Lie to Me

by J. T. Ellison

  “I guess you’ll have to interview me here.”

  Graham narrowed her eyes at him. “I’m calling in.”

  She stepped into the foyer. Talked to her boss for a few minutes, then hung up, and came back to the kitchen. “Your lawyer is on his way here. My boss is, too.”

  “Great. That sounds like a party I won’t want to miss.”

  The priest put a hand on his arm. “Sarcasm isn’t appropriate right now, Mr. Montclair.”

  “Sorry, Father. Not feeling so well at the moment.” And to the cop, “I’m going to ask you again. Am I under arrest?”

  “No comment. Did you kill your wife?”

  He gave her a sad smile. “Of course not.”

  * * *

  It went about how he expected. The sergeant and a few more cops arrived ten minutes post call, with Robinson hot on their heels, pushing reporters out of the way, shouting, “Ethan, don’t say a fucking word,” as he entered the house, which Ethan thought was rather excellent advice, considering. The media continued to mass outside, sensing something major was going down.

  They all sat at the kitchen table, and talked at him. Ethan listened with half an ear. Heard words like suspect, murder, lying, alibi, timeline, cooperation. Robinson kept a hand on Ethan’s arm to keep him from speaking and made a lot of impressive-sounding arguments, but finally, at ten after five, they said the words he’d been waiting for all afternoon, all day, all week, really.

  “Ethan Montclair, you have the right to remain silent.”

  NOW THE WORLD KNOWS

  The television was muted, but when the breaking news alert popped on the screen, the volume was turned up. A pretty reporter with a perfectly sharp blond bob, green eyes lit up like Christmas, was waiting in the shot. On cue, she began to speak.

  “We have an update on the Sutton Montclair case. In a few moments we’re expecting a presser from the Franklin Police Department, who will be—oh, look, here they are. On time. What a rarity. I’ll turn it over to Chief Meecham, let her take it from here.”

  She turned toward a bank of microphones. The chief of police, a buxom blonde with strands of gray in her hair, approached the microphone. There were several people alongside, investigators on the case.

  “Thank you for coming. I’m Chief Meecham, Franklin Police. We can confirm a body was found early this morning in a wooded area off Highway 96, near Gentry’s Farm. Preliminary findings indicate we have found the body of Sutton Montclair. We will not be releasing any more details regarding the victim, including cause of death, or any other suppositions until after an autopsy is performed.

  “Ethan Montclair, the victim’s husband, has been taken into custody and is being charged with first-degree homicide. At this time there are no other suspects.

  “Thanks to the tireless work of the Franklin Police Department, especially Sergeant Moreno and his team—”

  The television flicked off.

  A smile began.

  NOW, ISN’T THAT ODD?

  Holly was unsettled. Ethan Montclair had turned into a monosyllabic zombie the moment they’d arrested him. He’d been sitting in a holding cell for the better part of the evening, awaiting an arraignment in the morning. She stopped by to check on him a couple of times, and found him staring bleakly at the dirty floor.

  She’d been given a thousand tasks in the wake of the arrest. Most involved typing up reports, which she thought might be the one thing about being a detective that bit donkey butts. Filling out forms about homicide was a very dry experience anyway, and she wanted to be sure she had them right.

  She hadn’t gotten any sleep; her hands were shaky from downing cup after cup of coffee. Moreno told her the case was just beginning now. They all knew Montclair had murdered his wife. Now they had to prove it.

  She’d asked to be at the autopsy, but Moreno had declined the request, wanting her to keep going on the paperwork instead, since there’d be too many witnesses already. She didn’t bristle at the injunction; there wasn’t much to be gleaned from a burned body, anyway. Plus, that smell...the reek of burned flesh still hadn’t left her sinuses. She didn’t know if she really wanted to stand around while the ME drove needles into the eyes to try to get a vitreous, which would probably be all they could salvage from that mess.

  She checked her watch. Nearly eight. The autopsy must be finished by now. And as she thought it, the file in front of her flashed a red message indicator. A new file had been added from Forensic Medical, up in Nashville. She clicked on it, but it was empty.

  Damn it.

  She grabbed the phone and called the morgue. Got a receptionist, who forwarded her call to a voice mail. She left a message, hung up, scrubbed her hands through her hair, took another gulp of caffeine, and within moments, her phone lit up. It was the morgue.

  “Graham.”

  “Fox, from Forensic Medical. You rang?”

  “Hello, Dr. Fox. I got word you’ve finished the post on Sutton Montclair? My file updated but it’s empty.”

  “Right. It takes a while for the details to upload sometimes. We have a lot of photos.”

  “Do you have a positive ID?”

  “We haven’t gotten DNA or dentals back yet, but we’re still operating under the assumption that this is Sutton Montclair. The dentist is on a mission trip to Africa, and his office manager locked herself out of his computer using the wrong password. They’ll send the radiographs as soon as they catch up with him, probably tonight. He’s supposed to be out in some remote village this week, but he’s been calling in every few days.”

  “Good grief. Can you tell me her cause of death?”

  She could hear him tearing into the wrapper of something, taking a bite. After a moment, he said, “Sorry, didn’t get a chance to eat breakfast. So COD, in this case, it’s tricky. There’s really no way to tell exactly how she was killed. Burning a body is a very effective tool for hiding a murder cause. I can rule this a homicide—there’s no evidence of smoke or fire damage in her lungs, so she was dead when she was burned. There was also some whitish residue that we collected, chemically consistent with sodium bicarbonate.”

  “So she was burned on-site, then the killer put out the flames with a fire extinguisher? That’s twisted. But it explains the hair not burning completely away.”

  “Maybe he’s an environmentalist. Happy to burn the body, but didn’t want to burn down the forest.”

  “Hardly. Whoever did this wanted to obscure the cause of death without drawing attention to the site.”

  “You’re probably right.” He munched some more. “That’s really as far as I can go. We’ll probably never know exactly what killed her.”

  “Okay. That official homicide ruling is what I needed. When you get the positive ID, can you let me know?”

  “I will. Before you go, though, there was one really odd thing. The hair isn’t real.”

  “Come again?”

  “One of the evidence bags that came in had a reddish-blond wig in it. It’s real hair, but there’s a synthetic compound mixed into it.”

  “Why would she be wearing a wig?”

  “No idea. Ask her husband, he might know. She could have had some hair loss because of a medical condition, she could be vain and want luscious locks. Either way, the scalp itself is lightly burned, and there’s evidence of scraps of fabric clinging to the skull. We found some sticky residue on the top of her head. I ran it through the mass spectrometer, and it’s an adhesive commonly used to help the front of the wig adhere to the forehead. Other than that, there’s nothing of note on this autopsy.”

  “Fascinating. That’s it?”

  “That’s it. You’ll get my full written report within the week.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Fox. Have a good day.”

  She hung up, refreshed the computer screen
. The report appeared. She read through it carefully, twice. Looked at the photos, enlarged several of the face and head. She couldn’t tell anything.

  Occam’s razor. A preponderance of evidence said this was Sutton Montclair.

  So why did Holly suddenly get the feeling there was something much bigger going on?

  She gathered up her things and headed down to the holding cells. Gave the guard on duty a smile and a high five as she rushed by.

  Montclair was sitting in the same position she’d seen when she last checked.

  “Mr. Montclair?”

  He didn’t move.

  “Ethan.”

  That seemed to rouse him, though he still didn’t look up.

  “Are you asleep?”

  His head came up, and she saw a rage in his eyes that made her take a step back and reach for her Taser, which of course she didn’t have on her belt since she was inside the station house. Then his eyes cleared and he smiled grimly.

  “Come to mock the condemned again?”

  “Not here to mock,” she said lightly. “I have a question. And it’s very important that you answer me truthfully. Important for me, and for you.”

  “Ask my lawyer.”

  “Listen to me. Since I’m now breaking the law by continuing to talk to you, humor me.”

  He shrugged. “What?”

  “Did your wife wear a hairpiece or a wig? Extensions, anything like that?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I sodding well am. She has the most gorgeous hair of any woman I’ve ever seen. Thick strawberry blond hair that is the envy of all her friends.”

  “But if you two had been having problems, could there be any chance she—”

  “No. There is no bloody chance in hell my wife suddenly shaved her head and started wearing a wig. Now, why are you asking me this ridiculous question? Hey, Graham—”

  But Holly was already out of the holding cell, running full speed toward the elevators. Back on the second floor, she hurried to the conference room. Inside, the brass were in a meeting. Moreno, the chief, a couple of other detectives.

  She knocked, and opened the door. Heads turned.

  “He didn’t do it.”

  Everyone froze, then Moreno said, “For heaven’s sake, Graham. Go home. Get some sleep. We’re in a meeting here.”

  “I’m sorry to interrupt, sir. But Montclair didn’t do it. I know he didn’t.”

  Moreno narrowed his eyes at her. “Why, pray tell, would you want to rock the boat right now, Graham? You’re being promoted to detective. You’ve done exemplary work on this case. It’s a slam dunk. Even Robinson knows we’ve got Montclair dead to rights. He’s already been talking to the DA about a plea.”

  “Sir, I’m willing to bet my career on this. Please.”

  That got his attention. He glanced at the chief, then back to Holly, a hairy brow raised. “Talk.”

  “The body we recovered? It isn’t Sutton Montclair.”

  SUTTON

  “Life is full of confusion. Confusion of love, passion, and romance. Confusion of family and friends. Confusion with life itself. What path we take, what turns we make. How we roll our dice.”

  —Matthew Underwood

  MEMENTO MORI

  I asked so little from this life. A husband. A family. Friends. Love, to give and receive. That’s all.

  And I got them. Oh, did I get them.

  So when I fled my perfectly horrible life, I wanted even less.

  A warm bed in a cozy garret. A garden with green ferns and white flowers. Cafés and rain, a good book, a comfortable pen to write with. Long walks, watching lovers stroll arm in arm, and painters’ brushes sparkling in the dew. Solitude. I asked for solitude.

  And I asked for inspiration, enough to fill four hundred pages, yes. I don’t believe it is too much to ask for, is it? The desire to sit and write, to pour words onto the page, to create. It is what I do. What I did. Lusciously, deliberately. In the comforting absence of my life.

  I did not expect the company of loneliness.

  I did not ask to become involved.

  I did not ask for the sharpness of a blade, flashing silver in the moonlight. The chaos, the cries. The sirens and rough questions and the thick wetness of blood on my palms.

  Nor the stares, the stares, the stares.

  ELLE EST ARRIVÉE

  It was a dream Sutton Montclair had, moving to Paris.

  She spent time on this dream. Invested energy. Imagined what it would be like: feeling a bit like Goldilocks as she worked her way through the possible housing list, hunting high and low for the perfect flat. The apartment on the Rue Faubourg would be much too expensive, the one near Notre-Dame too shabby.

  When the dream became a plan, she did most of her research by watching reality television shows catering to international clients—Sutton Montclair is moving 4,300 miles from Franklin, Tennessee, to Paris, France! She narrowed down which arrondissement would be right for her. She wanted something slightly off the beaten path, residential, away from the tourist areas. She would hire the same real estate agent featured on the show to find her the perfect spot.

  “A garret, that’s what I’m looking for, something with Parisian charm, a good café nearby, and Metro access. Private, anonymous, French.”

  The agent immoblier would come through. She always came through. The woman had a reputation to uphold, after all.

  It would take three days, but Sutton would end up in a charming furnished one bedroom in the 7th Arrondissement, on the Left Bank, with a picture-perfect view of the Eiffel Tower from the open living room. It would cost her a small fortune, but she had the advance money. After a brief negotiation, she’d secure the flat for a pirate’s ransom, but she’d still have enough to live on for a year, if necessary. She was grateful her publisher hadn’t asked for the money back when they canceled her contract. She was free of them, free of her old life. She could do what she wanted, write for herself. Escape. She just needed a small, brief escape from the vagaries of her life.

  She would move in the same day; the tourist season was ending and the owner was tired of short-term rentals. He’d been working with a property company that catered to tourists and was desperate to leave the city and retire to Chamonix, where he planned to run a small coffee shop and ski as much as possible. The real estate agent would tell her the owner was grateful for the unexpected and quick offer to rent the apartment for a year, payment in full, up front.

  Moving in wouldn’t take long; she’d only have a backpack with her new laptop, new tablet, and a few worn, well-loved notebooks, a battered Hartmann carry-on bag she’d found at a local Goodwill store, along with three changes of brand-new clothes, all black, and some basic toiletries. Everything else she’d left behind.

  Everything, and everyone.

  And when the door closed, and she was alone, she would look around her new life. Spare. Empty. Perfect.

  Safe.

  What amazed her was how closely her long-held fantasy resembled her reality. Her new reality.

  It didn’t take as long as she expected. It always pays to do your research. She found the perfect flat in the perfect area on the most perfect street the first day. Took the keys, handed over twelve months’ rent, and climbed the stairs to her new world in her gilded, ivory tower.

  She’d escaped with her life. And really, that was all she could ask, wasn’t it?

  * * *

  Sutton dragged the Louis XIV desk in front of the window, set all her writing tools on the worn wooden top. She had no internet access yet, no wireless, which wasn’t an issue; she’d logged out of all of her accounts before she left, changed passwords to nonsense no one could figure out, especially her. Every single one, fr
om Facebook to Twitter to Instagram (look, cats!) to Gmail. She’d downloaded all the files that mattered onto a thumb drive and put them on the new laptop, then reset her Dropbox account. Turned off all cloud support. It was damn hard to disappear these days, but it was doable, if you were smart. And Sutton was very, very smart.

  No one had her new phone number, no friends, no business associates. Nor Ethan. Especially not Ethan.

  She ignored the stab his name elicited, continued tidying her new space.

  Ethan didn’t know where she was. He was probably beginning to miss her now. Or not. She didn’t care. She’d left a short, to-the-point note on the kitchen counter, on the richly veined Carrara marble she’d lovingly handpicked when they renovated the house. Don’t look for me, it said. I need some time.

  As planned, she’d walked to downtown Franklin, caught an Uber car she paid for with a Visa gift card, had him take her to the airport in Atlanta, tipped him $300 so he wouldn’t say anything, dropped the disposable burner phone in the toilet and flushed it clean away, then hopped a plane and flew off to Paris, with her shiny new hair and her shiny new name and her shiny new passport.

  Standing in her new living room, in her new city, her new country, her new life, the windows flung open to the cool spring afternoon, the scrolled wrought iron balconette holding her back from stepping into the sky, the birds chirping in the trees along the street in front of her, the red roofs leading to the view—the view!—of the Eiffel Tower, she took three quick breaths, pulled her newly dark hair out of its messy ponytail, and shook it down her back.

  I’m free. Finally, I’m free.

  She fell to her knees and began to cry.

  WIFE, INTERRUPTED

  Sutton woke the first morning in her new Paris flat to sunlight. It spilled through the window and edged around her bed, warming her, welcoming and friendly. She rubbed a hand across her face, wiped the grit from her eyes, and stretched. The bed wasn’t overly large like the massive California king they had at home, just a standard European full, and she felt cozy and snug.