She turned and looked at the water, peaceful and placid in the dawning day. She alternately hoped and feared that the girl would be there, because if she was, she was dead, not off on a great adventure that no one really believed she’d embarked on. But at least she’d be found, and then everyone would know, and the investigation could start anew, the police finding out if she had taken her own life or been taken by someone else.
Maeve’s clothes were wet, but the urge to fold herself up as small as possible was still there, and she brought her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, wondering what was taking Chris so long to get there. She felt confident that she had gone undetected, but who knew? Out there in the rain, everything was upended, a morning run turning mysterious, her questions growing by the minute.
She pulled her phone out; its screen was black. Dead. That explained why she hadn’t heard back from Jo, why strong protestations of Jo’s annoyance over having to run the store herself hadn’t come in, fast and furious. She shook in the cold, happy when she saw headlights crest over the hill that she had trudged up hours earlier, the sound of Chris’s Jeep and crunching gravel marking his arrival, his appearance the most welcome sight she had seen in a long time.
He pulled the Jeep over to the side of the road and got out, looking a little disheveled, bags under his eyes. “Maeve?”
She stood up and waved, the motion bringing the nausea into sharp relief. “Over here!” she called, walking toward him.
They met each other halfway, he a short distance from his car, she a hundred steps from the rock on which she had sat to wait for him.
“Are you okay?” he asked. “What are you doing out here? Who’s at the store? Why are you out in the rain?” The questions came at a rapid clip. He took off his windbreaker and wrapped it around her; it was so big that it went around her two times, like a straitjacket, something she was starting to think she might need.
“Is that your normal interrogation style?” she asked. “Do you pepper all people with ten questions in a row?”
“It was only four, and no, that’s not my normal interrogation style. Glad you still have your sense of humor,” he said, looking a little sour. She wasn’t sure if it was the early-morning call or the sight of her that made him that way.
Under normal circumstances, the setting and the sentiments would have been romantic, a guy finding his love shivering and cold, his arms and jacket around her, him whispering into her hair, kissing her forehead, but she was Maeve, and nothing was ever normal or right or romantic when it was supposed to be, and what she had seen, that morning in particular, colored everything.
This is crazy, she thought, but I have to say it. She looked up at Chris, the cop who didn’t have a stomach for the macabre and grotesque, the mysterious and the unsolved, and said what she was sure was the last thing he wanted to hear.
“You have to drag the lake.”
CHAPTER 24
Maeve told Chris everything she knew and remembered.
“Here’s the thing, Maeve,” Chris said. “He’s denying everything.”
They were in her kitchen now, a few hours after arriving home, and she was in dry clothes, a scalding cup of tea on the table. Farringville didn’t have divers or any of the equipment necessary to search or drag a lake, so they would have to call in County; Chris had completed his phone calls up the chain and was awaiting word. Maeve didn’t have a lot of faith in the county police; they hadn’t turned up anything related to Taylor’s disappearance and hadn’t been a tremendous amount of help to the Farringville detectives as far as she could tell.
“I saw him, Chris. He was there. Does he have an alibi?”
“As good as anyone else’s at five in the morning,” Chris said. “He was sleeping.”
“Alone?”
“No,” he said, and that made Maeve wonder who the coach might be involved with, who would vouch for his whereabouts. Someone stupid, obviously. Someone willing to get caught in a lie.
Chris shrugged. “I think I would have been happier if you had been with me and not running around the backwoods of Farringville, alone with an almost dead phone.” He leaned over and brushed some damp hair from her forehead. “What were you thinking?”
What was she thinking? She didn’t know. “Hey,” she said, trying to make a joke of it. “I have a hot boyfriend. I also have love handles. I was thinking I should make one of those things go away. I chose the love handles.”
“Lucky me,” he said.
They both turned at the sound of a knock at the front door, and Chris let in his boss, Suzanne Carstairs, who came in trailed by the smell of cigarette smoke.
“Hiya, Maeve,” she said, her aging, former-prom-queen good looks at odds with the job she held. “Do you have another one of those?” she asked, pointing at the tea. “An errant scone lying around?”
Maeve made her a cup of tea and found a frozen scone in the freezer; she put it in the microwave while the chief asked her a series of questions, all of them similar to the ones that Chris had asked her already.
Suzanne raised an eyebrow. “Out for a run, you say?”
Maeve placed the tea and scone in front of the other woman. “Why does everyone find that so hard to believe?”
Suzanne shrugged. “I don’t know. You run a business that opens at the crack of dawn and closes ten hours later. Doesn’t seem like it would leave a lot of time for a regular exercise routine.” She patted her own stomach. “I should know.”
Maeve stayed quiet. The less said, the better.
The chief picked at her scone. “You’re a better woman than me, Maeve. I can barely find time to eat during the day, never mind exercise.”
Chris shot Maeve a look that said her statement wasn’t entirely accurate. The takeout wrappers that Maeve had seen in the police car were another indication that the chief didn’t miss many meals, despite her lithe frame. She was probably one of those people who could eat anything and not gain an ounce. Maeve wanted to hate her for that, but she couldn’t. Suzanne seemed plainspoken and warm, but Maeve could also tell that she was canny and sharp underneath the choppy brunette bob and behind her dark eyes. She had been appointed chief only recently, no doubt because of her ability to see through the lies as well as navigate the political, shark-infested waters of a small-town department.
“Laurel Lake, you say?” Suzanne asked, pulling a little notebook out of her blazer pocket, a blazer that matched her slacks. Slacks, that was the only thing you could call them. Practical, functional, and perfectly suited to the woman’s line of work but stylish nonetheless. Maeve wouldn’t be caught dead in a pantsuit, but Suzanne managed to pull it off, particularly because what her clothing lacked in style, she made up for with a pair of very expensive leather boots.
“Is that what it’s called?” Maeve asked. “I didn’t know it had a name.”
“Yep. Laurel Lake. Story goes that someone named Laurel drowned there,” the chief said, sipping her tea. “Hence the name.” She wrote a few words in her notebook; Maeve couldn’t read them upside down and wasn’t sure she wanted to know what they said anyway. “So, Barnham? The coach? He was down there in a kayak?” she asked.
“All true,” Maeve said.
“And you sustained a head injury upon falling from a tree branch?”
Chris leaned against the counter, his arms crossed over his chest. Maeve looked at him. Clearly he knew where this was going, but he kept his mouth shut.
“I know what I saw,” Maeve said.
Suzanne pursed her lips. “I’m just concerned that you may be misremembering,” she said. “And by the way, is your head okay?”
“My head’s fine.”
“Need to get checked out?”
“No.”
“Okay,” the chief said, returning to her scone. “The problem we have is that Barnham has an alibi. So who was it that you saw?”
Maeve put her head in her hands and thought back to the events of a few hours earlier. It had been Barnham; she
was sure of that. “I know what I saw. It was him.”
“I’m just not sure I can call in County divers to search a lake based on this story, Maeve.”
“I’m just not sure you shouldn’t be doing everything in your power, including listening to me, even if you think my story is cockamamie, to find Taylor Dvorak.”
Suzanne smiled sadly. “Here’s what I’ve got, Maeve: I’ve got a woman who took up running, God knows why, who saw someone doing something in a little lake, but who hit her head and may not be our most reliable witness, accusing a guy with an airtight alibi, and a pillar of the community to boot, of kayaking in the wee hours of the morning. You see my problem?”
Maeve looked at Chris and then back at his boss. To her ears now, it was a completely ridiculous story. “And why is his alibi airtight?”
“Well, he’s sleeping with someone on my force, Maeve,” Suzanne said. “Is that airtight enough for you?”
CHAPTER 25
It wasn’t until she was in bed that night that it occurred to her to call Poole. Unlike her daughters, he always answered the phone when she called, no matter the day, no matter the time. Tonight was no exception.
“So, I’ve had a bit of a day,” she said, touching the back of her head. This was her second bump on the head this year, and she wondered if getting hit on the head twice in a short amount of time would lead her down the same road her father had been on prior to his death. Confusion. Anger. Disorientation. Moments of resignation, but not many. She pushed those thoughts aside and focused on the task at hand. “I’m looking for background on someone named David Barnham.”
“Spell it.”
When she was finished, she added, “I don’t know, Poole. Something isn’t right about this guy.”
“Just because he kayaks before dawn?”
“That and he seems to get involved with the girls on his team.”
“What do you mean ‘get involved’?”
She realized she didn’t know. “I don’t know. Has parties. Invites the girls.”
“How do you know this?”
“I hear things,” she said.
“Good sources?”
“Maybe?”
He let that go. “Anything else?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s not a lot to go on, Maeve. Lots of coaches have parties.”
“Single men with teenage girls?”
“It’s not unheard of,” Poole said. “Listen. We’re different, you and me. We’ve been changed in a way that we don’t even understand. If this guy has an alibi, and the alibi is a cop, I’m not sure you saw who you think you saw.”
She ignored that. When Poole turned against her, didn’t believe what she was telling him, that was the time she knew she was starting to lose it. “What about the fact that he was testing the water’s depth from his kayak this morning?”
“They gonna drag the lake?”
“I don’t know. The chief and Chris weren’t too forthcoming with the next steps in the investigation.”
“Chris the boyfriend?”
“Chris the boyfriend.”
Poole paused. “Maybe they don’t want you to know what’s happening next. Ever think of that, Maeve Conlon?”
“Maybe. Hey, I was just giving them my opinion. Telling them what I saw.”
“Police don’t like amateur sleuths,” Poole said. “Messes up our game.”
“The Farringville PD has zero game, Poole. Trust me.”
“Even the boyfriend?”
Especially the boyfriend, she thought. But she didn’t answer. “So, can you help me? Find out about this Barnham guy?”
“I can try.” In the background was the noise of the city—cabs honking, pedestrians talking, a train going by overhead. He was close to his precinct, still at work. “I’ll see if I can find him the usual ways. Find out what he may have been up to before he became coach. Will that help?”
“Thanks, Poole.”
“You get yourself into a lot of messes, Maeve Conlon. But this is a new one on me.” He chuckled. “Running at dawn? Following a kayaker? If I didn’t know you so well, I’d say that you were a little loco.”
But you don’t know me that well, she thought, as she listened to silence on the other end. You only know my secrets.
“Hey,” she started, before realizing she was talking to a dead connection. “Anything on my sister? Her paternity?” But he wasn’t there any longer, and knowing him the way she did, she knew that if he had something to tell, he would have told it. Poole was a man of few words, and the words he used always counted.
She got out of bed, having already made the decision to close the store the next day, her head still aching to the touch when she reached back.
Downstairs, sitting on the bottom step of the long staircase that led to the second floor of the old Colonial, she laced up a different pair of shoes, old hiking boots that she found in the hall closet, left over from the days when she and Cal were dating and his idea of a fun date was a picnic at the top of Bear Mountain. Her ideas had been much different; sipping a Châteauneuf-du-Pape in the cozy confines of a dark-paneled bar, a plate of paté or oysters in front of the two of them. But he had had no money and she even less, so sandwiches that she prepared and an eight-dollar bottle of Chardonnay had been their reward for reaching their destination.
Maeve stood and wiggled her toes in the boots; they were definitely more comfortable than the sneakers and would serve her well on her latest excursion. She leaned on the banister and called up the stairs. “Heather!”
She discerned a low grunt from behind the girl’s bedroom door.
“I’ll be back in a few minutes,” she said, not adding anything else that could be used against her later, make her fudge an alibi when none was available. She wasn’t going to see Jo, which would have been her first convenient go-to for a lie. She wasn’t heading back to the shop. And although she was in desperate need of a haircut and eyebrow wax, there wasn’t a salon in Farringville open once the streetlights came on. The art of the lie. She had honed it over the years, learning a few things along the way from Heather, curiously. Sometimes she thought the kid was better at it than she was.
She opened the closet door and grabbed the hooded sweatshirt—owner unknown—that hung in the overstuffed downstairs storage. Her headlamp, she remembered, was still in the trunk of the Prius. She was zipping up the sweatshirt when Heather appeared at the top of the stairs, a sheet of paper in her hands.
“Would you read my essay before you go?” she asked in an uncharacteristic display of neediness.
“What essay?” Maeve asked, a little too sharply to her own ears, and judging from the look on Heather’s face, hers, too. Damn it, Maeve thought. Just when they had reached a permanent state of silent, brooding détente. Foiled again.
“Forget it!” Heather said, starting for her room.
Maeve counted. One, two, three … door slam. Happened every time. She raced up the stairs, taking them two at a time, and let herself into Heather’s room without knocking, finding the girl on her bed, sobbing into the sheet of paper. Maeve sat down next to her on the bed. “What’s going on? What essay?”
“My college essay,” Heather said, balling up the sodden paper. “For my application.”
“To where?”
“Everywhere,” she said. “All of my schools are on the common application.”
That would have meant something to Maeve if she had been even half awake during Rebecca’s own college search, but Cal had insisted that he drive the figurative bus on the search and paperwork, and Maeve had acquiesced gladly. Now she needed to engage; that was clear. She took the essay from Heather’s hand and smoothed it out on her lap. She read the title—“My Father’s Daughter”—and steeled herself for the inevitable rapture that would spill out before her, Heather’s words rhapsodizing about her wonderful father and all he had done for her.
And she wasn’t disappointed. Heather’s essay started with a story about how he
r father had taught her to ride a bike and how because of that and the patience he had shown, Heather had learned everything she needed to know about perseverance. Dedication. Love. How being taught by her father how to make lasagna (really?) and drive and care for her younger brother had made Heather the person she was today. How he had cared for her when she got chronic ear infections, spiking fevers. Heather knew what it took to get through hard times—her dad had taught her that, too. She knew what it meant to work hard because she saw her father work hard every day of his life, even now, in his early retirement and in his role as full-time father to her stepbrother.
“You hate it,” Heather said. “It’s terrible.”
Tears blurred Maeve’s vision, the paper reading as if Heather didn’t have a mother at all. She wiped them away so that Heather wouldn’t see how she really felt. “Actually, it’s lovely, honey,” she said. “There’s a typo in paragraph two. It should be t-h-e-i-r instead of t-h-e-r-e.”
Heather laughed. “Oh, man. Rookie mistake.” She walked over to her desk and made the correction on her laptop. “Anything else? Does it say enough about me and what I’m like? My English teacher said that it should be a story about me and tell the person reading the application who I am. Give them a window into what I’m like.”
“Yes,” Maeve said. “It says that.”
“It’s not too much about Dad?” she asked.
It’s way too much about Dad, but I’m a little biased there, Maeve thought but did not say. “It’s perfect, honey. Really,” she said, the lie catching in her throat slightly, making her cough.
“I think I’ll send it to Rebecca to see what she says,” Heather said.
“Good idea.” Maeve stood thinking back to her dinner with Rebecca and her insinuation that Heather had a new person in her life. “How is everything else going?” Maeve asked.
Lie in Plain Sight Page 15
