Page 12 of Lies He Told Me

“Question: How do a lawyer with individual one-time clients and a bar owner with small profit margins manage to build a new house that must have set them back a million dollars? In cash, no less — no mortgage?”

He hears the door slam on Darlene’s car. He reaches under his seat and removes the hammer.

Darlene takes the walkway up to the pub’s side entrance, adjusting the purse strap over her shoulder. She’s tall and fit at age forty, roughly the same build as Marcie Bowers, who is the same age. Pretty, too, he thinks as Darlene enters the pub.

Not like Marcie, though. Marcie is … striking. Not just those eyes, those sculpted features, but the way she carried herself this morning as she hustled around the town square searching for her dog, surely stressed and hurried but burying all that under an implacable expression, even managing to be polite to Tommy, seated on the bench.

Formidable,Tommy thinks. That’s the word. Marcie Bowers is formidable.

Tommy reaches into the glove compartment and removes a long rusty nail he found at a construction site down the street. He gets out of his rental car, hearing the vague sounds of music, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, from the pub. He walks over to Darlene’s Jeep in the rear of the lot,looking around for anyone else, but they’re all inside boozing it up and socializing.

He stops at Darlene’s Jeep. Glances around again. Then he squats down and hammers the nail into the rear driver’s-side tire.

EIGHT

DARLENE FARRADAY BURSTS INTO a laugh, liking Tommy’s wisecrack, though her amusement is probably fueled more by alcohol than by Tommy’s sense of humor.

“I haven’t done this since … wow, since college,” she says. “Getting food after the bars.”

Tommy and Darlene are at a truck-stop diner just off the interstate, only a few blocks away from Hemingway’s Pub. Darlene’s Jeep and Tommy’s rental sedan are the only vehicles in the lot that don’t have at least eight wheels.

“I’m not keeping you up, I hope?”

“The salon opens late on Tuesdays,” she says. “So a Monday night is like a Saturday night to me.”

“A salon? You do hair?”

Darlene Farraday is the co-owner of A Hair Out of Place, a salon she opened fourteen years ago. But Tommy’s not supposed to know that.

“Sure do. I could give you a free haircut before you leavetown if you’d like. I’d offer to color it, too, but I wouldn’t dream of changing that hair of yours.”

“Ah, yes, the carrot top. A curse more than a blessing.”

“Do you have any idea how many of my clients would kill to have red hair? It’s distinctive. Especially on a man.”

Flirting with me, Darlene?Tommy can’t tell. She’s divorced, another thing he isn’t supposed to know. He wouldn’t mind going a round or two with her, especially if it would loosen her tongue.

“Well, I lucked out tonight,” he says. “I can’t find much for background on Marcie Bowers or David Bowers. And here I run into a sorority sister of Marcie’s.”

“I think I’m the one who lucked out,” she says. “I wouldn’t have the first idea how to change a tire.”

“Oh, that was nothing.”

“It wasn’t nothing to me. Not at one in the morning. But I’m not sure I’ve been much help about Marcie. We aren’t in touch as much as we used to be. All I can tell you is what I already said. She was super smart and serious, and she wanted out of HG.”

Right, but the way Darlene’s saying it — same way she said it earlier, when they first discussed Marcie — suggests resentment. Like Marcie thought she was too good for the town or something.

“But shegotout,” he says. “And then she came back.”

“She came back because her mother was dying and her father was already gone. Basically, hospice care for her mother.”

“Right, but then she stayed. That’s what I find interesting.She didn’t go back to Chicago. She stayed in Hemingway Grove.”

Darlene shrugs. “Lot of people end up back here after exploring the world for a while. It’s a good place to raise kids.”

Tommy sits back in his chair. “Unfortunately, that’s not interesting.”

“It’s not … interesting?”

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