Truth Be Told

25

Lizzie McDivitt stood on the sidewalk, half a block from the house. Just another Jamaica Plain saltbox, white, dandelion-dotted lawn, flagstones up to the screened front door. No cars in the asphalt driveway. Curtains over the front windows, closed, curtains over the second floor windows, closed, too. It could be vacant. Like it was supposed to be. Like the bank records said it was.

She fingered the keys in the pouch of her purse. Aaron’s keys. Yes, she was meeting him later, and whatever she discovered, she could easily pretend none of it happened. Didn’t have to decide that now.

She felt the sidewalk through her flat shoes, felt the humidity frizzing the ends of her hair, barely a breeze fluttered the leafy maple saplings that lined this street. Almost too hot to be outside. Maybe everyone was at a neighborhood swimming pool, or inside, grateful for air conditioning.

Maddie Kate Wendell. Why was she-and apparently a bunch of other college kids-living in that first “empty” house? Lizzie had checked the bank records on the down-low, and there was no denying it. The documentation was spot on, current and official. On paper, Maddie Kate’s house was empty.

Would this one be empty, too?

A police car screamed by, sirens wailing, blue lights whirling. Lizzie took a step back, spooked. But the cruiser was soon out of sight, the siren disappearing with it. Showed how jumpy she was, that she’d be unnerved by a cop car. She waited until her heart stopped racing.

She didn’t like loose ends. Especially when it came to numbers.

Now she was on the flagstone path, headed to the front door. A mailbox, mounted to the white siding, flapped open, but no mail was visible. No newspapers on the porch, no furniture, no sign anyone especially cared about the place, one way or the other. It did give off that shadowy hollow feeling of a vacant house, so maybe her theory was wrong. That would be a good thing.

She pushed the buzzer. No more trying keys without trying the doorbell first. She’d learned her lesson from Maddie Kate. She listened for sounds of someone inside. Nothing.

Maybe the Maddie Kate house was a mistake, and this whole “investigation” thing was a goose chase. She smiled, thinking about how a goose chase would change her evening with Aaron Gianelli. Maybe she’d buy some white wine, and some little appetizers. She’d be a regular person for once, not a-

“May I help you? Sorry, I didn’t hear you over the AC.”

The front door had opened. Lizzie, startled, took a hasty step back, almost tripping over her own feet.

Through the screen, Lizzie saw another version of Maddie Kate, this time a lanky redhead in sweatpants and a ponytail, a cell phone sticking up from her denim shirt pocket, one earbud dangling. An air conditioner hummed in the background.

“Ma’am?” the girl said. She blew on her fingernails, then looked again at Lizzie, questioning.

The screen door stayed shut.

“I’m from…” Darn. Lizzie should have prepared something, a ruse or a story, why hadn’t she done that? Well, the truth was sometimes good. Right now, the truth was about all she had.

“I’m from the bank.” Lizzie used her best customer service smile, and gestured at the door. “From customer relations. We’re here checking to see if everything is as expected. May I come in? And to confirm, can you tell me your name? Are you the one on the…” Shaky ground here. “… on the lease?”

The door opened, the girl hardly hesitating to admit a stranger. College kids.

“Oh, no,” the girl said. “I’m Mo. Mo Heedles. They told us we could have four people, and that’s really all we have. Really, it is. The other girl is here for the, um, weekend. Really.”

Mo waved Lizzie into a living room, strewn with wads of cotton and manicure implements. It smelled like polish remover and cigarette smoke. Not the safest combination. College kids.

“Mo, is it?” Clearly the girl was on the defensive, so Lizzie had some leverage here. Lizzie tried to decide whether being nice was her strategy. Or being tough.

“Maureen,” the girl said. She tugged out her other earbud, draped the thin cord around her neck. “Excuse the mess. What can I-what was your name again? And you’re from the bank?”

Lizzie would avoid the “name” question. “Yes. And we’re checking on your rent payments. Can you confirm you send them to”-it had worked before, why not try it again?-“a post office in South Boston?”

“Uh-huh,” Mo said. “Fifteenth of the month. So it’s not really due yet, right?”

“Exactly,” Lizzie said. “I don’t have anything to do with the rent, so no worries. And the term of your lease?”

“Well, we’re here for the summer. While BU’s out? We have jobs.” She waved a hand, then blew on her fingernails again.

They were a deep navy, Lizzie saw. With white edging along the tips. “So it was perfect that this place was gonna be sold, you know, like, in the fall,” Mo was saying. “Right when we’d be eligible to go back to the dorms.”

“I see.” This girl wouldn’t know what was typical and what wasn’t. Lizzie could risk pushing it. “Might I check one clause on your lease? It may be we’re charging too much rent, that’s why I’m here.”

“Awesome!” The girl seemed interested for the first time. “I’m not sure, but it might be in…” She yanked open a drawer in a sideboard-the surface littered with unopened mail-then stopped, holding her hands up as if she’d been arrested.

“Ah, bummer. My nails,” she said. “I can’t look through all this stuff, because…” She held her fingers up, showing her careful polish job.

“I’m happy to check, if you like,” Lizzie said. Should she paw through this girl’s drawer? Mo had offered. And there might be the piece of paper that would answer all her questions. “I know what our leases look like, of course. I’ll be able to tell you instantly if we owe you money.”

“Awesome,” Mo said. “Knock yourself out.”

Peter’s cell phone rang, vibrating across the console of the Jeep, hitting against Jane’s huge iced coffee. Whoever was on the other end, he’d find it easier to answer the phone than Jane’s insistent questions. He’d regretted the “can you keep a secret” remark the minute he said it-his usual lawyer training thrown spectacularly off course by the disturbing possibility that Gordon Thorley was indeed the Lilac Sunday killer.

He reached for his phone, feeling for it, keeping his eyes on the increasingly exasperating I-93 traffic. What if it was Thorley? Making his one phone call from the police department?

The screen said caller ID blocked. Thorley. Damn. Jane was eyeing him inquisitively. With her in the car, it would be difficult to keep anything confidential.

But Jane was digging into her totebag. She took out her own phone, popped in her earbuds, started punching buttons. “Don’t mind me,” she was saying. “I’ll check my messages.”

Peter’s phone rang again.

They’d never get to Thorley’s place at this rate. Thorley hadn’t been at his apartment earlier, Bing Sherrey had made that abundantly clear, so maybe there was no reason to hurry. Unless-unless Thorley returned home, unaware of the tumult that now surrounded him. In that case, Peter better arrive before the cops descended. Thorley’d give himself up, no question.

This’d be precisely what Thorley would hope for, in a crazy way. Even if he wasn’t guilty. If Thorley could get himself arrested, it would be what he’d wanted from the start.

Suicide by cop, everyone knew about that these days, headlines describing the trapped rats who’d decided-in some insane last stand-to go down in a gun battle, make the police kill them, in some misguided effort to-

Another ring.

Peter yanked the steering wheel, changing lanes, trying to get ahead of the idiot in the Toyota. Maybe this wasn’t suicide by cop. Maybe it was-worse, if that could be imagined.

To convince the cops he was the Lilac Sunday killer, did Thorley kill someone else?

Did Peter’s zealous representation of an innocent-until-proven-guilty client push that client to kill another victim?

In which case-Peter was as guilty as Thorley.

If Thorley was guilty.

He hit ANSWER before the next ring ended.

Someone from the bank had already been here? This freckle-faced college girl standing behind the screen door had told Aaron someone was here this morning. About the rent. Aaron processed this new information, trying to decide if he was screwed or confused.

It could only be Ackerman. But why would Ackerman visit this particular house? This place was on Aaron’s list, no question, and the tenants sent the rent checks, written to “cash,” to Aaron’s P.O. box in South Boston. This check had not been deposited on time and being in arrears was not tolerated. But there was clearly more to this than an overdue rent bill.

Standing on the front porch, Aaron pretended to check his notes, then pretended to check the house number on the doorjamb, giving himself some time to concoct a plausible explanation. The best defense is a good offense.

“Yes, of course,” he said. “Sometimes we duplicate efforts, can’t be avoided. What did they say?”

The girl shrugged, yanking down her thin white T-shirt, crossed one flip-flop over the other. Even through the mesh of the screen, he could see her cutoffs were impossibly short. Aaron tried not to look.

“Not much,” she said. “Asked for my name, I think. And where we were sending the rent? Something like that.”

“Which is what again? Your name?” Aaron asked. Might as well keep track of who he was dealing with.

“Maddie. Kate. Maddie Kate Wendell,” she said. “Is something wrong?”

Aaron wrote her name on his clipboarded notepad. People always fell for clipboards, they were so official, a perfect disguise. If a stranger came to his front door? Stood on the porch asking questions? He’d never give his name, or anything else. But when the bank asked, people talked. Luckily for him.

“We definitely paid, I wrote the check myself.” The girl, Maddie, was frowning now. She stood on one foot, then the other, then put the sole of one foot against her leg, like a gawky stork. “Maybe it’s like, held up at the post office. You all have never been here before. Now, there’s like two people in one day. Listen, sir, we paid. Are we still gonna be able to live here when-?”

“And then? The bank person?” Aaron interrupted, needing to get to the bottom of this. Had Ackerman tried to get these tenants to pay him? Directly? Why? That’d be a bitch. If Ackerman was trying to screw him? What an asshole. Good thing he’d come to get the scoop. What an asshole. “I mean, did you give him the check?”

“Him?” the girl said.

“The other bank guy,” Aaron said. Was this Maddie an idiot? Or maybe… in on it? Somehow skimming off the rent money, or sharing it with Ackerman, in some under-the-table way?

“It wasn’t a guy,” the girl said. “It was a woman.”