by Leslie Caine
“I can’t.”
“You can’t?”
“It’s too late for that. Women talk, you know. I told her all about John. She told me all about Dave.”
“But you never mentioned me. Obviously.” He got out of the van and slammed the door savagely.
“Obviously,” I told him. “I doubt she even realized that you and I know each other. She probably just called Interiors by Gilbert at random.”
He shook his head. “You’re not getting it, Gilbert. The woman is a professional con artist. Nothing Laura does is ‘at random.’ Besides, she’d have known your name from me.”
“But . . . we barely knew each other back when you two were together.”
“Yeah, but I used to complain to her about Interiors by Gilbert moving into town just down the street from Sullivan Designs. She’d have thought she was hiring my archrival when she hooked up with you, and she’d have loved every minute of it.”
“And yet look at us now,” I said evenly, through a deliberately forced-looking smile. “Bosom buddies.” We headed up the sandstone walkway, Sullivan maintaining such a purposeful march with his long legs that I had to trot to keep up with him. He pressed the doorbell so hard I half expected the button to crack into pieces.
A moment later, a positively radiant-looking Laura Smith threw open the door. Surprisingly, I felt a surge of anger at the sight of her that could easily be akin to hatred. Even more surprising—and frustrating—to me, tears stung my eyes.
Laura beamed at Sullivan as though she’d been expecting this visit, and squealed, “Oh, my gosh! Stevie! It’s so good to see you!”
Chapter 3
Sullivan backed away, avoiding Laura’s embrace. “Where’s Evan?” he growled.
She donned a facial expression poised beautifully between hurt and perplexed. “Do you mean Evan Cambridge? Your slimy former partner?”
“Cambridge . . . Collins . . . whichever alias he was using while you two were working together!” Sullivan dragged his fingers through his tousled hair with both hands, as if to give them something to do other than strangle her.
“Evan and I have never worked together, and I honestly haven’t got the faintest idea where he is.”
“Bullshit!”
Her eyes welled with tears. She gave me a glance that managed to make her look both injured and confused, then returned her attention to Sullivan. Softly she said, “Stevie, why are you acting like this? What we once had was special. Just because things didn’t work out doesn’t mean you have to hate me.”
“Cut the crap already! I’m totally on to you! You and Evan stole my money! You stole my car! I want it back! All of it!” He raised his hands and took a step closer, but then stopped himself from grabbing her shoulders. Instead he shouted into her face, “I want my life back, Laura!”
If Steve did take a swing at her, I wasn’t sure I could blame him; I surely couldn’t stop him. I glanced behind us, but there were only two houses with any view of this porch, and none of Laura’s neighbors was outside. Dave, though, if he was still home, would surely be roused to join us any second now.
Laura started to cry openly. She searched Sullivan’s eyes and said gently, “Oh, Steve. What’s happened to you? And what kind of a monster do you think I am? I loved you once, and I thought you loved me, too. Can’t you see? I had nothing to do with anything that Evan did to you.”
Sullivan scoffed, “You’re going to stand there and blame it all on Evan? Even though you knew about my getting ripped off . . . and you left town at the very same time!”
“Of course I heard about it . . . eventually.” She swiped at her tears. “I asked around about you. When I moved back into town five months ago. Someone told me what Evan had done, and I felt terrible for you.”
A chilly gust swept down the mountainside, knocking the three of us a little off balance with its force. The instant I’d regained my balance, my vision fell on the fake antique mirror behind Laura. I could see its shoddy craftsmanship, even at a distance. Resuming her Academy Award–caliber performance, Laura dried the last of her tears and said, “Why don’t you both come inside? We’ll try to unscramble this misunderstanding.”
“No way!” Steve balled his fists. “I just want to know where Evan is . . . and where my money is. Then I want to get the hell away from you, forever! I did lots of detective work, Laura, and I know exactly how you two managed to scam me. Evan posed as me, and the two of you drove my Lexus to St. Louis and sold it. Then you bought two plane tickets and flew to Paris together from St. Louis.”
Laura was shaking her head the entire time Sullivan was shouting his accusations at her. When he paused for air, she said emphatically, “No, Steve, you’re wrong. I took a taxi to DIA, and my flight to Paris connected in St. Louis. I did happen to bump into Evan there, but that was just a strange coincidence.”
“Jesus! I don’t believe this!” Sullivan whacked his forehead with the heel of his hand.
As if thinking I was the only one rational enough to believe her, Laura turned to me. “There was a delay in St. Louis, so I went out to the ticketing area to see if I could switch flights. Evan and I happened to bump into each other there, and he claimed Steve had sent him to France to scope out some foreign suppliers for a major new client of theirs.” She returned her attention to Sullivan. “I had no possible way of knowing that he’d stolen your money, Steve. You and I had just broken up, and I was heartbroken. I . . . needed a shoulder, so I waited in line with Evan, and we managed to get seats next to each other. We went our separate ways after we landed, and I never saw him again.”
“My God, Laura!” Sullivan cried. “You don’t actually expect anyone to believe that crock of shit, do you?”
Now Laura was finally starting to show some anger, though it was a mere fraction of his. “Yes! It happens to be the truth!” The wind was whipping her dark hair around, and she tucked it behind her ears and told him: “For what it’s worth, I can certainly see how it must look to you. And that’s precisely why I didn’t call to tell you I was back in town. Once I heard what Evan had done . . . and knowing that I’d accidentally sat next to him on the flight . . . I was afraid you would assume the two of us were in league together.” She sighed and glanced over her shoulder at the open doorway, as if longing to escape the cold. “Besides, I figured it was probably best left that way in the long run . . . you could go on blaming me for our breakup. I was willing to play the part of the bad guy, if that made things easier for you.”
Sullivan let out a growl. To my dismay, he shifted his attention to me. “This . . . sugarcoated poison is what I swallowed for over a year. The thing is, Laura”—he jabbed a finger at her—“the police learned that a woman matching your description, who claimed to be my wife, sold my Lexus to a used-car dealer in St. Louis! She was with Evan Cambridge, who posed as me, and was armed with a forged driver’s license.”
She took in his accusations without so much as a blink of her beautiful brown eyes. “What can I say, Steve? Your information is wrong. I can prove precisely when I flew from Denver to St. Louis. In fact, I’m fairly certain that I still have my boarding pass. I used it as a bookmarker in some dreadful tome that I eventually gave up on. Do you want me to find it and show it to you?”
“That wouldn’t prove anything,” he shot back. “You flew to St. Louis while Evan drove out in my car. Then the two of you hocked my car and flew to Paris together.”
“Wrong! I was only in St. Louis for three or four hours. I never left the airport. If you keep slandering me like this, I’ll be forced to get the authorities to pull the records so that they can verify the times!”
“Then what would you do? Sue me? You’ve already ripped me off for every dime I ever earned!”
Laura said quietly, “You poor thing. You really can’t accept that I simply chose to leave you.”
Sullivan let out another growl and stepped toward her. Hastily, I thrust myself between them. I needed to calm him down before his temper completely
exploded.
“Whoever the woman was that helped Evan steal your car, it wasn’t me,” Laura insisted. “She was probably a friend of Evan’s in the St. Louis area. You know how easily Evan can hoodwink people. After all, he fooled both of us completely.”
“But you took my title for the Lexus out of the desk in our bedroom, Laura! Evan wouldn’t have known where to look for it.”
“Or maybe, since you only had the one desk at home, he took an educated guess where it would be.”
A black sports coupe pulled into the driveway and stopped behind my van. The driver shut off the engine and got out. It was Dave Holland; this time he wore sunglasses. “Hey,” he shouted. “Laura? What’s going on? Is everything okay?”
Steve sent a scalding glance in Dave’s direction, then said firmly, “The police have a warrant for your arrest, Laura. Yours and Evan’s.”
Sullivan’s bluff had no effect on Laura. She spread her arms. “That doesn’t scare me in the least. I’ll tell them the same thing I just told you, and they’ll have to let me go, because I’m innocent.”
Dave marched past us to Laura’s side and threw his arm around her protectively. She buried her face in his jacket, whimpering, “Thank God you’re finally home.”
He hugged her and whispered, “It’s all right, sweetie.” Then he snapped at Steve, “Get it through your thick skull, asshole! It’s over! She’s never coming back to you! So get the hell out of here!”
“Dave,” I cried, “we’re just here to try to locate Evan Cambridge, Steve’s old partner. You’ve obviously already heard what—”
“Yeah,” he retorted. “I know exactly what Cambridge did to Sullivan. And we figured out that you’d think my Laura was involved. But she wasn’t.” He grimaced and wagged his finger in Steve’s face. “Considering the way you treated her after you duped her into leaving me, you had—”
“Give me a break!” Steve fired back. “I never mistreated her!”
“Like hell you didn’t!” Dave yelled, gently pushing Laura behind him until he was blocking her from Steve. “You think you need to use your fists on a woman to make you feel like a man, you coward!”
The men’s anger was scaring me. “Steve—” I began. “That’s a crock!” Steve snarled. “She’s lying to you, man! She’s playing us against each other! She told me when she first left you for me that you beat her!”
Laura was tugging at Dave now, saying, “Come on inside, honey. He’s making this all up to save his hide.”
Steve took a step as if to follow them. Desperate, I once again blocked his path. “No, Steve! Don’t!”
“It’s the truth, Holland!” he hollered over my head. “Laura had a black eye when she moved in with me!”
The carved oak door slammed shut. Steve stood still. “Jesus! He believes her! He actually thinks I hit her!”
“Come on, Steve. Let’s go.”
Though I had to pull him by the arm at first, we made our way to my van. Dave’s car—a rather ordinary-looking Toyota Camry in comparison to Laura’s top-of-the-line BMW—was blocking my van. Sullivan sat in stony silence, staring out the front window while I maneuvered back and forth and finally managed to squeeze past the Toyota.
The moment we’d left the driveway, however, Sullivan pounded the fleshy parts of his fists on the dash and growled, “That miserable, lying bitch!”
“You’re going to break your hands,” I warned. “As well as my dashboard.”
He sat back a little in the passenger seat. “Now you know why I hate women!”
I tightened my grip on the steering wheel but said evenly, “Evan Cambridge was in on the whole thing. He may well have been the mastermind. Do you hate all men, too?”
“We’re going straight to the police, Gilbert. Right now. We’re going to get them to drag that lying bitch out of her house in chains. We’ll make her tell them her story, and all the lies she’s told about me. I’ve never hit a woman in my life! I’ve never hit anyone!”
“I believe you, Steve. And yet now you’ve got bruised hands, and you’re practically foaming at the mouth.”
“So what? I’m pissed at her! Wouldn’t anybody be?”
I took a curve a little too fast and inwardly chastised myself; I had to stay focused on my driving. I ached for Steve; his confrontation with Laura made me realize just how emotionally devastated he truly was by what she had done. I merely replied, “Yes, but that’s not the point.”
“What is your ‘point,’ Gilbert?”
His voice was sarcastic and ugly, and if he were a child, I would have pulled the car over and reprimanded him. As it was, I struggled not to lose my own temper and, after a moment, answered, “Sorry, Steve, but I’m not taking you to the police station when you’re like this. You’d wind up spewing all this venom while you make your report, whereas Laura will be all calm and rational . . . batting her big brown eyes at the policemen. You’re the one who’s going to come off as the raving lunatic. It’s going to look like you’re just vengeful and trying to hurt her for leaving you. You’ve got to pull yourself together before you go to the police.”
Steve opened his mouth as if to protest, but then shut it and turned to face forward. He remained silent for the next two miles. Then he said, “The funny thing is, Gilbert, she almost had me convinced. You believe that? Even now. Even after everything I know full well she did to me, I wanted to believe that she had nothing to do with Evan’s treachery.”
“She’s a piece of work, all right. She nearly had me convinced, too. And now she has Dave under her spell.”
After another pause, he muttered, “I don’t hate all women, Gilbert. I just said that in anger.”
“I realize that.” Although, frankly, I still wasn’t all that sure that he didn’t hate me. There were times when he was nastier to me than he was to anyone else. We’d had some bad arguments in the two-plus years since we’d first met.
Forcing myself away from that line of thought, I said, “Here’s the plan. I’m going to call Linda.”
“Linda?”
“Officer Delgardio.”
“Hey, that’s right.” Steve brightened a little. “You have an in with the cops.”
“I prefer to think of her as a friend who happens to be a police officer.”
“Whatever.” He reached into his jacket pocket. “Want to use my cell phone?”
“No, thanks. I won’t talk on the phone while driving. I’ll call from my office, and I’ll let you know what she says.”
“Okay, but . . . we’ve got to move fast, Gilbert. Bet you anything Laura’s packing up to skip town, even as we speak.”
“There’d be no point in her leaving town now, Sullivan. She can’t rip off her insurance company when she knows we’d testify against her. And if she were worried about getting arrested, she wouldn’t have returned to Crestview in the first place. She’s obviously certain she can buffalo her way through this.”
We’d arrived at Sullivan’s office, and I pulled over to let him out. He grumbled, “If it comes down to it, I’ll keep a watch on her place myself tonight.”
“You’re going to stake out her house?!”
“You bet I am!” Leaning down to my eye level, he explained, “The woman stole three hundred thousand dollars from me!”
“That much? Jeez!” I couldn’t stay and help him to calm down; I was already late for an appointment with a client. I merely repeated, “I’ll let you know what Linda says.” Sullivan frowned and shut the door, and I drove off.
Was I giving him good advice? Maybe we should have driven straight to the police station. For one of the few times in my life, I felt hopelessly outmatched. All of the rules of normal human interactions were suddenly useless to me; they were based on the assumption that the other person had scruples. And yet Laura Smith was willing and able to lie about anything through those perfect teeth of hers. She had no compunction to play by the rules, whereas I didn’t even know how to function without them.
I had a vision of Sul
livan charging into his van and going back to confront her again the moment I was out of sight. That possibility frightened me to the bone. In Denver just a year or two ago a man had shot his neighbor’s dog in the dog’s own yard. When the neighbor stormed to the shooter’s porch, he too was shot to death. The district attorney wouldn’t bring the case to trial, because it fit the definition of the “make-my-day” self-defense law.
“Oh, Steve,” I murmured, feeling helpless and confused. “Be wise.”
Chapter 4
A centerpiece should be precisely that—an enticing and soul-centering piece of your household décor that captures the eye and draws you and your guests to your table, be it for a fancy feast or for a simple coffee break in an otherwise hectic day.
—Audrey Munroe
With Linda Delgardio unable to meet me until eight P.M. and Steve Sullivan merely keeping “a distant eye” on Laura’s house—at least according to what he’d assured me on his cell phone— I rushed home after work, eager to unwind and tell my troubles to my cat, Hildi. My sleek black cat sometimes proved to be a better listener than Audrey Munroe, who could be so obsessed with preparing her show segments that she became oblivious to the fact that I, too, had a life.
For me, there was nothing quite as inspiring and soul-cheering as the walk I took from my street parking on Maplewood Avenue into Audrey’s exquisite foyer. When designing this small, high-ceilinged entrance room, I’d angled the height of the chandelier so that, from Audrey’s slate walkway, the illuminated crystals glittered and beckoned through the transom like bright, dangling diamonds.
I unlocked Audrey’s ornate leaded-glass oak door and stepped inside, breathing in the sweet, warm air. In keeping with the Italianate design of this redbrick home, the floor was an Italian marble mosaic that made the footfalls of hard-soled shoes sound regal. The plaster walls were painted a light gray that Farrow & Ball had enticingly named “skylight.” The paint gave such depth and substance to the walls that they instantly seemed to embrace me. From the carved dome ceiling, the crystal chandelier sparkled and bathed the room in shimmering light. Centered along one wall was a small square antique oak stand; on it, a stunning porcelain vase held a fresh-cut bouquet of white roses. On the opposite wall hung a mirror in a carved antique frame. Although lovely, that item now only reminded me of Laura’s fake antique, and I averted my gaze.
