Crooked Little Lies

by Barbara Taylor Sissel

  Annie blew her nose. “Thank you,” she said.

  “I didn’t do anything,” Lauren said.

  Annie looked at her. “You didn’t try to talk me out of blaming myself.”

  Lauren made a face. “What I hear is that forgiving yourself takes time, but if it counts for anything, I don’t think your mom would like it, that you blame yourself.”

  “No, she wouldn’t.” Annie stuffed the napkin into the sack with the rest of their trash. “I’ve imagined the worst, you know? When it comes to Bo, I mean.”

  Lauren said it was human to do that. She said, “Your mind can run away with you.”

  Annie said, “I think Bo’s dad—I think JT knows something.”

  “Oh, well . . .” Lauren felt unsure of herself. Everyone knew things.

  “It’s just a feeling. Probably crazy. Like you said, your mind plays tricks sometimes.” Annie looked off. “Bo’s a grown man. He could have left of his own free will, you know? Ms. M could be someone who means something to him, someone he never told me or JT about. What if everyone has gone to all this trouble, and Bo just decided to leave town with her?”

  “He had money,” Lauren had to say it, at least that much. “He showed it to me.”

  Annie made a face and said she figured he did. “It’s a bad habit of his, taking out his cash.”

  Where had Bo gotten it? Did Annie know? Lauren looked into the middle distance.

  “He isn’t stupid; that’s the thing. He’s not retarded the way some people think. In fact, in some ways, he’s really kind of—”

  Lauren interrupted, “The white-haired woman had a dog!”

  Annie frowned.

  “Bo was laughing when he got into her car, not at her but at the dog in the backseat. I just remembered.” Lauren touched her temple. How could she have forgotten something so important?

  “He might go with someone who had a dog, even if they were a stranger.” Annie was apprehensive. “You’re sure?”

  Lauren nodded. “It was a brown-and-white dog. Medium size, I think. Short fur. There was a black blaze down his nose. His eyes—” She paused.

  “What about his eyes?”

  “They were blue. The dog turned its face and looked at me out the window when I passed. The eyes were blue.” Lauren was sure of it.

  Annie stood up and carried their trash to the receptacle. “We should go back to the center and find Detective Cosgrove or Sheriff Audi. The police should know. It might help them find her.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Lauren said. It shook her that she’d forgotten. There wasn’t an excuse for it. It wasn’t fueled by emotion or related to her family but completely independent of them.

  Annie said it was okay, but her expression was marked with something that suggested aggravation, disbelief, some mix of the two. At least that was how Lauren interpreted it, but then she was angry at herself and more than a little frightened. She felt disoriented.

  “I have trouble with my memory sometimes.” Lauren fell into step beside Annie, and when she caught her questioning glance, she said, “I fell a couple of years ago and took kind of a hard knock on my head.”

  It was obvious from Annie’s expression that she didn’t know what to say, and Lauren felt terrible about her discomfort. She felt she had to explain now. “I was helping my husband take down an old church. I fell from the bell tower, a couple of stories. I was in a coma for a bit. I don’t like talking about it.” It was all Lauren wanted to say, but somehow it wasn’t enough; she felt she owed Annie more, so she gave her the rest, leaving out her struggle with the Oxy.

  “It sounds as if you’re lucky to be alive,” Annie said when Lauren finished.

  “I’ve heard that before.” Lauren followed Annie through the community center door.

  “There’s Sheriff Audi.” Annie directed Lauren’s attention to the man in a uniform across the room, talking to Madeleine.

  Once Annie introduced Lauren to the sheriff, it took only a few minutes for her to repeat the story of her Friday-morning encounter with Bo, this time including the details about the dog. As Detective Cosgrove had done, Sheriff Audi wrote down everything Lauren said in a small notebook.

  He looked up. “You didn’t mention a breed. Do you know it?”

  “The blue eyes make me think it was an Aussie. Australian sheepdog,” she said at the sheriff’s questioning glance. She and Tara had an Aussie named Blue when they were growing up. “It might have been some other kind, though, a mixed breed of some sort.”

  “But you’re sure about the eye color? Sure the dog was brown-and-white and medium size?”

  Lauren looked away. Was she? Would she testify to it in a court of law? Swear it on a stack of Bibles? Should she explain about her memory that was as shot full of holes as an old, moth-eaten quilt? Would that make her seem like less of a hapless idiot? She looked back at the sheriff. “You know, I only saw the dog for a few seconds.”

  He nodded, putting away his notebook.

  Lauren turned on her phone, and it immediately rang. Without looking, she knew it was Jeff and excused herself, saying, “I have to take this.”

  “Would you like me to get your purse for you?” Madeleine asked.

  “Oh, yes, would you, please?”

  “I might want to talk with you again,” Sheriff Audi said.

  Lauren nodded distractedly, taking her purse when Madeleine brought it, talking over Jeff—he tended to shout when he was worried—telling him she was on her way, that he should calm down. She realized too late it was the wrong thing to say.

  “Calm down?” His voice was a sharp bark. “I’m out of my mind here! You said at eleven this morning you were coming in. Now it’s after four in the afternoon! I’ve been calling and calling—your cell, the landline at the house. When I called the dealership, they said they brought you a loaner so you could get to work. Jesus, Lauren! How can you do this?”

  “I’m sorry . . .” Her head felt light, and she touched her temple.

  “Lauren? Sweetheart, are you all right?”

  It was hearing him call her sweetheart that made her throat close. Suddenly, she longed for him. “Oh, Jeff, I don’t know. I—I only came by the community center to see if there was something I could do to help find Bo. I—I lost track of time.”

  She quick-stepped toward the entry. A man arriving from outside the door at the same time pulled it open, allowing her to pass, and when their eyes caught, despite how her mind was caught up in its own web of anxiety, she was moved by the aura of grim exhaustion that seemed to emanate from him. She nodded her thanks, trying to place him, why he looked familiar. It came to her once the door closed behind him, that the man was Bo’s dad, JT. She’d seen him with Annie on the news last night, pleading for anyone with information about his son to call the police or the hotline.

  Yet earlier, when Annie mentioned JT, she had sounded suspicious of him in a way that made Lauren think JT might somehow be involved in Bo’s disappearance. She stopped to look through the center’s plate-glass window, following JT as he crossed the room to join Annie and the sheriff. JT put his arm around Annie, and they seemed to sag against each other. Lauren’s heart constricted. It was such a terrible situation. She felt awful for leaving—

  But Jeff was talking, saying something about the loaner again, that she needed to get it back to the dealership. “You need to pick up your car before the service department closes.”

  “But I already have my car.” Lauren was thoroughly confused. “Someone, a guy named Danny, brought it to the house, around noon. There must be some mistake.” She searched ahead for a sign of the Navigator’s dark roof, expecting to see it, waiting to see it.

  Except she didn’t.

  The SUV wasn’t where she’d left it.

  A gray Nissan Altima was parked in its place.

  “Oh, no . . .” The protest,
not much over a whisper, slipped out. Tiny prickles of alarm burst under her skin.

  “Lauren?”

  “It’s not here.”

  “Where are you?”

  “In front of Kim’s shop on Prescott, where I parked.” Lauren shut her eyes tightly and opened them again as if that might make the car appear. Poof. Like magic, the Altima would become the Navigator. But it didn’t happen. She backed away a step, gaze whipping from side to side. Maybe she had parked in a different space nearby. Her feet followed the thought, half running first to one end of the block, then to the other before she paused again in front of Kim’s shop, scanning the opposite side of the street.

  But there was no SUV within her view that resembled hers even remotely.

  “Oh, God, Jeff. It’s been stolen!”

  “No, Lauren,” Jeff said reasonably, calmly, patiently. “It isn’t stolen. It’s at the dealership. You’re driving an Altima, a gray Nissan Altima. A 2011, I think they said. Do you see it there?”

  “Yes, but how—? This isn’t right. I distinctly remember driving the Navigator here. I gave Danny a tip for bringing it to me.”

  “Well, that may be true, but according to a guy I talked to in the service department, Danny or whoever it was brought you the Altima as a loaner after you called them and said you had to get to work.”

  They waited through a heartbeat of silence.

  “You don’t remember that,” Jeff said.

  It was a statement, not a question, and his tone was flat with disappointment, an edge of disgust. She’d let him down—again.

  Finally, he told her to go back to the community center. “I’ll have someone from the dealership bring your Navigator. They can switch it out with the Altima.” He said he would come, too. He was reassuring and kind, and he called her sweetheart again.

  But this time she wasn’t moved by the endearment. “Okay, but I’m going to the dealership. I want to talk to Danny myself, and I’d like you to be there.”

  “All right,” Jeff said. “After you get your Navigator back, if you still want to, we’ll go talk to him.”

  “You’re damn right we will!” Lauren rarely cursed, but she was scared and furious, and sick of doubting and defending herself. It made her feel mean.

  “We’ll go to the dealership,” she repeated, “and then we’ll go to the police. Because this is some kind of sick joke.” She took a moment, seeing the plausibility. “That’s what this is, Jeff. Some kind of prank.”

  He didn’t argue; he said she should wait for him, and Lauren took strength from that. She thought he accepted her theory, that he thought it was plausible, too.

  14

  JT came up to where Annie stood with the sheriff. She felt his arm come around her, felt his weight as if he might need her for support, and she was glad for it, for his presence and the relief of someone to hold her up, too, even if only for a moment. She told him about her visit to the morgue. It upset him that she’d gone.

  “I should have been the one to go,” he said to the sheriff.

  “I tried to call you,” he said. “You were out of range or your cell was dead.”

  “I volunteered,” Annie said, and she could still feel the impossibility of saying the words morgue and body in relation to Bo over the telephone to JT.

  JT pulled her closer to his side, and she turned her head, pressing her face into the soft spot beneath his shoulder, where she smelled the weariness of days spent in the same clothes, a fainter memory of his aftershave, the underscore of something sad, like despair. She thought of the gap that had existed between them for most of their years together, closed now by the zipper of calamity. Their unlikely bond was its dark gift, she thought. Tragedy’s incongruous treasure. And she was grateful for it. She thought, until Bo came home, JT was all the family she had in this world. “It wasn’t Bo,” she said, straightening. “That’s the good thing.”

  JT made a noise, something between a groan and a word of assent, and lowered his head, pinching the bridge of his nose, and he stood that way long enough for Annie to wonder if he was crying. Long enough for her to think that if he was, he had a right to his tears. But when he looked up, he was smiling. Not a real smile. Maybe it was intended to reassure her. She didn’t know, couldn’t quite interpret its meaning, really. It seemed grotesque, when the rest of his expression was so bloodshot and gray with exhaustion, the terrible grind of anxiety. But what bothered her more was his refusal to look at her. If their glances happened to catch, he jerked his away. She remembered when he left search and rescue—a job that had been a huge and vital part of his life, a job he’d done thoroughly and well—he’d acted the same way. Evasive, furtive. Too quiet.

  What’s wrong? Annie’s mother had asked repeatedly. Nothing, JT had answered. No need to worry, he’d said. It was the wife of one of his coworkers who ultimately told Annie’s mom that JT had quit, and when her mom confronted him, he excused himself, saying he didn’t want to burden her. He’d already piled enough on her plate bringing Bo into her life. Something like that.

  He always wanted to be the good guy, the rescuer, the fixer. If he knew something about Bo now, something bad, he’d keep it from Annie, forever if he could. He’d feel he was protecting her, saving her. And it annoyed and alarmed her, the thing he might know. She didn’t need saving. What she needed from him was the truth.

  He shrugged off his backpack. Annie had watched him unload the pack and check over his equipment: bottled water, a basic first aid kit, a small saw, a utility knife, a couple of heat sheets—the list wasn’t so very different from what you’d take if you were going camping—before reloading it on Monday near midnight. He still knew the drill. That’s what JT had said to her right after he said he wouldn’t quit until Bo was found. He’d stopped short of promising. Annie guessed he wouldn’t make that mistake again.

  “How long since you slept, man?” the sheriff asked him. “You should go home.”

  JT answered he was fine, and by the way he said it, Annie could tell he had no intention of going anywhere except back out to look for Bo. In fact, despite his obvious fatigue, there was an eagerness about him, an animation that had been missing for a long while. It was as if the search for Bo had restored meaning and direction to his life. Yet another backhanded gift of calamity, Annie thought.

  She said, “Before you go, I need to talk to you.”

  “What about?”

  She looked at the sheriff, then back at JT. “I talked to a detective earlier, and he brought up Leighton.”

  “The drug dealer?”

  JT knew about him because Annie had told him last summer when the relationship ended. She’d been worried for herself and Bo. “Detective Cosgrove said they don’t know where he is.”

  “Christ.” JT looked at the sheriff. “He’s not in Chicago?”

  “We’re still checking. There’s a BOLO out.”

  “I knew we should have reported that son of a bitch to the cops.”

  Annie had talked JT out of it. He’s gone, she’d said. That’s the end of it. She’d pointed out that Bo had stopped using drugs. Leave it alone, she’d begged. And JT had listened to her.

  “There’s another guy we’re looking for, an associate of Drake’s. Greg Honey?” Sheriff Audi was addressing JT. “Does the name ring any bells?”

  JT said no. He didn’t recognize the man in the photo the sheriff showed him.

  “You think Bo could be messed up with drugs again, JT?” the sheriff asked. “You see any sign of that lately?”

  JT said he hadn’t. “But that doesn’t mean anything,” he added, and Annie’s heart sank.

  Madeleine joined them and after looking JT over, she said, “You need to eat something.”

  He shouldered his pack. “Thanks, but I’m not hungry.”

  “Nonsense,” Madeleine said. “Do you suppose you’ll be any good to that bo
y if you drop from starvation? Either of you?” She divided her glance between Annie and JT. “There’s plenty of hot food right here in the kitchen.” She went over the menu, mentioning Cooper’s mother’s chicken soup, Annie’s baked goods, the variety of casseroles, salads, and desserts others had donated. “Plus there are sandwiches,” she added. “C’mon, I’ll fix you a plate. You, too, young lady. You’ll feel better with some decent food in your stomach.”

  JT caught Annie’s glance. “If I’m getting my arm twisted, so are you.”

  But Annie said “No, thank you” and “Maybe later,” and she wasn’t that surprised when neither Madeleine nor JT argued. They were too tired to fuss at her.

  Annie’s gaze followed them as they crossed the room. Madeleine disappeared into the hallway that led to the kitchen, but JT was stopped repeatedly. Some folks, the nicer, more polite ones, only wanted to offer commiseration, but others wanted news, facts, details. Watching, Annie felt pangs of distress, knowing JT found the attention as difficult to handle as she did. She would have joined him if she hadn’t heard the door to the community center open and glanced around to see Lauren coming through it, looking white-faced and shaken. A man was with her, an exceptionally tall, strongly built, good-looking man. They were having a very animated discussion.

  “Lauren?” Annie went to meet her. “What’s wrong?”

  “Oh, Annie, I don’t want you troubled with it. My husband and I just need to talk to Sheriff Audi a moment.”

  “No, we really don’t,” said the husband.

  Annie glanced at him, and when their eyes met, his veered away.

  “Lauren’s a bit wound up, is all.” He put his arm across her shoulders as if he meant to turn her and guide her back outside.

  She balked, holding her ground. “Of course I am. My car’s gone. Stolen.”

  “Oh, no,” Annie said. “Are you sure?” She didn’t know why she questioned it. Lauren was clearly upset. So was her husband, but not in quite the same way. Annie’s eyes collided with his again, and she realized he was embarrassed. She imagined if she asked he would say he wished he was anywhere but here. She could sympathize. As small and petty and awful as it was to admit it, sometimes Bo embarrassed her, too.