Liar's Market

by Taylor Smith

  Anyway, bottom line—living there wasn’t ideal, as far as I was concerned, but with our rushed departure from London, it’s what I was handed. I tried to make the best of it.

  And your husband? How did he seem when you got back to D.C.?

  He was even busier than he’d been in London, just as I suspected he’d be—which was another reason he had no interest in house hunting.

  How did he settle in?

  It’s been tough for him, the past two or three months.

  How so?

  Well, being back at headquarters is not like being out in the field. You’re a lot more independent out there. Back here—well, you must know this yourself. The FBI can’t be that different from the rest of the government. There’s a lot of bureaucracy to deal with. Political gamesmanship, that sort of thing. Drum hates all that.

  So he wasn’t happy?

  He was showing signs of stress, I’d say. It wasn’t that he couldn’t handle the deputy’s job, mind you. He was really pleased to have been promoted. It was more like, he was champing at the bit to get to it. He wanted to put his mark on things, he said. Travel out to the posts, get to know all the station chiefs.

  And what was stopping him?

  As I say, bureaucracy. It seems there was some big organizational review underway—still the fallout from September 11, I gather. You know—trying to decide what the Agency did wrong, coming up with recommendations on what they might do differently in future. When Drum got back from London, the Director asked him to take on the running of that task force for a few weeks. Said it needed a little fire put under it. Drum felt he couldn’t say no, especially when the Director stressed how high profile it was, and how important to the Agency’s future. But Drum was more and more frustrated with every passing week. Said he was spending his days pushing paper around, chairing endless meetings—except not the ones he wanted to be in on.

  And which were those?

  The ones dealing with day-to-day operations, I suppose.

  And so?

  So, nothing. What could he do? He had to get the damn job finished, he said. That’s what he was trying to do. All I know is, we hardly ever saw him. Most days, he left home before Jonah was up and came back long after he was in bed. After I’d gone to bed, too, for the most part.

  He left at what time in the morning, generally?

  About seven. He liked to beat the traffic and be at his desk before seven-thirty.

  Always?

  Whenever he was in town, yes. As I say, he was almost always gone by the time Jonah came downstairs for breakfast.

  So, he had a routine that never varied.

  Not really.

  And then two days ago, something changed. Right, Carrie?

  You know it did. That was the day everything changed.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Washington, D.C.

  August 12, 2002

  The buzzing of the cicadas was relentless, maddening, like an electric drill to the brain. Sweltering air hung thick and hazy, even at this early hour, a reminder that the nation’s capital was a Southern city, albeit one over-laid with a more northern ethic of naked ambition. Summer heat and the drone of the insects in the treetops only amplified the sense of urgency that coursed through Washington like a permanent adrenaline feed.

  Every cop on the beat knew that in D.C.’s rougher eastern neighborhoods, there would be blood on the pavement before the day was out. It was the same every summer. People couldn’t live day after day, week after week in such close quarters and suffocating humidity without snapping.

  But it wasn’t just a problem of the concrete inner city. Even in green, leafy suburbs of neighboring Virginia, tension was rising.

  McLean, Virginia

  7:32 a.m.

  Knowing Drum’s impatience with anything or anyone in his way in the morning, Carrie had gotten in the habit of either waiting to get up until after he’d left for work, or showering and dressing in the front guest room so he could have the master bedroom and bath to himself. On that morning in particular, she was anxious to avoid him. She’d been awake since a little after five and had slipped out of bed as soon as she’d felt him stirring for fear her brittle nerves would betray her.

  The previous night, as happened more often than not, she’d been in bed when he got in. But going to bed wasn’t the same as going to sleep, not with her body thrumming in anticipation of what the dawn would bring. Her head, too, had spun with doubts, wondering whether she was doing the right thing. And even if she was, she wondered if she shouldn’t just screw up her courage and tell him about her appointment the next morning—assuming he didn’t already know.

  Despite the fact that he was so rarely around, Drum had an unnerving ability to pick up information by osmosis—or maybe it was his mother who served as his inside source here on the home front. Althea’s formidable determination to stay on top of everything that went on under her roof was only one of the drawbacks of living in that house, as far as Carrie was concerned. As far as Drum was concerned, though, the notion of a place of their own had been a non-starter.

  “I haven’t got time to look for a house we don’t need, Carrie. MacNeils have been living on Elcott Road for generations, and the house really belongs to me now, anyway. My God, do you have any idea what it’s worth these days? Over an acre of land in an area of million-dollar-plus homes? Surrounded by parkland, and fronting on the Potomac, no less?”

  “But I always feel like we’re crowding your mother.”

  “That’s ridiculous. The place is way too big for her alone. Anyway, she’d be the first to insist it’s where Jonah belongs. Not to mention how close it is to Langley. Christ! Haven’t I got enough on my plate without adding a long commute every day?”

  End of discussion. But if Carrie had been wavering for months about whether or not to take back her life, this one-sided debate had pretty much tipped the scales. When the dust had settled on the move and Jonah was safely enrolled in summer camp, she’d quietly made—then canceled—several appointments with the partner of her former college roommate, who now had a legal practice in Alexandria specializing in family law.

  After the third time Carrie had chickened out, Tracy Overturf had met her for lunch, where, to her own horror, Carrie had broken down in tears over her Cobb salad.

  “Oh, God, Carrie, this can’t go on,” Tracy said. “Look how unhappy he’s made you.”

  “I can’t just blame it on Drum. I let myself go down this road.”

  “You met him at a vulnerable time. You’d lost your whole family. If ever someone was looking for a port in a storm, that was you back then. And no wonder.”

  “Still, I didn’t have to abdicate my life. Look at you. You’ve had a solid relationship with Alan for years, but that didn’t keep you from starting your own legal practice.”

  “I wouldn’t read too much into that. The only reason Heather and I formed Childers and Overturf after we passed the bar is because there were no jobs to be had. And you haven’t seen our offices yet—bankruptcy auction furnishings in three small rooms in a renovated cotton mill. It’s not fancy. I’m warning you. Look, Carrie, I care about you too much to keep it on a professional level where Drum’s concerned, but Heather doesn’t know you like I do, and she’s really good—a pit bull in divorce cases. If you decide you need her, she’ll do a great job for you and make sure you get a fair deal.”

  “I don’t need that much. I’m not even sure divorce is the right answer. If it were just me, but there’s Jonah to think about. This could really mess up his life.”

  “What about your life? How happily can he grow up with a mother who’s so frustrated? Look, just talk to Heather, all right? Explore your options. Then, whatever you decide to do, at least you’ll be making an informed decision.”

  So Carrie had thought about it for a few days, then called and rebooked with Tracy’s partner—just to explore her options, she told herself. Now, she worried Drum would get wind of her plans before she had a chance to
figure out what she wanted to do.

  She and Jonah had been out at the Pentagon City Mall the previous afternoon, buying new running shoes to replace yet another pair he’d outgrown before he could even wear down the treads. When they got home, Carrie had seen the message light flashing on the answering machine next to the telephone in the kitchen. Her heart had begun to pound when she’d played it back and realized it was Heather Childers’s secretary calling to confirm her appointment for the next morning.

  Althea said nothing about having heard the message, but to Carrie’s worried mind, she seemed cool that evening. Her mother-in-law had exchanged only the most cursory of greetings, then taken her dinner up in her room, pleading fatigue. But much later, a light had been burning under her door well past her usual nine-thirty bedtime.

  Carrie knew she should wait up and talk to Drum herself, heading her mother-in-law off at the pass. But ever since their return from London, days could pass without their paths crossing between 7:00 a.m. and midnight or without exchanging more than a few words face-to-face.

  In the end, Drum had returned home in the wee hours of the morning, long after everyone was asleep. Not even the dreaded Althea had that kind of staying power.

  The MacNeil home was a century-old Georgian residence built on a choice promontory overlooking the Potomac River. The family was old Virginia stock, descended from a Scots ancestor who had purchased a large tract of land in the late 1700s from the original Lord Fairfax, for whom the county was named.

  An even larger house had once stood on the site, the cornerstone of a sprawling tobacco and lumber plantation. The first time Drum had brought Carrie home, his mother had pulled out an album of old sepiatone photographs to impress his new bride with the history of the clan into which she’d somehow finagled herself. One showed an earlier generation of MacNeils standing before a grandiose Greek Revival mansion, complete with Ionic columns, a full-width front porch, and weeping magnolias lining both sides of a long and stately gravel drive—sort of a Virginia version of Tara.

  But after the insult of the Civil War, the plantation had never really recovered its former glory. When the big house had burned down during the economic depression of the 1890s, Drum’s great-grandfather had rebuilt a smaller place on the same site, looking across the river to Maryland and, downstream, to the heights of Georgetown.

  At the time of the fire, there’d been whispers that old Elcott MacNeil had torched the place for the insurance money. It was certainly coincidental that a number of irreplaceable items, including those rare old photographs, the family bible, and a few of the better pieces of furniture just happened to be out on loan or away for refurbishing when the fire broke out. Virginia gentlemen, however, do not publicly accuse one another of arson, especially when the gentleman under suspicion is an ardent supporter of the incumbent political party. And old Elcott MacNeil, solvent once more, was certainly in a position to be generous—all the more so when the federal government showed a sudden interest in buying up his tired plantation acreage for parkland and home sites for senior Union officers.

  Elcott MacNeil was also one of the chief advocates for the construction of the Great Falls and Old Dominion Railroad. Built at the turn of the last century, the railroad had drawn vacationers from the miasma of Washington summers, as well as year-round residents from among those government officials in the upper levels of a burgeoning federal bureaucracy who preferred to live outside the capital. Of course, railroad access to northern Virginia had only increased the value of the MacNeil acreage, which had been mostly sold off, forming the basis of the family’s wealth ever since.

  Over the years, the replacement house had been expanded in architecturally tasteful bits and pieces, becoming the new seat of the dynasty. If the old plantation with its rolling drive was gone, the house and its prime location still marked the MacNeil family as Fairfax County gentry.

  Carrie tiptoed past her mother-in-law’s closed door on her way to the guest bathroom. Althea had moved out of the master bedroom when Drum had announced their return from London. Carrie would have been happier if she would have stayed put, but Althea had insisted on moving into her daughter’s old room down the hall. By the time the family arrived back in town, the switch was a fait accompli.

  “This house is really Drum’s now, anyway,” she told Carrie as she showed off new burgundy and pink floral bed linens, drapes and matching lampshades she’d bought for the heavy, carved walnut bedroom suite that was now to be theirs.

  The walls had been newly painted in a matching shade of dark burgundy that to Carrie’s eye resembled dried blood. With its dark Victorian furnishings and heavy floral draperies, the room, despite its size, felt claustrophobic and funereal. But now that it had been redecorated especially for their arrival, Carrie knew there was no question of touching a thing in it without causing grievous offense to her mother-in-law.

  “But there’s no reason for you to give up your bedroom, Althea,” she protested. “Drum and I were fine in the room we had before.”

  “Oh, no. He works so hard. He needs his rest, and the master bedroom is so much quieter than the ones at the front of the house. You don’t hear the street noises back there at all.”

  The house sat on an acre of land on a riverfront culde-sac which had only five homes on it, all with equally large lots. The small, exclusive neighborhood had been carved out of a parklike wedge of land at the end of Chain Bridge Road, but the way Althea spoke of street noises, Carrie thought, a person might think the house was smack in the middle of Piccadilly Circus.

  “We’ve never been bothered by noise,” she told her mother-in-law. “And you always say what a light sleeper you are. Wouldn’t you be better off staying put?”

  Althea would not be moved. “No, this is yours now. I’ll be fine in Ellie’s old room. I’m sure I’ll get used to the noise in time.”

  And she did seem to be coping admirably, Carrie thought. Despite the racket made by those few well-tuned luxury cars that constituted morning rush hour in this quiet neighborhood, her mother-in-law’s room seemed dark and silent when Carrie passed her door, as it was most mornings at this hour. Althea almost never rose before ten. Carrie was anxious that this day not prove the exception to the rule.

  From the guest room window, she peered out over the street, trying to judge what the weather would bring that day. No surprises there. Thick haze filtering the early morning light told her it would be another hot and sticky one.

  A semicircular driveway covered in crushed white rock led from the house’s porticoed front door to the edge of Elcott Road. At the curb, bluebottle flies were flitting lazily around the lids of the fifty-gallon trash bins Carrie had wheeled out the night before—a gray one for regular garbage, green for garden waste, and a blue bin for recyclables. Up and down the street, identical tri-colored trios of bins dotted the ends of other well-manicured drives, the only sign that the pristine neighborhood housed real people with normal requirements for food, drink and bathroom products.

  Across the road, a green van sat in the driveway of Bernice and Morrie Klein’s house. The old couple had lived opposite the MacNeils for thirty years now, but they were getting on. Carrie had seen them only once or twice since she and Drum and Jonah had returned from London—and not at all in the last few weeks, she suddenly realized. Maybe she should run over and check on them? If their cleaning service was there, though, they must be all right.

  For all intents and purpose, the rest of the street seemed deserted.

  Carrie turned from the window and headed into the bathroom for her shower. Afterward, wrapped in a fluffy white towel, she did her makeup and hair carefully. Then, calculating that Drum must have left by now, she debated slipping back into the master bedroom to choose something appropriate for her appointment with the lawyer.

  But a glance at the clock on one of the side tables told her it was getting late. There was no telling when Jonah would decide it was a morning to dawdle, so instead, she pulled on the tank top and
track shorts she’d left hooked on the back of the bathroom door after her run the previous morning. Best to get him moving first. Then, she could slip back upstairs and change while he was eating his breakfast.

  The large attic had long ago been converted into nursery space for successive generations of MacNeil children. Drum and his younger sister had occupied the two big rooms up here from the time they were born until they’d left home for college. Jonah’s bedroom and playroom were long, high-ceilinged spaces with steeply pitched rooflines. A small bathroom between the two rooms had been set into a dormer that looked down over the front of the house.

  When Drum and Carrie had moved into the house after Tanzania, Carrie had redone the rooms in a bright circus motif for their own baby boy. On Jonah’s bedroom walls, she’d painted striped tents, elephants, lion-tamers, clowns and balloon-carrying children, all cavorting on a soft yellow background. The ceiling was pale blue with fluffy white clouds. Over his yellow circus-truck bed, she’d hung a red-and-white-striped canopy. The playroom was done up to look like the inside of one of those circus tents, with feather-harnessed horses, dancing bears, chimps on bicycles, more brilliantly costumed clowns, and a strawberry-headed ring-master whose black top hat had “JONAH” written in gold leaf across the peak.

  As a toddler and preschooler, Jonah had loved his bedroom and playroom, but when they’d been posted back from London that summer, the first thing he’d asked was whether they could redecorate his “baby rooms.” He thought a combined Spider-Man–Incredible Hulk theme would be just the ticket, but Carrie had been stalling. If she went forward with these on-again, off-again intentions of hers, he might soon have another room in a different house and it would be important to make that new place as special as possible.

  She found him curled at the foot of his bed, his favorite Spider-Man action figure tucked in the crook of his arm. His sandy red hair was tousled on the rumpled blue sheets, and he looked more angelic than fifty-seven pounds of pure energy normally allowed.