Legacy of Lies

by JoAnn Ross

  "You had an affair with Melanie Lord?"

  "Not an affair," he retorted. "I loved her. I'd have done anything for her."

  "Even kill your best friend?"

  Averill didn't directly respond to her question. "I grew up in Robert Lord's shadow," he said, his eyes focused on some unseen horizon. "My father was Eleanor and James's gardener. When we went away to college, Robbie got a Chrysler convertible. I got a job washing dishes in a sorority kitchen.

  "After graduation, Robbie got another new car, a Porsche this time, and went to Harvard law school. I managed to swing some financial aid for medical school, but it took me fifteen years to pay off my student loans. Fifteen damn years."

  "That must have been hard."

  He gave her a long, unfathomable look. "Yes."

  "But then you began to make a great deal of money," Alex said. "You were able to buy your Ferrari and this gorgeous ketch—"

  "That's not the goddamn point!" he roared as the ketch reeled on the increasing waves.

  Alex swallowed. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to belittle your struggles."

  "Everything always came so easily to Robbie. But then, I had something of his. I had his wife."

  "Whom you loved," she said, trying to remain calm. The thing to do, she decided, was to keep him talking. Until she figured out a way out of this.

  "Love doesn't begin to cover what I felt. Obsession comes close, but it's still not a strong enough word. Which is why, when she began insisting that the only way we could ever be together would be if Robert were dead, I believed her."

  Alex didn't know which she found more horrible: the story itself, or the fact that she was beginning to believe it. "Why didn't she just get a divorce?"

  "I suggested that. But Melanie pointed out that if we stayed in town, the scandal would damage my reputation. She said we'd have to move away and I'd be forced to start another practice somewhere else.

  "She convinced me it was ridiculous that I should have to struggle all over again when I could marry Robert Lord's widow and have the entire Lord fortune at my fingertips."

  "I can't imagine you agreeing to that," Alex said truthfully.

  "I can't, either. But at the time, Melanie's sexuality, along with the lure of more money than I'd ever dreamed of, proved terribly seductive. The plan was to kill Robbie on a night when everyone would be out at a party at the club.

  "I'd given Melanie something to put in Robbie's drink to make him nauseated. When he was unable to go to the party, Eleanor and Melanie left without him. It was a very clever plan."

  Averill's normally kind eyes lighted with pride, and he looked at Alex as if expecting praise.

  She wasn't about to risk disappointing him. "Very clever."

  "It should have gone off like clockwork. I'd shoot Robbie, then mess up the room, making it look as if he'd interrupted a burglary in progress. The only problem was that Robbie had overheard us plotting his murder. That's when he came up with his own plan. A plan to kill the man who'd stolen his wife."

  Alex lifted a hand and rubbed her temple. "Robert Lord was going to kill you?" If it weren't for the bracing salt spray constantly splashing onto her face, she'd have thought this was just another nightmare.

  "Robbie was an extremely jealous man. And he'd begun to drink heavily the past six months. Neither Melanie nor I realized that his drinking had been triggered by his finding out about our affair."

  Averill shook his wet head. "It was a ridiculous scenario. There we were, lifelong childhood friends, facing one another across the library like two cowboys at the OK Corral.

  "The idea of either of us actually committing murder was so ludicrous we both put our guns away. And," Averill said with regret as he raked his hand through his wet hair, "it would have all ended right there if Melanie hadn't returned unexpectedly. She was afraid I'd lose my nerve."

  He laughed at that, but the sound held no humor. "As it turned out, she was right. She began taunting Robbie, telling him what a failure he was as a man. She told him that he'd never satisfied her sexually, that she'd only married him for his money. Unfortunately Robbie was drunk and Melanie, who always knew how to find someone's sore spot, definitely hit the bull's-eye that night.

  "When he picked up his revolver from the desk and aimed it at her, I tried to take it away. We wrestled and somehow it went off. The bullet struck Melanie in the throat."

  As he described the incident, flashes of Alex's nightmares flickered on the screen of her mind. Her flesh turned an icy cold that had nothing to do with the soaked red sweatshirt and jeans clinging to her skin.

  She closed her eyes. A vision, imprinted deep on her subconscious, flashed behind her closed lids. The sound of gunshots reverberated through her head. She began to shake violently.

  Then suddenly, shockingly, it all flooded back, distant, horrifying memories locked in a child's subconscious.

  "Oh, my God! It was you!" Her eyes flew open and she stared at Averill in horror. "You killed my father."

  My father. Those impossible words echoed in her mind like the deep, warning toll of a bell. Her hands tightened around the water-slick brass railing, and she held on for dear life, as if to keep from sliding off the face of the earth. Her life, the entire world as she'd always known it, was spinning dizzyingly around her, tilting dangerously out of control.

  "I didn't kill him. After Melanie was shot, the damn gun fell to the floor and fired again. The bullet entered Robbie's chest and struck his heart. He died instantly.

  "I was kneeling over Melanie's body when I looked up and saw you standing in the doorway of the library, watching me with an expression of absolute shock. And horror. The same way you're looking at me now.

  "You were supposed to be in bed, dammit! Rosa had been well paid to give you a sleeping pill, take one herself and stay in her room. That way, the next morning, she could truthfully tell the police that she'd heard nothing."

  Alex wrapped her arms around herself to ward off the chill that had seeped deep into her bones. She wasn't Alexandra Lyons at all. She was Anna Lord. Her entire life had been a lie.

  "But what about my mother?" she asked numbly. "I know she loved me. How could she have lied to me all those years?"

  "It was precisely Irene's love that put you in this untenable situation in the first place. I met Ruth Black—the woman you knew as your mother—when I was going to medical school in North Carolina.

  "I was doing illegal abortions to supplement my income. Ruth, who was unable to earn a living at her dressmaking business, was working as a clerk at the North Carolina state adoption agency. There she saw couples who, for various reasons, couldn't meet the state's rigid adoption requirements. We both realized that we had something to offer one another."

  "You had access to pregnant women," Alex said slowly. "My mother knew people willing to pay handsomely for a child."

  No. Not her mother. Her mother had been Melanie Lord. A murdered, adulterous actress. And the woman she'd thought all her life to be her mother had been engaged in black-market baby selling. Alex felt sick.

  "It seemed a match made in heaven," Averill agreed.

  Or hell, Alex thought, devastated. So many lies. Years and years of them. A lifetime.

  "When I graduated from Duke and returned to Santa Barbara, I brought another doctor into the scheme so Ruth's income wouldn't drop off."

  "How generous of you." Despite her fear and shock, Alex could not keep the sarcasm from her voice.

  "She thought so. Only one person knew what happened the night Robbie and Melanie were killed."

  "Me."

  "Yes. Since Rosa knew of the plot, she'd have to be eliminated, which was, of course, unfortunate, but at the time I couldn't think of any other choice. But you…" He shook his head and his gaze softened. "You were an innocent child. I couldn't have a child killed."

  The man was, Alex thought, one helluva humanitarian. She glanced grimly out at the rough sea and ever darkening sky, then back at her captor.

 
"I called Ruth," he went on, "and without telling her the circumstances, asked if she could place a two-year-old girl. She said she could. That little piece of business out of the way, I warned Rosa she was an accessory to murder and instructed her to take you to Tijuana and wait for Ruth's arrival.

  "Finding someone to stage Rosa's suicide was easy. The bars were filled with men willing to do anything for a few hundred pesos.

  "Unfortunately Ruth fell instantly in love with you. She called me from Mexico and told me she was keeping you for her own. Then she disappeared. I decided she must have seen the national news coverage of the double murder and kidnapping and changed both your names. After a few years, I felt safe enough to stop looking for you."

  "But what about David? What about my brother?"

  He shrugged. "I'd heard through the grapevine that Ruth had a son of her own. Obviously, after she brought you back from Mexico, she got new birth certificates for both of you." He rubbed his jaw. "That was clever, actually, I never would have thought to look for twins."

  Suddenly a scene flashed in Alex's mind, like one of those black-and-white horror movies shown on cable television at four in the morning.

  After hours in the dark, the closet door had finally opened, flooding the small cubicle with blinding light. Terrified that the monsters were about to devour her whole, the little girl screamed and kicked out at the intruder.

  "It's going to be all right!" a female voice shouted.

  The woman struggled to avoid the child's kicks at the same time her hands attempted to capture the flailing fists. Finally Anna's arms were locked against her sides and she was lying across the woman's lap.

  Her pupils were enormous in her frightened amber eyes; her complexion was as white as her lace-trimmed nightgown, and an enormous handprint, a souvenir of the monster's brawny paw, cast a dark shadow across her pale cheek. Her exertion had her breathing heavily; her thin chest rose and fell beneath the cotton gown.

  "Shh, baby," the woman crooned in a very unmonster-like voice. "It's all right." The woman had blond hair, like Anna's mother. And while not as beautiful, she had a kind face and gentle eyes.

  Even as she longed to believe this stranger, Anna remembered how convincing the wolf had been when he'd greeted Little Red Riding Hood wearing her granny's ruffled white cap.

  Anna squirmed, trying to get away, but the woman's hold tightened. "As soon as you're calm, I'll let you go," she promised with a warm smile that reminded Anna painfully of Rosa. "I can't let you run away, baby. There are too many dangers out there. Too many bad things that could happen to a little girl."

  As if anything could be worse than what she'd already been through! Anna knew, with a child's absolute clarity, that she could no longer trust anyone. That being the case, she glared up at the woman, trying to resist the comforting hand that was now brushing her dirty, tousled hair away from her face.

  "I'll bet it was scary in that closet," the woman murmured, her gentle touch meant to soothe. "I remember, when I was a little girl just like you, I was afraid there were monsters hiding in my closet, waiting to pounce on me as soon as my mother turned off the light."

  Anna refused to answer. But she couldn't keep the truth of her own fears from flooding into her eyes.

  The woman nodded knowingly. "You don't have to be afraid anymore, sweetheart. I promise I'll keep all those mean, nasty monsters away from you. They'll never hurt you again."

  Anna flinched when the stroking fingers brushed the tender bruise on her cheek.

  "I used to have bad dreams sometimes, too," the woman revealed on a soothing, almost hypnotic tone that gradually had Anna relaxing muscle by wire-taut muscle. "Do you ever have bad dreams?"

  Not yet ready to trust implicitly, Anna's only response was a slight, almost imperceptible nod of her head.

  "It's no wonder. After what those monsters have put you through." There was an edge to her voice, a cold, barely restrained fury that Anna realized was not directed toward her.

  "But that's all over now," the woman said. "And you know what? I have an idea that will keep the monsters away. And help you to forget all your bad dreams." She paused. "Would you like to hear it?"

  This time Anna's nod was a bit more assertive.

  "I thought you might." The woman's smile melted some of the icy fear lingering in Anna. "The problem, the way I see it, is that Anna Lord is the little girl afraid of monsters. It's Anna whose Mommy and Daddy have gone to heaven to live with the angels. And it's Anna who has the nightmares. Isn't that right?"

  Anna nodded.

  "Poor Anna. She's had a very bad time. So the thing to do," the woman said with authority, "is change your name."

  "My name?" Anna asked in a small, frail voice.

  "Exactly." The woman rewarded her with a smile. "From now on, your name is Alexandra Lyons. And you are a bright, happy little girl who doesn't have any nightmares."

  It was like pretend, Anna thought. She played that all the time. A princess was her favorite, like in the fairy tales her nanna Eleanor read to her every night before bed.

  "Who are you?" she finally asked, her voice a little stronger this time.

  "Who am I? Why, I'm Irene Lyons," Ruth Black lied adroitly. The die was cast; regardless of the danger, there would be no turning back. "Alexandra's new mommy."

  Anna considered that for a long, thoughtful moment. Then wanting—needing—to put the horror of the past five days behind her, she wrapped her arms around the woman's neck and allowed herself to trust….

  Finally it was all so clear. Finally Alex understood why they'd moved so often during her younger years. Obviously she'd been afraid Averill would kill them both to keep his secret safe.

  Still not wanting to believe this nightmare, Alex grasped onto one last all important detail. "But the DNA test proved I'm not Eleanor's granddaughter."

  "There was no test. I faked the test and the results to convince Eleanor that there was no way you could be Anna. But I knew you were."

  She really was Anna Lord! The idea was too enormous to take in all at one time. The sky opened up, the rain pelting down like bullets. Like the bullets that had killed her mother and father.

  "So, that's the whole tawdry story," Averill went on. "And it would have ended there, if Eleanor hadn't been watching that damn Emmy broadcast. I was afraid that when you saw the house, you'd remember. But you didn't. So I waited, hoping Eleanor was mistaken again. That you weren't Anna.

  "But it became increasingly apparent that you were, and when you started having those nightmares, I knew you were on the brink of remembering. So, as much as I loathe the idea of killing, surely you can understand why I can't let you live."

  Panic bubbled up in Alex's throat. "Averill, please," she protested, "don't do this. I won't tell anyone what you've told me today. It'll be our secret."

  She never had been any good at lying. She knew, as his eyes swept over her face, looking hard and deep, that he wasn't fooled.

  "I'm honestly sorry, Alex. But surely you can understand I don't have any other choice."

  As he approached her, deadly determination glittering in his steel blue eyes, there was a deafening crack of lightning directly overhead.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Zach was growing more frustrated by the minute. He'd arrived at Alex's place, laden down with roses and champagne and a ring he had every intention of convincing her to accept, if he had to camp out on her damn doorstep until she finally gave in.

  When she wasn't there, he tried the studio, only to learn from Sophie that Alex was spending the night in Santa Barbara. Zach took that news as a sign that perhaps her anger was abating. When Sophie went on to reveal the negative DNA results, Zach was surprised. He'd come to believe that Eleanor had been right this time.

  "She still claims to be mad as hell at you," Sophie told him matter-of-factly. "But if you want my opinion, I think it's just injured pride talking."

  "I'm going to make it up to her."

  "You'd better."
Sophie waved her letter opener at him. "Or I'll cut out your heart and feed it to the critics."

  With that threat ringing in his ears, Zach drove to Santa Barbara. He found Eleanor in a state. He'd never seen her like this before. Her eyes were wide and frightened. Her hair was a witch's tangle around her ashen face.

  "Thank God you're here!" she cried.

  "What's wrong? Your heart?"

  "No." She shook her head violently, causing hairpins to scatter onto the tile floor. "It's not my heart. It's Alexandra!

  "She and Averill went sailing. When I came downstairs after my nap, they still weren't back. Naturally I was worried, so I called the yacht harbor. Averill's ketch hasn't returned to its slip!"

  Zach took one look at the storm pelting the windows and called the Coast Guard.

  "She's not Anna, Zachary," Eleanor told him as he hung up the phone and headed toward the front door.

  "I know. Sophie told me." He retrieved a squall jacket he kept in the front closet. "But that doesn't matter, does it?"

  "No," Eleanor agreed. "I love her, Zach. So much." Tears filled her eyes and slid down her cheeks.

  "So do I." He brushed the moisture away with a tender fingertip. "And don't worry." He gave Eleanor a quick kiss on her wet, weathered cheek. "She's going to be all right."

  She placed a trembling, beringed hand against the side of his face. "Promise me you'll find her, Zach." Her voice quivered with age and emotion. "Please."

  "I promise." With that he was gone. To find Alex. And bring her back home where she belonged.

  * * *

  Although her heart was racing, some detached part of Alex remained calm. She tensed every muscle in her body to keep from trembling. There was a way out of this, she assured herself. She just had to stall long enough to think of it.

  "There's something I don't understand."

  Averill stopped in his tracks. "What's that?"

  "Were you the person who came into my room to frighten me that first night at Casa Contenta?" Although she'd certainly suffered enough bad dreams after that terrifying incident, Alex had never truly believed it had been a nightmare.