The girls sat on one side of the kitchen table while Maeve stood. She needed to be ready to lunge at them if the spirit so moved her, knowing that what she was going to hear was going to make her very, very angry. There was no doubt in her mind.
Heather spilled it all at once. “Well, you know Tommy? Well, he had some stuff that he wanted to hide so I said we could hide it at the store and we put it in the flour but then when we went back it wasn’t there.” She looked down at the table. “Because you threw it out.”
“Threw what out?” Maeve said.
“The stuff.”
“What stuff?”
Rebecca filled in the blank. “The weed.”
“It was in the flour,” Heather said.
Maeve held on to the counter for support, her thoughts of lunging at both of them, of throttling them, gone. Weed. Pot. Marijuana. In her store. In her flour. She remembered the day well when she had accused Jo of not putting the top on the flour bin, but it had been Heather.
“Why?” was all she could get out.
“He couldn’t keep it at home,” Heather explained, as if this was an idea that should have crossed her mother’s mind.
“So you put it in my store.”
“It was his brother’s,” Heather said, the whole story coming out. “Tommy didn’t want him to be dealing again, so he stole it and asked me to keep it somewhere safe.”
Maeve put her head down. It was all too much.
“And we were coming back to get it. But you threw it out. And he had to pay for it. The stuff.”
“If that’s a hint of accusation I hear in your voice, Heather, I’m going to lose it.” Her mind raced. “How tightly was that package wrapped?” she asked, her mind going through all of the possibilities. How Joan Weisman may have gotten a carrot cake with a dollop of weed in the center. How the DPW guys may have eaten marijuana-tainted scones. How everything she had made from that bin of flour may have included something the customers hadn’t wanted.
How, if discovered, she was going to jail for the one thing she had had no hand in.
Heather tried to calm her. “It was wrapped really tight. It was in several layers of plastic, wrapped in tinfoil.”
Maeve would have to take her word for it. So far, she hadn’t heard of any hallucinogenic episodes around town after someone had shopped at The Comfort Zone. That kind of salacious news would have ended up in the blotter for sure. Maeve looked at Rebecca. “And the money?”
“She had to pay Tommy back because he had to pay … um, his brother’s dealer … back,” Rebecca said, her broad shoulders slumping in a way that suggested that she was happy that this was all out in the open and that her having to come up with a life—that of a baller who treated her friends to weekends in the city—that didn’t suit her to cover her sister’s misguided tracks, was a thing of the past. She let out a shaky, sobbed-filled sigh.
“Who’s the dealer?” Maeve asked. When it was clear that both girls knew but didn’t want to say, she asked again. “Who. Is. The. Dealer?”
“Some guy,” Heather said. “I don’t know.”
“Is it Mr. DuClos?” she asked.
Heather shook her head. “Someone else. From Prideville.”
“Is he the person that broke in?” she asked.
Heather’s bottom lip was shaking so hard that Maeve was amazed she could speak. “Probably.” She let out a pained sob. “I came back to get the stuff but it was gone. Tommy told them that it was gone from the bakery but they didn’t believe him. So I had to help him get money. He owed them for that with interest.”
“The Brantleys are one of the wealthiest families in town,” Maeve said. “I think if you had thought this through just a little further, you could have come up with a better plan.” She put her face in her hands, anything so that she didn’t have to look at them. “The finger? And how did they get into my store?”
Rebecca paled a bit but answered for her sister. “Tommy’s. I’m guessing it was a warning? To Heather?”
“Thank you, Nancy Drew,” Maeve said. “How did they get into my store?” Her emotions went from sheer terror to white-hot anger and then back again. Sitting in front of her, her girls didn’t seem to realize just how much danger they had put everyone in.
Heather took a deep breath before answering; that’s how Maeve knew it was going to be a humdinger of an answer. “Tommy knew the code.”
Before her mother could react, Rebecca took over the story and filled in the blanks. “Heather cashed the check before I came back from school. When she told me, I told her I would give her the money. From my school accounts. To pay you back.”
Maeve did some quick math in her head. “I don’t think you had enough money,” she said to Rebecca. “Where did you get the total amount to repay me?” she asked.
The girls exchanged a look, not wanting to give up the one person they went great lengths to protect.
“Dad,” Maeve said. “So you took all of the money you had and made up the difference by getting money from Dad. How much?”
“Five hundred dollars,” Rebecca said.
“For what?” Maeve asked. “What did you tell him it was for?”
“Books. I told him it would be easier to use cash at the bookstore.”
Maeve paced the length of the kitchen, her mind awhirl. “Where’s Tommy now?” she asked. “Still at lacrosse camp?”
Heather shook her head. “He came back for a few days. I think he’s leaving again.”
“You think?” Maeve asked. She pointed at Rebecca. “Get in the car.” She looked at Heather. “You, too.”
Rebecca looked relieved and smiled at Heather.
“Oh, you’re not going back to school,” Maeve said. “You’re going to Dad’s.”
When they got there, she let them loose. “You’re on your own. And you’d better tell the whole story, and the whole truth. Because if you don’t, there’s no telling where this is going to go.” She didn’t want to go in for a number of reasons, the least of which being that Cal seemed terrified of her now after the night with Donner, more so than usual. Couldn’t say that she blamed him.
They trudged up the walk to the Tudor like they were going to the chair, and once they were inside, Maeve drove off.
Maeve didn’t know how it was going to end, but she didn’t want to be along for the ride. “Siblings know.” And apparently, protected each other. Here, this whole time, she had been thinking that they were ready to kill each other, when really, they had been negotiating and plotting and trying to figure out how to get Heather out of the mess she had gotten herself into.
She parked in front of the Brantleys’ house, throwing the car so furiously into “park” that she was afraid she had broken the gearshift. The idea of what had transpired, the anger being replaced by white-hot fear, made her light-headed. It all made sense now, why Heather had stopped going out only to start again once her sister had come home, and ostensibly had settled the debt for Tommy, why she was in the store that day, a spoon in her hand covered with flour, the realization that Maeve had inadvertently disposed of precious goods probably making her tremble with fear. Maeve had spent her life keeping her girls far from danger, yet they insisted on finding danger, and the thought that she wouldn’t be able to protect them forever made her feel more than impotent.
It made her feel weak. Useless.
She had lived through years of abuse and her only wish was that she could raise happy girls who had nary a care in the world. But, Jack was saying to her, his voice drifting through her mind, people make their own choices. Screw up. Do the wrong thing.
That’s life, he would have said.
He wasn’t that cavalier, but he liked to put on a good front.
She could never trust them. She’d need to be more vigilant. She’d need to pay better attention.
“This is hard, Dad,” she said in the cold confines of the little hybrid. “I wish you could help me.”
But when he didn’t answer, didn’t have an
ything else left to say to her, she went to the front door, still clad in Heather’s pink parka, and banged on the door, her fear and useless feeling being tamped down by the anger that had propelled her to come here. Tommy, looking like he had come straight from bed, answered the door. “I’ve got it!” he called behind him to the other residents of the house.
Tommy stood a little straighter when he saw her, either just because she was Heather’s mother and she was at his house or because of the look on her face, the one that told him she was going to do the talking and when they were done, he wasn’t going to do anything but nod in agreement. The screen door, him on one side, her on the other, afforded him some protection, but with the way she was feeling, it may not have been enough.
“Welcome back from lacrosse camp,” Maeve said.
She wondered if he had the same look on his face when he told the dealer that his pot was gone.
“I’m going to say this once and you’re going to follow through. Got it, Tommy?” she said.
He nodded.
“Stay away from Heather. Don’t come to my house. Don’t talk to her. Don’t look at her. Don’t text her or Facebook her or send her a Snapchat or Instagram or whatever else you punks use to communicate.” She looked up the street. “I see you live in very close proximity to the police station.” It was on the next street, practically in his backyard. “Keep that in mind as I watch every move you make, and chronicle every last detail of your life.”
He tried to look dissolute, uninterested, but that was hard to pull off what with his left eyelid doing the salsa. Behind him, Maeve spied several suitcases, all lined up, waiting to go on a journey. With Tommy, hopefully.
“Nod so I know that you know what I’m saying here, Tommy,” she said.
He nodded.
“What is it you kids say? ‘I’m not playing’?”
He nodded again.
“Not only am I not playing, my hand is on speed dial to 911 so that if I see you within five feet of my daughter, I will call the cops and tell them that you stole three thousand dollars from me.”
It all came together for him, in that instant. Heather’s mother knew everything and no, she was not playing. She decided to go for broke. “Did you hit me over the head, Tommy, or was that some two-bit dealer who you owed money to?”
“I’m going away to school,” he said, and the way his face caved in at the mention of the breakin, the assault, Maeve knew that it hadn’t been him. “Tell Heather bye,” he said.
She looked down the street in the direction of the police station and wondered what she should do. Go to Chris Larsson, dragging this kid by the hair, and making him tell everything he had done, compromising her own daughter’s future?
He lifted his hand, the one with four fingers, and closed the front door.
And in that action, seeing his missing digit, Maeve let it go.
Maeve walked away from the house, the sudden urge to pee overtaking any other feeling she had in her body.
But it didn’t seem like good form to ask Tommy Brantley, a kid whose life she had just threatened, if she could use his restroom.
CHAPTER 57
“You can take me, right?” Jo said, pulling her apron off and hanging it on the hook by the kitchen door.
Maeve was sure that they had had a conversation about where she was supposed to take Jo, but the day had been a blur and whatever it was, wherever it had been, was gone from her mind. It was two weeks after Michael Donner had invaded her personal space, her home, and had been carted away by the police. Jo had drunk in every juicy detail, Maeve leaving out the really juicy ones like the fact that she really had a gun in her pocket, not a travel curling iron. And that she had stopped short of slicing his throat open, not wanting Cal to be the witness to her depravity.
The day after it happened, Maeve asked Chris when he stopped in for his daily muffin if he had asked Michael Donner about Francine Alderson. Copping to that murder, he told Maeve, would have taken things to a whole new level. Donner denied any knowledge. “Nothing,” he had said.
She remained convinced that it was Donner and him alone who had killed her friend, leaving her to die in the parking lot of the YMCA. He had been there that night. He had heard the conversations among the support group members, their recitations of the things they had done to find their relatives. He knew her name because Regina Hartwell had told him; she was sure of that. She asked Chris to find out what had happened to Winston and he obliged, giving her a little information confidentially.
“All I can tell you is that he’s happy and safe,” he said. “I can’t tell you more than that. I don’t really know a heck of a lot more, but just know that that’s what I was told.”
It wasn’t enough, but it would have to be.
He started laughing, his mind on something else. He pulled the paper off his muffin, talk of death and dying not affecting his appetite at all. “You’re going to see this in The Day Timer, so I can tell you, but a few weeks back, we got an anonymous tip from someone to go to your landlord’s house.”
Maeve tried to act nonchalant, something she was getting better and better at doing. “Really?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Lots of traffic at the house but we didn’t find anything, had no just cause. But someone else came forth, not sure if it’s the same person, and said that he was dealing.”
She had been right.
“Want to know what?” he said, even though she thought the answer was obvious. She looked at him, waiting for the answer. “Medical marijuana.”
“Really?” she said. “Isn’t it legal? And I thought people who smoked pot were mellow.”
Chris laughed louder. “I know! Not the people who grow it, though. It’s still a cutthroat community because when it comes down to it, pot is pot. Lots of money to be made. He was growing pot in the basement.” He grabbed a cookie from the sheet she had just taken out of the oven. “And tomatoes.”
The tomato he had given her the month before had been quite delicious. Maeve put her arms around Chris’s waist and looked up at him. “I’m not going to tell you how I know or why, but just keep an eye on Billy Brantley. He may not be as on the straight and narrow as you think.” She left out the part about the finger’s owner. When he opened his mouth to speak, she put her finger to his lips. “Not another word.”
And that was where they left it, a kiss cutting off any further questions he might have had for her.
“Maeve?” Jo said, interrupting Maeve’s daydream, taking some spray and cleaning the fronts of each cake case. “Café Americano?”
“Right,” Maeve said, standing in front of the refrigerated case in the front of the store and taking a quick inventory of the beverages. “What do you need?”
“They got written up in ‘Best of Westchester’ for their hot chocolate. It sounds delicious. And I need it,” she said, indicating that this was yet another item on the list of things that she craved incessantly and couldn’t live without.
Maeve would be very happy when this baby was born, if only to end the cravings. Earlier today, it had been pizza. And now, hot chocolate. Who knew what tomorrow would bring? Chorizo had been replaced by capers and capers by tabouleh. Maeve wondered what was in this magical hot chocolate, but Doug had the car, the beautiful Ford Taurus, and Jo was without “wheels,” as she called them. She had stopped riding her bike months ago and obviously couldn’t ride all the way to Rye anyway, pregnant, in the snow.
Maeve, as was often the case, was “it.”
Maeve hated driving across the county and avoided it like the plague. There was always traffic on 287. Sometimes, it was bumper to bumper. But Jo was the closest person she had to a sibling and likely always would be, and because of that, Maeve would have driven to Canada to get her what she wanted.
That, and Maeve could be guilted into doing just about everything. She blamed Catholic school.
On the ride over, Jo kept up a constant monologue, remarking on everything from the construction on 9A to the
new entrance to the Taconic and how the lines overhead made the AM station that Maeve listened to for weather and traffic reports crackle with static. Did Maeve want to see the new Johnny Depp movie? Did she prefer the popcorn at the Hawthorne theater or at the Palisades Center? How come movie prices were so high anyway? How long did it take for a baby’s umbilical cord to come off? And did you know that you could get practically new Dockers at Goodwill for like two bucks? Maeve had learned over the years that her participation in the conversation wasn’t really necessary; she just needed to be there, to be the sponge that absorbed all of Jo’s musings, from the mundane to the profound.
She knew her role. She was happy in it.
Maeve slowed as she approached the store, finding a parking spot on the street, rummaging around in the little holder in the car for a couple of quarters to feed the meter. She watched the café’s clientele streaming in and out of the upscale coffee shop, feeling bedraggled in her baggy jeans and clogs, her shirt that smelled suspiciously of sour milk and some other unidentifiable odor. She wished she could be like one of those women she waited on at the store, or the women who seemed to frequent Café Americano, women who had disposable income, who didn’t work, who vacationed with their friends because they needed a “break,” from what Maeve wasn’t sure. Yoga? Spinning? Pilates? Who knew? Instead, she was this woman, a woman with a friend who talked all the time and who sometimes felt as if she were still waiting for her life to start, even if she did have a successful business, a handsome guy to share a bottle of wine with, girls who were trying so hard to make her proud again.
A woman who had given up, just a little bit.
Maeve spied an area where she could sit and relax while Jo got this incredibly special hot chocolate. She asked if she could wait while Jo waited in line. “I’ll be right here,” she said, pointing to the surprisingly large seating area. Maybe Jo was right and this was the place to be.
Lies That Bind (Maeve Conlon Novels Book 2) Page 27