Perfect Lies by Liza Bennett Page A

been allowed to attend the basketball game in Montville. She had not come home. Tom Huddleson, the police chief, had asked around town and discovered that Lucinda never attended the game. The household in Red River from Tuesday morning on had been in an uproar, overriding, for a time at least, all other concerns. Huddleson had put out an APB on the teenager, but there was very little anyone could to do besides that. Except wait. And worry.
    “In some ways, yes,” Lark said. “But in others, I guess because she’s just so screwed up, she
is
a little kid, Meg. She’s so damned needy. Lord, I can see her hitchhiking and being picked up by some awful guy and—”
    “Stop it,” Meg cut in. “She’s not an idiot. And remember, she probably acts very differently with you than she’s does with her friends.”
    “Friends! Like she has any around here. I mean, they’ve all been perfectly polite to me, but it’s clear none of the Red River kids can stand her. And the Montville crowd? Tom and I have gone over there and tried to talk to the one or two who sometimes hang around with her—Tom knows who they are because they’re constantly in trouble—but they’re not nice and they claim they haven’t seen her since early October. Goddamnit—where is she? I haven’t got a thing done on the book all week worrying about her.”
    “I know how you feel, believe me,” Meg replied, swamped by worries of her own. As far as she could tell, Ethan still hadn’t spoken to Lark and, under the circumstances, she didn’t quite know what to think. Was Ethan just waiting for Lucinda to be found—and that problem resolved—before confronting his wife with another crisis? Or was Ethan stalling again—seizing this as an excuse to spin out his fantasy even longer? “What does Ethan say?”
    “Ethan’s been in one of his moods—well, you know what he’s like when he’s upset. He’s holed himself up in the studio. I’m just letting him be for now.”
    “Oh, baby,” Meg said, hating the uncertain situation Ethan had left them in once again. “I wish there was something practical I could do to help.”
    “Thanks, Meg, but you help just by being there. I always feel better just talking to you.”
    After Lark hung up, Meg took a deep breath and tried to clear her mind. Now was not the time to think about Ethan. Or to wonder again if Lucinda had spied on Ethan and her that Monday afternoon in the studio and seen things that made her want to run away. Lark’s comment about Lucinda hitchhiking and being picked up by the wrong kind of man had only reinforced Meg’s own worst scenarios about what might have happened to the wayward teenager. Meg suspected that Lucinda, despite her tough exterior, was not nearly as experienced as she made herself out to be.
    Meg took another deep breath and tried to put her personal problems out of her mind for the time being. She had enough worries to contend with at work. She began to mentally sort through everything she had to get done before the SportsTech presentation at three that afternoon. Between Lark’s call and a last-minute screwup with one of the ad designs, Meg felt seriously behind, and even as she was talking with Lark, she could hear the phones ringing out at reception almost nonstop. From her glassed-in corner office she could see just enough of the bull pen to know that all three of her art directors and their assistant had, miraculously enough, made it in before ten-thirty. But then, preparing a new business pitch was like getting ready for combat. Troops had to be ready, and battle plans reviewed.
    Hardwick and Associates, with fifteen employees including Meg, was not a large agency. The offices themselves were not particularly chic. As Meg’s small enterprise had grown, she’d simply rented space adjoining her original closet-size office in a rather dilapidated turn-of-the-century building, and broken through walls to create one large, oddly contoured studio next to four