Monday's Lie
Page 25
“It’s not happening, Paul.”
“You’d have access to your mother’s files.”
“No, I wouldn’t.” Then a cool echo in my head: You don’t need them, Plucky. Truth be told, you don’t need me either.
Don’t say that.
“Why not, Dee? Why shouldn’t I say it? That’s the beauty of being me. I can say what I like and offer up what I like, all to get what I like. I’ve been around a long time. I’ve earned it.”
Shit. I had said that out loud. I really am losing it. “I’m sure you’d show me a bunch of files that had my mother’s name on them, but I wouldn’t want to have to bank on what brand of bullshit would be inside.”
“You’ve really got your cloak-and-dagger play all scripted out, haven’t you? It’s not like that, Dee. We’re not that complicated. I would show them to you. Whatever you wanted to know. None of it is that big of a deal anymore. Nothing stays top secret forever. Just the same, it’d be a bit of a Faustian thing.” He smiles sunnily. “You’d certainly owe me.”
Another long stare off, but this time he can’t get my hackles up. He smiles into my eyes as he fishes in his pocket. He hands me a flimsy business card. The ink is thin, the graphic slightly off center. I know full well he could afford better. “If you change your mind, give me a call. I know it says Swan’s Dry Cleaner’s, but if you leave a message for me, I’ll get it.”
“I’m sure.”
He doesn’t turn around, and his parting comment comes from halfway out the door. “If you’re curious, ask Simon where he gets his uniforms laundered.”
Paul’s baiting me about my brother, and even if he isn’t, Simon’s life is his own. I had point-blank asked him about Paul in the bar on the day Patrick died. But if I was honest, I could play back that conversation verbatim. I had asked him in the present tense. Does he try to get to you, too? He could easily have answered no and let it stand as the truth on a technicality.
On the recording, my mother had only asked Brian to steer Paul away from me. She never mentioned Simon, and I burned with private shame that I hadn’t wondered why. Stable full of Vesses, she’d said it, but I hadn’t realized all that it meant. Did Brian know? Simon had said his job made it difficult to have a relationship, and that he’d wanted to rain down special trouble on Patrick. Once upon a time . . .
And he’d always known what our mother was, far more and much sooner than I ever had. He’d been her coworker.
He had told me over and over, but I’d never heard him.
I start to tear the business card straight down the middle, intending to turn it into a ragged pile of wastebasket confetti, which is all it deserves. My mother stares saucily at me over her shoulder from the silver frame on the corner of my desk. One of her loves had been a photographer, and a good one. I had always liked that guy. He’d caught her for me to keep forever in that picture. Her eyes drill into mine, and I kind of forget to finish off the poorly rendered swan. A thin buffer of rinky-dink card stock saves its neck. I set the card aside and pick up the photograph. She all but winks at me.
Turning the frame over, I pry the easel back away from the felt and peel a flap in the facing paper. I wonder about people who can grease the gears of the world with stealth and plots and never let the consequences get under their fingernails. I think of Patrick, his image in my mind already faded pale like overexposed film. I hear the distant echo of brakes screaming and glass breaking. I look at my hand; it’s steady. The overhead lights glint in my plain, clear-gloss manicure. I tuck Paul’s card inside the little pocket I’ve made and smooth it down, all but invisible. I smile at Mother and she smirks at me.
“It doesn’t matter about the stupid card,” I say aloud. I’ll never look at it again. I’m almost positive.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In Acknowledgment writing, the greatest blessing is a cast of usual suspects. I’m in a fortress of familiar support and never for a moment am I not aware of, and grateful for, how wonderful these people are.
Atop the list are my fantastic husband and the ridiculously awesome daughters we discovered under some rare and magical cabbage leaves way back when. There are three things I prize above all others—intelligence, humor, and kindness. I live a daily jackpot, up to my neck in gold tokens of insight, laughter, and love because of Art, Julia, and Rianne.
My agent, Amy Moore-Benson, well, I hope she knows how much I appreciate her. I tell her often, but I love telling everyone else, too. She’s tremendous in all the ways there are to be tremendous. The team at Simon & Schuster/Gallery Books makes the insecure, nerve-racking bits of this business brief and bearable, and they make the fun parts a full-on party. Thank you Karen Kosztolnyik, for your wisdom, encouragement, and patience, and also Paige Cohen, Stephanie DeLuca, Steve Boldt, Jen Bergstrom, and the ghosts of Alexandra Lewis and Heather Hunt (no, no, they’re not dead—just off on other parts of life, but newly enough so that they still haunt the business end of this work; they’re still mine—if only just a little).
Mike Breedlove (hopefully Sheriff Mike Breedlove by the time this goes to print) is still my go-to guy for police work and crime information. If I asked him more, I’d get less wrong. Thank you, Mike, always.
A writer’s writer-friends can do for her what regular friends cannot. That’s neither an endorsement nor an indictment. It’s just the way it is. Graeme Cameron, my most trusted nay-and-yea-sayer, you’re brilliant and thanks for existing. And an avalanche of thank-yous to Tana French, Mark Pryor, William Haskins, Chris Pavone, Brad Parks, Reed Farrell Coleman, Butch Wilson, Sylvia Harmon, Carole Oldroyd, Kim Michele Richardson, and Jane Smith for being writers and for being there for me. You people are absolute stars.
A writer’s regular friends are what everyone’s friends are: the best thing that life ever invented. Some of these are my patient early readers like Jessica Coffey, Katie Delgado, Mary Rollins, and Simone Kaiser, and some of them would have been if I’d gotten my act together sooner this time—I’m looking at you Kelly Coffey Colvin, Lisa Fitchett, Kristi McCullough, and Cindy Dearman. A little special thank-you goes to Tamsin Moore, a new friend, however far away, a reader and a person who could give lessons in enthusiastic encouragement. I could not leave out Tim Dearman, who is not only a wonderful friend but a master craftsman. He made for me the best place I could ever want for getting my work done. I love my office probably more than he even knows. I can think in here.
And love to my mother and sisters, Jeanne Miller-Mason, Carmen Mason, and Natalie Sherwood, who never are far from my thoughts, no matter how much map we cover.
All these people deserve my love and thanks, and I give them a dose here, gladly.
But it’s the reader I don’t know who is back here with me now, at the very end—the end that’s just slightly after The End, who I want to thank especially. It doesn’t matter that I wrote this in my office, all through a morning that is threatening a storm that I’m now starting to doubt is ever going to do its thing. Through the art and science of words and publishing, the real now is the now of you reading this, the now of you having given this book a slice of your time, wherever and whenever you did it, and whatever the season and the weather where you are. Thank you for doing that.
I hope we meet on the page again someday, and maybe even become each other’s usual suspects for stories.
—Jamie Mason, June 2014
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A man driven to murder buries the body in his backyard only to discover that there are two other shallow graves on his property.
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Gallery Books
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2015 by Jamie Mason
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Gallery Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.
First Gallery Books hardcover edition February 2015
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Jacket design by Lisa Litwack
Wedding rings © Colleen Farrell/Arcangel Images
Author photograph by Randall Wood
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
ISBN 978-1-4767-7445-9
ISBN 978-1-4767-7447-3 (ebook)
CONTENTS
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Acknowledgments
About Jamie Mason