A Neighbor's Lie

by Blake Pierce

  She’d forgotten all about her meeting with Steven until her phone dinged at her with a calendar notification the following day. The meeting was in two hours and the note of Choose A Place on her calendar made her realize that she had never texted Steven back to tell him where to meet her. Badly in need of a drink, she chose a bar about half a mile away, a place with a reputation for amazing burgers and daily drink specials. She texted the location and a time to meet—12:30—feeling like she was poking at a beehive.

  She got ready in a hurry, honestly not giving a damn what she looked like. As she headed out, she thought about what Danielle had said yesterday about leaving the past behind them. It was difficult to do with her father but she was looking forward to the day when she could put all of this Steven nonsense behind her.

  It was a notion that seemed to grow stronger when she saw him sitting at one of the high-rise tables at the back of the bar. His boyish smile and the squared angle of his shoulders, the aren’t-I-a-good-boy look on his face—God, how had she ever convinced herself that marrying him would be a good idea?

  And then she saw who was sitting beside him. Part of her wanted to scream. The other part of her wanted to turn around and walk back out.

  It was his mother.

  Sally Brennan sat on the other side of the table like a statue someone had gotten tired of lugging around. She sat prim and proper, her nose turned up at just the right angle as Chloe walked toward them.

  Chloe took one of the high-backed chairs at the table and decided in an instant that she wasn’t going to fake this. She was not going to pretend to be polite. It was bad enough that he had somehow swindled her into meeting with him, but he’d even brought his mother along.

  “I wasn’t aware we were going to have company,” Chloe said.

  “It’s nice to see you, too,” Sally said.

  Chloe ignored her completely. It was the sort of thing she had never had the courage to do when she and Steven had been engaged. But now Chloe found that she wanted to piss this woman off.

  “Thanks for coming,” Steven said. “Can we keep things civil, please?”

  “Yes. What can I do for you, Steven? Why did you want to meet?”

  “Closure.”

  “What kind of closure? I gave you back the ring.”

  “No…that’s not what I mean. Not closure to the relationship. I mean closure towards us.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “Maybe closure isn’t the right word. I feel like maybe we just gave up too quickly,” he said. “I think with some time and conversation, we can work things out.”

  Chloe had to bite back a laugh. And once she had it down, she started to wonder if Steven and his bitch of a mother were playing some cruel joke on her. But no…from what she could tell, Steven was being serious.

  “Did it ever occur to you—to either one of you—that I don’t want to work things out? Did either of you ever even consider that maybe I was relieved when things fell apart?”

  “Are you serious?” Sally said. “Steven was the best thing that ever happened to you or your family.”

  Chloe slowly turned to Sally and smiled politely. “As of earlier this week, I’m a federal agent with the United States government. If it weren’t for that, I’d slap you right across your Botox-laced face. Kindly shut up and let your son handle his own conversations.”

  Sally’s eyes grew wide and she leaned back in her chair. Steven, meanwhile, hunkered down. “Don’t talk to my mother like that.”

  “Well, maybe you shouldn’t bring her to situations like this, Steven. I know you well enough. I damn near married you. You’re a smart enough guy. Why did you bring her? Is she supposed to be your muscle?”

  “Chloe…what’s happened to you?” He asked it as if he was genuinely concerned about her.

  She thought about entertaining him with the story of what had happened to her and Rhodes. But she knew it would be useless. Steven and his mother would somehow try to twist that into a lesson about how her work was too dangerous and that she needed Steven in her life to protect her.

  “What happened to me is that I’m finally starting to live for myself. To live my own life. And I find it insulting and pretty fucking funny to think that you assumed I’d just nod and cry and welcome you back.”

  “But Chloe, you can’t—”

  “Was there anything else?” she snapped.

  “Chloe…”

  “Sorry you drove all the way out here,” she said. “But this conversation is not going to happen.” She then turned to look at Sally and said: “If you get on the road in the next hour or so, you can be back home before dark. Maybe tuck him in nice and tight and read him a bedtime story.”

  Sally opened her mouth to say something but no words came out. Chloe turned on her heel and left, feeling their stares on her back. She fully expected Steven to call after her in some masculine and demanding way, but he didn’t.

  Back out on the street, a smile came to Chloe’s face. She hadn’t expected it to feel so good to tell Sally Brennan off in such a way but the feeling that flushed through her was pretty close to a good orgasm. She quickly walked to the end of the street and retreated into a different bar. This one was a smaller sports bar, slowly starting to fill with the college football crowd. Chloe disappeared into the crowd, pulled herself up to the bar, and ordered a rum and Coke.

  She stayed there for quite a while, oblivious to the football games on the multiple screens around her. Instead, she did her best to think of why she had been so unable to detach herself from her father while Danielle had moved on rather easily.

  Around her third drink, she figured it shouldn’t be all that hard to step away from the past. And if she could make her separation from the memory of her father as enjoyable as she had her meeting with Steven and his mother, why couldn’t she leave her father in the past?

  Because even though you now know he didn’t kill her (though he did have a hand in the planning, no matter what he says), she thought, there are still unanswered questions. And by your nature, you can’t stand unanswered questions.

  She wasn’t sure if this was a positive character trait or a negative one. But in the thrum and bustle of the noisy crowd and with her fourth drink appearing like magic in front of her, she decided that it wasn’t worth the worry. The past was the past…and as long as she could keep her eyes on the future, that’s exactly where it would stay.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Chloe went back to work on Monday morning with a stunted kind of guilt—the feeling of returning to work after nursing a hangover for most of Sunday. She sat down behind her desk, placing the Wielding file back on her desk. She was setting up her workspace and about to check her email when she noticed the flashing red light on the landline phone at her desk. She’d only ever used this phone once and that was only to get accustomed to the voicemail system. It was no secret that about ninety-eight percent of all calls and messaging in the bureau were now done through cell phones. So the blinking red light struck her as very interesting.

  She dialed into the system, punched in her passcode, and found that she did indeed have one message. She smiled and felt a bit of warmth spread through her when she recognized the voice.

  “Hey, Fine. It’s Rhodes. I realized I didn’t have your cell number saved. I guess I wasn’t the best partner, huh? Didn’t even ask for your number. Anyway…it’s Sunday, around two in the afternoon. It’s the first time I’ve been coherent enough to pick up the phone. I wanted to say thank you and…I don’t know. Thank you doesn’t seem like enough. Let’s just say that when I get out of here, I’m taking you out to dinner and drinks and pretty much whatever the hell else you want. I hope this finds you well.”

  Near the end, there was a waver of emotion in Rhodes’s voice. It got to Chloe and she was glad when the message was over. She placed the receiver back on the cradle with a little click.

  “Everything okay?”

  She turned and saw Garcia approaching her cubicle. He was c
arrying a cup of coffee and looked far too chipper for eight in the morning on a Monday.

  “Yeah,” she said. “I had a message from Rhodes. Seems she’s doing well.”

  “That’s what I hear, too,” Garcia said. “So Johnson wants you in his office in about fifteen minutes. He’s going to reassign you with another partner and set you guys on figuring out who killed Kim Wielding. Because the more we discover about Dillinger, it appears less and less likely it was him.”

  “I figured. Are the Carvers back in their home?”

  “Yes, but they are also being very cooperative in regards to helping with the case. Between just the two of us, I think it’s going to end up being a simpler case that we’re thinking. It’s suburbia. Well-to-do families concerned with money and appearance. I guarantee you, sex or an affair or both is somehow at the center of the entire thing.”

  “I’d take that bet,” Chloe said.

  “Fifteen minutes,” Garcia said, pointing at her in a little gun motion. “Johnson’s office. Don’t forget.”

  She spent those next fifteen minutes clearing out her inbox and taking one final glance at the Wielding files to have it fresh in her mind while speaking with Johnson. She then made the walk to his office, wondering if it was normal for an agent this new to the game having been in her director’s office so many times in her first week on the job.

  She entered the waiting room just in time to see someone else walking into Johnson’s office. She looked to the receptionist and was waved inside. “Yes, it’s okay,” she told Chloe. “He’s expecting you.”

  Chloe walked in behind the other person. As she closed the door behind her, she realized that she recognized the person who had entered the office ahead of her. It was Kyle Moulton. He gave her a quick look of surprise that seemed to say: Funny meeting you here.

  Johnson gave them a quick nod of acknowledgment and then gestured to the two seats on the opposite side of his desk. “Good to see you both,” he said. “Please, have a seat.”

  Chloe did as she was asked, slowly starting to put the pieces of this all together. With her luck, Moulton would be her new partner—the agent that Garcia had told her was keeping up with the Wielding case.

  “I’ll keep this short and to the point,” Johnson said. “Agent Fine, this is Agent Kyle Moulton. Did you two ever cross paths during the academy?”

  “Only recently,” Moulton said.

  “Shortly after orientation,” Chloe said.

  “Good, good. Agent Fine, Agent Moulton has been working on the investigation into the murder of Kim Wielding. Based on your familiarity with the case, I’d like for the two of you to work together on this. And as I’ve said from the start, the sooner we can get it resolved, the better.”

  He said this with an air of conspiracy, as if he knew damned good and well that both Chloe and Moulton knew that there was only interest in this single murder because someone higher up the chain in DC wanted it looked into.

  “Is…is that it?” Moulton asked.

  “Yes. Agent Moulton, run this like you had originally planned. Are there any leads you’re after today?”

  “Yes, sir. I’ve got a possible lead at a Yacht Club right here in town. The Carvers were members, the father quite involved. But it was Kim that took the kids to the children’s programs. Phone records indicate she might have had a good friend that worked there.”

  Johnson nodded his approval and then gave a little clap. “Okay, great. Get us some answers and let’s get this over with. I think the two of you can work well together based on what I’ve seen so far.”

  “Thanks, sir,” Chloe said as she got to her feet.

  She made her way for the door with Moulton behind her. They passed awkwardly through the lobby and out into the hallway.

  “I heard about how you saved your partner,” Moulton said. “That was pretty badass.”

  “It was luck,” she said. “I was nervous as hell. Just thinking with my gut.”

  “Whatever it was, it makes me feel safe to know you’re with me now. For however long.”

  She recalled how she had felt a pang of jealousy when she had seen Moulton at the bar the other night, sitting with two women and leaving with one of them. Standing next to him, she still found him handsome and a little mysterious, but she was confused by his overall aloofness. He had a sort of goofy charm to him but the sort of stature that made it seem that he could ditch the goofiness without warning and become something else.

  “So we’re headed to a yacht club?” she asked as they came to the elevators.

  “Yeah. And if I’m being honest, I don’t know if it’s going to amount to much. But there are no leads at all on this thing.”

  “There has to be something,” Chloe said. “Something in her life led her to a scumbag like Mike Dillinger. There’s got to be a story there.”

  “Did you hear the latest on Dillinger?”

  “No.”

  “This morning, he was formally arrested for two counts of sex with a minor as well as sexual abuse and profiteering from it. Add shooting a federal agent and he’s going to be looking at about twenty-five years.”

  The elevator arrived and they stepped on. “Good,” Chloe said, though she almost wished Dillinger had killed Wielding. Not just because it would mean this case would be closed, but because the asshole deserved a life sentence as far as Chloe was concerned.

  “So, day one as my partner and you’re headed to a yacht club,” Moulton said. “Really, could you ask for anything better?”

  “Maybe being on a yacht?”

  “Yes, that would be better. With a margarita or two.” He smiled and then added, “Yes, I think we’re going to work together just fine.”

  She couldn’t help but smile. If she could get over this stupid little crush, she thought he was exactly right.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  They arrived at the Angler Head Yacht Club half an hour later. It was situated facing East Potomac Park. From the parking lot, they could see another yacht club, thrown up against the Potomac River the same way houses were built seemingly overnight in growing subdivisions. It was a pretty enough morning—seventy-three degrees and partly cloudy—but because of the early hour, the place was mostly empty.

  “So here’s what we know about Kim Wielding’s link to this place,” he said. “This is really the only public place she was ever seen with the Carver kids outside of the car rider line at their school. She has a friend that works at the restaurant and bar here, an older lady named Madeline Duplin. We know this because they have spoken on the phone at least three times and because Ms. Duplin had sent Kim a birthday card over the last two years.”

  “Have you spoken to her yet? Does she know we’re coming?”

  “I spoke with her last night on the phone. She asked that I not bother her after hours, as her husband is ill. But she was more than happy to see me here this morning.”

  Impressed with his ability to boil the facts down to just the basics, Chloe followed him across a large lawn that bordered the Potomac. A restaurant stretched out over the water, held up with enormous planks and steel struts that dived down into the water.

  They entered the restaurant and found only two tables occupied. “Thin breakfast crowd,” Moulton said.

  As they stood at the door behind the Please Wait To Be Seated sign, a woman came out of the kitchen area. She spotted them, smiled, and walked forward.

  “Agent Moulton, I assume?” she asked.

  “That’s me,” he said. “The suit gives it away, huh? Ms. Duplin, this is my partner, Agent Fine. She’d also familiar with Kim’s case.”

  “Good to meet you both,” she said. “I’ve brewed up a pot of coffee just for the three of us if you like.”

  “That would be great,” Chloe said.

  Madeline Duplin led them through the small restaurant, choosing a table at the back. As she had said, there was a carafe of coffee and three mugs, along with sugar packets and a creamer jar.

  As they sat down,
Madeline poured the coffee for them. “I’m still a little shocked that Kim is gone,” she said. “And I guess I should start off by saying that I didn’t know her all that well. But she was one of those people that seemed just…too perfect, you know?”

  “Her phone records show where you spoke with her a few times,” Moulton said. “Can you tell me what those calls were about?”

  “Sure, sure. I spoke with her twice because I was working behind the scenes, trying to get her on the waiting list for the little fishing tour we put on for the kids a few times a year. She forgot to sign up and felt awful. I spoke with her here a few times and told her I’d see what I could do. The third time was because she was helping to organize a fundraiser we had here last year.”

  “But you knew her well enough to send her a birthday card on two occasions?” Chloe asked.

  “Oh, I have a list of people about a hundred deep that I send birthday cards to. Mostly parents or nannies that bring their kids to the little events for kids that the club puts on. If you don’t mind my asking, how did you know about that?”

  “We found the cards in a folder of some Kim’s things at the Carver home,” Moulton said.

  “Speaking of which,” Chloe said, “did you ever see Kim with Bill and Sandra?”

  “I saw her out with Bill a few times. Bill helps out with fundraisers here and there as well.”

  “And how would you describe their interactions?”

  Madeline frowned as she started sipping from her coffee. “At first, I thought nothing of it. I thought it was healthy that a father would be so casual and friendly with the nanny of his children. But there was one time—at the banquet last Christmas—that it seemed almost weird to me.”

  “How so?” Moulton asked.

  “I happened to walk out of the main hall and saw them standing really closely off in a corner, like they were trying to sneak away from everyone for a while. They weren’t doing anything, mind you, but standing very close. There were also a few times that night that I caught small things: Bill placing his hand on the small of her back as he passed her, staring at her off and on. It was just off-putting.”