Never Tell a Lie

by Hallie Ephron

  Blanchard approached Ivy, taking out his pad and pen. “So what brought you out here?”

  “I live next door, remember?” Ivy could hear the hostility in her tone, but she didn’t care. “I was getting into my car when—”

  “Going where?” Blanchard interrupted.

  None of your damned business. “To see my husband. As far as I know, there’s no law against that.”

  “I see,” he said, returning Ivy’s challenge with a bland façade. “It appears that your neighbor was quite badly hurt.”

  “I know. I found her.” Ivy watched the ambulance drive away, siren wailing.

  Blanchard waited for Ivy to continue, pen poised.

  “I heard a commotion on the street,” she said. “Some guy in an SUV was leaning on his horn, and Phoebe—the dog—was barking at him. Phoebe never goes out alone without Mrs. Bindel—I knew that something was off.”

  Phoebe’s snout was now wedged into Ivy’s lap.

  “Did anyone else see him?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

  “Did you see anyone or anything else unusual? Then? Or perhaps earlier in the day?”

  Ivy tried to remember. The street had been deserted when Jody dropped her off. She told Blanchard about the woman who’d been pushing a stroller across the street. “She’s the only other person I noticed, and I see her out all the time.”

  Blanchard asked for the woman’s name, and Ivy admitted that she didn’t know. Didn’t even know where she lived.

  “But she didn’t see the man in the Range Rover,” he said.

  “He had on a Yankees cap,” Ivy said.

  “Brave soul.” Blanchard took a note and then squinted down at her. “I don’t suppose you got a license plate?”

  “Why would I? And why would he—” Ivy was about to ask why someone who’d attacked Mrs. Bindel would hang around afterward, honking his horn and drawing attention to himself. Then she realized that Detective Blanchard didn’t believe her. He thought she was fabricating the man in the Range Rover, just like he thought she’d made up the woman standing out at the curb by the wicker trunk.

  “You can’t think I…?” Ivy started. What—attacked Mrs. Bindel? “There was a man. I didn’t make him up.”

  “The skid marks out on the street are genuine enough,” Blanchard said. “And they’re wider than the tires on your car. Maybe this man saw something that will help us discover what happened to your neighbor.”

  Reasonable enough. “Well, I didn’t get the license plate. I wasn’t thinking about that, because I had to get Phoebe out of the street.” The dog’s head came up. “I assumed that Mrs. Bindel was in the house or in her yard.”

  “So you say your neighbor doesn’t normally let the dog out alone?”

  “Never.”

  The crow’s-feet at the corners of Blanchard’s eyes deepened as he gazed at the spot where Mrs. Bindel had fallen. “So when did you first notice the dog barking?”

  “When I was getting into my car, right before—” Ivy broke off. “No, I heard barking about twenty minutes earlier.” She stopped again. “Actually, there might even have been a dog barking when I got home. In fact, I’m pretty sure there was.”

  Blanchard looked annoyed. “How long before you found your next-door neighbor unconscious are you pretty sure that you heard barking?”

  “An hour, maybe hour and a half. My friend was with me. She might have noticed the barking, too.”

  “Your friend?”

  “She parked in front of the house for a while. Then she came in.”

  Now Blanchard looked thoroughly exasperated. “And she drives what?”

  “A VW Bug. You can ask her what she saw.”

  Detective Blanchard wrote down Jody’s name and her phone number.

  “So where exactly did you find your neighbor?” he asked.

  Ivy indicated the spot and described Mrs. Bindel’s position. Blanchard went over and crouched there. He swept his hand in an arc through the surrounding grass. He stood and walked slowly in ever-widening circles. When he was out about eight feet from the center, he stopped. He reached into his pocket for a handkerchief and used it to pick up a fist-size rock. A speculative look crossed his face.

  “You don’t think this was an accident, do you?” Ivy said.

  “You mean, did your neighbor trip and fall and bang her head on the edge of a step? What do you think?” He tilted his head and ran his hand back and forth over his mouth, waiting for her reply.

  Mrs. Bindel had been lying on her side, her head resting on the bottom step. “I don’t know, but I don’t see how she could have ended up in that position if she’d tripped on a step.”

  “I agree.” Blanchard’s mouth tightened in a grim line. “I think your neighbor was very fortunate. Her wig saved her from much more serious injury.”

  Ivy put her cheek to Phoebe’s head. She couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to hurt Mrs. Bindel.

  “Is there anything else you remember?” Blanchard asked.

  What would he say if she told him about Bessie turned sideways, or that there was a perfumy smell in her house? Worst case, he’d write her off as a demented pregnant woman.

  “It’s probably unimportant—” she started.

  “Let me be the judge of that.”

  She told him.

  “I haven’t used that perfume for months,” she added. “And when I found Mrs. Bindel, I thought she had that same smell on her hand.”

  She waited for him to dismiss the observation. Instead his face turned somber. “You lock all your doors when you leave the house?”

  “Always.”

  “And you did so when you left this morning?”

  “Yes.”

  Detective Blanchard gazed in the direction of her house. “Perhaps you gave your neighbor a key to use in case of emergency? Or maybe the previous owner gave her a house key?” Ivy shook her head. “Or you keep an extra set hidden outside? A lot of people do.”

  “I just had the locks changed, and no one has a copy of the new key except us.”

  Blanchard wrote a final note in his book, flipped the pad closed, and put it in his pocket. “Here’s what I think,” he said. “We don’t have a lot of crime in Brush Hills. Mostly it’s drunk driving and burglary. Occasionally vandalism. A woman disappears? That’s unusual. Right next door another woman gets attacked in her backyard? That’s unusual, too. Put them together and you’ve got yourself a coincidence. My gut says they’re probably related. So I look for a common thread.”

  “Common…” Ivy felt her mouth drop open. “You can’t possibly think that I…?”

  “Help me here.” Blanchard gave her his benign Uncle Bill face. “Give me something else to go with.”

  22

  After Detective Blanchard left, Ivy was furious with herself for failing to challenge him. Unfortunately, she could see his point. It made sense that there was some connection between Melinda’s disappearance and the attack on Mrs. Bindel.

  A chill passed through Ivy. Hit in the head with a rock the size of a tennis ball. Had Mrs. Bindel seen her attacker? Would she be able to identify that person when she regained consciousness? If she regained consciousness. Ivy was encouraged by Detective Blanchard’s remark that her injury could have been much worse.

  Ivy found a length of rope and tethered Phoebe to Mrs. Bindel’s clothesline. The dog submitted with a baleful look. Then Ivy filled a plastic tub with water and brought it over. Later she’d pick up dog food.

  She returned to her car and got in. David’s duffel bag sat crumpled on the passenger seat. She hit the automatic door lock and backed out of the driveway. As she drove, she rehearsed what she’d say to David. He had to give her some straight answers.

  By the time she arrived at the police station, her jaw ached from grinding her teeth. She parked in a visitor spot and got out of the car.

  As she pulled the duffel bag off the seat, she felt a tightening across her abdomen, not painful or even
uncomfortable. And she felt queasy. She put a hand on her belly, closed her eyes.

  One, two, three… When she got to ten, the tightness had passed. Another Braxton Hicks.

  A police officer whom Ivy had never met before led her to a barren basement room with cinder-block walls. A damp smell pervaded the space, furnished with a few card tables and flimsy molded-plastic chairs. A young woman was already sitting at one of the tables with a man in a suit, perhaps her lawyer. The schoolhouse clock on the wall said it was ten past one.

  Ivy took a seat and waited, her arms and legs crossed, her foot jiggling. Minutes later another officer appeared, escorting David.

  “Hey, Stretch,” David said. He looked pale and tired—not a villain, just David with his blood and energy leached out.

  Ivy gripped the arms of her chair, trying to stay in control. Her eyes filled with tears, and anger threatened to uncoil within her. All the speeches she’d prepared flew out of her head. She wanted to throw herself at him, to beat his chest and scream, to demand how in the hell he could have gotten them into this mess. Didn’t he realize what was at stake?

  “You hanging in there?” David asked, barely looking at her. “Feeling okay?” He dropped into a chair, leaned forward, and put his hand on her belly. “Hey, Sprout. Miss me?”

  Ivy didn’t trust herself to speak. She’d come to face him down, to make him tell her what in the hell was going on. But he looked so deflated that it would be like pummeling Jell-O.

  He lifted his head and met her gaze. “What?”

  Ivy felt her lower lip quivering. Where to start? She held her hands out in a gesture of helplessness. “The phone message, the knife, the plane ticket…”

  “Ivy, please…you can’t think—”

  “That plane ticket was booked on our computer.”

  “What?” The word exploded as David’s eyes lit up and his face flushed.

  “The browser history lists a Cayman Islands Web site and then a visit to Travelocity.”

  “No…way….” The words came out like air from a slow leak. David’s eyes shifted from side to side. “That’s impossible. When?”

  “Tuesday. And in the attic,” Ivy continued, lowering her voice to a harsh whisper, “there’s a box of books that you supposedly went inside to get.”

  David’s expression clouded. “What books?”

  “Good question. There was no buyer at the yard sale asking for books, was there?” Words rushed out before Ivy could stop them. “You made that up as an excuse to get Melinda inside.”

  Heat lightning pulsed behind David’s eyes. “Get her inside? Get her inside and what?”

  “And…” Ivy’s voice trailed off.

  “Listen to me.” David leaned close and squeezed Ivy’s arm.

  “Stop, you’re hurting me,” she said.

  He loosened his grip. “I did not purchase any ticket to the Cayman Islands,” he said, his voice low and urgent. “I don’t even know where the damn things are, and outside of crossword puzzles I’d never heard of them until the cops told me about the plane ticket. I never, ever touched Melinda White, during or after the yard sale, and I can’t even believe I have to tell you that. Suppose, just suppose, that I was going to run away from all this mess. Don’t you think I’d take you with me…?” His voice broke on the final words.

  Ivy tried to swallow. In the silence she could hear the fluorescent lights buzzing overhead.

  “I want to believe you,” she said. “But it seems like there’s been one lie after another after another. I’m feeling so beaten down. And now…”

  “Something else happened?” David said. “What?”

  David looked increasingly alarmed as she told him how she’d found Mrs. Bindel unconscious in her backyard. “Melinda’s disappearance. Now Mrs. Bindel getting attacked. What in the hell is going on?”

  Ivy wrapped her arms around her stomach. She said, “Look for a common thread. That’s what Detective Blanchard said—only he thinks the thread is me.”

  “The guy’s an idiot.” David sat back. “There has to be another answer, some rational explanation for all the crazy things that are happening. Okay, what do we know for sure?”

  He held up his index finger. “Melinda came to our yard sale. I left her in the attic—distraught, but alive and whole.” He raised a second finger. “Unfortunately, no one saw her leave. But that doesn’t mean she didn’t. And yes, she freaked me out. And yes, I guess I forgot about the goddamned books.”

  “The bloodstained blouse,” Ivy said.

  “And pants.” David held up a third finger. “That neither of us put in the wicker trunk. Then we have the canvas bag with the knife.” David raised a fourth finger. “Had to have been placed in my truck Monday after I got home from work.”

  “The ticket to the Cayman Islands, booked from our home computer,” Ivy added.

  David balled his hand into a fist. “Try to figure that one out. The only thing clear to me is that someone wanted to get rid of Melinda White and make it look as if I killed her. And now, on top of everything else, our neighbor gets bashed in the head. I’d like to see them try to blame me for that.”

  “Who got bashed in the head?” It was Theo’s voice.

  David’s gaze shifted upward. Ivy turned around. Theo looked glum.

  “Our neighbor,” Ivy said. “This afternoon someone attacked her in her backyard. Hit her with a rock. The police think it has something to do with Melinda’s disappearance.”

  The plastic chair scraped across the floor as Theo pulled it over. He sat, leaned forward, and rested his forearms on the table. He spoke in a low voice. “They got preliminary test results on the blood on the maternity blouse and the canvas bag—it’s Melinda White’s blood type. And there’s more.” His face lengthened. “They found fetal tissue.”

  The news crashed into Ivy as a cramp worked its way around from her back. She closed her eyes, then forced them open as images of what might have happened to Melinda and her baby flashed through her brain.

  “They have to do more testing,” Theo continued. “They’ve got Melinda’s DNA, and they’ve subpoenaed a DNA sample from you, David.”

  “The sooner the better,” David said. “Then they’ll start looking for that baby’s father. And high time, too.”

  23

  Mrs. Rose,” Detective Blanchard said later as he escorted her back to the lobby. “Do you have a sister?”

  “I—” Ivy tripped on a step.

  Blanchard caught her by the elbow. “Melinda’s sister, Ruth, calls me every day to find out if there’s been a break in the case, and every day I have to tell her we’re still investigating. Did you know that she and Melinda were best friends? That they talk on the phone every day? Share what’s going on in their lives?”

  They were at the entrance now. “What’s excruciating for her is the waiting,” he said, holding the door shut, “and not knowing what happened to her sister.”

  Ivy wheeled on him. “I’m sure she desperately wants you to find her sister. So do I. Why don’t you get out of my face, stop wasting time, and get out there and find out what happened to her?”

  “I think we know what happened to her. Soon we’ll have an indictment.”

  Ivy pushed the door open and brushed past him.

  “There’s plenty of evidence, and all of it implicates your husband. How much will it take before you stop protecting him?” he called after her.

  Blinded by tears, Ivy stumbled to her car. Son of a bitch. Her heels thudded on the concrete walk. Dense afternoon cloud cover made it feel like dusk, and there was a biting chill in the air.

  She got into the car, slammed the door, and gripped the steering wheel until her knuckles turned white. Then she jammed the key into the ignition and started the engine. The radio came on, and she bashed it into silence.

  Tires squealed as she pulled in to the street. When Ivy realized she was whipping past a soccer field, going more than fifty, she braked and pulled over. She sank back in the seat a
nd tried to slow her breathing.

  Arrogant bastard. The worst thing was, Blanchard was right. As evidence against David mounted, the possibility that Melinda was merely misplaced had diminished to zero.

  Fetal tissue…Ivy’s stomach clenched, and she rolled down the window, taking great gulps of moist, cold air. It was too horrifying to imagine what might have happened. But David was right: Paternity-test results would at least give the police another lead to pursue.

  Ivy forced herself to get moving. She shifted into gear and started driving again. Like an automaton, she went to the supermarket and bought dog food. By the drive home, rush hour was in full swing, and she was wishing she’d put the ten-pound bag of kibble in the trunk. She was feeling increasingly nauseous, and the smell didn’t help.

  She kept the window open as she sat stuck in traffic just blocks from home. Every time the bus in front of her inched forward, it spewed exhaust fumes. An airline ad across the back announced, “You are now free to move about the country.” If only.

  The noise of a jackhammer from road work on the block ahead filled the car. A horn honked, and Ivy accelerated, closing the five-foot gap that had opened up in front of her.

  Traffic crept forward a few more feet, and she pulled even with a side street. The sign said BELCHER ST. That was the street where Melinda’s mother lived, where Melinda had grown up. She’d probably walked to the square, bought candy at the convenience store, bowled at the now-defunct Kezey’s Good Time Lanes.

  Melinda is dead. Why was that so hard to accept?

  Ivy touched the spot on her belly where Melinda had pressed her hand. It had made Ivy recoil at the uninvited intimacy. But then Melinda had always been odd, her social interactions off-key and just this side of inappropriate. Ivy remembered that other kids rolled their eyes whenever they saw Mrs. White marching Melinda to school.

  Ivy had been on the yearbook council, but it hadn’t been her idea to nominate Melinda for Friendliest as a hilarious goof on the girl everyone called “the leech.” Still, Ivy could have done something to stop it from happening, but that possibility had never occurred to her. In truth, she’d never thought one way or another about Melinda or her feelings. She’d been every bit as callow and mean as her classmates, just more passive about it.