“I remember faces. Never seen her before.”
Mike put the photo away. “This weekend is the fair. I want you to snoop around, spy on people, and tell me everything you see.”
“Dirty people in this town,” Lang said primly. “Always in bed together.”
“The things you get up to in private are just as bad,” Mike said as he looked at his watch. “I want you to tear down every trap you’ve set around here. Don’t leave one of them. And burn the Mary Jane.”
“I think it would be better if you buried it,” Sara said, “or it might be like in that movie Saving Grace. We don’t want Colin dancing around in the nude.”
Mike looked at her as though she were crazy, but Mr. Lang gave an expression almost like a smile.
Sara didn’t say anything, but she knew he’d seen the obscure movie. He might not have TV but, somewhere, he had a DVD player. Wonder if he’s seen Mad Men? she thought. And he’d probably love Dexter.
“We need to go,” Mike said as he stood up and looked down at Lang. “Remember to tell me everything.” He put his hand on Sara’s lower back and escorted her to the door. Lang went out with them, but he stopped by the dogs. Sara didn’t think she was supposed to see that Mike slipped Mr. Lang some folded hundred-dollar bills, about five of them, and again told him to get rid of the traps.
After Mike opened the car door for Sara, he went to his trunk. It had half a dozen fifty-pound bags of dog food inside. “I’d put them away for you,” he called to Lang, “but not until the traps are gone. Do it today.”
Sara watched Mr. Lang nod, then Mike pulled out of the drive. “You weren’t afraid of visiting him at all, were you?”
“Why would I be afraid?”
She stared at his profile until he smiled.
“Sara, my dear, I’ve seen how you love to take care of people, so I let you take care of me.”
For a moment, she couldn’t say anything. When Mike had been saying he didn’t want to visit Mr. Lang, he had been completely convincing—but he’d been lying. She suddenly saw how he’d been able to work undercover for so many years. “Did you find out what you need to know?”
“Not a word of it, but he made me think about some things. From the time Vandlo was a kid, he was trained in reading people’s faces. All he had to do was see the way your eyes got dreamy whenever that rotting old farm was mentioned and of course he’d start saying he was going to buy it for you. You know, Sara, I’m beginning to think that it might be true that Vandlo wanted that old farm just to please you.”
“No,” she said softly. “That would imply that he loved me, but he never came close.”
“Really stupid man.” Mike reached over to take her hand.
This time, she knew he was lying—and distracting her from Mr. Lang. He’d found out a lot but he didn’t want to tell her what it was.
“So how about we get take-out sandwiches, go home, and eat them off each other’s bellies before we go to the fair?”
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard a better plan,” Sara said, smiling.
But on the drive home, his cell rang, he said a few words, then hung up. “Stefan Vandlo has been released.”
24
BY THE TIME they’d bought sandwiches, driven back to Edilean Manor, and Mike had made a pitcher of green tea—he refused to drink carbonated beverages—their minds were on things other than bellies. All Sara could think was, This is it. Now it was just a matter of time before the “action” would start. Over the next few days she and Mike would have little time to be alone. He’d told her that at least a dozen agents would be coming to Edilean for the fair. They’d all be undercover, so any couple or groups of flirting males and females could actually be well-armed law enforcement people.
The sober news had taken away their original eating plan. They both had the same sandwiches: lean meat and lots of vegetables. Sara’d given up her tuna salad that was drowning in mayonnaise.
“I think I should go over some things with you,” Mike said from across the table. He reiterated that at the fair they would act like a normal couple, lots of hand holding, teasing, laughing together. The idea was to shock the townspeople and set them to talking. It was to be a buildup to when Stefan Vandlo arrived and Sara told him—and the town—that she and Mike were married.
When he saw that what he was saying was scaring Sara, he tried to entertain her with a story from the dossiers he’d read. It was said that when Mitzi’s husband found out that he’d been tricked into marrying an ugly woman, he couldn’t consummate the marriage. But his young wife still got pregnant, and her old husband was too proud to say that he’d never touched the girl. When the boy was born and said to resemble a handsome young man who was a master pickpocket, no one mentioned it, but six days after the baby’s birth, the young man was found dead. It was years later, when the husband said he was leaving everything to his stupid and cruel son with his first wife, that Mitzi’s husband was found at the bottom of a staircase with holes smashed into his head.
When Mike finished the story, he again talked of using the games at the fair to draw attention to himself—and that made Sara think about what would happen when it was all over.
When they take Greg and his mother away in handcuffs, Mike will leave with them and I’ll never see him again, she thought.
She did her best to calm down. It wasn’t as though he’d lied to her. From the first he’d told her he was marrying her for the case. He’d even told her that after it was done they could divorce. And since the wedding, he certainly hadn’t said he loved her. And he hadn’t—
“Sara?”