Lies That Bind (Maeve Conlon Novels Book 2)

by Maggie Barbieri

  “Jimmy. Please.”

  She gave him a quick hug. “Jimmy.”

  “Hey, Maeve. Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  He pointed to the bike. “Will you be keeping that?”

  She shook her head. “Nah. Will probably drop it off at the Goodwill on my way home. Why? Do you want it?”

  He smiled. “I’d love it. I have a seven-year-old granddaughter who would think it was the best thing ever.”

  She handed over the bike. “It’s all yours.”

  “I figured your girls were big now and wouldn’t want it.”

  “You figured right,” she said. “What do I do with this cart when I’m finished?” she asked.

  “Pull up in front and I’ll load up your car,” he said. “Then, I’ll return it. I don’t want you to have to write another check for ‘use of services’ or something like that.”

  She started a slow jog to the car, gave up and walked slowly. At this rate, she might need a steady IV of Aleve or some kind of muscle relaxer. She wondered how much Buena del Sol would charge for that and then decided that she needed to be done with the place, once and for all.

  Moriarty, as promised, loaded the boxes into the back of the Prius and gave her one of his patented rough bear hugs. “Bye, Maeve. Good luck with everything.”

  “This is more like a ‘see you soon’ hug,” she said, not ready to let go of the one friend her father had, and who had stayed true to the old man in his infirmity.

  He didn’t look convinced. “Hey, thanks for the bike,” he said. “My granddaughter will love it.”

  “I tore up the North Bronx on that bike. I know it’s got a lot of good years left in it.” She got in the car. “Happy new year, Jimmy.”

  “Yes, Maeve. You, too,” he said, his eyes filling with tears. “Happy new year,” he managed to croak out.

  “My sister, Jimmy,” she said, holding his gaze. “Nothing? Jack never said anything?”

  “Nothing, Maeve,” he said, a tear running down his cheek. He wiped it away. “I miss the old coot,” he said. “He was my best friend.”

  She knew that. And she didn’t want to linger. Seeing a tough old hooligan like Jimmy Moriarty standing by the entrance of the place he lived in and would die in as well, tears streaming down his face, was more than she could bear today. She focused instead on the memory of the pink streamers flying past her hands as she careened down 262nd Street, braking hard as she hit Broadway, her nose running from both the force of the wind and a little bit of fear.

  It had been a good feeling, that, the feeling of the wind in her face, the freedom, the prospect of a little bit of danger. She wondered if she would ever recapture it.

  CHAPTER 35

  The girls had left her high and dry again, no surprise there, except for the fact that Heather was now wandering a little more freely. Maeve took note of that, noticing that she went on little excursions with her sister and wondering why that was, putting a discussion of this new development aside for a time when she could think. She tended the chicken she had put in the oven, wondering who she could call to help her eat it.

  She invited Jo over but she and Doug were having “date night” so that left them out. They’d better be; she didn’t want to have to maim Doug in order to get him to commit to her friend, whose emotional wounds had finally closed after all this time. She stared into the oven and at the perfectly browned chicken, juices flowing into the roaster that would make delicious gravy, slamming it shut when she realized she’d be eating by herself. Jack would have loved this meal, and then, when he had forgotten he had eaten, would have a complete second helping that didn’t remind him in the least of his first.

  She settled on Chris Larsson, who sounded more than happy to help her eat a six-pound Oven Stuffer roaster. He asked if she had wine.

  “Is the Pope Catholic?” she asked, channeling her father and one of his favorite tropes.

  “I don’t know. I’m a Lutheran,” he said, before hanging up.

  While waiting for him to show up, she focused on the morning, which seemed like days, not hours, earlier. She knew she would be going back to Rhineview; it was just a matter of when. There was something not right about the whole thing, about how Margie gave her the information but not much else, how the woman on the phone wouldn’t talk to her, how a warning shot was fired but how she wasn’t really looked for in the barn, even though the shooter had to know someone was in the vicinity. None of it made sense, but she had learned a long time ago that by relying on herself, her smarts, she would be in good stead.

  She didn’t need any of them. She didn’t need anyone. She had herself, and for most of her life, that had been enough.

  She hemmed and hawed a few minutes—the few she had before Chris came by—before picking up the phone again. Although she relied on herself entirely for most things, she did have a question or two about Margie Haggerty that she couldn’t answer, and her lack of trust in the woman niggled at the back of her mind. She had been on the police force as recently as ten years ago and Rodney Poole—someone she had seen recently but hadn’t spoken to in over a year—was closing in on retirement. Surely he remembered Margie’s case and the details surrounding it even if he hadn’t had any direct involvement with it.

  She knew he would have an opinion about this, look at it from a different angle. Maybe it would help illuminate what was troubling her and what, if anything, she should do with respect to Margie.

  His card was on her dresser; it had been for the last year. She turned it over in her fingers before sitting down on the edge of her bed and dialing his cell. She would go directly to him, not to Doug; Doug, in her mind, was never going to be a reliable narrator ever again. Finding him in Mickey’s solidified that suspicion for her.

  “Poole.”

  “Um, hello. This is Maeve. Maeve Conlon?”

  There was a pause followed by a throat clearing. “Maeve Conlon.”

  “Yes.”

  “I was sorry to learn of your father’s passing.” He paused. “I thought about coming to his funeral, paying my respects to a brother officer, but then thought better of it.”

  She smiled. She understood why. “Is this a good time to talk?”

  In the background, she heard voices, and then the sliding of a door followed by silence. “Sure.”

  Before she got to the real reason she was calling, she asked about Doug. “A new baby, huh?”

  “Yes,” he said, his voice giving nothing away, positive or negative. “Doug is ecstatic. Over the moon.”

  Good boy, Maeve thought. Keep it up and then I won’t have to hunt you down like a dog. “That’s good to hear. Same with Jo.” They made a little more chitchat about the holiday, her store, talking like old friends instead of what they really were: unlikely allies. “I’ll make this rather long story as short as possible,” she said, moving on to the things she really needed to know. She did her best to give him an abbreviated version of the story, leaving out the part where she visited Rhineview and the address that Margie provided. “Do you know her? Margie Haggerty?”

  “I do,” he said, his tone measured.

  “And?”

  “Not well,” he said. “Let’s just put it this way: Margie Haggerty got off easy for what she did. Losing the Job was the best-case scenario for her.”

  “And should that have any bearing on how much I can trust her or any additional information she gives me?” she asked.

  “Yes, Maeve. I think it should.”

  “Why?”

  “Let’s just say that she tried to take a few people down with her. Lives were ruined. Not many of us appreciated that.” He chuckled. “She has a law office now. Deals with workman’s comp cases. How’s that for irony?”

  “What’s it called? Do you know?”

  “I don’t,” he said. “But it’s on Two thirty-eighth and Broadway over a bodega. Under the El. Very swank.”

  She continued to flip the card over in her hands. “Well, than
k you. I appreciate the information.”

  “What are you doing, Maeve?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What are you doing with regard to finding your sister?”

  “Everything I can.”

  “I’d expect nothing less from you, my warrior queen.”

  “I’m going to try to keep my darker thoughts and pursuits out of this one.”

  He knew what she meant. “Please do.”

  “But I can’t promise anything.”

  “I wouldn’t expect you to.” He dropped his voice. “Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.”

  “I’m glad you understand.”

  “You need my help?”

  She thought about that; she already had Doug on the line for that but he lacked such backbone. “I might. Again, I can’t promise anything. But I need to find her. Make sure she’s okay.”

  “Alive.”

  “Yes. Alive.” She placed the card on her nightstand. “I’ll let you go. Thank you.”

  “Be well, Maeve Conlon. Be careful,” he said before hanging up.

  “You, too,” she said to the dead air.

  CHAPTER 36

  The girls were home by midnight and Maeve was out the door by three after making sure they were both in their beds, secure in the knowledge that they were going to sleep and not waiting for her to fall asleep so that they could go back out. That was one thing about her daughters and something that had been true since they were little: once they were asleep, they were out for the count. She had done something right in the sleep-training department. Cal was still regaling her with stories of walking the floor with Devon at all hours, and if she didn’t admit to a small measure of satisfaction in hearing that—her rules about bedtime and behavior having met with his ridicule more than once during their marriage—she would be lying.

  She knew the way to Rhineview by heart now and even in the inky darkness, found a space to stick the car that was closer to the house but hidden by a copse of dense evergreens. Her headlamp in place, she trudged under the stars to the barn, the place she was convinced held some kind of clue to her sister’s whereabouts.

  Siblings know. That’s what Heather had said. Maeve hoped that even siblings who had never met—or who had never remembered meeting—had the same telepathic bond.

  In one pocket, she had her gun. In her opposite hand, she held the shovel that Jo had given her for Christmas, marveling at her friend’s foresight. She had been right: Maeve needed a shovel. She just hadn’t known it at the time.

  The barn door was still ajar, just wide enough for Maeve to wriggle through. This time, the smell hit her head on, becoming more pungent as Maeve made her way farther into the space. Maeve gave thanks for what had been the warm start to winter, using all of her strength to break up the dirt. A quick sweep of the headlamp revealed that the tractor had been moved and was now at the other side of the barn; Maeve wondered why it had been moved, the plow on the front of it not needed.

  She went back to the spot that she had been in the day before, where fresh dirt had been mounded in a pile. Today, it was packed down more, the outline of fresh dirt suggesting that the grave, if that’s what it was, was really only the size of a small box. She continued to plunge the sharp end of the surprisingly sturdy tool into the ground, using her foot to push it farther beneath the ground. She was perspiring with the effort by the time she hit the box that was buried under a shallow layer of dirt, a plain brown box that you could buy anywhere, store anything in, looking not unlike the boxes in her living room that held the rest of Jack’s belongings. The stench grew stronger.

  Maeve dug a trench around the box and knelt beside it. Although her goal all along had been to unearth the box and find out what was inside, now that she was close to achieving that, she was hesitating. She had just spent the better part of fifteen minutes digging up a box that held something dead, clearly not a person, probably the grave of an animal who had once lived in the falling-down house beside the barn and had expired recently. Why not bury it in the woods where it would decompose naturally and not leave a scent?

  She lifted the lid. The smell was overpowering and her clothes would need to be washed again, if not disposed of completely. She shone the headlamp into the box and found a full-grown cat, hardly decomposed, so fairly freshly dead, and a kitten beside it. Their necks were broken.

  Maeve gagged at both the smell and the sight of the dead animals, but her headlamp caught on something tucked under the head of the larger cat. She was thankful she was wearing gloves but even so, the courage it took to move the cat’s head and extract the item beneath it was almost more than she could handle.

  You’re losing your cool, Maeve, she thought, gingerly lifting the animal’s head and pulling out a laminated card. It was a holy card, the Blessed Mother surrounded by illuminated stars, her outstretched hands protecting and blessing all who believed in her goodness and love.

  It was the same rendering, the same sort of card, that Maeve had found among her father’s things.

  A dime a dozen, she told herself. Every vestibule of every Catholic church she had ever been in had a stack, along with daily devotions, the way to say the Rosary, the church’s bulletin of news and events. It looked just like the one she had brought home all those years ago for Jack, the one that she wanted him to carry so that he would be safe at work, believing when she was a child that that was the talisman, the lucky charm that had kept him from getting shot or worse.

  He used to tell her that he wore his bulletproof vest every day but she knew that he was lying most of the time. They were bulky and restricted movement, but at the time, she tried to believe him because it made her feel better to think that he was protected.

  One of them needed to be.

  She walked back to the car in the dark and when she was buckled in, silently drove away.

  I think I might be crazy, she thought, and not for the first time.

  Maybe I should stop right now.

  But she knew she wouldn’t.

  CHAPTER 37

  Maeve was home before daybreak, well before the girls decided to arise. They had no idea that she hadn’t been home, had been driving around an area miles upstate from where they lived, and touching dead cats. The holy card was tucked into the pocket of her jeans and when she got home, she extracted it from her pants and laid it carefully on her nightstand, right next to Rodney Poole’s card.

  After she slept a bit, she would spend time with the girls, take them to the mall, the equivalent of a consumer cathedral for them, holy and special and the only place in which they didn’t fight with each other for extended periods of time. Maeve hated the mall but she wouldn’t complain. Her quality time with her father had been going to shooting ranges and then to the local Knights of Columbus for a beer with his cop friends before returning home. She wanted to make sure her girls had a more “normal” upbringing, whatever that was. She was sure it didn’t include shooting ranges; that much was clear.

  In her bed, the down comforter wrapped around her body, she drifted off to sleep thinking about her father and his religious devotions that didn’t extend to him actually going to church. Prayerful and often espousing the teachings, he didn’t have much use for organized religion but a lot for the rituals that he had learned as a child himself. As she settled into a deep sleep, Jack returning to her at the gazebo with the day-old loaf of challah bread in his hands once again, she wondered if he was at peace.

  “It’s rye,” he said again, admonishing her for her mistake.

  It was after one when she woke up, feeling more refreshed than she would have thought, given her schedule. She realized, with a start, that she hadn’t thought of the store once in the past few days, and to not think of it was refreshing. Only passing thoughts of her landlord and Billy Brantley. Not a care about Tommy, playing lacrosse somewhere like his life depended on it. It meant, despite driving up north and finding dead things, that she was relaxing, if in her own demented way. She got up and
got dressed, once again taking extra time to wash the stench of Rhineview out of her skin and hair.

  The significance of the card, whether there was any or not, stayed with her as she towel-dried her hair. Downstairs, she could hear voices and a little commotion that could only mean one thing: Jo had arrived.

  She was in the kitchen with the girls, where some kind of extravagant meal preparation was in the works. Maeve held her breath. These undertakings usually involved something burned and a pot that had seen its last use. They always required Maeve having to clean up a spilled marinara or exploding pea soup. She tried to keep her cool as she saw Jo open a package containing large salmon, raw, and instruct the girls how to bake it.

  “Hey,” Maeve said, entering the kitchen. “I’m the only professional cook around. Want me to do it?”

  “Had a hankering for the saltiest fish I could find,” Jo said, turning to face Maeve. “So Doug picked one up at the fish store that won ‘Best of Westchester’ for their salmon.” Behind her, the girls looked relieved that their mother was up and in their presence finally; they weren’t used to her not being awake in the afternoon. If she was still in bed, something was terribly wrong. “How complicated is it to cook salmon?” Jo threw herself into a chair, grasping at her belly. “Doug said I couldn’t cook it in the cottage because we would never get rid of the smell.”

  Was it worse than the smell that two dead cats produced? Maeve wondered. If so, Doug had a point. Maeve was thankful to have the fish to prepare, if only to get her nose accustomed to something that would inevitably taste and smell delicious once she was finished with it. “And how is Doug?” she asked, her voice pleasant, not giving away the murderous rage she felt every time she thought of him sitting with Tamara from Dunkin’ Donuts.

  “Great!” Jo said. “Loving birth class. He’s promised that no matter where he is or what he’s doing, he’ll make sure to get home for the birth.”