Living Lies

by Dawn Brown

  “I’ll drive,” she said.

  He nodded, following through the rear door to the alley where she had parked, but stopped short as they approached her car.

  “Oh, look, a coffin on wheels,” he muttered.

  She looked at the car as a stranger would. The salt stains and even the wine-colored paint couldn’t hide the clusters of rust dotting the doors and hood. The nearly bald tires, about as wide as pizza cutters, looked too small for the heavy metal frame. The whole thing just screamed death trap. One more winter, that’s all she asked.

  “Just get in,” she said, frowning. There was something off with him today. The edge in his voice and that scowl. He was angry about something.

  She slid into the driver seat and pushed her key into the ignition.

  “Even if I was a murderer, chances of survival in my car would still be better than traveling in this,” he said, sitting next to her.

  She turned the key and the motor made a strange choking sound, then went silent. She tried again and the same thing. On her third attempt, he snorted, shaking his head.

  “Don’t tell me,” he said, his voice thick with derision. “We can’t go.”

  She stopped battling the engine and turned. “What’s going on with you?”

  “Are the theatrics really necessary?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You have what you wanted. There’s no reason to stall me anymore, and no reason to take this trip. Couldn’t you have just called and made an excuse? Saved me coming down here instead of faking car trouble.”

  Okay, so he knew she was stalling him, but she sure hadn’t gotten what she wanted. Yet. “You think I’m faking this? You did look at the car when you got in, right? And that was you who made the, oh-so-clever coffin-on-wheels crack? Or was that some alternate personality? Because, I gotta be honest here, I’m starting to suspect you have a few.”

  “I spoke to Lara. She’s not going to admit to the rumor, but no doubt you know that by now.” His eyes were blazing and his voice deadly calm.

  “Why would I know that? I haven’t done more than smile and nod at Lara in years. I don’t think I even spoke to her at Michelle’s memorial.”

  “So it’s simply coincidence that you come up with convenient reasons to keep me from going to the police and now Lara’s backed out.”

  “Go to the police if you want. I told you last night that there’s nothing you’ve found that the police probably don’t already know by now.”

  “That’s true, but without Lara, I’m still on the block.”

  She frowned. “I’m missing your point.”

  “Don’t play dumb. You knew your father was a suspect no matter what, but going to Lara and having her refuse to admit anything keeps me as one too.”

  Haley leaned back in her seat. “Wow, that is a good plan. A lot better than mine.”

  “You made me feel like crap and all along you were stalling me—” He stopped speaking for a moment, as if her words were only just registering. “What do you mean better than your plan?”

  She shrugged. “That going to Lara was a great idea. I wish I’d thought of it.”

  “You’re telling me you didn’t speak to Lara?”

  “You’re catching up. Good.”

  “What about your sister? Maybe the two of you hatched this plan together.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Well, obviously, we’re so close after all. Besides, I only told Paige last night and she left first thing this morning for a meeting in the city. She had no time to contact Lara.”

  “Garret?”

  “I haven’t told Garret. Nate maybe, I spoke to him yesterday, but I’m almost certain I didn’t mention Lara.”

  “So, this is all just a strange coincidence?”

  “I think so.”

  He shook his head. “When I accused her of being incapable of forming her own thoughts, she admitted that a friend told her she had more to lose than I had to gain.”

  “I’m not that friend.” She faced him again. “That’s interesting, though. Who else would want to keep you looking guilty?”

  “I can’t think of anyone. Besides you and yours, of course.”

  She tugged at her lower lip with her teeth. Very interesting.

  “You did have a plan?” His voice intruded on her thoughts.

  “Yeah.” She sighed. “It wasn’t a very good one.”

  “What was it?”

  “To drag you in front of the Kearneys to see if they recognized you.”

  “What was the point of that plan?”

  “If they did seem to know you, it would make sense that you had told them where to find Michelle and that would make you—”

  “The murderer,” he finished for her.

  “Right.”

  “So if you were right, then you would have been alone with a killer for the rest of the afternoon.”

  “I told you it wasn’t a good plan,” she said, wishing she didn’t sound so defensive.

  They both fell into silence, staring through the windshield. A few big flakes of snow drifted down, nearly touching the glass, before the wind swept them away into the pale gray sky.

  “Now what?” Dean asked.

  “I’d still like to know why the Kearneys dug up the floor, but I’d also like to know who Lara’s friend is.”

  “We could still go, take my car instead.”

  Haley turned the key again and the engine roared to life. “Fourth time’s a charm.”

  He smiled at her, and butterflies the size of a hippopotamus rolled over in her belly.

  Not a date.

  Chapter Eleven

  Erin slipped into her mother-in-law’s kitchen through the side door, trying to stay as quiet as possible. For a moment she stood motionless, waiting for a sign of what she could expect. A lamp glowed softly from the den, and as she edged closer the unmistakable clink of ice against glass reached her ears. She froze.

  Damn. By five Claire should have already passed out. Obviously, Erin hadn’t waited long enough. Claire was still awake. Still drinking.

  Guilt nagged at Erin. Garret had asked her to look in on his mother throughout the day. With Paige in the city and Haley on a buy for the store, there’d been no one to limit how much Claire drank. Except her.

  Erin hated to do it. Hated dealing with Claire’s emotional outbursts that spewed venom one moment then collapsed into fits of tears the next. So she’d waited. And for what?

  Damn Haley. She couldn’t have made the buy tomorrow when Paige was back? Spite. That’s what it came down to.

  She sighed and started forward, fixing a smile in place. What choice did she have?

  “Hello, Claire,” she said, her insides tied in tight aching knots.

  Claire lifted her head and returned the smile. “Look at my girls.” Her words slurred.

  Claire held out a photo of Michelle, dressed in her cap and gown, flanked by Paige and Haley, standing in front the high school. Erin remembered the day that photo had been taken. She’d graduated that day too. Who would have guessed then that things would turn out the way they had?

  “Aren’t they beautiful?” Claire half-sobbed.

  “Yes,” Erin admitted, her eyes locking with Michelle’s. Dark, alive and frozen in time, they bored into her, knowing, accusing. Erin looked away.

  “Why would anyone want to hurt her?” Claire asked, weeping. “She never hurt anyone, she was a good girl.”

  “Have you eaten?” Erin asked. She couldn’t look at those pictures any longer.

  “Oh, Erin, look,” Claire insisted. “Look at her when she was a little girl.” She fiddled with the photos until she found one of Michelle when she was no more than two. Her hair a tangle of white-blonde curls, and dressed in a ruffled pink dress. Erin took a step back so she could no longer see.

  “I remember when she was born,” Claire continued, oblivious to Erin’s averted gaze. “She was like a living doll for me. That first day home from the hospital I had her dresse
d in at least ten different outfits.” Claire tried to chuckle, but it was dry and brittle and turned into a sob. “She’s dead.”

  Hot and nauseous, Erin went to the kitchen and prepared a sandwich. She would do what she came to do then she would get out of there.

  With the sandwich and a tall glass of milk, Erin returned to the den. Claire looked up, her eyes red rimmed from drinking and crying.

  She shook her head. “I can’t.”

  “That’s okay,” Erin said, setting the food on the coffee table and doing her best to ignore the faces staring up at her from the photographs. “I’ll just put this in the fridge and you can eat it later if you want. Maybe you should lie down for a bit. You look tired.”

  Relief poured over her when Claire nodded and let Erin help to her room. After Claire practically fell into the unmade bed, Erin pulled up the blankets, smoothing them over her shoulders as she would with her children.

  “It never goes away,” Claire said miserably, her voice flat and dead. “It’s like a part of me has been ripped away, and it still hurts as much as it ever did. It just keeps hurting. Paige and Haley don’t understand. Even Garret doesn’t understand. But you might. You could understand what it would be like to lose one of your girls.”

  Erin nodded. She couldn’t speak. Her throat had constricted until it was nearly sealed shut.

  “I told your father that when he came to see me,” Claire said sleepily.

  Erin jerked as if slapped. “When did he come to see you?”

  “This morning.”

  Why? What could he have been doing here? Fear, cold and desperate, turned the blood in her veins icy. Claire was already drifting off. Erin considered shaking her back to consciousness and demanding answers, but she was afraid of giving herself away.

  What had her father been doing here? Maybe just visiting with his friend’s widow. God, she hoped so.

  With frigid terror settling over her, the need to act was almost overwhelming. What could she do?

  Confess! The word screamed inside her brain like a siren. No, not that. Not now. It was too late for that. Years, too late.

  “So, you did have a plan, a lousy plan, but you still intended to manipulate me to get your own way.”

  Haley’s gaze shifted from the road to Dean. He stared stonily out the window. It was the first time he’d spoken to her since they pulled out of the alley nearly forty-five minutes ago.

  “He was my father,” she turned her attention back to the dirty salt stained highway. “I know he didn’t kill Michelle. What did you expect me to do? Sit back, smile and nod while you went ahead and ruined him?”

  “Oh, yes, let’s keep a dead man’s reputation intact, but the living breathing man, let’s make sure he keeps looking guilty.”

  “Just because he’s dead, doesn’t mean that having him blamed for a murder he didn’t commit will have no effect. Besides, for all I know you could have done it.”

  “You know I didn’t.”

  “How do I know that?”

  “You wouldn’t be in the car with me if you thought I had actually killed Michelle.”

  “That’s not proof. I just want to protect my father’s memory since he’s not here to do it himself.”

  “The evidence points to him.” Dean turned and looked at her, the tiny muscle in his jaw flicking wildly. “I didn’t wake up one morning and say, ‘Gee, I don’t really like the idea that everyone in my hometown thinks I murdered my old girlfriend, I know I’ll accuse her father, he’s dead anyway’.”

  Throwing up his hands, he sat back in his seat. She glanced from the road to him and then back to the road. “Why did you? I mean, why bother coming back to try and clear your name? You moved away, built a new life. No one could have known about Michelle.”

  Could he hear the envy in her voice? If he did, he didn’t let on.

  “You’d be surprised. You just never know when and where your past will pop up to give you a kick in the ass.”

  “When did yours?”

  “About six months ago. I had a new client, when I went to his home to do some measuring his brother and sister-in-law were visiting. The sister-in-law was Tanya McPhail. She used to sit in front of me in tenth grade science.”

  “Oh, God, did she say something in front of everybody?”

  “She didn’t recognize me right away, but she kept staring at me, like she knew me from somewhere. And the longer I’m there, I know it’s just a matter of time before she’s going to figure it out. I couldn’t leave fast enough. Needless to say, the guy canceled the next day.”

  With a quick glance in her rearview mirror, Haley signaled and changed lanes as they approached their exit.

  “You know,” she said. “Tanya may not have recognized you at all. Her brother-in-law could have canceled because you were in such a hurry to leave. Besides, what are the odds that you’ll ever run into anyone from Hareton again?”

  “Everybody knows somebody. How many people do you suppose that guy told that he almost hired a contractor who had murdered a girl, but thank God his sister-in-law eventually remembered him from a high school science class?”

  “You may have a point. Still, if I were to leave, I don’t think I’d ever come back.”

  “Easy for you to say, no one thinks you killed anybody.”

  For the rest of the trip neither spoke. The beginnings of a tension headache tightened the muscles in her shoulders and at the base of her spine. A dull but steady pain throbbed behind her eyes.

  With a crude map that she had drawn pinned beneath her thumb on the steering wheel, Haley maneuvered through the suburban side streets. At last, she found the house she was looking for.

  “They moved in with her parents,” Haley said as she pulled up against the curb.

  “How did you find that out?”

  “You know Karen who runs the Java Joint?”

  He nodded.

  “Her sister is their listing agent for my grandmother’s house. I asked Karen, Karen asked Darlene, and voila, address and phone number.”

  “You have a knack for this.”

  “Are you impressed?” Grinning, she turned to face him, but the smile fell away as soon as her eyes met his.

  “Extremely,” he said. His expression serious and his gaze hot. Again that flutter in her lower belly. She looked away quickly, pretending to be absorbed in carefully refolding her badly drawn map.

  “So what now?” he asked.

  She opened the car door. “We knock.”

  They stood shoulder to shoulder on the concrete porch while they waited for the front door to open. Dean jammed his hands in his pockets and leaned back. There was no car in the driveway and no sound beyond the closed door. Nobody home, he thought, relieved.

  He put his hand on Haley’s arm and opened his mouth to speak, but the clunk of the bolt turning stopped him. The door opened about three inches and a tall, thin woman filled the space.

  “Can I help you?” She pushed her reddish brown curls out of her face.

  “Rhonda Kearney?” Haley asked.

  The woman nodded, her hazel eyes narrowing. “I know you,” Rhonda said, her voice filled with accusation. “You and your brother sold us that house.”

  “That’s right,” Haley took a step back.

  “What do you want?”

  “Um—I—this is going to sound strange.” Haley hesitated. The other woman’s hostility seemed to have shaken her.

  “Why doesn’t that surprise me, coming from you?” Rhonda snapped.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I’ve got nothing to say to you.” Rhonda started to push the door closed, but Dean stepped forward and blocked it with his forearm. Fear flickered in the woman’s eyes so he backed off a little.

  “If you could just talk to us for a minute, then we’ll go.”

  “What do you want?” she asked again.

  There was no point in dancing around the issue, no time to finesse answers from her. “Why did you dig up the floor in the
basement? What happened that made you dig where you did?”

  Rhonda chuckled, a brittle sound, and again looked at Haley. “Like she doesn’t know.”

  “I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.” Haley crossed her arms over her chest and stuck out her chin. Her eyes practically glowed with simmering fury.

  “You sold us a house with a body in it, and God knows what else,” Rhonda accused. “We sunk every dime we had into that place and now we’ll never be able to sell it for what we paid. You’re lucky we’re not suing.”

  “You can’t possibly believe we knew she was there. Christ, she was my sister.”

  “But I do believe it, and I’m not the only one.”

  Dean stepped between them, trying to regain control of the conversation. “But how did you know she’d be there?”

  Rhonda scowled. “You want to know? Ask Sandra.” She slammed the door in their faces with a hard thwack.

  With her head high and her hands closed in tight fists, Haley turned and marched down the newly shoveled drive, the black pavement a stark contrast against the brilliant white snow. Dean sighed inwardly and followed a few steps behind. The ride back should be pleasant.

  “That could have gone better,” he said, sliding into the passenger seat. Haley didn’t reply, seeming to concentrate on starting her motorized deathtrap instead. “You have nothing to say?” The engine caught on her second attempt and coughed to life like a cranky old man after a nap.

  “What can I say?” She shrugged. “She thinks Garret and I knew Michelle was down there all along.”

  Dean watched her lean back in and press on the gas, revving the engine. Her teeth tugged at her bottom lip

  “Are we—”

  “Why in the hell would she assume Garret and I knew that our sister was buried in her basement?” she demanded, cutting him off. “That doesn’t even make sense.”

  Dean hesitated before replying, searching for the right words. She’d obviously missed the implication. “I think she believes you and Garret were protecting someone.”

  “Let me guess, my father. Isn’t that convenient for you?”