Fool Me Once

Kierce tries to connect the dots on the two murders. Though Kierce already checked out her alibi, Maya confirms that she was serving in Kuwait when Claire was tortured and killed in what looked like a random home invasion. Maya recalls Joe’s tears and shock when he told her about her sister’s death, a crime that made her realize that the real evil struck close to home. Frustrated in feeling patronized by Kierce’s sympathy, Maya longs to open the daycare app to see Lily’s face, but she doesn’t want to bring her daughter into the conversation.

Maya realizes that Kierce must have known that the same gun was used in Joe’s and Claire’s murders when he asked to test her registered Smith and Wesson. However, since Maya is cleared from suspicion of Claire’s murder, Kierce has temporarily eliminated Maya as a suspect in Joe’s, even though the spouse is always the first thought. Claire and Joe worked together at an equities firm; the Burketts are prone to hiring within the family, being mistrustful of outsiders. Maya was not jealous of their interest in their work and was happy that they had something in common. Kierce struggles to put it together, unsure why the killer would wait four months and then give the gun to Katen to kill Joe.

Kierce drives Maya home. During the ride, Kierce relays that Isabella confirmed that she assaulted Maya with pepper spray but that it was in self-defense. Maya says that she “may have touched her to get her attention. The way two women might” (97). Kierce, somewhat amused, accuses her of “playing the woman card” (97), against which Maya usually rails. Isabella denies taking the SD card and told the young cop that the video Maya showed her was blank. Maya is stunned, but she decides to hold off on pressing charges against Isabella, knowing how it would look if a “gun nut with a controversial past in the military” accused her nanny of assault for refusing to say that she saw Maya’s dead husband on video (98).

Maya realizes that she has many missed calls from Joe’s family, having missed the reading of his will that morning. She allays Judith’s fears, telling her that the suspects have been identified. Judith is livid that Katen will go free. Maya looks at the frame, trying to figure out why Isabella was duping her. With her sense of trust beginning to unravel, she decides to ask Eileen why she gave her the nanny cam in the first place. Eileen had changed over the course of their friendship from a funny and ferocious “firecracker” to a wife and mother seeming to “die of a slow societal suffocation” (102). Maya grabs a gun from the safe before heading over to Eileen’s house: “She didn’t think that she’d need a weapon, but no one ever thinks they do” (102).

As Maya confronts Eileen, she wonders what happened to the “feisty freshman” Eileen was when they met as teenagers (105). Eileen’s vivaciousness had been dormant since marrying her ex-husband, Robby, whose doting pride had soured into obsession and violence. Eileen didn’t leave Robby when the abuse began, which shook Maya to her core. She had always assumed that victims of domestic violence were “poor or uneducated women, women with no backbone” (105).

Eileen tells Maya that she bought the cameras earlier, and they helped her get rid of Robby for good. One night, Maya received a text from Eileen saying that Robby was going to kill her. Maya intervened, scaring him off, but when she was redeployed, Eileen was left vulnerable to his attacks again. Neglecting to press charges and considering whether or not to buy a gun, Eileen instead set up the nanny cam to catch Robby beating her. The tape went to her lawyer to force Robby to drop his joint custody request and stay away.

Eileen gave her one of her spare frames because she wanted Maya to be fine, like her. She shows Maya the order, placed a month ago, before Joe’s death, and then asks what is going on. Omitting the part about seeing Joe on the video, Maya tells Eileen about the gun linking his death to Claire’s. Maya asks if Claire was acting strangely before her murder. Eileen admits that Claire took a call that came in on a second phone during lunch. She was gone for a few minutes and engaged in an animated conversation; Eileen pressed Claire about the call, but Claire said nothing.

At Farnwood, Maya stops off at the small house on the Burkett property where the Mendezes reside: Isabella, Hector, and their mother, Rosa, who still works in the main house even though the children are all long since grown. Maya asks Hector where Isabella is, using a cover story of wanting to apologize, but Hector won’t budge. Rosa shoos Maya away.

Shane calls, having run the plate—the Buick belongs to WTC Limited, a holding company based in Texas. Without a warrant, Shane is unable to pursue it further. He pushes Maya to tell him what’s going on, but she holds firm on keeping him in the dark until she has a better idea herself. Eddie’s assertation that death follows her around pops into her head as she enters his house to search for the burner phone. Maya feels guilt and pain as she combs through Claire’s things, regretting that she wasn’t there for her sister when she needed her most. Maya uses these feelings to make her “mission more discernable” (118), and she recalls a chest handed down to them by their grandmother that contained a secret compartment. She finds the phone inside.

Eddie comes home and surprises Maya, livid. Demanding her key, Maya changes tack and asks Eddie if he knew about Claire’s second phone. Eddie deflates, worrying that Claire was cheating on him before her death. Eddie admits that their marriage hit a rough patch, and Claire’s work with Joe comprised much of her spare time. Maya shakes off the idea that their spouses were sleeping with each other. Eddie demands the phone and takes a threatening step toward Maya, but Daniel and Alexa’s giddy reunion with their aunt cools the adults down. Later, Eddie calls, apologizes, and asks to be let in on any of his wife’s secrets.

Maya finds a cord for the burner and, once charged, sees only one number that called or was called by Claire. She’s startled to learn that it belongs to a strip club in northern New Jersey, Leather and Lace. She calls Eddie, who denies having heard of it. Maya intends to learn what secrets her sister was keeping.

Maya dreams of Joe sitting in a burgundy leather chair, donning the tuxedo he was wearing when they met. When she calls out to him, he won’t turn, his face obscured. When she wakes, Maya is bombarded by the sounds of her PTSD: “the screams, the rotors, the gunfire” (130). She drops Lily off at daycare and heads to Farnwood for the will reading, hearing a radio report on Corey the Whistle, who promises the imminent release of a “treasure chest of new leaks” (131).

When Maya arrives at Farnwood, dressed in a sharp Chanel suit that Joe loved, Judith doesn’t hide her disappointment in her rift with Isabella. She suggests that Maya use Rosa in the meantime, pointing out that she was once an expert in child-abuse cases involving daycares. Despite her wealth and station, Judith remained a practicing psychiatrist, seeing clients twice a week in Manhattan. Maya could still see the “hint of something untamed in the eyes and the smile” of her mother-in-law (133). Judith asks if Maya is still seeing Dr. Ricky Wu, the Veterans Affairs psychiatrist assigned to help her with her PTSD. Maya bristles when Judith recommends that she engage in therapy with her Stanford-educated colleague—or any doctor at all. She insists that she’s fine.

Caroline beckons the women into the library where Neil, already sloppily pouring a drink for himself, waits. Their father, Joseph Sr., put Neil in charge of the family empire. Neil is the most ruthless of the siblings. Andrew, a year younger than Joe, “died at sea” (137), as the family says; he fell off a yacht when he was 17. Family attorney Heather Howell informs the Burketts that the will reading will have to be postponed, as Joe’s death certificate has yet to be issued, held up by authorities within the police department.

After the shock, Judith commiserates with Maya, having lost two sons herself and her daughter-in-law having lost a husband and sister. Eddie’s proclamation of death following her rings in Maya’s ears: “Maybe it followed Judith too” (142). Caroline pulls Maya aside to talk, walking her toward the full-size soccer pitch that Joseph Sr. built for Joe and Andrew. Caroline mentions Andrew, and Maya is intent on keeping the secret that Joe shared with her: that Andrew jumped off the boat.

Caroline asks Maya if she saw Joe’s body, as the decision to have a closed casket at his funeral was Judith’s. Andrew’s funeral was also closed casket, and Caroline insists that his death never felt real to her because of it. Now, with two brothers gone, neither of whose bodies she saw, Caroline is suspicious. Hinting at a conspiracy, Caroline tells Maya that she saw Roger Kierce’s name as a payee among recent transactions for a Burkett private overseas account. However, when she pulls up the details with Maya by her side, Caroline learns that she is locked out of the account. Maya considers confronting Judith or Neil but decides to continue her current line of inquiry—Leather and Lace and Isabella. Hector rebuffs her again, saying that Isabella is out of the country. Maya plants a GPS tracker on his truck.