Edward groaned. “Now, Cara—”
“No, she’s right,” Grayson said. “There’s something all wrong about this. If Audrey wanted to run off with Bobby Jack Cash, she’d have simply run off with him.” Grayson shot Patrice a withering glance. “Even if she was madly in love with the man, she would hardly have given up everything for him. We all know that Audrey could never survive without Edward’s money supporting her.”
“Perhaps they’re right,” Patrice agreed. “Maybe Audrey just wanted to put a good scare into you, make you think she’d left for good, then when she got in touch with you, you’d be so relieved that you’d forgive her and accept Bobby Jack as your new son-in-law.”
“Never!” Edward all but growled the word.
Grayson turned to his father-in-law. “I think we should have Mr. Shea continue his search for Audrey. Now that his first lead unearthed an imposter—”
“I’m not sure what to do, where to go from here,” Edward said. “I’d like to know that Audrey is well and happy, but if she doesn’t want to be found…”
“What if she’s in trouble?” Cara said. “What if Bobby Jack Cash did leave with her? What if he’s keeping her from contacting us?”
“Mr. Shea,” Grayson said. “What do you recommend?”
Yeah, put him on the spot, ask him to make a decision that shouldn’t be his. Apparently everyone in the Bedell family had slightly different opinions of the situation, including their suspicions about Lausanne Raney. Was the woman telling the truth or was she lying? He didn’t have the answer to that question any more than the rest of them did.
Glancing from Grayson to Edward, Dom said, “Mr. Bedell hired Dundee’s, so the call is his. If he wants us to continue the search for Ms. Perkins, we will. If not, then my involvement in this case is over.”
“Daddy, please, do something.” Cara grasped her father’s arm.
Tensing at her touch, Edward eased his arm from his daughter’s and took a step away from her. She clenched her jaw and sucked in a deep breath, apparently making an effort not to cry.
“I’d like you to stay on the case,” Edward said. “Stay on in Chattanooga and do what you can to find out where my daughter went when she left town. And also, keep an eye on Ms. Raney. We can’t rule out the possibility that she is lying, that she knows a great deal more than she’s telling us.”
“Yes, sir.”
Before Dom could say anything else, before he could discuss the details of exactly what Edward Bedell meant by keeping an eye on Lausanne Raney, Lt. Desmond entered the living room.
Apparently having overhead the last bit of conversation between Dom and Edward, Desmond said, “I think you’re wise to keep track of Ms. Raney. Although we intend to make sure she doesn’t leave town, having someone watch her movements for the next few days will help us a great deal.”
“Then you think she’s somehow involved in Audrey’s disappearance?” Edward asked.
“Possibly. But there’s no way to be sure. I’d say there’s a fifty-fifty chance she’s telling the truth,” Desmond said.
“Which means there’s a fifty-fifty chance she’s lying,” Dom said.
Desmond grimaced. “Yeah.”
“Where is she?”
“Waiting for me to release her so she can go home. I offered for Sergeant Swain to drive her, but she said she’d call a cab.”
“I’ll take her.” The words were out of Dom’s mouth before he realized he’d even thought them.
Desmond cocked an eyebrow.
“Good idea, Mr. Shea,” Grayson said. “Don’t let that woman out of your sight.”
“I’ll want a daily report,” Edward told Dom. “On the search for Audrey and on Ms. Raney. If necessary, bring in another agent to help you. Money is no object.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll contact you daily with updates. And if I think it necessary, I’ll ask for assistance.” Dom glanced at Desmond. “May I take Ms. Raney home now?”
“Yeah, sure. And one more thing—whatever Dundee’s finds out about Ms. Perkins and Ms. Raney, keep the Chattanooga PD informed.”
“I have your cell number,” Dom said.
Desmond nodded.
LAUSANNE WAITED in the study. Tapping her foot nervously while she sat, she folded and unfolded her hands, rubbing the perspiration into her palms. Her gaze scanned the elegant room, which was like something out of a magazine or off one of those TV shows about the rich and famous. Wonder what it cost to decorate a room like this? More than fifty thousand, she’d bet.
As her gaze traveled around the room, she paused on the marble fireplace and looked upward to the gold-framed oil painting of a woman. Slender and petite, with her golden red hair styled in a sleek page-boy cut the woman was pretty but not classically beautiful. Wonder who she is? Audrey Perkins’s mother perhaps. While working at Bedell, Inc., she’d heard rumors that Edward Bedell’s first wife had been the love of his life.
When the study door opened, Lausanne jumped up, intending to face Lt. Desmond and demand he allow her to go home. But instead she came face to face with Dom Shea.
“What do you want?” She scowled at him.
“I’m taking you home.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Lieutenant Desmond is releasing you and he instructed me to take you home.”
She eyed him speculatively.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Why did he tell you to take me home?”
“To make sure you get there safe and sound.”
“And if I don’t want an escort?”
“It’s either me or Sergeant Swain,” Dom told her.
“Some choice.”
Dom reached out and grasped her arm. “Let’s go, honey. Make it easy on both of us and cooperate.”
Lausanne glanced at his hand tightly gripping her arm. “Are you still working for Mr. Bedell?”
“Yes, I am.”
“So, who wants you to keep tabs on me, Mr. Bedell or Lieutenant Desmond?”
“Both of them,” Dom replied
“I take it that they don’t buy my story about Audrey hiring me to impersonate her?”
“They’d be fools to trust you. I trusted you and look where it got me.” Dom forcefully turned her around to face the fireplace. “Take a good look at the lady you were impersonating. There’s only a vague resemblance and yet it didn’t enter my head that you might not be who you said you were. It even crossed my mind that you might have had a little cosmetic surgery.”
A tight knot formed in the pit of Lausanne’s stomach as she stared at the portrait. That was Audrey Bedell Perkins? It couldn’t be. This was not the woman who had hired her, not the redhead who’d given her fifty-thousand dollars in cash and sent her off on a spending-spree holiday.
Oh, my God!
“What’s wrong?” Dom asked.
“Nothing’s wrong. What makes you think something’s wrong?”
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“I said nothing’s wrong. I just want to get out of here and try to forget about what an idiot I am. I should have known that if something seems too good to be true that it probably is.”
Why didn’t she just tell him that she now knew the woman who hired her to impersonate Audrey Bedell Perkins was not Audrey herself? Because he might not believe her. And if he didn’t, then what? Better to err on the side of self-preservation and keep quiet for now. With the realization that Audrey hadn’t hired her, the situation had suddenly gone from complicated to alarmingly convoluted.
“Is there something about that portrait that bothers you?” Dom asked.
She shook her head. “Not really. I was just thinking that Audrey Perkins and I really don’t look anything alike.”
After escorting her out of the study, Dom paused in the open doorway and glanced back at the portrait over the fireplace. Then his gaze met Lausanne’s. As he studied her closely, she realized he suspected she was lying to him. Again.
CHAPTER SEVEN
> LAUSANNE HADN’T SAID MUCH on the drive from Lookout Mountain to East Brainerd. A couple of times, Dom had tried to start a conversation, but her one-word replies had let him know she wasn’t interested in talking. Fine with him. There didn’t seem to be anything either of them could say to change the situation. Neither of them had turned out to be who the other had thought they were. Each had lied to the other, either by omission or misrepresentation. And neither trusted the other. But on some basic, sexual level, they were still painfully aware of each other, which made things worse. Much worse.
Dom had to admit that this was a first for him. He wasn’t the type of guy easily fooled or manipulated. In all his relationships, he’d held the upper hand, been the one sought after, the one who’d always been able to pick and choose the best of the best. His taste in women was fairly eclectic, but as a general rule, he preferred lovely, sophisticated, well-bred ladies. Of course, in his youth, he’d sampled a few bad girls, variety being the spice of life and all. But he knew trouble when he saw it and had learned to avoid becoming embroiled in messy personal situations.
Lausanne Raney was trouble with a capital T. Whatever the hell was going on with her, whatever brouhaha she’d created in her life, wasn’t his problem. A smart guy would steer clear, cut his losses and run. Even though keeping close tabs on her was part of his job assignment, that didn’t mean he had to become personally involved.
“Take the next right,” Lausanne said. “Two blocks over. Glennview apartments.”
Dom nodded, then took the next right at the red light.
“How long have you lived here?” he asked.
“Six months. Ever since I moved to Chattanooga. I needed a place that was cheap, already furnished and close to the bus line, since I don’t own a car.”
Dom caught a glimpse of her profile in his peripheral vision. Stoic. Proud. Her gaze focused straight ahead and not on him. “Where’d you live before that?”
“Nashville.”
Dom maneuvered his rental car into the parking lot of the apartment complex.
“Why did you leave Nashville?” he asked.
“I needed a change of scenery.”
Dom pulled his car to a stop in the nearest available parking slot, then turned off the motor and reached for the door handle.
“There’s no need for you to get out,” she told him. “Just put my suitcases on the sidewalk and I’ll get them up to my apartment on my own.”
“When I take a lady home, I always see her to her door.” He opened the car door and stepped outside, then rounded the hood and opened the passenger door.
“Somebody taught you good manners.”
He held out his hand to her. When she took it, he helped her to her feet. For a split second, they stood there, their bodies almost touching. She looked up at him as he glanced down at her. He was a good nine inches taller, despite the fact she was wearing two-inch heels. Staring into her moss green eyes, the expression on her china-doll face deceptively sweet and innocent, Dom had the overwhelming urge to kiss her.
Don’t do it, he warned himself. She’s trying to reel you in, trying to sucker you. Remember, she’s a master manipulator, capable of making lies sound like the truth. For all he knew, this woman was a cold-blooded killer. At the very least, she was hiding something from him and from the police.
Dom grasped her upper arm and turned her around so that they were no longer facing each other. “Come on. Let’s go.”
“I need my luggage,” she told him.
“So you’re keeping all the loot you acquired using Audrey Perkins’s credit cards, huh?”
“Damn right I am. It was part of the deal.”
Dom popped the truck lid and removed the Louis Vuitton luggage, one piece at a time. If what was in these bags was as expensive as the cases themselves, then the lady had spared no expense when she went shopping.
Lausanne grabbed the two smaller pieces of Louis Vuitton. “I’m in the building to the left,” she told him. “Apartment 2-B.”
He picked up the other two suitcases, then followed her across the sidewalk and up the flight of exterior stairs that led to the second level of the building. She stopped in front of a bright blue door, the paint cracked and peeling.
“This is it.” She set the bags on the floor, then rummaged in her purse, retrieved her house key and inserted it in the lock. After opening the door, she turned around and gasped when she bumped into Dom, who had moved toward her instead of away from her. “Thanks for bringing me home.”
“Are you sending me packing?”
Narrowing her gaze, she stared at him questioningly. “What is it that you really want?”
“I’d like a cup of coffee,” he told her. “How about inviting me in and fixing us a pot?”
“Why would I invite you into my apartment?”
“So we can talk in private.”
“What if I don’t want to talk?”
“Then I’ll do the talking.”
“My story isn’t going to change, you know.” She bent down and picked up the two pieces of luggage. “I told you and the police the truth. I don’t have any idea where Audrey Perkins is.”
Dom gave her a gentle nudge into her apartment. When she didn’t resist, he walked inside behind her and, using one of the larger suitcases, shoved the door closed. They stood a few feet into her living room, gazes locked, muscles tense. If he could look at this woman and not want to drag her off to the nearest bed, his job would be a lot easier. But there was something about her, something that appealed to him in some oddly primitive way. She was small and delicate, with a soft, sexy voice and a face like an angel. A false aura of innocent sweetness surrounded her.
Dom dumped the luggage on the floor behind him. “Were you lying when you said that you and Bobby Jack Cash weren’t lovers?” He wanted to kick his own butt for asking her a question that made him sound like a jealous fool.
She cocked her head to one side and gave him a hard, condemning look. “I had my fill of bad boys long before I met Bobby Jack. My mistake was dating him, but I thought he was a nice man. I was wrong. We had two dates and neither ended in our doing the horizontal.”
Lausanne put the two suitcases she’d been holding on the floor next to the ones Dom had deposited behind him.
“Did you know he was having an affair with Audrey Perkins?”
“No, I didn’t know. Like I told you, after our second date, I didn’t see Bobby Jack again, except occasionally at work.”
“Hmm…” Dom broke eye contact and moved past Lausanne. Glancing at the outdated, floral sofa, he nodded in that direction. “Mind if I sit down?”
“Sit if you want,” she said. “Stay all afternoon, but you’re not going to learn anything you don’t already know. I was hired to impersonate Audrey Perkins. I have no idea where she is. I didn’t kill her. I’m not involved with Bobby Jack Cash.”
“Let’s say I don’t believe you.”
She glowered at Dom.
“Let’s say I believe that you and Bobby Jack were lovers who plotted together to swindle Audrey Perkins out of a great deal of money.” Dom watched Lausanne for a reaction, but all she did was stare at him with those big, sad green eyes, practically no expression on her face.
“It’s a free country. You can believe whatever you want.” She marched over to the kitchenette, separated from the living room area by a small vinyl-topped bar. After laying her purse on the bar, she removed her cashmere sweater and hung it on the back of the metal bar stool.
“But something went wrong,” Dom said. “Maybe he fell for Audrey or maybe he decided that he could get more money from her by cutting you out of the picture and running off with her. So, you killed both of them.”
“Interesting scenario.” Lausanne opened one of the three wall cupboards over the single sink and compact stove. “Regular or decaf?”
“Huh?”
“It’s after one o’clock. Do you prefer regular or decaf coffee?”
“I never dri
nk decaf.”
She reached up into the cupboard, removed a bag of ground coffee and proceeded to prepare the coffeemaker.
“Or maybe you’re the one who double-crossed him,”
Dom said. “You two bumped off Audrey together, then you took the fifty grand and Audrey’s credit cards and left Bobby Jack high and dry.”
“Cream and sugar?”
Dom had to give it to her—Lausanne was as cool as a cucumber. He was accusing her of murder and she hadn’t blinked an eye. But did that unemotional reaction mean she was guilty or innocent?
“I take my coffee black.”
“Black it is,” she said.
“I figure the guy who tried to slit your throat at the Classico Hotel was Bobby Jack. You betrayed him and when he finally caught up with you, he—”
Lausanne laughed. Startled, Dom stopped talking mid-sentence and stared at her. Smiling at him, she shook her head, the action tossing her mane of reddish gold curls from side to side. Dom’s body tightened. Damn!
Grumbling under his breath, he willed his body under control. “Do you find being accused of murder humorous?”
“I find your fantasy scenarios humorous. I had absolutely no reason to kill Audrey Perkins or Bobby Jack Cash. Besides that, there’s no evidence that either of them are dead. For all we know, they’re off somewhere together basking under a tropical sun.”
“Maybe. But until we find them—or least find Audrey—part of my job is to keep you under surveillance. No one trusts you. Not Lieutenant Desmond, not Edward Bedell, not—”
“Not Domingo Shea.”
“I’d like to believe you. But you played me for a fool once and I’m not in the habit of handing out second chances.”
Lausanne removed two plain white mugs from the cupboard, then poured hot coffee into each. “That’s too bad. I think everybody deserves a second chance. After all, there aren’t many people who haven’t made a few mistakes and wish they could change the past.”
When she picked up the mugs and walked toward him, he rose from the sofa and took one of the mugs from her. “What mistakes have you made?”
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