The Second Lie

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  Sam’s silence was compliance enough for me.

  “I called to ask a favor,” I said then, back to tapping my pen instead of chewing it. Sam and I had known each other since grade school. And we’d played basketball together for a year during high school before I quit to be a receptionist at the local assisted-living facility. (We’d called it an old folks’ home back then.) Sam had spent more time hanging out at the police station and with her farmer friend, Kyle Evans, than with any of the other kids from school. But we’d stayed friends.

  I’d always liked her. More importantly, I trusted her. Implicitly.

  “What’s up?”

  “I’ve got a client who might be in trouble.” At least, I hoped I still had a client. Maggie Winston had stood me up that day—for the second time, which was why I was calling Sam. I was worried I’d lost Maggie.

  I filled Sam in on the original call I’d received from Lori Winston and my first visit with Maggie. “I’ve seen her once since then,” I added. “She stopped by my office without an appointment, and after I assured her that our conversations were completely confidential, she asked me some questions that left little doubt that she’s interested in an older man. From what she said, I’m pretty sure she found him on the Internet.”

  “Do you think she’s met him in person?”

  “Yes.”

  “How sure are you of that?”

  “Ninety-five percent. I know she met a man on the Internet. I know she’s seen him in person, though it sounds like, as yet, there’s been no physical interaction. I’m not even sure they spoke when she saw him. I know she’s interested in an older man. She hasn’t admitted that the man she met on the Internet and the one she has a crush on are the same person. Maybe the guy she’s interested in is an unsuspecting teacher at school and the Internet thing is unrelated. At this point, I’m certain enough that something’s going on to be worried. But I have no proof. That’s why I’m calling you.”

  “Do you have the guy’s name?”

  “Nope.”

  “How about an age?”

  “I think he must be past thirty.” Maggie had mentioned a friend whose father was killed in Kuwait. Which meant the friend had to be a lot older than Maggie.

  “You aren’t giving me much to go on here.”

  “I know.”

  “Maggie Winston, you said her name was?”

  “Yeah. Can you just keep an eye on her for me?”

  “I’ll see what I can find out.”

  Dropping the pen back into the cup holder, I unlocked the car door and climbed out. “Thanks, Sam.”

  “Yeah. You owe me.”

  “I know.” I owed me, too. Another couple miles of skating. I was two short of my usual six.

  “So how about that sleeping-pill referral?”

  “Nope.” If Sam really wanted a sleep aid, she could get it from her M.D. We both knew that.

  “You suck at paying your debts….” Sam rang off before I could encourage her to stop by my office for a chat. Dropping my cell onto the seat, I locked the car and pushed off.

  Sam was a great woman. Honest. Hardworking. Sincere. Maybe I’d stop by her place over the weekend. It would piss her off, but if I could break through that shell she’d been throwing up at me since I’d come back to town after college, all certified and capable of seeing through her, if I could help her fight the inner demons that drove her, she’d probably get over it.

  Yeah—I bent my knees to take a bump in the path—if I could squeeze it in, I’d stop by Sam’s on Saturday. If I was lucky, she’d have some of her brother’s samples to share….

  5

  Sam had never studied finance. Had never been the least bit curious about what in the heck the Dow Jones industrial average really was. A cop’s family was never going to be rich. Never going to need to know a whole lot about investments or savings or capital gains. So maybe the state’s financial crisis, which filtered down to Fort County and the sheriff’s department, had come as more of a surprise to her than some. Maybe others had been more mentally prepared for the cutbacks that made it tough for cops to do their jobs when crime was at an all-time high.

  Hell, they were living in a state with one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation. Ohio was a manufacturing and farming state. Pretty much every major company in nearby Dayton had either closed or moved out of state over the past couple of years, leaving desperation and deprivation in their wake.

  Pretty towns that had provided suburban neighborhoods for workers from the six GM-related plants in the city were now boarded up, paint peeling from the picturesque houses and foreclosure signs in the windows. Where flowers had once lined the streets, there were now weeds. Tall weeds, with hairlike follicles and no community money to mow them down.

  Sam had patrolled these streets and seen the changes. And along with the disappearing jobs, the growing desperation, they’d seen a huge hike in crime. In the current economy, there was less money to pay for law enforcement, and fewer officers to contain the growing desperation. And desperate people did desperate things. Sam didn’t need to be good at math to know that the odds were stacked against law-enforcement agencies.

  Still, there was a good side. There always was if you looked hard enough. Sam had learned that a long time ago. About the time her father had been killed while attempting to apprehend a man he thought was a pedophile attacking a child. One positive thing was that he’d died not knowing he’d attacked a father in the middle of some good-natured roughhousing with his child.

  And the positive spin on their current economic down-swing was that Sam got a car to herself—when gas money was available. There weren’t enough deputies left on staff for them to partner up anymore.

  Which meant that she didn’t have anyone watching over her every minute of the day.

  And that was one reason why no one, including Kelly Chapman and Kyle, knew she’d been driving by the west-side trailer park several times a day for the past week—on duty and off. Listening to hunches was a lot easier if she didn’t have to answer any questions.

  School was due to start just after Labor Day—only six days away. If Maggie Winston was up to something, chances were good that summer’s end would escalate her activities.

  So far, Sam hadn’t seen so much as a shoe print….

  There she was.

  The girl looked a lot older than the photo Sam had been carrying around with her for a week, clipped out of Chandler’s 2009 junior high yearbook. But it was definitely Maggie.

  Wearing denim shorts and a green short-sleeved shirt, her oddly highlighted hair down around her shoulders, and her feet in green flip-flops that matched her shirt, Maggie looked like any of a hundred teenagers out on Chandler’s streets that day.

  Sam slowed the white Mustang that was pretty much a member of her family. Pappy, her grandfather, had helped her rebuild the classic car ten years ago and it had never let her down.

  The girl looked neither left nor right as she stepped down from the trailer she shared with her mother on the edge of the run-down park. Weeds and trash covered the common ground around the mobile homes.

  The place was nothing like the flower-lined streets that surrounded Sam’s double-wide model on the other side of town—a mere three miles away.

  The only thing of beauty Sam could see here was the young woman striding with purpose toward the exit on the other side of the park. Rounding a corner, Sam was able to keep Maggie in sight mostly because of the lack of trees between them. She turned again, in time to see Maggie climb into the front passenger seat of a nondescript American-made two-door maroon sedan—2006, if Sam had her windshield moldings right.

  Ohio license plate, DSL T77. Sam committed it to memory. One of these days she’d keep paper and pen handy to write things down. Maybe.

  When she got old and lost her ability to remember everything she saw.

  She wondered if Maggie knew the bottom of her shirt was stuck in the waistband at the back of her shorts.

&
nbsp; Keeping a reasonable distance, Sam followed the car. A female was driving. Blonde. And young, based on the glimpse Sam caught of her in her side-view mirror.

  Out on the state highway that connected Chandler to several other small towns in Fort County before eventually leading to the big kahuna—Dayton—she was able to stay two cars behind the girls without any effort. Off duty until noon, she was in jeans and an oxford shirt and blended in with the rest of the world just fine as she tooled along under the speed limit.

  If the girls were on their way to an adult rendezvous with some lecherous creep, they didn’t appear to be in any hurry to get there.

  “Probably just on their way to the mall,” Sam muttered to the Mustang. And she could be at a desk at the station getting caught up on paperwork, which was what she’d planned to do with her Tuesday morning off.

  And then she saw the sedan signal a turn. Mechanic Street. She knew the road. She knew all the roads in the county, but this particular street was more familiar than some.

  She’d seen it written on a blood-spattered scrap of paper that was in the bag of things picked up off the floor of the Holmes family living room the night Mr. Holmes had shot his wife and then blown his own brains out.

  One-oh-nine Mechanic Street. She’d investigated the place. The home was vacant, bank owned and for sale. She’d figured maybe Holmes, who’d had his accounts and mortgage at the same bank, had known the Morrises, the people who’d lived there. She’d tried to find them herself, but so far no luck.

  The family had left no forwarding address and hadn’t bought another home, or registered for public utilities, like electricity and phone.

  Mechanic Street was a dead end. Fifteen homes, a couple of dogs, mown lawns, landscape lighting, that kind of thing.

  If Sam followed the girls down the street, her Mustang wouldn’t go unnoticed.

  “This is where we part,” she told the car as she pulled into a convenience store on the corner. “Back in a minute.” Climbing out, she locked the door, rubbing her waist with the back of her forearm as she did so. Feeling for the gun tucked into her waistband.

  Check and double-check. Always. Pappy had been firm on that one. So firm that he’d once grounded her for a week because she’d forgotten her house key and had been sitting outside on their porch on Main Street, waiting for him and Mom and Pierce to get home from Dayton.

  It had been broad daylight, and people they knew were out and about. Facts that she’d pointed out to him. Facts that had fallen on deaf ears.

  When it came to personal safety, check and double-check. She’d never forgotten again.

  Crossing behind the store, Sam cut through a field of weeds that had once been a strawberry patch—and a dog run when a breeder had owned the property—to the back side of Mechanic. The yards were well maintained with swimming pools and trampolines.

  One, about halfway down, had a big new barn set at the far end of the lot. Sam scrambled through a wall of six-foot-tall shrubbery, catching her bun, and crouched behind the barn, peering out around the side.

  And barely made it in time to see Maggie walk up the drive to a house across the street.

  Sam had no idea where Maggie’s friend was. She couldn’t see the street.

  Maggie stood on the front porch, speaking with someone behind a closed screen door. Either that or she was talking to herself.

  Maybe the girls were picking up a third friend to go to the mall.

  Before she could conjecture further, Maggie was back on the drive. Walking alone. Carrying nothing.

  The girl looked straight ahead as she walked down the drive and was lost from Sam’s view.

  Feeling like a really bad rendition of a destitute private eye, Sam slunk back through the underbrush to her car.

  As a general rule, Kyle tried to get errands away from the farm done in the early morning hours of Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, when the nurse he’d hired with the help of government assistance stopped by to check up on Grandpa. Twenty years older than Kyle, Clara could have held her own with his grandfather even in his prime. And she didn’t mind staying an extra hour or so to allow Kyle time in town.

  Today, the first Wednesday in September, he made it through the majority of their grocery shopping—buying mark-off brands of everything except the chocolate sandwich cookies that were Grandpa’s favorites—in just under an hour. Now he was anxious to get back.

  Clara had had to come early that morning to check Grandpa’s blood pressure before he ate. Kyle would be monitoring it throughout the next twenty-four hours, something the doctor had recommended after Clara had called in the stats on Monday.

  Kyle knew his grandfather’s time was coming, and he liked to hang close.

  Now that Chandler had a department store, where you could buy plumbing PVC, jeans, work boots and food all under one roof—and do banking, too—he could be a lot more efficient. Especially since the place was open twenty-four hours. Lucky for him, most Chandlerites weren’t in a shopping mood at seven in the morning.

  “Yo, Kyle, what’s up?”

  Just as he’d been enjoying having the place to himself… Kyle turned and felt a twinge of remorse as he recognized the owner of the voice.

  “David. How are you, man?” The clean-cut, model-handsome man was already in the suit and tie that had been his trademark ever since he’d returned to Chandler with a brand-new law degree and bar certification ten years before.

  He held up a bag of disposable diapers. “Rough night,” he said with a half grimace. “Devon’s been going at it from both ends for more than twenty-four hours now. I had to take the day off yesterday to help with him.”

  What did it say about Kyle that the attorney’s plight made him envious? Not that he wanted any kid to be sick, but to be a father…

  “And we just found out on Monday that Susan’s pregnant again,” David added, twisting an invisible knife. “Number five. I gotta tell you, man, it’s mornings like these that show me what a smart guy you are. I gotta be in court at eight, and after missing yesterday, I still have briefs to review.”

  “Sounds like you need some beer and a good game of barn darts,” Kyle offered.

  “Now that’s just what the doctor ordered.” David grinned. “How about Friday night? Susan has the church ladies coming over for crafting.”

  Sam worked the late shift on Fridays. Not that it mattered. It wasn’t like Kyle kept nights free for her.

  “You got it,” he told the man who’d helped him through his god-awful divorce. David had saved half the farm for him. If Kyle had confided in him about his first mistake, the one before his marriage, the lawyer would have told him he was a fool to fork out money to a woman without a conscience.

  “What’s this loser got?” Pierce Jones, Sam’s older brother, elbowed David from behind.

  “A drunken game of darts,” Kyle told the man he’d once thought would be his brother-in-law. “You want to help me beat the crap out of him again?”

  “Always. When?”

  “Friday night.”

  The jeans and tightly fitting black T-shirt Pierce wore emphasized muscles that were mostly, in Kyle’s opinion, wasted in that fancy kitchen of his. He looked more like a cop than chef. Maybe if Sam’s older brother had followed in their father’s and Pappy’s footsteps, Sam wouldn’t have felt compelled to do it herself. “I’ll bring eats,” Pierce added.

  There were upsides to most things. If you looked hard enough.

  “Why don’t you bring that sister of yours?” David headed around Kyle’s loaded basket toward the self-checkout stand that had just opened. “She distracts Kyle enough to give us half a chance.”

  “Right,” Pierce said, his expression sobering. “More like she’d beat us all.” He looked at Kyle. “Why the hell that woman can’t see what’s right in front of her…” Shaking his head, Pierce walked off toward the fresh vegetables—obviously buying ingredients for the day’s fare, whatever that might be.

  Kyle directed his buggy towar
d the bin of five-dollar movies to see if there was anything really old that might spark Grandpa’s interest. Was it just a guy’s lot in life, he wondered, to want what he didn’t have?

  6

  He drove by her place. Just to make certain she was okay. Then drove by again, alternately wanting a glimpse of her and hoping to hell she stayed locked inside.

  If nothing else, he had to get her out of that hellhole. She deserved far better than the trash-ridden rusted heap of garbage her mother called home.

  School was going to be starting again in a matter of days. Later than most Ohio schools, which went back before Labor Day. Once she was in class, she wasn’t going to be able to do as much work for him. She’d have to concentrate on her studies. He’d insist on it.

  As he did with all of his crew.

  But maybe he could get her a couple of more jobs this week. Slide her some extra pay. He’d tell her it was tips.

  That way, he could keep his eye on her. Just to make certain she was okay. To put his mind at ease so he could get on with the business of living.

  For now, she was all he thought about. In the middle of the night. In the middle of the day. Sometimes the feel of her cheek against his palm intruded when he was having sex.

  He kept replaying those few seconds of contact over and over. The softness of her skin. That touch had done things to him.

  Remarkable, unbelievable things.

  In all of his thirty-four years, he’d never felt like this.

  But he wasn’t going to be stupid about it. Emotional and physical attraction brought men down. Powerful men. Again and again.

  He had his code. And wouldn’t break it.

  So he’d watch out for her. Pass her a little bounty when he could.

  In the privacy of his own mind he’d entertain thoughts about the silky touch of her skin. Of her sweet innocent smile. Those eyes that saw so much. And sometimes peered up at him with a hunger, a longing, that was far beyond her years.