The Liar

by Roberts, Nora

  “How could I have not seen what he was?”

  “You didn’t. And you’re not the only one who didn’t. Nobody thinks you were part of this.”

  “You’re my brother, of course you don’t think so.”

  “Nobody,” he repeated, and drew her back to look in her eyes. “They have to do what they do. You’re going to look at pictures of stolen articles, of people he stole from. You’ll tell them whatever you know. That’s all you can do so that’s what you’ll do.”

  “I want to help. The clothes on my back, Forrest, the clothes I put on my baby. It makes me sick knowing where they came from.”

  “Tell me where the hair clip is. I’ll get it.”

  “The top right drawer of the vanity in the bathroom I share with Callie. I have a box in there. All my hair clips are in it. It’s mother-of-pearl with little blue and white stones. I thought it was fake, Forrest. I never thought—it’s a hair clip, so I never gave it a thought.”

  “Don’t worry about it. If you don’t want to talk to them anymore now, I’ll tell them you’re done.”

  “No, I want to tell them whatever I know. Whatever I know I didn’t know. I’ll go back in now.”

  “When you’ve had enough, you just say.”

  “I want it over.”

  She went back, and once again Landry stood.

  “I’m sorry,” she began.

  “Don’t apologize. We appreciate your cooperation, Ms. Pomeroy.”

  She sat, picked up the tea. Too much of the ice had melted, but it was cool enough, and wet enough. “Did he kill other people? Do you know?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “He was never violent with me or Callie. If he had been . . . that would have been different. He didn’t pay much mind to her at all, and less and less to me. He’d say things, cruel things sometimes, to me, but he was never violent.”

  Carefully, she set the glass down again. “I never saw what he was. If I had I would never have let him near my baby. I hope you can believe that. Callie’s going to be home in about an hour. If we’re not done, I need us to go somewhere else, or wait until tomorrow. I don’t want her to hear any of this. She just turned four.”

  “That’s not a problem.”

  “If you could give me another date. If I could figure out something around it, a holiday or a doctor’s appointment, something that sticks out, I might be able to tell you what I was doing. What he was doing. I don’t know what else I can do to help. I want to help.”

  “Let’s stick with Atlanta for now, work forward.” Landry nodded at Boxwood.

  “August eighth, same year,” Boxwood said.

  “My daddy’s birthday is August ninth, and Forrest was born on August fifth. We always had a double birthday party, the Saturday or Sunday closest. I wanted to come. I hadn’t been home in a while, and I wanted Callie to visit her family. Richard said no. We had a charity gala to attend on that Saturday, and I couldn’t go running off to Daddy. I was his wife, and expected to attend, and act like I belonged. It was at the Ritz-Carlton, in Buckhead.”

  “Saturday, August eighth, 2012, six figures’ worth of jewelry and rare stamps were stolen from the home of Ira and Gloria Hamburg. They had attended a gala at the Ritz that night.”

  “Like in Florida,” Shelby added. “Jewelry and stamps. It must’ve been like a . . . specialty of his.”

  “You could say that.” Landry sat back. “Tell us about that evening.”

  25

  She’d known the Hamburgs, a little, had attended a dinner party in their home. Richard had played golf with Ira Hamburg a few times, and she and Richard had hosted them at the country club. They’d socialized at other galas or fund-raisers now and then.

  It wasn’t hard to remember some of the details of that particular night as she’d pictured her family here, in this house, celebrating birthdays—and had missed them.

  She remembered Richard bringing her a glass of champagne at one point and telling her, impatiently, to mingle, for God’s sake, and stop sulking. He was going outside for a bit to have a cigar and talk some business with a couple of potential clients.

  She couldn’t say how long she’d mingled, wandered, put bids on a couple of items in the silent auction as he’d instructed her to do. It could’ve been as much as an hour, she supposed.

  “He was in a good mood when he found me—said he’d been hunting for me, and why didn’t we go check on our bids before the auction closed. I thought he’d gotten some business because he was in a better mood, and then he put a big bid on this wine package.”

  “The Hamburgs live less than a mile from the hotel,” Boxwood pointed out.

  “I know it.”

  They asked her about other nights, days, times. Some she could remember, others were lost in a fog. From the photographs, she recognized cuff links, the diamond studs, a three-strand diamond and emerald bracelet Richard had given her once, then accused her of losing when it disappeared from her jewelry box.

  Forrest lingered after the FBI stepped out.

  “Do you want me to stay?”

  “No, no, I’m all right. Mama will be back with Callie soon. Just . . . do they believe me? Don’t answer as my brother, but as a police officer.”

  “They believe you. They played a version of good cop/bad cop with Boxwood trying to trip you up here and there, giving you the hard eye. But they both believed you. You were helpful, Shelby. The best thing now is to put it aside. Let the FBI do what they do.”

  “I sold stolen property.”

  “You didn’t know it was stolen, had no reason to think it had been. We’ll work that out.”

  “How could I not see—how can they believe I didn’t know? I swear, if I didn’t know I didn’t know, I wouldn’t believe me.”

  “The BTK killer had a wife and raised two children, lived in a community, went to church. None of them knew what he was. Some people wear masks well, Shelby, know how to compartmentalize beyond what’s normal.”

  “He wasn’t right, was he? I mean, Richard couldn’t have been right inside to be able to do all he did.”

  “The police officer’s telling you he was a sociopath, and a shrink would likely have a lot of fancy terms for what he was. But no, he wasn’t right. That’s done—you’re never going back to that. You’re going to have to deal with some of it, but mostly? You need to look at the here and now, and the future.”

  “I’ve been trying to. What was just won’t let go. I keep finding out more.”

  “You’re a Pomeroy with MacNee in your blood. You’ll stand up to it. You call me, you hear, if you need me.”

  “I will. I don’t know what I’d’ve done if you hadn’t been with me today.”

  “That’s just one more thing you never have to worry about again.”

  Shelby thought if the whole of the Ridge didn’t know about the FBI, then they soon would. So she told her parents everything as soon as she could.

  The very next morning before the first customer came into the salon, she told her grandmother and the rest of the staff.

  “I thought y’all should know.”

  “Ada Mae called me last night, told me all this,” Viola began. “I’ll tell you what I told her. None of this is your fault, not a bit. And we can look at that storm as the right hand of God making sure you and Callie were well rid of the son of a bitch.”

  “I’d rather he wasn’t dead,” Shelby said after a minute. “I’d rather he was alive so I could tell him what I think of him. I hate that he died believing I was nothing. I hate that he died knowing I never had an inkling what he’d done.”

  “My sister’s ex kept a woman over in Sweetwater for six years,” Vonnie piped up. “Had an apartment there with her and everything. None of us knew a thing about it—and that man went to the Lutheran church every Sunday he was in town. Coached Little League and b
elonged to the Elks Club. Lydia might never have known if the woman in Sweetwater hadn’t called her up and told her all of it after she found out Lorne had taken up with a third woman.”

  Vonnie shrugged. “I guess it’s not the same thing, but I’m just saying, we all thought the world of Lorne until we knew to think different.”

  “Thank you, Vonnie. I’m sorry for your sister, but I guess that makes me feel better.”

  “We don’t always know somebody the way we think we know them.” Crystal readied her station for her first appointment. “My good friend Bernadette’s cousin down in Fayetteville? Why, her husband embezzled twelve thousand dollars from her daddy’s hardware business before they found out. Bernadette’s cousin stayed with him after, too. And if you ask me, anybody who’d steal from family isn’t worth spit.”

  “Hell, that ain’t nothing.” Lorilee fisted her hands on her hips. “I almost married Lucas John Babbott—y’all remember. About ten years back I was ready to walk down the aisle with that man. Something just said, Don’t do it, Lorilee, so I didn’t, but it was close. And I found out he’d inherited his granddaddy’s cabin over by Elkmont. You know what he was doing in it? That man was cooking meth, and now he’s in jail.”

  Others picked up the theme, ran with it. Viola stepped over, put an arm around Shelby’s waist. “People ask me, don’t you want to retire, Vi? You and Jack could go traveling, or you could sit on the porch and sip lemonade all day. And I think, Why, I wouldn’t step away from this place for all the tea in China. Where else are you going to get such entertainment—and add to the till while you do?”

  She kissed Shelby’s cheek. “You did right telling everybody straight-out.”

  “It’s the same as family.”

  “It’s just the same. Crystal! I see your nine-o’clock crossing the street. You girls get on to work now.”

  The next day she met Emma Kate for a drink after work—and after she’d spent a solid hour with Bitsy.

  “I’m buying. I owe you.”

  “I won’t say no.” Shelby pulled out her notebook, opened it. “All right, the engagement party first. It’s all set—time, place, date. I did talk her down on the flowers, and the food. Just gentle suggestions about saving the big guns for the wedding. Why didn’t we make this pretty and elegant, but sometimes elegance is simple. Since you’re going with yellow and orchid for your wedding colors, I steered her away from that, too. Said why didn’t we go for bride white—that’s like you wanted, right?”

  “Yes. All white flowers. You got her to agree?”

  “I showed her pictures I’d found in magazines and online, and she got so excited. Then, since I’d already talked to the florist and we’d figured it all, I said let’s order these right now! Got her when her enthusiasm was high.”

  Pleased and proud, Shelby brushed her palms together. “It’s done.”

  “I owe you two drinks.”

  “Emma Kate, you owe me so many drinks we can’t count them. We’re down from that orchestra she wanted to hire out of Nashville, to booking Red Hot and Blue—which Tansy suggested, and you liked.”

  “Oh my God, we’re not going to have men in white tuxedos playing waltzes? Matt and I both really liked Red Hot and Blue when they’ve played at Bootlegger’s.”

  “It’ll rock some, and be a good chance for you and Matt to see if you want them for the wedding, want something else or want to go with a DJ, since you haven’t decided on that.”

  Meticulously, Shelby ticked it off her list. “Then I said to your mama how I’d work with the hotel as she needed to be fresh and be mother-of-the-bride-to-be and got her talking about what she’d be wearing, how she wanted her hair. And I’d made up these poster boards of table decorations and flowers and all that.”

  Shelby gave her nails an exaggerated buff on her sleeve. “I bowled her over, is what I did, then didn’t give her much chance to waffle on it.”

  “Poster boards!”

  “I also decided I’m not showing you. You’re going to trust me, and be surprised. The wedding, you’re in on every little detail, but this is going to be a surprise, and I promise you’ll be happy with it.”

  “I don’t have to think about it?”

  “You don’t have to think about it.”

  “If I didn’t love Matt, I might change my mind and marry you. But then he has certain attributes you lack, not to mention between him and Griff they can fix anything. He’s over at Griff’s right now, helping out for a couple hours. I expect it’ll run to three as Matt’s got a head of steam working up on finding the right property and building a house, or doing what Griff’s doing and finding an old place to rehab.”

  “Are you ready for all that?”

  “Like I trust you to make everything look beautiful, I trust him to figure that out. I’ll have plenty to say about it, but I’ll let him get going on it first.”

  “All right, then.” Shelby wiggled her butt back, leaned forward. “Let’s talk weddings.”

  They plotted, planned, with Shelby taking notes.

  “Put that down for now.” After twenty minutes, Emma Kate waved at the notebook. “It’s starting to make my head spin.”

  “We got a good start here.”

  “More than a good start, and it’s time to change the channel. I want to know about you. Have you heard any more from the FBI?”

  “No. I keep expecting them to come to the door again, with a warrant for my arrest as accessory after the fact, or something. But they haven’t.”

  “If they think you had any part of all that, they don’t deserve to be special agents.”

  Forrest said the same, Shelby thought, but it steadied her ground to hear it from her best friend.

  “I’m going to go over all the pictures and letters again. I needed to put it away for a couple of days so I could start fresh. Maybe I’ll remember something else, or find something else.”

  “What’s the point now, Shelby?”

  “Knowing. Just knowing. I don’t expect I’m going to find a treasure map to what he stole in Miami, or any of the others that are still unfound. I’m supposing there are others still unfound. But knowing feels important.”

  “I wish you’d let it go, but the girl I grew up with wasn’t ever good at letting things go if they mattered to her.”

  “This matters to me. What if I did find something that led to something, that took the police to somewhere else and they found them? At least that woman and her son in Miami would have that.”

  “Shelby.” Emma Kate took her hand, squeezed it. “You’re looking for a way to pay them back somehow, like you’re paying off all that debt. And none of it’s yours, none of it. And that’s one of the reasons—I know you—you slapped the brakes on with Griff.”

  Shifting, Shelby got busy tidying her notes. “That’s not exactly so.”

  “It’s close enough. You looked happy together. You looked good together.”

  “I just wanted to slow things down some.”

  “You’ve got to move at your own speed, and I’d never say different.”

  “I guess he had some things to say about it.”

  “Not much, not to me. Not to Matt, either, or I’d’ve gotten it out of Matt. He’s not the vault Griff is, and I know the combination anyway. I expect he might say more tonight, working on the house, having a beer, that sort of thing. I’ll get that out of Matt easy enough.”

  “He was awful mad. It’s hard to know how to deal with a man who gets mad so . . . reasonably.”

  “I’d hate that!” Emma Kate laughed, sat back. “You can’t win against reasonable, not really.”

  “And what makes it harder? He went by the house when I was working—he’d know I was working and Mama had Callie. Mama said how he went out back with Callie and spent nearly an hour with her on the swings, with the puppy.”

  “Well! Tha
t shows you what kind of dastardly individual you’re dealing with.”

  “All right, Emma Kate.” Shelby let out a sigh. “I don’t know what to do about it, exactly. I’ve got a right to be mad about some of the things he said.”

  Sipping wine, Emma Kate lifted her eyebrows. “Reasonable things?”

  “I guess from where he’s standing, but that doesn’t make them less awful for me.”

  “I’m trusting you on this engagement party, and you haven’t let me down yet.”

  “And I won’t.”

  “That’s why I trust you. Why don’t you trust me?”

  “I— Of course I do. I do trust you.”

  “Good. Go over there and talk to Griff.”

  “Oh, but—”

  “Did I say ‘but’ on the party? I did not,” Emma Kate said definitely. “So you trust what I’m saying to you, and go over and talk to Griff. Matt says he’s been stewing for days. I can see you are, too, maybe needed to, but stewing time’s over. Go talk it out. One way or the other, both of you are bound to feel better, or at least know where you both stand.”

  She wasn’t going to do it—wasn’t it better to just let things sit awhile? But the idea sat in the back of her head, nagging, through dinner, through the bedtime ritual with Callie.

  She told herself to settle down, spend the rest of the evening going over the photos and letters again. But she couldn’t settle.

  She went down where her parents held their own evening ritual of TV and needlework.

  “Callie’s all tucked in. I wonder if you’d mind if I went out awhile? There’s something I’d like to do.”

  “You go on.” Her father gave her an absent smile before he zeroed back in on the ball game. “We’re not going anywhere.”

  “I’m dragging your daddy as far as the front porch when the game’s over. We’re going to sit and have ourselves a glass of tea and smell the roses rambling up the trellis.”

  “You enjoy that, and thank you. I won’t be very long.”

  “You take your time,” her mother said. “And you put some lipstick on, fluff your hair some. You can’t go over to Griff’s without your lipstick.”