Lies That Bind Read Online Free PDF

you want.”
    The two EMTs followed Jo and left Maeve with Chris. “You, too, Chris,” she said. He was a regular customer on the days he worked, always getting a blueberry muffin, taking his coffee “light and sweet,” just like his temperament. “Unless you need to fingerprint?”
    “Ah, you’ve been watching too much television, Maeve,” he said, smiling again. “This is Farringville. I’ll do some digging around and see what we can find out, but I think you probably interrupted a break-in.”
    “How did they get in?” she asked.
    “Front window was jimmied,” he said.
    “So they must have come in after I disabled the alarm?” she said, trying to put the pieces together in her head.
    “Maybe,” he said. “Looks like vandals, Maeve. Got more than they bargained for when you came in, even if they didn’t trip the alarm like they probably expected to.”
    “How can you tell?” she asked, attempting to peek around his massive frame to see the rest of the kitchen. She had never noticed before but he smelled good. Not like cake, like she always did, but clean and fresh. A little like her father once did, but without the heavy hand on the cologne.
    “I’m a crack detective,” he said, breaking out into a broad smile. “They came for money, I imagine, but they didn’t get into the register.”
    There wasn’t anything in there, so it wasn’t worth the effort of breaking in.
    He jotted some notes on a pad. “Does anyone else have a key to the place? The alarm code?”
    “No,” she said, shaking her head, the action making little lightning bolts dance before her eyes. “Just me. The landlord doesn’t even have a key. That was our deal when I signed the lease.”
    “Okay,” he said. “Not Jo? Not your husband?”
    “Not Jo. And the husband is an ex,” she said. She assumed he knew that. Didn’t everyone? “Thanks for coming by, Chris,” she said, attempting to call an end to the day.
    “I heard about your father, Maeve. I’m so sorry,” he said, his face sad. “And now this.” He buttoned his coat. “I bet someone with a bright idea saw the obit in The Day Timer and thought it would be a good idea to break into The Comfort Zone.”
    “But the garlic,” she said, realizing too late that if she kept bringing it up, they’d make her go to the hospital, and that was a jaunt she wasn’t in the mood for. “Mr. DuClos,” she said. “See where he was.” She knew what Chris was thinking: DuClos knew the security code. He could have let himself in any time he wanted. He wouldn’t have to break in to the store.
    All made sense. Except that his smell followed him everywhere he went.
    Chris Larsson wouldn’t let her drive home, so she got into the front of his Farringville police car, looking out the window as they passed the usual sights of the small village: the animal hospital, the florist, the place that sold comic books. He would have one of the uniforms deliver the Prius to her house. When she got home, she realized that both emotionally and physically she was drained. She stripped off her clothes, once inside her bedroom, thinking that tomorrow was another day. She had almost forgotten about what had happened prior to her searching for a bottle of vanilla that turned out to be on the bottom shelf of the pantry. This day, the day she had buried her father, was a day she had spent time with people she’d rather forget and been told something about her family that to her mind either amounted to the ravings of an alcoholic whose sole purpose in life was making sure that other people were as miserable as she was, or it was true.
    It was hard to know, hard to tell.

 
    CHAPTER 7
    Jo was leaning against the counter, her back to the front of the store, her hands on her prodigious belly. It was two days after the funeral, Maeve having taken an extra day off in between. While she lay in her bed the day before, wrapped in her comforter as if it were a cocoon, she focused on the pattern in her