John Lescroart - A Plague of Secrets

“I don’t think we need to do that,” Joel said. “Maya doesn’t have anything to hide. She can say anything she needs to in front of me and these inspectors.”

“Absolutely,” Hardy said. “If she wants to, of course she can. Maya? Your call.”

They stood in a frozen tableau for a long moment, until she finally turned to face Hardy and said, “Maybe Joel ought to come with us.”

After his initial stunned expression Joel took in the cops again with an apologetic shrug, then came back to Hardy and Maya with a terse, “All right. Let’s go, then.”

Maya led the little party of three off to a front working den-flat-screen TV, bookshelves, fireplace. Closing the door, they remained standing because Joel gave no one any time to sit down before he more or less exploded, although he kept his voice in check. “Maya, you want to tell me what this is about?”

She threw a glance at Hardy-and again, clearly, this didn’t get her any points with her husband-nodded, took in a breath. “Mr. Hardy knows that I went by BBW on Saturday morning and saw the body, and then got scared and drove away without calling the police.”

Joel’s mouth went tight. “You went to BBW Saturday morning? Why?”

“Because Dylan called me Friday night and said he needed to see me first thing, that it was an emergency.”

“What kind of emergency?”

“He didn’t say that.”

“But you went?”

“Yes. I went. But the real problem, ask Mr. Hardy here, is that the first time I talked to those people, I didn’t say anything about that. I told them I went to Mass. ”

“The first time you talked to who? Those inspectors out there? This isn’t the first time?”

Hardy finally felt that he could join the conversation. “They talked to your wife yesterday morning.”

Joel couldn’t take his eyes off his wife. “Why didn’t you tell me you’d talked to them? And not told them the truth?”

“I don’t know, Joel. I don’t know. I panicked. I was afraid, or embarrassed, or something. I thought you’d be mad at me being in this on any level, for getting you involved.” She had her arms crossed over her chest, displaying more defiance than her words indicated. “The point is I’m telling you now, all right? I don’t know what I should do right now . And by the way, you should know, Joel, that the gun they think is probably the murder weapon is the one I left down there back when I first opened the place, like ten years ago, and it’s registered to me.” She looked from one man to the other. “And in case either of you are thinking it, if I were going to have shot Dylan, which I never would have done under any conditions, period, I never would have been so stupid as to throw it away where the police could find it.”

For a minute no one spoke. Eyes flashed between husband and wife. Hardy kept his own counsel in silence until he felt again that he would be heard. “The thing to do right now, in my opinion, Maya, is to go out there and tell the inspectors the truth. As your husband has said. If you don’t do that, and somebody did witness you in the alley on Saturday morning, it will look much worse and be a lot harder to explain. As for the gun, you owned it. So what? If you kept it at the shop, Dylan undoubtedly knew about it and probably had it with him illegally for protection while he was carrying the weed.”

“What weed?” Joel asked.

Maya shook her head in anger and frustration. She spoke under her breath. “Oh, Jesus!”

“Dylan was selling marijuana out of your wife’s store,” Hardy said in his most neutral voice. “I don’t know why it hasn’t been in the papers. The cops have known this all along.”

“How special for them,” Joel said. Clearly seething now, he spoke in a near whisper. “How long were you going to keep all this from me, Maya? What is that about? I thought we talked to each other.”

“We do.”

“Not so much, though, as it turns out.” Finally, Joel brought his attention to Hardy. “So you’re suggesting we go outside and tell these people that my wife lied to them, is that it?”

“Omitted,” Hardy said. “Not lied. At least then we start over with a clean slate.”

“But Maya’s at the murder scene within, apparently, minutes of the crime.”

“That’s true. And in point of fact, she was.”

Now Joel came back to her. “And you don’t know what the emergency was?”

“No.”

“No idea?”

“No, Joel, really.”

This wasn’t enough for her increasingly furious husband. He kept at her. “So the situation here, correct me if I’m wrong, is that Dylan called you on Friday night saying he needed to see you first thing next morning, and you dropped everything and got up at five-thirty, lied to me and the kids about going to Mass-”

“But I did go to Mass, after-”

Joel waved that off. “After you went to see Dylan first, for some reason that he wouldn’t even tell you. Is that what you expect me to believe?”

Tears glistened in Maya’s eyes. “That’s what happened, Joel. That’s exactly what happened.”

“That twerp calls you, doesn’t even give you a reason, and you come running, and now we’ve got the cops sitting in our living room and your lawyer here says we need to tell them the truth, except that the truth leaves you going down to visit the murdered man just about the time he was killed, and with essentially no reason.” He turned to Hardy. “How can we tell them she went down there if we can’t tell them why? Can you answer that for me?”

“Keep it simple. He asked her to, that’s all. Some problem with the business, some decision she had to make in person.” Hardy slowed himself down. “I’m sure Maya thought it was going to be a quick little meeting and then she’d have time to make it back to Mass. Isn’t that right, Maya?”

Hardy had given her the answer and was glad to see her embrace it. “That’s exactly it, Joel. I didn’t think it was anything really important. I wasn’t hiding anything from you. It was just a small business hassle that I thought I’d take care of like I have a million others.”

Another silence, finally broken when Joel asked Hardy, “You really think this will fly?”

“It’s the truth,” Hardy said. “All things considered, honesty’s still the best policy.”

Husband and wife stared at each other for a long beat. Maya reached out and took Joel’s hand in hers. “That ought to be the end of it,” she said.

“Not exactly,” Joel said, extricating his hand from his wife’s. “You and I are going to have to have a discussion.”

“We can do that.” She looked up at Hardy. “Meanwhile, let’s go tell ’em,” she said.

He nodded, no-nonsense. “All right,” he said. “But let me do the talking.”

At ten-thirty that night Hardy threw the next-to-last dart of his round at the Little Shamrock bar and it landed in his “out” spot of double eleven. He plocked the next shot directly in the center of the bull’s-eye, ending the game. He was playing “ 301” and he’d gone out ahead of his opponent, Wyatt Hunt, by hitting his last eight throws in a row, a fairly nice run.

And all too underappreciated by Hunt, his firm’s private investigator, who now owed him not only the tab for the three beers they’d each consumed in the three-game minitournament, but the extra hundred bucks they’d put up as the pot. No sooner had Hardy’s winning shot landed than Hunt handed him the Franklin and offered to go double or nothing.

“That’s a sucker bet, Wyatt, as you well know.” Hardy took the bill and put it into his wallet. “But I’ll buy you a consolation drink to help assuage the agony of defeat.”

“ Assuage is a good lawyer word,” Hunt said. “You don’t hear people say assuag e every day.”