The Lies You Told

by Emerald O'Brien

  “Let’s start at the prison, then. I’ll be out by five.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Madigan and Grace arrived at the prison as the sun dipped below the horizon. The cold concrete halls carried the echoes of their footsteps to the front desk where Grace took out her badge and asked for Tommy Leman’s records.

  “Just a sec,” the officer said.

  Madigan pulled her aside. “You know they could find out about you looking into this case.”

  They might.

  “If they do, and I get another warning from Sergeant Colette or Shelling, so be it,” Grace whispered.

  Madigan nodded. “You sure?”

  She always has my back.

  “Finding Tina is more important. I told you, I’m not compromising my ethics anymore to try to get back in Colette’s good graces.” She pulled Madigan back to the desk as the guard checked a clipboard and set it beside his computer monitor.

  If Colette finds out, I’ll own up to my involvement and get my own Staff Inspector involved. Not ideal, but he’s the one I’d take orders from—not Colette.

  “Thank you for your help, Officer Turner.” Grace nodded.

  “Call me Kip,” he said. “And this ain’t no thing. A detective was already in here, asking for the info. Wasn’t hard to find. Alright, Thomas Leman was here for twenty-two years and one month. During that time, he’s had…” He typed something and waited. “One-hundred and ninety-eight visits, by…two people.”

  He tilted the screen toward them. “Jared Leman, the brother. Current age of forty-three. His visits were pretty scattered, but he never went longer than a month without seeing Tommy.”

  Finding out your brother is a murderer could have been enough to drive them apart, but he kept in contact with him.

  A driver’s license picture of Jared Leman popped up on the screen. Jared had a thick head of brown hair with some gray, unlike Tommy’s shaved head Grace remembered from the news articles, but she saw the similarities in build. Even in their faces.

  Not the eyes… Tommy’s are a piercing green and Jared’s hazel.

  “They look a lot alike, don’t they?” Kip asked.

  Madigan leaned over, examining the screen.

  “He works construction,” Kip said. “The detective let me know that’s what Tommy’s doing now, workin’ with his brother while he’s on parole.”

  “And the other visitor?” Grace asked.

  He turned the screen back toward him and clicked the mouse a few times. “Amanda Post. No relation to Leman. Current age of forty-one. Her first visit was when Leman had about seven months left to go, and her visits were sporadic. Several times in one week and then not again for another. She visited a total of twenty-six times; the last was two weeks ago.”

  “Right around his parole hearing,” Grace muttered as Kip turned the screen toward them.

  “Whoa.” Madigan leaned back as Grace leaned in and studied a slightly younger-looking Tina Morelli.

  She could pass for Tina.

  “It’s the woman in the video. The one who used Tina’s credit card.” Grace took a step back from the counter. “The detective was in to see this, specifically regarding Tina Morelli?”

  Kip nodded. “I showed him the same thing. Ain’t you workin’ on the same case? I didn’t think anyone would be back here.”

  “Why?” Grace asked.

  “He literally said he had everything he needed and that I was a big help.”

  Grace tapped the counter. “That you are. Thanks for the help, Kip.”

  Kip nodded back before Grace led Madigan back down the cold hall then outside to the dark parking lot.

  “This is crazy,” Madigan said. “Leman’s girlfriend looks a lot like Tina. That can’t be a coincidence. Do you think he has a thing for Tina, and that’s why? She’s his type or something?”

  Or he started talking to Amanda with a plan to exact revenge against Tina. Take her and have Amanda pose as her, throwing police off their trail…

  Grace marched faster to the car.

  “Hey, where are we going?” Madigan asked.

  “I think Tommy Leman has been plotting his revenge against Tina for at least seven months now. Ever since he was in contact with Amanda Post, which could be much longer than we know by other means of communication. I think he wants to punish Tina and get her back for catching him and sending him to prison.”

  “You think he picked her because she looks like Tina so she could pretend to be Tina?”

  “Yes. No.” Grace turned the key in the ignition and leaned back in her seat as the car purred to life. “I’m still figuring this whole thing out in my head, but I want to know what Shawna knows. Tina might never have been in South Bend. Just her car and this Amanda woman. Jared Leman lives in South Bend, and it says that’s where Tommy is staying, with him.”

  “So he, what, took Tina and then had Amanda pretend to be her so it looked like she ran away?” Madigan asked. “But the police know about Amanda now, so they’ve questioned her, right?”

  “Maybe, or they might be trying to find out more first.” As they pulled out of the lot, Grace turned right.

  “Hey, I thought we were going to Amherst to see Shawna?”

  “We have one stop to make first. Amanda Post lives right here in Tall Pines.”

  “You memorized her address?” Madigan asked. “Nice one!”

  Hers and Jared Leman’s. But that’s for another time if things don’t go as planned.

  “She’s involved in this.” Grace tightened her grip on the wheel. “We know that now. If she knows where Tina is, we need to know too.”

  They pulled over to the curb down the street from a small row of bungalows on an adjacent, quiet side street. Grace parked the car and got out, striding to her trunk as Madigan followed.

  They probably have someone watching Amanda’s house right now. There, that car down the other street.

  She pulled out a case and grabbed one of the small bug devices.

  “We’re going to track her. That’s her car. House number seven.” Grace nodded to the old car in the driveway three houses ahead. “Plates match.”

  “You come prepared.”

  “I have a few tricks up my sleeve, and I rarely get to use them.” She closed the trunk and handed Madigan the bug. “They have a car on her, watching right now. Don’t look. It’s down the other end of her street, along the curve there, parked behind the truck. I need you to take out some paper and go door to door, starting on this end, all the way to the seventh house, and pretend you’re selling something. They can’t know what you’re doing, but on the way to Amanda’s door, while you’re on this side of her car, you’re going to plant the GPS under her car on a flat piece of metal.”

  Madigan’s eyes opened wide as she tucked the bug in her pocket and nodded. “Okay. I can do this.”

  She went back to her side of the car and took out her bag, flinging it over her shoulder and digging out the notebook she used while pretending to be a reporter.

  “Keep it short and simple. You’re selling insurance, and your rates are astronomical, got it? Everyone already has it, and nobody will keep you talking long.”

  Madigan nodded. “Got it.”

  “When you get to Amanda, tell her the same thing, and if she says no, ask if she has any plans of moving and that you sell insurance for that too. I have a feeling if she’s willing to go to all this trouble with or for Leman, she’ll want to be with him soon. He’s on parole and has to live with his brother for now.”

  “What if he’s here? Tommy.”

  He could be. No lights on in the home though.

  “It’s just her car in the driveway. If he answers the door, you keep your distance and give the insurance spiel. I’ll be right here in case, but you’ll be fine. Are you okay with this? I would, but I don’t want to be recognized.”

  “I’m good. I can do this.”

  “I know you can.”

  I’ll just bend down a bit, pretend I’m ty
ing my shoe out of sight of the unmarked car watching Amanda’s, and boom. Planted.

  Despite the pep-talk, her pulse raced as she strode up to the first house with no car in the driveway and all the lights off but rang the bell anyway.

  No one home. Move on.

  She stepped up to the next house with two cars in the driveway and knocked on the door. A man in a housecoat answered, opening it just enough to show his full face. “Hello?”

  “Hi there, my name’s Christine, and I’m with Full Life Insurance. I’m wondering if you have a minute to talk about your current coverage, and if you’d—”

  “Not interested,” the man said, shaking his head and closing the door in her face.

  Okay, this is it. Walk slowly.

  She walked back down the driveway and up beside Amanda Post’s car. She wanted to do a quick check to see if she was being watched by the car down the road, but she held back and bent down near the front of the car, reaching into her pocket, and grabbing the GPS tracker. She turned it over, pressing it against a flat surface beneath the car.

  A clamor from the house next door made her jump. Another crashing sound came from behind as she let go of the GPS and reached for her boot laces, glancing over her shoulder as the man next door in the housecoat took his garbage bag from the can and gave her a funny look as he passed her, taking it to the curb.

  Madigan felt around beneath the car, and the bug remained where she placed it.

  Done.

  She stood, straightening her shirt as she approached the front door and knocked.

  “She’s not there,” the neighbour called. “Don’t waste your time.”

  “The car’s here,” Madigan said, stepping backward until she stood face to face with him. The man shrugged and kept walking. “Hey, are you sure?”

  “She hasn’t been here in days,” he said and pointed to her car. “That thing doesn’t even work.”

  Great.

  “Oh, okay, thanks.” She sauntered down the driveway. “Hey, do you know when she’ll be back?”

  “Probably out with some guy. Least she’s not here with whoever the flavor of the month is.” He shook his head and opened his front door. “Never know when Mandy’ll be around, and she wouldn’t go for insurance. Definitely not car insurance.”

  He laughed as he closed the door behind him. She did as Grace told her to, continuing down the row of houses, and walked back to Grace’s car afterwards, her shoulders hung in defeat.

  “She’s not home, and her car doesn’t even run,” she huffed as she dropped into her seat. “Ugh, I should have brought the bug back.”

  “Was that what that neighbour told you?”

  “Yeah, and she hasn’t been home for days. He said he never knows when she’ll be around. She’s always with some new guy, he said, ‘flavor of the month.’”

  Grace nodded. “It explains why she was walking around South Bend. No car. She’s probably staying with the Leman’s.”

  “Do you think Tina’s there, too?”

  Grace started the car. “Tommy and Amanda had to know using Tina’s credit card in South Bend would cause more than just suspicion. That it would ring so many alarm bells that cops would be crawling all over there, and they did. They found her car taken apart. They might have searched the Leman property, but if they found anything, we’d know about it by now. This is why we need to talk to Shawna. They might have updated her about Tommy, and we could really use the information.”

  “Yeah,” Madigan muttered. “Or we could just go to South Bend ourselves.”

  Grace shook her head and turned back down the street the way they came. “No. We can’t. If they’re watching Amanda’s house, they’re watching the Leman’s place, too.”

  “Shouldn’t we get the bug?”

  “No. If she gets her car fixed, we’ll know where she is. If she doesn’t, I’ll go back for it later.”

  As they drove toward the city, Madigan tried to keep the image of Tina Morelli tied up somewhere on a property in South Bend out of her head, and the thoughts mixed with Angela Cole, the friend she went to South Bend to find. On that hunt she learned justice came in many forms, and as rough as the town was to outsiders, they weren’t very kind to their own either.

  If she’s there, she’s in trouble…if she’s not already dead.

  She shook the thought away and turned the volume on the radio up until they reached The Amherst Suites, parking on the street.

  “I hate being in the city after dark,” Madigan mumbled before getting out of the car, the cool evening wind whipping against her face.

  “Hey.” Grace linked arms with her before they crossed the street. “Since everything happened with the attack and John’s associates, you’ve gotten stronger. You can defend yourself now, and you’ve proven that even at night in this city, you can handle yourself.”

  “It’s just so hard not to think about Tina.” Madigan tucked her hair away from her face behind her ear, and Grace turned to her as they approached the front doors. “What could be happening to her… I’m sure it’s all Shawna’s thinking about.”

  “I know it’s easy to find your thoughts wandering that way, but if you’re going to be working a case, you need to focus on the things that will help the victim or the person you work for. The worry won’t help, and at times, it can even cloud your vision of what is right in front of you.”

  As they rode the elevator up to Shawna’s floor, Grace checked her phone. “We’ve really gotta be careful with Shawna…” She pursed her lips as the doors opened and they passed a couple getting on.

  Which Shawna are we going to get? Angry? Paranoid? Suspiciously calm?

  Madigan followed Grace down the hall and knocked on Shawna’s door.

  The door flung open, and Shawna held it, waving them in. “I’m glad you’re here. I just… I still can’t trust him.”

  “Who?” Grace asked as they followed her inside.

  She waved to the desk and sat on the end of her bed. “Rhett. He was here this morning.”

  Grace walked around the desk and sat behind it as Madigan sat right on it.

  “Tommy Leman.” Shawna grabbed her phone. “Everything is pointing to him.” She tapped on her phone and held it out to show them the voice recording app before pressing play.

  Madigan recognized the voice right away as Shawna’s.

  “…you took her out to the backyard and yelled at her! I followed you out, and I heard everything, but I didn’t confront you then and there because I didn’t want to cause a scene on her birthday like you did!”

  “You don’t understand.”

  That’s Rhett, I think.

  “I understand you dragged my mom away from the rest of us and yelled—”

  “Shawna, I thought she was cheating on me!”

  “What?” Shawna scoffed.

  “I didn’t want to get you involved in any of this, but it will clear up some things—”

  Grace and Madigan exchanged a look.

  Does he know she was seeing her ex-husband?

  “Your mom’s been off for a while now—at least a month. At first, I thought it was lack of sleep. Then, I was sure she was overworking herself. We’d fight about it, but she insisted she was fine. I didn’t believe her, so I checked up on her, and…she wasn’t at work like she said she was.”

  “You were spying on her!”

  “Please, just let me finish.” He cleared his throat. “I—I thought maybe she was cheating on me, and then, you know how your mom talks in her sleep sometimes? Well, she does, and she was saying a man’s name. This happened over and over, so the day of the party, she kept checking her phone, and I’d…”

  He sighed, and a muffled sound followed. “I’d put so much work into the party so she’d have a great time, and I knew she’d been lying to me, so I had to confront her. I know it wasn’t the right time, but I needed the truth because our relationship felt like a sham, and I was sure everybody knew but me. I know. It was stupid. I confronted her abo
ut it, and she told me work was getting to her more than she cared to let on. We disagree sometimes about how personal she makes and takes things because it drains her.”

  I guess we have that in common.

  “So what did you say? Did you ask her?”

  “She cried a bit, and you know she never cries, so it just kinda shook me back into the moment and reminded me how much I care about her. I love your mom, and whether you believe it or not, I’ve never hurt her. I couldn’t even confront her about the man she talked about in her sleep because I convinced myself she wouldn’t cheat on me. That she was telling the truth. Her job had gotten too stressful. I—I let it go, but it’s why I didn’t tell the department about her disappearance sooner. At first I thought she was at work, but then I found out she wasn’t, so I thought she was with the guy, whoever he was… But it all makes sense now, and this is my fault.”

  “How?”

  “She started talking about this man in her sleep. After the new suspect, Thomas Leman, was brought to our attention, I was informed he had a parole hearing about two weeks ago and that Tina went. The name she said in her sleep was Tommy. She must have been having nightmares about him. It explains why she wasn’t at work. She was at his parole hearing. She was probably upset after that, but she didn’t tell me because she knows how I feel about making work personal, or maybe she didn’t want to worry me. I don’t know, and now…”

  “What would he do to her?” Shawna asked in a small voice.

  “Shawna, we can’t know that, but know I’m so sorry for not starting this search sooner, and the guilt I’ve felt… I just had to tell you everything and apologize. I know I can seem—”

  Shawna tapped the screen to pause the recording and stared down at the phone. “Do you believe him?”

  “It makes sense,” Madigan said. “But he and your mom are the only ones who know if it’s true.”