Lie in Plain Sight

by Maggie Barbieri

  Cal raised an eyebrow, implying that everyone knew the truth: Maeve didn’t have any money. For once, she was grateful for that fact.

  “Did you give her any?”

  “No!” he said. “That’s why Gabriela knows. Trish told her what she overheard in the store.”

  Maeve thought back to the day when Jo came in and figured out that she had slept with Cal. She hadn’t seen Trish but that wasn’t to say that the woman hadn’t heard every last sordid detail. Just Maeve’s luck.

  “And Gabriela confronted you?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I denied everything.”

  “And I’m sure you were really convincing,” Maeve said. What was that thing her father always said? No good deed goes unpunished? The missing money would have been enough to make her change her mind, but extortion was another thing entirely. Desperate people do desperate things; she knew that. But what she hadn’t known was exactly how desperate Trish Dvorak was. “We never should have done it, Cal. You’re married. You have a child.”

  He didn’t respond to that, preferring to focus on Trish’s shaky moral code. “What kind of woman has the time to blackmail someone when her daughter is missing?” Cal asked, shaking his head.

  “Did you tell the police?” Maeve asked.

  He nodded. “Yes. Chief Carstairs.” He smiled. “Have you met her? She’s kind of hot.”

  Maeve ignored the remark. He was a like a walking, talking cauldron of testosterone. Or a sixteen-year-old boy. Maybe both.

  Behind him, Heather charged down the stairs. “I’m going out,” she said as she breezed by them, running down the front steps and jumping into a car that was unfamiliar to Maeve.

  “Wait!” Maeve called after her, but it was too late. “Be home by curfew,” she said to the ceiling.

  Cal waited a beat. “So what are we going to do?” he asked.

  “I don’t know, Cal,” Maeve said. “Right now, I need you to leave. That’s as far as I can get in my thinking.”

  “Thanks for nothing,” he said.

  She opened the front door, holding it for him. “You’re very welcome.”

  After he left and she had cleaned up the dinner dishes, she went over to Chris Larsson’s, just to see if he was still alive. He was, but barely, from the sound of things. She could hear him moaning as she stepped up on the porch. Giving the doorbell a quick push to announce her presence, she let herself in with the key he’d given her.

  “Chris?” she called.

  He responded by retching loudly from behind the door to the bathroom off the front hall.

  She knocked on it lightly. “Chris? Do you think you have something besides food poisoning?”

  “Maeve? Please go away,” he said as gently as he could before resuming his activities behind the door.

  Maeve went into the kitchen, where it was clear that the minute he had walked through the door, he had divested himself as quickly as possible of his clothes and the things he had been carrying. His gun was next to a bowl of apples; Maeve traced her fingers lightly over the metal. His belt. His tie.

  His notebook.

  He had thrown it so quickly and carelessly onto the table that it had flipped open to the page where he had written notes about his conversation with Maeve. Nothing mind-blowing, just the facts. She picked up a pencil and flipped through the notebook, landing on a page with several names that were familiar to her for some unknown reason. She committed them to memory anyway, thinking that they might come in handy at a future date.

  Tim Morehead.

  Jesse Connors.

  Steven Donnell.

  Maeve searched her mind, finally arriving at how she knew them. At one time, in what she considered her more paranoid days, she had had a fake Facebook page, a teenager’s profile, filled with “friends” who went to the high school, all the better to keep tabs on Heather—who she was seeing, where she was going, what she was doing. She had since deactivated the page, thinking that dating Chris Larsson might be the prime time for her to stop her more illicit pursuits. But she recognized the names as ones she had seen on that friend list.

  She also realized that two of them—Morehead and Connors—were the two solid citizens she had met while they were raising money for the Mississippi trip. “Not what. Who” was something Heather had muttered when they had last had a conversation about the trip. Maeve would have to find out exactly who Heather meant.

  And why.

  She closed the notebook, hearing water running in the bathroom. Chris emerged a few seconds later looking wan and exhausted.

  “Meat loaf, huh?” he asked, falling onto the couch. “More like a serving of E. coli.”

  “I’m so sorry, Chris.”

  “How come you’re not sick?” he asked.

  “First, I didn’t eat any of the meat loaf, and second, even if I had, I have an iron constitution,” she said. “Remember, my dad did most of the cooking when I was growing up, and suffice it to say, that wasn’t really his forte.” She smiled at him, but he didn’t have the energy to return the gesture. “What can I get you?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “I think I need to sleep.”

  “Sure?”

  “I’m sure. This is not the sort of thing you want anyone else to witness. I know we’re close, but we’re not that close,” he said. “Thanks for checking on me.”

  “Ginger ale? Gatorade?” she asked.

  “Just go,” he said. “Kid hates me. She’s trying to kill me.”

  Maeve laughed in spite of the situation and the gastric pain written on his face. “Not true, Chris,” she said, and while she wanted to wrap her arms around his strong chest, the thought of catching what he had made her stop. “Call me if you need anything.”

  She let herself out into the cool night air and took a deep breath. She loved him, she did, and because of that, she had tried to mend her ways, but sometimes she thought that maybe something was wrong with her, that she didn’t have the capacity to be normal. Happy. Content.

  With three names filed in her brain, she started for home, wondering what she would do with this new information.

  CHAPTER 17

  Watching the early news the next morning, Maeve couldn’t help getting the sense that Trish Dvorak was enjoying the attention having a missing daughter could bring. And then she felt a stab of guilt for feeling that way as she watched the woman burst into tears, a photo of her daughter clutched against her thin chest.

  “I just want my daughter to come home,” she said, and Maeve felt her own eyes fill with tears. “Please come home, Taylor. This never should have happened,” she continued, and with that, Maeve felt the words creeping into her brain, the same ones that populated her thoughts when she least expected them.

  It’s all your fault.

  The logical side of her brain knew that it wasn’t, but the illogical side, the one that sometimes overtook her thoughts and made her think dark things, had a hold on her. She continued watching, hoping that there would be some mention of a father. She was in luck. Although he didn’t say anything to the reporter camped out in front of his house, she recognized him from back-to-school night as the man whose son, Jesse Connors, was raising money for the Mississippi trip. His house, a shot of which appeared on the television, was on the other side of town, the last part of Farringville before you entered Prideville. The houses were big and imposing, some, like his, with iron gates fronting them. She made a mental note to find the house.

  Maeve thought back to her conversation with Trish at back-to-school night, the woman’s antipathy toward her daughter’s father, his reluctance to accept her as his own. He had been there that night, too, in the same building, out in the open. Someone had located him, and there he was, right in the same village, something Trish had never mentioned.

  The reporter identified the man in the video footage. Maeve wondered if just saying the name—Charles Connors—made Trish sick. Because to her, the thought that Taylor’s delinquent father lived in the same village, in comfort and
wealth if the house they showed was any indication, made her want to throw up. Her heart went out to Trish again, thoughts about their short, troubled history being replaced with another, stronger emotion.

  Anger.

  They were from opposite sides of the proverbial tracks, Trish and Connors, and he had left her to raise a girl on her own while his own son grew up without a care in the world, at least financially. Cal had his faults, but he was there for the girls. What kind of man could do what Taylor’s father had done?

  Maeve finished dressing, turning off the television, and spent the day at the store in deep consternation. Even Jo noticed.

  “What’s going on?” her friend asked as she rearranged a tray of quiches in the refrigerated case.

  “This town has a lot of secrets,” Maeve said, the best way she could articulate what she was feeling.

  “You’re telling me,” Jo said. She leaned over the counter, looked around, and whispered, “From what I gather, the local baker had hot and heavy monkey sex with her ex-husband.”

  Maeve took a roll of paper towels from atop the refrigerated case and threw it at Jo’s head, missing her and knocking the wall phone to the ground. “We are never to talk about that again,” she said.

  “But it’s so great! And juicy!” Jo said. “I can’t help it.”

  “And what, exactly, is monkey sex?” Maeve asked.

  Jo shrugged. “Not sure. It just sounded as dirty as sex could get, and when I imagine you and Cal together, I imagine dirty,” she said.

  Maeve waved a hand over her body. “This? Dirty? Not so much, Jo.”

  Jo pulled a quiche from the case. “Can I take this home? I’ve got nothing for dinner.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “And secrets? What kinds of secrets in this village?”

  Jo had an ear to the ground at all times, and now that she had a baby and hung around the local playgrounds, there was so much more to hear. And to share. Maeve told her what she knew; maybe Jo would be able to fill in the blanks. “Charles Connors is Taylor’s father, from what the news reports say.”

  “Who’s he?” Jo asked.

  “He used to own Farringville Stone,” Maeve said, “and he has a kid in the high school.”

  “Taylor has a half brother?” Jo asked.

  “Seems that way. And Trish hinted that Connors certainly doesn’t support the girl.”

  “All that’s coming out now?”

  Maeve went behind the counter and picked up the paper towels. “Yes. It makes me wonder.”

  “About what?”

  “Trish was trying to extort money from Cal to keep her mouth shut about what had happened between Cal and me.”

  Jo turned around, her mouth hanging open, her eyes wide. “And maybe she was doing the same to the father?”

  Maeve touched her finger to her nose. “Bingo.”

  “So he kidnapped her?” Jo asked. “Is that where you’re going with this? That seems a little far-fetched even for me to cook up, don’t you think?”

  Maeve shrugged. “Secrets. Lots of secrets.” She stuck her head into the cookie case and grabbed one that had fallen between the shelves, popping it into her mouth. “Nothing in this town would surprise me anymore.”

  “I’ll see what I can find out,” Jo said. “I have playgroup at the church next week.”

  “Playgroup? Church?” Maeve asked. Neither jibed with what she knew about her friend.

  “Yeah, bunch of women come together in the church basement for an hour or so. Some nice people there. Kids are kind of horrifying, though,” Jo said. “But that’s where I get my best info.”

  The idea came to Maeve while she was washing a hotel pan in the kitchen sink a few minutes later, her hands red and raw from being submerged in hot, soapy water. When Jo came in, she turned around, wiping her hands on a dry towel. “I miss Rebecca. Can you believe I’m saying that?”

  “Of course I can,” Jo said. “She’s always been your favorite.”

  “Oh, don’t say that!” Maeve said, although there was a hint of truth there. If being her favorite meant never giving her a day’s worth of tsuris, as Jo called it, then, yes, trouble-free Rebecca was her favorite. There had been one time when she had let Maeve down, but it was in protecting her sister, so Maeve couldn’t really blame her. She loved Heather, certainly, but a part of her wondered just how much of her mother the girl had inherited, and that worried her. “I love my daughters equally.”

  Jo smirked. “Sure you do,” she said, exiting the kitchen.

  Maeve called Rebecca from the phone in the front of the store, not expecting to reach her but happy when her daughter answered. “Hey!” she said, sounding a little more eager than she intended, but these little mercies—the answering of a phone, the hearing of her girl’s voice—were few and far between with work, the house, Heather, and life in general. “Can I take you to dinner tonight?”

  Rebecca sounded suspicious. “What’s the occasion?”

  “No occasion,” Maeve said, hearing the jingle of the bell over the door behind her. She turned to find Chris standing there, still a little gray, but none the worse for wear. She held one finger up. “I figured it was about time you had a good meal.”

  “Bring me a quiche?” Rebecca said, her agreement to the dinner implied.

  “Sure. Anything else?”

  “Bread? Cupcakes? A couple of mini pies?”

  “You’ve got it. See you at six.”

  Chris took a seat at one of the tables, his big frame sagging. “Going up to Poughkeepsie tonight?” he asked as she came around the counter.

  She hugged him from behind, wrapping her arms around his chest and leaning her head against his back. “Yes. I miss my girl.” She put her hand on his forehead to check for a temperature. “How are you feeling?” she asked, his brow warm to her touch.

  “Not great,” he said. “But there’s a lot going on in this case, and I can’t afford to be sick.”

  “You’re sick,” she said. “Not poisoned, right?”

  “I think that’s correct,” he said. “Tell Heather I forgive her for day-old meat loaf.”

  She went over to the refrigerator and pulled out an iced tea, his favorite. “Drink this. I don’t want you to get dehydrated.”

  “Too late,” he said. “But thanks.”

  She pulled up a chair. “So what’s going on? Any new leads?”

  His face clouded over, whether from the sensation of the cold liquid hitting his stomach or something else, she wasn’t sure. “Maybe. It’s been too long. The trail is getting cold. I feel like I’m racing against the clock and the clock is winning.”

  “County any help?”

  “A bit,” he said. “What did you know about Trish before you hired her?”

  “Not much,” Maeve admitted. “We reconnected at back-to-school night. I used to see her a lot when the kids were small. Class trips, recitals, things like that. She came into the store occasionally. I liked her,” Maeve said. “She was frank about Taylor’s aspirations and her own financial limitations at back-to-school night. I appreciated her honesty.”

  “And that was enough to hire her on the spot?”

  Maeve looked down at her hands, rubbing at a spot of blue frosting in the crease of her palm. “She’s a single mother. So am I. She needed a job. I wanted to help.”

  He tried to smile, but the effort was almost too much. “You’re a good person, Maeve.”

  “Thanks for saying that.” She reached across and took his hand. “You need to go home. You are as sick as a dog.”

  “In a couple of hours,” he said, getting up. “Thanks for the drink.” He started for the door. “When this is over,” he said, and she wasn’t sure if he meant his illness or the case, or both, “I’m taking you out. And then I’m taking you home.”

  “It’s a plan.”

  “Limber up,” he said, attempting a laugh. He clutched his stomach. “That hurts.”

  “Go home!” she said, pushing him out the door. After
he left, she grabbed a spray bottle of cleaner and went over every square inch of every place she could remember him touching.

  After Jo left for the day, Maeve puttered around the store, killing time until she had to leave for Poughkeepsie. Vassar had been Rebecca’s first choice, and it suited her as a school, the academic embodiment of her own personality. Maeve wondered if Heather would find the same thing in the school where she ended up or if, as she did with everything else in her life, she would chafe at the things that made it unique or charming or a place of contentment for everyone else.

  Maeve received no response to the text asking Heather to join her, so she sent her another text letting her know what she would find in the refrigerator for dinner, not receiving a response. She made it up north in good time and texted Rebecca from the circular drive in front of her dorm. It had been several weeks since they had last seen each other, and Maeve felt as she always did when she visited her daughter at school: happy with a sense of dread. It was all different now, her little girl not little anymore, her daughter more of a woman in her own right than someone dependent on her mother for anything other than the payment of tuition or advice on how to handle the flu, whether or not to precook the noodles for lasagna, how to make chocolate chip cookies. These were little things that didn’t require much of Maeve but that she held on to, knowing that motherhood as a concept and a job was slipping away from her in drips and drabs. Every call brought her joy, even if it was filled with complaint, because she knew that soon she would be completely alone, and all she would have would be the intermittent phone calls, the requests for an extra twenty, the questions about how to do their own laundry while at school.

  Rebecca came out, and Maeve tried to temper her response so that she didn’t appear as needy and excited as she felt. She played it cool; nothing scared the girls off more than when she descended upon them, wanting to hug and kiss them the way she used to—and they loved—when they were small. “Hi, honey,” she said, accepting Rebecca’s kiss on her cheek. “How are you?”