In the Company of Liars

ONE DAY EARLIER
TUESDAY, MAY 4

This shouldn’t be happening.

“This shouldn’t be happening,” Allison says, removing her fingernail from her mouth. The nails are reduced to nubs now. She’s never had long nails, not since she began writing, but now they have been chewed into nonexistence. “I’m sitting there all day, listening to my lawyer plot strategy, and the whole time, I’m thinking, ‘This shouldn’t be happening.’ ”

Mat Pagone drops his briefcase in the living room. He has come in with Allison, after picking her up at her lawyer’s office and driving her home-to what was once his home, too.

Allison watches her ex-husband disappear into the kitchen.

What do you mean?

What do you mean, this shouldn’t be happening?

Mat returns with two glasses of wine from a bottle already opened. “Drink,” he says. “Your head still hurt?”

She accepts the glass. “Only when I think. Did you call Jessica?”

“She’s studying, Ally. You know she has that paper. She turned her cell phone off, is all. She’s fine.”

“She had to testify in a murder trial against her own mother. She is notfine. ”

She doesn’t see Mat “off-camera” much these days. He has played the dutiful-supporter part, picking her up for court and taking her home, but that’s a public appearance. Up close and personal, he looks tired. Worry and regret have cast a shadow across his face. His career is in tatters, his reputation probably shot. He is lucky but probably can’t see that. He never could.

“What I meant before,” she says finally, “is I should have pleaded guilty. I should have spared Jessica having to testify.”

“Pleading is giving up,” Mat says. “That’s not you. That would have torn up Jess just as much. She thinks you’re innocent, Ally.”

“She thinks I’m innocent. Wonderful.” Allison rubs her face.

“That’s a good thing, I would think. You prefer she thinks you killed Sam?”

“Mat.” Allison looks at him directly. “She can’t think I’m innocent. Because she’s going to blame herself, either way, when I’m convicted.”

“You aren’t going to be-”

“I am. I am and you know it. Jessica needs to understand that I was convicted because I’m guilty. Not because of her. She has to believe I’m guilty.”

Mat opens his arms, the wine bobbing in the glass and almost spilling on the carpet. “You want me to tell her you’re guilty? You want me to tell her you confessed to me?”

“That’s exactly what I want you to do.”

“Won’t play, Allison. She’ll need more than that.”

“Tell her I used that trophy to kill him.”

“Ah.” Mat says it like a negative, like a grunt.

The police have believed, almost from the outset, that the instrument that delivered the fatal blows to Sam Dillon’s head was an award given to him two years earlier by the Midwest Manufacturers’ Association for excellency in advocacy. They saw the spot on the mantel of Sam’s fireplace, from the pattern of dust, where it had rested for the last two years. The award, they quickly learned, had a solid marble base that would serve nicely as the head of a hammer. On the base, in gold, was a miniaturized version of an old industrial machine with a gear and sprocket. It was determined by looking at other such awards given out by the MMA that this trophy was sufficiently sturdy-indeed, it would be ironic if it were not-to be used as a weapon, bringing the marble base down on someone’s head. Assault with a deadly statuette.

Anyone who has followed the suffocating account of this case in the papers, on television, and online would know of this trophy, currently missing and the subject of a rather feverish manhunt by police. Thus, Mat’s objection.

“She wouldn’t accept that as proof,” Mat says.

“No.” Allison wets her lips. “I suppose she wouldn’t.” She goes to the window next to the side table, looks out at the backyard and her neighbors’ as well. They built a fence, about four feet high, around the property when Jessica got old enough to wander. She once tried to clear it, like an Olympic high-jumper, using the old Western-roll technique and requiring five stitches on her lip for her trouble.

“Y’know,” Mat starts.

She turns to him.

“Never mind.” He waves his hand. “Never mind.”

“No, tell me,” Allison says.

“I was just thinking.” Mat averts his eyes, strolls aimlessly through the living room. “There is probably something I could tell Jessica. There is proof.”

“What?”

Mat takes a drink of his wine, sets his jaw. “The murder weapon,” he says. “You could tell me where it is. I could tell Jessica. If it came to that.”

“I haven’t even told my lawyer that. Nobody knows that.”

But that, clearly, is Mat’s point. It would be irrefutable proof to Jessica, a fact unknown to everyone.

“There’s no spousal privilege,” Allison says. “We’re not married. You could be forced to divulge this.”

Mat makes a face. The prosecution has already rested its case, and no one is looking at Mateo Pagone to help convict his ex-wife.

“You think so little of me?” he asks.

This again. Always falling back on self-pity. But he has a point. If she can’t trust Mat, there is no one left.

She takes a breath as the adrenaline kicks in, her heart races, the memories of that night flood back. She turns again and places her hand on the window. It is colder than she expected.

“The Countryside Grocery Store,” she says. “The one on Apple and Riordan?”

“Okay.”

“When Jess was five,” she continues. “She got away from me at the store. I was beside myself. I was looking everywhere for her. I had the store manager ready to call the police.”

She can faintly see Mat in the reflection of the glass. He is captivated, listening intently, but she detects a frown. It only underscores the distance that has always been between them, even then. He doesn’t remember this incident. She probably never even told him. He was at the capital, as this happened during the legislative session; this was back when Mat was a legislative aide, before he traded up to lobbying his former employers. It was one of countless episodes in their lives that passed right by him unnoticed.

She returns her eyes to the window. “I found Jessica out back,” she continues. “She had wandered through the delivery area in the back of the store. She had gone down that little ramp they have for deliveries and she was standing outside by the fence. She was pointing at this post that was supporting the fence. It was yellow. This was during that ‘lemon’ thing she had.”

Mat, she assumes, again does not get the reference. When Jessica was very young, she had great difficulty pronouncing the wordyellow, so she used the wordlemon instead. Even a banana was the colorlemon. Even after she matured a bit and was able to say the word, she continued for many years to qualify it with the phrase-

“Yellow like lemon,” Mat says.

Allison squeezes her eyes shut. It is these little things that always move her. She takes a moment, swallows hard, before continuing.

“That’s where I put it.” She raises her chin and keeps her voice strong, as she faces the window. “It’s still there, that post. The paint has chipped away some but it’s still the only yellow post out there. I-I can’t say why I went there. I-we hadn’t shopped there for years. I didn’t think anyone would ever connect me to it.”

She takes a deep breath and faces him. His eyes retreat again.

“You buried the trophy from the manufacturers’ association next to a yellow post behind the Countryside?” Mat asks. “The one on Apple and Riordan?”

“I did. So if I’m convicted, you tell this to Jessica. But only then.”

Mat’s gaze moves about the room, anywhere but at her. He is lost in thought for a long moment, blinking rapidly, eyes narrowing. “Okay. If it ever comes to it, I can tell her about that. I’m-let’s find something to eat.”

Allison takes a step toward him. “You’re the only person who knows this,” she says. “I haven’t even told my lawyer. If this got out-if anyone found out-”

“Allison.” He stops on his way to the kitchen but does not look at her. She senses a tightening in his posture.

“I won’t tell a soul,” he assures her.