The Whole Lie

by Steve Ulfelder

  For my parents

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Also by Steve Ulfelder

  About the Author

  Copyright

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This novel came together while my first, Purgatory Chasm, came to market, so it’s only fair to thank everybody who helped with both books.

  Start with literary agent Janet Reid, who’s been with me and behind me from the get-go. Then there’s Anne Bensson, my editor, who wore out a pencil or two shaping The Whole Lie (and I’m glad she did!). The copyediting, design, and publicity experts at Minotaur Books have twice made me look better than I deserve to.

  I owe a debt of gratitude to Tatnuck Bookseller in Westborough, Massachusetts, whose knowledgeable staffers are staunch allies. In addition, I’m lucky to live an easy drive from more than a dozen Barnes & Noble stores. These B&Ns have been generous in organizing events and talking up Purgatory Chasm.

  My wife, Martha Ulfelder, and my kids deserve thanks for putting up with typical writer nonsense: More often than it should, my mood depends on the day’s 1,500 words. My family’s patience and support mean everything to me.

  CHAPTER ONE

  When Savvy Kane walked into my shop, I was wrestling the rotted muffler from a Maxima.

  It’s not a pretty job. Rust flakes, road crud, frozen bolts. Cursing is involved.

  As I gave a final twist, the customer door swung open.

  I looked.

  I looked again.

  My jaw dropped.

  The muffler dropped.

  It weighed thirty pounds, and every one of them landed on my right boot.

  Her name was Savannah, but when I’d met her in a biker bar on the south side of Owensboro, Kentucky, all the Harley boys had called her Savvy.

  It wasn’t hard to see why. She didn’t pay for a drink all night. And she drank a lot.

  Me too. Back then.

  “What the hell,” I said, stepping into the customer area.

  “Some greeting,” she said.

  “Close the door,” I said.

  She stepped close, planning a hug until she saw the grime on my coveralls. I could smell her hair. No change: almost like apples, but not quite.

  “You look the same,” I said.

  “You don’t.” She took my face in both hands, brushing a fleck of something from my forehead. As she studied me I remembered her eyes: They were a gray that could look blue, green, brown, or nearly black, depending on the light. Depending on her mood.

  Savvy thumbed my right cheek. “What happened?”

  “Life. And lots of it.”

  She shook her head. “Death.”

  “Some of that, too.”

  Her thumb was still on my cheek when the door whooshed and Charlene walked in.

  I froze.

  Charlene froze.

  Savvy did not freeze. She stroked my cheek again, dropped her hand, turned, squinted, paused a long beat. “Darlene?” she finally said.

  “Charlene,” I said. Quickly.

  “Well knock me over,” Savvy said.

  “Savannah Kane,” Charlene said, then curled her lip. “Savvy.”

  “Are you two…” Savvy said.

  “Hell yes,” I said. Quickly.

  “How sweet,” Savvy said, then faced Charlene. “Come to keep an eye on your man?”

  “On my business,” Charlene said. “I own the place.”

  “Well,” I said.

  “Or may as well,” Charlene said. “I hold the note.”

  “True enough,” I said.

  “My my,” Savvy said. “Business and pleasure.”

  We stood there. From the work area, where I ought to be, came an Eagles song on the classic rock station. Then the whir of an air wrench as Floriano Mendes, my friend and only employee, took something off a Honda Pilot.

  Savvy said, “Can you spare Mister Goodwrench here for a cup of coffee?”

  “Ask him.”

  “Pretty busy,” I said.

  “Too busy to chat with an old Barnburner who’s got a problem?”

  Barnburner. Savvy’d said the magic word, and Charlene knew it as well as I did. Charlene hit me with the ice-blue eyes, a stare that cut deeper than words could. Then she turned and walked to her desk. Didn’t say a goddamn thing.

  Didn’t have to.

  * * *

  A long time ago, in a nineteen-dollar-a-night hotel room outside Paducah, Kentucky, Savannah Kane and I had swapped life stories.

  She was born and raised in Virginia’s Roanoke Valley. Her father made nozzles for high-quality pressure washers and did well enough so the toughest choice his daughter ever faced was jumping or dressage. She majored in drunk at the University of Virginia, put together a rich girl’s cocaine-and-vodka habit. She never sniffed or drank any more than her friends did—but after college, when the friends dumped the cocaine and got jobs, Savvy didn’t. Couldn’t. That’s when her story turned ugly, the way they do.

  “Nice little place,” she said now, looking around the coffee shop. A girl on hidden speakers sang a slow song. Customers diddled with laptops.

  “I like Dunkin’ Donuts better,” I said, “but this is closer. Where have you been? Why are you back?”

  She laughed some. “You still don’t beat around the bush. I remember how much I liked that.”

  I said nothing.

  “I stayed put for seven years,” she said, “right where you and that weird little guy put me.”

  “Moe Coover.”

  “Yes! Such a great name, how’d I forget it?”

  “So you’ve been in Greensboro this whole time?”

  “North Carolina.” She said it Noff Caro-LYNE, exaggerating the accent. “And don’t sound so skeptical. I grew fond of the place, believe it or not. You were right about its being the perfect city to get lost in.”

  “Moe was right,” I said. “Greensboro was his call. What did you do there?”

  “I did just as you recommended. As Moe recommended, sorry. Some of this, some of that. McJobs. I waited tables in chain restaurants, stocked shelves at Staples, sold sofas in big furniture stores. Never hung around long enough to get funneled into management.” She sipped her coffee, a fancy thing with whipped cream and a cinnamon stick. “Not long enough to get close to anyone.”

  I sipped too, looked her in the eye. “I don’t believe you.”

  “Asshole!” She hissed it, slapping her coffee to the table.

/>   “It’s not in you to work a square job,” I said. “Maybe for a month, for giggles. No longer than that. You need action. When you can’t find it, you make it.”

  “If you’re so sure about that, why’d you help me run in the first place?”

  “You were a Barnburner.” My AA group, the ones who saved my life. Savvy’d been a member of the group for a while. It’s where she met Charlene. “I help Barnburners. No questions asked.”

  “You’re still running around with that crowd? They must all be a hundred and ten. What kind of super-sexy problems do you solve? Canasta cheating scandals? Misplaced hearing aids?”

  I took it, both hands flat on the table. On the hidden speakers, a boy now sang a slow, sad song just like the one before it. Only with a higher voice.

  Savvy hadn’t changed. She was smarter than you and didn’t mind letting you know it. She’d whip you up and down trying to get her way. But if you gave in, she lost respect and dropped you as whatever you were to her: friend, co-conspirator, lover.

  Lover.

  In her bedroom, I remembered, I’d wanted to do everything, tell everything, feel everything in a way I hadn’t known before or since.

  I felt her hand on mine and snapped to, pissed that she could still read my mind. I was a simpleton to her, always had been.

  “Why are you back?” I said. “And since it’s been seven years, maybe you can tell me why you needed to disappear.”

  “Why’s your face red? What were you thinking about just now, Conway?”

  “Why’d you need to leave all of a sudden? You wouldn’t tell me then. I didn’t force it. You seemed scared. But it’s seven years on.”

  Savvy cut her eyes left and right, then put both hands in her lap so she could lean way in. With her chin nearly touching the table she said, “I don’t remember you being much of a political creature, but you do know y’all have a gubernatorial election a week from today. Right?”

  “Okay.”

  “And you know Betsy Tinker has been a lead-pipe cinch from the get-go?”

  I said nothing.

  “Name ring a bell?” she said. “The sweetheart of Massachusetts? The money, the senator hubby?”

  “He died. She took his seat. More money than God.”

  “Right. The whole world loves Betsy Tinker. Doesn’t matter what she says, doesn’t matter what her plans are. After this clown of a governor, the one who’s on his way out, voters want somebody uncontroversial, somebody nice. Three weeks ago, the polls had Tinker up twenty-six among likely voters. Do you pay attention at all, Conway?”

  “Not to politicians. I keep hoping they’ll go away if I ignore them.”

  “Betsy Tinker’s not going anywhere except the corner office. Thomas Wilton, her opponent, is a nothingburger, the Washington Generals.”

  I smiled. Leave it to Savvy to throw in a Harlem Globetrotters reference. “For a North Carolina gal, you know plenty about Massachusetts politics.”

  “Tinker’s lead has been shrinking,” Savvy said. “That’s natural. Nobody wins by twenty-six, not even in Massachusetts. However…” she leaned forward even more “… there’s a problem.”

  I waited.

  “Blackmail threats.”

  I waited.

  “There are, I’m given to understand, issues that could put a very big dent in Tinker’s lead.”

  “Such as.”

  “Such as me.” Her eyes danced as she said it.

  “Tell me.”

  “I have a history with Tinker’s running mate, the next lieutenant governor,” she said. “He’s a business guy, a charger. He was supposed to grab the blue-collar votes while Tinker focused on Morrissey Boulevard and Newton and the Berkshires. Any idea who he is, my strapping, not-as-dumb-as-he-wants-you-to-think friend?”

  I said nothing.

  “Thought not. Nobody gives a rat’s ass about the second name on the ticket. Ever heard of Bert Saginaw?”

  “Made a mint in fences,” I said. “Built himself a palace right here in Framingham.”

  She mock-applauded me for finally knowing something. Like I said, she’s smarter than you and doesn’t mind if you know it.

  I sipped. “What about him?”

  Half a smile played across Savvy’s lips. “Bert Saginaw has a little John Edwards problem. And I’m Rielle Hunter.” She read my eyes, sighed, put both hands on mine. “I asked you and Moe to disappear me seven years ago because I was pregnant with what the tabloids call a love child.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Maybe ten seconds passed. “You were pregnant?”

  “Everybody figured it out but you.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “You would have gone crazy jealous on me.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “You feel a twinge even now,” Savvy said. “Even though Charlene’s got a ring through your nose. It might as well be stamped on your forehead.”

  She was right. “We were close back then,” I said. “The way I remember it, we had something intense going. It felt … it felt exclusive, that’s for sure.”

  “It was intense, you’ve got that part right.” She brushed my cheek with her fingertips. “Seven years. A long time. Besides, you’ve got grim little Charlene. She cleaned up nice, I’ll give her that. Back then she was a bitty bottle-blond crack ho, was she not? Social Services took her kids away, or am I misremembering?”

  “She got her daughters back a long time ago,” I said, putting my hand on Savvy’s left forearm.

  “I always figured you’d wind up with someone,” she said, ignoring my hand. “You’re a serial monogamist. You work the strong-silent-type routine and you work it well, but at day’s end you need a woman to fix your dinner and wash your boxer briefs. What good is Brando-hood without someone to tell you what a cool loner you are?”

  “They’re eighteen and twelve, and I love them. Charlene built a good business from scratch. I live with her, moved in a while back. We’ve been through a lot together.”

  She grabbed my hand with her free one. “You’re hurting my arm.”

  “Yes.” I kept the pressure on.

  “You’re hurting me.”

  “Yes.” I held her eyes, held the pressure, watched fear bloom behind the pain.

  Finally she said, “I’m sorry, ow, ow, I’m sorry, I’m sure Charlene is the cat’s meow, ow!”

  I released, stood. Left the coffee shop, walked back toward the garage. The smart move would be to work my ass off the rest of the day and clear Savannah Kane from my head. Charlene would be frosty for a few days—who could blame her?—but we’d get past it.

  Yup. It’d be a mistake to try to explain. Talking doesn’t always work out so well for me. I dig holes. Better to buckle down, work my tail off, let my actions show Charlene that Savvy was nothing to me.

  She was nothing.

  Right?

  So why did I catch myself listening for footsteps? Why did I slow when I heard her trotting after me?

  She grabbed my arm when I was half a block from the garage. “Some things never change,” she said, then held up an index finger and put hands on knees and panted.

  “You still smoke,” I said. “Old Gold?”

  “Seen the price of cigs lately? I smoke whatever’s on sale at the gas station.” She straightened, caught her breath. “I was thinking, as I staggered after you clutching my ticker, how quickly we fell into the old patterns.”

  I said nothing.

  “Me tormenting you over things you don’t know,” she said, rubbing the forearm I’d squeezed. “You hurting me back the way that comes naturally to you.”

  “Charlene and I are a couple,” I said, fishing my cell from my pocket, flicking to the photos. “This is her younger daughter Sophie. The older daughter is Jessica, everybody calls her Jesse.”

  “Cute. Quite a financier you found for the brand-new garage. I kid, Conway, I kid. I admit I wondered where you got the dough to launch this shop. Last I heard, banks weren’t loaning mucho
dinero to guys with manslaughter two on their resume.” Pause. “So I Googled. Why wouldn’t I?”

  “Why did you, though? Why are you here?”

  “Brass tacks at last.”

  “How’s this for brass tacks?” I said, riffing, thinking on the fly. “This Bert Saginaw knocked you up. He voted abortion, you voted child support. After all, you weren’t getting any younger. You had to play the long game. Saginaw must have looked like an ATM with legs.”

  She slapped me hard.

  I ignored it. “You made do with the child support, but it burned you up. When Saginaw went into politics, you couldn’t take it anymore. You had to make a run at the big payday. You’re here to squeeze him. Gold Digger One-Oh-One.”

  Her eyes flashed. “You get in trouble when you try to act smart,” she said. “You obviously don’t realize Bert’s famous for blowing fortunes. He wasn’t rich when I was with him, and my child-support checks prove it.”

  “So you’re here to renegotiate. And if talks don’t go your way, you parade your kid for the reporters.”

  She slapped my face again. “I would never do such a thing, and you’re a prick for saying I would! Max is back home with his … in very good care.”

  We stood. Traffic rolled. My face stung.

  “You guessed partly right,” Savvy said, and I noticed she’d molded herself to me, breast pressing my arm, thigh on thigh. From face-slap to this in two seconds. Typical. “I did come to renegotiate. But a funny thing happened.”

  “What?” I said, looking at the Shell station across the street.

  “Bert and I hit it off. Rekindled, if you get my drift. And believe it or not, the campaign has kind of … adopted me, no, absorbed me. I’m part of Team Tinker-Saginaw.”

  “They’re hugging you close til the campaign’s over. Then they’ll brush you off.”

  “No. I thought that too at first, but there’s more to it. Trust me, I’m part of the sanctum sanctorum.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Never mind. It was my idea to get your help. We were talking in the war room last night, and I mentioned the kind of thing you do for Barnburners.”

  “Saginaw’s not a Barnburner.”

  “But I am.”

  “I need to get back to work.”

  “Please, Conway. Old times’ sake.”

  I stared across at the Shell. “What were you talking about in this war room?”