Harlan Coben - Fool Me Once

Back at the house, Maya got Lily settled and opened what she referred to as the Drawer of Many Cords. Like most people she knew, Maya never threw out a power cord. The drawer was stuffed past capacity, like a snake-in-a-can, with dozens, maybe hundreds — heck, there was probably a cord that could work a Betamax — for her to go through.

She found an adaptor that fit into the bottom of Claire’s phone, plugged it in, and waited for it to have enough juice to work. It took about ten minutes. The phone was rudimentary — just the facts, ma’am — but it did indeed have a call history. She pressed the icon and started to scroll through the calls.

They were all to the same number.

Maya scrolled down and counted sixteen calls. The number was unfamiliar. The area code was 201. That meant northern New Jersey.

Who the hell was Claire calling?

She checked the dates. The calls started three months before her death. The last call came in four days before the murder. So what did that mean? The calling pattern was fairly uneven. There were a lot in the beginning, a lot toward the end, a scattering in the middle.

Was Claire setting up rendezvous?

For a moment Maya flashed back to Jean-Pierre. Her imagination started toying with her then. Suppose Jean-Pierre had gotten in touch with Claire after all these years. You hear about that all the time, especially in the Internet Age. No lover ever completely vanishes when you have Facebook.

But no, it wasn’t Jean-Pierre. Claire would have told her.

Really? Was she so sure about that? Claire had been up to something, no question about it, and she hadn’t seen fit to tell Maya what it was about. Maya had always thought that she and Claire shared everything, that they had no secrets from each other, but then again, let’s be fair here. Maya was on the other side of the world when all this happened, fighting for her country in a forsaken desert instead of being here, home, protecting her sister.

You were keeping secrets, Claire.

So now what?

Do the easiest thing first. Google the phone number. See if she got lucky and something came up. Maya typed the numbers into the search engine and hit the return button.

Bingo. Sort of...

The number came up right away, which surprised her. Most times, when you google a number, you get some offer to buy information or background checks on its owner from a third party. The phone number Claire had been calling was a business of sorts, but like everything else surrounding the swirling insanity of the past few weeks, it led to more questions than answers. The place was indeed in northern New Jersey, near, if the Google map was to be believed, the George Washington Bridge. It was called Leather and Lace — A Gentlemen’s Club.

Gentlemen’s Club. Euphemism for a strip club.

Maya clicked on the link, just to be sure, and was greeted with a screen full of scantily clad women. Yep. Strip club. Her sister had secured a secret phone and hidden it in their grandmother’s old trunk so she could call a strip club.

Did that make sense?

Nope.

Maya tried to throw this new information into the mix. When she added it all up — Claire, Joe, the nanny cam, the phone, the strip club, the rest — Maya considered all the possibilities and came up with bubkes. Nothing made sense. She started grasping at straws. Maybe Claire was having an affair and, what, her boyfriend worked there. Maybe Jean-Pierre was the club manager. The website did offer its “upscale clientele” something called a “French Lapper,” though Maya had no idea and did not want to know what that could possibly be. Maybe Claire was leading a secret life and worked there. You read about that sometimes or see it in a bad cable movie. Housewife by day, stripper by night.

Stop.

She picked up the phone and called Eddie.

“You found something?” he said.

“Look, Eddie, if I have to dance around” — she realized the irony the moment the word spilled from her lips — “or worry about filling you in, I’m not going to learn anything, okay?”

“Yeah, sorry, what’s up?”

“Do you ever go to strip clubs?”

Silence. Then: “Ever?”

“Yeah.”

“Last year, some guys at work had a bachelor party at one.”

“And since then?”

“That’s it.”

“Where was the club?”

“Wait, what does this—”

“Just answer, Eddie.”

“Outside of Philadelphia. Cherry Hill area.”

“No others?”

“That’s it.”

“Does a club called Leather and Lace mean anything to you?”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Eddie?”

“No. It means nothing to me.”

“Okay, thanks.”

“You’re not going to tell me what this is about?”

“Not yet. Bye.”

Maya sat there and stared at the website. Why would Claire be calling Leather and Lace?

No reason to keep coming up with unfounded theories. She wanted to drive right now and go the club, but she had no sitter for Lily. Growin’ Up closed at 8:00 P.M.

Tomorrow, she thought. Tomorrow, she would get to the bottom of Leather and Lace, so to speak.

Maya had the strangest dream about the reading of Joe’s will. The dream was surreal, one of those through-the-shower-stall nocturnal visions where you really can’t remember what was said or where exactly you were or any of that. She only remembered one thing.

Joe was there.

He sat in an opulent burgundy leather chair, wearing the same tuxedo he’d worn the night they met. He looked handsome as hell, his eyes fixated on a fuzzy figure reading a document. Maya couldn’t hear a word the figure was saying — it was like listening to Charlie Brown’s teacher — but she knew somehow that the figure was reading the will. Maya didn’t care. Her entire focus was on Joe. She called out to him, tried to get his attention, but Joe would not turn her way.

Maya woke up to the sounds again — the screams, the rotors, the gunfire. She grabbed the pillow and wrapped it around her head, covering her ears, trying to muffle the terrible noise. She knew, of course, that it would do no good, that the sounds were coming from inside her head and, if anything, her efforts would keep them locked there. But she did it anyway. The sounds rarely lasted long. She just had to close her eyes — another bizarre move: closing your eyes when you are trying to drown out sounds — and ride them out.

When the episode subsided, Maya got out of bed and made her way to the bathroom. She looked in the mirror and then wisely decided to open the medicine chest so at the very least she didn’t have to look at her gaunt expression. The small brown pill containers were there. She debated taking one or two, but she would need to be sharp today, what with the reading of Joe’s will and facing his entire family.

She took a shower and chose a black Chanel pantsuit Joe had picked out for her. Joe had liked to shop for her. She’d tried it on for him, loving the feel and cut, but she’d pretended not to like it because the price was obscene. But she hadn’t fooled Joe. The next day, he went back to the store and bought it. It had been lying on the bed, just as it was now, when she came home.

She slipped on the suit and woke up Lily.

Half an hour later, Maya dropped Lily off at Growin’ Up. Miss Kitty wore a Disney princess costume Maya didn’t recognize. “Do you want to dress as a princess too, Lily?” Lily nodded and went with Princess Miss Kitty, barely bothering to wave good-bye to her mother. Maya got back in her car and booted up the Growin’ Up app. She checked the in-room camera. Lily was slipping into an Elsa-from- Frozen costume.

“‘Let it go,’” Maya sang to herself as she started driving to her in-laws’.