Rules of Lying (Jane Dough Series)

by Stephie Smith

  He chuckled—a little. “I don’t take girls home to Mama. The only girl she’d like is one she picked out for me.”

  I suddenly didn’t like his mama very much, but since he’d never be taking me home to meet her, it didn’t matter.

  “Here’s what we’ll do,” Bryan said. “You’ll put on a surgical mask. I’ll check to make sure the coast is clear so we can exit this closet, and then you’ll walk with me to the staff elevators, which you will take to the garage floor. You should leave the mask on until you’re off the property, just in case the reporter has a telephoto lens.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t go with me,” I said. “If the reporter sees you, maybe he’ll take a harder look at me. After all, you’re supposed to be wooing me.” Wooing me. That sounded lovely, even though we were hiding out in a linen closet and maybe breaking the law.

  “You’re right. I could just tell you where the staff elevator is, but I don’t trust you to get on it and leave. I’m afraid that five minutes from now I’ll hear that the crazy woman’s been caught trying to sneak back under her friend’s bed and the police are on their way.”

  “Well, that’s just ridiculous. I’d never go back and hide under the bed after being caught there once.” Or maybe I would, now that I thought about it. Maybe they wouldn’t look there again because that was where they’d caught me before. They’d probably think I wasn’t stupid enough to hide there again. And I wasn’t. Stupid, that is. But the fact that they’d never look there again was the reason I should probably go there.

  “Oh, no. I can see the wheels turning inside that pretty head of yours. You’re thinking they’d never look for you there since they caught you there already, so that’s exactly what you’re planning to do. Change of plans. Instead of putting you on the elevator, I’m getting on with you to make sure you get off and go to your car.”

  Hunh. Bryan really was perceptive.

  “Let’s find you a mask,” he said, reaching around me to rummage through the contents of the shelf I was backed up against.

  Footsteps and chatter moved in our direction, so I reached behind Bryan to flip off the light. Since both of us were reaching behind the other, it sort of knocked us smack together in the dark. I got a very faint whiff of his aftershave or cologne or whatever it was, and my knees went weak, causing me to sag against him.

  Bryan caught me. Now we both had our arms around each other, in the dark, so I planted one on him. The only problem was I missed his mouth, so I planted one on his neck.

  Something down south moved as it stiffened; the something didn’t belong to me.

  Bryan groaned. “Jane, what am I going to do with you?”

  “I’ve got a few ideas, but this probably isn’t the best time.”

  “Does that mean we might find another time, like when we’re out on a date?”

  I was finding it hard to think. Very hard. But I dragged my thoughts up from where they’d been. “Maybe, but first I have to take care of my house problem.”

  “Why can’t I help you take care of it?”

  “It’s a character thing. I have to solve it by myself. So when I solve it, I’ll let you know.”

  Bryan sighed again and let go of me. “Okay, but just be warned that by the time you solve your problem, I might be over my infatuation. I’m usually saner than this.”

  He opened the door a crack and peeked outside. “Let’s get you out of here,” he said, swinging the door open. So that was what we did.

  Chapter 15

  It was Saturday, my favorite day of the week. Sue breezed in with the newspaper and doughnuts, and Hank knocked on the door a few minutes later carrying bagels and cream cheese. They had both shown up the previous Saturday morning. Hank, because he was helping me all day in the yard and Sue, just because we were lucky. The result had been an entertaining chit-chat that put us all in good moods for the day. The big difference between this Saturday and last was that today my sister Marci trailed in behind Hank.

  Marci had checked Hank out last Saturday when she stopped by to pick up some clothes her six-year-old daughter, Erin, had left behind after spending the night. I’d hoped Marci didn’t hear Sue’s suggestion that we make this a Saturday morning routine, but alas, whenever a good-looking man is involved, all of Marci’s senses engage at high alert.

  And Hank was a good-looking man. I sized Hank up through Marci’s eyes. Broad-shouldered and slim-hipped, he carried his lean, muscled body with an easy grace. His tanned face with its dark brown eyes and slightly crooked nose had always been handsome, but now that his hair was growing in, he was what Granny would call a real looker. Marci wouldn’t have been Marci if she hadn’t wanted in on that.

  “Can you believe it?” she asked as she plunked herself down at the table as though she were an invited guest. She flipped her long, professionally streaked blond hair away from her spray-tanned face.

  “What? Macy’s is closed for inventory?”

  Marci loved to shop and shop and shop. I would too if I were twenty-eight and everything I tried on made me look eighteen. Of course, the styles she wore were for eighteen-year-olds, but Marci put the teenagers to shame. She should, considering the cosmetic surgery she’d had. A tummy tuck, lipo to the thighs, an eyebrow lift, and a boob job. She’d probably done other things I didn’t know about. Not that there was anything wrong with cosmetic surgery. If I had the money, I’d be getting it too. Constantly. Probably that was why Marci’s cosmetic surgery annoyed me. She could afford it and I couldn’t, but I didn’t want to come by money the way she had—through men.

  She was wearing a pair of those hip-riding jeans, the kind that are cut so low you have to wonder if there is any genitalia down there at all. And the only thing that stuck out on the firm, tanned skin that was supposed to be a tummy was a diamond-studded gold hoop earring just below her belly button.

  “No,” she replied in an exasperated tone, rolling her eyes in Hank’s direction as if to imply that I wasn’t intelligent enough to follow normal conversation. “Macy’s is not closed for inventory; I was there just yesterday.”

  She snatched up the newspaper. “Your friend is in the paper again,” she said disdainfully, directly to me, “like anybody cares.”

  “What friend?”

  She opened the paper to the “World News” section and tapped her nail on it. “Children are starving in … well, somewhere, but the headline is once again Where is J.T.? Why does anyone think this jerk deserves newspaper space, especially in the “World News” section?”

  Hank choked on his coffee. Both Marci and Sue instantly leaned toward him to pat his back, but Sue’s hand got there first. Was it just me or did her hand linger a quarter second longer than was really necessary to prevent choking? I immediately felt chastened by my thoughts. My best friend, and I was jealous. Considering that I wasn’t making a play for Hank, why should I care if Sue did?

  Now, Marci … that was another story. She might be my sister, but she was a barracuda when it came to men. She nosed her way into a man’s life, sank her teeth into what she wanted—which usually included all his worldly goods—and swam off while he was still trying to figure out what had happened. Come to think of it, my across-the-street neighbor, Sheila, did the same thing. And I didn’t want to see that happen to Hank, even if all he had was a Chevy and 400 bucks.

  “He’s not a jerk and you know it,” I said. “Johnny was a great person when he was a kid, and I’m sure he’s a great person now.” I wondered if Marci had made the statement intentionally, to provoke me. She probably hoped I’d act like a bitch in front of Hank and was goading me with something she thought would work. Too bad for Marci. I wasn’t going to play.

  “You don’t know him at all,” Marci shot back. “Look how he went from simple Johnny to snooty J.T. He could be the biggest jerk who ever lived, and you wouldn’t know. You haven’t seen him in twenty-five years. I’ll bet you didn’t even know he’d gone missing.”

  “What do you mean by missing? And how wo
uld I know about it?”

  “You’d know the same way everyone else knows, from the newspaper, the Internet, or TV. Everybody’s been talking about it for a month now.”

  Sue smiled over her bagel. I raised my eyebrows in question.

  “His disappearance is no big mystery,” Sue said. “His agent says he’s on hiatus, but others speculate that he’s ready to leave tennis. Jane wouldn’t know because she turns the channel the instant sports news comes on.”

  Sue took on the role of the non-partisan bystander who must bring the newcomer—Hank—up to speed. It’s the tone of voice she uses in her job as mortgage broker, the tone that says, “I’m just giving you the information, mind you, and you’ll have to decide what you want to do with it,” and it was directly opposite the tone that is biologically inherent in my sisters. Their tone says, “This is what happened, this is what it means, and now I’m going to tell you exactly what to do about it.”

  “Jane hates sports,” Sue told Hank. “It has to do with emotional scars brought on by a sportsaholic father. Since you’re a man, I’m sure you know the type. Every single minute of his so-called home life was spent with all the televisions and radios gathered around him, tuned to different games. Jane, here, has all the sports channels deleted from her TV.”

  “I don’t even have cable, Sue, so I don’t get any sports channels.” Cable had been the first thing to go when my finances had gotten tight.

  “No, you don’t have cable now, but when you did have cable, you programmed out the sports channels.”

  “It doesn’t mean I’m emotionally scarred. It just means I had enough of sports as a child to last the rest of my life.” And if that wasn’t an emotional scar, then what was?

  “Well, I’m not a nutcase,” Marci piped up (as though I were), “and I do watch sports, mostly because David always watched sports and insisted I sit with him through every game. You know, when you really love a man unselfishly—”

  I cleared my throat loudly enough to drown her out. Marci had never loved anyone unselfishly, and I wasn’t about to let her use David as a way to make Hank think she had. Especially when she’d been about as selfish as someone could be, both in her marriage and its dissolution.

  “I resent sports,” I said, “because every second of Dad’s time was spent either watching sports, listening to sports, reading about sports, or talking about sports. He didn’t care about anything that any of us had going on in our lives. He was spoiled and selfish.”

  And I had loved him dearly.

  It had really hurt that he’d never had one minute for me, but he had all the time in the world for sweaty men playing stupid games.

  “Did you think your father loved sports over you?” Hank asked.

  “Hell yes, there’s no doubt about it. My father would’ve watched a nose-picking contest if they were keeping score. Competition was all he cared about, what he lived for.”

  Hank’s eyes had gone dark, and that hint of compassion was back. “That’s too bad,” he said. “I wonder if he knew what he missed out on. I wonder if he figured it out before he died and regretted it.”

  He took a bite of his whole wheat bagel, and a smidgeon of cream cheese was left behind on his lip. His tongue darted out and licked up the cream cheese. My mouth went dry and I forgot what I’d been about to say. It didn’t matter since both Sue and Marci’s attention had been hijacked by Hank’s mouth. I glanced away from his lips. My eyes met Sue’s and she waggled her brows.

  “It’s a shame he tainted sports for you,” Hank said. “I can see you at a Major League baseball game, a beer in one hand, a foot-long in the other, yellin’ at the umpire.”

  Put that way, I could see me too. “Maybe someday,” I said. I wouldn’t mind getting over my problem with sports. Especially if eating and drinking and yelling were involved. Uh-oh. Wait a minute. I sounded just like Dad.

  “Well, I don’t see why anyone cares about your friend,” Marci said, bringing us back to J.T. “I saw him play on TV a few times. He had a great body, but his hair was so long he had to tie it back. Besides, I think he was on drugs. That’s probably why he dropped out of sight; he’s at an addiction clinic.”

  “And you base that on … ?” Hank smiled behind his coffee cup as he asked the question.

  “Let’s see.” Marci began to count off on her fingers, displaying her rhinestone manicure. “One, he’s never seen without sunglasses on. Two, he never gives interviews—ever. Three, he’s a loner. No girlfriend—or boyfriend, for that matter—at his matches. And four, nobody just disappears like that unless he’s taking some big secret with him. It’s obvious to me.”

  Hank gave me a wink. It occurred to me that he really enjoyed these conversations around my table. I know that I enjoyed talking to him, even if it was usually about my family.

  “And what about you, Jane? Is that what you think?” he asked.

  I shrugged. “I think he must have had a good reason to drop out of sight for a while. Maybe his Grams needs him. She must be about eighty now. The Johnny I knew would have had a darn good reason for anything he did.”

  “You ever watch any of his matches?”

  “When I lived in L.A. I even thought about getting in touch with him, but then I moved back here. And now …”

  “Now what?”

  “Well, now I wouldn’t want him to know what’s going on with me. He’d probably feel like he had to help me because of a … never mind. It’s complicated.”

  I wouldn’t admit I was embarrassed because of a pact Johnny and I had made as children. Not with Marci sitting there anyway.

  Marci let out a snort of disgust and didn’t bother to stop herself. “Look, I didn’t come over to discuss your childhood playmate or how Dad’s love of sports turned you into a bitter old woman—”

  “Hey! I’m neither bitter nor old,” I said in protest, “and you did too come over to discuss J.T. You’re the one who brought the paper.”

  “Whatever,” Marci said, shrugging.

  Talk turned to Hurricane Flossie, which had just become a Category 4 hurricane. The current guess was that Flossie was turning north, which would save Florida from a direct hit. There was silence as we all considered what might happen if Flossie didn’t turn north.

  Hank decided to take the silence as a cue. He pushed back his chair and stood. “I hate to leave you ladies, but I got a couple things to do.”

  Marci jumped to her feet as well. “I was just going, myself. I’ll walk out with you.”

  I slid a look at Sue, and we did a synchronized eye roll.

  “See you next Saturday,” Marci said as she waved from the door.

  “Yippee,” said Sue.

  *****

  Richard and I were hard at work on my third lot. It would take much longer than the other two because it had most of the rotting structures. I was thrilled to have help with this part of the work, however, since much of what we’d have to do, such as tearing the gazebos apart, would require manly muscles.

  According to the schedule, we’d spend two weeks trimming the trees, cutting back the brush, and clearing it away from the buildings and then weeding. It would take another week to bust apart the structures.

  I filled Richard in on what the inspector said about my fine and that I’d have to pay the hundred no matter what. He mentioned again that it was really only an extra twenty-five dollars, so I shouldn’t complain. Did no one understand where I was coming from? It would have been zero dollars if some tattletale hadn’t turned me in. Why didn’t anyone get it?

  I decided to drop the subject of the fine before I slapped him, but I wasn’t finished talking.

  “He thinks I should see an attorney,” I said.

  “Who?”

  “The inspector. He doesn’t think the homeowners’ association has a leg to stand on. I’ve been thinking about it, and maybe he’s right.”

  “You signed a contract, didn’t you?”

  Well, if he was going to be a stickler about it …
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  “Yes, but my property was already out of conformance before I ever bought it, and my contract doesn’t say I have to fix up things that were in bad order already. It says I have to keep my property consistent with the rest of the neighborhood. Since it wasn’t consistent to begin with, that seems like a gray area to me.”

  “I don’t know. Sounds like you might be throwing your money away, and you don’t have any to throw.”

  My optimism crumbled in the face of that practical advice. I figured he could tell since sympathy softened his expression.

  “Look, I have a friend who’s a patent attorney. I’ll ask him about it. He should be able to tell you if it’s worth looking into, and maybe he can even recommend someone.”

  “Really? Thanks!” Wow. Look what happened when you put yourself out there. People actually tried to help.

  The rest of the evening crawled by. And so did the next evening and the next. If I’d had a nice round butt to look at every little while, time would have gone a lot faster. I wondered what Hank was up to. I hadn’t seen his Chevy all week.

  On Friday evening we dragged the last of the bamboo stalks to the sidewalk; the air was so thick with water vapor, it was like dragging logs through a lake. I’d gotten used to the sweat running down my face and body, but what I would never get used to were the bugs. As soon as sweat washed away the bug repellent, no-see-ums showed up to snack.

  “Maybe we should go ahead and cut up these stalks,” I told Richard, waving a wimpy bamboo stalk at the gigantic ones littering the sidewalk. Cutting stuff into the four-foot lengths required by the county trash service wasn’t on Richard’s schedule until the weekend, but the bamboo stalks were twenty to thirty feet long. I hated to leave them on the sidewalk.