Julia Spencer-Fleming - To Darkness And To Death

“Uh-huh,” Lisa said. Across from her, Kevin was scooping coffee out of a can. “Why do you think Mom and Dad are doing that?”

“Mark didn’t say, but I’m guessing they’re pulling out all the stops to find your husband. Lise, you need to think about hiring a good lawyer and having Randy turn himself in. This isn’t like ducking out of a traffic ticket. Mark and the rest of them will be searching for someone they think is dangerous. They have guns. People get killed evading arrest.”

Lisa’s throat closed up.

“Look, I’m off shift. I’m going to pick up Madeline from the neighbor’s, and then we’re coming over to keep you company.”

“With what’s going on? Mark won’t like it.” Her sister and Mark were both control freaks. They tended to wrangle a lot.

“He doesn’t get a vote. Besides, he’ll be at work. He doesn’t need to know. The important thing is, will it help, me being there? Or would you rather be alone?”

“I’d love you to come over,” Lisa said gratefully.

“Okay. I’ll see you when I get there. Till then, keep your legs crossed and your mind on higher things, as Mom would say.”

Lisa was laughing as she hung up.

Kevin looked at her. “What’s up?”

Her brief bubble of good humor faded into air. She shrugged. “Our parents.”

“I know how that can be. Coffee’s almost ready, if you want to get the cups.”

Lisa turned over possibilities as she unloaded two clean mugs from the dishwasher and took out the sugar bowl and spoons. She could do as Rachel suggested. Find a lawyer, tell Randy to turn himself in when he called. But then where would they be? If Randy was found guilty, he’d do time, no way around it. They knew a guy who got into a bar fight in Lake George with somebody who’d been messing with his girlfriend. Busted him up. Got sent to Plattsburgh for a year. How would she and Randy survive for a year without his income? They’d have the lawyer’s bills to pay, on top of the loans and the credit cards and everything else.

She opened the refrigerator and removed the jug of milk. Ultimately it boiled down to the fact that prison would kill Randy. He needed to be outdoors. He hated the jobs that shut him up inside; being locked away for a year or more would gut him. Then there was his temper. He needed to have her around for ballast. On his own, bottled up and seething, he’d explode. And some drug dealer, some guy who was a real criminal, unlike Randy, would knife him.

The coffee ceased bubbling out of the filter. She waited a second to see if any last drips fell, then pulled out the pot and poured two cups. So. No lawyer, no surrender. Or not yet. That could always be their reserve, their fallback position.

Clumping on the stairs. MacAuley poked his head through the doorway. “Thought I smelled coffee.”

Lisa forced a smile. “Can I get you a cup?”

“Sure.” He sauntered in and took up a post leaning against the refrigerator. “Nice place you have.”

She poured MacAuley a cup and handed it to him. “Thanks,” he said. He slopped in enough milk to turn it tan and took a deep, appreciative drink. Then he looked at her over the rim of the cup. “I hate to cause you distress, ma’am, but we do have reason to believe your husband may have been seeing Becky Castle.”

Lisa had split firewood before, and she knew what he was about. He was poking at the surface of the log, looking for a crack he could wedge his splitter into. It could take hours to chop apart a log with an ax. You needed an opening. It didn’t matter how small: Once you worked a splitter into it, down came the maul, and that log was gone, split in two, ready for the woodstove.

She took out her own splitter. “No, he wasn’t. And I know that to be true, because I know who she was seeing.”

MacAuley’s bushy eyebrows flicked upward. She had caught him off guard. “Who?”

“Shaun Reid.”

“The guy who owns the mill?” Kevin made a face. “Get out! He’s older than my father!”

MacAuley looked at him wearily. “It doesn’t shrivel up and drop off when you turn fifty, Kevin.” He turned to Lisa. “How do you know this?”

The first rule of lying: Keep as close to the truth as possible. “I clean for the Reids. Thursdays. And I was at Millers Kill High when she was. I know some of the same people she knows. There’s always talk. It’s a small town.”

“She lives in Albany now.”

“He never travels ‘on business’? She never comes up to ‘visit her folks’?” She shrugged. “Maybe I’ve got it wrong. But I’ve never heard any whispers about her and my husband.”

MacAuley set down his mug. “Mrs. Schoof, what would you say if you I told you that Becky Castle has named your husband as the man who assaulted her?”

“I’d ask why on earth Randy would want to hurt a woman he can barely remember from school.”

“She says he was planning on stealing her father’s logging equipment. She took pictures of him, and when she wouldn’t surrender the camera to him, he beat her up.”

“Oh, please. Randy was going to steal a skidder? And what, escape with it down the highway at twenty-five miles an hour?” Ladling scorn kept her from wincing. She knew Randy tended to act without considering the consequences, but she hoped even he wasn’t stupid enough to try to guarantee job security by ripping off heavy equipment. “Who’s more likely to have a reason to try to shut her up for good? A man who wants to get a good recommendation from her father? Or a man who’s already been through one expensive divorce and can’t face another one?”

MacAuley and Kevin glanced at each other. She clicked her teeth together. The second rule of lying: Don’t say too much.

“Miss Castle told us she ran into your husband’s motorcycle at her father’s house this afternoon. She called the tow truck and had it taken to Jimino’s garage on her dime. We’ve got a confirmation on that from the tow truck dispatcher and the mechanic.”

Lisa noticed MacAuley had dropped the “what would you say if I said” fig leaf. She looked him straight in the eye. “So she did meet up with him today. That explains why she used his name when she had to find someone to pin her injuries on.”

“Oh, come off it,” Kevin said.

Lisa put her hands on her hips. “Are you trying to tell me you’ve never known a battered woman to lie about what happened to her because she was afraid of the guy who hit her? Or in love with him?” She let her anger and her irritation show fully in her face, so they wouldn’t see past those emotions to where she was desperate and afraid.

Lyle looked at her as if he were measuring her. Finally he swung his gaze toward Kevin. “Time to go,” he said. Kevin promptly put his cup down, coffee untouched.

“When your husband comes home,” MacAuley said, “have him contact us immediately. Whether he’s responsible or not, things will go a lot easier for him if he does.”

Thunk. Thunk. The sound she heard as she ushered them out of her house was the echo of two pieces of wood falling, neatly and sweetly cloven in two.

Clare barely made it into the dry cleaners before they closed. She wasn’t the only person to wait until the last possible moment. Ahead of her, a harried-looking woman balanced a cranky toddler on her hip while accepting a stack of shirts. Behind her, the door chimed in a good-looking young man whose suit and camel coat looked decidedly out of place on a Saturday in Millers Kill.

“Clare Fergusson,” she told the attendant, after the woman had struggled away with kid and clothing. “One dress and two blouses.”

The woman took her slip and nodded past her at the young man. “You?”