Lie in Plain Sight (26 page)

Staying at Dad's.

Maeve had no way of knowing, but she wondered if implicit in those three words existed the end of her relationship with her daughter. She was tired and being dramatic; she knew that.

But in her mind and in her heart, she saw no way to mend what was rapidly becoming a flawed and very broken relationship with a girl who kept more secrets than Maeve imagined she could count.

 

CHAPTER 34

Maeve felt guilty at how well she had slept the night before and actually felt a smile break out on her face when she saw Mark Messer, the sun barely up, filling in the pothole that had nearly swallowed the Prius several times over the last few months. She got out of the car and walked over, surprising both of them by giving him a big hug. This was what her life had come to: joy at predawn pothole filling.

“What do you want, Mark? I'll make anything to thank you.”

He had the face of a boy, but she knew he had turned twenty-two so was technically a man. She was a mother and figured she would always see the child underneath the older features of people she had seen grow up through the years. “Oh, it's okay, Ms. Conlon. I'll grab a muffin when I'm done.”

“You'll grab as many muffins as you want,” Maeve said, turning to go into the store. “Is this your regular shift? At five in the morning?” she asked.

“No,” he said, smiling. “My dad said that if I didn't come out here and fill your pothole today, I shouldn't bother coming to work today.”

“I'm sorry, Mark,” Maeve said. “That's my fault. It's just that I thought I'd lose the Prius more than once driving in here and not paying attention.”

He tamped down some gravel with the flat side of his rake. She wondered how he could see what he was doing; the only light he had was a flashlight in his pocket that he turned on intermittently to see his handiwork.

Inside the store, Maeve prepared to open, getting scones and muffins ready for the busy commuter rush. The media had moved on since the drama of two days earlier, not interested in her or her daughter, moved on to some other salacious story, another juicy detail related to another sordid or tragic tale. Focused on Trish Dvorak and her ham-fisted plot to get her daughter's father to give the girl what she deserved. Had the woman ever heard of a lawyer? Clearly she had one now, but there were others out there who would have loved to sink their teeth into a case involving a destitute woman and her daughter and the wealthy estranged father who lived in the same town.

Desperate times. Maeve knew that sometimes they existed, even if she couldn't always condone the desperate measures.

That morning, it was just her and the sound of the wonky oven that only she knew how to massage into working order every day, the occasional tamping down of the gravel outside as Mark continued his work on the hole, the feeling of dough beneath her fingers, the smell of cinnamon all around her. It was almost as if everything were normal and her life happy, the people in it content. She knew that wasn't true, though, and the thought of that made her focus on the dough on the butcher block, the only thing that kept her from thinking dark, unsettled thoughts.

She never heard Mark leave as the crush of commuters descended upon the store before leaving for the station. The kid had left without his muffin, she thought. She was circumspect to her regulars about her absence the day before, citing a bad headache to a few, a nasty fall to others. Anything but what it really was, that her daughter had been picked up by the police and questioned in a girl's disappearance.

Nine o'clock rolled around, and she took a minute to breathe, pouring herself a cup of coffee and sitting on a high stool behind the counter to peruse the paper before going back to work. The back door opened, and while she would have been surprised to see Jo arriving early to work, she was even more surprised to see the woman standing before her.

“Trish,” Maeve said. “Shouldn't you be in jail?”

She seemed thinner than she had when Maeve had first seen her at back-to-school night, and now, days after her daughter's disappearance, broken as well. Maeve motioned toward a stool on the other side of the counter, but Trish continued to stand.

“You must think I'm a horrible person,” Trish said, opening a conversation Maeve didn't want to have and not answering Maeve's question.

“I don't judge,” Maeve said, which sounded better than the truth:
I shouldn't judge. I can't judge.
She had done some terrible things, but in her own mind, they were justified; maybe Trish felt the same way. “But was that really the only thing you could do? A fake kidnapping?” Maeve asked, getting deep into it with the woman quickly.

“You don't know, Maeve. You have no idea,” she said, looking around the kitchen, a place for her eyes to land so that she didn't have to look at Maeve. “The things he always promised. The way we'd eventually be together. That's what I wanted. That's what I deserved.”

Maeve closed the paper, looked through the hole in the kitchen door to see if anyone had come in without her knowing. “He told me he gave you a lot of money. That it's gone.”

“Did he tell you why?”

Maeve shook her head.

“Did he tell you that Taylor had several surgeries as a baby to correct a heart defect? Did he tell you that?”

“No.”

“That I had to declare bankruptcy?” Trish asked, escalating, gripping the sides of the counter to stay upright.

Maeve pulled the stool out from under the counter. “Here. Sit,” she said, going into the front of the store to wait on a lone customer while a cup of tea steeped on the counter for Trish. She rang up the order and went back into the kitchen with the tea and a scone and placed them in front of the distraught woman. “Eat something. Please.”

Trish picked at the scone and blew on top of the scalding cup of tea. “It's hard being known as the town slut, Maeve.”

“I've never heard anyone say that.”

“You haven't, but I have. A single mother with a child who has no father. This town thinks it's progressive and hip, but it's like 1950 all over again.”

“I think you're overstating that, Trish. I don't think anyone cares that you're a single mother.”

“You think you know because you're divorced, but it's different. Cal lives in town—”

“Oh, yes, Cal,” Maeve said. “Who you tried to get money from.”

Trish looked up at Maeve. “I was desperate. I don't know how many ways to say that, Maeve.”

“You stole from me.”

Trish looked down at the table.

“Charles actually gave me the money back,” Maeve said.

“He's a regular prince.”

“There's financial aid, Trish. There are loans. There are ways to pay for college,” Maeve said.

“Which is all well and good, but I have nothing,” she said slowly so that Maeve couldn't miss her point, pushing the scone away. “And my daughter had nothing. It's not fair.”

Maeve folded the paper and threw it in the trash. She knew in her heart that their situations were different, and although she wanted to kill Cal on a daily basis, there was one thing that he hadn't done, and that was abandon his children financially or emotionally. He was there for them and cared for them, and while he often made parenting a pissing contest, she couldn't dispute that he loved them and wanted the best for them. “It's not fair, Trish. It's not fair at all.”

The tears that Trish had been holding back finally came, and with them a torrent of emotion that Maeve was uncomfortable witnessing. She got up and hugged the woman, feeling every bone in her emaciated frame as she shook with anger and sadness, and all Maeve could think was: He threw you away. And with that thought, anger and sadness flooded her body as well, but one emotion took hold more than the others.

Rage.

She took Trish's face in her hands and looked at her. “We have to find her. By whatever means necessary.”

Trish nodded, although she didn't know what Maeve meant. “Someone has to help me,” she said, and Maeve hugged her again, thinking that she was just the person for the job.

 

CHAPTER 35

After Trish left, Maeve was grateful for the influx of customers who came into the store so that she didn't have to think about the encounter anymore. Making small talk, boxing up cakes and quiches, and answering the phone took her mind off the thought of Trish and what she had done. When Jo came, she went into the kitchen and sat at the counter, wondering what she would do next. In the pocket of her apron, her cell phone rang, and she saw the number of the only person she wanted to speak to: Rodney Poole.

“Maeve Conlon?” he asked, as if they had just met.

“Hiya, Poole. How are you?”

“I'm good. Another day in Dodge City.”

“Here, too. We've had some drama.”

“Oh?”

“Cops picked up Heather two days ago.”

“You should have called me. I could have helped you with that.”

“You must be sick of hearing from me.”

“Never. Now tell me what happened.”

“Heather was caught on tape talking to Taylor on the day she disappeared.”

“About what?

“Dunno. No one is saying.”

“Even the boyfriend?” he asked, and she knew he was referring to Chris.

“Mostly the boyfriend.” She took a sip of her coffee. “Did you see the news?”

“About the mother? Yes.”

“Surprised?”

“Nothing surprises me, Maeve. There are bad people out there. You know that.”

“She had no choice, Poole. It was a bad, bad thing to do, but she had no choice.”

He fell silent, and she knew better than to try to fill that space with chatter. He would speak when he was ready. “I've got nothing for you, Maeve Conlon.”

“About my sister?”

“Yes. I wish I didn't have to say that.”

“It's okay, Poole. This may be a secret that died with Jack. Obviously he wanted it to.”

“So why do you want to know?”

“I like to be the one with the secrets. I'm not great at having other people hold back from me.”

“Very astute, Maeve Conlon. Extremely self-aware.”

She heard him curse under his breath. “Everything okay?”

“There are two types of people in this world: those who use the shopping cart return area and those who don't.”

“You thinking about shooting someone?” she asked.

“That's your department, my warrior queen.” She heard him call out to the offender with a gruff “hey!”

“I'll let you go, Poole. Sounds like you've got your hands full. Thanks for your help.”

She knew having him find out anything was a long shot, but she figured she'd try, wondering if she could reconcile herself to the fact that she loved her sister as much as she did, even though there existed this huge question mark between them, one that Evelyn had no idea haunted her younger sister.

She looked up at the ceiling. “Who was he, Jack? And why didn't you want me to know?”

In the kitchen, the back door slammed, which meant one of two people had arrived: Chris or Cal. She prayed that it was the former, not enthusiastic about talking about Cal's marital problems with everything else that was going on.

But it was her ex who stood inside the back door, the baby asleep in the stroller, a pacifier dangling from his slack lips, snoring gently. She couldn't stop the words from coming from her mouth. “Oh. It's you.”

“And it's you,” he said in return. “I heard you talked to Gabriela.”

“Indeed.”

“And what did you say?”

“I mostly listened.”

“So I guess you heard about what a terrible husband I am,” he said.

“I already knew that.” She enjoyed the sour look he got on his face. Just what did he expect exactly? Kindness? Compassion? “She told me that she was afraid she was turning into me, and that's the only reason she's not angry at what happened between the two of us.”

“But you didn't confirm anything.”

“I confirmed nothing,” Maeve said. Behind her, on the way, the old phone, which had surely been there since the 1970s, its cord dirty and tangled, rang, waking the baby, who set up a mournful howl in protest. “I listened. That was it.” She made her way to the phone as Cal threw an envelope on the counter.

“Here,” he was saying as she picked up the phone. “Here's the check Heather needs for that extra course she wants to take at the community college.”

“What course?” Maeve asked before saying, “The Comfort Zone,” to whoever was calling her. “And why didn't you give it to her last night?” she asked, her hand over the receiver. “I assumed she went to you. She texted me that that was where she was headed,” Maeve said.

And as he said, “I didn't see her last night,” Judy Wilkerson was saying, “Heather never came to school,” and Maeve slid down the wall, feeling the floor beneath her turn to an ocean of sadness and grief, her ability to stand deserting her in one emotional tidal wave of terror.

 

CHAPTER 36

Chris Larsson, the man she loved but wouldn't trust now with finding a missing cat, snapped his notebook shut. “So the last time you saw her was right before we spoke last night?”

“Yes,” Maeve said. “She texted me that she was staying at her father's, but she never showed up.”

Cal was sitting at the counter, his head in his hands. Maeve picked up the baby and fed him a cookie to keep him quiet, knowing that sugar was not on the list of approved ingredients that the child could eat and not caring. “What do we do, Chris?” she asked.

“Leave it to us, Maeve,” he said, and while she knew that that was the answer he had to give, she wasn't confident that it was her best choice.

After they left, Chris taking his two uniformed colleagues with him, Cal departed with the baby, now wailing lustily, in need of a nap or organic baby food. Maeve texted Jo, telling her the store would be closed for the rest of the day, but not telling her why.