The First to Lie

by Hank Phillippi Ryan

  “Um, no, no kids,” Ellie said.

  “Any siblings? And any who had kids?” Meg went on, seemed to be forwarding Abigail’s questions.

  “Well, no, in fact.” Why’d she want to know this? But maybe Abigail was testing whether Ellie could give as good as she took. Ellie wondered if she offered something deeply personal, it would reassure Abigail that her motives were pure. An emotional exchange. An agreement to be honest. “I’m not close with my family.”

  “Oh my gosh, since when?” Meg’s voice had changed, the pitch now higher, no longer the neutral interviewer.

  Ellie frowned, changed her tone to shut Meg down. It wasn’t Meg she was trying to win over. “Some years ago,” she said. She usually tried to avoid going to that empty black spot in the universe.

  “So, unless you have a child, your immediate family dies out?” Meg asked. “Abigail is asking.”

  Abigail is kind of a crazy person, Ellie thought. “I suppose,” she said out loud.

  “Your parents are still alive? She wants to know.”

  You’ve gone too far, Abigail, Ellie thought. “They are. So now—”

  “And it would make them happy, Abigail’s saying, if you had a child? Since there’s still time for you, Ellie, right?”

  And we’re done here. Ellie’s sympathy—honest sympathy—had curdled into wary irritation. “I suppose,” she said. “So Meg, is Abigail ready? Are we okay to continue the interview?” She tried to paper over the transition. “I know this must be difficult for you.”

  Silence on the other end.

  “Are we still connected?” Ellie half regretted her brusque response and hoped she hadn’t blown it. “Everything okay?”

  She heard someone clear her throat. Then more murmurs.

  “Okay,” Meg said. “Just checking the recording. I’m flipping on my video again. Okay. Go ahead.”

  “Here’s a different kind of question.” Ellie was relieved they were back on topic. “How do you deal, now, with what happened?”

  It was a key part of the story, the physical—and psychological—backlash from such a devastating loss. A loss not only of a child, but of trust.

  After a few beats of silence, Meg answered. “Abigail says she’s done talking. She told you what happened. That’s all you need to know.”

  “It’s just that—”

  But all she heard was a dial tone.

  CHAPTER 18

  NORA

  Nora couldn’t decide which tactic was more ominous: that she’d been yanked off her afternoon appointments, or that Allessandra Lewes and Detta Fiddler had not offered her the elegant visitor’s chair that now sat conspicuously empty in front of the Pharminex executive’s desk. Today Fiddler’s opulently pristine office smelled of gardenias. A pale green ceramic container held a lavish arrangement of the waxy white flower, each delicate bloom nestled among glossy green leaves. Gorgeous but aggressive, the fragrance replaced all the oxygen in the room.

  “Ms. Quinn.” Allessandra spoke first, her voice settling over Nora like a late spring frost. “I call you Ms. Quinn merely because it’s the only name we have for you. At this point.”

  Nora noted the hesitation, the fidget of a careful eyebrow.

  “Care to enlighten us?” Lewes asked. “On who you are?”

  “I’m sorry.” Nora crossed her arms over her chest, lifted her chin. Almost apologetic. “What’re you saying?”

  Lewes and Fiddler exchanged glances. Fiddler pursed her lips, appraising. Cocked her head at her subordinate. Go on.

  “Your résumé, Ms. Quinn.” Lewes perched on the edge of Fiddler’s desk and mirrored Nora, crossing her arms over her moss-green leather jacket, then smiled oh-so-cordially. “It’s a load of crap.”

  “There is no Nora Quinn, as you are well aware.” Dettalinda Fiddler stood, her voice smoldering fire to Lewes’s ice. “No thirty-three-year-old Nora Quinn from Charleston, South Carolina, with a BA in Economics from USC, two deceased parents and the valedictorian of her high school class. No Nora Quinn with the previous addresses you so helpfully provided, or the previous employers you listed—companies which had conveniently gone out of business—and no Nora Quinn with that social security number you used.”

  Nora listened with her best poker face, waiting for Fiddler’s ire to diminish.

  “So what shall we do with you, whoever you are?” Fiddler touched a manicured forefinger to her lips, glossy deep red. Nora knew the woman was only pretending to consider her next steps. Nora would have to stay nimble.

  “And do tell us the purpose for this deception,” Fiddler went on. “Corporate spying? Are you with the feds? Are you a reporter? Are you wired even now? Why?”

  Nora heard a buzz, and Lewes pulled a cell phone from her jacket pocket. Looked at the screen. Slid the cell back in.

  “You should know, Ms. Quinn,” Fiddler said, acknowledging the pretense, “that we have security officers outside this office door. And they are prepared, at our direction, to escort you to the authorities.”

  “What authorities?” Their strategies to make her feel awkward were working, though Nora would never show it. They were pros, but she was too. And they could never uncover her motives—only she knew what they were. She lowered her shoulders, found her center.

  Lewes ignored her question. “Several more things we need to discuss, Nora. One, we have your fingerprints from your job application. And we ran them against a government database.”

  Nora didn’t answer but mentally raised an eyebrow. The AFIS database was not open to the public. Was this a bluff?

  “There were no matches, sadly, Nora,” Lewes went on. “But we’re still looking. I was disappointed that you didn’t have TSA Global Entry. That would have made our lives so much easier.”

  “Why would my fingerprints be on file?” Nora pushed them, couldn’t hurt. “I’ve never committed a crime. Never been in the armed forces or worked for the government, let alone as some kind of spy. As you could see from my résumé.”

  Dettalinda Fiddler’s laugh reached the ceiling, surprisingly lilting from such a formidable source. “We can see nothing from your résumé, Nora. And I’m sure spies, governmental, corporate or otherwise, would hardly indicate that on their curriculum vitae. But suffice it to say we will continue to check every word of your submissions. As will the authorities, if we give them the green light. And your prints will remain on file. Eventually they will prove who you are. And why you attempted to mislead us.”

  “I’ll resign,” Nora said. Maybe capitulation without explanation would succeed. “I’ve done nothing but properly carry out the job I was hired to do. My performance is stellar, my record is unblemished.”

  The laugh again. But Nora continued, “I’ve met my sales goals every day. And more. I’ve never divulged a word of what was taught in class or what I’ve learned on the job. What does it matter what my name is? I’ll resign, I’ll vanish—”

  “As I’m sure you’re adept at doing,” Lewes cut in.

  “And we can put all this behind us. You’ll never hear from Nora Quinn again.”

  “You think we’ll agree to that?” Detta Fiddler leaned back in her chair and crossed her legs, resting her head against the brocade upholstery.

  “I do,” Nora said. She had to decide on tactics. Should she try to intimidate them? “And I have to think the public would be skeptical of your quality control procedures if you can’t even quality control the hiring of your own employees. Embarrassing, no?”

  “An oversight. We can tolerate a bad apple,” Lewes said.

  “Perhaps. But the company doesn’t need negative headlines right now, correct? Especially with Winton Vanderwald about to be lauded as good guy of the century.”

  “Oh, please.” Lewes rolled her eyes. “Mr. Vanderwald is completely—”

  Detta picked up the phone on her desk.

  “But I’ve done nothing wrong, Allessandra.” Nora kept talking. “And Detta? I’ve been a model employee. You fire me, with any a
ttendant hoopla, and the ‘load of crap’—as you say, Allessandra—will hit the fan. Right before the Vanderwald gala.”

  Detta put down the phone and opened a manila folder on her desk. “Ms. Quinn? Are you familiar with Dr. Douglas Hawkins?”

  “You know I am,” Nora said.

  “In our training sessions you must have heard the company’s absolute prohibition against personal relationships with our clients?”

  Nora gestured, acquiescing. Stalling. It would be Hawkins’s word against hers, she calculated. If he’d ratted her out, he’d ratted out himself as well, so she had to wonder what deal he’d made with these two to keep his part of the situation confidential. To keep his wife from getting wind of his infidelity. Not that they’d done anything physical. Not intimately physical. “And your point is?”

  “You said you’d done nothing, yet you attempted to seduce Dr. Hawkins. Why? To sell more product? To increase your bonuses? It’s a matter of supreme indifference to me. All that matters is that you did it. So now, Nora, what do you propose we do?”

  “It was his idea to go to dinner, not mine. And I did not step over any line. I was professional each and every second. He’s simply trying to protect himself from the wrath of his wife. And—”

  Fiddler’s laugh was even more derisive, and Lewes’s mirth accompanied it.

  “What?” Nora, frowning now, couldn’t decode their reactions.

  “There is no wife,” Fiddler said. “But Dr. Hawkins? He’s also in our … employ. In a general sense. Without compensation, of course. We’ve asked him to test our newbies. See how far they’ll go. And he’s happy to do so.”

  “Test?”

  Fiddler leaned toward Nora, almost smirking. “Think about where you talked to him—was it in an exam room? No, indeed, it was in a private office. Where no patient ever goes.” She shook her head, pretend-disappointed. “That conversation’s on tape, my dear.”

  “You can’t do that!” Nora couldn’t hold back her yelped protest. She knew it was illegal in Massachusetts to secretly tape someone’s voice.

  “You planning to take us to court over it?” Fiddler asked. “Call the police?”

  “Do what you will, Nora. But Dr. Hawkins was bait.” Lewes stood, pulled out her cell phone again. “And you, Nora, or whoever you are, you took it.”

  CHAPTER 19

  ELLIE

  “Hey, Ellie. Perfect timing.”

  Ellie, coat half unbuttoned, stood in the open doorway of her office, carrying a risky late-afternoon latte, trying to comprehend how she could be seeing what she was seeing: Meg with a phone receiver in her hand, the cord attached to the landline on Ellie’s desk. Meg was using her phone? The woman had her hand clamped over the mouthpiece, as if she didn’t want the person on the other end to hear.

  “Perfect timing for what?” Ellie stepped into her office, reaching out her hand for the phone. “Is that for me?”

  Meg made an embarrassed face, kept her hand over the mouthpiece and her voice low. “I’m so sorry, El, I—well, I came in to talk with you, and your phone was ringing, and I don’t know, secretarial reflex or whatever, I picked it up. When I realized what I’d done, it was too late. So I said I was your assistant, and could I take a message. And he said—”

  “He?”

  “Yes, it’s…” Meg raised her eyes to the ceiling as if trying to remember. “Gabe? From…” She grimaced, apologetic. “Some law office, I think. I couldn’t really understand the name.”

  Gabe. As they’d left Spinnaker, he’d said he’d contact her when he had information. Ellie didn’t trust him, of course, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t listen to him. Ellie reached for the phone again, but Meg held it just out of reach.

  “Want me to take his number?” Meg whispered. “It’s never good when a lawyer calls. Is something wrong?” She didn’t wait for Ellie to answer. “Besides, I can’t wait to hash over our Abigail interview. Wasn’t it amazing? I thought about it all night—but I didn’t want to bother you.”

  Ellie put down her latte as she took the last two steps toward the phone, almost grabbing the receiver. “It’s fine. Could you close the door on your way out?”

  “Oh, El, I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s fine.” Ellie smiled forgiveness, trying to look convincing. She pointed to the phone. “He’s waiting, right?”

  After the door clicked closed, Ellie put the phone to her ear. “Gabe,” she said. “Hey. Some confusion on this end, sorry. What’s up?”

  Ellie listened, her heart beating faster with every word.

  “Nora Quinn?” she repeated. She checked that the door was completely closed and mentally crossed her fingers that Meg wasn’t lurking on the other side with her ear plastered against it. She punched the phone to speaker, unbuttoning her coat as she talked. “Who’s Nora Quinn?”

  “A newish recruit at Pharminex. The most recent class. Have you seen her on your rounds? You must have. I’ve seen you in the same places, you know. She’s a knockout redhead, the whole package.”

  Ellie was glad he couldn’t see her expression.

  “My take on Ms. Quinn is that she’s a potential candidate to blow the whistle on the company,” Gabe went on. “Here’s why. I think her family has connections to Pharminex. To the Vanderwalds themselves.”

  “Connections?”

  “I think she’s related to them.”

  “That’s why she works there?”

  “The opposite. I think—just a theory—she’s scheming to rat them out. Reveal what the company’s doing. How it’s harming women. Same as we’re doing.”

  “Why would you think that?”

  “Have you ever met her?”

  “Have you?”

  “Yup,” Gabe said.

  “Talked to her?”

  “Yup. And I think I might be right. She’s got ulterior motives. She’s not what she seems to be.”

  Ellie lowered herself into her desk chair. Gabe thought this pharma rep was a Vanderwald with ulterior motives. Ellie shrugged her coat off her left shoulder, switched the phone to the other hand, shrugged off the right, draped the coat over the back of her chair.

  Ellie knew, like everyone else who knew about the pharmaceutical business did, that Brinn and her soon-to-be-lauded husband Winton Vanderwald had a daughter.

  “You don’t think Nora Quinn is Brooke Vanderwald, do you? The daughter?” Brooke Hadley Vanderwald, who’d be thirtysomething now, had disappeared from news coverage years ago. Ellie had googled her relentlessly, but no matter what she tried, no recent information about Brooke ever showed up on a search. Some sites theorized she was hiding, others thought she might be dead. Might Gabe suspect she had created a new identity as a pharma rep? Nora Quinn?

  “And you think she’s back in the family fold? It might be cool to find her. I guess,” Ellie went on. “She was in that sailing accident that killed her brother, right? Do you know if she fully recovered? She was in rehab, according to the internet. Then, like, nothing. The internet kind of wondered if she was dead.”

  “You think my Nora Quinn is Brooke?” Gabe sounded skeptical. “Huh. That’d be interesting. Think it’s possible?”

  “I told you. The internet thinks she might be dead.”

  “Right, yeah. But it was only the brother who died. Five years ago. Maybe more?”

  “You were saying,” Ellie said. “This pharma rep. Whoever she is or isn’t—is doing what?”

  More silence.

  “Gabe?”

  “Trying to bring down the family,” Gabe said. “My theory, and who knows why, but my money’s on money, is that Nora’s using her insider status in the company sales force to seek out patients, women who have been harmed by their drugs. By the Pharminex drugs. And then use that knowledge to ruin the company. Or possibly blackmail it.”

  Ellie had no answer to that. Her mind was going too fast, a computer about to overload.

  “I wonder if you’ve seen her.” Gabe didn’t wait for her response. “In do
ctors’ offices. You’d notice her, I bet, always in black or dark colors, but wearing clothing my mother would have disapproved of.” He laughed. “Looks fine to me, I gotta say.”

  “Nora—”

  “Quinn. Yup. It’s the red hair you’d see first. Which, I must say, based on my years as an investigator—”

  “Her hair?”

  “I’d say it’s dyed. Have you seen her?”

  “Maybe.” Ellie, thinking, drew out the word.

  “She has kind of a Southern accent,” Gabe went on. “Also one hundred percent phony, if you ask me. Hang on,” he said. “Two seconds.”

  Ellie held the phone to her ear but heard only white noise. How had Gabe latched on to pharma salesperson Nora Quinn and what she might—or might not—be doing? She stared at her closed office door, thinking.

  Women’s lives were at stake, and she had taken on the task to stop that. Stop Pharminex from pushing its deadly poisons on unsuspecting women. It was horrifying and high-stakes, and Ellie would do whatever was necessary to end it. Apparently Gabe and his law firm had embraced the same quest. Ellie had to make this work.

  “I’m back. Ellie. We should talk in person.” Gabe’s voice had softened. “Compare notes. About Nora. Maybe over a glass of wine?”

  “I’m at work.”

  “I meant later. There are things we shouldn’t discuss over the phone.”

  “Like what?” Ellie’s cell phone pinged with a text, then another. Meg, wondering whether Ellie wanted a cookie. Warren, who wanted them both in his office. She almost threw her cell against the wall. “I just got a text. My boss wants to see me. I have to go. But you have to tell me. Like, quickly. What can’t we discuss on the phone?”

  “It’s possible Nora might have—wait. Do you know the name Kaitlyn Armistead?”

  Ellie covered her face with her hand and closed her eyes for a second, listening to Gabe’s voice through the speaker. She had to get out of here. But no, Ellie did not know a Kaitlyn Armistead.

  She cleared her throat. “Why?”