Lie in Plain Sight

by Maggie Barbieri

  “You’re playing soccer?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Maeve laughed. “What do you mean, what do I mean? I saw you at the field yesterday. You don’t play sports.”

  “I do now.”

  “Really? Why?” Maeve was suspicious. Heather had lasted two days in soccer back in the first grade, just long enough for Maeve to pay for her membership and uniform, walking off the field after some overzealous coach had yelled at her for letting in a goal. Maeve was happy she had quit because otherwise, she probably would have killed the guy; the sight of Heather’s humiliated face walking off the field and toward the car made her heart hurt even now.

  “I need extracurriculars for my college applications.”

  “Huh,” Maeve said. “And soccer? You’ve never really played soccer.”

  “Have you seen the team since Rebecca graduated? They aren’t exactly what I’d call all-stars.”

  “And you can just join midyear? Just like that?”

  “They stink. And they’re shorthanded. It didn’t take much to get on the team. Coach Barnham didn’t even care that I haven’t played in ten years.”

  Rebecca’s words about the coach rang in Maeve’s ears. “You like it?” she asked, not looking at Heather, trying to make her line of questioning seem innocent, just small talk.

  “Not really,” she said.

  “So?”

  “Extracurriculars,” Heather said and brushed past Maeve on her way to the kitchen, the conversation over.

  “You could go to Mississippi. That would be a great extracurricular.”

  “Trip’s too late. I’ll already be in college somewhere by the time it happens.” She frowned. “Hopefully.”

  “Yeah, but interviews. You could mention that you’re going.”

  Heather turned and looked at her. On her face was a look that Maeve recognized because it was the same look she got on her own face when she didn’t want to do something, when the discussion was ended. “I’m not going to Mississippi.” She closed her mouth and then opened it again. “Plus, I hate—”

  “What?” Maeve said, cutting her off. “Mississippi?”

  “No, not Mississippi.”

  “Then what?”

  Heather walked toward the kitchen, letting the door swing shut behind her. She muttered something before the door closed, something that sounded to Maeve like “Not what. Who.”

  Maeve followed her into the kitchen, getting the message and letting the conversation go for now. “Can you dust the cases and handle anyone who might come in? We’ll close up at four like usual.”

  “Sure,” Heather said and, without being asked, grabbed some glass cleaner and a paper towel and started wiping away the smudged fingerprints left by the preschool class who had come in earlier that day to meet “Miss Maeve, the Cupcake Lady.” Her daughter was adopting a work ethic that Maeve recognized as being second only to her own. She wondered how she could get Heather to train Jo in the finer points of executing closing tasks prior to the end of the day.

  Maeve stayed in the kitchen and planned the rest of her day, watching the clock for the stroke of four, when she could close up and do what was next on her to-do list. She had been without a mission for a while, and it felt good to have one again.

  “Mom, go,” Heather said at ten minutes to four. “I’ve got it covered.”

  And she did. So Maeve hung up her apron and prepared to leave, Heather confirming she knew what the security code was and how to make sure the store was closed up tight.

  In the kitchen, going through her bag to make sure she had everything she needed, she heard the bell over the front door ring, a final customer arriving before close. Maeve peered through the round window in the swinging door that separated the kitchen from the retail area and spotted Mark Messer, his DPW shift done for the day. Heather was still behind the counter, and if Maeve wasn’t seeing things, she could swear that Heather smiled at the guy, her face tinting pink at his entrance. He leaned on the counter and ordered a coffee and a cupcake, the two of them chatting amiably. Mark looked up and spied Maeve in the window, waving at her to come into the front of the store.

  “Hey, Maeve,” Mark said as he ingested the cupcake in two bites, “your chocolate cupcakes are the best. What’s your secret?”

  “Butter! Lots of butter!” Maeve said as she exited the front of the store, hearing his hearty laugh behind her. She didn’t know what made her happier: his compliment for her cupcakes or his ability to make her daughter smile.

  She didn’t tell Heather where she was going; it was better that way. The kid already thought her mother was insane and paranoid; why give her the evidence to back that contention up? Maeve went back to the high school and parked a few spaces down from a pickup truck. The day she had been to the field there had been one parked on the grass and since cars, most cars anyway, weren’t allowed to drive past the gate at the top of the hill, she assumed it was Barnham’s.

  She looked out the window of the Prius and watched as Coach Barnham sauntered out of the school building, a big bag of balls slung over his shoulder, his lips puckered as he whistled. He was alone, and Maeve was relieved. Nothing would have set her off more than seeing a gaggle of devoted acolytes following their coach, one or more maybe jumping into his red pickup truck, the kayak in the back a fitting accessory.

  Maeve waited until he was in the car and had driven around the bend before she left her spot. She trailed behind him, only losing sight of the pickup once, until they had traveled about a mile and he turned into a driveway that Maeve knew led to a house tucked back in the woods off a hiking trail. If Maeve had had to choose a house for the guy after having seen his truck and his kayak, this would have been it. She couldn’t follow him down the driveway without revealing herself, so she parked the car on the side of the road and walked along the edge of the driveway until she got closer to the house.

  At times like this, she was happy she had a silent hybrid and was a small person. And middle-aged. She was coming to that age where she was invisible to most everyone, especially younger men, and for her darker pursuits, that served her well. That’s not to say that he wouldn’t notice her if she was out in the open, as she was now, walking along his driveway, the look on her face suggesting that this wasn’t a social call. She forced herself to smile. Her nonsmiling face, she had been told by the girls, was not friendly, and the last thing she needed was for him to get his hackles up at her arrival. She crept forward, stopping a hundred feet or so in, noticing that in addition to the pickup truck, kayak, and house in the woods, Barnham had another obvious accoutrement of the young, single jock—a giant dog, who spotted Maeve lurking in the trees and sounded the alarm that there was an unknown person in his master’s midst. The dog, playing in a giant puddle that had formed from the earlier downpour, ran toward her. The coach saw her among the pines and followed close behind the dog. By the time he reached her, he was smiling.

  “Mrs. Callahan, right?” he said. “Rebecca and Heather’s mom?”

  Maeve came out from behind the copse of trees and tried to affect a nonchalant stance. “Yes, hi, Coach.”

  “I got my mother’s birthday cake from you,” he said. “She’s still talking about it.”

  Maeve didn’t remember ever having seen him in the store, so either he was as adept at lying as she was or, as she feared on a regular basis, her mind was going just like her father’s had prior to his death. “Great!” she said, smiling so wide that all of her teeth showed. See? I’m not dangerous at all. I’m not following you. I’m just a doddering middle-aged woman with saggy jeans and an icing-covered T-shirt under a zipped Farringville High School hoodie.

  He waited for her to reveal why she was on his driveway, hidden in the trees that fronted his property. The dog sat at his side, nothing interesting to him about the lady talking to his master. “Are you lost?”

  “I guess I am, a little bit,” she said. “Uphill Terrace. I can never remember where that is off of this street.�
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  “Well, the reason you can’t remember is that it’s not off this street,” he said, pointing to a spot over her shoulder.

  No wedding ring, she noticed, but then again, she didn’t expect one. Everything about him said “single,” from the small log cabin in front of her to the free and easy way he carried himself. This was a guy with few responsibilities and no one else on his mind. She could tell.

  “It’s off of Shady Lane,” he said.

  “Oh, right!” she said, laying it on thick. “You’d think after all the time I’ve lived here, I would remember.” She stood for a moment, wondering how far to take this, but given that she wouldn’t have much of an excuse to talk to the soccer coach again without it seeming odd or suspicious, she brought up Taylor and her disappearance. “The girls on the team must be really upset about Taylor Dvorak.”

  She studied his face for some kind of sign, but there was none. All she saw was concern and nothing else. “Terrible. I’ve already spoken to the police at length,” he said.

  “Really? Did they question you?” she asked, adding just the right amount of righteous indignation to indicate that she was appalled at the idea of it.

  “I volunteered,” he said. “Offered to tell them what I knew about her.”

  “She seemed…,” Maeve said, trailing off. She didn’t know the girl from a hole in the wall but hoped he would insert the proper adjective.

  “Sad?”

  “Maybe,” Maeve said.

  “Depressed?”

  “I guess.”

  “It was hard to say what it was exactly,” he said, offering up more information than Maeve could have hoped for. “But she was troubled. Soccer was a way for her to be free, to let herself forget about whatever it was that was bothering her.”

  Maeve wondered if he’d heard about her part in the story. “Well, let’s just pray that she’s found.”

  “Yes. Let’s do that,” he said. “I’m glad Heather has decided to try soccer.”

  “Me, too,” Maeve said, wondering if he had picked up her hesitation about Heather as an athlete. She felt off-kilter about seeing Heather on the field, wondering if the story about needing extracurriculars was true or if there was some other reason that her daughter had joined the team but she couldn’t think of what that might be. She studied the coach’s face for a clue to his intentions toward her daughter, or any girl for that matter, but all she saw was an open and honest expression, nothing seeming to lurk beneath the surface.

  Either he was telling the truth or he was a complete sociopath.

  Takes one to know one, she thought. Would she still know one or had she lost her touch?

  The dog had lain by Barnham’s side throughout the entire conversation but perked up as a bird flew low overhead. “Ready to go, Cosmo?” the coach asked, the dog jumping up. “I’m sorry. I should have introduced you. This is Cosmo.”

  “Hello, Cosmo,” Maeve said, keeping her distance. She hadn’t been raised with dogs, and her first memory of canines was of the Doberman who lived next door who had tried to take a bite out of her ass as she rode her bike down the street. Cosmo did what came naturally to all dogs and planted his nose right in her crotch. She pushed him away as gently as she could, his persistent nuzzling making a wet spot on her right thigh. Barnham did nothing to help her. “Well, thank you for pointing me in the right direction, Mr. Barnham.”

  “Please. Call me David.”

  “David, then. Thank you. I guess I’ll be seeing you at some games,” Maeve said as she turned and walked back down the driveway. When she got to the end, she turned around to wave, but he was gone, as if he had vanished into thin air.

  As if the day couldn’t get any weirder, when she got home, Heather had made a meat loaf, and it was the first thing Maeve smelled when she walked into the house. Heather was at the kitchen table typing on her laptop, which she slammed shut when her mother walked in.

  Maeve peered into the oven. “Looks good. Smells even better,” she said. “What possessed you to make a meat loaf?”

  “Ground meat was on sale at the store, so I brought some home last night. But it was the last sell date,” Heather said, knowing even more about sell dates than Maeve did. “Aunt Evelyn called,” she added.

  “What did she have to say?” Maeve asked, smiling. Evelyn’s conversations ran the gamut from the last movie she had seen to remembrances of Maeve’s father, the man who had secretly taken good care of her until he died, something that Maeve was trying to forget, trying to forgive.

  “She said she saw The Comfort Zone on television,” Heather said.

  Maeve turned so quickly that she got a pain in her side from the exertion. “What?”

  “The store. She said she saw it on News 12.”

  News 12 was Evelyn’s favorite station, showing county news, weather, and sports all day and all night. “News 12?” Maeve went into the living room and turned on the television, knowing that the station rebroadcast the top stories throughout the day.

  Heather joined her on the couch. “What’s the matter?”

  “I’m wondering why the store would be on television.” Maeve suffered through high school sports scores, the weather, and a story about a bedbug infestation at a local hotel before the top story, the disappearance of Taylor Dvorak, was run again. The details were the same as the ones Maeve knew. A shot of The Comfort Zone flashed on the screen, as did an old photo of her from the Farringville Chamber of Commerce dinner from two years earlier—yes, she had put on weight since then, thank you for noticing—where she was smiling while standing next to the mayor.

  The blonde doing the report sounded a little judgmental to Maeve’s ears. “A new development in this case … we have just learned that the girl had an emergency contact, a woman named Maeve Conlon, owner of The Comfort Zone. Conlon gave the school nurse permission to send Taylor Dvorak home. Where she is now is anyone’s guess, but the Farringville Police Department assures the citizens of Farringville that they are doing everything in their power, including bringing in the county police, to find the girl. If anyone has any information on Taylor’s disappearance, please call—”

  Maeve turned off the television and looked at Heather, hoping her teenager would have something to say that would make it better, that would let her know that although she felt responsible, she wasn’t. The entire viewing population of the local news was now privy to her role in the teen’s disappearance, and she felt hopeless, trying not to let it show.

  Heather stared at her, wondering how her mother was going to react. “It’s not your fault.”

  “I think it is,” she thought to herself, realizing when she saw Heather’s face that she had said it out loud. She had done a lot of things in her life—some of them not the right thing—but this felt like the worst thing of all.

  CHAPTER 16

  Cal showed up just as Chris Larsson was leaving later that night, the memory of Heather’s meat loaf writ large on the cop’s friendly face; he was pale and a little shaky. Maeve wondered if the sale meat was really a good idea. She hadn’t touched her own helping of meat loaf, her appetite gone after seeing the store and her photo on the news report. Heather’s appetite seemed to disappear as well. She wondered how long it would be until the story was picked up by the metro news, until it was the lead story for the networks. She shuddered at the thought.

  Evelyn called every time the story ran, which turned out to be more times than Maeve could count. “I see your store!” she would say when Maeve picked up, not getting that it wasn’t really the kind of publicity that Maeve wanted.

  Chris has been tight-lipped during dinner, but it was clear to Maeve that they still had no leads on Taylor’s disappearance. She wondered if the awful meat loaf, in conjunction with the sickness that he felt in his gut every day that the girl was missing, was the reason that he had left so quickly, if seeing Heather, so reminiscent of the missing girl, had started to make him physically ill.

  Cal stood in the hallway, pointing over his
shoulder as Chris ran down the front porch steps to his car. “He has time for dinner?” Cal asked. “Shouldn’t he be pulling double duty looking for that girl?”

  Maeve didn’t have time for Cal’s sarcasm, nor his implication that Chris was doing anything but looking for Taylor. “Why are you here?” she asked, her mind flashing on the sight of Trish leaving Cal’s house a few days before.

  Cal looked up the long flight of stairs to the second floor of the house to make sure that Heather was in her room and that the door was closed. “She knows.”

  “Who knows?” Maeve asked, too exhausted for the guessing game that he wanted to play.

  “Gabriela,” he said. “She knows.”

  “Knows what?” Maeve asked. “There’s nothing to know. We’ve been done for a while.” There was nothing to know except what had happened that one time, and that was between them—but clearly the cat was out of the bag if Jo’s intelligence on what had come out of Gabriela’s spin class was any good.

  Payback’s a bitch, huh? Maeve wanted to ask but wisely kept her mouth shut.

  “Well, she knows that something happened between us specifically.”

  Interesting choice of words. Clearly there had been others. “How?”

  “Trish.” When Maeve looked at him for more information, he came clean. “She heard you talking to Jo.”

  “Shouldn’t she be worried about finding her daughter?” Maeve asked.

  “Oh, she is,” Cal said. “But she’s also holding you responsible.”

  “Okay, now you’re just being ridiculous,” Maeve said, trying to sound calm, the high-pitched timbre of her voice belying that. “Responsible?”

  “She came to me and told me she’d be quiet. Not make a bigger deal out of you and what you did. For money.”

  “Why didn’t she ask me for money?” Maeve asked, thinking back to the missing money from the short time Trish had worked for her. Oh, right, she preferred to just steal it, Maeve thought. Now she had the reason for Trish’s car being in front of Cal’s house. She was almost relieved that the reason was blackmail and not something more salacious and for that, she wasn’t proud.