Lies That Bind (Maeve Conlon Novels Book 2)

by Maggie Barbieri

  Maeve looked at the receptionist. “He’s not coming back,” she said.

  “Of course he is,” she said, the smile still on her face even though it was clear she was puzzled by her boss’s behavior.

  After twenty minutes, Maeve asked if they could see someone else. “He’s not coming back,” she said to the receptionist again.

  Eventually, Maeve and Winston were led to the office of a less-twitchy social worker and then joined by a state police officer; Maeve had requested that the state police be called and the social worker had acquiesced, even though she wasn’t sure why Maeve would have a preference. This officer was a woman and, along with the female social worker, she asked questions about how Maeve had come to gain custody of a man no one really knew had been missing. Maeve handed over the files she had gathered, the box of social security cards. After the social worker took Winston out of the office and down the hall to get him a coat from the piles in the lost-and-found, Maeve turned to the female officer, a no-nonsense woman named Detective Fahnestock.

  “There are graves. With crosses.”

  “Where?” the woman asked, her eyes narrowing.

  “Behind the house. In the woods.” Maeve had been sitting on the edge of the chair across from the social worker’s desk, every nerve ending on high alert. With the revelation of the graves, and the recollection of what they looked like, how they were spaced, she sank back into the chair.

  “What’s your connection to this, Ms. Conlon?” the detective asked.

  She put a hand to her head and closed her eyes, reminding herself. She had almost forgotten what it was, the events of the past several hours, the past several days, clouding her thoughts. She recited the words that she had said a few times out loud but that she also said every night before she went to sleep.

  “I had a sister. Her name was Aibhlinn,” she said. “It means ‘longed-for child.’”

  The detective asked a question that Maeve hadn’t considered until this very moment, and the thought of it, that she had overlooked this one important detail, made her sick to think about.

  “Was there anyone else in the house?”

  CHAPTER 52

  Detective Fahnestock kept Maeve in the office while she sent a team of detectives from the state police to the house in the middle of nowhere and they confirmed what Maeve had told them: the car had been set on fire and was burned away, the house had blown up because of Regina Hartwell. There were graves in the woods.

  The detective called Cal and he confirmed everything that Maeve had told them as well: she had a sister and she was looking for her.

  “When will we know?” she asked the detective. “If there was anyone else in the house?”

  The detective knew why she was asking but was honest with her. “These things take a long time, usually. I’m not sure. I’ll work with the fire investigation team and see if we can’t get an answer sooner rather than later.”

  “Do I need a lawyer?” Maeve asked. She had a lawyer but he was a bit of a sissy. She didn’t tell the detective that.

  The detective considered that question. “I don’t think you do, Miss Conlon, but I also think I will have more questions for you.” She had deep brown eyes framed by long black lashes and perfect eyebrows; maybe she had the app that helped you shape them just so? “I don’t know why I believe you, but I do.” She gave Maeve the once-over. “Tell me your story one more time, please,” she said, studying Maeve’s face and her notes as Maeve recounted it one more time, looking for inconsistencies. There weren’t any. When Maeve was done, the detective was silent for a few moments. “I guess if I had a missing sibling, I would stop at nothing to find her, too,” she said finally.

  Maeve had left out the more violent parts of the story and the fact that she was carrying an unlicensed gun; had she told the detective some of those additional details, the woman wouldn’t have felt as sympathetic toward her. But Maeve didn’t have to fake sincerity when a few tears spilled from her eyes. “Thank you.”

  When they were in the hallway, Maeve turned to the detective again. “What will happen to Winston?”

  “We’ll bring someone in from the state to be with him during questioning and then find a proper home for him.” Detective Fahnestock put a hand on Maeve’s shoulder. “Don’t worry. We’ll make sure he’s taken care of this time.”

  “There’s one more thing,” Maeve said, explaining about her new friends from the support group and how they got together to heal the wounds that were left by the idea of their missing relatives. “Will you tell them? Will someone tell them?”

  The detective nodded. “We will.”

  She went back to the car and sat there for a few minutes, hunching down low when a Rhineview police car drove by. She didn’t know if it was Regina Hartwell’s son or just some random local cop but the sight of the car made her more aware that she had to get out of this town as soon as possible. While she drove, she thought about what had happened. Just knowing that Eileen Mackin’s card was in the box that Maeve turned over and that her dead body was now buried in a shallow grave in the woods behind the burned-down Hartwell house filled her with sadness.

  She banged the steering wheel, hard. Her hands ached but she had to release some of what she was feeling. “Please, God. Please let her not have been in there,” she said. “I can’t take any more.”

  Her sadness eventually turned to a white-hot anger and she knew where she was headed next.

  She didn’t call Rodney Poole this time to let him know that she would be visiting Margie Haggerty in her office in the Bronx. She didn’t want to be deterred from what she was going to do, which was get to the bottom of this once and for all.

  She is really messing up a good thing.

  Those were some of the last words Regina Hartwell had spoken before she had blown up her house and, with it, the evil that had resided there.

  She had known everything all along. Maeve’s suspicions about her old neighbor had been correct. She was rotten to the core, just like every other person who had lived in that house on her street. But why she had doled out information in little spoonfuls, making Maeve run around, making her feel the things she did, made Maeve rage.

  So, while Detective Fahnestock and her staff combed the woods behind the Hartwell house looking for the white crosses posted on the shallow graves, the remains beneath the ground, Maeve drove, her hand intermittently caressing the gun that was in the pocket of her pink coat.

  The IHOP lot was full so she drove around for a half hour looking for a spot. It was times like these that she gave thanks for her suburban life, the little parking pad at the side of her house that was so narrow that it forced her to squeeze in and out of her car, but it was hers nonetheless. That little strip allowed her to stow her car when the plows came by during snowstorms or when her neighbors had parties that required their guests to park on the street.

  Four blocks over from Margie’s office, she squeezed the Prius in between a huge van and a motorcycle, bumping the fenders of both in the process, hoping the owners were far away and couldn’t see her. She had hoped the walk to Margie’s office would help her calm down, but with each step she took, the cold from her toes now spreading to her feet and ankles, she became more incensed.

  Margie had played her. For what purpose, Maeve wasn’t sure, but she had been played. Had she ever wanted to help Maeve find her sister, or was this just another sick, cruel game that Margie—the daughter of sick and cruel people herself—had concocted to make Maeve, who the sisters apparently harbored ill will toward, even all these years later, suffer more than she had? Their father had taken her mother’s life and her father had died sick and broken, a widower for the better part of his adult life. Did they really need a pound of flesh from the only remaining Conlon on the planet?

  She decided that they did. And that fueled her rage even more.

  It was late and the other office on the floor was dark. Margie was still in her office but the front door was locked; Maeve could hear
her talking on the phone. When she didn’t answer Maeve’s knock or maybe when she heard Maeve call her name, she stopped talking. Pretended she wasn’t in there. Maeve took the gun out of her pocket and, protecting her hand with the sleeve of the pink coat, smashed the window that identified the office behind the door as MHK Law. She leaned in, found the deadbolt, and unlocked the door, letting herself in.

  She looked around the room. “Margie, you’ve done so much with the place,” she said, noticing that it was even more cluttered and messy since the last time she had been there, if that was possible. “Bad housekeeping runs in the family, I see.”

  Margie hung up the phone in her hand as Maeve came around the partition. “Was that Michael Donner?” she asked.

  Margie stared back at her, her hands beneath the desk. “No, Maeve. This is a place of business,” she said. “I talk to a lot of people throughout the day.”

  “Put your hands on the desk where I can see them, Margie,” Maeve said, her gun in a safe place in her coat pocket, her finger on the trigger. She was ready.

  Margie complied, and when she rested her hands on a stack of file folders, Maeve noticed that they were shaking again. When Maeve was around, they always seemed to be.

  Maeve sat down across from her. “So, I’ve come up with a few theories on my drive down here. Tell me if I’m correct.” She added an additional request. “And please don’t lie to me, Margie, because I am so, so tired, and I’ve got this buzzing in my ears that usually means I do things that I normally wouldn’t do.” She smiled. “In your case, I can’t even imagine what it might be, but trust me: neither of us wants to find out.”

  Margie licked her lips and scratched a space over her eyebrow until it turned bright red. “What do you want to know?”

  “Everything,” Maeve said. “Seems like your beloved aunt had taken some children from that home and kept them as prisoners in her house.”

  “They weren’t prisoners,” Margie said. “She took care of them.”

  “Tell yourself that, Margie, if it makes you feel any better, but they are all dead, with the exception of one.” She watched Margie rub the spot over and over. “And if one of them is my sister, I’m not sure what I’m going to do,” she said, and it was the truth.

  Margie’s face didn’t give anything away, but if Maeve had to guess, Margie knew that they were dead.

  Maeve continued. “She had their social security cards and a hook with a guy in social services. Her brother-in-law. That’s all I can figure out right now. Help me with the rest.”

  That brought a look of surprise to the woman’s face.

  “Yes. Michael Donner. I brought Winston in so that someone real and good could take care of him and you know what the guy did?” Maeve laughed out loud at the memory of the tall man in the blue suit leaving the office at the Rhineview municipal building. “He ran! Like a scared kid.” Maeve inched closer on the chair. “So, the police are now at his house or his apartment or wherever he lives and they are getting evidence.” She thought for a moment. “How did it work? She killed them and he pretended to check on them and let everyone know that they were still alive? She collected benefits?”

  Margie didn’t dispute that theory.

  “He must have gotten a cut,” Maeve said, thinking about how a plan like that might work. “They were in business together.” Her mind drifted in a few different directions for a few minutes. “And where do you fit in, Margie?”

  Margie had fallen mute, so Maeve pulled out the gun and pointed it at her.

  “Stop it, Maeve,” she said. “Stop.” Her hands went to a space under her desk.

  Maeve stood. “Margie, hands where I can see them,” Maeve said. She sat back down, her bloodlust taking a backseat to a dull feeling that started in her stomach and rose to the back of her throat. “And me? Why did you help me?” she said, although the word “help” was a little generous in this case.

  Margie shrugged, crying. “I wanted to help you find out if your sister was there.…”

  “Was she ever?” Maeve asked, holding her breath.

  “I don’t know. But I thought that maybe I could help you find her. That maybe my aunt would help. She’s a sociopath, Maeve,” Margie said. “I know that now.”

  Maeve knew a thing or two about sociopaths. “I thought you hadn’t seen her since you were little?”

  “When Dolores told you about your sister, I tried to blackmail her into helping you. I wanted to make things right again.” Margie held her hands out. “I’m not like those people. The people in my family.”

  “That is hard for me to believe, Margie.” Maeve relaxed a little, taking in Margie’s terrified face, her shaking hands. “You should have turned her in.”

  Margie looked surprised. “You don’t turn against family.”

  And there it was, the root of all of the problems with the Haggertys. They didn’t turn on family even when they knew that certain members were up to no good, making the lives of others a living hell. Before all of this had happened, Maeve had seen Margie, who had spoken ill of her own sister, something Maeve reminded her of now. “Why the family devotion all of a sudden? Especially to Dolores?”

  “She’s my sister. We’ve gotten closer since she became a widow.”

  “That’s beautiful, Margie,” Maeve said. She looked around the office. “You can’t make this stuff up.”

  Margie fingered a stack of papers on her desk, avoiding Maeve’s gaze. “I never meant to hurt you, for this to happen.”

  A sudden realization dawned on Maeve. “You are just really, really stupid,” she said. What other explanation could there be for the woman sitting in front of her to hatch a plan like this? Maeve counted off the transgressions on the hand not holding the gun. “You withheld from me that I had a sister. You sent me to see your aunt, who you didn’t tell me was a relative, to get information she was never going to give me.” Maeve stood and walked around the office, the little space she could navigate, and gathered her thoughts. “You knew that she was awful. A ‘sociopath.’ This whole situation defies comprehension.” She bit her lip, thinking. “I’m not entirely sure what I’m supposed to do with you, Margie.”

  In the front of the office, Maeve heard shoes crunching on the broken glass. Rodney Poole appeared around the partition, taking in Margie’s terrified expression and Maeve’s wild-eyed visage, the gun. “We need to leave, Maeve Conlon,” he said, taking the gun from her hand. He looked at Margie. “This never happened,” he said, waving a hand around the room. “She was never here.”

  Margie tried on a look of defiance that really didn’t suit her; she was incapable, it seemed, of really having a backbone. “Or what?” she asked.

  Poole studied her face. “Do we really need to get into that, Haggerty?” He put Maeve’s gun in his pocket. “Let’s put it this way: still a lot of cops on the force, around these parts, who would rather see you dead than help you one iota. That’s just the way it is.”

  “Are you sure about that?” she asked, giving her stoic resolve one last try.

  “I’m positive,” he said. He mentioned a name that wasn’t familiar to Maeve but which Margie seemed to know. “Just ask Ramona Ortiz. Oh, that’s right, you can’t. She’s dead.”

  Margie’s face turned in on itself, like an ice sculpture that was melting and then collapsed into a pool of water on the floor. “That wasn’t my fault.”

  “I guess it wasn’t,” Rodney said, but the damage was done. “You ruined her life, she took her own. Seems to run in your family, that kind of behavior. Life has a funny way of coming full circle, though, doesn’t it?” He took Maeve’s hand and led her to the front of the office.

  Out on the street, he reached into his pocket, and without anyone passing by being the wiser, he slid the gun from his coat pocket into hers. “This been discharged?” he asked.

  “It’s clean,” she said.

  “Good,” he said. “Keep it that way. Unless you have no other choice.”

  CHAPTER 53


  Maeve opened the store the following Wednesday, happy to be back in the routine of making scones, quiches, and cakes, channeling her sadness into creating beautiful things that people loved to eat. Jo’s stream-of-consciousness monologues helped the days pass and she was grateful to hear more than she ever wanted to know about how one birthed a baby in the twenty-first century, her children having been born in the old twentieth century when epidurals and pain meds were still thought to be acceptable accompaniments to the painful process of delivering a child.

  Jo was going to go “all natural,” she said, adding “until it gets really painful.”

  Maeve had news for her: there was no area between “painful” and “really painful” when it came to childbirth. It all hurt, a lot, and all the time. Even after the baby was out, if her own daughters were any indication.

  Jo was still determined to try every culinary item from the “Best of Westchester” issue of the local magazine, naming for Maeve all of the places they hadn’t been. Maeve was exhausted just thinking about it.

  Chris Larsson occupied the nights between her last trip to Rhineview and the opening of the store, his uncomplicated brand of wooing her just the salve she needed to heal her wounds, make her forget the pain she had been witness to. She told him only what he needed to know: that she had confronted Mrs. Hartwell, that the woman had responded by blowing up her house. That she had found Winston. That she knew now what happened to some of the Mansfield Missing.

  “And your sister?” he asked one afternoon when they were in his bed, soft sunlight coming in through the window, his long arms wrapped around her body, his face in her hair.

  “I don’t know,” she said. She still didn’t know if anyone else had been in the house, if other bones had been found, but she couldn’t admit any of that to him. It was too good, what they had. She wanted it to last, if only for a little while.