Crooked Little Lies Read online

  “A calamity has that effect,” Lauren said. “Things come to light—” She stopped.

  Annie looked curiously at her.

  What about drugs? You think he could have been on something? Were you on something? Detective Willis spoke in Lauren’s mind; she saw his face, that wily look he’d given her, as if he was on to her and knew her for the liar she was. She thought of the roll of bills Bo had shown her. She thought of telling Annie about it, but she might not know the police associated her brother with drugs, and if she didn’t, Lauren didn’t want to be the one to tell her. Neither did she want to implicate herself or speak of her own addiction. It was painful enough talking about her downfall at 12-step, where she was accepted, where forgiveness was automatic. Annie wouldn’t be so forgiving, Lauren thought, and the realization filled her with regret. What a mistake she’d made, coming here.

  “It’s hard to keep secrets when someone’s in danger.” Annie broke the silence, and her tone, her expression when Lauren met her gaze seemed freighted with some odd significance. Panic tapped at Lauren’s temples. A thought rose: that it was foolish to imagine she and Bo would have engaged in a drug deal in broad daylight on one of the busiest street corners in town. And further, even if she had bought drugs from Bo, what would that have to do with his disappearance hours later?

  She jumped now, hearing someone—Madeleine, it turned out—say Annie’s name. Lost in the swirl of her anxiety, Lauren hadn’t heard the older woman approach.

  Lauren stood up, and so did Annie.

  “I thought Carol took you home.” Annie’s tone was lightly scolding.

  “She tried, but I want to stay. See to the food,” Madeleine added, and it sounded more like an excuse than an explanation.

  It sounded, Lauren thought, as if Madeleine was afraid Annie would discover what seemed obvious: that Madeleine stayed for Annie’s sake. Lauren sensed that if Annie would let her, Madeleine would have the girl in her arms in a heartbeat, that she would like nothing better. And it was surprising, because Lauren had always thought of Madeleine as aloof, even austere. Not at all the mothering type.

  According to the talk around town, she’d never been married. Rumor had it that she’d been engaged a long time ago, but her fiancé had died suddenly from a rare heart defect. Who knew if it was true? Madeleine had never felt compelled to confirm or deny the story. She kept to herself, and while she might appear aloof, she wasn’t unkind. Far from it. Everyone local knew if there was a need, Madeleine Finch would move heaven and earth to fill it.

  She cooked meals and delivered them to people when they were ill, and employed others, like Bo, when they were down on their luck. A few years ago, when Tara was home recovering from an emergency appendectomy, Madeleine brought over her famous eggplant casserole because it was what Tara ordered most often when she and Lauren had lunch at the café.

  Annie was talking about a text message she’d gotten from Bo, that it had been delayed, that it had mentioned a woman named Ms. M. “Does it ring any bells?” she asked Madeleine.

  The older woman said it didn’t.

  “Could he have meant you?” Lauren asked.

  “Oh, I don’t think so. He calls me Ms. Finch, or sometimes Ms. Birdie.” Madeleine flushed pink as if it pleased her, Bo calling her Ms. Birdie.

  Annie said she hadn’t considered the M might be the letter of a first name.

  They looked at each other, taking a moment to think about it, the letter M and the possibility it might be related to a first name as easily as it could be to a last. Their shared silence was pocked with a dissonant clamor of ringing telephones, a low rumble of voices.

  “I don’t think the police care who she is,” Annie said. “The detective I talked to, Jim Cosgrove, told me they don’t have enough of a description to find her.”

  “Detective Cosgrove talked to you?” Lauren worked to keep the flare of fresh apprehension from showing in her voice.

  Annie’s look was curious.

  “I talked to him, too. He and his partner came by my house this morning.” Lauren paused, making herself breathe. She wanted badly to ask if her name had come up when Annie talked with Cosgrove. She wanted to know if Willis had been present. Instead, she said, “I think they came because I’m the last person they know of to see Bo.”

  “Can someone put these up?” A woman approached, carrying an armload of flyers. “Somehow we missed both sides of Prescott Street from here north to Oak Hill.”

  Madeleine reached for them, but Annie intercepted her. “You go and rest. I’ll take these.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Lauren said, and it was sheer impulse. “I’d like to help.”

  Annie thanked her. “I need to run to the restroom first.” She handed Lauren the stack of flyers.

  Watching her go, Madeleine said, “That child has seen way too much trouble, more than most people get in their lifetime.” She sounded almost angry, as if she took Annie’s trouble personally, and she went on, not leaving Lauren time for a reply. “Her daddy walked out when she was a baby. She lost her mom a couple of years ago, and now this. JT does his best, but mostly he’s just going through the motions, putting one foot in front of the other. He’s a good man, but he hasn’t got a clue what to do with a girl, much less one as sensitive and stubborn as Annie. Or Bo. JT never has known what to do about Bo, either.”

  And no wonder, Lauren thought. Raising a child was hard enough when they were mentally whole and there were two parents.

  “It hurts him, the way Bo is,” Madeleine said, and her voice tremored. “I see it every time JT looks at the boy. But being hurt over what ails a child never does any good.”

  “No,” Lauren murmured. She wondered if Madeleine had been interviewed by the police, but couldn’t bring herself to ask.

  “Annie’s mother is the one who looked after Bo; she looked after all of them. She kept them together, and ever since she passed, that little family’s been like a boat adrift without a rudder. It just cuts me to the bone—” Madeleine’s voice broke completely.

  She was so obviously flustered at her loss of control that Lauren reached out, putting her hand on Madeleine’s arm, and it occurred to her that if Madeleine was without a family of her own, it wasn’t by choice. Lauren understood then that Bo and Annie were the closest Madeleine had ever come to mothering anyone. She saw it so plainly: Madeleine’s utter despair, her loneliness and longing, and it saddened her. “What can I do?” she asked.

  Madeleine brought her hands to her face, and Lauren looked away, giving her privacy, a space to gather herself. She took only moments, and then she said briskly that money was needed. “For a reward,” she explained. “Annie’s against it. She doesn’t like asking anyone for anything, much less their money. But I keep telling her sometimes money is the only way people will talk.”

  Lauren’s cell phone rang, and she pulled it from her purse, checking the ID. Jeff. She tucked the phone into her jacket pocket, feeling bad about it, but the situation here was so dire. She felt compelled to stay, to do what she could, and he would only argue.

  Madeleine mentioned renting a billboard along I-45, the interstate that cut through town. “We could put Bo’s photo and a phone number on it so folks could call in tips. A lot of people drive that freeway.”

  “What about organizing an auction to raise money?” Lauren spoke as the plan took mental shape. “We’ve held them at Wilder and Tate before. We have things we could donate, and we could ask others to contribute items, too. They don’t have to be antiques.” She would call Tara, Lauren thought. Tara knew people, important people, through the public relations manager she worked for. Her boss had connections all over Houston, all over Texas. Lauren could imagine what Tara would say, that at least he was good for something. She and Lauren would laugh. “What about Sunday?” Lauren offered the day and then bit her lip. Did she honestly think she could arrange such an event so q
uickly, in three days? Was she nuts? What if Jeff didn’t go for it?

  “It’s kind of you to offer,” Madeleine said. “You do realize we could go to all the trouble to organize an event and Bo could show up.”

  “So much the better. It would become a celebration then, wouldn’t it?”

  Catching sight of Annie, Madeleine said, “Maybe we should wait until we know for sure what we’re going to do, before we say anything to her.”

  Lauren would have disagreed or at least questioned Madeleine’s reluctance to advise Annie of their plans, but the young woman rejoined them too quickly. Slipping her wallet into her jacket pocket alongside her cell phone, Lauren asked if Madeleine would mind taking charge of her purse. Carrying the flyers, Annie led the way out of the community center, and she and Lauren headed north, taping posters to the light poles and inside the windows of the shops they passed. They handed flyers to the folks on the sidewalk. By now, Annie’s face was familiar to them from the news, and they spoke to her in that way, asking how she was, as if the question could have a reasonable answer, one that wasn’t readily apparent. It annoyed Lauren. There was a look in their eyes she didn’t like, some mix of complacency and relief that this terrible thing that had happened wasn’t theirs.

  No, no. Blessedly for them, they had dodged the calamity bullet this time.

  Good for you! Lauren wanted to say to them. Aren’t you the lucky ones?

  By the time she and Annie finished walking both sides of the three blocks that comprised the downtown area, Annie was white-faced and shivering, and Lauren was like Madeleine, consumed with a heated desire to protect Annie, to pull her close and say, Never mind them.

  Instead she kept the polite distance of the near strangers they were between them and asked, “Are you cold?” even though both of them knew what ailed Annie wasn’t the weather.

  She answered she was fine, looking not at Lauren but far beyond her, at some unknown point on the horizon.

  The sound of Lauren’s cell phone jarred her, and she tugged it into view, just far enough to check the ID. Jeff. Again. She ought to answer; he’d be worried. But, as if her mind had other ideas, she thumbed the “Off” button and stuffed the phone back into her jacket pocket. She didn’t want to leave Annie, not just yet, and realizing they were close to Uncommon Grounds, Hardys Walk’s answer to Starbucks—so close, in fact, that the air was fragrant with mingled aromas of coffee and sugary Danish—she said, “Let’s have something warm to drink. My treat.”

  Annie said no. “It may sound awful, but I can’t face one more person. They’re so sorry for me. They ask so many questions. I know they want to help, but all I want is to find Bo. If only I could know—” She broke off, clamping her jaw so tightly the muscle at its corner pulsed.

  “We could sit outside. It’s warm enough in the sun, don’t you think?” Lauren pressed, speaking quickly, her gaze taking in the comfortably furnished patio area that fronted the coffeehouse, then coming back to rest on Annie. She was surprised and gratified when, after a moment, Annie agreed. “You go and sit down,” Lauren told her. “I’ll bring you something. What would you like? What’s your favorite?”

  “Hot chocolate. With extra whipped cream?” Annie’s smile, self-conscious and fleeting, tilted the corners of her mouth.

  Lauren nodded, and her heart swelled with a ridiculous amount of happiness that she could perform this small service for someone who badly needed it. Inside the coffee shop, she ordered Annie’s hot chocolate and a pumpkin-spice latte for herself, and on a whim, asked for an assortment of scones, too, enough for a half-dozen people. She was embarrassed when she rejoined Annie and unloaded the bulging sack of its contents; she was equally thrilled when Annie helped herself to an iced cranberry scone and took a bite and then another.

  When she caught Lauren watching, she blushed. “Thank you,” she said, popping the last of it into her mouth and dusting her hands. “It was delicious. I know I should eat a regular meal, but it’s hard.”

  “Then don’t. Just eat what tastes good.”

  Annie smiled, and Lauren knew she’d given the right answer. She thought how she would never have said that to Drew or Kenzie. With them, it was always lecture, lecture, lecture. Maybe she should stop. Maybe it was okay once in a while to have pancakes for dinner, as Drew often suggested. Hadn’t she seen it on a bumper sticker, the admonition: “Eat Dessert First”?

  Annie folded her paper napkin in half and then in half again. She ran the tip of her index finger along the crease. “People think I should be relieved it wasn’t Bo at the morgue, but I don’t know if I am.”

  “I don’t see how it could be a relief to see anyone in that place.”

  “I feel terrible for the man’s family, but I envy them, too. At least they know where he is and what happened to him. And if they find whoever hit him—” Annie didn’t finish, but Lauren didn’t need her to.

  Justice. Annie meant they would have justice. Maybe closure, Lauren thought, if such a thing existed.

  Annie put her empty cup and napkin into the paper sack. “I haven’t been the best big sister.”

  “Me, either,” Lauren said.

  “You have a brother?”

  “Sister.” I think she and my husband are plotting a way for him to leave me and take my kids. The thought popped up in Lauren’s mind, an ugly surprise. She set her teeth against it. Where had it come from?

  “I always wanted a sister,” Annie said. “Are you close?”

  “Maybe not as close as we once were.” Lauren wasn’t sure where that came from, either, and she was grateful when Annie didn’t pursue it. But then, after a moment, as if Annie had asked the nature of the difficulty, Lauren said, “Tara and I inherited a family business, but after I married, we merged it with my husband’s business. It was fine until last year. Tara got into trouble financially, and she had to sell her share to my husband and me, and ever since then, she—we—” Lauren faltered to a stop and looked out into the thin blue air. What a lie it was, using the buyout, accusing it, accusing Tara of being the one who had changed, who had caused the ten thousand tiny fault lines that were cracking beneath them and breaking apart the ground of their relationship. While there were lingering hurt feelings over the buyout, the real trouble hadn’t started until the moment Lauren began doping herself in secret. “We’re still working through it,” she said.

  Annie nodded, and they shared a silence.

  Lauren broke it. “Madeleine told me about your dad and mom, that you lost them. I hope it’s okay. I was so sorry to hear.”

  “I don’t really remember my dad, but my mom was my best friend.” Annie took a breath.

  Lauren sipped her latte, which had grown cold.

  “My mom died in a car accident two years ago.”

  “Oh, both my parents did, too. It’s awful, isn’t it? The suddenness is such a shock.”

  “Madeleine really helped me. I’m not sure I would have come through it without her.”

  Thinking of Margaret, Lauren said she understood.

  “People think they know her because of the way she comes across, kind of unfriendly. But just because you’re alone and you keep to yourself doesn’t mean you’re a snob or that you don’t have feelings, that you aren’t capable of love.”

  A pause as light and awkward as a newly fledged bird perched between them. Lauren didn’t know what to do about it. Annie spoke before she could decide. “It was my fault,” she said.

  Lauren looked at her.

  “Mama wouldn’t have been in the car on the freeway at two o’clock in the morning if I hadn’t called her to come and get me.” Annie ran her fingertip along the table’s edge, keeping her eye on it. “I’ve never said that to anyone—that I was to blame.”

  “Can you explain? Do you want to?”

  “You’ll hate me.”

  “No. We all make mistakes.” Lauren
waited a beat, then added, “You have no idea.”

  “There was a party in Houston. I don’t usually go to parties. They make me nervous. I never know what to say, especially to guys, and I don’t usually drink.” Annie extended her arms on the tabletop.

  Her cheeks were flushed, but otherwise she was very pale. She looked to Lauren as if she were suffering more from a fever than embarrassment, and Lauren quelled a fresh motherly impulse to pull Annie’s face around and flatten her palm against Annie’s brow. She so badly wanted to wrap this tiny slip of a girl into her embrace and promise her everything would be all right. But no one could make that guarantee, least of all Lauren.

  “For some reason, I decided to go that night,” Annie said. “I drove myself there in my mama’s car, and I drank. I broke every one of my rules.”

  “You tried to drive home afterward?” Lauren thought she understood.

  “I wish I had. Then maybe I’d be the one dead and not my mom, and Bo wouldn’t be missing, because she took better care of him than me.” Annie wiped her hands down her face. “I knew I was too drunk to drive, and I called her to come and get me. She had to borrow our neighbor’s car since I had her car, and this semi driver rear-ended her and pushed her—pushed her right off the 610 Loop onto 59. They said—said he passed out at the wheel. If I hadn’t called her—if I’d found another way home—”

  Lauren touched Annie’s arm but nothing more. Sometimes appearance was all that remained of your dignity.

  “Mama didn’t ask any questions or lecture me when I called her. She told me to wait, and she’d come. She said she loved me, and she was glad I didn’t try to drive.” Annie bit her lip.

  Lauren offered a clean napkin, and Annie dabbed her eyes.

  “She said I did the right thing, that she was proud of me. Can you believe it? She was proud of me?”

  Lauren found Annie’s gaze and held it the width of two heartbeats, three, five.

  “My daughter, Kenzie—” she finally said. “She’s eleven now, but I hope I can be as calm as your mom if she calls me in a situation like that.”