Lies That Bind (Maeve Conlon Novels Book 2)

by Maggie Barbieri

  CHAPTER 5

  Eventually, she did go back inside, said good-bye to her guests, put the memories of the Haggerty sisters from her mind, the thing Dolores had said. She and the girls left Mickey’s after the last mourners had departed and got into her Prius, Maeve gripping the steering wheel to steady her shaking hands; she willed herself to calm down. She drove to the train station, Rebecca’s questions to her going unanswered. Who were those women? What did they say? Would she be all right even after Rebecca left, the few weeks until she came home for Christmas break?

  By the time they reached the station, Rebecca was ready to hop out of the car before it even stopped moving. Before they left Mickey’s, the girls had been in deep conversation at their table for two, their father and stepmother having left right after the scene with the Haggertys, Heather’s head bent in such a way that her long, thick hair covered each side of her face like the curtain Maeve used to pull aside to use the confessional at St. Margaret’s. Back then, Maeve confessed the made-up sins of an eight-year-old who had picked up pointers from some magazine called True Confessions. Turned out that the magazine had stories that weren’t about the kind of sin she was thinking about at her young age but she didn’t know that.

  “Aren’t you forgetting something?” Maeve asked as Rebecca prepared to make her exit.

  Rebecca leaned over and kissed her mother’s cheek. She threw in a hug for good measure. “Are you okay, Mom?” she asked. “I’ll be home on the twenty-first. Not too long from now.”

  “I’ll be fine, honey,” she said, pushing Rebecca’s hair back from her forehead and holding her hand there. “Are you sick?” she said. “You feel warm.” Being a mother was what she knew. Being an orphan, not as much.

  Rebecca smiled. “I’m fine,” she said. “You worry too much. I love you,” she said, and then was out of the car, leaping up the stairs to the station, two at a time, like a lithe gazelle.

  I do worry too much, Maeve thought. That’s my job. And I love you, too, she thought but didn’t say because Rebecca was almost out of sight. She opened the window. “Dad will pick you up at school on the twenty-first!” she called after her, but Rebecca was gone, lost in the throng of afternoon commuters, on their way to see the tree at Rockefeller Center or the decorated windows along Madison Avenue.

  Maeve waited until the train pulled out of the station, willing her heart to slow its beating, her hands to stop shaking. In the backseat, Heather was wearing noise-canceling headphones and crying softly, wiping her nose on the sleeve of her pea coat. Two years younger than her sister, she was Maeve’s “little gypsy,” as her grandfather used to call her, dark, brooding, and prone to long bouts of silence. Maeve caught Heather’s eye in the rearview mirror but knew better than to go any further than reach back and squeeze the kid’s knee.

  She drove back through town, pulling up in front of the house. She wasn’t ready to go home and she wasn’t ready to go back to work, but she knew that baking would calm her nerves, keep her from thinking about the absence, her deceased father. She gritted her teeth, willing the tears away, and waited until Heather went back into the house before driving off down the street.

  Baking had gotten her through many a tough time. It was after her mother died, and after watching a show on public access television, that she had become interested in food, sweets in particular. She had baked for Jack, making him cinnamon buns and coffee cakes that he could eat before he went to work and cookies and brownies that she stuffed inside the bag he carried to the precinct where he worked most of his years on the NYPD. She baked when she was happy and she baked when she wasn’t, the bad days outnumbering the good for many years but her prowess growing along with her iron will.

  She went into the kitchen and punched the security code into the keypad, taking off her coat and donning a Comfort Zone apron over her soiled funeral clothes. She’d make donuts, even though they were Jack’s least favorite of everything she made, a thick, cakelike donut and a cup of coffee all she wanted after the hours spent in church, next to the Haggerty girls. She pulled a big silver mixing bowl from the shelf next to the sink and assembled a few ingredients, going to the locked pantry that Billy, DuClos’s “assistant,” had tried to get into a few days before, and opening the door with the key on her key ring. She moved a few items around, looking for the new large bottle of vanilla extract that she knew she had bought a week earlier but which now seemed to be missing.

  First the flour that needed to be thrown out, and now the missing vanilla. At this rate, replacing ingredients would bankrupt her in no time.

  Although she heard the door that led from the front of the store to the kitchen creak ever so slightly, she didn’t have time to turn around, down on her knees inside the pantry, before a blow to the back of her head sent her face-first onto the floor. But she did smell something before she blacked out, and although she wasn’t sure when she woke up, she was thinking it might be garlic.

  CHAPTER 6

  Why hadn’t she ever noticed that local police detective Chris Larsson’s eyes were the deepest blue? Or that when he smiled, the skin around them crinkled in a way that masked the fact that he spent most of his time in serious pursuits, keeping the village safe from crime? From her place on the floor, inside the shallow pantry, she looked up at him, smiling herself.

  What a nice sight to wake up to, she thought.

  “If I’d known you were coming, I’d have baked a cake,” she said, attempting to sit up.

  “Whoa, stay there,” he said, pressing a gentle hand against her clavicle. “Let’s get you checked out before we start moving around too much.”

  Behind him, Jo was leaning against the butcher-block counter and wringing her hands. “Is she okay?”

  “Does she always talk about baking?” Chris asked, standing up and moving away from the pantry.

  He was replaced by an EMT, a kid she felt sure was not much older than Heather but who seemed confident in his ministrations. He finally sat Maeve up. “I think we should take her to Northern Westchester for observation.”

  Maeve put up a hand. “Nope. That’s not necessary.” She stood, and although she felt a little woozy at first, that feeling was replaced with steadiness and a pounding headache. She put a hand to the back of her head and felt a hard lump. “Who hit me?” she asked, taking a seat at the small desk at which she did her accounting and invoicing. She looked around and took in the concerned faces of another EMT and two uniformed cops. “What happened?”

  “I don’t know,” Jo said, “but I passed a car on the way over here. I came to see if you needed anything from me, if you’d be okay. I found you on the floor of the pantry.”

  Chris Larsson crouched down in front of her. “Do you remember anything, Maeve? Any sounds?”

  “I remember a bad smell.” Chris and Jo exchanged a look that told her they thought she had sustained a far more serious head injury than she had. “Garlic?” She went through the papers on her desk and found Sebastian DuClos’s card. “Here. Ask him.”

  Chris took the card and looked it over. “He’s your landlord, right?”

  Maeve nodded, and just the simple act of moving her head up and down intensified her headache. “Yes. He smells like garlic.”

  Jo was nodding vigorously. “He does.”

  “Okay, Maeve, we’ll find out where Mr. DuClos was around the time of this incident,” Chris said, even though the look on his face told Maeve that he wasn’t convinced she would be attacked by her landlord. “Are you behind on your rent?” he asked.

  “No,” she said. “On time. Every month.”

  “Are you sure we can’t convince you to go to the hospital?” Chris asked.

  “I’m sure,” she said. She looked over at Jo. “Please put some things together for everyone here. As a thank-you.” She motioned to the EMTs. “Go with her to the front of the store and pick out what you want.”

  The two EMTs followed Jo and left Maeve with Chris. “You, too, Chris,” she said. He was a regular cus
tomer on the days he worked, always getting a blueberry muffin, taking his coffee “light and sweet,” just like his temperament. “Unless you need to fingerprint?”

  “Ah, you’ve been watching too much television, Maeve,” he said, smiling again. “This is Farringville. I’ll do some digging around and see what we can find out, but I think you probably interrupted a breakin.”

  “How did they get in?” she asked.

  “Front window was jimmied,” he said.

  “So they must have come in after I disabled the alarm?” she said, trying to put the pieces together in her head.

  “Maybe,” he said. “Looks like vandals, Maeve. Got more than they bargained for when you came in, even if they didn’t trip the alarm like they probably expected to.”

  “How can you tell?” she asked, attempting to peek around his massive frame to see the rest of the kitchen. She had never noticed before but he smelled good. Not like cake, like she always did, but clean and fresh. A little like her father once did, but without the heavy hand on the cologne.

  “I’m a crack detective,” he said, breaking out into a broad smile. “They came for money, I imagine, but they didn’t get into the register.”

  There wasn’t anything in there, so it wasn’t worth the effort of breaking in.

  He jotted some notes on a pad. “Does anyone else have a key to the place? The alarm code?”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head, the action making little lightning bolts dance before her eyes. “Just me. The landlord doesn’t even have a key. That was our deal when I signed the lease.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Not Jo? Not your husband?”

  “Not Jo. And the husband is an ex,” she said. She assumed he knew that. Didn’t everyone? “Thanks for coming by, Chris,” she said, attempting to call an end to the day.

  “I heard about your father, Maeve. I’m so sorry,” he said, his face sad. “And now this.” He buttoned his coat. “I bet someone with a bright idea saw the obit in The Day Timer and thought it would be a good idea to break into The Comfort Zone.”

  “But the garlic,” she said, realizing too late that if she kept bringing it up, they’d make her go to the hospital, and that was a jaunt she wasn’t in the mood for. “Mr. DuClos,” she said. “See where he was.” She knew what Chris was thinking: DuClos knew the security code. He could have let himself in any time he wanted. He wouldn’t have to break in to the store.

  All made sense. Except that his smell followed him everywhere he went.

  Chris Larsson wouldn’t let her drive home, so she got into the front of his Farringville police car, looking out the window as they passed the usual sights of the small village: the animal hospital, the florist, the place that sold comic books. He would have one of the uniforms deliver the Prius to her house. When she got home, she realized that both emotionally and physically she was drained. She stripped off her clothes, once inside her bedroom, thinking that tomorrow was another day. She had almost forgotten about what had happened prior to her searching for a bottle of vanilla that turned out to be on the bottom shelf of the pantry. This day, the day she had buried her father, was a day she had spent time with people she’d rather forget and been told something about her family that to her mind either amounted to the ravings of an alcoholic whose sole purpose in life was making sure that other people were as miserable as she was, or it was true.

  It was hard to know, hard to tell.

  CHAPTER 7

  Jo was leaning against the counter, her back to the front of the store, her hands on her prodigious belly. It was two days after the funeral, Maeve having taken an extra day off in between. While she lay in her bed the day before, wrapped in her comforter as if it were a cocoon, she focused on the pattern in her bedroom throw rug, the water stain on the ceiling. She didn’t think about the fact that her father was gone or that Dolores Haggerty had ruined the funeral luncheon; instead, when she wasn’t focused on the rug or the ceiling, she thought about the solace she would have gotten from the kind people who had attended, had Dolores Haggerty not ruined it for her—Mrs. Devereaux and her trolling for Jack’s apartment notwithstanding. Jimmy Moriarty. The Department of Public Works guys who loved her and looked out for her like she was their sister.

  She had lain in the bed, drifting off every now and again, dreaming of her father. In one dream, she had handed him a loaf of bread and said, “Here, Dad. It’s a challah. Your favorite.” And he had responded, solemnly, “It’s rye.”

  She had woken up abruptly, wondering if she should have gone to the hospital, just as the EMTs had recommended.

  Jo had called, as had Chris Larsson, both checking in on her, both worried that she would never get out of bed, if their voices were any indication. She would get out of bed when she was ready, and two days after the funeral, she was ready.

  Now back at the store, once a haven for her, a gullet full of ibuprofen for the pounding at the back of her head, Maeve was already into the throes of the Christmas preparations that she went through every year. This year, though, was tinged with sadness. She wondered if it would always be like that, always a little sad, or if each passing year would bring a little more comfort.

  “I’m starting to rethink Jason as the baby’s name.” Jo picked up a broken cookie from a tray in the case and munched on it thoughtfully.

  Maeve cleaned the coffee maker, dumping a large pile of grounds into the garbage can by the kitchen door. “So what are your options?”

  Jo traced circles around her belly button with her index finger. On her ring finger glinted a huge solitaire engagement ring and a band alternating with diamonds and sapphires; Doug had chosen well even if Maeve was starting to think he was a bit of an absentee husband. He hadn’t attended the wake or the funeral and like always, Jo had made up some excuse about overtime, a big case. “Well, it has to be a ‘J’ name because Grandma Julia is the last person to have passed. What do you think about Jordan?”

  “I like it,” Maeve said. This was not the first conversation they had had about the baby’s name; in the last seven months, Maeve had lost count of how many times they had discussed it.

  “Maybe,” Jo said, oblivious to the sound of the bell jingling over the front door of the shop. “We have birth class tonight. Don’t forget.”

  How could she? Jo had only mentioned it every day for the past week, both in conversation and in texts. Maeve thought she might get a pass after having been hit in the head, but apparently, that wasn’t the case. She greeted the customer standing at the counter when it was clear that Jo was otherwise occupied, thoughts of baby names and birth class taking precedent over Maeve’s business, a money-making venture, as she reminded Jo on a daily basis.

  Maeve sold a brown-butter apple tart and a quiche Lorraine, two items that would have landed in the trash bin or Jo’s refrigerator had they not been sold; Maeve didn’t keep items in the cases more than two days. She ended the day with a fifty-dollar order and felt relieved when she saw that she had had a very good day, retail-wise.

  In the kitchen, Jo took her usual seat on a stool next to the counter. “Now that we have some downtime,” Jo said, as she watched Maeve wash a sink full of pots, “tell me what happened at the funeral the other day. Something with those old neighbors of yours? I saw you run into the street. I saw what you looked like when you came back. I didn’t want to bring it up, you know, with what happened the other day.”

  Maeve hesitated.

  “You know you can trust me,” Jo said. “I promise I won’t say a thing.” She crossed her heart. “I know I haven’t been so great about that in the past, but I promise for real this time.”

  Maeve was wary of saying the words out loud to her friend, to get her reaction; it was going to be overblown and dramatic. History told her that. “Dolores Donovan said that I have a sister.”

  But there was no meltdown, just Jo’s wide-eyed silence. Maeve went back to the pots. “I don’t know what that means and I’m not sure I want to know or even if it’s true.�
�� She looked at her hands in the sink; they were red and raw, wrinkled from the water. Her mother’s hands? She would never know.

  “The one in the tight blue pantsuit?” Jo asked. “She really needs to go up a size. Just looking at the tight crotch kept reminding me that I’m going to have to push an eight-pound baby out of mine soon.”

  “That’s the one,” Maeve said.

  Jo busied herself, pulling apart cupcake holders and then putting them back together, thinking. “That is a lot to process.”

  “That’s an understatement.”

  “Do you believe her?”

  Maeve shouldn’t, she knew that. But part of her felt as if it were true, that Dolores knew something that had been kept from Maeve. She shrugged in response to Jo’s question.

  “You need to find out if it’s true.”

  “Again, Jo, I don’t know if I want to know.”

  Jo got up and put her arms out, knowing Maeve wouldn’t accept the hug but giving it a try. “I don’t know how to say this without sounding insensitive, but you’re all alone now. It would be nice to have someone to replace Jack. A new Conlon.”

  “I’m not all alone,” Maeve said, her voice sounding angry. She said it again, but this time, she didn’t sound so sure. “I’m not all alone. I have the girls. Well, I’ve got one of the girls,” she said, smiling; the jury was still out on Heather. “I have you,” she said, awkwardly taking hold of one of Jo’s outstretched arms. “I sort of have Cal, even if he’s married to someone else. He’s got my back.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t give that union much longer. You may have him back sooner than you think,” Jo said. “The shelf life on that marriage is rapidly coming to past due, I suspect. That Brazilian is a tough one to handle. Gorgeous, but tough.”