Tell Me Lies (17 page)

Brent was going to take Emily to Brazil. He’d gone out and gotten her a passport and now he was taking her to Brazil.

She dropped everything but Em’s passport back in the box and slammed the lid. Outside the cubicle, she shoved past Mr. Webster and ran up the stairs to the bank lobby.

No Em.

Brent had found her. Maddie’s breath came shorter as the panic hit her. He’d come into the bank and he’d found Em and—

“Mom?” Em came out from behind Candace’s counter, her fingers smeared with stamp-pad ink. “Candace has some really neat stamps.”

Maddie stopped herself from grabbing Em and running from the bank. “We have to go now. Thank you, Candace.” She took Em’s hand, and the warmth of Em’s grasp made her drop to her knees. “I love you, Em,” she said, and hugged her daughter tightly.

“I love you, too, Mom.” Em’s tone added,
You’re acting weird.

Maddie stood up, ignoring Candace’s startled face. “Let’s get lunch, okay?” Brent couldn’t walk into a restaurant and take Em. That was public. Sooner or later, they were going to have to go home, but right now, later was better. Later meant she could think. “Burger King.”

They crossed the street, and Maddie ripped pages out of Em’s passport as she went, throwing them in two different trash cans as they walked. The case was too tough to rip, so she threw that in the Dumpster behind the restaurant. She was pretty sure that a ripped passport wasn’t valid, but if it was, Brent was going to have to dive in three different bins to reconstruct it.

He’d gone behind her back and gotten their child a passport and now he was going to take her away.

The hell he was.

She kept Em’s picture, stashing it in her purse. He wasn’t taking Em.

Through it all, Em was silent.

“I know I’m acting weird,” Maddie told her when they were in the restaurant. “I think I need to lie down again.”

Em nodded and ate her cheeseburger and fries in silence, watching her mother’s every move. The silence was good; it gave Maddie a chance to reassure herself that Brent couldn’t take Em, to calm down so she could pretend to be sane. All she had to do was get Em home, chain the door so Brent couldn’t get in, and wait until Monday. If she just held on to Em and sanity until Monday, Brent would have to go to Rio alone, and she could divorce him in absentia.

Somehow, divorce didn’t seem nearly the trauma it had the day before.

Once they were home, Maddie locked, bolted, and chained the front and back doors and then searched the house to make sure Brent wasn’t hiding there, waiting to jump out at her like Freddy Krueger. Then she sat on the stairs and put her head between her knees. It wasn’t fair that she should have head injuries at a time like this. She hurt all over. Someone should be holding her and saying, “Poor baby.” C.L. would be good at that.

“Mom?”

Maddie lifted her head and smiled at Em as best she could. “It’s my head again, sweetie. Go and watch some mindless rot on TV. It’s bad for you, but I’ll take you to a museum another day.”

Em nodded warily and took off down the hall, and Maddie walked into the living room and sat down, staring at the coffee table and the two empty glasses and the wine bottle. She heard Em dialing the hall phone.

Probably to talk to Mel. “My mother’s a weirdo,” she’d say. “El weirdo. Daddy’s been teaching me Spanish.”

This couldn’t be happening, but as long as she stayed calm and kept the doors chained, there was nothing to worry about. Maddie lay down on the couch and stared at the coffee table some more. She should be cleaning. Empty wine bottles on a coffee table looked cheap.

In the background, she heard Em talking to somebody in her polite voice. She couldn’t be calling Mel. Who was she calling?

“Em? Who are you calling?”

“Daddy, at work.”

Maddie sat up fast, a mistake because her head almost exploded. “
Why
?”

“I think you should go back to the hospital. You’re still sick.”

She tried to keep her voice normal, but panic made it tight. “What did he say?”

“I don’t know. Uncle Howie said he wasn’t there.”

“Oh.” Maddie started to breathe again. One more crisis and she’d have a heart attack right there on the couch.

“Should I call Aunt Treva?”

“No, no, that’s okay.” Maddie lay back down again. It felt so good she decided to never get up again.

“How about that C.L. guy? He could take you.”

He took me last night,
she thought, and for a minute, she felt good about that. But only for a minute. Then the panic came back. “No, baby,” she told Em. “I’ll just rest.”
Until Monday. We’re going to do a lot of resting until Monday.

“Okay. Yell if you feel funny.”

Em went upstairs, and Maddie let herself relax a little. Everything was going to be all right. They were locked in the house with the chains on. Brent couldn’t get in. Visions of Brent breaking through the chains rose before her. She could push furniture in front of the doors, but Em was already suspicious as it was. Best to act as normal as possible. No furniture. Maybe—

The phone rang. Em answered it upstairs and yelled, “Mom!” and Maddie got up. It couldn’t be Brent, Em would still be talking to him.

Brent was not taking Emily. After that nothing else mattered.

She picked up the downstairs line and said, “Yes?”

“Maddie?” The voice was a strange one, gravelly and tentative. “This is Bailey.”

“Bailey?” The rent-a-cop from the Point. Not someone on her regular phone list.

Bailey’s voice grated over the line. “I just wanted to tell you that I haven’t told anybody about what I seen last night.”

“Thank you,” Maddie said.

“C.L. and me go back a long ways,” Bailey said. “I wouldn’t never do anything to hurt C.L.”

“That’s good,” Maddie said. “I’m sure he appreciates it.”

“I was kind of hoping you’d appreciate it, too.” Bailey’s voice got as whiny as a gravelly voice could. “You know what I mean?”

“I haven’t a clue,” Maddie said, almost relieved now that Bailey was getting somewhere. “What do you want?”

“How about a hundred dollars?”

“What?” Maddie was so surprised she almost dropped the phone. “You’re blackmailing me?”

“No, no,” Bailey said, frantic. “I wouldn’t do a thing like that. That’s illegal. I just thought you might want to show your appreciation.”

Her appreciation. “And if I don’t?”

“Well, it’s a damn good story,” Bailey said. “It’d be a real shame to waste it.”

She wanted to say,
Bailey, you idiot, that’s blackmail,
but he wasn’t going to get it, and she didn’t care. “You know, Bailey, any other week this would be upsetting—”

“Now, Maddie—”

“—but this week you’re just part of the scenery.” Okay, she wasn’t going to pay blackmail, but she was going to have to stop him. That meant calling Henry. Which meant stringing Bailey along for a while. “How do you want me to get this hundred to you?”

“I could stop by,” Bailey said.

As blackmailers went, Bailey was almost endearing in his ineptitude. “Things are pretty hectic here right now,” she told him. “Let me get back to you on this.”

“Well, don’t wait too long,” Bailey said. “It’s an awful good story.”

“I’ll get back to you,” Maddie said, and hung up. The hits just kept on coming.

She picked up the phone to call Henry and remembered that C.L. didn’t want his uncle to know he was sleeping with a married woman at the Point. “Oh, hell,” she said, and put the phone back. So she’d talk to C.L. first. Whatever. She went back to the living room and lay down on the couch and tried to remember what she’d been thinking before Em had taken ten years off her life with a phone call to her father and Bailey had gotten delusions of grandeur. Oh yes, sloppy housekeeping. The wine bottle. Empty.

Maddie frowned at the bottle. Empty? It should have wine in it. Wine and enough painkillers to kill a horse. Or at least relax it into a coma.

What had happened to the doped wine?

Maddie sat up. Somebody had drunk the wine with the pills in it. Treva hated wine. C.L. hadn’t been in the living room. Em knew better than to drink alcohol.

Only one person could have finished the wine.

Oh my God,
Maddie thought.
I’ve killed my husband.

“Cool,” Mel said. “Just like in the movies.”

“No, it’s not cool.” Em let her voice go sharp with exasperation. “This is my mom. He wants a hundred dollars.”

“That’s not much,” Mel pointed out. “In the movies, it’s always millions.”

“He said it was about last night. I bet it’s about what happened to her face.”

“Wow.” Mel was silent for a moment. “Is she going to do it?”

“She told him she’d call him back. And, Mel, the guy knows that C.L. guy who was here today.”

“Did he say anything about my mom and dad?”

“No. This is just about my mom and whatever happened last night. I wish my dad was here. He could fix it.”

“Where is he?”

“I don’t know.” Em swallowed. “I don’t know anything. What are we going to do?”

“We can’t find out any more about the guy on the phone if we don’t know who he is,” Mel said. “So that leaves this C.L. guy. You’ll have to grill him.”

“Right,” Em said. “Get real.”

“Grown-ups like to talk to kids,” Mel said. “It makes them feel like they can relate.”

“They can’t.” Em’s voice was firm.

“Well, don’t tell this C.L. guy that. Be sweet and ask him questions and maybe he’ll tell you what you need to know so you’ll like him.”

Em thought about sucking up to a stranger. “That makes me gag.”

“Okay, big critic, what’s your plan?”

Em thought for a couple of minutes. There didn’t seem to be anything else she could do. “Okay, I’ll do it,” she told Mel. “But it’s going to be yucky.”

Maybe Brent wasn’t dead.

Right. She’d poisoned the wine. It wasn’t spilled, and he was the only one around to drink it.

And he was now missing.

Worst-case scenario: suppose he’d drunk the wine and got in the car and drove off a cliff.

What cliff? Frog Point had no real cliffs.

Just a Point. Hardly a cliff. More like a shelf above a ditch. A high shelf. A deep ditch. Okay, a cliff.

Maddie groaned. At least if he’d driven off the Point, she could stop worrying about him kidnapping Emily.

They’d find his body full of her painkillers. She’d go to prison. Her mother would have to raise Em. Oh, God, no, she’d turn out like Maddie. Insane. Treva’s kids were turning out well. Maybe Treva could raise Em.

Maddie went to the hall, picked up the phone, and heard Em say to Mel, “It’s going to be yucky.”

“Mel, go get your mom,” Maddie said, and she heard Em say, “Mom?” and Mel drop the receiver with a clunk and then after a minute, Treva said, “Hello?”

“Treva? Get over here right away.”

“What happened? Are you all right?”

“No. Get over here. I need you now.”

“Don’t open the drapes. My head is killing me.”

Maddie heard Treva move through the dark room to sit on the edge of the bed. “What’s wrong?”

“I killed Brent.”

“What?”

Maddie’s head began to pound harder. “The wine’s gone. I put my pills in the wine bottle because I was upset, and now it’s empty.”

“He drank it?”

“Well, I didn’t. He must have.” Maddie took the cloth off her eyes and peered through the gloom at her best friend. “Treva, he’s missing. He’s not at work. He’s not here. He’d be somewhere. He’s dead. I killed him.”

Treva’s voice was unsure in the dark. “You’re panicking. You couldn’t have killed Brent. It’s too bizarre. Don’t panic.”

Maddie put the cloth back on her eyes. “Good. I won’t. Will you raise Em until I get out of prison?”

“You don’t go to prison for accidentally poisoning your husband.”

“Who’s going to believe it’s an accident? He’s cheating on me, and everybody in town knows it.” Then Maddie remembered the night before and groaned. “Plus, last night I got picked up by a rent-a-cop in the backseat of my husband’s car at the Point with another man, and now he’s blackmailing me, and when I don’t come across with the money, he’s going to tell everybody.”

“What?”

“And then Brent picks last night of all nights to beat me up.”
And he was going to steal my kid and take her to South America with a lot of very suspicious money.
She had to do something about that money. Later. She took the cloth off her eyes again and looked up at Treva. “Really, the motives are just all over the place. The police won’t even have to bend over to pick them up.”

“Forget the motives, go back to the part about the Point. The cops picked you up with who?”

“Not cops, Bailey. I was making love with C. L. Sturgis.”

Treva’s voice went up a notch. “In the back of Brent’s car?”

“You think that was tacky?”

Treva started to laugh. “No, no, I think it’s great. Oh, God, I wish I’d been there.”

“I wish you had, too,” Maddie said, still panicked but a little cheered by Treva’s attitude. “That’d be one less motive for me.”

“So how was it?”

Maddie propped herself up against the quilted headboard. “I tell you I just killed my husband, and I’m being blackmailed, and I’m going to be arrested at any moment, and you ask me, ‘How was it?’”

“You didn’t kill your husband.” Treva waved that theory away with her hand. “Think about it. A couple of Tylenol Three in a little wine isn’t fatal. He’s not dead. I think you took a crack on the head in a car accident and then got punched twice last night—for which I hope your husband rots in hell—and I think you’re not thinking straight, as who would be? Lie back down again.”

Maddie slid back into the bed. “You’re right. I’m not well.”

Treva pushed herself up farther onto the bed and sat cross-legged. “So, before you die, tell me. How was it?”

“You’re a ghoul.”

“No. I’m only a ghoul if you had sex with a corpse. Was it that bad?”

Maddie started to smile. She couldn’t help it.

“What?” Treva pounced. “It wasn’t bad? It was great?”

“It was cosmic.”

“What?”

Maddie’s smile widened. “He’s been practicing. I’ve never had anything like it in my life. We’re going to move into the backseat of the Cadillac.”

Treva laughed out loud. “This is wonderful. This is great. Wait until I tell Howie.”

Maddie sat up. “No!” Then her head throbbed and she added, “Ouch,” and lay back down again. “No, you will not tell Howie.”

“Oh, come on. He’s going to find out anyway when you move into the car.”

“You tell
nobody
.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m married!”

Treva’s grin faded. “Oh, yeah. I forgot.”

“I’m getting the divorce,” Maddie said. “But until then I have to be careful.”

“That reminds me,” Treva said. “That box we found in the office—”

Downstairs the doorbell rang.

“
Brent
. ”Maddie scrambled out of bed. “He’s come for Em!”

“Ringing his own doorbell?” Treva said, but then Em’s voice shrieked up the stairs.

“Mom! That C.L. man’s here again. And you should see what he’s got!”

Maddie was so relieved, she sagged against the doorway. As long as it wasn’t Brent, she didn’t care.