Never Tell a Lie Page 18

  “You mean did we…? Was there…? No way. But not because of her. Because, believe me, she was asking for it.”

  Ivy winced. His smug tone turned her stomach. Melinda had probably never gotten drunk before. Boys were paying attention to her for what had to be the first time ever. No big deal for a bunch of football jocks, but for Melinda it had to have been a very big deal.

  Theo exhaled sharply. “It was obvious that Melinda had the hots for David. He was nice to her, for God’s sake. Big mistake.”

  “So you’re saying that at the yard sale David took Melinda inside because she wanted to talk to him about something that happened back in high school?”

  “Exactly. Is that insane or what? Only…nothing happened.”

  Theo sat forward and looked at himself in the rearview mirror. He ran his palm against the hair on the side of his head, then looked over his shoulder as Jody pulled Ivy’s car into the driveway.

  He turned to Ivy. “Ivy, David said she was acting crazy. Out of control. He told you all about it, how she got all little-girlie. Smashed that glass. She was furious when he told her that she was…mistaken about what had happened. Which is pretty funny, actually, because he got so drunk he passed out. I practically had to carry him home. And she was so drunk that…” He chuckled. “Anyway, I’m surprised either of them remembers anything at all, other than the hangover they had when they woke up. Must have been a corker.”

  Theo let himself out of the car. Ivy waited while he came around to the passenger side, feeling as if she’d been slugged in the back with a sandbag. Yes, David had told her about Melinda’s meltdown in the attic, but he certainly hadn’t told her everything. He’d glossed over Melinda’s accusations, just as Theo was glossing over them now.

  Theo opened the car door for her. The rain had stopped.

  “Know what I thought when I first heard they’d found a body?” he said. Ivy bit back the repulsion she felt as she took Theo’s offered hand and heaved herself from the car. “That it was Melinda, and she’d committed suicide. And I’ll tell you something else. I just hope she is dead. Because if she’s not, she’s gone over the edge, and that’s big trouble.”

  For whom? What if Melinda turned up alive and well and eager to tell the police what had happened at Kezey’s? Tell them her version, that is. Even if some statute of limitations had expired and it was too late to press charges, the story would come out. David would find himself at the center of a scandal. There would be questions about Theo’s role. The would-be state senator could have his reputation sullied by innuendo that he might never be able to disprove. His political career would be DOA.

  Jody walked down the driveway toward Ivy. “I opened the side door for you. Left your keys in the kitchen. You okay? No more labor pains?”

  “Not a twinge,” Ivy said. “I’m fine.”

  “You don’t look fine to me. You want us to come in for a bit before Theo drives me home?”

  Ivy held up her hands to ward off any more offers. “No. Thanks.” She might have welcomed Jody’s company, but the last thing she wanted was to spend another minute with Theo. “Really. All I want to do is go inside and get some sleep.”

  She started up the driveway.

  “I’ll have my cell turned on.” Jody’s voice followed her.

  Ivy was about to climb the steps to the side door when the sound of barking from behind Mrs. Bindel’s house brought her to a halt. Crap. Once again she’d forgotten all about the damn dog.

  “Jody!” she called out, turning back.

  Jody trotted halfway up the drive. “Tuck you in?”

  “Could you do me a big favor and carry in that big bag of dog food that’s in my car? Leave it for me in the kitchen. I promised I’d look after Phoebe, Mrs. Bindel’s dog.”

  Ivy crossed into the neighboring yard. Phoebe’s barking turned to pitiful mewling yelps as she approached. The dog had gotten herself tangled in the rope that tethered her to the clothesline. Phoebe couldn’t even reach the plastic tub of water Ivy had left there.

  Ivy untied the rope from the clothesline. She lowered herself and sat cross-legged in the damp grass near the tub of water and waited for the dog to come over.

  Phoebe’s stumpy tail wagged so hard that her entire rear end rumbaed. She licked Ivy’s face, lapped up some water, and licked Ivy’s face some more. Ivy untangled the rope, then put her arms around Phoebe and buried her face in the dog’s warm, moist coat. Dogs were great for comic relief.

  Ivy rolled onto her knees, then stood. Phoebe tried to pull her toward Mrs. Bindel’s house. After a brief tug-of-war, the dog surrendered and let Ivy lead her to her house. Inside, Ivy untied the rope from Phoebe’s collar and left it coiled around a doorknob in the mudroom. She dropped her purse onto the kitchen counter, beside where Jody had left her keys. The bag of dog food was on the floor.

  While Phoebe sniffed her way around the kitchen, Ivy slit open the bag and scooped some pellets into a bowl. She had no idea whether she should add some water, but she did, mixed it around, and set the bowl on the floor.

  Phoebe came over and immediately started to eat. After a few moments, she gave Ivy an anxious look, rolls of velvety flesh bunched up over her eyes, and then went back to eating.

  Ivy returned to the mudroom. Click, click, click. The sound of claws on the floor as the dog followed her. She double-locked the side door, then leaned down and scratched Phoebe behind the ears.

  The truth was, she was glad not to be alone. Equally glad to have a companion who didn’t require conversation.

  Ivy poured herself a glass of orange juice and drank while Phoebe ate. She’d drunk half when she registered the bitter-tasting edge. She dumped out the rest, rinsed the glass, and put it in the sink.

  With Phoebe trailing behind, she walked through the downstairs. In the front hall, Bessie was facing forward, as she should be. The front door was double-locked. The living-room shades were drawn and the room in perfect order. Couch cushions were plumped and arranged. No newspapers or magazines had been left on the floor or coffee table.

  Ivy yawned. She really was bone tired.

  Upstairs, Ivy poked her head into each of the bedrooms. Then she stripped off the clothes she’d had on yesterday, too, and put on fresh underwear and sweats. She brushed her teeth, scrubbing away a nasty aftertaste that lingered in her mouth from the orange juice.

  Bed beckoned. But she knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep. She’d be churning, rehashing Theo’s words: Nothing happened. The bald truth was, she didn’t believe him. Theo was a spinner, a consummate politician even when he wasn’t running for office—someone who liked to neatly tuck in the ragged edges of messy reality.

  In any event, she’d caught David in yet another evasion. How much more will it take before you stop protecting him? Maybe Detective Blanchard was right. Sure, physical evidence could easily have been planted by someone trying to implicate David, but over and over, David had lied. He’d finally admitted that he’d hidden the bag with the knife in it. Fetal tissue—it made Ivy nauseous just thinking about it.

  What if the paternal DNA turned out to be David’s? David and Melinda? Impossible—that’s what Ivy would have said a few days ago. Even now, at her core, beyond reason, beyond that growing body of physical evidence, she was convinced that David was not a murderer. If one piece could be disproved, the rest would crumble.

  That ticket to the Cayman Islands—she’d seen the evidence with her own eyes that it had been booked from their computer. Or had she? Visits to a couple of travel Web sites hardly seemed conclusive.

  Ivy went into her office and settled in at her desk. She jiggled the mouse, and the screen lit up. Phoebe wormed her way underneath and lay at Ivy’s feet. Ivy yawned and opened the browser window.

  She clicked the HISTORY button. Clicked TUESDAY. Again she saw the list of sites visited, in reverse chronological order. Caymanislands.com was followed by Travelocity.com. They were sandwiched between MapQuest before and the Channel 7 Web site after.
>
  That was three days ago. She tried to remember. She’d slept late, not getting up until after David had left for work. The visit to MapQuest had been for driving directions to Mr. Vlaskovic’s. And she was nearly certain that she hadn’t checked the TV-news Web site until after she returned to the house following the baby shower.

  She touched her fingers to the screen, excitement stirring. Travelocity and the Cayman Islands Web site had been visited Tuesday when David was at work. It had been the same day that preparations were under way for the baby shower—his co-workers could vouch for him.

  Elated, Ivy hit PRINT SCREEN. A moment later the printer hummed into action. She grabbed the paper as it slid out. She’d take the printout to Theo, who’d show it to the judge at Monday’s bail hearing. Or even better, maybe he could request an emergency hearing before then.

  She had it, proof that David was no flight risk. Proof that someone had come into this office on Tuesday and used her laptop to purchase a plane ticket in David’s name. Proof that someone had gotten into the house, come and gone without either her or David’s realizing.

  Thank God that the next day she’d had the locks changed.

  29

  Ivy called Theo with the good news. When he didn’t pick up, she left a message. As she finished the call, a wave of exhaustion rolled over her. She needed to sleep. But first she wanted to check whether there was news.

  The local news site came up with a red banner: BREAKING NEWS! And beneath that: GRISLY DISCOVERY IN BRUSH HILLS.

  A photograph of Melinda White overlapped a larger picture showing the front of the gray bungalow, both filling the left side of the screen. Anticipation turned to queasiness as Ivy remembered the sour smell inside the home and the salt-filled tub.

  She read: “Last night police discovered the body of Gereda White, an elderly Brush Hills woman….” She scanned down. “Police said that an anonymous tip led them to the house, which Mrs. White once owned.”

  A sidebar read, “Mystery deepens around the disappearance of Mrs. White’s pregnant daughter, 33-year-old Melinda White.”

  Damn right it did. Ivy stared at the inset photo of Melinda. She looked as she had in one of the black-and-white photo-booth strips that Ivy had found in her bedroom. Jody had speculated that the second, more recent set might be of Melinda’s sister, Ruth. Ruth, who’d reported Melinda missing. Ruth, who had a rented apartment in Florida that she hadn’t been to in weeks, and who obviously was not taking care of Mom.

  Was it Ruth who’d come to their yard sale and introduced herself as Melinda? Who’d manipulated David into taking her inside and leaving her there alone? And what if by then, like her mother, Melinda was already dead?

  It made Ivy’s head hurt just thinking about it. She shut the laptop, went into her bedroom, and crawled into the unmade bed. Phoebe stood, her snout resting on the bed. The dog gave a pitiful whine. Then a yelp. The sounds perfectly expressed how Ivy felt, too.

  What the heck. Phoebe wasn’t hers for keeps, so there’d be no bad habits to break. She reached over and hauled the dog up onto the bed beside her. Phoebe circled twice before settling.

  When Ivy closed her eyes, she focused on the sliver of good news she had for David. She hoped the revelation would give those reporters something else to spin—which reminded her. She reached over and turned off the ringer on the bedside phone.

  As she drifted into sleep, she could feel Phoebe’s body, warm against her side.

  Ivy came to with a start. A steady rain thrummed at the window. She propped herself on an elbow and checked the clock. It was nearly four. She’d slept for hours and wanted nothing more than to turn over and go back to sleep, but Phoebe had other ideas. The dog stood in the doorway, whining. At least she was well housebroken.

  Ivy rolled out of bed and shoved her feet into a pair of old running shoes. Phoebe led the way downstairs. Between the rain and having all the shades pulled, it was dark in the house. Still groggy, Ivy got the rope from the side door and tied it to Phoebe’s collar. She grabbed a rain slicker from the mudroom and used the spare key hanging alongside the door to let herself out.

  Light pulsed in the sky. Ivy counted to twenty before the distant groan of thunder followed. The overcast sky provided welcome cover as she and Phoebe walked the edges of her own and Mrs. Bindel’s yards. Drizzle hit her face like tiny needles as she waited for Phoebe to do her business.

  On the way back, Ivy paused for a moment at the spot where she’d found Mrs. Bindel’s inert body. She remembered that angry, livid bruise on her neighbor’s pale scalp and the good-size rock that Detective Blanchard had found nearby.

  She shivered and hurried back inside.

  Ivy toweled off the dog in the mudroom, locked the door, and hung the spare key back on its hook. She was halfway through the dark kitchen when she stopped. Turned back.

  Something was off.

  She flipped on the switch, and the overhead fixture flooded the room with light. Her purse was not on the kitchen counter, where she was sure she’d left it. Her keys were gone, too.

  Instead, on the counter sat one of her grandmother’s red glass dessert plates. On it lay the newspaper clipping of Ivy and David’s engagement announcement.

  A siren went off in Ivy’s head. Someone was in the house. She had to get out of here. But she couldn’t take her eyes off the clipping. Yellow and curled, it looked like the copy she’d found in Melinda’s bedroom at her mother’s house.

  But how could it be? Hadn’t Jody gathered up all that material from Ivy’s hospital bed and burned it?

  Ivy stepped closer. Where her own face had been cut out, another face now filled the hole. She turned the clipping over and ripped away the photograph that had been taped onto the back.

  It took her a moment to process what she was seeing—the face was in a frame from one of the photo-booth strips she’d found in Melinda’s old bedroom.

  A low growl sent a chill rippling across Ivy’s back. Phoebe stood in the doorway to the mudroom, teeth bared and snarling, staring past Ivy toward the dining room.

  Ivy turned. A figure emerged from the shadows. The woman who’d been at their yard sale stood there, staring at Ivy. Was this Melinda? Ruth?

  Raw terror clawed its way up Ivy’s throat. “Get out of my house.”

  The woman stepped into the bright kitchen. She was not pregnant.

  “Keep away from me!”

  The woman took a step closer.

  “Why are you doing this?”

  The woman’s gaze dropped to Ivy’s belly. “Because that’s my baby.”

  Ivy backed up fast, banging against the kitchen counter. She grabbed one of the knives from the block and held it out in front of her, the tip wavering, the blade catching the light.

  “Stay away!” Ivy screamed.

  She registered the pink scrubs that the woman had on—just like that nurse who’d come to check on her in the middle of the night, the nurse who’d worn a surgical mask over her face and left behind her the scent of latex and Opium perfume. She hadn’t been there to check on Ivy. She’d been looking for Ivy’s baby.

  The woman snagged a dish towel that was hanging on the stove.

  Phoebe growled and scrabbled back into the mudroom. Before Ivy realized what had happened, the woman snapped the dish towel at her. Her hand stung, and the knife skittered across the floor. Ivy plunged after it.

  The woman grabbed Ivy from behind and kicked the knife, sending it spinning across the room.

  Ivy kicked and screamed, but she was held tight. They stood there, locked together. The cloying scent of Opium seemed to pulse off the woman in waves.

  Ivy gagged and retched. Bile backed up in her throat.

  The phone rang. Then it rang again.

  “That’s my friend.” Ivy somehow managed to squeeze out the words. “Checking on me. If I don’t answer—” The phone rang a third time. The woman tightened her grip. “—She’ll know something’s wrong.” Ivy could barely breathe.

  The
phone rang once more, and the answering machine picked up. Ivy’s surly message played: “There’s no one here to take your call.” The beep sounded.

  “Mrs. Rose?” Ivy didn’t recognize the formal woman’s voice. “This is Phyllis Stone from the Norfolk County Crime Lab. I understand you’ve agreed to come in and give a DNA sample? A detective from the Brush Hills Police Department asked me to call you and schedule an appointment.”

  That bastard Blanchard—was this his idea? A new way to harass her?

  The voice continued. “Call me and let me know when you want to come. It’ll only take a minute. We’re open nine to five. And be sure to bring a photo ID.”

  If Ivy could just get to the phone, knock it off the hook. Scream.

  Ivy tried to buck, to heave the woman off her, barely registering the caller giving an address and a phone number. She jabbed an elbow into the woman’s stomach and twisted free. The woman shrieked and staggered sideways.

  Ivy grabbed for the phone, but it was too late. Dial tone buzzed in her ear. She started to punch in 911, but the woman unplugged the phone cable from the wall.

  Ivy dropped the receiver, grabbed the teakettle from the stove, and brought it down as hard she could on the woman’s head. Then she raced into the mudroom. The spare key was there, hanging from the hook by the door.

  She felt movement behind her. Hurry!

  She jammed the key in the lock, turned it. She had the door barely open when the woman’s forearm clamped around her neck. Before Ivy could resist, she was shoved hard against the door, slamming it shut. The sound seemed to explode in her skull.

  Something stuck into Ivy’s side—the knifepoint, she realized, pricking through the sweatshirt and into her skin. She tried to pull away. Winded and breathing heavily, the woman wrapped her arm more tightly around Ivy’s neck and twisted the knife tip against Ivy’s ribs.

  Ivy’s head throbbed, and patterns of yellow and black kaleidoscoped in front of her tightly shut eyes.

  “Lock the door and give me the key,” the woman said, her voice low.