Liar, Liar, Tabloid Writer

by Suzie Quint

  Cleo sighed. “I guess it doesn’t matter anyway. If the cops know―”

  Annaliese made a disparaging noise. “Like I’d tell them.”

  “You didn’t tell them?”

  “Hell, no. If I’d told them, I’d still be there drinking their lousy coffee.”

  Cleo stared at her in disbelief. Her honest-to-a-fault mother, the woman who couldn’t be bothered to lie about anything, had withheld information from the police? What if they decided Sebastian’s death wasn’t an accident? What if they found the marker? Her mother would be at the top of the suspect list because she’d told a lie of omission.

  She took a sharp breath. It wasn’t going to be an issue because Sebastian’s death was an accident. Just because everything else in her life felt like Murphy’s Law on steroids was no reason to expect the worst in every situation, was it?

  Jada entered the kitchen with one hand shoved deep in Annaliese’s purse. A moment later, she pulled out a prescription bottle and handed it to Annaliese.

  Cleo’s mother shook two pills into her hand, then pulled a pint bottle of Jameson Irish Whiskey from the cupboard. She chased the pills with a swallow of the amber liquid straight from the bottle.

  “What are you doing?” Cleo asked, her voice shrill with shock. “That’s dangerous.”

  “Oh, hush. It’s only dangerous if you overdo.”

  Of course. Why would Annaliese ever listen to her? “What happened to ‘your body’s a temple’?”

  “It’s still a temple,” Annaliese said. “There are just a few cracks in the structure. That happens as you get older.” Annaliese poured a liberal splash into her coffee. “My new philosophy is moderation in all things.”

  Annaliese had always been a woman of extremes. Work hard. Play hard. Nourish your body, so you could keep doing the first two. Her new “philosophy” was a radical departure, and one Cleo suspected wasn’t quite as moderate as Annaliese thought it was. Not that it would make a difference if Cleo pointed that out. A stranger would have better luck.

  Which made Cleo realize Alec was taking far too long.

  She found him in the living room staring at the five-foot-tall fichus Jada had grown from a two-inch pot. As she drew closer, Cleo realized it wasn’t actually the plant he was staring at, but something on the wall.

  Her heart nearly leaped out of her chest when she realized she’d missed a picture in her reconnaissance the night before.

  “Who’s this?” His eyebrows beetled. “Is this you?”

  Dammit. How had she missed this one? “No,” she said in a surprisingly calm voice even as her heart picked up a couple of extra beats, proving he was right about one more thing: she really didn’t like lying. Looking over his shoulder, she saw the picture fresh.

  In it, Annaliese was dressed in showgirl regalia, complete with false eyelashes that looked as if they were made from a nest of daddy longlegs, and a headpiece that, in spite of being made mostly of feathers, weighed at least fifteen pounds. She stood in what the showgirls called a bevel stance, her hands on her hips, her right leg cocked in front of her left with her right foot at half-point forming the bottom of a T to her back foot. She’d been thirty-one when the picture was taken, but with all the stage makeup, it was impossible to tell her age. She could have been anywhere between twenty and thirty-five—the age at which she’d retired.

  Beside her, twelve-year-old Cleo, who had been on the tail end of her gawky, ugly-duckling stage but dressed in a spangled mini-dress, mimicked the stance. In spite of the frown that made her look mad and had been her defense against showing the braces she’d hated so badly, she still looked like her mother’s mini-me.

  Alec took a half step back, putting him beside her instead of in front of her. “That is you, isn’t it?”

  He was half a second away from seeing through her lies. “No, no, of course not.” Her voice sounded strained. She kept her eyes on the photo. “That’s . . .” Who else could it be but her? The panic bubbled up and boiled over into another lie. “That’s Annaliese’s daughter.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Patty.” It was almost true. Patty was a legitimate nickname for Cleopatra. In junior high, she’d tried to get people to adopt it, but it hadn’t taken. “Don’t mention her, though. It upsets Annaliese.”

  In her peripheral vision, she saw Alec turn his head toward her. “Why?”

  She wanted to thump him. Reporters. They had to have something genetically wrong with them, always asking one more “why” than was polite.

  “She’s dead.” She kept her voice flat, her face expressionless. He was right; she didn’t like lying. But apparently, she had a talent for it.

  “Oh,” he said in a subdued voice. “I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah, well . . .” Heaven help her, she had to get him out of Vegas before someone told him the truth.

  “She looks a lot like you.”

  “People used to confuse us a lot.”

  He fell silent, looking thoughtfully at the picture. She tried to see it through his eyes, but she couldn’t. Instead, she saw how much she’d wanted to be like her mother. At twelve, she’d still thought Annaliese was the best mother ever. Way more fun than the other mothers. And then puberty hit, and overnight, Annaliese morphed from fun mom to embarrassing mom.

  Cleo remembered the moment it had changed with pinpoint accuracy. She’d been so sick with worry about a science presentation that she’d thrown up. The school nurse had called her mother to come get her. Annaliese arrived between periods when all the kids were in the halls, and a group of boys had whistled and catcalled as she walked past them. Without missing a beat, she’d turned and thrown them a kiss. Cleo had been mortified.

  And suddenly, she’d seen that her mom’s clothes were too tight and too flashy, that she walked with a provocative swing in her hips and laughed too easily at crude jokes.

  Cleo had wanted to crawl under a rock and never come out. But looking at that picture of the two of them . . . She missed her “fun mom.” Why couldn’t they have kept that?

  “That’s why she tries to mother you, isn’t it?” Alec said.

  She pulled herself back to the present. “What?”

  “She transferred her maternal instincts to you after her daughter died. You became her surrogate daughter.”

  Cleo drew in a deep breath. He was buying it. “I suppose so.”

  Maybe it was a blessing he’d found this picture. It would keep him from wondering too much about their relationship.

  “Were you close?” Alec asked.

  “Like sisters.” Cleo held up crossed fingers to reinforce the image. How handy that it was also a free pass for lying.

  Chapter 13

  The casino smell—that musty odor of spilled food and drinks that never seemed to dissipate—hit Cleo as they walked into El Dorado. Before they’d taken ten steps, someone whooped as a slot machine paid off, the sound rising above the pinging and steady drone of other players.

  “We’ll get the casino’s press release first,” Alec said. “Then figure out a game plan on who to talk to. Definitely the grieving widow and―”

  Cleo cut him off. “We should split up. We’ll cover more ground that way.”

  “Nope. We’ll stick together.”

  Over her dead body. She stopped walking. They needed to hash this out right there, right then.

  He was several paces past her before he realized she wasn’t with him and turned back. “What?”

  “You don’t really need me to hold your hand, do you?”

  “No, I can handle myself just fine in Sin City,” he said. “It’s not the first time I’ve been here, you know.”

  “Then why do you insist on being joined at the hip?”

  He tilted an eyebrow at her.

  “You think I’ll hold out on you. That’s it, isn’t it? You think you won’t get your story if you’re not watching me every second.”

  “That’s exactly what I think, sugarplum.” He looked amused tha
t she’d figured it out. “You’ve fought this junket since it first came up.”

  She’d known from the beginning he wasn’t stupid. “You’re right. I don’t want to write this story. I shouldn’t be here. I know these people. I can’t be objective.”

  “But that’s our biggest asset. You know these people. And they know you. They all know you’re a hotshot reporter, but they’ll still talk to you and tell you things they won’t tell me.”

  “They’re not going to tell me anything once they know I’m with The Word. They’ll clam―”

  “Whoa.” He caught her arm and hustled her to the side of the room in front of an empty bank of slot machines. “You do not tell them who you work for. Let them think you’re still with The Sun. Or if that offends your sensibilities, tell them you’re working freelance on this, looking to sell it to some magazine to improve your career.”

  “You want me to lie to them?”

  “Did you tell your sources on that border story that you were writing an exposè?”

  “Well . . . no, but most of them were bigger liars than I was, so I had to lie to get to the truth.”

  “That’s all we’re trying to do here. Get to the truth.”

  “But these people aren’t trying to hurt anyone.”

  “Someone’s already been hurt. As in dead.”

  “Accidentally.”

  He sighed. “What if it wasn’t an accident? Are you so sure, you’re willing to give away what could be our advantage because you’re squeamish about one little lie?”

  From his perspective, it clearly made no sense. It would make even less sense if he knew she’d been lying to him since day one. And she’d already told one whopper today. Almost before breakfast. She still tried to explain it. “This is different. I know these people.” More importantly, they knew her. When the story was over, they wouldn’t talk about “that reporter who didn’t work for who she said she did” and forget about it a week later. They’d talk about Annaliese Carson’s daughter, Cleo, who’d waltzed into town and tried to get people to believe she was better than she was. And they’d remember every time she came home.

  “It’s not different,” he said. “You just feel differently about it. Do not, under any circumstances, admit you work for The Word. You got it?”

  She jerked her arm from his grasp. “I got it.” This was obviously why Nigel had sent Alec with her on this trip—so she didn’t do something that would blow their chance at the story. But she didn’t like lying for their benefit. Almost as much as she would dislike admitting the truth. Why couldn’t she have stayed on her side of the bed last night? Why couldn’t he have been the one who crossed the line? Then they’d be on a plane for Denver and none of this would be an issue. “They still won’t tell me anything with you hanging over my shoulder.”

  He looked at her without expression for several long seconds. “Okay. You’re right. You can record your―”

  “Recording it makes it an interview instead of a friendly conversation. It’ll have the same effect your presence would. I’ll get monosyllabic answers and suspicious looks.”

  He sighed, clearly exasperated with her. “Okay. You win. But we still need a plan of attack. You make a list of who we need to talk to and how you think we should divvy them up. I’ll get the press release, then we’ll meet in that restaurant we went to yesterday.”

  He started to walk away but then turned back. “Make sure to include anyone who might be glad Sebastian is dead. Who maybe even would have liked to help him get there.”

  She wished he’d let go of the idea that Sebastian’s death was a murder. “You’re going to have egg on your face when it turns out this was an accident.”

  He shrugged one shoulder. “Maybe. Maybe not. Either way, we’re not doing a whitewash about what a great guy Sebastian was. He wasn’t a pussycat. A mover and shaker in Sin City has to have enemies. They need to be on your list.”

  She hated that he was right. “That’s really why you didn’t tell Willa I wasn’t with The Sun any more, isn’t it? Because people will talk to me easier if they don’t know I’m with a tabloid.”

  “It was a secondary consideration. I’d have done it, though, if you hadn’t looked so pitiful, so I guess it’s a good thing I’m a compassionate guy.” And with that parting salvo, he walked away.

  Compassionate, my ass, she thought at his retreating back. Everything he did turned out to be self-serving. But she let it go because, if she couldn’t be on a plane out of there, at least she was on her own for a while.

  At the restaurant, she picked out a table, put on her glasses, and opened her iPad to start a list.

  Alec was going to write a story about Sebastian’s death, and he—and her new boss Nigel—expected her to do her part. She needed to stop thinking about the personal aspects and attack it as if it were any other story. For the first time in her life, she wasn’t sure she could do that, but for the sake of her professional pride, she was going to try.

  So who might want Sebastian dead? The most common motives for murder were love, lust, greed, and revenge. She made a list for each, lumping love and lust into one.

  The first suspect police looked at was always the spouse, so Liz clearly belonged on the list. Had she loved Sebastian once? Cleo didn’t known her well enough to guess, but she gave Liz the benefit of the doubt and listed her in the love column.

  Of course, Liz stood to gain a lot more as his widow than she did as his ex, so an argument for greed could also be made. Cleo listed her again.

  And whatever had caused their marriage to go belly-up might be a motive for revenge. Hm. Liz’s name went in the third category as well.

  Cleo tapped her finger on the table and stared unseeing across the room.

  To be fair, she considered Annaliese. Love/lust? Nope. Annaliese had known Sebastian a long time, and their relationship had been sexual, off and on, but Annaliese didn’t confuse love with sex. Cleo had no doubt her mother loved Jada, but if that hadn’t curbed her tendency to share her favors with others, Cleo didn’t want to know.

  Lust as a motive was laughable. If Annaliese wanted sex from Sebastian, Cleo was pretty sure all she would have had to do was ask.

  As for her debt, it wasn’t enough to commit murder over, especially since the money to pay it off was sitting in her bank account. And revenge? Cleo couldn’t think of a single thing Sebastian might have done that would upset Annaliese enough to kill him.

  Someone in the kitchen dropped a glass. The sound broke Cleo’s concentration, and she registered her surroundings. A young couple, the woman noticeably pregnant, stood in front of the counter. The man stood behind his wife, his chin resting on her shoulder. He held her loosely, one hand absently rubbing her swollen belly as they perused the menu board above the pass-through window.

  Even if the woman hadn’t looked like she’d swallowed a basketball, the way her husband touched her would have telegraphed her condition to the world.

  Cleo smiled, then shook herself out of her reverie and looked down at her iPad. Why was she even making this list? Sebastian hadn’t been murdered. That whole angle was Alec’s headline-driven fantasy. That she was even making this list proved he was making her as crazy as he was.

  She had to remember who she worked for. The Word was interested in possibilities. Something they could stretch into rumor or doubt or . . . conspiracy theories.

  Oh, lord.

  There were probably lots of people who needed to be on her list, but she’d been gone from Vegas long enough, she didn’t know who they were. So who would?

  Sebastian always had a personal assistant, someone who took care of his schedule and the other mundane things in his life. He’d hired Nancy Bales ten years ago when Cleo was sixteen. Was it too much to hope Nancy had quit by now? She’d have to check. Whoever sat in Sebastian’s outer office these days would be at the top of her list—or at least right under Liz. And maybe they’d get more leads from the assistant.

  “Cleo?”

&nb
sp; She looked up to see Willa, coffee in hand.

  “Are you working?” Willa asked.

  “Sort of. Sit down, please.” She laid her glasses on the table. “Maybe you can help me.”

  “I don’t know what I can do.” But she sat anyway.

  “For starters, you can tell me who Sebastian’s personal assistant is.”

  “That would be Nancy Bales. You remember her, don’t you?”

  Cleo didn’t realize she’d made a face until Willa laughed. “I see you do.”

  “She must be a glutton for punishment. Shouldn’t she have moved on by now?”

  “Bales is a bulldog. You’d never know it to look at that mousey thing, but Sebastian said she’s the best assistant he ever had. Every time she threatened to quit, he threw more money at her. Or so I heard.”

  “That’s too bad.” Bales had never liked Annaliese, and that sentiment had spilled over onto Cleo. No doubt the woman wouldn’t give Cleo the time of day. Their best bet would be to sic Alec on her. She hated to admit it, but when he cared to exert himself, he had an abundance of charm. If he turned that charm on Bales, who knew what he might turn up?

  “I always thought Bales was secretly sweet on Sebastian, you know?” Willa said, turning the end of the sentence up like a question. It was a verbal tic Cleo always forgot until she heard it fall from Willa’s mouth.

  “Oh, my lord.” Cleo almost felt sorry for Bales. If she had to describe Sebastian’s type, the easy answer would be everything Bales wasn’t. Maybe Bales should be on the list under jealousy. Or would lust cover it?

  “We didn’t have much time to talk yesterday,” Cleo said. “Can you fill me in on what kind of rumors were going around before Sebastian died?”

  “There was a rumor about a consortium wanting to buy the casino.”

  “There’s always a rumor about someone wanting to buy the casino,” Cleo said. “They rarely amount to anything.” And even when they were true, it took forever to close a deal like that because the Nevada Gaming Commission had to approve the buyer.