Fool Me Once(33)

*

Five minutes later, Eddie called on her mobile.

“Sorry about that,” he said. “I loved Claire. God, how I . . . You know all this. And we had troubles, sure, but she loved me too.”

Maya was driving the car. “I know, Eddie.”

“Do me a favor, Maya.”

“What?”

“Whatever you find on that phone, no matter how bad, I need you to tell me. I need to know the truth.”

In the rear window Maya spotted the red Buick again.

“Promise me, Maya.”

“I promise.”

She hung up and took another look in the rearview mirror, but the red Buick was gone. Twenty minutes later, when she got to the Growin’ Up Day Care Center, Miss Kitty had her fill out the rest of the paperwork and arrange payment. Lily didn’t want to leave, which Maya took as a good sign.

Back at the house, Maya got Lily settled and opened what she referred to as the Drawer of Many Cords. Like most people she knew, Maya never threw out a power cord. The drawer was stuffed past capacity, like a snake-in-a-can, with dozens, maybe hundreds—heck, there was probably a cord that could work a Betamax—for her to go through.

She found an adaptor that fit into the bottom of Claire’s phone, plugged it in, and waited for it to have enough juice to work. It took about ten minutes. The phone was rudimentary—just the facts, ma’am—but it did indeed have a call history. She pressed the icon and started to scroll through the calls.

They were all to the same number.

Maya scrolled down and counted sixteen calls. The number was unfamiliar. The area code was 201. That meant northern New Jersey.

Who the hell was Claire calling?

She checked the dates. The calls started three months before her death. The last call came in four days before the murder. So what did that mean? The calling pattern was fairly uneven. There were a lot in the beginning, a lot toward the end, a scattering in the middle.

Was Claire setting up rendezvous?

For a moment Maya flashed back to Jean-Pierre. Her imagination started toying with her then. Suppose Jean-Pierre had gotten in touch with Claire after all these years. You hear about that all the time, especially in the Internet Age. No lover ever completely vanishes when you have Facebook.

But no, it wasn’t Jean-Pierre. Claire would have told her.

Really? Was she so sure about that? Claire had been up to something, no question about it, and she hadn’t seen fit to tell Maya what it was about. Maya had always thought that she and Claire shared everything, that they had no secrets from each other, but then again, let’s be fair here. Maya was on the other side of the world when all this happened, fighting for her country in a forsaken desert instead of being here, home, protecting her sister.

You were keeping secrets, Claire.

So now what?

Do the easiest thing first. Google the phone number. See if she got lucky and something came up. Maya typed the numbers into the search engine and hit the return button.

Bingo. Sort of . . .

The number came up right away, which surprised her. Most times, when you google a number, you get some offer to buy information or background checks on its owner from a third party. The phone number Claire had been calling was a business of sorts, but like everything else surrounding the swirling insanity of the past few weeks, it led to more questions than answers. The place was indeed in northern New Jersey, near, if the Google map was to be believed, the George Washington Bridge. It was called Leather and Lace—A Gentlemen’s Club.

Gentlemen’s Club. Euphemism for a strip club.

Maya clicked on the link, just to be sure, and was greeted with a screen full of scantily clad women. Yep. Strip club. Her sister had secured a secret phone and hidden it in their grandmother’s old trunk so she could call a strip club.

Did that make sense?

Nope.

Maya tried to throw this new information into the mix. When she added it all up—Claire, Joe, the nanny cam, the phone, the strip club, the rest—Maya considered all the possibilities and came up with bubkes. Nothing made sense. She started grasping at straws. Maybe Claire was having an affair and, what, her boyfriend worked there. Maybe Jean-Pierre was the club manager. The website did offer its “upscale clientele” something called a “French Lapper,” though Maya had no idea and did not want to know what that could possibly be. Maybe Claire was leading a secret life and worked there. You read about that sometimes or see it in a bad cable movie. Housewife by day, stripper by night.

Stop.

She picked up the phone and called Eddie.

“You found something?” he said.

“Look, Eddie, if I have to dance around”—she realized the irony the moment the word spilled from her lips—“or worry about filling you in, I’m not going to learn anything, okay?”

“Yeah, sorry, what’s up?”

“Do you ever go to strip clubs?”

Silence. Then: “Ever?”

“Yeah.”

“Last year, some guys at work had a bachelor party at one.”

“And since then?”

“That’s it.”

“Where was the club?”

“Wait, what does this—”

“Just answer, Eddie.”

“Outside of Philadelphia. Cherry Hill area.”

“No others?”