Perfect Lies Read online

  “I just saw him last Wednesday, at the Agway with the girls….”

  “Her mother’s a druggie. That’s what I heard.”

  “The first wife … Totally messed up. They had to put her away, right?”

  “Yeah. And that kind of thing runs in a family, you know….”

  Suddenly Meg realized that Hannah was speaking to her. She felt Hannah’s warm breath in her ear, as the woman leaned in closer to say, “I knew about you and Ethan, Meg.”

  “What?” Meg turned to stare at Hannah. For the first time she saw the fine web of wrinkles around her eyes, the grooves bracketing her mouth. Meg couldn’t have heard her correctly.

  “Ethan told me a little bit about what was going on before—before he was killed.”

  “Going on?” Meg cried over the noise. “Nothing was going on. It was all in Ethan’s head.” Meg felt her heart beating rapidly. The room was far too noisy and hot. Her head, too, was pounding—with anger, she realized. How easy it must have been for Ethan to imply that she had responded to his overtures. A slight smile on his part, a shrug to a certain question from Hannah, and the picture would be quickly painted: How could a single, lonely woman resist a man like Ethan? For someone as experienced and sophisticated as Hannah, the fact that Meg was Ethan’s sister-in-law was probably just a minor concern.

  “Meg, don’t worry,” Hannah said, touching her elbow. “You can trust me. I’m really very discreet. And, God knows, I totally understand about Ethan. He was such a powerful presence—in my life, as well. From the moment I first saw him. I knew. He had that certain something—that life force that draws others to him.”

  “That may be the case,” Meg replied. “But I was never drawn to him in that way. I don’t know what he told you, Hannah, but it simply wasn’t true.”

  Hannah took a sip from the plastic cup she was holding, appraising Meg as she did so.

  “You’re overreacting,” she said soothingly. “I really only brought up the subject because I assume you’d be upset. I thought you might want someone to talk to. I guess I’ve come to think of you as Ethan’s friend. And, by extension, my friend. I hope I haven’t upset you. But, quite frankly, I’ve been devastated by all of this, too. It was such a shock. He’d just been to see me Friday night, you know. He told me then that you two had had something of a lovers’ quarrel….”

  “Hannah, we were not lovers,” Meg hissed, glancing quickly around the closely packed room. Nobody seemed the least bit interested in their conversation. Meg and Hannah were outsiders and, at any other time, would have been objects of intense curiosity. But that night there was only one subject among the residents of Red River: Ethan McGowan’s murder.

  “Whatever you say,” Hannah whispered back. “Whatever you need to say. I understand your position. Really. All I want you to know, Meg, is that I do understand. More than you realize. I know what a special kind of man Ethan was. And, well, if you ever feel the need to talk to me about it… ”

  The basement was a burbling sea of voices. Meg realized that Hannah was still talking to her. She saw other mouths moving: people drinking, chewing, talking, laughing. She smelled bourbon. She felt sick, as though she’d been drinking herself. The room had a precarious list to it, as though everyone were going to slide off to the right at any moment. She needed balance.

  “Are you okay, darling?” Hannah asked.

  “Yes, I think…” Meg turned toward the double doors leading out to the parking lot. “I’m going to get some air.”

  The storm had passed, but night had already started to settle in and it was barely four-thirty. Meg could see stars through the branches of the old sugar maple trees that clustered around the church. The parking lot was still full, the surfaces of the cars aglitter with a hard coating of frozen sleet. Ice crackled like broken glass under her heels. It was damp and cold and she hadn’t bothered to find her coat. Though she was wearing nothing more than a lightweight black wool suit, she didn’t feel anything when she first started out except a kind of lulling numbness—as though not just a limb, but her entire body had gone to sleep.

  She found herself walking aimlessly along the edge of the parking lot, clutching her arms to her chest to keep herself warm. She had to get some perspective on what Hannah had said. She had to come to terms with the ugly impression that Ethan had left behind. Ethan was gone, but the force that had driven him to such extremes of passion was still at work. The small lies Ethan had dropped—in front of Lark, and then Hannah—were rippling out across the lives that had intersected his. He probably had not intended any real harm. Meg could almost hear him justifying his actions now: He’d simply implied that she had responded a bit to his flattery—not such a big thing, really, hardly a sin. His ego couldn’t handle the truth, so he had changed it. He’d recast the facts to a shape more pleasing to himself.

  But now Ethan’s offhand half-truth had blossomed into something Meg only seemed to make more substantive by denying. It had taken on a malevolent life of its own—undermining her relationship with Lark, producing an unwanted ally in Hannah. If Ethan were still alive, she would have asked that he retract the falsehood. But with him gone, she was left with a situation that was growing ever more complicated and dangerous.

  The parking lot was bordered on its northern edge by an old graveyard, separated from the macadam by a lichen-crusted stone wall overrun with weeds and vines. No one had been buried there since 1918 when the flu epidemic of the First World War had—within the space of a few years—doubled the number of graves. The new cemetery—where Ethan would be buried the next day—lay to the south of Red River and boasted manicured lawns and neatly cared-for shrubbery.

  Several years before, Ethan had made a number of rubbings from the worn headstones behind the church. He’d framed the charcoal impressions—sad-eyed cherubs and sailing ships—intending to hang them along the hall leading from the entryway to the kitchen. Lark had objected.

  “They’re gruesome,” Lark had said during the argument Meg had witnessed at that time. “I don’t want to be reminded of death every time I walk down my front hall.”

  “I disagree, my love,” Ethan had replied. “I think they’re funny as hell. Like comics. Man’s little joke on himself. As if angels will be singing as the big ship death pulls into the heavenly harbor. I think it’s hilarious that people can’t stand the thought that when they die they’ll simply be dead. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” Meg had forgotten how the rest of the argument had gone, but the rubbings ended up hanging in Ethan’s studio.

  The small cemetery was slick with sleet, the gravestones leaning drunkenly, one or two broken in half and tented carefully on their respective graves like oversize place settings. Meg could hear the noise coming from the reception behind her. She wasn’t sure what had drawn her here. Moonlight played through the wands of the gnarled willow tree whose roots had heaved up several gravestones at the southeast corner of the walled-in plot. Meg’s fingers traced the ghostly lettering of a headstone. Pale light illuminated the first name, mary ellen, but time and the elements had erased the rest.

  Meg tried briefly to imagine who this woman had been, what she had yearned for, what had made her laugh. But it was impossible to know her, or to know anybody. Other people’s lives—even Ethan’s, in which Meg had played such an integral part—were, in the end, mysteries. Ethan, who had lived so large and demanded so much of the world, was soon to be nothing more than a name, like this one, chiseled on a headstone. All that passion and need and ego—the fires that blazed and burned—were no more now than the memories he’d left behind. The chaos he’d created was for others to sort through. But trying to understand the dead, she knew, was as difficult as reading worn stone letters. Like those carvings, Ethan’s life was dissolving into the pieces of a puzzle that she needed desperately to decipher and fit together. Once again she ran her fingers over the gravestone, searching for an impression that was hardly there.

  17

  “I’m just saying we don’t n
eed a lot of outsiders telling us what we know already,” Lester Friedlander said, his words slow and slightly slurred. He stood in the belligerent, shoulders-back stance of a man asking for trouble. An overhead light at the bottom of the steps leading down from the church to the parking lot illuminated the scene. Lester, who had his own construction company; Willie Skylar, the part-time manager of the town’s transfer station and full-time handyman; and half a dozen other men stood in a loose half-circle around Willie’s pickup. A keg of beer gleamed in the back of the truck. It seemed obvious to Meg, who came upon them as she made her way back to the reception, that the group had been helping themselves liberally to the keg’s contents. She stopped just outside the circle of light to listen.

  “You just don’t like cops,” Carl Yoder, Mike’s younger brother, shot back. “Ever since Tom hit you with that D.W.I, last year.”

  “That’s not what I’m saying,” Les continued, stumbling a little in an attempt to keep his macho pose. “This has nothing to do with me personally, okay? It’s got to do with all of us. My point is this: Who do you think is paying for those state guys to come in here and take up half the rooms at the Rocquonic? Who’s paying for them to pick through the dust balls and shit at Ethan’s studio? We are, folks. That’s who. It’s our hard-earned tax dollars at work, that’s what. And for what purpose? We already know what the hell happened.”

  “Hey, it just needs to be investigated by professionals, Les,” Willie said as he refilled his plastic beer mug.

  “Like we need some fricking state seal of approval on this thing?” Les demanded. “Come on, that’s just ridiculous. Lucinda McGowan was found with the murder weapon in her hands, for chrissakes. We need Columbo and Matlock to help Tom track down the killer?”

  “Well, my observation is that old Tom has a difficult enough time tracking down his reading glasses,” Theodore Weisel observed. A math teacher who lived in Red River and taught at the Montville secondary school, Theo always tried to sound wry and knowing. He was obviously pleased by the round of laughter that followed his comment.

  “He sure had them on when he was interviewing Becca Sabin,” Willie observed, smiling as he shook his head. “Should’ve seen the guy helping her out of her car down at the police station yesterday—like she was some kind of visiting dignitary.”

  “I wouldn’t mind helping her with a few things myself,” Carl Yoder commented. “That woman has some body, if you know what I mean.”

  “Those state guys were getting an eyeful, too,” Willie added. “I was over there to pick up my hunting license when Becca came by for her interview. They were just falling all over themselves to get her coffee and whatnot.”

  “And that plays exactly to what I’m saying.” Les, a bit steadier on his feet now, had also found his voice—and everyone there knew just how much Les enjoyed the sound of his own words. Les paused for dramatic effect and went on in a more measured tone. “I mean, can’t you just hear those state detectives talking up Becca Sabin? ‘And what were you doing, ma’am, the morning that Lucinda McGowan drove a flaming hot metal rod into her stepfather’s chest? Sleeping in, eh? And what were you wearing, please? No, it’s very important to the progress of this case that we get an exact description of your red silk negligee….

  To general laughter, Theodore Weisel observed, “Ethan could have provided them with one.”

  “That’s for sure,” Willie said, chuckling.

  “Ethan probably could have given them a pretty good description of a couple of bedrooms in this town,” Carl added.

  “Yeah, including your brother’s,” Les said, prodding Carl Yoder with his elbow. A silence fell on the men and Meg could almost hear them thinking, Les Friedlander and his big mouth. When he has a bellyful of beer in him, he just doesn’t know how to keep his yap from flapping.

  Carl took a step away from Les. “What are you trying to say, Les?”

  “Just what the rest of us have known for years,” Les replied defensively, though he sensed with a quick look around at the others’ faces that he was alone on this one. “What you Yoder guys are just too holier-than-thou to admit to yourselves. Paula had a thing for Ethan. A big one. And, knowing the man the way we all did, I’d say he took ample advantage of Paula’s tender feelings.”

  Without any warning, Carl Yoder rammed his right shoulder hard into Les Friedlander’s chest. Les’s beer mug flew up in the air and landed on the windshield of a nearby car. The two men fell to the icy macadam and rolled against the back wheels of Willie’s truck. Meg couldn’t see them, but she could hear their angry curses and ragged gasps as they grappled with one another.

  “What’s going on here?” Francine had emerged seemingly from nowhere, the bulky parka she had thrown on over her clerical garb giving her a slightly comical look. There was nothing funny, however, about her angry tone of voice.

  “Nothing,” Willie Skylar muttered, stepping between the beer keg and Francine’s line of vision. “Just a little friendly misunderstanding. Right, guys?” Les and Carl grunted as they pulled away from each other and crawled out from under the rear of the truck.

  “Willie Skylar, have you actually brought beer onto church property without my permission?”

  “Now, Francine,” Willie began in his slow, sincere-sounding way, “the keg was already sitting there in the back of the truck when I came to the service. I didn’t bring it specifically for any purpose. And we all just got talking out here, you know, waiting for the wives and kids, not wanting to break things up in there. Didn’t think it would do any harm.”

  “You grown men should be ashamed of yourselves,” Francine replied, though Meg could sense her anger seeping away. “Get that keg out of my sight and get yourselves on home now while you can still see straight. The roads are slick and I don’t want any of you idiots rolling drunk into a tree. I’ve had about as much trouble these past few days as I can stand.”

  “Yes’m,” Willie replied, as Carl and Les brushed the ice shards off their coats. “Sorry to have caused any trouble.”

  “And Les?” Francine added. “Sometimes I think that they left out an eleventh commandment: ‘Thou shalt mind thine own business.’ Do you understand me?”

  Meg hesitated in the shadows, not wishing to be caught eavesdropping, as the group broke up and Francine turned and went back to the reception. She overheard one last comment as Willie Skylar climbed up into his truck.

  Just before he turned on the ignition, he rolled down his window and called over to Les who was scraping ice off his windshield, “It’s fitting, don’t you think, that Ethan got it with a poker? I mean considering how many he’s poked in his time?”

  Les and Theo Weisel, who’d overheard the comment, laughed out loud in the damp, cold night air.

  “Meg, I need to get the girls home.” Lark came up to her as she walked back into the basement. The reception was winding down, the crowd now massed around the coatracks. A row of small children, ornery with fatigue, sat on folding chairs as parents tried to get them into their snow boots. Meg had watched Lark sail through the funeral and reception with a luminous calm. Her eyes glistening, her head high, Lark, publicly at least, was handling her husband’s murder with dignity. Detachment. With the “love,” Lark had told Meg she wanted to display. But now Meg couldn’t help but wonder what was behind her sister’s forbearance. Clearly, Ethan was not the husband or father that Lark pretended he had been. Meg was obviously not the first or only woman he had tried to seduce. It didn’t make her feel any better that Ethan hadn’t singled her out, but it did make her question everything she thought she knew about her sister’s marriage. It had been far more complicated and compromised than Lark had ever let on. Lark, who had confided to Meg the smallest minutiae of her daily life, had managed to gloss over what was surely her biggest problem: her husband.

  “I’m ready to go, too,” Meg replied, trying to read her sister’s expression, but Lark didn’t meet her eye. Looking tired and irritated, she scanned the departing crowd.
r />   “Actually, I’m going to ask you to stay and help Francine clean up. I was counting on Janine to do it, but apparently Clint’s had too much to drink and she’s got to get him home. Where the hell did all the booze come from?”

  “Willie Skylar had a keg in his truck,” Meg began.“There was a fight—” Though she wanted to confront Lark with what she knew, she thought better of it when she realized that Brook and Phoebe were following sleepily in their mother’s wake.

  “These men,” Lark said disdainfully, but then her expression softened as her eyes fastened on someone across the room. Meg followed her gaze to where Abe was struggling with an armload of coats.

  “Okay, guys,” Abe said as he passed Brook and Phoebe their parkas. “Time to saddle up.”

  “Abe’ll help me get us all home,” Lark told her. “Francine offered to drive you back when you’re done here.”

  Meg knew she had no choice but to do Lark’s bidding, though she felt her anger welling. Lark had purposely made Meg feel guilty and miserable—while keeping her sister in the dark about so many things. The haven of love that in Meg’s mind had been Lark’s beloved home had collapsed as swiftly and completely as a house of cards. She thought of the anguish she’d endured on Ethan’s behalf—all of it in an attempt to save Lark’s marriage and family. But now she knew that her sister’s married life had been no better than her parent’s illfated union. All those years that Meg had envied what Lark possessed—could it really have been nothing more than a trick of the heart?

  Meg didn’t know the two other women in the congregation who stayed on to help with the cleanup. They knew how to operate the three large industrial dishwashers, so they concentrated on the kitchen while Meg and Francine picked up the main hall, folding chairs, bagging trash.