“Cal, one more thing,” she said.
He knew what it was about and didn’t sound all that enthusiastic.
“Can you do a search of the name ‘Winston Alderson’ and see if a death certificate comes up?” She figured he knew his way around some of the more legal documents and sites that might be on the Internet and that he could do this while she was attending the support group, which she filled him in on. “There are a lot of people looking for their relatives. This one woman, Winston’s mother, has really stayed with me,” she said. “She’s very sweet.”
“Okay,” he said. “Devon! Be careful!” he called to the baby inevitably toddling to his death. “I’ve got to go,” he said.
At the support group, all of her friends were in attendance; she took a seat next to Francine Alderson, who was her usual cheerful self, full of life and good will despite the fact that her closest and only living relative had disappeared and never been found.
The meeting started with a short talk by a man named Michael Donner, someone who worked in the county’s social services department and who came every year, apparently, to review any findings on missing adults and what steps a family member could take to find a loved one who had gone missing. Frankly, he didn’t have a lot to say. There were so many laws in place to protect the privacy of those who had lived at Mansfield and who were now in group homes that legally, the process was long and protracted. Maeve noticed the faces of those around her fall a little bit, as they probably did every year when he came and gave his same talk.
After he sat down and everyone started to share again, like they did every week, one woman, Jessica, reported good news: her cousin, Emily, had been found living in a group home in Buffalo. Maeve sat up a little straighter in her chair.
Jessica was about Maeve’s age but weathered in a way that Maeve hoped she could stave off for at least a few more years. “She’s a ward of the state. I have to get an informational subpoena and ask the state for information.”
Maeve raised her hand tentatively. “How did you find her?”
Jessica looked at her, her eyes red. “I hired a private investigator.” She laughed, a little strangled chuckle emitting from her throat. “I don’t know how she did it or who she had to pay off, but we found her. I’m completely out of money now, but it was worth it.” She looked around the room. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “We found her.”
When it was Maeve’s turn to talk, she didn’t really have a lot to say. “Hello. I’m Maeve Conlon, as you know. I’m looking for my sister, Evelyn Conlon. I don’t have anything to report further on my search for her.”
The people in the group knew how to react to that news without tipping the emotional apple cart in one direction or another. Most smiled sadly at Maeve while others murmured encouragement, telling her to keep looking.
She looked back at the group and mustered up some inner strength. “I’m going to keep going. I’m going to find her,” she said, looking at Michael Donner, who nodded enthusiastically. Maeve wasn’t sure if he was behind her in the search or thought she was completely insane, but she didn’t care.
After the group disbanded, Maeve tried to find Jessica but she had left. She wandered the halls of the Y looking for a restroom—the one closest to the community room had been locked when she tried to enter—and found one at the opposite end of the pool, which was uncharacteristically quiet that night. School had started and this was a school night; swimming after dinner was a thing of the past, relegated to the next break in the academic year.
Outside, it seemed darker than usual for the hour, but maybe it was just her mood; she noticed that one of the streetlights in the parking lot, the one she had parked under when she had come to her first meeting here, was out. Across the empty parking lot, Francine Alderson was struggling with her walker, attempting to lift it into the old beater that she drove, a Dodge Dart from the 1970s, from the looks of it. Maeve rushed over, careful to avoid the potholes that dotted the surface of the macadam. The parking lot was empty. It was as if Jessica’s news had created a mass exodus of the people at the Y; either they were excited and wanted to get home and share the news or newly depressed. It was hard to tell for sure.
“Francine. Wait,” she said, putting her purse on the ground and peering into the trunk of the old car. The interior was spotless and held only one tennis ball, an item that probably had fallen off the walker some time earlier.
“You’re a dear, Maeve,” Francine said, leaning against the passenger side of the car.
Maeve struggled with the walker but finally wrestled it into the trunk. “That was some story tonight, huh?” she said. “Jessica’s cousin?”
A look crossed the old woman’s face and Maeve could tell that behind her sunny exterior lay the sadness that she, too, felt. “It was wonderful,” she said.
Maeve pulled the list from her pocket. “I have a list of all of the residential facilities in the tri-state area and some of the upstate counties as well,” she said, wanting to do anything—say anything—to restore Francine’s sunny disposition. “I’m going to start calling and find out if my sister lives in any of these. I’ll ask about Winston, too.”
“If they are still alive, dear,” Francine said. Taking in Maeve’s crushed face, her smile gone, the older woman recanted. “I mean, that’s wonderful.” She looked off into the distance. “It will be hard, though. If your sister has a guardian, you’d have to get permission from that person to get information. To renew contact.”
She hadn’t said much, but implicit in that statement was the truth: if Evelyn had a guardian, that person would have already let Maeve know about her sister because surely it was someone Maeve knew. Who Jack trusted. Who they had known all of their lives. What kind of cruel person would let her continue the search, knowing that her sister was dead? The weight of that realization left Maeve a little breathless. She swallowed hard. “You’re right. There are laws,” she said simply. “To protect them.”
Francine turned to Maeve. “I’m sorry,” she said. Her mouth contorted just a little bit. “He’s dead, Maeve. I know that. Or I hope so. The thought that he had lived without me for all these years…” She stood a little straighter, composed herself, the emotional moment having passed as quickly as it had begun. “Now. Help me get into my car, please?”
“How do you get out when you get home?” Maeve asked.
She snapped her fingers. “I’ve got this down to a science. Don’t worry, dear.”
Maeve took her arm and led her around the car.
“Don’t forget your bag, Maeve,” Francine said, and made her way around a patch of ice that had formed at the back of the car from on earlier shower. Maeve knelt to pick up her bag, which had fallen on its side, the usual personal detritus that resided in her purse—tissues, change, two single dollar bills, a few loose mints—threatening to blow away in the stiff breeze that had kicked up. As she leaned forward, she slipped on the ice, finding herself half under Francine’s car, a nasty pain radiating up her leg that took up her complete attention and prevented her from hearing the sound of a car that appeared out of nowhere, at her back. It careered toward Mrs. Alderson, who was making her slow but steady way to the driver’s side door.
Maeve stood, ignoring the searing heat in her hip, but was too late. She was knocked to the ground again, this time by the woman’s body, hurtling high over her head and then coming to earth astride Maeve’s bag, the contents that once seemed important enough to chase in the wind now seeming like what they were: pieces of trash that just got in the way.
Francine didn’t make a sound as the life slipped from her body, her kindly eyes fading into some kind of opaque nothingness. Maeve knew better than to try to sit her up or rearrange her on the pavement, the blood leaking from her head letting Maeve know that this situation was hopeless. Instead, she took off her coat and placed it over the woman’s body, pulling her purse from beneath her weight and finding her phone. Somewhere in the distance she heard a keening sound, sobs
cutting the stillness of the night air. It was only after a few stunned minutes, the shock settling into her bones and making her incapable of thoughtful clarity, that she realized the sounds were coming from her.
She knew in her heart that Francine was dead but that didn’t prevent her from sitting next to the old woman and begging her to open her eyes, get up from the pavement. It had only been a short time and they had only seen each other a total of a few hours but the loss of this gentle soul wounded her. She willed herself to get off the ground and ran to the door of the Y, banging so hard on the glass that her hands ached, hoping that there was a security guard or someone inside who could help her. She couldn’t dial her phone; her hands were shaking too hard, her fingers uncooperative. In the distance, she heard the car turn a corner and race off.
She also heard someone screaming “Don’t leave!” over and over and realized it was her. Her voice, her panic. Whether she was talking to the driver of the car or Mrs. Alderson, she wasn’t sure and never would be, even when she thought of the moment days later, its details sneaking up on her like a naughty child who wants to frighten their mother, only to hear her scream in terror.
Finally, a man appeared in the lobby of the Y, taking in her tear-stained and frantic face and getting a look on his own face that let her know that he wasn’t sure he wanted to open the door. She looked like a raving lunatic, she was sure of it. She pounded harder and screamed for his help.
He was Hispanic and didn’t speak much English. Maeve did nothing more than point to the old woman lying on the pavement, a pool of blood around her, making a shape just like her body. An outline really. He used a key from the large cluster on his belt and opened the door. She asked him to call 911—screamed it over and over until he did what she wanted—and then went back to Mrs. Alderson’s body to keep it company while she waited for help.
She held the old woman’s hand. In her own warm hand, Francine’s turned colder as more blood was lost, the longer she was dead. When the police finally arrived, it took one strong, kind officer to convince Maeve to let go.
CHAPTER 43
From her perch on the cold curb, Maeve noticed for the first time that the moon was full. Had it been any other night, watching lacy clouds float in front of the light that was cast from above would have fascinated her, but tonight, it only served to illuminate the scene unfolding in the parking lot.
The police had wrapped her in what looked to be a large piece of tin foil but which she knew was an insulated blanket designed to keep her warm and help her from going into shock. Marathon runners wore these after races, she knew. She wasn’t going into shock; she was acutely aware of everything that was going on, what had happened to Francine Alderson. The shock had passed and in its place was a hollowed-out feeling, a place where only emptiness lived.
Maeve stared at the officers in the parking lot, the EMS workers taking care to load the body into the ambulance, tightening the straps around her slim and aged body before they slanted the gurney and slid it into place, the lights on top of their vehicles turning lazily.
She was the only witness, the janitor having been at the back of the Y building doing his nightly work and not having heard a thing. Although people had passed by on the road adjacent to where the support group met, no one had made a 911 call or had reported seeing an old woman thrown sky-high before landing hard on the pavement.
There was one massive police officer, a big country boy type, who spent some time with Maeve. She told him what she knew and remembered.
“It was a car.”
“Color?”
“I didn’t see,” she said, putting a hand to her hip, which felt raw and bruised. “I didn’t see the color or the make or model,” she said, almost hearing Jack’s admonishments from wherever he was now. “Notice your surroundings, Maeve! Pay attention!” he would have said. “It happened so fast,” she said, to herself and to him, absolving herself from the guilt she would inevitably feel when she was less in shock and more cognizant of what happened. When it all became real. She wiped her nose on her sleeve. “I never used to cry.”
The cop, a big guy with the look of someone who spent a great deal of time outdoors, snapped his notebook shut. “You have any travel plans, Miss Conlon?”
“No,” she said. “I’m going back to Farringville and will be at the number I gave you.” She zipped the top of her purse, holding in all of the garbage that had seemed so important less than an hour earlier. “I’m going back to Farringville,” she said, more definitively this time. “I’m going home.” She was going home, but she was also going back to Rhineview as soon as she woke up the next morning.
Before she went back to her car, she turned to the police officer. “There’s a dog. Prince Phillip,” she said. “He’s in Mrs. Alderson’s house. Could someone go get him?”
The cop looked confused. “There’s a dog named Prince Phillip? Is this a joke?” he asked, eyeing her suspiciously. “You may be in shock, Miss Conlon.”
“No,” she said. “There is a dog. A Labrador. Mrs. Alderson called him Prince Phillip. That’s his name.” She stared the cop in the eye, tried to make him understand. Was she making sense or like her father, addled and confused? She shook her head. “No. Yes. The dog. Prince Phillip. Please get him and take care of him.”
She waited while the officer called animal control. “He’ll go to a no-kill shelter here in town,” the officer said, but implicit in his tone was the idea that he still couldn’t believe that someone had named their dog after a British monarch. “Don’t worry.”
Maeve felt better about that, but shaken to the core over Francine’s death. She sat in her car for a few minutes, staring out at the diner across the parking lot until she heard a tap on her window. It was Officer Beglin, his name tag now visible under the light over her car.
“I just wanted to check on you. Are you sure you don’t need to be seen by the EMS crew?” he asked, his eyes kind. If she stared at them any longer, she might start to cry and that wouldn’t support her contention that not only could she drive home, she wanted to drive home, to do something normal and routine.
He finally let her go. As she drove away, she thought about what the police had said to each other. It was a hit-and-run, they had murmured, low enough so she couldn’t hear them, but she did. She heard every word they said. The old woman had never stood a chance. She was gone before she hit the pavement. It was too bad Maeve hadn’t seen anything that would help them find out who did this because with only one witness and nothing to go on, it was unlikely they would ever solve this case. Unless the person felt so guilty that they had to turn themselves in.
It wasn’t an accidental hit-and-run, she wanted to say. The car hadn’t been there and then it was. Someone had been driving with a singular purpose.
She started to think, some time after she crossed the Newburgh-Beacon bridge, that it was her the killer had wanted.
There was only one thing to think: she was getting closer to the truth.
Maeve knew that Chris Larsson lived in the center of the village, directly across from the high school, his Jeep visible when she picked Heather up, the decal for Boston University—his son’s college—on the back windshield. After texting the girls not to wait up, she drove there, parking her car on a side street and walking the block to his house, ringing the bell. Although she wanted to apologize for showing up so late, he didn’t give her a chance, taking in her tear-stained face, her shaking hands. He brought her into the warm and cozy house, where a fire burned in the fireplace, and a glass of wine sat on a coffee table next to a variety of sections from the previous week’s Sunday Times. He took her hand and led her to the couch, and while she wanted to tell him everything, she responded by pulling off her coat, and then the fleece underneath it, the T-shirt beneath that finding its way to the floor.
He was confused but not so confused as to resist her. He stretched out on top of her, distributing his weight, and pushed her hair away from her face. “What happened to yo
u?” he asked, taking his thumb and wiping her tears away.
“If I told you, you’d never believe me,” she said, referring to other things, things he would never find out about her. She kept it simple. “I don’t want to be alone tonight.” Or anymore, she thought, but didn’t say. “Does that sound desperate? Predictable?”
“I don’t want to be alone tonight either,” he said, searching her face. “Should we not be alone together?”
She grabbed him and held on tight, never wanting to let go.
CHAPTER 44
She left a few hours later, after she told him everything, after she promised him that if her hip still hurt in the morning, she would call the doctor, a promise she knew she would never keep.
“I can help you,” he said, not for the first time. “I don’t know how, but I can help you.”
“I will let you know if I think of anything,” she said, thinking that his help would consist of comforting her when she was scared, soothing her jangled nerves when she was losing it. He seemed more concerned about her sister than the finger in her refrigerator, and something about that made her like him even more.
On her way home, she wondered how Jo would feel if she knew that Maeve, scared and alone, had gone on a booty call.
She’d never believe it.
Before she left him, while she was picking up her clothes from around the room, she asked him about the breakin, Sebastian DuClos, breaking the mood that had been established by her drop-in. There was nothing to report on any front, DuClos having gone on some extended holiday; Billy’s whereabouts known but not a cause for concern, according to Chris; the breakin still unsolved.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Do you think I’m the worst detective in Farringville? Or beyond?”
She was so focused on finding Evelyn that she didn’t really care anymore, and told him so.
The next morning at home, after a few hours of restless sleep, she got up, the queasy feeling in her gut and the pain behind her eyes not deterring her from getting ready to get back in her car and head north. She knew if she asked, Chris would go with her, but this was a solo job. She worked alone.
Lies That Bind (Maeve Conlon Novels Book 2) Page 19