Rules of Lying (Jane Dough Series)

by Stephie Smith

  “Why did she tell you where he lived?”

  “She read in the paper that he’d paid me a call.”

  His eyebrows shot up as though he didn’t get the connection. Surely he knew that all mothers wanted their daughters to marry a doctor. Well, maybe nowadays mothers wanted their daughters to be a doctor, but my mother wasn’t living in the present.

  I took Mr. Renquist’s advice and resisted the temptation to admit that Mom had told me where Bryan lived so I’d know what a good catch he was, as in hooking and reeling him in. A young, rich, handsome, doctor fish.

  Evans shook his head as though the statement made no sense but wasn’t worth following up on. “And Dr. Rossi was all for going along with your scheme to get dirt on Carlson?”

  Uh-oh. This was the embarrassing part. “Um …” I glanced at Mr. Renquist, and he gave me an encouraging smile. “Dr. Rossi didn’t know exactly. I mean, I just told him I wanted to confirm that Carlson was living there and not in my neighborhood because you can’t be on the homeowners’ association board unless your primary residence is in the neighborhood.”

  “In other words, you lied to Dr. Rossi to coerce him into helping you.”

  Well, if he was going to put it like that …

  “No! Well, maybe. I think he knew I wasn’t telling him everything, but he was too much of a gentleman to pressure me about it.”

  “Really? And what did you promise in return for his help?”

  “I promised to have dinner with him.”

  “Just dinner?”

  “Yes.” The kissing and petting wasn’t promised. It just happened.

  From that point on, the interrogation wasn’t too bad. I related what I saw and heard, and Detective Evans asked a few questions. I learned that he knew Bryan had called for an ambulance and that when the ambulance arrived, no body was found. I had a lot of questions about that myself, but decided to wait until I was alone with Mr. Renquist to ask them.

  “So you say you never saw that knife on your kitchen floor? You sure?”

  “Yes.” Jeez, a bloody knife on the kitchen floor wasn’t something I would have overlooked. Not even if it had been stuck through a contract I was supposed to read.

  “So how do you think it got there?”

  “Someone must have put it there while I was outside working in the yard.”

  “Any ideas who could have done that? Wasn’t your house locked up?”

  I puzzled over that. The front door had been locked but someone could have gone in through the patio doors because that was the way I’d gone out and I hadn’t locked the doors behind me. There was really only one point during the afternoon when I wouldn’t have seen someone enter my house. I debated telling Evans I’d been crying my eyes out for about two minutes because I was such a bitch that I’d lost all my friends, and it was possible that someone snuck in during the time I was bawling, but I didn’t.

  Something else was niggling at me, yet I couldn’t quite get it. I’d had the same feeling the night Richard had presented himself as an applicant … later that evening when Little Boy had mysteriously appeared in my bed and I’d gotten up to look for the calamine lotion. When I’d stood beside the kitchen bar and gazed around the family room, something had niggled at me, the same way it was niggling at me now.

  I shut my eyes for a few seconds and pretended I was there again, checking out the room. When my gaze reached the key hook, it hit me. I was looking at the key hook where my house key wasn’t hanging. That was the thing that had been different that night; my extra key to the front door had been hanging on that key hook for months, but that night, the key was gone.

  I’d gone into the house to take a shower to wash off the bogus poison ivy while Richard waited outside. Or so I’d thought. I hadn’t locked the doors. He’d made up the poison ivy, and I’d played right into his hands. While I was showering, he must have taken my key to get a copy made and returned it that night after I’d gone to bed, letting Little Boy in with him. Good old Richard. Screwing me every which way he could.

  I quickly relayed my suspicions and included the incident at the bank, where I’d overheard Richard colluding with Carlson to cost me money.

  “I remember reading about that incident. You punched that guy in the face, didn’t you?”

  Why did everyone think the worst of me? “It was a slap, really, and it was justified too. He wrenched my wrist hard enough to leave this.”

  I showed him my bruise, the same bruise that Evans had implied I’d gotten while killing Carlson. I didn’t mention that I slapped Richard first or that he grabbed my arm to keep me from slapping him again. That had no bearing on Carlson’s murder, at least not directly. So it was nobody’s business but mine.

  “Her bruise is more than a day old, so we can conclude it wasn’t caused last night,” Renquist put in. “I think you’ve covered everything, so if you’ve no more questions, I’d like a few minutes alone with my client.”

  “Don’t leave town,” Evans said as a parting shot.

  As soon as the door clicked shut, I asked Mr. Renquist how Carlson’s body could disappear in the short amount of time between the murder and the arrival of the ambulance. The killer left the scene right behind us, and I never saw him return. There was only one street on the island and I’d been watching it.

  “The theory is that someone else was there with the killer. That one of them left in the car to look for you, and the other hid the body until after the ambulance came and went. The hospital told Bryan that the paramedics knocked on the door, and when they didn’t get an answer, they went around to the back, since Bryan had reported that the scuffle sounded as if it came from there. They didn’t see anything unusual, so they left. The police are investigating, checking for blood at the scene.”

  “But what about that Mercedes? Didn’t the guard have a record of that visitor?” What good was a guard and high-tech security if they didn’t pay attention to strangers on the island?

  “Carlson owned a black Mercedes, and it’s parked in his garage, vacuumed and wiped clean inside and out. The guard remembers that Carlson had passengers when he arrived earlier that evening, but he didn’t see their faces. In addition to the Mercedes, Carlson had a Toyota Land Cruiser and it’s missing.”

  “So the one guy came back with the Mercedes, put it in the garage and cleaned it up, and then they loaded Carlson into the Land Cruiser and left the island?”

  “Apparently, since the e-tag on the Land Cruiser went through the gate at eleven that night, and Carlson couldn’t have been driving. They tossed Carlson in your pond, but kept some blood and the knife so they could frame you. They knew you were there, after all.”

  I shivered, this time not from the freezing temperature, though the temperature was definitely still freezing, but from the thought that killers had been in my house. I didn’t know what to think. If Richard had stolen the key, then was he also the killer? Was he the second guy at Carlson’s house? It was hard to think of Richard as a killer. A big-time jerk, sure, but a killer?

  Mr. Renquist rose and pulled out my chair as all handsome gentlemen do—in black and white movies from the 1940s. Of course Bryan wasn’t from an old movie and he’d done that too. It was all about class. Bryan Rossi and Jonathan Renquist had it.

  “We just have to wait for them to print your statement. I’ll read it over to make sure it’s accurate, then you can sign it. You should read it first, of course.”

  Yeah, as if I wanted to waste time doing that. I hadn’t wasted time reading the homeowners’ contract, and I hadn’t wasted time reading that health privacy act. Hmmm … Maybe I should start wasting time reading the stuff I was signing. But I trusted this man. Considering we’d just met and that I had such a big issue with trust, that was pretty good for me. And I wasn’t gonna let any reading screw up that trust.

  “Does anyone have a theory on why Carlson was killed?” I asked. “And what I had to do with it? I mean, I can see why my pond was chosen if a place had to be chose
n, since everyone knew I’d been fighting with him and the killer saw me at the scene of the crime, but why was he killed in the first place?”

  “Unfortunately, no one has any theory yet and probably won’t until they find the killer. Until then, you should be careful, keep a low profile, and stay out of trouble.”

  Sure. Like I could manage all three of those at the same time.

  His gaze lowered, and he cracked a smile. “Nice boots,” he said.

  I grimaced. I’d forgotten about the boots. “I’m sure they’ll be all the rage tomorrow when a picture of me wearing them hits the papers.” Someone in the police station had probably already taken a photo with a cellphone. You couldn’t trust anyone anymore.

  “Too late,” Jonathan said as he opened the door and waited for me to precede him into the hall. “You were featured on a Breaking News bulletin on TV. Those boots have been walkin’ everywhere by now.”

  *****

  Hank and Sue were waiting down the hall, much to my surprise. Hank had on a pair of well-worn Levis that showed off an impressive package and a T-shirt that said World Cup. Sue was stunning in a lime-green halter sundress that flattered her tan and her honey-blond hair, and she radiated happiness, probably because she’d just returned from North Carolina. Cops were climbing on top of each other to get a good look at Sue. I couldn’t blame them. If I were a guy, I’d be right there with them. When Sue and Hank saw me they moved in my direction; the entire cop population followed like a giant amoeba.

  “We came to give you a ride home,” Sue said.

  “I figured you’d never speak to me again,” I said to Hank.

  Sue looked from me to Hank.

  “What?” I said to Hank. “You didn’t tell her?”

  “Tell me what?” Sue’s gaze shot back and forth between us again.

  “That we had an argument. In a nutshell, he confessed something to me, and I was furious. Not because of what it was, but because he’d kept it from me, pretty much the same way I was furious at Mark. Only I wasn’t nasty to Mark. With Mark I just went away and got furious. With Hank … well, I accused him of manipulating me by pretending to be Hank Tyler when he was really—”

  “J.T.?” The corners of Sue’s mouth turned up in a smug grin. “I knew it! I knew it the minute his hair started growing in. If you’d ever watched a sports channel, you would have known it too,” she said.

  “I was about to say he was really Johnny Smith, my best friend when I was five years old.”

  “Uh-oh,” Sue said, and her smile slipped away. She tried to maintain her composure, but her gaze was darting left and right. I realized she was looking for the fastest exit out. “I never knew for sure,” she said. “I still don’t, do I, Hank? I never asked you, did I, and you never told me. I’m only saying that’s what I thought from the minute his hair started growing in, that he looked like J.T. and that’s why I thought…” She halted her chatter with a wince.

  “Relax,” I told her. “J.T. and Johnny Smith are one and the same.”

  “Oh, yeah.” Sue breathed out a sigh of relief. “I forgot.”

  Hank looked past me. “Bryan,” he bit out with a curt nod.

  I whipped around and lost my senses again. Bryan stood there in a black Italian suit—Gucci, if I wasn’t mistaken—looking as impressive as Renquist had. His black hair curled over the crisp white collar of his shirt, and I wished I could thread my fingers through it—after I’d torn off that suit and shirt.

  “J.T.,” Bryan said with a nod back to Hank. He switched his gaze to me. His face went from rigid to relaxed.

  “Everything okay, Jane?” he asked.

  I nodded. “I’m just waiting to sign my statement. Thank you for coming to my rescue. Your attorney probably kept me from confessing to a crime I didn’t commit.”

  He gave me a tender smile before nodding at Sue and Hank, and then he was gone. He’d said we wouldn’t see each other until things had settled down. I hoped that meant now, but I didn’t know if he would ever want to see me again. Maybe he just said it to let me down easy. No way to know.

  Hank was giving me a look, so I looked back. I wondered how Hank and Bryan knew each other. Since Bryan knew Hank as J.T., they evidently hadn’t met in Palmeroy, Florida. Behind Hank I saw a few of the cops elbowing each other, tossing sidelong glances in Hank’s direction. I didn’t know if they’d overheard Bryan’s greeting or if they’d recognized J.T. Hank didn’t seem to notice. He had something else on his mind.

  “Sue and I have been talking about your yard,” he said. “You’ve only got a couple days left to get your place in compliance, and we think you ought to have a big come help me finish cleanin’ up my yard party tomorrow.’”

  “Yeah, that sounds like a party everyone would want to attend. I’d probably have all of two people show up—you two. Maybe I don’t have to worry about it anyway. With Carlson’s death and his reputation under suspicion, surely the board will have to take another look at every decision made while he was serving.”

  “Sure,” Sue said, “but why pass up the chance to finish off the work? I think a lot of people would come. Everyone knows about your problem since it was in the paper—”

  “Don’t remind me.”

  “Really. I know you don’t like to take help from people, but you’ve gotta change that attitude. Hank and I are coming over to help tomorrow. A lot of other people would come too, if you’d ask them, so be prepared to ask them because I’m making a list of everyone we know tonight, and when I get to your house in the morning, you’re gonna start calling them.”

  “I’ll think about it,” I said. I’d think about Sue and Hank coming up with the suggestion anyway. I wouldn’t think about doing it. Nobody really wanted to get sweaty and dirty helping me fill in a swamp, and it would be embarrassing asking them to come and then having no one show up.

  And there I was, worrying once again about what people would think, which was totally ridiculous when I had so many other things to worry about—important things, scary things, like exactly how many people had a key to my front door, and which one of those people was a murderer.

  I peered up at Hank through my lashes, which I batted coquettishly. “How good are you at changing door locks, cowboy?”

  Hank moved in so close I had to tip my head back to look into his eyes; they’d gone dark and dreamy.

  “I’m pretty handy when it comes to most things,” he said in a low voice meant just for me. “And like I said the day I introduced myself, all you have to do is holler.”

  Chapter 32

  When I woke the next morning, I had a different take on life. The first thing I did was thank God I wasn’t in jail. And then I thanked God I was alive. Not just alive, but alive with good friends and my family and my house and my cats and my health and my job and everything else I could think of.

  The little voice in my head applauded my enthusiasm, and that got me thinking.

  Maybe the little voice was more than just me talking to me. Maybe the little voice was part God or at least something he’d put inside me so I’d know when I was doing the thing that was right for me. That felt good, so I was going with that.

  I was energized, so I jumped out of bed and quickly fed the cats. The kittens were the cutest things ever and old enough to eat kitty food now. They tumbled over each other to get to the food, seeming to forget that they didn’t have to nudge each other out anymore, that there was plenty for all.

  Leaving them to breakfast, I brushed my teeth, did something with my hair, put on shorts and a tank top that actually looked good on me, applied sunscreen, lipstick, and mascara. Next I grabbed a cup of coffee and gulped it down. As I stroked the little Maine coon—he was constantly following me around—I thought about my friends. Sue and Hank had been right about asking for help. I’d always said no whenever anyone offered help before, assuming when they said, “If there’s anything I can do, just call,” that they didn’t really mean it. That when they offered to help me, I couldn’t, should
n’t, accept that help. That everything came with ties that would bind me until I choked to death.

  But that was wacky thinking. When people cared about you, when they loved you, they wanted to help. I’d always felt that way about the people I loved. Why had I never thought people could feel that way about me too?

  It probably had to do with my mother, with the way she always made me feel bad about myself. But had she, or had I just taken everything the wrong way? I ran over some of the turning points in my life, times when I’d felt really good about myself until Mom came along and everything changed.

  No, she really had tried to make me feel bad about me. I didn’t know why—I was sure it had to do with her own self-esteem—but it was true. That didn’t mean I had to believe her and let her put-downs ruin my life, did it? No! I was going to be happy, even if it killed her. Or me.

  And that meant I had to quit worrying about the rules of lying. If family members felt they had to lie, for whatever reason, that was their problem, not mine. My problem would be keeping myself from lying back. As Hank had said, I had the same genes as my sisters, but they were arranged differently. I was not them. Sure, we’d all had the same basic upbringing, but what we did with it was up to us.

  And I was gonna quit lying. Or at least I was gonna quit following all the rules but one, the one that made it okay to lie when something was nobody else’s business. My 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 was nobody’s business but mine, and I planned to keep its existence to myself until the day I died.

  My mind and heart clear for the first time in months, I turned my thoughts toward the last obstacle on my property. My plan for the day was to call everyone who’d offered to help and tell them that if they meant it, they could come on over. I had to get that swamp and the surrounding weeds dug out or filled in, and if it took fifty people with shovels, so be it. Sue had said she’d make a list of people, so I’d call her first to see if she had it.