Perfect Lies

by Liza Bennett

  “Five thousand per?” Clint asked, and then whistled between his teeth when Hannah nodded. “Jeez, that already seems like a lot of money to me.”

  “Well, Ethan had a lot of talent,” Hannah replied. “And I must say that it’s a tremendous relief to me that I’m no longer entirely alone in my saying so.”

  It was not unusual in Red River, and especially at the McGowan’s, for people to wander into the house, unannounced. Francine Werling felt enough at home to stop and pour herself a mug of coffee in the kitchen before joining the others on the sun porch that morning. Matt, carrying a large Kmart shopping bag, followed behind her, his headset pumping with angry rhythms.

  “Hannah.” Francine extended her hand; Hannah flinched under the minister’s bone-crunching grip. “Good to see you again so soon.”

  “Indeed, you as well.”

  When Francine dismissed the news of the Guggenheim sale with a quick “that’s nice,” Meg sensed Hannah’s animosity toward the minister growing. It didn’t help that Francine immediately monopolized the conversation. No matter where she was or what she was doing, she was somehow always in the pulpit, above them all, dispensing advice, casting judgment.

  “Matt and I are going into Montville.” Francine said, smiling. “We’re going to visit Lucinda. Take her a few things. We’ve been collecting some books and magazines we thought she might enjoy.”

  “That’s thoughtful of you,” Meg said, glancing across the table at Lark. She was looking over her daughters’ heads, out the window, her gaze unfocused.

  “I don’t understand,” Hannah said. “Why would you be bringing that girl gifts? I wouldn’t think you’d want to reward her behavior.”

  “I wouldn’t think so, either.” Lark’s words came out in a rush.

  “God is merciful, Lark,” Francine said, looking at her. Sometimes Francine’s serenity could be almost frightening; her calmness overcontrolled. Meg could sense the enormous reserve of emotion Francine held in check and wondered what would happen if she ever let it break through the floodgates. “We must learn to follow Her example. We must not ever forget, as the Bible tells us: ‘Judge not that ye be not judged.’”

  “The Bible also said something about an eye for eye,” Lark said, scraping her chair back and getting up. She crumpled up her paper napkin, threw it on her plate, and started to clear the table.

  It seemed to Meg that Clint entered the conversation at that point primarily to diffuse the tension building between Francine and Lark. He’d been in charge of Ethan’s business for only a few weeks, but already he seemed more confident and grounded. He’d always been big and somewhat lumbering, but now his bulkiness seemed more pulled together. It helped that he’d recently gotten a haircut and had his beard trimmed as well.

  “I was going to ask about Luce. What’s happening with her?”

  Meg waited until Lark left the room before she said, “Abe told me that there’s a hearing scheduled for next week. To review the case and, I guess, rule on further hospitalization and mental status.”

  “Does she need to stay in the hospital?” Janine asked.

  “Her burns became infected,” Meg explained. “But I don’t think it’s too serious.”

  “An infection is the least of her worries,” Matt said sourly. He hadn’t sat with the rest of them at the table, slouching down instead on the low-slung couch facing the river, a plate of French toast balanced on his lap. He spoke up so seldom that Meg at first didn’t recognize his voice. Deep and mellifluous, it immediately gained his listener’s attention. And it was unmistakable that he was his mother’s son. Everyone at the table turned to him as he spoke.

  “Only God can know her true state of mind, Matt,” Francine said, turning back to her coffee and away from her son. “We really must make a concerted effort not to judge for ourselves.” Snorting laughter from Matt followed Francine’s pronouncement, and he stood up abruptly. He was a tall, rangy boy, with a insolent bounce to his walk. There was a sense of menace in the way he approached the table and dropped his empty plate down next to Meg’s place.

  “Are we going? Or are we going to sit around and chew the fat all day?” he said.

  “We’ll be going in a moment,” Francine said. “I just wanted to ask if there was anything we could bring Lucinda from here?”

  “I’m going to lend her my Archie and Veronica comics,” Phoebe announced, slipping off her chair.

  “She won’t want them, silly,” Brook said, trying to stop her little sister. “And besides, I don’t think Mom would like—”

  “What wouldn’t I like?” Lark asked with a forced smile as she carried a fresh pot of coffee into the room along with, Meg sensed, an attempt to be more cheerful.

  “Us giving stuff to Lucinda,” Brook told her.

  “It’s the charitable thing to do,” Francine said when she saw Lark start to frown. “We’ve talked and talked about this. Now is the time to act. To turn the other cheek.”

  Lark put the coffee on the table and wiped her hands on her jeans.

  “I can hear what you’re saying, Francine,” she said, looking directly at her friend and adviser. “I know you mean well. But, I’m telling you right now—if one single thing goes out of this house for Lucinda … it will be over my dead body.”

  “A tooth for a tooth,” Matt said into the silence that had taken hold of the room.

  “Matthew!” Francine snapped. She looked from Lark to her son. “Behave.” It was the same tone of voice one would use to discipline a recalcitrant puppy, and Matt, hanging his head, responded in much the same way a puppy would have.

  “C‘mon,” he said to his mother with a whine in his voice, “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  23

  After Francine and Matt had left, Lark and Clint walked Hannah down to the old ice house by the studio that Ethan had used for extra storage space. Clint was already working on the old wooden structure, repairing its walls and patching its sagging roof. This was where Lark had agreed to let the Lindberghs set up the retail end of their business. The studio, as Clint pointed out, had too many bad memories associated with it. And, for the time being, it remained sealed off by the police. Janine stayed at the house to clean up after breakfast and look after Fern and the girls. Meg, alone for the moment, dialed a number posted in big bold letters by the kitchen phone.

  “Red River Police Department. Huddleson speaking.”

  “Yes, I’m Meg Hardwick, Lark’s sister. She told me you wanted to speak to me.”

  “Meg, sure,” Huddleson said. “We’ve met a few times. It would be great if you could come by. When’s good?”

  “How about right now?”

  “Well…” he hesitated a moment. “The other two men on the team are over in Montville this morning, but I think I can handle it on my own. If you don’t mind me having to get the phone from time to time. This is pretty much a one-man show on Saturdays.”

  It was a ten-minute walk into town. The morning was chilly and clear, a blanket of frost covering the fields and lawns. A quarter mile beyond the turn-off to Lark’s drive, a concrete bridge spanned the Rocquonic, leading into the town proper. Here the two-story white clapboard houses sat on half-acre lots, a clutter of bicycles and toys in every other driveway. Without the flattering leaf cover of the maples that lined Main Street, it was clear that many of the storefronts and homes needed a fresh coat of paint or new shingles.

  Though far from wealthy or prestigious, Meg knew that Red River was a pleasant, quiet place to bring up a family. Children could roam freely, play in each other’s yards, come home after sunset without parents worrying about anything happening to them. Everybody knew everybody else—a glance would place you as so-and-so’s child. There were no strangers here, though it often took a while for new people to feel welcome. Once you were known and liked, however, as Lark and the girls clearly were now, you became a part of a community as close-knit and caring as a large, extended family.

  Then there were those, like
Ethan, who were never really accepted. He hadn’t tried, of course. He’d moved to Red River primarily because the farm had been a good buy and because it was a perfect location for a glassblowing studio. The town itself, its unique character and inhabitants never meant that much to him. Except for the more attractive women. No, Meg decided, as she passed Yoder’s general store with its rank of pickups out front, Ethan had never been liked—and would not be missed.

  Lucinda, on the other hand, had been actively despised. She’d been disruptive and disrespectful from the moment she’d come to town. Once she got a reputation for wildness and promiscuity, parents discouraged their children from speaking to her. In a town the size of Red River, the bad news spread quickly. Lucinda managed to chalk up one outrage after another during the past year. It wasn’t surprising, Meg realized, that Red River had turned its back on her now. Lucinda McGowan had managed to make herself into the perfect scapegoat.

  The police station was located in the middle of town. The American and New York state flags hung limply on either side of the well-scuffed front door.

  Tom Huddleson, alone in the station, sorted through papers at a metal desk. In his fifties, running a bit to fat, he had a thick head of steely gray hair and the well-lined face of a veteran sportsman. The front office contained a cluster of wanted posters and a series of shelves sagging under the weight of heavy binders. A garishly framed portrait of the last police chief shaking hands with the governor hung above the fax machine.

  “Sorry about the mess,” Huddleson said, lifting some papers off a swivel chair next to his desk and nodding Meg into it. “Cup of coffee?” The smell emanating from the two-pot electric coffeemaker in the corner made Meg suspect that the coffee had been sitting there for several hours.

  “No, thanks,” she said, taking a seat.

  “I’ve a few questions for you,” Huddleson said. He pulled a file out from a row of folders behind his desk, opened it, and drew a yellow legal pad toward him.

  “We’ve been told by several people that Ethan and you…” The police chief had a deliberate way of speaking, weighing each word, thinking through every sentence in advance. “… you had been, uh, seeing each other.”

  “Ethan tried to seduce me—and failed,” Meg corrected him. “The first time was the night of his gallery opening in Manhattan in late September. Then he kept at it right up until the time of his death. At no point did I respond in a positive way.”

  “I see.” He wrote something down in a chicken scratch that looked impossible, from where Meg was sitting, to read. “You were upset with him because of this?”

  “Yes. I was furious. I didn’t know until later, until after the murder, that he had a reputation for that sort of thing. I was horrified, in any case. He was my brother-in-law, for heavens’ sake.”

  “Of course.” Huddleson nodded sympathetically. “But then you know about Lucinda’s miscarriage, right? And the possibility that Ethan was the father? Lucinda came to you in the city after she ran away. What did she want?”

  “Money. A place to stay,” Meg replied. “Months ago I promised her that she could come visit me—if she cleaned up her act a bit.”

  “But you were aware that ‘her act’ wasn’t exactly together?” Huddleson looked over his half glasses at Meg. “You knew that she was pregnant?”

  “No, I didn’t. I had no idea until Lark told me about the miscarriage.”

  “Lucinda did turn to you for advice from time to time, didn’t she? Confide her feelings and such?”

  “Yes, I’d say she felt comfortable telling me things.”

  “She tell you about her feelings for Ethan? Go into that at all with you?”

  “They had a strained relationship, I know. She never gave me chapter and verse on it, though.”

  “But she was pretty upset when she discovered that you had become the object of Ethan’s affections, right?” Huddleson scanned the file in front of him. “That happened at your apartment down in the city when Ethan came by and Lucinda was there instead of you.”

  “Yes, she was upset,” Meg said, realizing that Lark must have gone over all this ground already with the police during her various interviews.

  “Very upset from what we heard. In a jealous rage.”

  “No, she wasn’t jealous. She was upset that Ethan was coming on to me.”

  “I’m sorry, but that sounds like jealousy to me.” Huddleson said. He put down his pen, pulled off his reading glasses, and massaged the bridge of his nose.

  “No, that’s not how it was at all,” Meg, sitting forward, tried to explain: “Lucinda didn’t want Ethan screwing up my life—the way he had her mother’s. She was upset because he kept cheating on his family—Lark and the girls—and, by extension, Lucinda herself. But it wasn’t a sexual jealousy—it was an emotional outrage. She felt betrayed by him—and concerned for me.”

  “And how do you know all this? Did she tell you how she felt?”

  “Not in so many words,” Meg answered truthfully. “But she did tell me that Ethan would never have tried to seduce her. He didn’t even like to touch her. She told me that he thought she was ugly.”

  “And this was when?”

  “When I saw her in the hospital.”

  “After the murder.”

  “Yes.”

  “And where were you when he was killed?”

  “I must have been running in the park—in New York,” Meg said, thinking back.”

  “Anyone see you there? Anybody able to verify your whereabouts?”

  “My neighbors’ kids,” Meg said, remembering the Edleson twins skating past her. “And Lark, of course. She called me right after Ethan was found. Am I a suspect?”

  “No, not unless we find out that you’re lying about being in Manhattan at the time of the murder.” Huddleson closed the file and stood up. “My counterparts from the state may have a question or two, though I think we’ve pretty well covered it. I’ll just need to take your prints, if you don’t mind.”

  “You seem to be running a very thorough investigation,” Meg observed, attempting to defuse the forced intimacy she felt as Huddleson helped her slowly roll her fingers through the cool black printing ink. There was a sour smell of coffee on his breath.

  “Got to. The D.A. in this county hasn’t lost a case in years. And he doesn’t intend to lose this one, I can tell you that. It’s up to me—and my friends from the state—to make sure he’s got the goods to convict.”

  “Convict Lucinda, you mean?” Meg asked. He handed her a moist towelette, and she worked at the stains on the pads of her fingers until they were clean, though she felt tainted in a deeper way by the interrogation. Despite her best intentions, she knew that her interview had done nothing but add to the mounting circumstantial evidence against the teenager.

  “I know why you’re worried,” the chief said kindly, as he walked her to the door. “The state detectives have been putting your sister through the ringer. They just go by the book, you know, for them its just another job. They can’t see what I see—I know this town and the people in it like the back of my hand. I’ve known and admired Lark for many years. And you’d have to have been blind not to see how much she loved Ethan. These state detectives couldn’t know that. They just see a wife who’s been cheated on for a lot of years.”

  “They think Lark killed Ethan?”

  “You want to know how it is?” Huddleson looped his thumbs in his belt and for the first time Meg noticed he was wearing a gun. “These guys think anybody might have done it—they make no assumptions. They’re looking for evidence. They’re gathering alibis. Shipping hair and skin samples off to the forensics lab upstate. To them, it’s like science. A kind of math problem. To them, all they need to do is get the numbers all lined up and—there you go—the face of the murderer comes up. Like looking at some X ray on a light box. Now, I’m not saying they’re wrong. It could very well be that clinical. But in my mind, solving this thing is a lot more like a religion—you take everything y
ou know, add to it everything you believe, factor in history and experience. You end up with a kind of inevitable sense of what is true—a kind of faith, I guess.”

  “You’re convinced Lucinda did it?”

  “I’m not saying that.” Huddleson held the door open for her. “I’m not coming out and saying that, you understand? All I’m telling you is that you can go back and tell your sister not to worry. This town knows what she’s been through. We know things instinctively—in our hearts—that strangers like these state detectives can’t know. Let them work their science. Let them run their tests. In the end, I believe it’s all going to add up to the same thing. We’re going to get her … coming and going.”

  24

  The Lindbergh’s cottage reminded Meg of the series of worn-down rentals she’d lived in growing up. On her way back from town, Meg caught sight of its fading white facade through the now leafless woods—and was drawn to it. She turned off the main driveway and followed the short dirt road down to the two-story shingled Cape where Clint and Janine had lived for the last ten years. Though the nearly hundred-year-old cottage was in need of a major overhaul, Clint had recently patched the roof in places and reinforced the gutters with metallic tape. Meg knew enough not to try the front of the house. In Red River, most of the front doors hadn’t been opened in twenty years. Instead, she went around to the side door that led onto a small porch attached to the kitchen. Janine, working at the sink, saw her before Meg had the chance to knock.

  “Meggie!” Janine turned her name into a surprised little squeal. She wiped her hands on a dish towel and added in a more contained voice: “Everyone’s still up at the big house.”

  “Actually, I wanted to talk to you, if you have a second,” Meg said, looking around. The kitchen was warm, sweet with the smell of something baking in the oven. Apart from that, Meg thought it was a depressing sight. She hadn’t been in the house for several years, and its state of repair had only deteriorated in that time. The linoleum floor was clean but heavily scuffed and the oval rag rug in front of the sink didn’t quite cover the area where pieces of the flooring had been ripped out for some plumbing repair and never replaced. The veneer cupboards were chipped in spots, pressed wood showing through like skin beneath ragged clothing. Taped with pictures of animals and flowers that Janine had cut out of magazines and old calendars, the refrigerator wheezed unevenly. An overhead fluorescent light gave the room a bright, slightly bluish cast.