Lies She Told

by Cate Holahan

  The bartender grabs a champagne flute and strains the lipstick-colored concoction into it. “We don’t really talk about guests. Don’t want to out anyone for coming. Understand?”

  All doubts about the sexual orientation of the bar’s primary clientele disappear. The man probably thinks that I am a girlfriend trying to figure out whether her boyfriend is using her as a beard.

  I sip my drink. It’s good, but too sweet for me. Still, I effuse over the man’s efforts. He smiles in a thin way that shows he’s all too aware that my compliments are because I want something and moves to straighten the glasses on the back bar. If another patron were here, he’d probably start chatting him up right now to avoid me.

  “My husband and Nick were prominent in the LGBT community after their law firm sued the city on behalf of a bullied teen,” I blurt out. “Please, look. He thinks Nick could have been the victim of a hate crime.”

  This gets the man’s attention. His arms puff out as he walks over to me. He picks up my phone from the counter and taps the screen to zoom into the photo. “The guy on the right, smiling. Nick, is it?”

  “Yes.”

  He hands me back the phone. “He’s a regular. Takes dates here often. Great tipper.”

  I remember Christine. Did Nick have a thing about bringing women to gay bars? “Female or male dates?”

  The bartender’s mouth pinches on the side as though I’m particularly dense. “Honey, look around. Men bring men here.”

  Nick was gay! Things that never made sense to me before become clear. Why he was never particularly affectionate with any of his “girlfriends.” Why he hadn’t been interested in sleeping with a clearly willing Christine. Why he still wasn’t married, while David and I had just celebrated twelve years.

  My mouth must be hanging open because the bartender’s hands are folded across his oiled pectorals as if to tell me to get on with it. I clear my throat and pose another question. “The night he disappeared, Saturday, July ninth, Nick came here with a man. A woman came in later. She was upset.”

  The bartender regards me skeptically and shakes his head. “I wasn’t here. I spend most of July in Fire Island. But I can ask the rest of the staff if you text me a photo.”

  I type in his number as he rattles it off and then send him the picture of David and Nick. There’s a beep under the counter that I assume is his cell acknowledging receipt.

  “Do you have a photo?” he asks.

  “I think you just got it.”

  He rolls his eyes. “Of you.”

  “Me?” I don’t understand. Maybe bartenders for gay clubs aren’t necessarily homosexual. Or he’s bisexual? A flush rises to my cheeks. “I—”

  He chuckles. “You’re cute, hon. But I also want to ask around about you. How do I know you’re not the girl who came in here all upset about her boyfriend and then had her homophobic brother or some other asshole murder him?”

  I want to protest with a list: (a) I’m married. (b) My husband is straight. (c) We’ve been together twelve years and are trying to have a baby. (d) I’ve never been here in my life. But I hold my tongue. He wouldn’t believe me, anyway. After all, I hadn’t realized Nick was gay.

  I pull my wallet from my purse and remove a business card. My last book cover is on the front. A flattering photo of me is printed on the back with a few lines of positive criticism for my first book, the international bestseller. “This is me.”

  He examines the image and then stares back at me, comparing features. Recognition sparkles in his eyes. He flicks the card with his finger. “I read Drowned Secrets. Good book.”

  Chapter 14

  Victoria sleeps in her bassinet, body positioned for a police pat down. Her arms are raised in a stick-’em-up position. Her legs are spread. Yet there’s no tension in her expression. Her bow mouth is untied. Her lids are closed without fluttering. She does not have bad dreams.

  Fatigue weighs on my eyelids. REM is not an option. I know Colleen waits for me in my subconscious, bloody and beaten. Banquo’s ghost, prepared to accuse me of murder and usurp my position as Victoria’s mother.

  I need to think like the detectives. They are questioning Jake. They must suspect murder. They’ve seen the blood-soaked floor. And Jake must be a suspect. He was the last known person to see Colleen alive. I’m certain to land on the short list, too, if anyone figures out that I knew of his affair.

  Although, how would they discover that? Jake thinks he’s slipped everything past me. My mother believes she’s lying about my whereabouts to cover up an indiscretion with a coworker. The only person who knows that I knew is Tyler. Surely he wouldn’t say anything. He was my shrink, after all—though sleeping together probably voided any doctor-patient confidentiality agreement. If a policeman came to his door asking questions, would he say he treated me? Would he confess everything?

  I need to find out. I grab my house line off the nightstand and call his office. He answers on the third ring.

  “Hello. Dr. Tyler Williams.”

  “It’s Beth.”

  “Oh, hi. Did everything go all right last night?”

  “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. Are you free at all today?”

  His voice drops. “Did you tell him anything?”

  If I say no, he’ll assume that he’s safe and won’t see me. “Can we meet?”

  “I have one more appointment for the day coming up in twenty minutes.”

  “I’ll see you in an hour and half then. I’ll come to your office.”

  *

  Tyler doesn’t leave me loitering. He’s waiting at the door. As soon as I get within fifty feet of his office, he waves me and the stroller through like a frantic traffic director and locks the door behind us. His facial expression does not befit a shrink. Visible worry lines crease his brow as he motions to his couch. I push the stroller around to the side of the room and then settle down on the sofa, hoping he’ll sit beside me.

  He takes his usual chair. “So what happened?”

  No “nice to see you.” He only cares about how close my husband is to filing malpractice charges. “I didn’t tell Jake anything. I didn’t even go home last night. I went to my mother’s house. She has assured me that, if Jake asks, she’ll claim I was there all night.”

  He scratches his neat goatee. “But she knows something occurred.”

  “She believes I went out for drinks with a male coworker after Jake stood me up. I’ve made sure, the best I can, that this won’t come back to you.”

  His expression relaxes. “Thank you.” He starts to rise from his chair, hand extended, as though we’ve made a business deal to bury our rendezvous and all that remains is to shake on it. Me, bare-skinned beneath his body, can be deleted from his memory.

  “I apologize for all this,” he says.

  “The police came to my apartment this morning.”

  Tyler slumps back into his chair. His Adam’s apple bobs.

  “Jake’s girlfriend is missing. Apparently, she was supposed to meet a friend late last night for drinks and didn’t show. A neighbor found blood outside her apartment and called the cops.”

  Images of the stained floor overpower me like an unseen wave. I am caught without enough air. I start gasping. Hyperventilating. Suddenly, Tyler is beside me, brandishing a paper bag from the ether. He places it over my mouth, a parent securing a child’s oxygen mask on a plane going down.

  “Just breathe.” His palm, warm and wide, rubs my back. A few long inhalations and I’m ready to speak again. I focus on the feel of his body next to mine. I can get through this. I have to concentrate on Tyler.

  “The cops came to the house to question Jake,” I continue. “I’m sure he was with her last night. That’s why he cancelled our date last minute.”

  A real sob escapes, even as I lie by implication. The weight of my actions threatens to crush me. If only Colleen weren’t dead. If only I could go back to when I discovered the affair and confront them both in that restaurant, tell her that s
he could have my cheating spouse. I’d gladly give him up now.

  Tyler takes my hand in his larger palm. He strokes my fingers. For a moment, I close my eyes, remembering his touch from the night before. He’d made me feel beautiful. Worthy.

  “Do you feel safe?”

  “No.” I take a halting breath.

  “You think he did something?”

  Of course he did something! His betrayal made me a murderer! I clear my throat, making way for the lies to slip out. “Jake was always kind of violent and controlling. I never said anything because I was embarrassed. If his girlfriend threatened to leave him or to tell me what was going on, I could see him flipping out. He didn’t know I knew.” I gasp, my best imitation of a horror movie victim. “If he finds out where I really was last night . . .”

  Tears escape my eyes. They are real, fueled by despair over my future. I will never again have a sound sleep. The fear that someday someone will figure out my crime will hang over me like a suspended boulder.

  Tyler cradles my cheek with his palm. “Don’t worry. I certainly won’t say anything to him. It will be all right.”

  His assurances annoy me. Obviously he won’t talk to Jake. He doesn’t want my husband to go after his license for sleeping with me. Plus, nobody in his right mind would tell a likely murderer that he fucked his wife the prior night.

  “I’m so afraid.” I sound meek. I can’t tell whether I’m acting or if the stress of the past twenty-four hours has sapped all the confidence from my voice. “If he thought I knew what he did . . . If the police found out and it somehow got back to him . . .”

  Tyler pulls me into his chest. Here, with his arm around my back and my head against his strong shoulder, I feel protected. I want to stay. Hero types are my downfall.

  “Please,” I whisper. “You can’t tell anyone that I knew about the affair. Even the police. It could get back to Jake.”

  He makes a shushing sound as though I’m an infant. “They can’t ask me about our sessions.”

  “What if they gave you a subpoena?”

  “I can’t be compelled to talk about anything you said. I’m bound by confidentiality. I’m your doctor.”

  I lift my chin to gaze into his empathetic brown eyes. He’s not scared. He thinks his doctor-patient privilege protects him and, to a lesser extent, me. In fact, he feels more secure now that I have my own reasons to keep our one-night stand secret. But he should be afraid. I covered up a crime. I know that once the police start investigating Nick, they’ll want to verify my comings and goings. They’ll check the security cameras around our building. I wasn’t thinking about avoiding them when I went to Tyler’s apartment. My face is undoubtedly on a CCTV tape somewhere. Tyler’s doorman saw us too. And although Tyler’s practice is in the same building as his first-floor apartment, the timing of our rendezvous is wrong for a session. Once the cops see us walking to the elevator, hand in hand, late at night, they’ll know it wasn’t for a standard psychiatric visit. Confidentiality will crumble.

  “But what if they find out that I was with you that night? If they see me on a camera somewhere or your doorman recognizes me? What will you do?”

  “I’ll tell them . . .” His eyes widen. “I’ll tell them . . .”

  I cup my right hand over the one stroking my left and look him straight in the eye. “You’ll tell them that I developed feelings for you. My husband was ignoring me, and I mistook your attention for affection. You were trying to calm me down.”

  “But what if they have footage in the lift?”

  I close my eyes, considering the possibility without seeing the worry lines across his brow. We definitely kissed in the elevator—though that probably works to my advantage. It would be better for the police to think that I was having sex with a lover than out killing Colleen. Faced with any footage, my best bet is to tell the cops that I’d been seeing Tyler, maybe even to hint that I’d intended to leave my husband for him. But I can’t ask Tyler to come clean. Once he admits to sleeping with a patient, his career is over. He’ll have nothing to lose by telling the whole story, making clear just how angry I was at Jake and his girlfriend.

  I squeeze Tyler’s hand. “If they have elevator footage, you can say that I was kissing you. You didn’t push me off because of my fragile state. But you talked to me until midnight and got me through my crisis. Then I went to my mother’s.”

  He nods slowly, taking in everything I’ve said. Evaluating me. He thought I was a desperate housewife. Deferential to her husband. Nonconfrontational. Unaware. Weak. It is occurring to him that his assessment was off. “Thank you, Beth.”

  I grab the stroller. I should leave before he realizes all that I am capable of. “Thank you, Tyler, for helping me.”

  “Be careful.”

  I press my lips together as if holding back tears. Really, I’m stopping the retort on the tip of my tongue. I always am.

  LIZA

  The apartment is in disarray when I return. Papers are strewn over the dining room table. Books have been tossed from shelves onto the floor. Clothing—David’s from the look of it—is thrown over the living room couch. A thousand pins pierce my lungs. Is he packing? Is he fleeing the country? Is he leaving me?

  My voice trembles as I call out my husband’s name. He emerges from the master bedroom, face flushed from exertion. The sunlight penetrating the French doors tinges his blue eyes an animalistic yellow.

  “What’s going on?” I ask.

  His nostrils flare. “I’m looking for that note. I have to find it.”

  The fear that had gripped my body moments before releases. “Are you sure it’s even here?”

  He flips on the overhead lights and then scans the room with his hands on his hips. The artificial brightness highlights areas of mess. David’s expression changes from panic to disgust. He looks at me sheepishly.

  “Is it from the court?” I ask. “Can’t you get a new one?”

  “No. I . . .” His eyes water. He shuts them and presses the heel of his palms into the lids. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

  My husband is going grief (or guilt) crazy. I love this man. I don’t want to know which one. “Hey, I’ll help you look, okay? Just tell me what it is we’re searching for.”

  My offer only makes things worse. “No. I got this.” He sniffs. “Um, what have you been up to?”

  I consider whether or not to tell him. Will learning that his best friend was gay make things worse? Or will he be relieved to know that police are exploring a theory about Nick’s death that doesn’t involve him?

  I choose my words carefully. “My contact at the police academy spoke to the detectives on the case. They’re looking into a woman who was following Nick. Apparently, he’d gone to a bar by his apartment before he went missing and some upset lady was asking after him.”

  David’s chin retracts toward his neck, a turtle retreating into his shell. He may not be ready for this revelation.

  I take a deep breath. “The bar was a gay bar, babe. I know you probably won’t believe this, but the bartender said that Nick went there often on dates—with men. He was homosexual.”

  David’s expression relaxes. He should be shocked. Protesting.

  “Wait, did you know already?”

  He clears his throat. “He came out last year.”

  I notice a new tension between my temples, as though a rubbery sinew is being pulled to its breaking point. “And you didn’t tell me?”

  “Why would I? Nick’s sexuality was his private business.”

  “I tried to set him up with friends.” I rub my temples, trying to stop the tugging. “You could have at least mentioned that I was wasting my time and my friends’ ti—”

  “I always told you not to bother with Christine, but you wouldn’t listen.”

  “But he couldn’t have only been gay. Nick had girlfriends. That one with the pixie cut. That mod-looking girl.”

  David shrugs. “They were friends. Just friends. Coming out was hard for him.
He didn’t want to be labeled.”

  “It’s not taboo to gay.” The rubber band snaps. A jackhammer starts trying to break open my skull from the inside. I stride to the couch, my eyes in slits, and slump down on top of one of David’s suit jackets.

  “The world isn’t New York City, Liza.” I can’t see David’s expression, but I imagine that he looks annoyed from his tone. “You think everyone is accepting because you’re a progressive elitist who grew up in the Hamptons, went to an Ivy League university, and then settled in Manhattan. For you, sexual orientation is like hair color, right? Change it every week if you want. No one gives a shit.” David releases some of his normally well-covered Texas accent. He’s spent so long trying to sound like an Upper Midwest news anchor that I know he must be upset. “Nick was from fucking Mississippi, a pray-the-gay-away state. His parents raised him to think something was fundamentally wrong with homosexuals.”

  I peek between my fingers to see David scowling at me. “He was thirty-eight and he lived here, though. A stone’s throw away from Stonewall. I mean, gay marriage is legal now.”

  I cradle my aching forehead in my palm and force my head back to look at my husband. He is staring at me like the bartender from earlier. The expression says, Are you really this stupid? “The ink on the marriage law is still wet, and there are plenty of people out there who want to erase it. They think being gay is like a psychological dise—”

  A knock interrupts. David’s head snaps toward the foyer. He is not expecting anyone.

  The sound comes again, three short raps and a word that I can’t hear over the heartbeat in my head. David walks toward the exit, arms hanging stiff by his thighs. I brace myself for whoever is on the other side of the door.

  “Mr. Jacobson, Detective Campos.”

  I force my knees to straighten and hoist myself from the couch. The detective from yesterday stands in the doorway with a piece of paper in his hands, which he passes to my husband. I squint to see it through my headache haze. There’s a government seal on the top.