Little Bitty Lies

by Mary Kay Andrews

She turned the key, but the engine did not respond.

  “Alternator, I bet,” Matt said. “Has your warning light been coming on?”

  “All my warning lights are lit up when you’re around,” she said, “but yes, the lights on the dash were flashing. I never can tell what all those symbols mean.”

  “It’s the alternator,” he said, as if that settled it. “What model year is this?”

  “It’s a ninety-three,” she said.

  “Does your husband keep any tools in the garage?”

  “Tools?”

  He shook his head impatiently. “Automotive tools. Was Parker the mechanical type?”

  She laughed. It was the first time that day. Possibly that week.

  “Parker didn’t even like to change lightbulbs,” she said. “There are some tools on the workbench in the garage, but I think they’re pretty basic stuff, like hammers and pliers and stuff.”

  Matt said, “We’ll stop by my place on the way.”

  “On the way to where?” Mary Bliss asked.

  “Pep Boys,” he said. “Unless this car of yours is the self-healing type. Or you have a mechanic you really trust.”

  She sighed. “The car has been dying in stages all week, I think. I have a mechanic, but I still owe him money from doing a tune-up on Erin’s Honda last month. I don’t dare call him until I can pay him something.”

  “Then I guess you’re left with ole Matt the Mechanic,” Hayslip said, giving her a wink. “Cheap, and reliable.”

  “No, thanks,” Mary Bliss said, slamming the car door. “I’ll just have to see if I can use Erin’s car.”

  He followed her to the back door. “You’re still pissed at me. I’m a detective. I can sense these things.”

  “I’m not pissed at you,” Mary Bliss said, unlocking the back door. “I don’t care enough about you to be pissed.”

  “As much lying as you’ve been doing, you’d think you’d be better at it,” Hayslip said. He pushed the door open for her. “But you’re not that good a liar, Mary Bliss.”

  “I’m not inviting you in,” she said, trying to pull the door shut before he could walk in. But he walked in anyway.

  “I’m not waiting for an invitation,” Matt said. “I’ve been doing too much waiting as it is. So here’s the thing. Let’s start over, okay? I’ll be straight with you, and you can be straight with me.”

  “I’ve been straight with you,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest.

  “No. You’ve been lying through your teeth. About Parker, anyway. Don’t you want to know what I’ve found out in the past two weeks? That’s why I came by here today, to fill you in, since you won’t answer my phone calls.”

  “No,” she said. “I don’t want to talk to you.”

  He waved a finger. “See? There you go, lying again.”

  “All right. What have you found out?”

  “Are you gonna let me fix your car for you?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t have too many other options.”

  “And buy you dinner?”

  “No. Dinner is not part of the deal.”

  “All right, lunch. It’s close to lunch right now. And I’m starving. We can pick up the parts at Pep Boys. There’s a deli right around the corner from there. I’m in the mood for corned beef and rye. What about you?”

  “I’m not hungry,” Mary Bliss said. She was starving. Her stomach had been growling nonstop since she’d left the nursing home.

  “Chicken salad,” Matt said. “I’ll bet you’re a chicken salad person. Most women are.”

  It was Mary Bliss’s turn to shudder. “No. No more chicken salad.”

  “Tuna, then,” Matt said. “Or egg salad. Whatever you want.” He took her hand in his. “Come on, Mary Bliss. Let’s have a truce. All right?”

  His gray eyes were pleading. She felt her resolve collapsing. She could hear Mama’s voice telling her about how the Lord helps those who help themselves. Maybe she was helping herself by allowing Matt to help her.

  59

  “Well?” Matt said, putting his sandwich down on the plate. “Come on. Quit with the silent treatment. Talk to me.”

  The deli was crowded, and the tables were packed tightly together. A mother at a table next to theirs was trying to coax a preschooler into eating his peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Two elderly women to their left were complaining loudly about the deli’s lack of a senior citizen discount.

  Mary Bliss twisted her paper napkin into a tight roll. She had been concentrating on her lunch, tuna on rye, listening, nodding.

  “It’s not that I don’t want to know,” she said slowly. “Maybe I just don’t trust myself to ask the right questions. Or maybe I don’t know what I’ll do once I know something.”

  Matt took a gulp of iced tea. “My investigation isn’t that far along yet,” he said. “I’ll find Parker. But I haven’t yet. He’s still two or three steps ahead of me.”

  “What do you know?” Mary Bliss asked.

  A muscle in Matt’s cheek twitched. “While you’re riding around in a half-dead ten-year-old sedan, Parker has bought himself a new car. I did a title search. He’s driving a brand-new black Range Rover. And he paid nearly seventy-three thousand dollars cash.”

  Mary Bliss stared down at her plate, picked at the potato salad with the tip of her fork. “When was this?”

  “Three weeks ago. He bought it at a dealership in Jacksonville.”

  She nodded. “What else?”

  “He’s moving around a lot. I’ve found two more bank accounts for his graveyard employees—one in Birmingham, another in Orlando. I’ve got photos from ATMs in both places. It’s Parker, all right.” He reached for the briefcase he’d brought into the restaurant.

  “No,” Mary Bliss said. “Don’t show me. I don’t want to see.”

  “He’s grown himself a cute little mustache,” Matt said. “And he’s wearing a gold chain with what looks like a diamond ring around his neck.”

  “Maybe it’s my engagement ring,” Mary Bliss said.

  Matt gave her a sharp look. “He took that too?”

  She nodded. “He told me he was having the prongs on the setting tightened. I didn’t know until I called the jeweler that he never took it in there.”

  The muscle in Matt’s cheek twitched again. “The next thing is something you’re not going to want to hear.”

  She gave him a sad smile. “I don’t really want to hear any of it, you know. But I guess I need to, don’t I?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “You do. So here it is. Parker’s not traveling alone. He’s got somebody with him.”

  Mary Bliss raised one eyebrow. “So there is somebody else. Katharine is right. She said a man never runs off by himself. There’s always another woman involved. Do you know who it is?”

  “Not a clue,” Matt admitted. “But in two of the five ATM photos we’ve recovered, there’s somebody waiting in the front seat of the car parked directly in back of Parker. The car is the Range Rover. All we can see of the passenger is a silhouette. But it’s the same silhouette in both photos. Both times, the passenger is wearing a white baseball cap, with chin-length blonde hair visible. The rest of the face is hidden under the ball cap.”

  “A blonde,” Mary Bliss said. “Why is it that the other woman is always a blonde? Is she young?”

  “Hard to say. The ball cap shades all the facial features.”

  Mary Bliss pushed her plate away. She felt nauseous. “Where do you think he’s going? What’s he done with all that money?”

  “I don’t have any idea where he’s going. But at least he hasn’t left the country. Yet. And I don’t know what he’s done with the money, either. The graveyard bank accounts only have a few hundred apiece left in them.”

  “What would you do?” Mary Bliss asked. “Where would you run if you were Parker?”

  “Me?” Matt grinned. “I would have stayed home with my beautiful wife. And if I had run off, I would have taken her with me.”

 
“That’s not fair,” Mary Bliss said, twisting her napkin again.

  “You said you wanted me to be straight with you. I’m being straight. If I were running away with you, we’d go somewhere beautiful. Tropical, remote. Ever been to Hawaii?”

  She shook her head. “Parker never liked to travel that much.”

  “Until now,” Matt said. “I think you’d like Hawaii. Gorgeous flowers, beaches, waterfalls. Great deep-sea fishing. Do you like to fish?”

  She smiled. “The last time I went fishing was with a cane pole on the banks of a creek back in Alabama. I guess I liked it. I was probably six or seven years old. My daddy showed me how to bait my hook, and how to take the fish off and let it go, so it wouldn’t get hurt and die.”

  He cocked his head. “Are your folks still around?”

  “No,” she said lightly. “Mama died when Erin was a baby. Daddy died when I was just a kid. He’d been out of our lives a long time by then.”

  “Divorce?” Matt asked.

  “No. He just up and left us. Daddy wasn’t real big on paperwork.”

  “I see,” Matt said. She could tell he did.

  “Can we change the subject, please?” Mary Bliss asked. “You’ve told me what I needed to know about Parker. I hope you catch him, I guess. But I can’t think that far ahead.”

  “Does the insurance company know? That he’s really alive?” Matt asked.

  “Charlie is handling that,” Mary Bliss said. “Let’s talk about something else. Something pleasant.”

  “Us?”

  She clamped her lips together, tried not to smile. “There is no us.”

  “Yet.”

  “I’m legally married to Parker McGowan.”

  “You could get a divorce,” Matt suggested.

  “I wouldn’t know where to start,” Mary Bliss said. “How can I divorce somebody I can’t even find?”

  “Ask Charlie,” he said. “He’s the man with all the answers.”

  “I’ve been depending too much on Charlie. He’s been so wonderful to me. And he’s not out of the woods yet, you know. He looks a lot better, but you never know.”

  “All right,” Matt said slowly. “Forget the divorce. Everybody thinks Parker’s dead. As far as the world is concerned, you’re a widow. You can do as you please.”

  “But I’m not a widow,” Mary Bliss said. “You know it, and I know it. And so do Charlie and Katharine. And there’s Erin to consider too.”

  “Excuses,” Matt said. “You keep coming up with excuses to stay away from me. Am I that ugly?”

  “No,” she said. “That’s not it and you know it.”

  “Give me another chance,” Matt said. “We’ll take it slow, I promise. Just one night out. Please? You won’t even have to be alone with me.”

  “I can’t,” she said reluctantly. “It just wouldn’t look right.”

  “To who?”

  “Whom,” she said, automatically correcting him. “To the world.”

  “The world can take a flying leap,” Matt said. He leaned across the table and kissed her gently on the cheek. “I want to spend time with you. Is that so wrong?”

  The two blue-haired old ladies the next table over had been staring and actively eavesdropping. Now the older of the two started to giggle. Mary Bliss felt herself blush.

  “You’re making a spectacle of me,” she protested. “Please behave.”

  “No,” he said. He pushed his chair back. “If you don’t agree to go out with me, I’m going to get up and come over there and give you a bend-over-backward Rhett Butler–does–Scarlett O’Hara kiss. And the whole joint will see it. It’ll be all over Fair Oaks in no time at all.”

  “All right, all right,” she said hastily. “But no more intimate dinners at home. No more red wine and candles.”

  “I’ve got just the place,” Matt said. “The country club dinner dance is Saturday night. What do you say?”

  “I don’t know,” Mary Bliss said, biting her lip.

  He pushed the chair out a little farther, stood up and walked over to her, pulled her out of the chair.

  “Yes,” she said, laughing, pushing him away. “I give in.”

  One of the blue-hairs at the next table beamed at her. “Good for you, dear,” she said. “He seems nice. Give him a chance.”

  60

  August 15. Mary Bliss had been avoiding the kitchen calendar all week long. She had tried to put it out of her mind. Saturday night was no big deal. A dance at the country club. No big deal. She had been to dozens of country club dances.

  But not with a date. And the fact was, she had a date. She was a married woman, and she was going out on a date. She was ashamed and terrified and wild with a kind of electric anticipation she hadn’t felt since she was a teenager.

  At ten o’clock Saturday morning, Katharine appeared at her house, unannounced. She was carrying a stainless-steel thermos bottle and two matching pairs of hot-pink flip-flops.

  “What’s up?” Mary Bliss said warily, putting down her first Diet Coke of the day.

  “Let’s go,” Katharine said.

  “Where? What’s in the thermos?”

  “Our destination is on a strictly need-to-know basis,” Katharine said. “The thermos contains a morning’s worth of Bloody Marys. Now put on the flip-flops. We’re on a tight schedule here.”

  “What kind of schedule? I can’t just leave. Erin isn’t up yet. I want to talk to her about…tonight. About Matt.”

  Katharine winced. “Maybe you should just tell her a little bitty white lie about tonight. Tell her you’re going with us.”

  “No,” Mary Bliss said. “No more lies. I can’t expect her to tell the truth unless I tell it myself.”

  “Have you told her the truth about Parker?”

  “She won’t discuss it with me,” Mary Bliss said. “But I know she’s been spending some time at the nursing home with Meemaw. I have a feeling Meemaw’s been filling her ears with all kinds of stuff about me.”

  “Isn’t she due to die any day now?”

  “Katharine!” Mary Bliss said. “It’s true she’s not well. The doctors want her to go on dialysis, but she’s adamantly refused, so far. To tell the truth, the nurses tell me they’re amazed she’s lived this long without it.”

  “She’s an evil old hag,” Katharine said. “She’s probably hanging on just to spite you.”

  “I feel sorry for her,” Mary Bliss said. “The only person she ever really loved is Parker, and he’s gone. She’s cut herself off from all her old friends, and she’s made it very clear that Erin and I are not big priorities with her.”

  “But she loves Erin, right?”

  “I guess so. I think she sees something of Parker in Erin. But Eula was never the adoring grandmotherly type. You know what she gave Erin for her sixteenth birthday? An Abs-R-Cizer.”

  “Like they sell on TV?”

  “I swear to God,” Mary Bliss said. “She saw an infomercial for it and sent away. Gave it to Erin, no card, no gift wrapping. All she said was, ‘Here. You don’t wanna get a spare tire now, do you?’ ”

  “Sweet,” Katharine said.

  “And the funny thing is, Erin adores her grandmother. She calls her on the phone, goes over there, takes her funny little presents.”

  “Amazing,” Katharine said. “Now let’s go.”

  “Just let me leave a note.”

  “Let’s go!” Katharine ordered. “Right now. My car is running, and we’ve got a lot to accomplish this morning.”

  Mary Bliss followed Katharine out to the Jeep, her pink flips making slapping sounds against the pavement.

  Mary Bliss was halfway through her Bloody Mary by the time Katharine wheeled into a Buckhead shopping center, the centerpiece of which was a pale-pink stucco wedding cake–looking building called Spa Serenity.

  “No,” Mary Bliss said, setting her drink in the cup holder. “No spa.”

  “Yes. Spa. Good,” Katharine said, ignoring her. She got out of the car and headed for th
e door, but Mary Bliss didn’t budge.

  Katharine backtracked and yanked open the passenger side door. “You might as well come in,” she told her best friend. “I’ve booked us the full package. It’ll take three hours at least. And I’m not leaving.”

  “This is ridiculous,” Mary Bliss said. “I’m going to a simple little dance. It’s not the senior prom. I don’t want all this fuss. I don’t need it.”

  Katharine gave her a long, withering up-and-down full-body scan. “Have you looked at yourself lately, M. B.? I mean, please. If this were the emergency room instead of a spa, you’d be in the intensive care unit. Split ends, lackluster color, raggedy-ass nails, chewed-down cuticles, enlarged pores. And don’t get me going on your eyebrows.”

  Mary Bliss grabbed the sun visor, pulled it down, and stared in the mirror there. “What’s wrong with my eyebrows?”

  “One word,” Katharine said. “Unibrow. Now let’s go.”

  A tiny, wizened Asian man sat behind the stark smoked-glass reception desk in the lobby of Spa Serenity, yelling nonstop into a cell phone in a language Mary Bliss didn’t recognize.

  “Hon,” Katharine said politely. The man didn’t look up. “Hon!” Katharine repeated. The man looked up, held up a finger in the “one minute” gesture, and continued gabbing.

  “Hon!” Katharine screamed. “Get off the phone!”

  He looked wounded, but pressed a button and set the phone on the glass-top desk. “What you want?” he snarled.

  “We have an appointment,” Katharine said. “The works. And we’re on a tight schedule.”

  He glanced down at the open appointment book in front of him. “No. No appointment. You come back. Very busy today.”

  Katharine walked around the desk, grabbed the book away from him, and jabbed her finger on the line where somebody had written “Weidman (2).”

  “Right there,” she said. “I’m with Ruby, and my friend is with Pearl.”

  He frowned, but walked behind an elaborate pink-and-gold dragon screen that divided the reception area from the salon.

  “You were so rude to him,” Mary Bliss said. “Really, Katharine. There’s no excuse for rudeness.”