Page 8 of The Lie Maker

“You can’t drive yourself crazy second-guessing the things you should or shouldn’t have done. You have to— Hello.”

Something had caught Lana’s eye. Her wall-mounted flat-screen TV was on and tuned to the local eleven o’clock newscast. Lana always had some news station running in the background. The set was on mute, but now she wanted to hear what was going on.

Carrying a slice, she went over to the coffee table, grabbed the remote, and upped the volume.

“—and after the break, the latest on that missing judge,” the female anchor said.

“Want to see what they’ve got on this,” she said, putting the set back on mute.

“A missing judge?”

She waved the question away. “And nothing from Harry?”

“If he’d had any nibbles on the book he’d have let me know.”

“You need a new agent.”

We’d been over this before. Just because Harry wasn’t with one of the big literary agencies, she thought he wasn’t up to much. Granted, he hadn’t represented a lot of big names, but at least he’d managed to sell my first two novels.

I walked to the window to get a better look at the planes taking off and landing, but then found my gaze drawn to the street, watching people going about their business. It was late, and there weren’t that many. Someone stopped to look up at the building, then kept on walking.

“You’ve got that look,” Lana said.

“What look?” I asked, turning to look at her.

“You get it all the time. We’ll be sitting in a restaurant and it’s like you’re looking over my shoulder, or turning around to look over your own. Like you’re expecting somebody.”

“I don’t think I do that.”

“Well, you do.”

I didn’t want to admit she was right. It was a hard habit to break.

She unmuted the set once again. “Here it is.”

A news correspondent for the local NBC affiliate was standing on a street in Boston’s Beacon Hill neighborhood. Behind him, a stately looking two-story home that had no doubt been updated several times since it was built a couple of centuries ago. At the curb, a couple of unmarked police cars. Across the bottom of the screen, the words retired judge missing.

“This is why I was late,” Lana said. “It’s around the corner from my parents’ place. Got sent to cover it.”

The reporter was talking about some elderly gentleman who’d taken his dog out for a walk early that evening and never returned. They’d found the dog. The missing man, whose name I did not catch, had a long judicial career.

“Wouldn’t normally cover an old guy who’d wandered off from home, but he was a big deal once. Just wondered if they had anything new.”

“His family’s got to be worried sick.”

“Might be Alzheimer’s or something, although everyone I talked to said he still had all his marbles. He was out walking his dog. Oliver. The mutt showed up later, leash still attached to his collar.” She sighed, hit the mute again, and said, “Anyway. I’ll probably be doing a proper follow-up on him tomorrow that may turn into an obit if they find his body.”

And then, suddenly, she sneezed.

“Oh, shit,” she said. “I nearly blew pizza through my nose.”

She walked back over to the island. I handed her a napkin, which she used to first wipe her nose, then her chin. Another sneeze followed.

“That time of year,” she said, and went rooting about in her purse for some allergy pills. This was September, when the ragweed was in full bloom, and Lana took various over-the-counter antihistamines to hold the symptoms in check.

She sniffed a couple of times, took a shot from some nasal inhaler, tossed it back into her purse, and dabbed her watery eyes with a tissue. Allergy attack over, she reached into the fridge for another bottle of wine and was about to open it when she stopped and asked, “You staying over or are you driving?”

Part of me wanted very much to stay over, and I told her so.

---