The Liar

  “Next week?”

  “Yeah.” He patted and jiggled as Callie’s tears dissolved into sniffles. “We’ve got a couple of little jobs, but we’ll juggle this in. I had music in my ears, so I didn’t hear you.”

  “That’s okay. I probably didn’t need those last ten years of my life. I’m just going to put her down for her nap.”

  “I’ve got it. Over in here, right?”

  He stepped into Callie’s room. By the time Shelby pushed up, walked across, he had her on the bed, under her light blanket, and was quietly answering the singsong questions she often came up with at nap or bed time.

  “Kiss,” Callie demanded.

  “You got it.” He kissed her cheek, stood up, glanced at Shelby. “Is that it?”

  “That’s it.” But she did a come-away motion, and eased out. “It’s only that easy because she wore herself out at Chelsea’s.”

  “She smells like cherries.”

  “Juice box, I imagine.”

  And her mother smells like a mountain meadow—fresh and sweet and wild all at once. Maybe the word of the day should be “pheromones.”

  “You really do look good.”

  “Oh, I’ve been job hunting, tried to look presentable.”

  “You went way over presentable into”—he caught himself on “hot”—“excellent. How’d you do on the job hunt?”

  “I did great, out of the park with bases loaded.”

  Jesus, baseball metaphor. He might have to marry her.

  “I want a Coke,” she decided. “Do you want a Coke?”

  “I wouldn’t turn one down.” Especially since it meant he got a little more time with her. “So what’s the job?”

  “Now, that’s much too direct for around here,” she warned him as they started downstairs. “We have to work up to how I went about getting it.”

  “Sorry, still shedding the Yankee.”

  “Well, don’t shed it all, it works for you. What were you listening to?” She tapped her ears.

  “Oh, it’s a pretty eclectic playlist, I guess. I think it was The Black Keys when I cut that ten years off your life. ‘Fever.’”

  “At least I lost a decade to a song I like. Now to your question. First, I got my butt kicked and my ego flattened when I tried for a job at The Artful Ridge as my high school rival, at least in her mind, manages it.”

  “Melody Bunker. I know her. She hit on me.”

  “She did not.” Amazed, she stopped short, gaped up and gave him a chance to look close. Her eyes really were almost purple.

  “Did she really?”

  “She’d had a couple of drinks, and I was new in town.”

  “Are you going to tell me if you hit back?”

  “I thought about it,” he said as he walked to the kitchen with her. “She’s great to look at, but there’s that mean streak.”

  “Not everyone—particularly those who are male—notice that.”

  “I’ve got a pretty good eye for mean. She was with another girl, and there was a lot of . . . How do I put this without saying ‘meow’?”

  “You can say it, it fits her. She’s always been catty. And she does have a mean streak, deep and wide. She tried her best to make me feel stupid and useless today, but she didn’t manage it. She’s following after a superior act in that area of mean, and fell short, well short.”

  She caught herself, shook her head as she got out Cokes, glasses. “Doesn’t matter, and it was for the best. For more than the best.”

  “What did she say to you—or is that too direct?”

  “Oh, she started with snide little comments about my hair.”

  “You have amazing hair. Magic mermaid hair.”

  She laughed. “That’s a first. Magic mermaid hair. I’ll have to use that with Callie. In any case, Mean Melody got in a few jabs about my current circumstance, which I tolerated as I wanted the damn job. She moved on, though, trying to scrape me down to the bone, how I wasn’t qualified, didn’t have enough class, basically, or intelligence, and it was clear I didn’t have a cherry snow cone’s chance in hell of working there, so I landed a few jabs of my own, with, I will say, more subtlety and style.”

  “I just bet.”

  With a cool, sharp smile, Shelby poured Cokes over ice. “She was so steamed up when I was leaving she shouted out how she’d been second-runner-up Miss Tennessee, which is her spotlight of fame. To that, I ended the encounter with the southern woman’s sweetest and most pitying insult.”

  “I know that.” He pointed a finger. “I know that one. You said ‘Bless your heart.’”

  “Haven’t you caught on fast?” After topping off the glasses, she handed him one. “I knew that one landed, but I was so fired up, I marched over to the bar and grill. I was going to ask Tansy to hire me on as a waitress. I met Derrick—and doesn’t he look like an action movie star.”

  “I hadn’t thought of it.”

  “You’d be looking at him as a man does. From a woman’s eyes?” She laughed again, waved a hand in front of her face. “Lucky Tansy—and lucky Derrick because she’s a sweet, smart, sensible woman. So after I apologized for being rude to him, because I was fired up, they didn’t want me for a waitress.”

  “Sounds like a rough day on the job hunt.”

  “Not at all. They wanted me for Friday nights, to sing. I’m going to be their Friday night entertainment. Or, as Tansy’s calling it, I’m going to be Friday Nights.”

  “No kidding? That’s great, Red, seriously great. Everybody says you can sing. Sing something.”

  “No.”

  “Come on, a couple of bars of anything.”

  “Come into Bootlegger’s a week from Friday, and you’ll hear plenty.” After lifting her glass to him, she took a satisfied drink. “Then, because that’s not all, I went in to tell Granny before I hit a couple other possible places for day jobs, and she cornered me into working part-time there. She made me believe she could really use me, so I’m hoping she meant it.”

  “In my shorter experience, Miz Vi usually means what she says.”

  “It’s true enough, and Crystal swore to it they’d already talked about hiring someone part-time. So, I didn’t just get a job, I got two. I’m employed, gainfully. God, it feels so good.”

  “Want to celebrate?” He watched her eyes go from sparkling happy to just a little wary. “Maybe we could get Matt and Emma Kate, go have dinner.”

  “Oh, that sounds like fun, it really does, but I need to buckle down, work out a playlist. Tansy wants to change it up every week, so I’ve got some research to do. And there’s Callie, though it’s likely to be more of a weight on me leaving her for hours at a time than for her leaving me.”

  “Does she like pizza?”

  “Callie? Sure she does. It runs a close second to ice cream on her favorites list.”

  “Then I’ll take you both out for pizza one night after work.”

  “That’s awful nice of you, Griffin. She’s already got a crush going on you.”

  “Mutual.”

  She smiled at him, topped off his Coke. “How long have you been in the Ridge now, Griffin?”

  “Going on a year.”

  “And don’t you have a girl by now? Somebody who looks like you ought to have the single girls flocking.”

  “Well, there was Melody for about ten minutes. And there’s Miz Vi, if only she’d reciprocate.”

  “Grandpa’d fight you for her.”

  “I’d fight dirty.”

  “So would he, and he’s very canny. I have to say, I’m surprised Emma Kate—or surely Miz Bitsy—hasn’t tried fixing you up.”

  “Tried, didn’t stick.” He shrugged, downed some Coke. “I haven’t been interested in anyone particularly. Up to now.”

  “I guess it just takes . . . Oh.” It may have been a long while, but she supposed a woman didn’t forget that look in a man’s eyes, that tone in a man’s voice. Flustered, and under the flustered she couldn’t deny flattered, she took a careful drink. �
�Oh,” she repeated. “I’ve got to say, Griff, I’m a complicated, twisted-up mess of a thing right now.”

  “I fix things, Red. It’s what I do.”

  She managed a nervous laugh. “This is a complete overhaul—what you’d call a gut job, I think. And I come as a set.”

  “I like the set, and I know I’m hitting on you pretty quick considering. It just seems to me it’s better to be straight-out. You knocked me flat when you walked into Bitsy’s kitchen. I planned to be slow and a lot smoother about it, but hell, Shelby, why?”

  That was straight-out and forthright, she thought, and as unnerving as it was flattering. “You really don’t know me.”

  “I plan to.”

  This time she let out a laugh that was more stupefied. “Just like that.”

  “Unless you take a strong dislike to me, and I don’t think you will. I’m likable. I want to take you out, when you’re ready and want to go. Meanwhile, since I’m attached to Matt and he’s attached to Emma Kate, we’ll be seeing each other. Plus, I really like your kid.”

  “I can see that. If I thought different, if I thought she was a kind of conduit with you to me, this would be a different conversation. As it is, I don’t know just what to say to you.”

  “Well, you can think about that. I’ve got to get back, and you’ve got things to do. Tell your mom I’ve got the measurements. Once she settles on the tile, the fixtures, we’ll get them ordered.”

  “All right.”

  “Thanks for the Coke.”

  “You’re welcome.” She walked back with him, considering the nerves—those interesting, fluttery nerves she hadn’t felt in so long. A mistake, absolutely a mistake to act on them at this point in her life.

  “I meant it about the pizza,” he said at the door.

  “Callie would be thrilled.”

  “Pick the day, let me know.” He frowned outside a moment, his gaze following the car that passed. “Do you know somebody with a gray Honda? Looks like a 2012.”

  “Can’t think of anyone. Why?”

  “I keep seeing it. I’ve seen it around a lot the last few days.”

  “Well, people do live here.”

  “Florida plates.”

  “A tourist, I guess. There’s good hiking now while it’s still cool, and the wildflowers are popping out everywhere.”

  “Yeah, probably. Anyway, congratulations on scoring the jobs.”

  “Thank you.”

  She watched him walk away—that swagger really was damn appealing. And he’d gotten her blood moving in ways she’d forgotten it could move.

  Still, it was best all around if she kept all her attention on Callie, her new work, and climbing her way out of the canyon of debt.

  Thinking of debt, she started upstairs. She’d change, work out a new budget, check and see if there was any progress on the house sale, or if there was any more money coming from the consignment shop. Then she could think about a playlist.

  That was work, true enough, but it was also fun—smarter to get the hard over with first.

  She stopped dead in the doorway of her room.

  A gray Honda with Florida plates. She scrambled for her dresser, pulled out the drawer where she’d put all the business cards from Philadelphia.

  And there was Ted Privet, Private Investigator. Miami, Florida.

  She had seen him in the bar and grill. He’d followed her all the way back to the Ridge. Why would he do that? What did it mean?

  He was watching her.

  She made herself go to the window, look out, search.

  She had no choice about the debt coming home with her, but she wouldn’t sit still, do nothing, when more of Richard’s mess tried to push its way into her life now.

  Instead of getting to work, she picked up her phone.

  “Forrest? I’m sorry to bother you at work, but I think I have some trouble. I think I could use some help with it.”

  • • •

  HE LISTENED TO HER, didn’t interrupt, didn’t ask any questions. That only made her more nervous, babbling it all out to her brother while he sat there cool as ice, his eyes on her face telling her nothing.

  “Is that it?” he said when she ran down.

  “I think so. Yes, that’s it, that’s all. I guess it’s more than enough.”

  “Do you have the IDs, the ones you found in the bank box?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m going to need them.”

  “I’ll go get them.”

  “Sit. I’m not done.”

  So she sat back down at the kitchen counter, knotted her hands together on it.

  “Do you have the gun?”

  “I . . . Yes. I made sure it wasn’t loaded, and I have it in a box, top of my closet, where Callie can’t get to it.”

  “And any of the cash—from the box?”

  “I kept three thousand of it in cash—it’s up in my closet, too. I used most of the rest, like I said, to pay off bills. And I put some in the bank here. I opened an account here in the Ridge.”

  “I want all of it. The IDs, the gun, the cash, the envelopes, anything you have that came out of the box.”

  “All right, Forrest.”

  “Now, I’m going to ask you why the fuck, why the fuck, Shelby, you’re just telling me all this now?”

  “The hole was so deep, and it got deep so fast. First Richard’s dead, and I’m trying to think what to do, then the lawyers are telling me there’s all this trouble. I start going through the bills. I just never did that, because he locked them up. They were his business—and don’t slap at me for it. You weren’t there, you didn’t live that life, so don’t slap at me for it. Then I found out about the house, and everything. I had to deal with it. I found the key, and I had to know. Then when I found the bank box, and what was in it . . . I don’t know who I married, who I lived with, who fathered my child.”

  She took a long breath. “And I couldn’t let that matter, couldn’t let that take the rest over. What matters is now, and dealing with it until I’m clear of it. Keeping Callie clear of it. I don’t know why this detective followed me here. I don’t have anything. I don’t know anything.”

  “I’ll deal with that.”

  “I’ll thank you for it.”

  “I might’ve slapped at you some, Shelby. But just to wake you up. You’re my sister, goddamn it. We’re your family.”

  She linked her fingers together again, to hold herself in. “You think I’ve forgotten that, and you’re wrong. If you think I don’t value that, you’re stupid.”

  “What should I think?” he countered.

  “That I did what I thought was right. I couldn’t come back until I’d started climbing out of that hole, Forrest. I wouldn’t. Maybe you think that’s just pride, just stupid, but I couldn’t come back and put all of it on my family.”

  “You couldn’t ask for a hand, a hand to reach down and help you up out of it?”

  “Well, Jesus God, Forrest, aren’t I doing just that? But I had to get up far enough to reach a hand. That’s what I’m doing now.”

  He pushed up, paced around the room, stopped at the window for a while, looking out in silence. “All right. Maybe I see your side of that. I don’t have to say you’re right to see it. Go ahead, get me everything you have.”

  “What are you going to do? It’s still my business, Forrest.”