Liar Read online

  “As needed for pain, but not more than two every twelve hours.”

  I set the bottle down. He reached over with his left hand, and squeezed mine—quickly, quietly and as if in gratitude. Nothing flirtatious about it.

  I looked into his face. Suddenly remembered his father asking similar questions twenty-some years before. Remembered the clerk growing more and more angry with Arthur’s persistent refusal to read the label. But why? Why hadn’t he just picked up the bottle and read it himself?

  Something had happened just before Arthur squeezed my mother’s hand. She had picked up the bottles and read the labels aloud.

  Comprehension finally dawned.

  “He couldn’t read,” I said softly. Travis nodded and smiled a little.

  Mistaking my meaning, the woman behind the counter first looked shocked, then turned red. “I’m so sorry, sir,” she said quietly. “I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”

  “Nor I you,” Travis said.

  He took the first pain pill at a water fountain before we left the building. I held my questions until we were in the car.

  “Your father—” I began.

  “As you guessed.”

  “Arthur was illiterate?” I said, still not believing it.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “But he had his own business!”

  “Yes. Landscaping—that was how he began, anyway. He had a wonderful sense of color and placement, loved making things grow, loved the outdoors. Even when he no longer earned most of his money that way, few things made him happier.”

  “But not being able to read! I just can’t imagine how he managed to get by!”

  “It wasn’t easy,” he said, closing his eyes, leaning his head back.

  “I’m sorry, you probably aren’t up to talking about this right now.”

  “To be honest, no, I’m not.” He yawned. “But I’ll talk more about it with you tomorrow—if you want to.” He yawned again. “You’ve got a lot to think about now, anyway,” he said drowsily.

  I started the car, pulled out of the parking lot.

  “Did my mother know?” I asked, unable to let this one question keep overnight.

  He opened his eyes, looked over at me, then watched the road for a little while before he closed them again. I thought he wasn’t going to answer. But then he said, “According to my father, yes, she did—but only after that day in the pharmacy.” He smiled sleepily. “He always spoke highly of your mother. She kept his secret.”

  “But he could have explained to my father—”

  He looked over at me again. “He was ashamed that he couldn’t read. Can’t you imagine what that was like for him? My dad knew that Patrick would blame him, not your mother, for that little squeeze of her hand. That’s exactly what happened—your father assumed he made a pass at your mother. He worried at first that she would tell Patrick the truth, and his secret would be exposed to a man who already disliked him. But your mother must have seen how painful that would have been to him, because she let my father decide whether Patrick would know or not know.” He smothered another yawn, closed his eyes again. “She never told Patrick. Never told anyone. My father admired her for that.” I thought he had fallen asleep, but then he murmured, “I wish I had known her.”

  As I drove home I thought about Arthur Spanning—my uncle, not my uncle, perhaps my uncle again. A man who preferred having my father think of him as an unprincipled sleazeball rather than as someone who was unable to read. Did he have a learning disability—something like dyslexia? Or had he simply never learned to read? I remembered the “six years” of education on the death certificate.

  I thought of my mother, keeping secrets from the rest of us, letting us think Arthur was a womanizer, letting the rift grow between our family and her sister’s husband.

  But he was a womanizer, I reminded myself. A bigamist. His illiteracy had nothing to do with that. Travis was probably right; it was impossible to imagine his parents were remarried—or whatever it would be called in this case. Why would Briana ever take him back? Because she pitied a dying man? Because of Travis?

  I looked over at my sleeping cousin, his bandaged hand lying palm up in his lap.

  That unexpectedly strong sense of protectiveness I had been feeling toward him all day resurfaced. The idea that someone had tried to harm him while he was staying at my home made me furious. I decided that if Rachel were awake when I got back to the house, I wanted to have a talk with her about the DeMonts.

  Then again, maybe it wasn’t a smart idea to bring him home. Whoever had tried to kill him knew exactly where he was staying.

  How? I wondered. How did anyone find out?

  No one other than a librarian in Mission Viejo knew that Travis was the storyteller, and she knew very little of his background. And even if she had revealed to the world that Travis was Cosmo the Storyteller, she didn’t know where I lived. For that matter, she couldn’t have been certain we were going up to the Valley Plaza Branch Library; for all she knew, I would just make a phone call to that library. Certainly no one knew he’d be coming back with us. Rachel and I hadn’t known it ourselves.

  I thought briefly of the car that had tailed us on the freeway. But not only had Rachel lost the tail, we weren’t in the same vehicle when we headed home. Where had the tail started?

  There was a Las Piernas PD patrol car sitting outside our house when I pulled into the driveway. Jack and Rachel were sitting on the front porch, talking.

  “They’re here to keep an eye on things,” Rachel said, indicating the patrol car.

  “I thought you two would be gone by now,” I said.

  “I think I’ll stick around,” Rachel said. “If you don’t mind. At least for tonight.”

  “Not at all,” I said. “I’ll put Travis on the foldout couch.”

  “Forget it!” she said. “He’s been hurt. Give him the guest-room bed. I’ll be fine on the couch.”

  “He could stay at my place,” Jack offered.

  But we both turned that idea down—we wanted to be able to keep an eye on him.

  “I wonder if he realizes he’s got a couple of mother hens looking out after him,” Jack said.

  “And what are you still doing here?” I asked.

  He laughed. “Making sure the guy Rachel hosed down doesn’t come back. Not sure those two cops in the patrol car out there would be enough to stop him from killing her.”

  Before he went home, Jack helped me rouse a very woozy Travis, and together we settled him into the guest room.

  “Frank called,” Rachel said as soon as Jack was gone. “He’ll call back later. He’s not too happy about what’s going on.”

  “You told him?” I asked.

  “You’d rather he just didn’t find you at home at two in the morning?”

  I shrugged. “I guess not. Listen, if he calls again, tell him I’ll be back in about an hour.”

  “Back? It’s almost three in the morning. Where are you going?”

  “Since I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep, I’m going to interrupt the beauty rest of the one person who might have led the bomber to my home.”

  “Oh?”

  “A society columnist for the Express.”

  “I thought you said she didn’t know your address.”

  “She doesn’t, but to keep a man happy, she might have made the effort to find out.”

  Rachel laughed. “Be careful, she may be more dangerous than you think. You know where she lives?”

  I nodded. “She throws an annual Christmas party at her place. I haven’t been to one in a couple years, but I went to enough of them in my single days to remember how to find her house.”

  “Bene,” she said. “And don’t worry, I’ll keep an eye on your cousin.”

  16

  Margot Martin didn’t live far from me, at least not in miles. But then again, back when people lived in castles, the average scullery maid never lived far from the queen. Rivo Alto Island is a world away from my neighborho
od.

  The streets of Rivo Alto crisscross over the curving canal for which the island was named. Both the man-made island and its canal were the brainchild of a turn-of-the-century developer who looked at a mudflat and saw money. He wasn’t wrong.

  Margot’s manse was one of the island’s more modern ones; someone undoubtedly tore down an older house to build it—not an uncommon practice there. As a result, you’d be hard-pressed to find another area as small as Rivo Alto crowded with so many varieties of architectural style.

  The houses are closer together than those in my neighborhood, but larger, and those situated along the canal, as Margot’s is, each have private docks. The boats have plenty of space, but it’s tougher to get around on Rivo Alto in a car—I ended up double-parking in the narrow lane in back of Margot’s place. At three in the morning, I figured I’d be fine until the paperboy tried to squeeze by.

  On the way over, I’d thought about everything I knew about Margot Martin. It wasn’t all that much, even though we had worked on the same paper for a number of years.

  I knew that Margot had become a widow about ten years ago, and that the late Mr. Martin left her a bundle. She was his second wife; he was a widower when they met. She spent her thirties as a corporate wife, serving as Martin’s hostess at numerous business gatherings, keeping the peace among the other wives at company golf tournaments.

  After several decades of jet lag, intense pressure, rich food and three-martini lunches began to take a toll on Martin, Margot tried to help her husband cope with an attempt at a healthy lifestyle—but all the granola and bran muffins in the world couldn’t undo the damage. One evening Martin—having slipped out of the house while Margot was at a Junior League meeting—keeled over in the yacht club bar, breaking, as he fell, a bottle of single-malt Scotch that was nearly as old as he was, ensuring that his passing was accompanied by genuine grief.

  Before she became a corporate wife, Margot had briefly held a part-time job on a small regional magazine. When our previous society editor retired, she told our editor that Margot was “an experienced journalist” and asked that Margot take her place. I’m sure one look around the newsroom convinced him that no one else had the wardrobe to do the job.

  Being a society writer is not an easy job; Margot often attends five events a week, sometimes two a night, usually dressed to the nines. The circles she moves in are relatively small and all are closely interrelated; no little amount of diplomacy is required when dealing—week after week—with Mrs. X who is bitter about not having that photograph of her in her newest gown in the paper, or Mr. Y who is angry that his daughter wasn’t in the debutante ball photo, or Mr. & Mrs. Z who weren’t mentioned in the article on the Assistance League fund-raiser. One of the curses of newspaper work is that everyone’s an editor—or thinks he should be. In her case, it’s compounded by constantly dealing with people who are sure of nothing so much as their own-importance.

  But whatever sympathy or understanding I might usually be able to muster for Margot was gone that night. It had been a hellish day, and I was fairly sure she must have led the bomber to my home.

  Her house was dark. As I came up the walk to the front door, Margot’s little Yorkies started yapping.

  I smiled to myself. Things were looking up.

  I knocked on the door. No answer, but I could hear the snickety-snick of Yorkie toenails scrambling across the marble entryway. The barking got louder, and then there was the telltale thump of a full eight pounds of ferocious protection launching itself against the door. Judging by the sounds, one of them was trying to shoulder it open, making a miniature leaping canine battering ram of himself, while the other was trying to scratch his way through the wood with forelegs that were only slightly slower than a circular saw.

  “Nice doggies!” I said.

  The barking became frenzied.

  A light came on at the house next door. Still nothing at Margot’s place. I rang the bell. The dogs went ape wire.

  Above the doggie din, I heard Margot’s phone ring. Apparently she heard it, too. Soon lights came on at her house, then went off at the neighbor’s. “Hush,” I heard her call, to absolutely no purpose.

  The porch light came on. I already knew she had a video camera set up at the front door, so I looked toward the camera and said, “Open up, Margot, we need to talk. Now.”

  “Irene?” Barking in the background. Yep.

  “Quiet!” I heard her snap at the dogs. They lowered their protests to growling. “Just a moment.”

  I heard her lead them away, probably shutting them up in the downstairs bedroom. She came back, apparently a little more awake and ready to do battle. Her voice was less sleepy now.

  “Irene, what’s gotten into you?” she said reprovingly. “This is no hour to be calling on anyone.”

  “Open up, Margot.”

  “Leave me alone. Go on, don’t make me call the police on you.”

  “Please do call them, Margot. I’d like for them to know how the person who planted a bomb in front of my house learned where I live.”

  The front door flew open. “A bomb!”

  But I was speechless. The thin woman standing barefooted in front of me was clutching the folds of a blue cotton robe; peeking out beneath it was a worn red flannel nightgown with little lambs on it. She had not brushed her short, not-from-nature-blond hair and—most startling—had some kind of white cream all over her face, everywhere but around her eyes. She looked like a poorly designed Day of the Dead figurine. This couldn’t be Margot, could it?

  “Well,” I said, when I came out of my daze, “at least I know he’s not spending the night.”

  Her hand flew to her head and she said, “Come inside.” As she shut the door, she motioned toward a leopard-skin fainting couch in the front room. “Have a seat. I’ll be right back down.” She paused halfway up the staircase and said, “Make yourself a drink if you like.”

  “Mind if I turn on some lights?”

  “Not at all. I’ll only be a minute.”

  The dogs had switched to an alternative schedule of barking—sporadic outbursts of barking between lengthening interludes of mere growling.

  Although she had said she’d only be a minute, I knew Margot wouldn’t come back down until she had put herself together, a project that might take some time. I felt a moment’s hesitation over what I was contemplating, then thought about Travis and found my resolve. I strolled across her white carpet and out of the front room, trying to remember where I had once seen an office on the first floor.

  Trying not to be distracted by the view of moonlight on the canal, or the design of her big open kitchen, I turned to the right, walked down a hallway and opened a door next to a laundry room. A bathroom. I started to close the door, had an inspiration and went to the medicine cabinet first. I found a small box of bandages there and dropped it into my purse.

  The dogs started barking again; I began to appreciate the cover their noise provided.

  I closed the door, retraced my steps down the hall, turned left this time, and found the office. It was clean and orderly, and during the day it probably had a beautiful view of the canal. The view at night would have been better with a brighter moon; there was just enough light to see Margot’s sailboat tied up at the dock. I made myself concentrate on the task at hand. I searched the drawers of the small desk. I looked through a stack of loose papers and invitations, but found nothing of interest.

  I had been in this office once before, at one of the Christmas parties, when Margot was giving the grand tour of the house. But this time, all the equipment was new; as I looked around the office, I saw that Margot went in for the latest available models. For the first time, I envied her wealth. The room wasn’t outfitted on a part-time reporter’s salary—this equipment was better than what we worked with in the newsroom. There was a three-line speakerphone on the desk. Next to the desk, on a carved mahogany cart, was a plain-paper fax machine; a matching cart held a copying machine. There was a beautiful
computer work station with a fancy printer on it. I checked the phone lines running between the phone, computer and fax. The second and third lines were hooked up to the fax and computer.

  I looked for an answering machine but didn’t see one; maybe it was in another room. I thought of turning the computer on, but decided that even with this high-tech office, Margot wasn’t the type to make computer notes about her boyfriends. I was about to leave when I noticed that one of the line-in-use lights on the phone was lit. Line one. I hurried over to the phone, pressed the mute button so that nothing would be heard from my extension, and picked up the receiver. Whatever number she had called at three in the morning had already answered, and I was only in time to hear a male voice saying,“… or enter your phone number and then press the pound key, and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible.” As I listened, I fumbled in my purse, trying to find a little tape recorder I sometimes use for notes and interviews. There was a long tone, a set of quick beeps, and then the sound of Margot dialing again. I tried to memorize the tune the tones played as she dialed. It was eight tones long. A mechanical voice said, “Thank you,” and disconnected. Margot hung up. I quickly followed suit.