Puppet Read online

  “You were remarried. To a wonderful man you loved very much. You had a little girl.”

  “I suffered from postpartum depression.”

  “Well, isn’t that convenient,” Amanda scoffs.

  “It was anything but convenient, I assure you.”

  “Interesting you’ve never mentioned it before.”

  “Times were different then. It wasn’t something we discussed. Not like today.”

  “The times, they hadn’t changed yet,” Amanda says, repeating her mother’s phrase.

  Gwen nods. “And then Rod tracked me down, and he threatened me, and it was just too much, I guess.”

  Amanda stares at her mother in openmouthed disbelief. “Too much bullshit, you mean.”

  “Amanda …,” Ben pleads.

  “Who the hell do you think you’re talking to, Mother? The police? You seriously expect us to believe this crap?”

  Her mother turns away, says nothing.

  “You want to know why we don’t believe it?” Amanda bangs her fist on the table, reclaiming her mother’s attention. “Because it doesn’t make any sense.”

  “I’m sorry you feel that way.”

  “Not only doesn’t it make any sense, it doesn’t explain what you were doing with this.” Amanda holds up the photograph of Rodney Tureck and his daughter, waves it in front of her mother’s face. “What were you doing with this picture, Mother? How did you get it?”

  In response, her mother rises slowly to her feet. “I’m afraid I’m feeling very tired. You’ll have to excuse me.” She walks to the door and knocks for the guard.

  “This isn’t over,” Amanda says to her mother’s back, watching it stiffen.

  Then the door opens, and the guard leads her mother from the room.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  “DO you believe that?” Amanda whispers between clenched teeth as she charges down the prison corridor, Ben at her side. “Not only did she know the man, she was married to him! For ten fucking years! Do you believe that?”

  “I think we should wait to discuss this until we’re in the car.” Ben nods toward the guard watching them from behind the glass partition near the front entrance.

  “She stole a hundred thousand dollars from the man!”

  “I really think we should wait—”

  “She was a goddamned drug addict!”

  “Amanda—”

  “First we have no motive for the shooting. Now we have nothing but motives.”

  “Is there a problem here?” A guard materializes, attracted by the commotion. He emerges from a distant wall as if by magic, ambling toward them, one hand hovering above the gun in his holster.

  “No, Officer.” Ben’s fingers dig right through Amanda’s parka into the flesh of her arm as he maneuvers her toward the front door. “No problem.”

  “She called me sweetheart!” Amanda pushes open the door to the parking lot and marches through. Then she stops, spins around on her heels, and bursts into a flood of angry tears. “Who the hell is this woman?”

  Ben nods understanding, although his eyes are a mirror of her own confusion.

  I could really use your arms around me right now, Amanda thinks, swaying toward him.

  His right hand reaches for her. But instead of drawing her into a comforting embrace, he merely takes her elbow and guides her through the thick slush of the parking lot, as if they are wading through potentially treacherous ocean waves, the keys to his white Corvette already extended between his fingers. “Are you all right?” he asks, once they are settled inside the front seat, the engine of the old car spewing streamers of noxious fumes into the already gray air.

  “I guess.”

  “What did you think of her story?”

  “I think that for a psychopath, she’s a surprisingly bad liar.”

  “You think everything she said was a lie?”

  Amanda shakes her head. “I think she was married to Rodney Tureck. I think he was a con man who cheated on her and stole from her father. I think she might even have stolen that money back. After that, it gets kind of murky.”

  “There’s definitely a lot she’s not telling us.”

  “So how do we find out what it is?”

  Ben takes a moment to deliberate. Amanda watches his eyes dart back and forth across the car’s front windshield, as if he were reading from an invisible list of options. “We do exactly what you told your mother we’d do if she didn’t level with us.” He pauses, waits for her mind to catch up.

  “We pay a visit to Hayley Mallins,” Amanda says quietly, then buckles her seat belt and settles in for the ride.

  There is an accident on the Gardiner Expressway—a trailer-truck has jackknifed and is taking up all the eastbound lanes—and as a result, it takes Ben and Amanda almost two hours to return to the downtown core. This is worse than I-95, Amanda thinks, but doesn’t say, because in truth nothing is worse than I-95. And besides, to say anything at all would be difficult, considering how loudly Ben is playing the car radio. A familiar signal, she recognizes with a nod of her head. It means he doesn’t want to talk. It means he wants to be alone with his thoughts, or possibly that he doesn’t want to think at all. Amanda remembers this about Ben from their years together, and she smiles, wishing she could block everything out so easily. For a while she tries, silently repeating a mantra she learned from her friend Ellie, who once paid over $1,000 for a four-day course in Transcendental Meditation. Kir-rell, kir-rell, kir-rell. But either because she is too impatient, or because it is Ellie’s mantra and not her own, and Ellie has betrayed some kind of oath by divulging it, the mantra doesn’t work. Kir-rell, kir-rell. After only half a minute, Amanda is back in that awful, airless little room with her mother, and her mother is telling her she was married to Rodney Tureck, aka John Mallins, for more than a decade—kir-rell, kir-rell—that he’d cheated her father out of his life savings—kir-rell, kir-ell!—that she’d stolen it back—kir-rell, kir-rell—that he’d threatened her—kir-rell, kir-rell!—and that her subsequent depression threw her into the nightmare world of anti-depressant drugs. Kir-rell, kir-rell, kir-rell!!!

  Fucking hell is more like it.

  Amanda abandons the mantra. It floats, like a sigh, on her breath, forming a cloud on the windshield. Somewhere along the way, her mother’s story loses the ring of truth.

  The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, Amanda thinks wearily. “Anything but the truth,” she says out loud, glancing over at Ben when she realizes she’s said these words out loud. But either he hasn’t heard her or he’s pretending not to, having listened to enough of her frustrated ramblings during the first hour of the drive back into the city. Now he sits staring straight ahead, calmly advancing when he can, and tapping his fingers against the steering wheel to the ferocious beat of the rock music on the radio. Coldplay, she thinks, but isn’t sure. In truth, she’s lost touch with most of the music of her generation.

  Don’t tell me you actually like this stuff? she remembers Sean demanding, before switching the channel on her car radio from rock to classical without even asking. At least it was better than the awful country music he liked to listen to. This is America, he’d say over her vociferous protestations, singing along with a chorus that invariably had something to do with cheating women and pickup trucks. This is the heartland.

  This is crap, she’d think. But four years into their marriage and she was singing the chorus right along with him. “There’s hope for you yet,” Sean had joked. Maybe that’s why she’d felt such a pressing need to leave. Country music ruined my second marriage, she decides now with a chuckle. Somebody should write a country song about that.

  Except ultimately, of course, it wasn’t the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but. Their marriage had failed not because of conflicting tastes in music or movies, the difference in their ages, or even their opposing ideas with regard to starting a family. No, their marriage was doomed from the moment she said I do. Because the simple truth, the whole truth, and n
othing but the truth was that she didn’t.

  Amanda closes her eyes, sees her mother’s face. I was married to the man for more than ten years. Obviously, multiple marriages run in the family, she thinks, laughing out loud.

  “Something funny?” Ben asks, lowering the volume on the radio.

  “Not really.”

  He nods as if this makes perfect sense.

  By the time they arrive at the Four Seasons hotel, the late-afternoon sky is already sour with the threat of night. “You really think this is a good idea?” Amanda asks, feeling strangely reluctant, even a little squeamish, about confronting Hayley Mallins.

  Ben hands his car keys to the valet as they enter the lobby. “You have any better ones?”

  Amanda glances toward the crowded lobby bar to their left. “I could use a drink.”

  “Definitely a better idea.” They pass the comfortable enclave where her mother sat waiting to gun down her former husband, then climb the few steps leading to the bar proper, where they settle into a small table by the window. “What’ll it be?” Ben asks.

  “Some peach-raspberry tea,” Amanda says as a waiter approaches.

  Ben laughs. “One peach-raspberry tea and one glass of very dry red wine,” he tells the young man before turning his attention back to Amanda. “You never cease to amaze me.”

  “Is that a good thing?”

  He shrugs, ignores the question. “Sure you don’t want anything stronger?”

  “I think I should probably keep a clear head.”

  He nods. “Not a bad idea.”

  “What exactly are we planning to say to Hayley Mallins anyway?”

  “Well, for starters, we’ll tell her her husband’s real name. See what kind of reaction that generates.”

  “And if my mother is right? If Hayley Mallins doesn’t know anything about her husband’s past?”

  “Do you really believe there’s any chance of that?”

  “I don’t know what to believe anymore. Nothing makes any sense.”

  “It all makes sense,” Ben corrects. “We just haven’t figured it out yet.”

  The waiter returns several minutes later with their drinks, lowering them to the small round table between them. The subtle aroma of warm fruit wafts toward Amanda’s nose. “Yum. Doesn’t that smell wonderful?”

  Ben buries his nose inside the delicate lip of his wineglass, inhales deeply. “That it does.” He lifts his glass toward her teacup. “Cheers.”

  “Cheers.” Amanda clicks her china cup against the curve of his glass, wondering what it is they’re cheering. “And after we burst Hayley Mallins’s bubble, then what?”

  “That will depend on what Hayley Mallins has to say.”

  “What if she doesn’t say anything?”

  “We show her the photograph.”

  “Thus proving the old adage—a picture is worth a thousand words?”

  Ben nods, takes a long sip of his drink.

  “And if she doesn’t know anything about that either? If she has no idea how my mother got ahold of that picture or what she was doing with it? What if all we accomplish by our visit is to traumatize the poor woman even more than she’s already been traumatized? I mean, maybe my mother is right. Is there really any point in upsetting the applecart?”

  “Are you sure you’re all right?” Ben asks, as he asked earlier, peering at her from over the top of his glass.

  “Yes. Why?”

  “It’s not like you to be concerned about upsetting applecarts.”

  “You’re right,” Amanda agrees. What’s the matter with her? Had she really said her mother might be right—about anything? “I think it’s the tea.”

  “Look,” Ben says. “Even if we don’t find out anything of consequence, think of it as a public service.”

  “A public service?”

  “At least this way Hayley Mallins learns about her mother-in-law’s estate. She could go back to England a very wealthy woman.”

  “You think?”

  “I think you should finish your tea.” He downs the rest of his wine, then stands up. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

  Minutes later, they step out of the elevator onto the twenty-fourth floor. “This way,” Amanda says, already halfway down the hall.

  “Amanda, wait,” Ben calls after her. “Promise me you won’t go flying off the handle.”

  She glances back over her shoulder without stopping. “I won’t be confrontational. I promise.”

  “Just take things slow and easy.”

  Amanda approaches the door to the Mallinses’ suite. “Don’t I always?”

  “Shit,” she hears Ben mutter as she raises her hand to knock on the door.

  “Mom,” a boy’s voice calls out from inside seconds later. “Someone’s here.”

  Footsteps—halting, tentative. A woman’s voice—guarded, fearful. “Who is it?”

  “It’s Amanda Travis, Mrs. Mallins. We talked the other day.…”

  The door, secured by a brass chain, cracks open. A dark eye peers into the hallway, widens when it discovers Amanda isn’t alone. “Who’s this?”

  “This is Ben Myers. He’s—”

  “—representing the woman who shot my husband,” Hayley Mallins acknowledges.

  “Could we come inside for a few minutes, Mrs. Mallins?” Amanda asks. “There are some things we need to discuss with you.”

  “Such as?” The chain remains stubbornly in place.

  “Such as this.” Amanda reaches into the pocket of her red parka, pulls out the picture of father and daughter, and holds it up to the crack in the door. The exposed eye widens further, fills with alarm. The door shuts in Amanda’s face.

  “So much for taking things slow and easy,” Ben says.

  “Sorry. I couldn’t help myself.” Amanda raises her hand, knocks determinedly on the door.

  “Go away,” comes the immediate response.

  “Mrs. Mallins … Hayley. Please …”

  “Go away or I’ll call the police.”

  “That’s fine,” Ben says loudly. “I think the police might be very interested in seeing this picture.”

  A pause in which no one seems to breathe. Then the sound of a chain sliding out of its lock, a knob turning, a door opening. Hayley Mallins stands back to permit them entry.

  “Way to go,” Amanda whispers admiringly to Ben as she steps over the threshold and takes a furtive glance around the room. The first thing she notices is that Hayley’s normally pale skin is now a ghostly white, as if she’s just emerged from a vat of bleach, and that the sleeves of her oversize, moss-green sweater cover all but the tips of her trembling fingers, the sweater hanging loose over a pair of baggy, brown corduroy pants, her hair falling like anemic dark threads around her chin. Everything about her looks tenuous. Even her features appear fluid, ready to slide from her face, as if she is melting. Amanda watches the woman as her eyes dart nervously toward the closed bedroom door to her left. Don’t you think Victor deserves to know the truth? a woman is demanding on the other side of the door. Please, another woman begs in return. You don’t know what you’re doing.

  Amanda recognizes the familiar voices from her once-favorite soap and finds fleeting reassurance that some things, at least, never change. Women have been keeping secrets from Victor from the beginning of time. In the end, he always discovers the truth, and everybody pays dearly for their deceit. You’d think they’d learn. “How are the kids holding up?” she asks.

  “They’re very anxious to get back to England.” Hayley’s fists clench and unclench inside the cuffs of her sweater. “What is it you want with me?”

  “We found this picture in my client’s house. Do you have any idea what she might have been doing with it?” Ben asks, taking the photograph from Amanda and offering it to the other woman.

  For a second, Hayley Mallins looks as if she might faint. She grabs on to the side of the nearest gold-and-red-striped chair and sinks into it slowly.

  “Are you all right,
Mrs. Mallins? Would you like some water?”

  Hayley shakes her head, a hint of color slowly returning to her cheeks as she glances toward the picture, although her eyes refuse to linger. “What does it mean?”

  “We were hoping you could tell us.”

  Hayley stares into her lap, says nothing.

  “We found something else,” Amanda says. “A number of bogus business cards.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Does the name Rodney Tureck mean anything to you?”

  An audible intake of breath. The slight blush that had returned to Hayley’s cheeks quickly vanishes. “No. Nothing.”

  “Let us tell you what we know,” Amanda says.

  “I’m really not interested in what you think you know,” Hayley protests.

  “We know that your husband’s name wasn’t John Mallins.”

  “You’re wrong.”

  “We know it was Rodney Tureck.”

  “This is absurd.”

  “You were right about your husband coming back to settle his mother’s estate,” Amanda continues, “but his mother’s name was Tureck, not Mallins.”

  “Maybe she remarried. Did you think of that?”

  “Did you know that your husband’s autopsy revealed he was ten to fifteen years older than he claimed, and that he’d had some cosmetic surgery on his face?”

  “You’re lying.”

  “Call the police. Ask them yourself.”

  “I think you should leave now.”

  “There’s something else we know,” Amanda says quickly.

  “Something else you’re wrong about,” Hayley insists.

  “We know your husband was no stranger to Gwen Price. In fact, we know they were once married.”

  Hayley scrambles to her feet, her head shaking violently from side to side. “You’re out of your minds.”

  “It’s the truth.”

  “Is that what that woman told you? Because she’s either lying or she’s crazy. How could you possibly believe anything she says?”

  “It’ll be easy enough to prove,” Ben tells her.

  “I want you out of here. I want you out of here right now.”