Once Upon a Lie (33 page)

Finally, Rodney spoke, and his voice, which had been true and sincere just moments before, took on a tone that Maeve didn’t recognize at first but which told her everything she needed to know. He stood. “So, I’ll be going, Maeve, my warrior queen.” He went to the closet and got his coat, pulling it closed, buttoning a few buttons, and putting up his collar against the night chill. “You were right: your cousin was a horrible person. I think I’ll focus my energies on more worthy homicide victims. You know, the drug dealers and the jilted husbands. Solve a few of those cases. Put in my last five and then get out. Head down to the Keys, where I can forget about everything I’ve seen and all of the money Colletti owes me. The change-of-life baby will be going to college soon after that, so I can move on.”

She couldn’t get up. She was glued to her chair. “Good night, Detective.”

“Please. Call me Rodney.”

“Rodney.”

He leaned over and gave her a peck on the cheek, whispering two words into her ear, the force of his breath ruffling her hair.

“Good work.”

CHAPTER 44

Maeve waited until the next morning, Thanksgiving Day, to peel back the carpeting in her closet, the carpet that she had laid painstakingly at the end of September and that, if she did say so herself, looked as good as if a professional had done it. It was a nubby Berber and really classed up the look of the closet. She was sad about ruining such a wonderful job, but there was something beneath the carpeting and the floorboards beneath it, and she needed it now.

She wasn’t sure why she’d kept it. Maybe to remind her that it had really happened, that he was really dead? Well, that as well as the insurance policy it provided. If she ever needed to skip town, the money would help. But she had no intention of skipping town, and she didn’t need the insurance policy now. What she needed was a dress that was fit for her best friend’s wedding, and this time, H&M wasn’t going to suffice, nor was Target. She was going downtown to a boutique and buying something befitting a warrior queen.

She was on the down side of forty. How many offers to be a maid of honor would she get after this one? This was probably her last, and she needed to make sure that she was dressed to kill.

Jo had called the night before to say that Doug of the Dockers had proposed. It had taken her aback, she’d said, but she couldn’t find a reason not to say yes. Maeve didn’t think that was the best reason to get married, but Jo had been madly in love with Eric and she knew how that had turned out. He had turned out to be a scoundrel of the highest order and a heartbreaker, leaving Jo’s in little pieces after he left. Maeve had a good sense of people, a honed set of antennae, and Doug of the Dockers seemed like a gentleman. Even though Jo had hung her hopes on marrying a boring C.P.A., finding out that she was really dating a cop had made Doug even more attractive to her and had “sealed the deal,” in her words. Make no mistake—he was still boring and she still felt betrayed that he had lied to her; but that was something she would use to her best advantage over the next few years. He’d be making it up to her forever. He would never set the world on fire, but he didn’t need to. He only needed to make Jo happy and keep the fire of contentment burning inside of her.

The floorboard came up easier this time because she hadn’t glued it back in place. She reached down under the floor and pulled out a worn but expensive wallet. It was Burberry, a wallet that a captain of industry, a man of distinction, would carry. In it was two thousand dollars and a condom.

“Fancy meeting you here,” she had said to him that night, right before she had put a bullet in his temple and then smashed the gun down between his legs, the extra violence that Poole had referred to the night before.

She pulled the money out of the wallet. She didn’t know why she had kept it. Now, though, it had to go, along with the gun—Jack’s service revolver—the one that she planned to throw into the river when she was way up north buying apples for the store. She hoped it wasn’t discovered by an auspicious diver. Boy, she had loved that gun. She would miss it, even. But it was evidence, and it had to go. Although she had told Michael Lorenzo that it had never been fired, making it clean, it had. If she had been forced to shoot him, there was the chance that some eagle-eyed ballistics expert would make the connection between the man who had been murdered in the park and the one who had been found floating in the Farringville River.

She wouldn’t have to go far to get rid of the wallet. She would have a fire roaring in minutes, a Bloody Mary chilled and ready to go, and she would watch as the last material connection she had to Sean Donovan went up in flames.

Maybe that would make her feel better. Maybe that would help her let go.

Or maybe not. Maybe the warrior queen would continue to avenge, the thoughts of what she had been told and what had been done to her a fire that she wouldn’t ever be able to extinguish but which she could continually stoke and use to her—and others’—advantage with some careful planning and detailed execution.

She went downstairs in her pajamas and mixed the Bloody Mary just as she liked it, extra horseradish, no celery. There was a cord of wood right outside the back door, and she chose a couple of dry, seasoned logs from the top of the stack, waving to her neighbor through the trees.

“Happy Thanksgiving!” she called, not waiting to hear her neighbor ask if she had an extra pie that she could buy; she had been too busy to go out the day before, apparently. Maeve set about making the fire, and satisfied when it was lit and crackling to a full roar, she got her drink.

Her iPod was plugged in in its dock on the dining room sideboard and she turned it on, wondering which song would shuffle to the top. She would take it as a sign, whatever it was. A loud drumbeat came out of the speakers, announcing a song that she had listened to over and over again because it was one of the girls’ favorites. Something about a fire deep inside. Deep inside the singer’s heart, her broken heart. It was a song the girls played repeatedly and sang along to, the crescendo building to a point where their voices cracked and the notes proved too long to hold.

Maeve threw the wallet in the fire. The song played on.

She made Sean wish he had never met her. Michael Lorenzo, too.

In that knowledge lay power.

Sean hadn’t killed her, emotionally or physically.

He had made her stronger.

ALSO BY MAGGIE BARBIERI

Extra Credit

Physical Education

Third Degree

Final Exam

Quick Study

Extracurricular Activities

Murder 101

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

MAGGIE BARBIERI is a freelance editor as well as a mystery novelist. Her father was a member of the NYPD, and his stories provide much of the background for her novels. Visit her online at
www.MaggieBarbieri.com
.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

ONCE UPON A LIE.
Copyright © 2013 by Maggie Barbieri. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.minotaurbooks.com

Cover design by Olga Grlic

Cover photograph by Plainpicture/Roy Botterell

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

ISBN 978-1-250-01167-1 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-250-01168-8 (e-book)

e-ISBN 9781250011688

First Edition: December 2013