Tell Me Lies (10 page)

“There’s a prowler loose.”

Maddie sagged against the wall, reprieved. “At ten o’clock in the morning?

“Well, no. Candace saw him last night. She told me this morning.”

“What were you doing at the bank again?”

“Cashing a check. Really, Maddie, it’s not safe. Especially with Brent out so late like last night.”

How did she find out about these things? “Mom, that was one night.”

“Well, a prowler only needs one night and there you’ll be, murdered in your bed, and you with a head injury already. How’s your head?”

“Fine, thank you, Mother.” Her mother, the head writer for the Worst Case Scenario. If she only knew.

“Will you lock your doors, please?”

Maddie gave up. “Yes. I promise. I have to go now. Treva and I are going out.”

“Wait. What’s going on with Treva and Howie?”

“The usual happily married stuff,” Maddie said.

“I don’t think so,” her mother said. “They had a fight at the bowling alley last night.”

“At the alley?” Their cars had been in the parking lot. “What were they doing at the alley?”

“Esther says that Lori Winslow says that Mike Winslow was there and said that Howie was talking to Brent and then Treva walked in and there was a ruckus.” Her mother’s voice was avid. “Didn’t she say anything?”

“No,” Maddie said. “And I’m not asking her about it, so don’t bring it up again. Married people have fights.”

Her mother shifted gears. “What was Howie so mad at Brent about? Is there trouble at the company?”

Everywhere
but
the company,
Maddie wanted to say, but instead she said, “No. You know how people love to talk. They’re blowing things out of proportion.”

“Esther said Lori said Mike said Treva looked like three kinds of death.”

“Esther needs to get a life. And I have to go now.”

“Out with Treva? Should you go out? How’s your head? Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” Maddie repeated. “Oh, I’ve still got your car. We’ll drop it off.”

“If you need that car, Maddie, you keep it. Walking’s good for me.”

“I don’t need it.” Maddie felt torn between guilt and exasperation. Her mother was so nice when she wasn’t gossiping; she didn’t deserve a daughter who was a lying pre-divorcee who had sarcastic thoughts. “Treva will take me places.”

“Well, that’s nice, dear. Have a good time. Let me know what she says. Be careful of your head.”

How?
Maddie wanted to say, but she didn’t, knowing if she pushed her luck, she’d end up tramping through town in a motorcycle helmet. “I will,” she said, and went to tell Em to get ready.

And Brent wasn’t helping things any. It was past nine, and he wasn’t at the construction company, so what kind of businessman was he? Yes, Brent had been in, the blonde secretary had told him. “You just missed him, Mr. Sturgis,” she’d chirped, cute as hell. “He left for the bank ten minutes ago. The First National on Main Street. Downtown.” As if Frog Point were big enough to have a downtown. “One street and three traffic lights do not make a downtown,” he wanted to tell the secretary, but it didn’t seem fair to take his annoyance out on her, so he shut up and went to cruise the bank.

There his luck turned. He passed the First National just as Brent came out, dressed in a suit and carrying a gray gym bag. C.L. slowed down to pull over, but the parking spaces on both sides of the street were taken, and the car behind him honked.

“Hey, Brent!” he yelled, and Brent turned and looked taken aback for a minute. Then he waved and kept on walking.

C.L. opened his mouth, and the car behind him honked again, longer. He’d no doubt be hearing about this from Henry later. The hell with it; he’d just have to turn around and follow him. C.L. drove to the next street, turned right into the drive-through circle at the Burger King, earning a glare from the woman at the window, and then turned back onto Main Street on a yellow light, earning more glares and honks from other drivers. Just like old times. He couldn’t wait until dinner when Henry ripped a strip off him for rude driving.

He drove down Main Street. Brent was gone. C.L. circled the downtown twice, going behind the shopping district and into the side streets, but Brent had evaporated. C.L. had had people avoid him in the past, but never with the enthusiasm that Brent Faraday was showing. The son of a bitch must be up to something really low.

And sooner or later C.L. would find out what it was. In Frog Point, nobody kept a secret for long.

One was a box of Trojans.

“I thought you were on the pill,” Treva had said as she’d pulled them out of Brent’s bottom desk drawer.

“I am,” Maddie said. “Gee, maybe he’s cheating on me.”

“I hope he dies,” Treva said, and went back to searching, but Maddie came up with the next find, a locked metal box about ten by fourteen inches with “Personal” scrawled across the top in Brent’s handwriting. “I want to see inside that box,” Treva said, but Brent’s secretary, Kristie, came to the door then and asked them to leave.

“You shouldn’t be going through Mr. Faraday’s desk,” Kristie said, her squeaky little voice quavering.

“Well, actually, it’s only one quarter his desk,” Treva snapped. “Because as it happens, Mrs. Faraday and I each own one quarter of this company, so the desk is half ours, which makes us half your boss, so you can leave now.”

“Treva,”
Maddie said, but Kristie had backed out, hurt and confused, and they’d finished searching after that, taking the locked box to open at home and the condoms, as Treva said, to slow Brent down.

But now the locked box sat in the middle of Maddie’s kitchen table and sneered at them. The lock had proved impossible to pick and the lid refused to be jimmied off. Maddie considered running over it with her car but decided that would be immature. Also she didn’t have a car anymore. Life just kept getting better.

Treva was disgusted. “Christ, what does he have in there? His morals?”

“He’ll be home later,” Maddie said. “I’ll look on his key ring.”

“Sure. You can just say, ‘Honey, I found this secret box when I burgled your office; could I borrow the key?’ That’ll work.”

Maddie looked at the box doubtfully. “I’m not even sure the key will work anymore. You hammered a screwdriver in there, remember?”

“I was angry,” Treva said. “It was defying me.”

“Always a bad move.”

Treva checked her watch. “Oh, hell, I promised Three I’d be home half an hour ago.” She stood up and gestured to the box. “You want me to take that, get it out of your way?”

“No,” Maddie said. “Let me work on it some more.” She stood, too. “You sure it’s okay if Em spends the night tonight?”

Treva nodded. “You and Brent need to have this out in private. Just don’t go to sleep this time until you get your hands on him.” She looked at the box again. “Forget the box until I can help you. Pry Brent open instead.”

“Yeah.” Maddie drew a deep breath. “He used her yesterday, Treva. I tried to talk to him, and he went and stood behind her and said, ‘Don’t upset Em.’ And poor Em just stood there, scared to death.”

“I hope he
dies.
I really do.” Treva came around the table and hugged Maddie hard. “You deserve better. This is good, what you’re doing. You’re going to start all over again, brand-new. It’ll be better this time.”

“Right,” Maddie said, but when Treva left, she sat down at the table and thought,
Better how?
How was being alone going to be better? How was Em not having a live-in father going to be better? She wanted to cry and scream and behave badly, and she thought about how good it would be to just throw herself at somebody, to feel the impact and let go of all of her anger and frustration. That made her think of C.L., broad and sturdy, holding on to her last night. It had felt so good to have someone to lean on, and he’d said all the right things, bless him, and his chest had been hard against her cheek, and if he’d been there now, she’d have hauled him onto the floor and taken out all of her frustration on him in vengefully enthusiastic sex.

Which would be the last thing she needed. Maddie poked at the box to distract herself. There must be some way into the damn thing. Maybe a can opener. Or an ax. She didn’t really think there was anything important in it, but it was better than thinking about Brent. Or C.L. and sex.

It shouldn’t be that tough. The round plate for the keyhole stuck out about a quarter of an inch. She should be able to get that off.

She got up and rummaged through the tool drawer and came back with a wood chisel and a hammer. “Brace yourself,” she told the box, and jammed the chisel in behind the lock. It took half a dozen blows with the hammer, but the plate came off.

The box stayed locked.

“Well,
screw
you,” Maddie said, and smacked the top of the box with the hammer.

The lid flew open and clattered back on the table.

“All right.” Maddie sat down. “That’s more like it.”

She pulled the box to her and took out the stack of papers inside. She thought at first they were all business papers, copies of contracts and invoices, but toward the bottom the contracts became letters. Love letters.

There were twenty-nine of them. Twenty-seven of them were Beth’s, all planning a future with Brent, but there were no dates, so it wasn’t clear when she’d written them. Maddie read through them, struck by how much Beth loved him and believed in him. Maybe he should have stayed with Beth.

Maybe that’s who he was with now.

Maddie put Beth’s letters to one side and picked up the last two. Both were unsigned. One on white paper with red daisies in the corner was written in a spiky hand and suggested that they meet in her garage, surely not Gloria since none of the requests she was making had to do with the grass. The other was folded white paper ruled with blue lines, the kind of paper school kids used. It said “Brent” on the outside, and the writing looked as if it might belong to somebody like Kristie, loopy and immature. Now all she needed was a handwriting sample from Kristie, and she could be rude to her without guilt. “Found your pants,” she could say. “God, they were tacky.” This was such a rational thought that Maddie blinked, surprised at herself. Where was the pain here? She should be furious over all these affairs instead of feeling sarcastic.
This is a good sign,
she thought.
I must be over him. The rat bastard.

Feeling vaguely cheered, she opened the letter and lost her breath. “You have to meet me at our place,” it said. “I know you love Maddie, but I’m pregnant and I don’t know what to do.”

Maddie dropped the letter on the table. “You son of a bitch,” she said out loud.

He’d gotten Kristie pregnant. Well, he’d gotten somebody pregnant. So much for the box of condoms. Kristie or somebody was going to have Em’s half brother or sister. That was nice. What the
hell
had Brent been thinking of?

She had to do something. This was going to be worse than she’d ever imagined. And she was the one who would get to explain everything to Em. “You know how much you like Kristie?” she could say. “Well, Daddy liked her a lot, too, and—”

She shoved all the letters but the pregnancy note back in the box and slammed the bent lid shut. Then she looked at the note again. The writing didn’t look familiar at all, and the paper was no help. Would Kristie write on notebook paper? It was all too confusing.

She stuffed the note in her purse to compare later with something of Kristie’s from the office. Then she put her head down on the table because it had begun to pound. She was a sick woman. She shouldn’t be reading stuff like this. She shouldn’t be having this life. It was too much. She had to do something about it, but right now her head was killing her.

She took three pills, hoping to obliterate all conscious thought, and went upstairs, taking the box and the condoms with her and hiding all of it under the bed where Em wouldn’t trip over it. Then she crawled under the covers and passed out.

“She says she’s better.” Em poked at her manicotti and took a cautious bite. It was good. “She doesn’t have that awful look on her face that she had yesterday, like she’s going to cry any minute.” She stabbed her fork into the manicotti again and took another bite and chewed while she thought about how to say the next part. “My mom and dad had a fight yesterday,” she said finally. “A real one.”

Mel’s eyes widened. “You’re kidding.”

“Yeah. It was a real quiet one, but it was right in front of me. They looked so mad, Mel.” Em turned to her, trying not to cry. “They looked like they hated each other. And then my dad brought me over here and left her all alone. It’s awful.”

“Why didn’t you tell me then? About the fight, I mean.” Mel sounded funny, really tense instead of her usual bouncy self.

“I just couldn’t talk about it,” Em said. “It’s awful when your dad and mom fight. I know you said yours do all the time, but they sound like joke fights. This was real. I didn’t even want to think about it. Then my mom was real quiet today, and I didn’t see my dad at all. This is bad, Mel.”

Mel looked like she wasn’t sure she should say what she was going to next. Em got a funny feeling about that because Mel never cared what she said to anybody. “There’s something else,” Mel said.

“What?” Em said, her throat tight.

Mel swallowed and shifted on the couch. “My mom is pretty mad at your dad. I heard her on the phone this morning and she was yelling at him.”

Em sat back. “How do you know it was him?”

“Because she was yelling his name.” Mel looked miserable. “It was awful, Em. She told him she’d kill him if he told anybody.”

Em swallowed. “About what?”

“I don’t know.” Mel cut into her manicotti again, trying to look like she didn’t care, but Em could tell she did. “It gets worse than that. After she hung up, my dad came in and asked her who she was talking to. She said my grandma.” Mel clamped her mouth shut for a minute. “She
lied.
Then they had a real fight, too. They were doing those sharp kind of whispers and Mom slammed her hand down on the table and then Dad went out and slammed the door.” She stopped and swallowed. “After my dad left, my mom started to cry. She never cries. It was awful. I don’t even want to talk about it now. I want it to go away.”

“I don’t think this is going to go away,” Em said, remembering her mom and dad in the front yard the day before, the way her mom had looked, with her fists up against her chest like that. “Something really, really bad is happening.”

Mel stared at the TV. “Maybe Mrs. Meyer bit your dad and made him a vampire, and he bit my mom, and she doesn’t want anybody to know.”

“Mel, knock it off,” Em said. “This is for real.”

Mel kept on staring at the TV. “I don’t want it to be for real. I want it to go away.”

“Me, too,” Em said. “But I don’t think it’s going to.”

The screen dissolved into a lot of fizzy snow, and Mel sat up. “I don’t believe it.” Her voice went high with stress.
“Mom!This
sucks.
Mom! The
cable’s screwed up!”

“Language,” Aunt Treva said as she came in the room.

“I can’t
believe
this,” Mel said, while her mom jiggled the cable box. “Everything’s screwed up. What happened to it?”

“It looks like it just went out.” Aunt Treva straightened. “I’ll call them tomorrow and tell them they ruined your life. In the meantime, read something.”

“That’s a
joke,
right?” Mel said.

“It’ll be good practice,” Aunt Treva said. “School starts a week from next Tuesday.”

“Do
not
remind me,” Mel said. “Can we watch videos?”

Aunt Treva shrugged. “Sure. Rot your mind. Whatever.”

Mel waited until her mother was gone, and then turned to Em. “Can you
believe
it? Anything we want on
video?
Whatever’s wrong is really wrong. My mom’s been nuts for over a week now. I couldn’t believe she let us watch
The Lost Boys
last night. That’s an R. This is bad.”

Em thought about it. “You’re right. It was about a week ago that my dad got grumpy. Something happened then. What are we going to do?”

“We’re going to have to start snooping around,” Mel said. “They’re never going to tell us. We’re going to have to find out for ourselves.”

Em thought about it. Spying had been dumb the day before, but things hadn’t been this bad then. “You’re right. We have to do something to save them. I just don’t know what. I’ve never snooped before. What do we do?”

“Well, for starters, every time the phone rings, we listen,” Mel said. “That’s just obvious.”