Lying With Strangers

by Jonnie Jacobs

  And then she remembered the ring of keys she’d stuck in her purse to keep Trace from finding it. The ring that might hold the key that would open the door to Diana’s now-empty house.

  Stealing was wrong. It was the very thing she’d told Trace she wouldn’t do.

  But she was desperate. She’d much rather have asked for money under the pretense of visiting a doctor, but fate had intervened and Diana had driven off.

  One or two little things, was all. Items Diana might not even miss. Nothing really valuable. Just little stuff Chloe could sell easily for cash.

  Although her heart pounded wildly, she walked to the front door as though she were an expected visitor. No one watching would think otherwise. She fingered the keys in her purse, looked out on the street, checked the windows of the neighboring houses, and held her breath as she put the larger bronze key into the lock. It turned and it was only after she’d stepped into the hallway that she remembered there might be an alarm.

  No shrill sound pierced the air. There was no sound at all, except for the ticking of the large hallway clock Chloe had noticed the first time she was there.

  She’d been too stunned then, and in too much pain, to fully appreciate how lovely the house was. The walls were a soft rose beige, the molding and doors some kind of warm, richly grained wood. The floors were a lighter wood, accented with richly colored oriental rugs. A home that was both beautiful and inviting.

  “Isn’t this the most beautiful place you could ever imagine, Megan?” she asked her baby. “It’s just like something out of the movies.” Only better, because it felt, even to Chloe who didn’t belong there at all, like home.

  She had to stop staring and move quickly. Take something and get out before Diana returned. But take what? Maybe she should look for money. Anything else would be too much to carry.

  She felt sick as she moved into the kitchen where Diana had tended to her injuries only a few days earlier.

  No. She couldn’t do it. No way could she go through with her plan and take anything.

  A clatter of footsteps rang on the stairs and then a muffled scream. Chloe turned to see a slender girl with straight blond hair, a girl about her own age, standing in the doorway. She pulled the iPod buds from her ears.

  “Who are you?” the girl asked. She sounded more baffled than frightened.

  Chloe froze. The girl hadn’t been here before. “I’m sorry.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  Chloe’s mind began to work again. “The door was open. I thought I heard Diana say to come in.”

  “You’re a friend of my mother’s?”

  “No. I mean, not friend really.”

  The girl looked puzzled. “Are you the new cleaning lady?”

  Chloe considered going with the cleaning lady bit, but figured that would only dig her in deeper. She needed to get away as quickly as possible.

  “She helped me out—”

  “What, you’re her new charity case?” The girl’s laugh sounded nasty. “It’s creepy having you skulking around my house when I didn’t even know you were here. How many times did you ring the bell?”

  Chloe cleared her throat. “I knocked.”

  “Ah, no wonder I didn’t hear you, I was upstairs listening to music.”

  Chloe inched toward the hallway. “I guess I’d better get going.”

  “Mom will be back any minute. She went to get ice cream and stuff.” The girl scowled at Chloe. “It’s funny that the door would be open, though. My mom’s a bear about making sure it’s closed and locked. Of course, she’s been kind of distracted lately.”

  More footsteps, from the back of the house. And then voices.

  “Is that bag too heavy, Jeremy?” Chloe recognized Diana’s voice, which followed more loudly with, “Emily, we’re home.”

  “In here,” the girl called.

  The dog who’d set Chloe’s whole fiasco with Diana in motion pranced into the room and came to sniff Chloe’s feet. His tail wagged like she was an old friend.

  And then Diana strode into the kitchen and stopped in her tracks.

  “Chloe.” She set her package on the counter. “What are you doing here?” She looked suddenly stricken. “Is there a problem? A medical issue, I mean?”

  “No. I’m good. Well, I’m mending anyway.”

  Diana looked relieved. “That’s great news.”

  Jeremy was studying her face. “It must hurt still,” he said solemnly.

  Chloe shrugged. “Sometimes, yeah. But I’ll live.”

  “Jeremy plowed into her on his bike,” Diana explained to the girl, Emily.

  “But he didn’t mean too,” Chloe added hastily. “It was an accident.”

  “We are all lucky she wasn’t hurt worse,” Diana said, putting a few items away into the freezer, before turning back to Chloe. “Did you come for money to cover a doctor’s visit? I told you I’m happy to pay for that.”

  Chloe had come for that very reason but she found herself now, suddenly, incapable of deceiving Diana. She shook her head. “I was in the neighborhood and thought I’d come by to thank you for taking care of me.”

  Diana smiled. “It was the least I could do.”

  Emily opened a package of oatmeal cookies her mother had bought and ate one without offering them to anyone else. “Enough with the feel-good crap,” she said, then addressed Diana accusingly. “She said you left the door unlocked.”

  Chloe’s heart stopped. The moment of reckoning had come. How could she possibly explain herself now?

  Diana’s forehead wrinkled. “No, I’m pretty sure I locked it. But I couldn’t swear to it. I’m really not thinking straight these days.”

  “Her husband died a few days ago,” Emily explained, reaching for another cookie. “He was shot in some stupid convenience store robbery. You might have heard about it. He was a DA and a really great guy. We’re all kind of off balance right now.”

  “Died?” Chloe felt the air sucked from her lungs. She tried to breathe and for a moment was afraid she couldn’t. “He died? Oh, no. I’m so sorry.” Chloe’s eyes filled with tears. She looked at Jeremy. “Oh, geez. How terrible.”

  Diana, who had been puttering around the kitchen putting away groceries, stopped and, looking a bit surprised at the outburst, said, “Thank you. It’s been pretty rough. The funeral was yesterday. Now I’m trying to move on. We all are.” She paused and her face crumpled. “It’s harder than I ever thought it would be.”

  “Of course,” Chloe said. “Of course it is.”

  Chloe’s scalp felt tight. She heard the rush of her pulse in her ears. It was like a tidal wave crashing over her. The end of the world, a collision of galaxies, a black hole sucking her down. So much hurt. So much was wrong. And Chloe felt herself at the very center of it.

  Chapter 21

  Emily opened the fridge and studied the contents for a few moments before shutting the door again. “Is that girl some kind of nutcase?” she asked Diana.

  “I don’t think so, but the visit was a bit odd, I’ll grant you that.”

  “She’s weird, is what she is.” Emily gave heavy emphasis to the word “weird.” She reached for another cookie, apparently having found nothing she wanted in the fridge.

  “I like her,” Jeremy said defiantly. “She’s nice.”

  “Fat lot you know,” Emily shot back. “You just like her because she doesn’t blame you for running over her.”

  “I didn’t run over her.”

  “Okay, into her. But you knocked her over.”

  Her children continued to bicker but Diana tuned them out. She sat down at the kitchen table and pressed her fingers against her temples. Her nerves were frayed to the point of snapping. Diana hadn’t decided how much of what she’d learned about Roy to tell her children, or what any of it meant. Nor was she sure what she should do. She wasn’t sure of anything anymore. Only that this had been one of the worst days of her life.

  Although she could have sworn she’d been awake
all night, the sleeping pill she’d taken must have kicked in at some point because Diana had awoken this morning from a pleasantly deep slumber. And in the grogginess of early morning consciousness, she’d begun the ritual of easing herself into the day. She’d known the other side of the bed was empty, but in her sleep-induced daze, she’d imagined Roy was in the shower. She lay warm under the covers, expecting him at any moment to emerge from the bathroom and flip on the light in the closet.

  And then she’d remembered.

  First, that Roy was dead. The knowledge rocked her with the impact of a thunderous wave breaking overhead. And while she was struggling to catch her breath, another wave of recognition crashed into her.

  Her husband was an imposter.

  The agony of that dual loss was so great that for a time Diana had been unable to pull herself out of bed. She`d curled into a ball and buried her face in her pillow. Finally, intensity of the pain propelled her on. She had to move or be sucked into a blackness so deep she was afraid she’d never claw her way free.

  Gradually her world had come into focus, and over coffee she’d found within herself a renewed sense of determination. She had her children to think of, a newspaper column she’d been neglecting, the estate to settle. The demands of everyday life and the minutia of death. And, of course, the puzzle of the man who’d been her husband.

  After she’d taken Jeremy to school, Diana had gone back into the den, sat at Roy’s large, heavily worn oak desk, and begun pulling together the records and documents she’d need for the attorney handling the estate.

  As with most married couples, she and Roy had divvied up responsibilities without making a conscious decision to do so. Diana paid household bills but Roy handled the bulk of their finances. Not because Diana couldn’t—she’d managed fine for years as a divorced woman—but because she found it tedious. She was thankful now that Roy had always been good about keeping records.

  She pulled out the recent checking account and credit card statements, the pink slips to their cars, which were both in Roy’s name—again a matter of convenience—Roy’s life insurance policy, and a photocopy of the deed to the house. She’d get the original from the safe deposit box when it became necessary.

  But she couldn’t find paperwork on the certificates of deposit she knew Roy kept in the file with the bank statements. There were two CDs, their rainy day funds, they called them. They sometimes joked that maybe the sky was gray enough to cash one or the other of them out and take a trip around the world, but of course they hadn’t really considered it. Roy’s temperament matched Diana’s in that regard—financially conservative and risk averse.

  After looking further and thinking maybe the CDs had been misfiled, she’d called the bank.

  “No, ma’am,” the bank officer told her. “Our records show that both those accounts have been closed.”

  “What? When?”

  “The larger one, in June when it matured.”

  That couldn’t be, Diana thought. She and Roy had agreed to let it roll over.

  “The smaller one,” the officer continued, “was closed out two months ago. There was a penalty assessed on that because the funds were withdrawn before the maturity date.”

  Diana’s head swam. It didn’t make sense that Roy would close the accounts, especially not if he had to pay a penalty.

  She checked the bank statements to see if Roy had deposited the money into their meager savings account. He hadn’t.

  What he’d probably done was invest the money in a stock fund for a better rate of return, and simply forgotten to tell her. Or maybe he had told her and she had forgotten.

  Rather than scour the brokerage statements, which she found complex and confusing, she called their broker directly. He was a man who’d had a daughter in Emily’s class in high school. Someone Diana had met but rarely had dealings with.

  “I was very sorry to hear about Roy,” the broker told her. “It’s a damn shame.”

  “Yes, it is.” Diana paused, unsure how to begin. “That’s what prompted my call. I’m trying to get our finances in order and I have such trouble making sense of the statements. I was wondering if Roy had made any investments recently.”

  “No, just the opposite.”

  “What do you mean?”

  The broker seemed to hesitate. “He sold off quite a bit.”

  Stunned, she said, “How much?”

  “Oh, off the top of my head, I’d say forty thousand. Roughly half your portfolio. I figured maybe the two of you were doing a big home remodel job or something.”

  Diana lost her breath. Both CDs and now a significant portion of their stock portfolio. She felt ill.

  “Thank you,” she said, attempting to cover her dismay. “I really have no head for financial matters.”

  “Any time. Please let me know if I can be of help.”

  She’d received similar news from Roy’s life insurance company. He’d borrowed against the policy to the extent the payout would be minimal. By that point, she hadn’t been surprised by the response so much as numbed.

  Roy had always been responsible financially, as in every other way. The two of them paid their credit cards off each month, budgeted for vacations, bought their cars with cash. They owed nothing except the mortgage on the house. And they lived, if not frugally, well within their means. Yes, Roy bought nice suits, but usually on sale. And he wore easy-care shirts that didn’t have to be sent to the laundry. He wasn’t cheap. They ate out, took vacations, and didn’t always chase a deal, but he was as solid and responsible as they came.

  How could he have cashed out their CDs and sold off half of their investments without telling her? And what had he done with the money? The questions, like dark and ominous clouds, had shadowed her throughout the day.

  Now, as she continued to rub her temples, Diana’s head once again flooded with possible answers, none of them reassuring. A mistress? Another family? Gambling debts? Drugs?

  Not Roy. Surely not Roy. But then, well, Roy wasn’t really Roy, was he?

  “Mom,” Emily said with impatience, “I asked you when dinner was.”

  Diana looked up. “Sorry, I didn’t hear you.”

  “Duh. I asked twice and you tuned me out. You’re as weird as that girl.”

  Diana sighed. “Okay, I’m weird, but cut me a little slack here. I’ve just buried my husband.”

  Emily rolled her eyes. “It’s not all about you, you know.”

  “I never said it was.”

  “But that’s the way you act. Your husband, your loss, poor you.”

  Diana turned in a flash of anger. “I’m not—”

  “Other people miss him, too,” Emily said, her voice breaking and her eyes tearing up.

  Diana felt instantly ashamed. What kind of awful mother was she, anyway? Jeremy had lost a father, and Emily, the closest thing to a father she’d ever known. Diana had paid lip service to their loss—no, more than that, she understood that they were grieving too, and she desperately wanted to be a source of strength for them—but she’d been so wrapped up Roy’s deceptions and her own sense of loss, she’d tuned out their pain.

  “You’re right, honey. It’s not all about me at all. Not by a long shot. This is devastating for you and Jeremy, too.”

  Jeremy, who’d been quietly petting Digger, didn’t look up.

  Emily glanced away.

  Diana gave them each a hug. Jeremy returned the hug, his small body folding into hers like an animal burrowing into its nest. Emily remained rigid. She hugged Diana briefly and then pulled away.

  “It was wrong of me to be so preoccupied. Please try to forgive me. I promise to be better going forward.”

  “That wouldn’t be hard,” Emily muttered.

  Diana took a breath, then continued brightly, “How about we order pizza for dinner? I don’t feel like cooking and I think we could all use a treat.”

  “Can I have a Coke?” Jeremy asked uncertainly.

  “Sure.” What was one night witho
ut milk?

  Emily met Diana’s eyes and lifted her chin. “Can I have a beer?”

  Classic Emily, always pushing the boundaries. But for the moment, Diana wasn’t about to push back. “Sure, if that’s what you want. Now what kind of pizza shall we order?”

  *****

  Stupid. Totally stupid. What had she been thinking?

  Chloe huddled in a seat near the rear of the bus and pressed her head against the window. How could she have stooped so low?

  To break into someone’s home, to plop yourself smack in the middle of their tragedy, and under false pretenses, too. She placed both palms on her belly to shield the baby from her shame.

  Roy Walker’s death troubled Chloe in ways that didn’t make sense. The store clerk, Hector, had died, and while Chloe felt truly terrible about it, there was a sense that it didn’t involve her. Hearing about it on the TV and seeing his mother’s tears as she spoke to reporters, Chloe had been choked by sadness, but this was different.

  Diana had been so kind to her. She’d treated Chloe’s wounds, driven her home, and even offered to pay for a visit to the doctor. And Jeremy—Chloe had seen the look in his eyes when he talked about his father. Roy Walker’s death was something else. Chloe felt it as sharply as she’d felt anything in her life. And to know she was part of it, even an unwitting part, made her feel small and dirty and unworthy.

  “Oh, Lizzie,” she said with a hand on her belly. “How did this happen?”

  She shivered even though it was warm and stuffy inside the bus. She’d made a mess of her life already and she was barely eighteen. And she didn’t see any way to make things better. Nothing would bring back Roy Walker or the dead clerk. Nothing short of several thousand dollars would convince Weasel-face and his two friends to lay off Trace. And now that the lawyer had died, the police would ramp up the hunt for his killer. She had been naive to think she and Trace could do anything but run and hide. She’d go to the bank first thing in the morning, cash her paycheck, and then they’d take off. At least they had each other, and that’s what counted most, wasn’t it?