Never Tell a Lie

by Hallie Ephron

  Ivy felt a rush of gratitude and relief.

  David handed Theo the crumpled search warrant. Theo smoothed it and scanned the contents. He looked up. “You haven’t answered questions, have you?”

  “We had no idea we were ‘answering questions,’” David said, drawing quotation marks in the air, his voice low and intense. “We get home and—”

  Theo put up his hand. Ivy followed his gaze to the street. A media van had pulled up in front of the house. “Hang on.”

  Theo approached the officer guarding the front door and a moment later disappeared inside. A few minutes later, the side door opened, and he stuck his head out.

  “Come on in. They’re done in the kitchen.”

  Ivy climbed the steps and entered the house. She crossed the little mudroom, where layers of coats hung on hooks behind the door, and went into the kitchen. Quickly, she lowered the window shades and shut the drawers and cabinets that the police had left open. She leaned back against the counter, pulled her jacket around her, and stood there shivering, her arms folded across her belly.

  “I feel like we’ve been ambushed,” David said, grinding a fist into the refrigerator door.

  Theo tossed the search warrant on the table. He pressed the door to the dining room firmly shut and took a seat at the table.

  David paced up and back. “What in the hell is going on? They’re treating us like—”

  “Stop. Sit,” Theo said. “We need to talk.”

  David and Theo exchanged a long look. Then David drew a deep breath and ran his hand back and forth through his hair. He shrugged off his jacket, hung it over the back of a kitchen chair, and sat.

  “You, too,” Theo said, looking at Ivy.

  Ivy slipped into a chair.

  There was a sound like someone was playing the theme from the old TV show Dragnet on a toy piano. Theo fished his cell from his pocket, flipped it open, and looked at the readout. He turned off the phone, and the sound died.

  “Why are they doing this?” David asked. “Treating us like criminals.”

  “These days no one gets cut any slack. Not since the JonBenét Ramsey case.” Theo explained that ever since the Boulder police had famously screwed up the investigation of the murder of the little girl, police everywhere were going by the book, “especially when the case involves a white suburban household. It’s nothing personal.”

  Theo read through the search warrant, then pulled a silver pen and a pad of yellow lined paper from his briefcase. “Okay, from the top. The missing woman?” Theo’s brow creased. He loosened his tie and shot David a questioning look. “We’re talking Melinda White—as in Melinda White from high school?”

  “Right.” David explained how police had tracked her to their yard sale.

  “Okay. Her sister reports her missing,” Theo said. “They find her car. Your newspaper ad brings them here. So how’d that get them a search warrant?”

  David told him about Mrs. Bindel’s wicker trunk, left out at the curb for garbage pickup. How the police officer had found Melinda’s clothing inside.

  “Can they do that, Theo? I mean, isn’t that invasion of privacy?” David asked.

  “Anything out in the open on the street like that is fair game. It’s entirely legal for the police to open it up and look inside.”

  “That blouse was not in there when we put the trunk out Sunday night,” David said, glancing at Ivy for corroboration.

  “Of course it wasn’t,” she said.

  “You don’t have to convince me,” Theo said. “I’m your attorney.” He looked long and hard at David. “And I’m also your friend.”

  The ceiling creaked. The police were probably up there searching their bedroom, pawing through Ivy’s underwear, running their hands through the bedding.

  “Ivy saw lots of people stop by and rummage around in it,” David said. “Any one of them could have put that blouse in there.”

  Theo took notes. “What kinds of people? How many?”

  “Our neighbor,” Ivy said. “Another woman who lives in the neighborhood. Some tall guy, but by then it was too dark to see who he was.” Ivy picked up a salt shaker from the table, a little ceramic frog she’d found at Goodwill. She ran her thumb over its smooth head and tried to keep her teeth from chattering. “There must have been others, too. I wasn’t watching every minute.”

  “We thought they were taking stuff,” David said. “Which was fine, because we’d been hoping the whole thing would disappear by morning. I mean—we’d been hoping…” David stammered.

  “Garbage pickers,” Ivy said. “Better to have someone take stuff and put it to good use rather than us throw it away.”

  Now Theo looked baffled. Ivy flashed an image of Theo’s apartment, all chrome and glass and white Berber carpeting. Theo could no more imagine dragging someone’s discarded wicker trunk into his home than he could imagine wearing a Timex or drinking wine from a screw-top bottle.

  “Ivy got a little freaked when she saw a woman out there, late that night,” David said, lowering his voice.

  “And?” Theo asked. “Ivy?”

  “I heard a sound. I looked out the kitchen window and saw her.”

  “This woman, did you recognize her?” Theo asked, taking more notes.

  Ivy swallowed. “She looked like me.”

  Theo stopped writing.

  “She had hair like mine anyway,” Ivy added.

  “Pregnant?” Theo asked.

  Ivy closed her eyes and tried to remember. “I…I don’t know. The trunk lid was up.”

  “Have you told the police about these people you saw out there?”

  “They never gave me—” Ivy started.

  “Good,” Theo said. “Because you can imagine what they’ll think if you tell them you saw someone who looks like you. Sounds like you were out there yourself, and you’re trying to establish an explanation in case another witness who saw you comes forward.”

  “But it wasn’t me!”

  “Of course it wasn’t. I know that,” Theo said in a harsh whisper. He held a finger to his lips and jerked his head in the direction of the door to the dining room. “I’m just saying—”

  “That they’re going to assume I’m lying or that I’m a crazy pregnant nut job.”

  “You’re not crazy,” David said, his voice shaking. “Melinda’s the crazy pregnant nut job. I wish to hell I’d never—” David’s words died as Theo sent him a withering look.

  “Okay. Back to Melinda.” Theo looked from Ivy to David. “When did you guys see her last?”

  David stared down into his lap.

  “Hon?” Ivy said.

  “What?” Theo said.

  David looked pale and tired as he sat slumped in the chair. “I guess I’m the one who saw her last,” he admitted. “I showed her around inside the house.”

  “He was going in anyway,” Ivy added. “To get the last box of books. Melinda kept asking what we’d done with the interior, so he offered to give her a tour.”

  David stared down at the table. “She said she used to play in the house when she was little. Her mother worked here, or something like that. It was obvious that she was making Ivy uncomfortable.”

  “Okay. So you do the House Beautiful tour. Then what?”

  “Then nothing. Downstairs, up—that was it,” David said.

  “You saw her leave?” Theo directed this to Ivy.

  Ivy shook her head.

  “Did anyone else see her leave?”

  “The yard sale was in the driveway, up the side of the house,” David said. “I guess someone must have. I was in a hurry to—”

  There was a light knock at the door.

  Theo leaned toward them. “Okay, here’s the drill,” he said under his breath. “Very simple. You don’t answer questions unless I say it’s okay. Refusing to answer police questions is not a crime. And no, it does not make you look as if you have something to hide. It makes you look as if you’re listening to your attorney, who’s looking out for you
r best interest.”

  Theo stood. “Anything, and I do mean anything, you say can be used against you. Something you think is completely innocuous can be twisted and made to look incriminating. Okay?”

  He straightened his tie, smoothed the sides of his hair with his palms, and shot his cuffs. “Okay?” he repeated.

  Hunkered down into her jacket’s upturned collar, Ivy nodded. She was so cold.

  8

  Lawyered up, have they?” The man who’d arrived in the Crown Vic and brought the search warrant made their kitchen table and chairs look like doll furniture. He had to be at least six-three. He’d introduced himself as Detective Blanchard, and he had a uniformed officer with him.

  “We’d like to get DNA swabs from you both,” he went on, talking in a raspy smoker’s voice. “That way we can eliminate—”

  “I’m advising my clients against it,” Theo said, cutting him off.

  Detective Blanchard’s mournful look said they’d disappointed him personally. Ivy pulled her jacket tighter around herself.

  “We’ve interviewed some of your neighbors,” Blanchard went on, “trying to find someone who saw Ms. White leave your house. So far, we—” He stopped. “Mrs. Rose? Are you all right?”

  “I’m…just c-cold,” Ivy said, trying to keep her teeth from chattering.

  David took her hands in his—his palms felt hot.

  “Would you go kick up the thermostat?” Blanchard told the uniformed officer.

  “Thermostat’s in the living room,” David said.

  “We know that,” Blanchard said with a wry smile.

  “Do you want to make yourself a hot drink?” Blanchard asked.

  Glad to have something to do, Ivy stood. A wave of dizziness surged up to meet her, and she steadied herself against the table. When it passed, she got down a mug and some chamomile tea.

  The furnace in the basement thunked on.

  Ivy’s hands trembled as she filled the kettle and set it on a burner. She turned on the stove and stood close by, absorbing warmth from the gas flame.

  Eating something might help. She got out a saltine cracker and took a bite. Sawdust. She choked down the mouthful.

  Ivy turned off the burner as the kettle started to emit its two-toned whistle. Blanchard waited, all the patience in the world, until she had a steaming mug of tea and had settled herself against the cast-iron radiator that was starting to heat up.

  “Like I was saying, we’re looking for anyone who saw Ms. White leave your house. We know she didn’t move her car, and it seems as if she never made it back to her apartment. She must have gone somewhere. It would be very helpful if you could give us names, or even just descriptions of the people who were at your yard sale at the same time.” At that moment Detective Blanchard reminded Ivy of her Uncle Bill, her father’s brother and the only person in the world who could coax her into cleaning her room when she was eleven.

  Theo gave a cautious nod, and the tension in the room seemed to ratchet down a notch.

  “There must have been at least twenty people at the yard sale when she was there,” David said. “Most of them strangers.”

  “Anything you can tell us will help.”

  David enumerated neighbors who’d been there. Ivy retrieved the checks she’d been given. She described everyone she remembered, including the yard-sale regulars who’d shown up.

  “And I understand you saw some people, later that day and into the night, looking into the trunk after you’d left it outside?” Blanchard said.

  Ivy described everyone she’d seen. Theo’s raised index finger reminded her that the police didn’t have to know how much the woman with long dark hair and sunglasses had reminded Ivy of herself.

  “Thanks,” Blanchard said. He snapped his notebook shut. “Just one final thing. I was wondering when either of you was last up in your attic.”

  Gentle, coaxing Uncle Bill had evaporated. Ivy didn’t need Theo’s clearing his throat to get the message.

  “Mmm,” Blanchard continued. “Well, I ask because there’s a vacuum cleaner up there now, in that half that’s unfinished. Mrs. Rose, you must be quite a fastidious housekeeper. And it’s odd, isn’t it, that the dust bag’s been removed? I can’t help wondering why, when it wasn’t nearly full. We found it in the rubbish bin outside. Someone had sliced it open.”

  Even if Ivy had allowed herself to respond, she’d have been at a loss for words.

  David looked as if he were about to explode. “The whole point of throwing a yard sale was to clear out old junk and clean out the attic, and the basement, and wherever else the former owners had squirreled it away.” He put his hands on the table and half stood from his seat. “My wife—she’s pregnant, in case you haven’t noticed—she’s been doing a lot of cleaning lately.”

  Theo put his hand on David’s shoulder. David sank back, folded his arms across his chest, and leaned the kitchen chair up on its back legs. A muscle twitched in the corner of his jaw.

  The detective gave a sympathetic smile. “Hey, I hear you. Been there.” His face turned hard again. “Actually, I wondered if it was you up there vacuuming and cleaning, Mr. Rose. No matter, because despite your efforts to clean up, we did find at least one very interesting item.”

  Blanchard dropped a small evidence bag on the table. It landed like a stone in a still pond. Ivy felt herself pulled forward as she tried to make sense of what she was seeing. Visible through the clear plastic was a marble-size piece of green glass.

  “Mrs. Rose, you told Officer Fournier that you gave Ms. White a green glass dish, shaped like a swan?” Blanchard said.

  The mug slipped from between her hands, and hot tea erupted when it hit the floor.

  “That’s it. We’re done,” Theo said.

  The police spent another hour in the house. After they left, Ivy and David and Theo sat in the kitchen. Ivy had changed pants, but the insides of her legs still stung from where she’d been splattered with hot tea.

  She reached for the search warrant that Theo had tossed onto the table, pulled over the form, and read.

  Evidence to be seized: Any and all items that may have contributed to the disappearance of Melinda Jane White, DOB: 05/18/76.

  The list of possible finds included:

  blood; tissue; fibers; hair; bodily fluids; material; clothing; drugs; any weapon, including, but not limited to, any cutting instrument, knife or knives; firearm(s); blunt objects; wires and/or cords.

  Glass swan head. The police had taken that with them. They’d been through the bathroom hamper and bagged up towels and the clothing that Ivy and David had worn on the day of the yard sale. She wondered how they’d known what to take. Probably from Mrs. Bindel.

  The police had taken the wicker trunk, too, and no doubt Ivy’s bathrobe, noting the bloodstain at the hem where she’d soaked up her own blood after David removed the glass splinter from her foot. Now she knew where that shard of green glass had come from.

  “I’m sorry,” David said. He reached for Ivy’s hand and made eye contact for the first time since the swan’s head had landed on the table. “I should have told you earlier.”

  Ivy’s skin prickled. “Told me what?”

  “The thing is, I didn’t see Melinda leave.” David rubbed his hand across his mouth. “When we got up to the attic—”

  Theo stood and reached for his briefcase. “Maybe I shouldn’t hear this.”

  “You idiot.” David grabbed his arm. “Put that down. And stop looking at me like that. Nothing happened! Well, nothing like whatever it is that you’re thinking might have happened.”

  Theo lowered himself into the chair.

  David took a deep breath and then began. “We get up to the attic, and she starts walking around the room, running her palm across the wall, practically caressing the doorknobs. She makes a complete circuit, then plops herself in the middle of the floor, cross-legged, cups her hands together, and shakes them up and down, singing ‘Onesies, twosies, threesies, foursies.’ Then she p
retends like she’s throwing a ball and picking up jacks.”

  As Theo listened, his mouth dropped open.

  “You think I could make this up?” David said. “She tells me how she used to play in our house when she was a kid. And I’m like, o-kaaay. Then she starts talking about her mother, and her sister, and how hard high school was for her. She gets herself more and more worked up.” He closed his eyes and rolled his head back, the vertebrae in his neck cracking. “Then she starts to cry. I thought, Jesus Christ, get me out of here.” He looked at Ivy. “That’s when she threw it.”

  “The dish,” Ivy said.

  David held his hands open in a gesture of helplessness.

  “Why didn’t you tell me before?” Ivy asked.

  “She’s crazy. I figured you didn’t need the aggravation.” David came up behind her and put his arms around her. “Why should both of us be upset?”

  Ivy pulled away. “Any other details you don’t think I can handle?”

  “Ivy, that’s not what I meant.”

  “What happened next?” Theo asked.

  David shoved his hands into his pockets. “I got her a glass of water and some tissues, and then I went downstairs to get a broom and the dustpan to sweep up the glass.”

  “And then?” Theo said.

  “Then nothing. When I got back, she’d gone.”

  9

  Anxiety scraped the inside of Ivy’s rib cage as she climbed the stairs, exhausted and confused, leaving David and Theo talking in the kitchen.

  Why should both of us be upset? The explanation was plausible. But since when had Ivy turned into someone David needed to protect? Hadn’t they always been honest with each other?

  She stood in the bedroom doorway. It was obvious that the police had searched the room. Bedding was pushed back. The closet doors had been left open and clothing shoved to the sides. Items on her bureau top had been rearranged, and the smell of sandalwood and spicy clove hung thick in the room. The scent she’d once loved told her that they’d opened her bottle of Opium perfume, though she couldn’t imagine why.