I turned away from him so he couldn’t see my embarrassment or tears. “I guess it just made me angry—at myself—that I didn’t notice things about my friends that other people, like you, would notice right away. It scares me, makes me think I’m more like them than I want to be. Self-absorbed, thinking only of myself. I shouldn’t have taken it out on you.”
I felt Hank’s hand on my arm, and I turned toward him. He looked tender, apologetic, and regretful all at once. What did he have to regret? I was the bitch.
“Janie,” he said with a sigh, his eyes never looking away from mine, “I need to come clean.”
Janie? Where had that come from? Only Granny still called me Janie. And Katherine, when she wanted to put me down, make me feel like a little girl. Of course, my fans—what there were of them—called me Janie, but Hank had never been in that category of acquaintances.
“I didn’t end up here by chance,” he said. “I came here because of you.”
Huh? I couldn’t compute his meaning for a few seconds. Because of me? What did that mean? I considered what his words could mean. Maybe he was a fan—a fan who knew me by the name Janie. Oh my God. Maybe he was a fan who was also a stalker. Maybe that was why he didn’t have a job and hardly knew anyone. He’d come here and rented that house, planning to worm his way into my life … Yeah, sure, that was it. I had such a wonderful life to worm into.
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“You told me about a little boy, the only person you’d ever trusted. Remember?”
“Well, sure, you’re talking about Johnny, my best friend when I was …” I stepped back, stared at Hank. “My best friend when …”
It suddenly hit me—hard and clear and without doubt. Hank Tyler and Johnny Smith were one and the same. I didn’t know how I knew, but I did, and in a split second I was overcome with joy. Damn. All those guesses about who Hank was, what his story was. This was one story I’d never have guessed.
“I came because I was worried about you,” he went on. “Grams told me about the homeowners’ association, that you might lose your house—”
“Grams lives here?”
“In Kissimmee. That’s who I was helpin’ through the hurricanes.”
I was speechless. That Hank could be my best friend from twenty-five years ago was almost beyond comprehension.
Then I remembered that Johnny was J.T., so Hank was Johnny and J.T., and so I said it. “You’re J.T.?”
Hank smiled. “I reached the pinnacle of my tennis career, and I’ve been searching for more. I just wasn’t sure what, and I didn’t want a bunch of reporters, agents—strangers—nosing in to help me decide. So I kinda dropped off the radar.”
Okay, that I could understand. The reporter part anyway. And then two seconds later I was mad enough to scream.
“You kept this from me!” I shoved him so hard he fell back on his butt. “All this time! How could you do that?” There was nothing I hated more than having secrets kept from me when everyone else knew the truth. That was exactly what Pete had done when he’d been sneaking around with—well, whomever he’d been sneaking around with. Everyone else had known about his cheating. I could see it in their eyes, and I’d felt like a fool.
“Settle down, Janie.” Hank pushed himself to his feet and brushed off his back side. “Grams said if I thought you were independent when you were five, I hadn’t seen nothin’. She said you’d never take my help, that your Granny told her you were determined to solve your problems on your own.”
“Granny! Granny was in on this too?” I hated that Granny and Hank and Grams and probably other people, like Hank’s friend Keith, had been pulling the wool over my eyes.
“You made a fool of me,” I said. I certainly felt like a fool, but I wasn’t sure it was from anything Hank had done. It was more the way he was staring at me, as though I’d turned into a two-headed Gila monster.
He threw his hands up in the air. “Stop! Listen to yourself. You’re actin’ crazy again. You’re mad because people have kept parts of their lives—or maybe just their thoughts—private from you. You got a major issue with trust, and you’d better learn how to deal with it before you lose everyone in your life. Or is that what you want? To run everyone off before they can reject you, like your mother did and Pete and whoever else? Maybe you just wanna get all your relationships over with right now, so you don’t have to worry about someone else endin’ them later.”
“Oh, give me a break.” I snatched up the bamboo stalk I’d discarded and pitched it as hard as I could across the lawn. I wanted to wrench a couple of the bamboo trees out of the ground and throw them too but I hadn’t lost my mind quite enough to actually try it.
“Should I call you Dr. Hank? Or would that be Dr. John?” I added somewhat sarcastically. “You might have known me when I was five, but you don’t know me now. This has nothing to do with my shortcomings. I just can’t stand liars.”
“Liars? Really? What gives you the right to expect everyone to tell you every single thing goin’ on in their heads?”
“What gives you the right to move into my neighborhood, strike up a friendship with me, and then try to manipulate me by pretending to be someone you aren’t?”
Hank gave me a long, hard stare. There was no anger in it, only regret and something that might have been pity. Great. Pitiful was one more thing I did not want to be. I clenched my fists until my nails dug into my palms. Was I in the wrong?
“This is who I am,” he said. “For the first time in my life, I’m not pretending. Hank is my middle name—it’s the one I prefer—and I legally changed my last name to Tyler, my mother’s maiden name. I’d hoped you could find happiness in the fact that someone you cared for a long time ago has come back into your life, but if you can’t … if all you can feel is anger … I’m sorry for you. I truly am.”
And just like that, he was gone, striding off without a backward glance like some lone cowboy at the end of a western movie. I wanted to yell after him to come back, but he crossed the street, got into his Chevy, and pulled away.
I looked around blindly. Blind because tears were blurring my vision. What was the matter with me? Maybe someone should just shoot me and put me and, evidently, everyone who knew me out of our misery. Once upon a time I’d had these great friends, but I’d driven them away, one by one.
Maybe Hank was right. Maybe I wanted to find fault with everyone so I felt justified keeping them at arm’s length. Except no one had arms this long. At this rate I would end up old and alone.
Oh my God! Wasn’t that what the Mysterious Marissa had said? That I would end up old, penniless, and alone? Maybe she wasn’t such a fraud after all. Or maybe, as Angie had said, I was turning her words into a self-fulfilling prophesy.
I blotted my tears with the back of my arm and stumbled toward the swamp. I’d come out here to get to work on this thing, and I wasn’t going to let this latest upset keep me from that. I only had four days left to save my house, and dammit, I was going to … I really was going to …
I sank down to a squat and then settled back on my butt and let the tears flow. Hank was right. He was certainly right about the lying. I’d accused him of striking up a friendship and manipulating me by pretending to be someone he wasn’t, but didn’t I do the exact same thing? I’d pretended I was looking for a husband and took him up on his offer to help me until I found one, and I wasn’t even looking.
If he was right about that, maybe he was right about everything. Maybe I wanted to be in this predicament and maybe I even wanted to lose my house, just so I’d have something besides me to blame for my unhappiness for the rest of my life.
I swiped at my face, brushing away the combination of tears and sunscreen while I let that thought sink in.
No, that wasn’t true. I’d worked my butt off to solve this problem, to bring my property into conformance with the rest of the neighborhood, and I’d be damned if anything was going to stop me now. Not even the stupid old swamp. Even if I had to
dig it out all by myself. Nothing was going to keep me from being successful, not even me.
I was forcing myself to my feet when a movement in the swamp caught my eye. It was something big that made the movement. Something too big to be in my swamp.
I shot to my feet like a jack-in-the-box, launching myself halfway across the yard before I knew I was moving. The only word that went through my head was alligator, in big, bold caps. I was almost to my patio before I forced myself to slow down. That was when I realized that the thing in my swamp couldn’t be an alligator.
Because alligators didn’t wear suits.
Chapter 31
Let’s go over your statement one more time, Ms. Dough.”
I was sitting in an interrogation room, like the ones on Law and Order. Small room, tiled floor, bright light, wobbly table, hard chairs. I knew the wobbly table was supposed to drive me crazy, so I tried to pretend someone was rocking me to sleep. It didn’t work.
My skimpy cotton halter top and short shorts had drawn looks from every cop in the station as I’d walked through. Or it might have been the ugly rubber boots covered in swamp muck. I’d been mortified that the detectives hadn’t let me go into the house and change clothes.
Until they told me they were executing a search warrant on my house.
After that, my mortification had to do with that battery-operated device wrapped in a hand towel, stored inside a shoebox that was stuffed inside a bigger box labeled “worthless junk” that was in a plastic storage bin in a corner of my closet. I was beginning to understand what Hank meant when he said no one should have to share his every thought.
Whoever was on the other side of the two-way mirror had to be enjoying my discomfort. I was freezing; they must have turned the thermostat down to zero. At least that’s what my nipples thought. They were the only part of me that was thinking. My brain was in shock and had been since the cops pulled dead Mr. Carlson out of my swamp. Except for those few minutes of panic over that battery-operated device, that is. My brain had been in overdrive then.
Detective Evans was a big man with tiny, close-set eyes perched atop a bulbous nose that was mottled with red spider veins. His nose reminded me of my fifth grade teacher, Mr. Cragan, who took swigs from a bottle of cough syrup throughout the day, though he was never known to have a cold. I felt like asking this guy if he needed some cough syrup right now. I was thinking I could use a drop or two myself.
“What? Cat got your tongue, or do you only answer to Ms. Jansen?” His eyes gleamed with a mixture of excitement and anticipation. I could tell by his smirk that he wanted me to say yes. He wanted me to be a prima donna, acting as if I were somebody special, just so he could put me in my place. Too bad for him that I was an expert at reading smirks. This might be the only time in my life that I’d thank my mother for that.
“My name is Jane Dough,” I said, “and that’s D-O-U-G-H.” I didn’t remember giving the statement the detective wanted to go over. If I wasn’t careful, I would end up in uglier clothes than the ones I was wearing.
I wanted to ask for a lawyer, but I didn’t have any money and was too ashamed to admit it. Pride goeth before a fall, they said, though I’d never really understood that saying. When someone fell, was it because he’d been prideful first, or did the foreknowledge of a fall make pride get out of the way? And what did it matter when I had too much pride and not enough money?
“I don’t remember what I told you,” I said. “Could you read my statement back to me?” I clamped my teeth together, lest they started to chatter.
His eyes drilled into me, and I resisted the temptation to shrink back in my seat. The problem was, I felt guilty even though I wasn’t. I’d been like that for as long as I could remember. Dad told me after my seventy-third belt whipping that he always knew when I was guilty because I looked it. I looked it because I felt it. Even when I wasn’t. Even when Nicole had done it and had gotten me blamed for it, which was eighty percent of the time. Okay, sixty. Or fifty. The point being I always felt I was to blame. And I felt it now.
I reminded myself I hadn’t done anything wrong. Unless you counted spying, witnessing a murder, and then fleeing the scene without telling the police. At least I hoped I hadn’t told the police. I hadn’t murdered Carlson, so they wouldn’t find any evidence of that.
“We know you killed him. We found the knife in your kitchen, with the blood still on it. And I can see the bruises on your arm from the struggle. You might as well confess. We’ve got the goods on you, Jane Dough!”
“Eeeee.” It was the only word I could form. Was he making this up? On Law and Order they sometimes lied to the perp to get him to confess.
Oh my God! I was the perp.
Evans leaned in closer. “What was that you said?”
I tried to squeak out the words, “I want a lawyer,” but just then someone rapped on the other side of the mirror. I shot upward, banging a knee into the table. Great. Bruised up knee to go with my bruised up murdering arm. Except, I reminded myself, my arm hadn’t murdered anyone.
The door swung open and in walked a man. A gentleman, actually. A very attractive gentleman. Late forties, dark hair shot with the teensiest bit of silver, wearing a black pinstripe suit that had cost more than my annual electric bill and water bill rolled into one. His Burberry black leather briefcase made a quick run for second in the big bucks department.
“Counselor,” said Evans. Was it my imagination or did the detective’s shoulders sag a wee bit?
“I’d like a word with my client,” said the gentleman, and I almost fell over onto the floor. I was the only other person in the room. I must be the client.
Evans gave me a look that would have scared me shitless if we’d been alone. He scraped his chair back on the tile floor and tramped out of the room.
“Ms. Dough—may I call you Jane?”
“Ga, I mean ya-yeah-yes.” I stared at him, stuck somewhere between mesmerized and stupid.
“I’m Jonathan Renquist.” He offered his hand and a smile so charming that it slid over me like a balm. Charm, it seemed, was highly underrated.
His eyes were a deep blue, his face unlined except for a smattering of laugh lines, and his expression was kind and sincere. “Bryan Rossi asked me to assist you with this.”
“But I can’t, I mean, I don’t have …” It was so embarrassing to have to say I couldn’t afford him. Hell, I couldn’t even afford his soap. I wondered, if I shut my eyes tight, if he would just go away.
He chuckled, the sound rich and confident. “Don’t worry about the fee. I’ve been taking Bryan’s money for years, and I’ve seldom had to do anything for it. That’s the way it works with retainers.”
Relief swept through me, taking the brain freeze with it.
“Oh, well, thank God, because they’re telling me they have a knife from my house with Carlson’s blood on it, and there’s no freaking way the knife that killed Carlson was in my kitchen.” I had the urge to clutch at his arm as the thought hit me that if the knife had been in my kitchen, so had the killers, but I restrained myself.
“I’d move if that was the case. In fact, maybe that’s what this is all about. Carlson has been trying to get me out of my house for three months, and now he’s found a way to do it. Get me arrested and thrown in prison for the rest of my life, and my family will sell my house to him in seconds.”
Except he was dead, and that was the important part. He couldn’t buy the house if he was dead, so nothing I’d said made any sense. My mouth had run amuck with no mental faculties attached to it, the same way my mother’s mouth takes off when she’s nervous. Oh goodie. One more unfavorable character trait from Mom’s side of the family.
“I don’t want you to worry about that,” Mr. Renquist said. “Bryan just gave a statement disclosing the details of last night’s upsetting incident. There’s only one problem. He didn’t see the killer; you did. So you’ll have to give a statement too.”
“But what about the fact that we were spy�
��”
“Strolling on Carlson’s property?” Renquist supplied smoothly. “There weren’t any no trespassing signs posted, and Bryan is a homeowner on the island, so that’s moot. I have to caution you to tell the truth, though, about the reason you were there. People often think there’s no harm in telling a little lie about something that may be personally embarrassing. That’s not the case when giving a statement to law enforcement. You end up in the same prison for lying about a crime as you do for committing the crime. You needn’t, however, go into detail. Just answer the questions you are asked. Do you understand?”
Yeah. Keep my mouth shut except when asked to open it, and then tell the truth as succinctly as possible. I could do that—I hoped.
I nodded in confirmation.
“Good. There are other details we should discuss, but they’ll wait. If you’re ready, I’ll let the detective know.”
*****
It went better than I expected. Detective Evans dropped the scare tactics, opting for real questions and real answers. I almost felt a little sorry for him because he seemed to have lost all his joy. In general I was against stealing someone’s joy, but in this case I made an exception.
I was surprised he didn’t badger me about the reason I was spying on Carlson, but I guessed he’d heard all about my dispute with the homeowners’ association. As motives for spying went, mine wasn’t half bad. The embarrassing part came when he asked about Bryan’s role in my scheme.
“You say you asked for Dr. Rossi’s help because you knew he lived in Island Hill, where Carlson lived. How did you know that?”
“My mother told me.”
“How did your mother know?”
“I don’t know.”
Rules of Lying (Jane Dough Series) Page 27