She tried to hold on to the fact that Margie didn’t think Evelyn had ever lived there, but even if that was the case, the idea that she had been responsible for an innocent person’s death stayed with her.
Maeve scanned the papers and the Internet every day for the stories related to what had happened up in Rhineview, her name mysteriously missing from any mention of the investigation or the missing man. She had asked Detective Fahnestock if that would be possible, and apparently the woman had bent to Maeve’s wishes, a call from Chris probably helping secure her identity as “unidentified woman from downstate.” She was grateful for the courtesies cops showed each other, showed her as a cop’s daughter.
A few days after she had seen what Regina Hartwell was capable of, saw her blow up her own house, Maeve was icing a cake when Detective Fahnestock showed up at the bakery unannounced, a small bag in her hand. Jo let her in, holding open the swinging door to the kitchen and staying just long enough to hear that the detective wanted a DNA sample from Maeve.
“I need a DNA sample from you, Miss Conlon.”
Maeve put down the piping bag that she had been using to dot florets around a chocolate cake, a beautiful, multilayered concoction that would fetch close to thirty dollars. “What is it?”
The detective cut to the chase and didn’t give Maeve a chance to steel herself for the news that was going to shake her to her core. “There were two sets of bones found in the rubble,” she said. “The medical examiner is looking at them now to determine who they might belong to, if the person was even alive when the house blew up.”
“Female?”
“Hard to tell at this point,” she said, pausing, “but most likely.”
The next morning, she could still feel the scrape of the cotton swab on the inside of her cheek, a reminder of her visit from the female detective. Of the news she brought. Maeve hadn’t eaten a bite since that moment, drinking only when she felt a dire thirst, her parched throat reminding her that she was getting dehydrated.
Was there anyone else in the house? The detective’s words rang in her ears, every one an indictment of Maeve’s impulsiveness, her drive to make Regina Hartwell tell the truth.
That afternoon, after Maeve had sent Jo to the store to buy butter, she asked both girls to come to the bakery and sat them down in the kitchen area. They had been helping out that morning, though Maeve hadn’t uttered a word to either one of them. Finally, she found her voice again and peppered them with questions. She had solved one mystery; time to solve another. She left off the nice preamble, going straight to the one question that she needed an answer to: “Who was in my bedroom and why did a check for three grand go missing?”
They were liars, both of them, and it was written all over their faces. In the front of the store, the bell over the door rang and Maeve went through to wait on the new customer.
“Get your story straight. I want the truth when I come back,” she said before she left.
When she came back into the kitchen, they were still sitting there, looking as if they hadn’t moved or spoken the whole time. “So?” she asked.
Rebecca was the mouthpiece. “We don’t know, Mom.”
“Where’s the money from your accounts?” Maeve asked Rebecca. “And don’t tell me you put it toward your tuition because I’ve already been on the account on the Web site and we’re all paid up.”
Rebecca wasn’t a liar; she hadn’t inherited the finely honed art of deception from her mother. “Fine,” Rebecca said. “I spent it. I spent every last dime. I didn’t eat in the dining hall, I partied, I treated my friends to dinner. We went to New York City. I rented a hotel room.”
Heather looked at her, stunned. She was not used to seeing her sibling in the role of the less-than-perfect older sister.
“And shoes?” Maeve asked.
“Not too many, but yes, I bought some shoes,” Rebecca said.
Maeve studied both of them, sitting quietly on the high stools that framed the butcher-block counter in the middle of the kitchen. Heather’s hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail that she kept grabbing and smoothing with trembling hands.
Maeve looked down at her hands and saw the pulse in her wrist jumping out of her skin. After a few minutes, she looked at her daughters and gave Rebecca, her face pale and her own hands shaking, a hard look. But Maeve was honest; she was a bit out of her league on this one. “I don’t know quite what to do right now, Rebecca, but I would like you to leave my sight, immediately.”
The girls shared a look that Maeve couldn’t decipher.
“Please go home.”
Rebecca opened her mouth to speak.
Maeve held up a hand. “Please. Before I say or do something that I will regret.”
Right at that moment Jo walked in the back door and put the butter in the refrigerator, chatting aimlessly about the store, who she saw, what a bitch the cashier had been to her, why she hated going on these runs for Maeve. She closed the refrigerator door and turned around, finally taking in the stunned faces of the Callahan girls and Maeve’s own florid one. “What happened here?” she asked. “What did I miss?”
“Nothing,” Maeve said. “Rebecca was just leaving.”
Heather asked if she could go, too.
Maeve waved a hand in her direction. “Certainly. Go.” As the door to the kitchen slammed behind them, Maeve called out, “Clean your rooms! Go to church! Feed some orphans! Stay out of trouble!”
Jo looked at her for an explanation.
“You don’t want to know.”
It was only minutes before closing when the bell over the door jingled for what would be the last time that day. She and Jo were deep into their closing routine, Maeve wiping the counters with a focused ferocity. When she was done, they gleamed. With the girls out of the store and wandering the streets of Farringville proclaiming the evilness that was their mother, most likely, she was happy to have an outlet for her stress.
“A little help, please?” the woman at the counter said.
Maeve turned at the sound of her voice, her words slurring and blurring together into one barely intelligible sentence. Maeve hoped she hadn’t driven here herself.
“Hello, Dolores,” she said, asking Jo to go into the kitchen. “What brings you here?”
“Where’s my sister?” she said. Today, her auburn hair was freshly coiffed, her makeup artfully applied. It was only the crooked line of lipstick on her bottom lip that indicated that she was a little tipsy.
“Your sister?” Maeve asked. “Is she missing?”
Jo walked out briefly and tossed a bundle on the counter before returning to the kitchen. “Mail’s here.”
“Yes,” Dolores said, leaning in. Maeve caught a whiff of something medicinal, vodka maybe, covered over by a strong breath mint. Oldest trick in the book, she thought.
“I don’t know,” Maeve said.
“Wasn’t she helping you find your sister?” Dolores asked. Behind her, the clock clicked to four, and Maeve came out from behind the counter to turn the OPEN sign to CLOSED. No reason why her regular customers, the nice people who shopped here, needed to see this.
“‘Help,’ Dolores, is a very loose term,” Maeve said. “Listen, I’m closing. What do you want?”
Dolores surprised her by softening just enough to let a few tears spill from her eyes, the tears taking rivulets of black mascara along for the ride. “I miss her. I need my sister.”
“That’s rich, Dolores,” Maeve said. “You want me to pity you for losing a sister.” Maybe Margie, like Michael Donner, was in the wind, never to be seen again. “Forgive me, Dolores, if I don’t feel a whit of sympathy for you,” Maeve said, but deep down, if she had to admit it, she did feel a twinge of sadness for two lives that seemed to have seen hardly a moment of happiness. Those girls had never stood a chance in that household. Dolores had been right all along: Maeve had always thought she was better than them, what with her doting father and her cupcake making. She was never hit—at least by Jack—and
he told her often that she was perfect. That he loved her. And that counted for a lot, made some of the hurt go away. She found herself welling up, thinking of what it must have been like to hear how fat and dumb, how useless, you were every single day of your life. It was almost worse than physical abuse.
Almost.
“I don’t know what happened to Margie,” Maeve said, softening her tone. “I’m sorry, Dolores. I hope you find her.”
Seemed that Margie had been smart enough to hit the road. The jig was up, as Jack used to say, and the handwriting was on the wall. If she stayed around, she might be arrested and sent to jail for knowing what she knew and keeping it to herself. Her life, as she knew it, would be over and even though she hadn’t been sent to jail for her role in the chain-of-custody case, or responsible for the other woman’s suicide—someone she had brought down with her—this time, she’d be done for.
Hit the road. That was the answer. Where had she gone?
Not my problem, Maeve thought. Not my concern.
Dolores looked at her. “I’ve got no one, Maeve.”
Welcome to the club.
“My husband is dead.”
Good riddance.
“My kids never come around.”
Wonder why?
“And now my sister has left. It’s not fair!”
Life rarely is.
When she saw that she was getting nowhere, she turned. “I don’t ever want to see you again, Maeve Conlon.”
The feeling is mutual.
Dolores exited the store quickly, stepping out onto the sidewalk, not seeing the red car that zoomed into the parking lot, missing her by inches.
“Careful,” Maeve said to the empty store. “Those red cars will get you every time. Ask your father when you see him in hell,” she said, because it was a red car that had taken her mother’s life.
She looked through the mail. Bills, flyers, magazines. And a postcard. She looked at the front; it was a photo of the White House. And on the back were three words.
I am sorry.
Margie Haggerty, it seemed, was heading south.
CHAPTER 54
That night, she followed Jimmy Moriarty from Buena del Sol to a rib place in town.
She got out of the car and walked across the parking lot, peering in the window and finding Moriarty sitting at the small bar in the front, drinking, oddly enough, a very pale glass of white wine. Sauvignon Blanc, if she had to guess.
She walked into the restaurant and was immediately accosted by the overzealous hostess, who she bypassed for a seat next to Jack’s old friend. He stared straight ahead, even though he knew she was there.
“I bet your father never told you that he once saved my life,” he said, taking a dainty sip of his wine. He motioned to the bartender to bring Maeve one, too. She settled onto a stool and stashed her bag at her feet.
“Saved your life? How, Jimmy? I didn’t even know you knew each other before Buena del Sol. My father never mentioned that. You never mentioned it.”
“He didn’t remember sometimes. Sometimes he did.”
“And you?” she asked.
“I guess it never came up, huh, Maeve?” he said. “How often have we really seen each other?”
Not a lot. But it was something that he should have told, she should have known. “So, how did he save your life?” she asked.
“Chasing a perp. It was bad in those days, back in the seventies. Streets were horrible,” he said, his eyes not on her but looking down the barrel of the past. “Your father and I were together only once, on this thing. Didn’t see him again until I moved into Buena del Sol.”
She thanked the bartender for her wine, pushing the menu she was offered to the side.
“Perp had just sold a big bag of dope to an undercover but that guy couldn’t reveal himself so we went in after him. Up eight flights of stairs. He made us on the fourth flight, I think.” He looked over at Maeve. “You should look at the menu. The fried pickles…”
“I know,” she said, holding up her hand. “They’re delicious. And fattening.”
He smiled. “Eat the fried pickles, Maeve. You’ve only got one life to live.”
She wanted him to go back to the story. It took another glass of wine to get him started again. “We ended up on the eighth floor and the guy went out the door but I didn’t see which one, so I ran the length of the hall and to the door at the far end when your father screamed my name.”
Maeve had never heard this story so she didn’t know how it ended or any of the intervening details.
“The door was to the fire escape. It was pitch black out. Someone had removed the floor grates so that anyone who ran out there would just fall through, all eight flights.” He went back to looking straight ahead. “If your father hadn’t called my name, I would have run out there, gone through the floor, broken every bone in my body. Probably would have died.”
“How did he know?” Maeve asked. “That there was no floor?”
He turned back to her; she could see it in his eyes that all these years later, the entire story, though true, mystified him. “I don’t know. And neither did he. He said he never even remembered calling my name.”
She tilted her head; had she heard him right? “Well, that’s impossible, Jimmy.”
“I’m just telling you what happened.”
It was another Jack story, burnished gold and only partially true through years of the embellishment of retelling.
“I was there, Maeve. It happened to me.”
“So, Jack had ESP? What?” she asked. She was not really a believer when it came to things unexplained. There was always an explanation, always a reason.
“He said your mother told him,” he said. “And she had been dead over a year at that point.”
She had to bite her lip so that she wouldn’t laugh. The guy was so intent on telling her this remarkable story, a story that he believed with all of his heart, that she couldn’t disrespect it and him. Jesus, Jimmy. Do you really expect me to believe that? she thought but didn’t ask.
“I don’t expect you to believe me, Maeve,” he said, seeming to read her mind.
“Why are you telling me this now?” she asked.
He chose his words carefully. “I just wanted you to know why I loved your dad like a brother.”
They sipped their wine without talking, her rumbling stomach breaking the silence. She ordered a plate of ribs and some fried pickles. When it came, she pushed the plate toward him. “Here. I can’t eat all of this.”
“Sure you can,” he said even as he helped himself to a rib and a pickle, putting them on the small plate the server had given them for sharing.
If she closed her eyes and imagined a time long ago, it was almost like sitting with Jack. But then, she’d open her eyes and see that she was just with another sad old guy who longed for his younger days, when he was on his own, when danger was a daily part of his life, and when he didn’t have to answer to anyone at an assisted-living facility that sometimes treated its residents like children.
She noticed that even though they talked the entire time they ate, he never asked once about her sister, if she had found her. She found that strange and unsettling.
“Are you my sister’s guardian, Jimmy?” she asked. It was worth a try. If Evelyn was alive, she had a guardian; she couldn’t think of anyone Jack trusted more than Jimmy Moriarty.
“No, Maeve,” he said sadly. “I do not have guardianship of anyone.” He chuckled, to break the mood, relieve her of the pained look on her face. “I can barely take care of myself! Just ask Charlene Harrison.”
She grabbed his arm, held on tight. “Jimmy, please. I’ve got nothing here, no one left besides my daughters.”
“And they should be enough, Maeve.” It was an admonishment, one she didn’t take kindly to. “Take care of them. Love them. They’ll be big soon and they’ll go away.”
“And that’s why I need my sister.”
“I don’t know anything about a sister
, Maeve,” he said, but he couldn’t look at her when he said it. He let out a rattling cough, one that seemed to start in his toes. Maeve asked the bartender for some water. She put her hand on his back to steady him. She had pushed him far enough.
“That’s some cough, Jimmy.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Seeing the doctor tomorrow.”
“Let me know what he says.” She traced her finger around the bottom of her glass. “Did you give me that photo album, Jimmy?”
He considered his answer for a long time. “Yes, Maeve. I gave you that photo album.”
“Thank you.” She felt a sadness come over her, thinking that if she didn’t get answers from him now, she might never. “She’d be in her fifties now. I wonder if she’s short, like me.” She went in for the kill. “I wonder if she’s happy.” I wonder if she’s alive, she thought, but left that out.
His face gave nothing away.
She got up, threw some money on the bar for the drinks and their shared dinner and leaned in, giving him a hug. He smelled like Jack. He talked like Jack. He dressed like Jack. But he wasn’t Jack and as hard as she tried to imagine that he was, she knew the truth.
He knew the truth as well, but it was a different truth.
She walked to the car, her purse weighted down by the gun, and allowed herself just one little sob before she got in and drove home.
CHAPTER 55
Cal showed up shortly after she got home with a lockset for the powder room door. It wasn’t a moment too soon: Heather had been locked in there that morning and had almost broken her leg—according to her—jumping out the window over the toilet.
Maeve was still waiting to hear from Detective Fahnestock about the identity of the bones that had been found, if they had belonged to a female. The waiting was killing her. No amount of affection or comfort from Chris Larsson could take away the knot in her stomach, the pain in her heart.
Cal was fiddling with the lockset and the girls were now at Mickey’s. After a prolonged protest about the lack of food in the house, Maeve had sent them to Mickey’s with fifty dollars and a promise that they would bring her the change. It was walking distance; she had seen Rebecca’s driving skills first hand and had not been impressed.
Lies That Bind (Maeve Conlon Novels Book 2) Page 25