Lie in Plain Sight (33 page)

When she heard the shot ring out, and saw him crumple to the ground next to his Jeep, a car in which they had steamed up the windows several times, she stifled the gasp that nearly escaped her parched throat.

Mark came into view, nudging Chris's motionless body with his shoe and then placing what was a very large shotgun against the closed garage door. He knelt down, his breath coming out in ragged chuffs, and attempted to pick the larger man up and toss him over his shoulder, but gave up after a few tries, coming to the conclusion that dragging him was his best bet. Blood leaked from a gaping wound in Chris's midsection, and Maeve prayed—to her mother, her father, to anyone who was dead and would listen—that he was still alive.

Mark gave up halfway to the cellar in the ground under the tree house and was directly in Maeve's line of sight. She stopped breathing until he resumed his trek, Chris's body limp, the blood draining from him, and waited until he was at the tree house before running in a straight line to the driveway and to the gun propped against the closed garage door.

He was on her as if there hadn't been half a football field between them, the sound of his breath close behind indicating that he was nearly to the spot on which she stood, the spot where she turned, stood her ground, and pointed the gun. He looked surprised and put his hands up, smiling as he did, not knowing a few things about her.

Jack Conlon raised a girl who could shoot.

And Jack Conlon raised a girl who believed that sometimes, wrong in the eyes of the law was right in the eyes of God, or the universe, or whoever you believed in.

Jack Conlon raised a girl who didn't flinch when others might, who made split-second decisions along with others that were more thought out.

And lastly, Jack Conlon raised a girl who didn't close her eyes when she shot, making sure that it counted and she could see the soul leave the body of the person whose life deserved to be taken.

She dropped the gun, marveling at how one minute Mark Messer was danger and evil personified and now, with half his head missing, he was a threat no more.

 

CHAPTER 46

“I don't believe you,” Suzanne Carstairs said, and it wasn't the kind of disbelief at what Maeve had done and what Carstairs and her entire police department couldn't do.

She didn't believe Maeve's story even though everything Maeve had told her was the truth, right down to when she shot Mark Messer in the head. She left out the part where she didn't feel a morsel of regret.

But it was the truth, for what it was worth. From the inside of what had been Chris Larsson's cruiser, she watched as Kurt Messer's body was carried out from the house. If she had figured out what was going on in the nick of time, he had figured it out just a bit sooner. Mark must have shot him before going on to kidnap Jesse Connors and punish him for … what? Raping Taylor Dvorak? Being in the car that caused his sister's death? Maeve didn't know, and she was too tired to ask.

Carstairs repeated what Maeve had told her.

“Something like that,” Maeve said. “It's all kind of a blur right now.” In the darkness, she could see the pain on the chief's face. She would feel that pain, too, but right now, something approaching shock mixed with disbelief had her thinking that Chris Larsson would come lumbering toward her, putting his big, beefy hands on her face, now blazing hot, and give her a kiss. A long kiss. One that would go on forever and would let her know that she had opened her heart enough to be loved by this kind, simple man, that she wasn't as complicated as he thought and could make him happy.

That there were good parts with her.

“He raped her, didn't he?” Maeve asked. “Jesse Connors.”

The chief stayed silent for a few beats. “Not him. The other one. Judy Wilkerson's grandson. We think. Couldn't prove it. Jesse was there, though. Not sure he did anything to stop it, although he claims he did.” The chief pulled a cigarette out of her bag and left it unlit, putting it between her lips. No one but a professional smoker could talk with a cigarette dangling from their mouth; the chief was one of them. “Lucky for Morehead we picked him up or he'd be in that cellar, too, right now. Maybe worse.”

Maeve turned fully in her seat. “Morehead?”

“Bunch of assholes. With good attorneys. He said, she said. Works every time,” Carstairs said, a tear slipping down her cheek.

“But there were witnesses,” Maeve said. “Social media…”

Carstairs held up a hand. “Stop right there. It's done. No one saw anything, would go against these kids. Happens all the time, Maeve. Taylor had no one to stick up for her.”

Except Heather, Maeve thought. She turned back around, faced the windshield, looked out at the flashing lights atop the police cars, turning lazily in the fog. “You speak from experience.”

She nodded, the glow from the myriad police lights on the street casting a greenish tint to her skin. “I do.” She reached up and hastily wiped away the tear. “Anyway, I don't know why you were here…”

“Cupcakes. Picking up my platters.”

“Right. Cupcakes. Platters,” Carstairs said, shaking her head. “What a bullshit story.”

“I'm sorry about your boyfriend,” Maeve said, and there weren't enough words to say just how sorry she was. It sounded empty, emotionless, and she guessed it was. She had been wrong. “I'm sorry about Chris,” she said in the midst of a heart-wrenching sob.

“Nice guy,” Carstairs said. “Not sure he's the greatest cop, but a really nice guy.” She tapped the steering wheel, drumming out a methodical beat. “Isn't cut out for this line of work, I don't think. Has too much heart. A lot of soul.”

Maeve nodded. That much was obvious. She wondered when the numbness would go away and when she would feel the weight of everything that had just happened. She hoped never. “Is he going to be okay?” she asked.

Carstairs looked out the window. “Hope so.”

The chief didn't speak for a while. “Assholes,” she said finally.

“Who?”

“Teenagers.”

Maeve had to laugh in spite of the situation, but as soon as it came out, a sob followed. And then another one, and one more, until the car was filled with the sounds of her crying, raw and wretched, emotion that she hadn't felt in a long time making itself known. I'm here, it was saying. And I'm not going away.

Carstairs waited until it subsided before asking Maeve another question. “You done with County?”

Maeve nodded. She had spent two hours talking to a man who reminded her of her father, down to the perfectly parted, slicked-to-the-side old-school haircut, a man who believed her story more than the local chief. There was no way that this little woman, all one hundred and twenty pounds of her, her face freckled and sweet, had gunned down a murderer herself in cold blood, not feeling an iota of shame or guilt before, when she had made the decision, or after, when the deed was done.

“Self-defense, I suspect,” Carstairs said.

“What else would it be?” Maeve asked. “You saw what went on here.”

The chief started the car. “I'll take you home.”

Before they reached her street, Maeve tried one more time to figure out one of the remaining pieces of the puzzle. “Your boyfriend?”

“I hate that term. I'm a little long in the tooth to be calling someone my boyfriend.”

“Barnham.”

“Yes?”

“Witness Protection.”

The chief tried not to flinch, but she wasn't as good as Maeve in the lying department. “What made you say that?”

“I don't know.” They pulled up in front of Maeve's house. “Any chance you can get him to drop the charges?”

“Maybe if you stop saying things like Witness Protection.”

Maeve felt that she was right, but she let it go. She had bigger mysteries to solve, including one that involved Heather. She thanked the chief for the ride. “I'm sure I'll be seeing more of you.”

“You can count on that,” Carstairs said. “Maybe try baking a little more, perhaps take on a renovation project at the house here?” She leaned over and looked out the passenger-side window. “Looks like it could use a coat of paint.”

“I understand.”

“That might go a long way toward clearing up the mess you're in with my boy—”She stopped herself. “Well, you get it.”

“I do.”

“You killed a guy, Maeve,” the chief said, looking straight ahead.

More than one, Maeve thought.

“How does that feel?”

Maeve smiled, even as she felt the wet on her cheeks. “It feels okay.”

Maeve stood on the street and watched the chief drive away, not sure she had the strength to mount the short set of steps up to the front porch. She tried her legs, but they were uncooperative; she sat down on the first step and waited until the dizziness and weakness passed before getting up again and lumbering up the rest of the way.

The front door was unlocked, something Maeve hadn't remembered when she left and there was a light on in kitchen, the one over the sink. A glass of milk, half-drunk, sat on the counter. With newfound energy that she hadn't had previously, she raced up the stairs to the second floor and found the door to Heather's room ajar, the girl asleep in her bed.

Maeve stood in the doorway, solving the mystery that had previously been unsolvable.

She was the last person to have seen or talked to Taylor.

“Get them.”

Mark Messer.

Jesse Connors.

Maeve resisted the urge to brush the damp hair that had plastered itself to the girl's forehead, remaining in the doorway and watching her sleep. If she closed her eyes, breathed in the scent, it could be years earlier when things were simpler and life had its own predictable rhythm. It would be when the big bed in there was really a toddler bed, two actually, with two tiny, lovely little girls asking for one more book, another glass of water.

“We love you, Mommy!” they would cry in unison as she pulled the door almost shut, waiting on the stairs to hear what they talked about. They would debate who loved Maeve more, who was the better daughter. Who was just like her, and who would be the best baker.

“I'm just like her,” little Heather would say to her sister when she didn't know Maeve was listening. “I'm going to be just like her when I grow up.” At three and four, it was the best thing she could think to be, not knowing that in several years, it would be the sentiment that would make her cringe, cause her to do everything in her power to distance herself from Maeve and her own emotions.

I'm just like her.

Maeve came back to the present and looked at the girl, sound asleep, sleeping more deeply than she ever had.

You are just like me, Maeve thought.

I just wish that weren't true.

 

CHAPTER 47

The day that Coach Barnham quit the team, leaving Farringville in his wake, Heather also quit the team, citing a lower-back problem.

Like father, like daughter. Cal constantly complained about lower-back pain and had once thought that medical marijuana was the answer, rather than the services of a good chiropractor.

Chris Larsson was still in the hospital. She had visited once, and when it was clear that whatever that had been between them had vanished into thin air, was more gone than the day he had broken up with her in the store, she had left, hoping that he would do as Chief Carstairs was going to suggest and take early retirement, putting the unpleasantness of being a small-town cop—something he hadn't signed up for—behind him.

He was a nice guy. He would find a nice girl to love him, someone who didn't come with as much baggage and have as many secrets as Maeve did. It was small comfort as she lay alone in her bed at night, wondering how everything had turned so dark and so deadly. She finally concluded that it was her; she brought those things to every life she touched, or so it seemed.

It was a few days later, days of uneasy détente in the house, when Maeve pulled the envelope out from between her cookbooks, leaving it on the kitchen table in front of Heather, who regarded it coolly while eating a bagel.

“I still have this,” Maeve said.

Heather shrugged.

“Get them?” Maeve said. “How did you think you were going to get them?”

Heather put her bagel down. “Yes. I wanted to get them. For what they did.”

“For raping Taylor?”

“For that. For ridiculing her. For letting it happen.” She pushed her plate away. “And if I had known about her mother earlier, I would want to get her, too.”

Trish Dvorak had instructed Taylor to go the Rathmuns' house, which as the housecleaner she had a key to, until they got the money. They never got the money, and Mark Messer found Taylor first.

“You know what, Mom?”

Maeve stood by the back door, focusing her attention on the overflowing garbage in the bin rather than see the look on her daughter's face. It was a look she saw every day when she regarded her own reflection. It was resolute and determined. Fearless. Righteous. “What?”

“Bad things should happen to bad people. That's the way the world should work.”

Maeve froze, half bent over the garbage can, her back to her daughter. “Don't say that, Heather.”

Heather stood and put her plate next to the sink. “I'll say it because I believe it.”

Maeve turned. “So you were going to get them? How?”

“I just wanted them to tell the truth. To let everyone know what they had done.” She stared at her mother, no trace of the little girl she once was evident on her face. “To get what they deserved.”

“But then Taylor went missing.”

“And I tried to find her.” Her tough facade crumbled only slightly. “Mark said he would help me.”

“But he had her almost the whole time.”