Lie in Plain Sight by Maggie Barbieri Page B

their lives. Talk about their kids.
    He knew that Maeve didn’t do casual meet-ups with him, though. Two years earlier, he had investigated her cousin’s death. His murder, really, if Maeve wanted to be specific, a loss that she considered just and necessary. What had come from that was unexpected and strange but had grown into a comfortable relationship, one built on a secret that they both knew the other would keep. After they covered the usual topics, he looked across the table at her. “What’s going on, my warrior queen?” he asked, using his nickname for her.
    â€œI don’t know if you’ve seen the news, but a girl went missing in Farringville.”
    â€œYes. Saw that.”
    â€œShe’s the same age as Heather. Looks like her a bit, too, which is a little disconcerting,” Maeve said, adding a creamer to her coffee.
    â€œFriends with your daughter?”
    â€œNo. I don’t get the sense Taylor had a lot of friends, really, but I could be making that up,” Maeve admitted. In her mind, she had cast Taylor as an outcast, a loner. But she wasn’t sure.
    â€œWhy are you involved?” he asked. “Was the girl abused? I know you can’t abide that.”
    Maeve shook her head. “Not that I’m aware of.” She recounted her phone call with Judy Wilkerson, the lies going around town. “People think that I wouldn’t go get her, that somehow I am implicated in all of this.”
    â€œThat’s ridiculous,” Poole said. “Anyone who knows you knows that’s just ridiculous.”
    She sighed, relieved. No one understood her like Poole, someone she had only seen in person a handful of times. Life was complicated, and their relationship more so. She couldn’t explain to anyone why that was, but they both understood, and that was the most important thing. “It’s all over town.” She looked out at the traffic going up and down the busy avenue, thinking that although she was a native of this borough, she was more content in sleepy Farringville, something she never would have imagined when she was growing up. “There was another girl, too. Last year.”
    â€œSo what do you want to do, Maeve Conlon?” he asked.
    â€œTell me what you do,” she said. “Tell me how you find someone.”
    He stared across the table at her as if he knew that trying to talk her out of it was an exercise in futility. “You start at the beginning, where she was last seen. You pound the pavement. You talk to everyone who knew her, could have possibly seen her. You talk to her friends. Her family. And you look at what you’ve got, every single night, until one puzzle piece, usually the one that seems the most innocuous, becomes the one that tells you ‘This kid is a pawn in a domestic dispute, a bad divorce.’ Or ‘This teenager is a runaway.’” He paused. “‘This person is dead.’”
    She was silent. She had considered that Taylor might be dead—everyone must have, without giving the notion voice—but she tried not to think about it.
    â€œSo you want to find her because you’re tangentially implicated in her disappearance?” he asked. “Or something else?”
    â€œIt’s always something else, Poole,” she said, pushing her coffee to the side, unable to drink it. It, or something else, was leaving a bitter taste in her throat. “It’s always about making sure that everyone is safe. Where they need to be.”
    He nodded. “I understand.”
    Their shared history—the abuse, the fear, the terror—made them kindred spirits. That and the fact that he had once let her get away with murder.
    â€œHow’s your sister?” he asked.
    â€œShe’s great,” Maeve said, and that was the truth. There was no one happier or healthier or more positive than Evelyn Rose Conlon. Maeve felt a twinge of guilt at the mention of her