Crooked Little Lies

by Barbara Taylor Sissel

  Did he mean about the shooting? Hiding it? Lauren waited.

  He plowed his hands over his head, and she had the sense he was hunting for the words to make her understanding happen. He found her gaze again. “We were going to lose the business, the house, everything if I didn’t do something, and this opportunity—Wick brought the deal to me, over a year ago, before you came back to work, when you were still so—”

  “What deal, Jeff?” But even as Lauren asked, she was putting it together, remembering the Nautilus resort brochure and the way Cosgrove had questioned her about it. You don’t know Matson in the capacity of real estate developer? You don’t know that the Nautilus is his project? You haven’t bought shares?

  “Wick has this fantastic beachfront property on the Gulf Coast near South Padre Island. His granddad left it to him. Wick wanted to develop it. Put up a swanky hotel, get somebody famous to build a golf course. He started getting investors. I was one of them. It looked solid, you know, and we made money at first. Everybody was happy. We kept getting new investors, more than we could handle really. But more important than that, Wilder and Tate was back to even again. The mortgage on our house was current. We were getting a handle on all the medical bills. You know how we had to drain the kids’ college funds?”

  She nodded.

  “Well, I was able to start new accounts for them. I was going to tell you. I wanted to surprise you, make it into a celebration.”

  He paused as if he expected a response, but even if she were capable of speech, Lauren didn’t know what she might have said.

  “So, we were getting this dividend out of the project every month. The way it worked—the more you put in, the bigger the return. Sometimes I was getting over 18 percent. It was like taking candy from a baby.” Jeff’s eyes shone. There was a fine film of sweat across his brow, his upper lip. He sounded thrilled but in a feverish way.

  Watching him, Lauren thought, I don’t know this man. Even his appearance seemed altered. “But was it ever built, Jeff? Was it ever more than a paper dream?”

  “See, that’s the thing. The EPA got involved. They said the land was contaminated. Well, not the land but the water supply or some shit. Something about injection wells in the area. I never really understood it.”

  “That ended the project, then? The investors got their money back?”

  “Not exactly,” Jeff said, and he told her how Wick continued to sell shares. By then, Jeff was selling shares, too. “People would hear me talk about it, about the return on investment. They couldn’t wait to give me their money.”

  “But how could you keep taking it? Didn’t they know the resort wasn’t going to be built? Didn’t you tell them?”

  “The deal wasn’t entirely dead. Wick kept working with the EPA. He swore we’d find a way around all the government bullshit, that the Nautilus would eventually open for business.”

  “Oh, Jeff, how could you believe anything he said—but even so, you weren’t honest with those people. You took their money under false pretenses.”

  “I know what you’re saying, Lauren, but moralizing now? What good is it? And trust me, if we hadn’t had that money coming in, we’d be on the street with the kids. Is that what you want?”

  Lauren blinked up at the ceiling, hunting for sense, coherence, some familiar ground, but all she could come up with was another question. “How could you do all this without my knowing?”

  “You did know. You saw all the cash running through the Cornerstone account. Where did you think it came from?”

  It was the way he said it, with the conviction of absolute truth that tripped her, but only for a moment. “Oh, please.” She bit off the words. “I’m not that far gone. The only thing I ever saw from that account was the e-mail they sent you about a new sign-in process. I never saw statements or knew there was any activity until Detective Cosgrove showed me a list of deposits and withdrawals. I don’t even remember opening the account. I had to ask you about it. You were annoyed—”

  “But you could say it was yours, that you made the deposits, wrote the checks. Your name is all over it. You’re the primary.”

  “Why would I lie?”

  “Look”—he bent toward her—“as good as the Nautilus deal was a few months back, it’s not so good now. The investors haven’t been paid anything for over a week, and for around five weeks before that, they’ve only gotten part of what’s owed them. And by them, I mean us, too. Then, recently, I found out Wick’s been bleeding cash out of a couple of the partnership accounts. While I’ve been running around like a crazy man trying to find new investors, he’s been robbing me—us—”

  Lauren interrupted, “Are these partnership accounts other bank accounts? Is my name on those, too?”

  “No. They’re accounts Wick and I opened jointly. It’s complicated, Lauren. A venture like this—you have to move money around—”

  “But it’s not legal; nothing you’re telling me is, right.” Lauren searched his gaze, hunting for a sign of the Jeff she knew, the man who was too smart, and more than that, who was too honorable to be caught up in what this so clearly was, some scheme, a way to rob people. She couldn’t fathom what had changed for him or inside him or where she’d been when it happened, and it sickened her. She felt like a person drowning, grasping for sense, any handhold.

  His face closed against her; he didn’t want to hear it—the moralizing, he’d called it. And he was right in a way. What good was it now?

  “The thing is, folks are pissed,” he said. “I’ve gotten threats.”

  “Threats?”

  “Yeah, you don’t fuck with people and their money, you know? Some of the investors want out; they want their original investment back. I don’t have it, not for all of them. Plus I think somebody found out about the EPA bullshit and tipped law enforcement. These Lincoln County guys keep saying they brought me in here to question me in regard to the shooting, but they’re asking a whole lot of other questions, and now they’ve questioned you, too.”

  “It’s scary,” Lauren murmured.

  “Yeah,” Jeff agreed.

  They sat a moment, aware of but not looking at each other. Like strangers, Lauren thought, waiting to be clobbered by yet another calamity.

  Jeff wiped his face. “It’s only a matter of time until the feds get involved. The FBI, I mean. This kind of thing—it’s federal because of the bank stuff.”

  “Oh, my God.”

  Jeff sat back. He blew a chestful of air out of his mouth. “I’ll go to jail. It’s that simple. They’re saying it’s fraud. I disagree with that, but even if I can beat whatever charges they trump up against me, like I said, there are people out there who’d like to see me as dead as Bo Laughlin. Do you understand? It’s my life on the line here. Yours and the kids, too.”

  She frowned. “Why us? We didn’t—”

  “Think about it. Where will you be if I go to prison? They’ll take everything, the house, the business. They’ll sell the goddamn furniture.”

  “How can they? I wasn’t involved.”

  “Doesn’t matter. They’ll do whatever it takes to make restitution.”

  “We can’t lose our house, Jeff, our means of earning a living.”

  “I’m doing everything I can so that won’t happen. This morning I got hold of some cash, enough to tide us over. Ben Kaiser gave me a couple hundred thousand when I met with him, but that’s not going to buy us much time.”

  “For asbestos removal.”

  Jeff didn’t confirm or deny it.

  “There is no significant asbestos contamination in the Waller-Land building, is there?”

  “Don’t worry about Kaiser. Two hundred K is nothing to him. He’ll get over eight million when he sells the property.”

  Lauren watched, mesmerized, as Jeff dismissed the issue with a flap of his hand.

  “There isn’t much ti
me,” he said to her. “So let me tell you what I’ve been thinking. We can either get a good attorney who might be able to get us out of this mess, or assuming I can get out of here, we can leave town and start over somewhere else. Whichever one you want.”

  Lauren registered the import of the alternatives Jeff was presenting, in some shocked part of her mind, and a memory surfaced of the folder containing the Waller-Land demolition paperwork—the one Jeff had insisted she hadn’t put in his briefcase—along with the realization that he had probably orchestrated that so-called mistake, too. But she couldn’t deal with it now. She wanted to know about the asbestos. “You faked a second notification form, didn’t you? And signed my name to it.”

  He admitted he had, turned up his palms, and said it again, that he’d had no choice, adding, “Believe me,” this time.

  Lauren shifted her glance. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t known from the start he’d forged her signature. But when it comes to owning a terrible truth, there’s a gap between knowing and not knowing; there are borders of acceptance to be negotiated. The journey is precarious, and Lauren was an unwilling traveler. She looked up at her husband, the man she’d married, who she no longer recognized. “You always have a choice, Jeff.”

  “Well, if there was one, I didn’t see it. The business wasn’t in good shape before your accident, and it wasn’t getting better.”

  “I understand that, but we could have filed bankruptcy, cut our losses, and—”

  “And let some banker or, worse, some lawyer tell me how to run my own goddamn business? I spent half my life and who knows how many hours, nights, days, weekends building Wilder and Tate into what it is—or I should say was. Maybe it wasn’t some Fortune 500 company, but it was a good company. It gave us and the folks who’ve worked for us a good living. I couldn’t give it away to some bunch of bloodsucking jerks in suits, you know? Besides, the trouble was temporary. I just needed a bump, and it’d be all right. Everything would go back to normal. It’s all I could think about—you and the kids, keeping you guys safe, keeping my family together. Protecting our name, our reputation.”

  He held her gaze, and she didn’t look away.

  “What was I supposed to do?”

  She couldn’t answer.

  “You’ve been through so goddamn much, Lauren. I couldn’t stand it.” His voice cut out; the sheen of tears reddened his eyes.

  Her own throat closed. “But you implicated me. How is that different from involving me?”

  “I never would have, but six weeks ago when I found out what Matson was doing behind my back, I got my hands on what money I could, opened the account at Cornerstone, and dumped it in there. I put it in your name so the bastard couldn’t find it and neither could the cops. I paid off some of the investors, too, you know? I wanted to make it right.”

  “There weren’t only withdrawals made from the account, Jeff. There were deposits, some for a lot of money. Detective Cosgrove showed me.”

  Jeff rubbed his eyes. He glanced at her and shrugged. “Folks wanted in, and I’m talking even after they found out it might not happen. Some people just want to believe in the dream. Is that my fault?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “It got away from me, Lauren, and that’s the truth.”

  “Yeah, I can believe that,” she said, and her voice hitched.

  “But it can work, I think. If we stick together, we can walk away from this without major consequences, like prison.”

  “How?”

  “You need to let me do the talking. Let me tell them you were Matson’s primary partner in the resort deal. You got the investors, took their money, dispersed the interest payments. I’ll say you didn’t really know what you were doing, that Wick put pressure on you when you weren’t yourself.”

  Lauren couldn’t have been more astonished if Jeff had balled up his fist and slugged her in the stomach. “You must be joking.” That was the only response she could make; he wasn’t pleased with it.

  “Come on, it’s not such a stretch, is it? You did take drugs; they did screw with your head, and on top of that, you had a severe brain injury, and you’re still recovering. Dr. Bettinger would testify to all of that, and after he does, do you really think a judge or a jury would convict you of anything? Even if they did, I doubt they’d do more than give you a slap on the wrist.”

  A slap on the wrist . . .

  “Tara and I, even the kids, Diane at First State, Suzanne, all of us can give a ton of examples about how your mind isn’t working up to par. It’s better, but you’re not all the way there yet. There won’t be a dry eye in the courtroom.”

  When she didn’t respond immediately, he prodded her. “What do you think?”

  “I think forging my signature on those documents isn’t all you’ve done to make me look incompetent.” Her mind had snagged on his mention of the drug use. She was shaking harder now, so much that not even her voice was steady.

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  But he did; she could see it in his eyes, the evasion, the wish to drop his gaze. But he wouldn’t. He still thought there was a chance she might buy what he was selling. But the blinders had fallen all the way now, and while the view was brutally harsh, she couldn’t deny what was there. “The Oxy in my purse and in the house—you put it there, didn’t you? Didn’t you?” she insisted when he didn’t answer. “Where did you get it?”

  “Remember when I searched the place after you quit? I found it stashed everywhere. You wouldn’t believe—”

  “You kept it?”

  “It was in a safe place, where even you wouldn’t think to look. It seemed like a shame to toss it. What if somebody needed it for pain?”

  “Or what if you needed it to make it look as if I was drugging myself again, as if I was the scammer, the liar, and the robber. After all, everyone looks up to you, Saint Jeff, the poor guy with the brain-damaged, drug-addled wife. I don’t believe you!”

  “I’m not a saint, and I wanted to tell you. I did. But think about it, Lauren, if you’d known the plan, you wouldn’t have sounded convincing.”

  “That’s insane, Jeff! And people think I’m crazy?”

  “Okay, but answer this—if you were asked if you took the Oxy, like in a courtroom, could you honestly say you didn’t? Could you swear your memory was accurate? Would you swear it? Would you swear that at times, even since you’ve been off it, your judgment isn’t still impaired, that you haven’t forgotten things, important things?”

  Like your own daughter.

  Jeff’s meaning hung between them, an accusing finger.

  He went on. “Wouldn’t there be reasonable doubt, enough that you couldn’t be held accountable?”

  “I’m surprised you didn’t spike my morning coffee with it.” The words were pure sarcasm, acid on her tongue.

  “Are you serious? You think I’d do that after what I—all of us went through when you were on that shit? No! I never gave it to you, Lauren. Jesus—”

  “But you did torment me with it. You did things to make me doubt my own sobriety and sanity.”

  He raised his brows.

  “The Navigator?” she said.

  “What about it?” he asked, as if he were in ignorance.

  But the flush creeping out of his shirt collar, the visible heat of his guilt was unmistakable. Lauren felt the last of her hope go. She had wanted so badly for this at least to be an invention of law enforcement. “Why did you do it?”

  He knew what she meant and shifted his gaze from her. His jaw worked. He said he didn’t know and stopped. He said, “I was so fucking mad that day. Everything piled up.” He gave her a look. “My stress level was off the chart even before the weekend at the farm. Then that kid got shot, and you got involved in the search. It scared the shit out of me when you said the cops had been at the house Wednesday morning. I decided right then
I had to tell you—I mean, everything, the shooting, Matson, all of it. I thought when you got to work, we’d sit down. We’d work out something. I waited for you. Waited and waited. But you never showed.”

  She could see that it mattered that she hadn’t kept her promise. She could see that if she had gone to the warehouse instead of going into town, things might have worked out differently, and the enormity of it, of how her own actions might have altered the outcome, jarred her.

  “I was so fucking pissed. I knew where you were, that you’d gone to the community center, and I drove there. I was going to let you have it, but then I saw the Navigator—I’m not proud of what I did. I hope you believe that.”

  “What were you thinking? That it would make me look even crazier? I mean, when the shit hit the fan, as you say, and you implicated me? You could cite that whole little drama you arranged with the car, that you played out at the community center as an example of my faulty memory, my lack of judgment—my criminal behavior?” Lauren stood up, bitterness flooding her mind, coating the back of her mouth. She pushed the chair up to the table. “You’re on your own, Jeff. I don’t want any part in this, your latest scheme. I don’t know what drove you to do such terrible things. I don’t know the man you’ve become.”

  His face fell. His eyes reddened again. “But you do. You do know me,” he insisted. “I’m still the same guy, your husband who loves you better, more than anything on earth. I’m nothing without you. When you got hurt, when I almost lost you, I was there at the hospital every second. I helped you learn to walk again, to talk again, to remember. I tied your shoes, Lauren, when you couldn’t.”

  She gripped the chairback hard enough to whiten her knuckles.

  “Look, I know I fucked up, but I can make it right. Let’s just get out of this, and then you’ll see.”

  Jeff stood and came around the corner of the table, and Lauren let him approach her. She was confused about why. There was some part of her that was still clinging to the idea that there was a way back. She knew better, but still . . . almost sixteen years together. How did you walk away?