.

  She laced her fingers together. “Well. After talking to Clery, talking to you…the picture’s really coming together.”

  My mouth fell open.

  She grinned. “Nice to have a, uh, what did you call it? A little married police officer friend? She took me down to county. Frank and I had a good chat while she got herself some coffee.”

  “You spoke to him?”

  She rolled her eyes. “The fact that he talked to me at all is proof that you should have picked someone else. Even if he’s the only dude who whacks people professionally in all of New Mexico, I mean, drive to Vegas. It’s not that far and at least those guys’ll go away for ten years before they say shit to a stranger. But I promised him a favor, and suddenly he was a big ol’ chatterbox. Can you believe it?”

  I didn’t move.

  Mary pushed her hair over one shoulder. “Anyway, you already know what he said. It wasn’t Dave you wanted dead, was it?”

  “No,” I said quietly.

  “No,” she repeated. “It was you.”

  There it was. I felt the truth bore down on me.

  “You didn’t hire him to do anyone else. You hired him to do you.”

  I couldn’t meet her eyes.

  “So I thought about that for a while. It didn’t sit right with me at first. You have this husband you’re so in love with that you won’t even leave him when you think he’s cheating on you. You have a baby. You have that beautiful house. Neither of you were fired; in fact, you both have cushy office jobs where you get to use your master’s degrees every single day. Was it that you were just so depressed that Daddy died that you wanted to follow him out? I batted that one around, but it didn’t really stick for me. But clearly something was rotten, because you were desperate to shed the coil. I thought, what could it be? And then I realized—it wasn’t Daddy. It was Mommy, wasn’t it?”

  “No,” I said again. “It has nothing to do with her—I just wanted—”

  “Nah,” she said. “I think it does. I think you’re just like her. How did she wind up in those hospitals over and over again? It wasn’t just because she was depressed.”

  I couldn’t speak.

  “She tried to kill herself too,” Mary said. “She tried more than once.”

  “I’m not like her,” I bit out.

  Mary giggled and sent up a cloud of dust as she clutched the bookshelf again for support. “You’re right! I mean, that’s the part that gets me the most. You hired a professional wetworker to leave you alone.”

  “What?”

  “Well, he wasn’t supposed to really kill you, right? He was supposed to smack you around, get a few blood spatters on the Honda, and take it for a joyride. Ditch it in one of the arroyos, am I right? Carjacking gone wrong. And then you’re free to start your new life.” She paused. “You wanted your husband to be in love with Elaine. You thought Eli would have a new mommy built right in. You thought you’d be Yvonne.” Mary tilted her head. “Clery said all that cost you forty thousand dollars in cash. Must have taken you all year to get that much cash out of your accounts slowly enough that Dave wouldn’t notice. No wonder you were so pissed when Clery got sent to prison.”

  “The pawnshop closed.” I cleared my throat. “I didn’t know what to do.”

  “It must have been horrible for you,” Mary said sympathetically. “Now you had to start all over again. By the time I got to this point, I started thinking, wouldn’t it have been easier just to off yourself and be done with it?”

  I looked at my hands.

  “Oh, so you thought about it,” Mary said. “I figured. Why didn’t you do it?”

  It took a long time for me to say, “Dave.”

  Mary’s voice warmed. “You didn’t want to break his heart?” She paused. “That’s the part I didn’t understand, I guess. That’s nice of you, Leslie. Okay, so you had one last light at the end of the tunnel. The estate was finally ge
tting settled. That money was just your money, not Dave’s. Maybe you didn’t even tell him about it. You could use it to take off by yourself. Make it look like a carjacking, make sure Dave would never know you’d left him on purpose. But Daddy knew you a little bit better than you thought. He didn’t trust you to give your sister her share. He left instructions to make sure Albert would hand the check to her in person. You were good. You tracked her down. You made it all the way to the house in Henderson. And then you made a mistake.”

  “You said you saw me in Henderson,” I whispered. “How?”

  “I lived there, silly,” Mary told me.

  My head was spinning. “What do you mean?”

  “Rachel Vreeland was my roommate.”

  I stood up and stumbled away from her. “You mean Robin was your roommate.”

  “No, honey,” Mary said. “Come on, step away from the door. You know what I’m saying.” She paused. “I almost thought you saw me in the house, but you were out of there like a shot! Couldn’t wait to leave your sister’s body behind. Made you hungry, huh?”

  “You followed me,” I said. “To the restaurant. You were on my car when I came out. You were…” I twisted from side to side, but Mary was watching me. “You were waiting for me?”

  “Of course,” Mary said. “I thought I’d mess with you a little. I didn’t expect you to buy it.” She laughed. “Boy, did you ever buy it!”

  “But the—the woman in the bed,” I said. “They called me about a credit card. Under her name. Why would they call me if she wasn’t…”

  Mary waved her hand. “Rachel had rich parents. She could handle me opening a couple more credit cards for her. They wouldn’t let me open any more under my other name, or even under Daddy’s. So that’s how you found me—the credit cards? No wonder Iker led you to the wrong room.”

  “The wrong room?” I echoed faintly.

  “He led you to Rachel’s room.” She smiled. “Mine was down the hall.”

  50

  Robin

  Leslie pressed herself against the wall, breathing hard through her nose. “I don’t understand,” she said after a minute.

  I rolled my eyes. “Don’t you recognize me? I know it’s been a while, but man. I expected you to know right away! I mean, Rachel kind of looked like me, but I was definitely the prettier one. Especially toward the end, when she got all twiggy. But that was my fault, I guess.”

  “Your fault?” Leslie was as white as the wall.

  “It’s a long story. My ex traded me in for the new model. So I made friends with her, introduced her to some new drugs, and fucked her life up a little bit.” I blinked. “I guess it wasn’t that long.”

  “That girl. Rachel. That was her. But…” Leslie seemed unfocused. “She had my mother’s earrings. They were right there, in her room…”

  “Mom’s earrings? I thought I’d lost them until I saw them on you that day. You’d come out of Rachel’s room, and then later you were wearing them in the parking lot, and I realized you’d lifted them right off her, just like she must’ve stolen them from me. She was always trying to find stuff to sell.”

  “Stole them. To sell them? For…”

  I shrugged. “I really didn’t think a little heroin was going to end up killing her. I just wanted to fuck her up some, you know? I liked that guy.” I stopped and looked at her. “You know, Paul. I told you about him. His brother knew James Cameron. He was going to help me with my career. But then he met Rachel. She looked just like me, but she was twenty-two.”

  “So you punished her,” Leslie said.

  “No,” I said patiently. “I punished Paul. I followed her around a little at first—just wanted to know what she was like. Why she was better than me. He’d thrown me away for nothing, so I thought I’d show him so. I told her I was new in town, asked her to be my friend, introduced her to her new favorite pastime. I wanted to know how come he fell in love with her, you know? I wanted to fall in love with her. But the more I got to know her the more I knew it wasn’t the same between them. I listened to her talk about Paul, how he was getting more distant, and I knew he was almost done with her. She stopped looking good. She stopped eating anything. It happened so fast. When she kicked it, I wanted to be the first one to tell him the news. I thought now that she was out of the way…But there he was with some new girl already. He called the cops on me, can you believe it? That cop Sam, he’s been following me around for months.” I did my best impression of Sam’s nerdy cop growl. “ ‘Give me all your cash, baby. Otherwise I’ll take you in for stalking.’ I wasn’t even stalking Paul, no matter what he told the police. Talking to your ex isn’t stalking.” I sighed. “At least I got to key Sam’s car on my way out. He deserved way worse.”

  “You killed her,” Leslie said.

  “I did not!” I said, slapping the carpet. “She did that to herself. I told her exactly what was safe to take. Well, I told her a little more than that, but she way overdid it. That is not my fault.” I shook my head. “To be honest, I was just as surprised as you when I came home and heard Iker calling your name. I was barely in my room before I saw you peeling out of there like you thought the police were on your tail, and then Iker comes up the stairs, like Becca, Becca—that’s the name I gave the housing people—Becca, Becca, did you know your roommate is dead, and I thought, Oh, Leslie saw Rachel, that’s why she’s freaking out—”

  “So you followed me.”

  I threw up my hands. “What else was I gonna do? I hadn’t seen you in a decade, and finally you decide to visit me, and you take off before I even get home! I waited for you outside George’s to say hi and you didn’t even recognize me. You were all, ‘Get off my car,’ like, immediately.”

  Leslie drew in a deep breath. “You said your name was Mary.”

  “It was the least me name I could think of. I thought you’d call me out right away.” I wrinkled my nose. “Now I wish I’d picked a better name. I mean, do I look like a Mary?” I glanced down at my body. “I really don’t think so. It kind of bothers me that you bought it.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  It was the loudest she’d been since I’d walked in and scared her. I winced. “Because you were acting like a crazy person,” I said honestly. “I mean, first you don’t even recognize me. Then you tell me I’m dead. I’m obviously offended that you thought bag-of-bones Rachel was me. Then you say I owe you money. Um, I don’t owe you shit! By that point I had no idea what you were talking about, and to be real with you for a second, I was mad about you leaving fake-me for dead and bouncing to find crab cakes at four in the afternoon. So I was just going to wait for you to figure it out, then lay down the guilt trip you completely deserved. But…” I took a deep breath. “Then you ask me if I want to impersonate Robin Voigt to the tune of fifty thousand dollars. Do I! I did think about that one for half a second because it seemed to me that you had lost some mental stability in the last ten years and I wasn’t sure it was a great idea to poke the bear. But Sam was all over my ass, and after all, it’s my money—I mean, I’d have gotten it regardless, but how much more fun was it to pretend I was stealing it, huh?”

  “But your hair,” Leslie said hoarsely. “Your nose…”

  I felt my face. “Oh. Does it look that different? I got my nose fixed years and years ago. Fixed my teeth too, better skincare…it’s necessary in the business.” I dropped my hand. “You should get yours done too. I can give you the name of the lady who did it.”

  “No, thank you.” Leslie was stiff.

  “Whatever.” I thought back. “Oh, and the hair. The hair was dye. I knew I’d look cute as a redhead, but blond is ultimately my calling. I always go back.”

  “I’m going to fucking kill you,” Leslie said. Her voice was gravelly.

  I let my gaze go flat. “No. You’re not.”

  She shrank back against the wall. “
You’re a sociopath.”

  “I’m fun,” I corrected her. “I had a good time road-tripping with you to Burque. I kept feeling like any minute you’d figure it out, but you never did. You’re not that observant, I guess. Or maybe some part of you really wanted me to be dead, enough that you’d ignore what was right in front of you.”

  Her nostrils flared.

  “Ha!” I pointed at her. “That’s it! You did want me to be dead! Even though it complicated everything for you! That’s fucked up, you know. That’s not being a very good sister.”

  “I wish you were dead,” she said. “I wish I’d never met you.”

  “That hurts,” I told her. “That’s a mean thing to say to someone who helped you pretend to steal fifty thousand dollars. These were incredibly high imaginary stakes for me, you know. I could have pretend gone to prison.”

  She licked her lips. “What happened to her,” she said at last. “Rachel. Did they bury her?”

  I frowned. “How should I know? I’m sure someone called her fancy family in Kansas. Don’t change the subject. We were talking about you, and the most inept attempt at faking a carjacking there ever was.”

  Leslie headed for the door, and I cut her off, slamming it closed. “No.”

  She stared at me, then lunged for the other door. I grabbed her wrist and wrestled her arms behind her back. She brought her foot down on my arch, hard. “Ow, sheesh,” I exclaimed.

  “Let me go!”

  I wrenched her arms closer together and she hurled us both to the carpet. I hit my elbow against the leg of the desk and yelped. “Just hold still!”

  Leslie bit me.

  “Fuck!” I grabbed her by the hair, sat on her chest, and pinned her arms with my knees. “I just want to know why,” I said, panting. “Sheesh, Leslie!”

  She spat at me, but it fell down into her hair.

  “This is embarrassing for you,” I told her.

  Leslie writhed for a few seconds longer. At last she went limp. I didn’t let go; I wasn’t stupid.

  “Okay,” I said. “So now tell me why you decided to erase yourself.”