Rules of Lying (Jane Dough Series) (27 page)

“Granny! Granny was in on this too?” I hated that Granny and Hank and Grams and probably other people, like Hank’s friend Keith, had been pulling the wool over my eyes.

“You made a fool of me,” I said. I certainly felt like a fool, but I wasn’t sure it was from anything Hank had done. It was more the way he was staring at me, as though I’d turned into a two-headed Gila monster.

He threw his hands up in the air. “Stop! Listen to yourself. You’re actin’ crazy again. You’re mad because people have kept parts of their lives—or maybe just their
thoughts
—private from you. You got a major issue with trust, and you’d better learn how to deal with it before you lose everyone in your life. Or is that what you want? To run everyone off before they can reject you, like your mother did and Pete and whoever else? Maybe you just wanna get all your relationships over with right now, so you don’t have to worry about someone else endin’ them later.”

“Oh, give me a break.” I snatched up the bamboo stalk I’d discarded and pitched it as hard as I could across the lawn. I wanted to wrench a couple of the bamboo trees out of the ground and throw them too but I hadn’t lost my mind quite enough to actually try it.

“Should I call you
Dr.
Hank? Or would that be Dr.
John?”
I added somewhat sarcastically. “You might have known me when I was five, but you don’t know me now. This has nothing to do with
my
shortcomings. I just can’t stand liars.”

“Liars? Really? What gives you the right to expect everyone to tell you every single thing goin’ on in their heads?”

“What gives
you
the right to move into my neighborhood, strike up a friendship with me, and then try to manipulate me by pretending to be someone you aren’t?”

Hank gave me a long, hard stare. There was no anger in it, only regret and something that might have been pity. Great. Pitiful was one more thing I did not want to be. I clenched my fists until my nails dug into my palms. Was I in the wrong?

“This is who I am,” he said. “For the first time in my life, I’m not pretending. Hank is my middle name—it’s the one I prefer—and I legally changed my last name to Tyler, my mother’s maiden name. I’d hoped you could find happiness in the fact that someone you cared for a long time ago has come back into your life, but if you can’t … if all you can feel is anger … I’m sorry for you. I truly am.”

And just like that, he was gone, striding off without a backward glance like some lone cowboy at the end of a western movie. I wanted to yell after him to come back, but he crossed the street, got into his Chevy, and pulled away.

I looked around blindly. Blind because tears were blurring my vision. What was the matter with me? Maybe someone should just shoot me and put me and, evidently, everyone who knew me out of our misery. Once upon a time I’d had these great friends, but I’d driven them away, one by one.

Maybe Hank was right. Maybe I wanted to find fault with everyone so I felt justified keeping them at arm’s length. Except no one had arms this long. At this rate I would end up old and alone.

Oh my God! Wasn’t that what the Mysterious Marissa had said? That I would end up old, penniless, and alone? Maybe she wasn’t such a fraud after all. Or maybe, as Angie had said, I was turning her words into a self-fulfilling prophesy.

I blotted my tears with the back of my arm and stumbled toward the swamp. I’d come out here to get to work on this thing, and I wasn’t going to let this latest upset keep me from that. I only had four days left to save my house, and dammit, I was going to … I really was going to …

I sank down to a squat and then settled back on my butt and let the tears flow. Hank
was
right. He was certainly right about the lying. I’d accused him of striking up a friendship and manipulating me by pretending to be someone he wasn’t, but didn’t I do the exact same thing? I’d pretended I was looking for a husband and took him up on his offer to help me until I found one, and I wasn’t even looking.

If he was right about that, maybe he was right about everything. Maybe I wanted to be in this predicament and maybe I even wanted to lose my house, just so I’d have something besides
me
to blame for my unhappiness for the rest of my life.

I swiped at my face, brushing away the combination of tears and sunscreen while I let that thought sink in.

No, that wasn’t true. I’d worked my butt off to solve this problem, to bring my property into conformance with the rest of the neighborhood, and I’d be damned if anything was going to stop me now. Not even the stupid old swamp. Even if I had to dig it out all by myself. Nothing was going to keep me from being successful, not even me.

I was forcing myself to my feet when a movement in the swamp caught my eye. It was something big that made the movement. Something too big to be in my swamp.

I shot to my feet like a jack-in-the-box, launching myself halfway across the yard before I knew I was moving. The only word that went through my head was
alligator,
in big, bold caps. I was almost to my patio before I forced myself to slow down. That was when I realized that the thing in my swamp couldn’t be an alligator.

Because alligators didn’t wear suits.

L
et’s go over your statement one more time, Ms. Dough.”

I was sitting in an interrogation room, like the ones on
Law and Order.
Small room, tiled floor, bright light, wobbly table, hard chairs. I knew the wobbly table was supposed to drive me crazy, so I tried to pretend someone was rocking me to sleep. It didn’t work.

My skimpy cotton halter top and short shorts had drawn looks from every cop in the station as I’d walked through. Or it might have been the ugly rubber boots covered in swamp muck. I’d been mortified that the detectives hadn’t let me go into the house and change clothes.

Until they told me they were executing a search warrant on my house.

After that, my mortification had to do with that battery-operated device wrapped in a hand towel, stored inside a shoebox that was stuffed inside a bigger box labeled “worthless junk” that was in a plastic storage bin in a corner of my closet. I was beginning to understand what Hank meant when he said no one should have to share his every thought.

Whoever was on the other side of the two-way mirror had to be enjoying my discomfort. I was freezing; they must have turned the thermostat down to zero. At least that’s what my nipples thought. They were the only part of me that was thinking. My brain was in shock and had been since the cops pulled dead Mr. Carlson out of my swamp. Except for those few minutes of panic over that battery-operated device, that is. My brain had been in overdrive then.

Detective Evans was a big man with tiny, close-set eyes perched atop a bulbous nose that was mottled with red spider veins. His nose reminded me of my fifth grade teacher, Mr. Cragan, who took swigs from a bottle of cough syrup throughout the day, though he was never known to have a cold. I felt like asking this guy if he needed some cough syrup right now. I was thinking I could use a drop or two myself.

“What? Cat got your tongue, or do you only answer to Ms. Jansen?” His eyes gleamed with a mixture of excitement and anticipation. I could tell by his smirk that he wanted me to say yes. He wanted me to be a prima donna, acting as if I were somebody special, just so he could put me in my place. Too bad for him that I was an expert at reading smirks. This might be the only time in my life that I’d thank my mother for that.

“My name is Jane Dough,” I said, “and that’s D-O-U-G-H.” I didn’t remember giving the statement the detective wanted to go over. If I wasn’t careful, I would end up in uglier clothes than the ones I was wearing.

I wanted to ask for a lawyer, but I didn’t have any money and was too ashamed to admit it. Pride goeth before a fall, they said, though I’d never really understood that saying. When someone
fell,
was it because he’d been prideful first, or did the foreknowledge of a fall make pride get out of the way? And what did it matter when I had too much pride and not enough money?

“I don’t remember what I told you,” I said. “Could you read my statement back to me?” I clamped my teeth together, lest they started to chatter.

His eyes drilled into me, and I resisted the temptation to shrink back in my seat. The problem was, I felt guilty even though I wasn’t. I’d been like that for as long as I could remember. Dad told me after my seventy-third belt whipping that he always knew when I was guilty because I looked it. I looked it because I felt it. Even when I wasn’t. Even when Nicole had done it and had gotten me blamed for it, which was eighty percent of the time. Okay, sixty. Or fifty. The point being I always felt I was to blame. And I felt it now.

I reminded myself I hadn’t done anything wrong. Unless you counted spying, witnessing a murder, and then fleeing the scene without telling the police. At least I hoped I hadn’t told the police. I hadn’t murdered Carlson, so they wouldn’t find any evidence of
that.

“We know you killed him. We found the knife in your kitchen, with the blood still on it. And I can see the bruises on your arm from the struggle. You might as well confess. We’ve got the goods on you, Jane Dough!”

“Eeeee.” It was the only word I could form. Was he making this up? On
Law and Order
they sometimes lied to the perp to get him to confess.

Oh my God! I was the perp.

Evans leaned in closer. “What was that you said?”

I tried to squeak out the words, “I want a lawyer,” but just then someone rapped on the other side of the mirror. I shot upward, banging a knee into the table. Great. Bruised up knee to go with my bruised up murdering arm. Except, I reminded myself, my arm hadn’t murdered anyone.

The door swung open and in walked a man. A
gentleman,
actually. A very
attractive
gentleman. Late forties, dark hair shot with the teensiest bit of silver, wearing a black pinstripe suit that had cost more than my annual electric bill and water bill rolled into one. His Burberry black leather briefcase made a quick run for second in the big bucks department.

“Counselor,” said Evans. Was it my imagination or did the detective’s shoulders sag a wee bit?

“I’d like a word with my client,” said the gentleman, and I almost fell over onto the floor. I was the only other person in the room. I must be the client.

Evans gave me a look that would have scared me shitless if we’d been alone. He scraped his chair back on the tile floor and tramped out of the room.

“Ms. Dough—may I call you Jane?”

“Ga, I mean ya-yeah-yes.” I stared at him, stuck somewhere between mesmerized and stupid.

“I’m Jonathan Renquist.” He offered his hand and a smile so charming that it slid over me like a balm. Charm, it seemed, was highly underrated.

His eyes were a deep blue, his face unlined except for a smattering of laugh lines, and his expression was kind and sincere. “Bryan Rossi asked me to assist you with this.”

“But I can’t, I mean, I don’t have …” It was so embarrassing to have to say I couldn’t afford him. Hell, I couldn’t even afford his soap. I wondered, if I shut my eyes tight, if he would just go away.

He chuckled, the sound rich and confident. “Don’t worry about the fee. I’ve been taking Bryan’s money for years, and I’ve seldom had to do anything for it. That’s the way it works with retainers.”

Relief swept through me, taking the brain freeze with it.

“Oh, well, thank God, because they’re telling me they have a knife from my house with Carlson’s blood on it, and there’s no freaking way the knife that killed Carlson was in my kitchen.” I had the urge to clutch at his arm as the thought hit me that if the knife had been in my kitchen, so had the killers, but I restrained myself.

“I’d move if that was the case. In fact, maybe that’s what this is all about. Carlson has been trying to get me out of my house for three months, and now he’s found a way to do it. Get me arrested and thrown in prison for the rest of my life, and my family will sell my house to him in seconds.”

Except he was dead, and that was the important part. He couldn’t buy the house if he was dead, so nothing I’d said made any sense. My mouth had run amuck with no mental faculties attached to it, the same way my mother’s mouth takes off when she’s nervous. Oh goodie. One more unfavorable character trait from Mom’s side of the family.

“I don’t want you to worry about that,” Mr. Renquist said. “Bryan just gave a statement disclosing the details of last night’s upsetting incident. There’s only one problem. He didn’t see the killer;
you
did. So you’ll have to give a statement too.”

“But what about the fact that we were spy—”

“Strolling on Carlson’s property?” Renquist supplied smoothly. “There weren’t any
no trespassing
signs posted, and Bryan is a homeowner on the island, so that’s moot. I have to caution you to tell the truth, though, about the reason you were there. People often think there’s no harm in telling a little lie about something that may be personally embarrassing. That’s not the case when giving a statement to law enforcement. You end up in the same prison for lying about a crime as you do for committing the crime. You needn’t, however, go into detail. Just answer the questions you are asked. Do you understand?”

Yeah. Keep my mouth shut except when asked to open it, and then tell the truth as succinctly as possible. I could do that—I hoped.

I nodded in confirmation.

“Good. There are other details we should discuss, but they’ll wait. If you’re ready, I’ll let the detective know.”

*****

It went better than I expected. Detective Evans dropped the scare tactics, opting for real questions and real answers. I almost felt a little sorry for him because he seemed to have lost all his joy. In general I was against stealing someone’s joy, but in this case I made an exception.

I was surprised he didn’t badger me about the reason I was spying on Carlson, but I guessed he’d heard all about my dispute with the homeowners’ association. As motives for spying went, mine wasn’t half bad. The embarrassing part came when he asked about Bryan’s role in my scheme.

“You say you asked for Dr. Rossi’s help because you knew he lived in Island Hill, where Carlson lived. How did you know that?”

“My mother told me.”

“How did your mother know?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why did she tell you where he lived?”

“She read in the paper that he’d paid me a call.”

His eyebrows shot up as though he didn’t get the connection. Surely he knew that all mothers wanted their daughters to marry a doctor. Well, maybe nowadays mothers wanted their daughters to
be
a doctor, but my mother wasn’t living in the present.

I took Mr. Renquist’s advice and resisted the temptation to admit that Mom had told me where Bryan lived so I’d know what a good catch he was, as in hooking and reeling him in. A young, rich, handsome, doctor
fish.

Evans shook his head as though the statement made no sense but wasn’t worth following up on. “And Dr. Rossi was all for going along with your scheme to get dirt on Carlson?”

Uh-oh. This was the embarrassing part. “Um …” I glanced at Mr. Renquist, and he gave me an encouraging smile. “Dr. Rossi didn’t know exactly. I mean, I just told him I wanted to confirm that Carlson was living
there
and not in my neighborhood because you can’t be on the homeowners’ association board unless your primary residence is in the neighborhood.”

“In other words, you lied to Dr. Rossi to coerce him into helping you.”

Well, if he was going to put it like that …

“No! Well, maybe. I think he knew I wasn’t telling him
everything,
but he was too much of a gentleman to pressure me about it.”

“Really? And what did you promise in return for his help?”

“I promised to have dinner with him.”

“Just dinner?”

“Yes.” The kissing and petting wasn’t promised. It just happened.

From that point on, the interrogation wasn’t too bad. I related what I saw and heard, and Detective Evans asked a few questions. I learned that he knew Bryan had called for an ambulance and that when the ambulance arrived, no body was found. I had a lot of questions about that myself, but decided to wait until I was alone with Mr. Renquist to ask them.

“So you say you never saw that knife on your kitchen floor? You sure?”

“Yes.” Jeez, a bloody knife on the kitchen floor wasn’t something I would have overlooked. Not even if it had been stuck through a contract I was supposed to read.

“So how do you think it got there?”

“Someone must have put it there while I was outside working in the yard.”

“Any ideas who could have done that? Wasn’t your house locked up?”

I puzzled over that. The front door had been locked but someone could have gone in through the patio doors because that was the way I’d gone out and I hadn’t locked the doors behind me. There was really only one point during the afternoon when I wouldn’t have seen someone enter my house. I debated telling Evans I’d been crying my eyes out for about two minutes because I was such a bitch that I’d lost all my friends, and it was possible that someone snuck in during the time I was bawling, but I didn’t.

Something else was niggling at me, yet I couldn’t quite get it. I’d had the same feeling the night Richard had presented himself as an applicant … later that evening when Little Boy had mysteriously appeared in my bed and I’d gotten up to look for the calamine lotion. When I’d stood beside the kitchen bar and gazed around the family room, something had niggled at me, the same way it was niggling at me now.

I shut my eyes for a few seconds and pretended I was there again, checking out the room. When my gaze reached the key hook, it hit me. I was looking at the key hook where my house key
wasn’t hanging.
That was the thing that had been different that night; my extra key to the front door had been hanging on that key hook for months, but that night, the key was gone.

I’d gone into the house to take a shower to wash off the bogus poison ivy while Richard waited outside. Or so I’d thought. I hadn’t locked the doors. He’d made up the poison ivy, and I’d played right into his hands. While I was showering, he must have taken my key to get a copy made and returned it that night after I’d gone to bed, letting Little Boy in with him. Good old Richard. Screwing me every which way he could.

I quickly relayed my suspicions and included the incident at the bank, where I’d overheard Richard colluding with Carlson to cost me money.

“I remember reading about that incident. You punched that guy in the face, didn’t you?”

Why did everyone think the worst of me? “It was a slap, really, and it was justified too. He wrenched my wrist hard enough to leave this.”

I showed him my bruise, the same bruise that Evans had implied I’d gotten while killing Carlson. I didn’t mention that I slapped Richard first or that he grabbed my arm to keep me from slapping him again. That had no bearing on Carlson’s murder, at least not directly. So it was nobody’s business but mine.

“Her bruise is more than a day old, so we can conclude it wasn’t caused last night,” Renquist put in. “I think you’ve covered everything, so if you’ve no more questions, I’d like a few minutes alone with my client.”