The First to Lie

by Hank Phillippi Ryan

  “Last night, most recently.” She took a seat in the corner of a cordovan leather couch.

  “Did she mention being connected to the Vanderwalds?”

  “Nope, she didn’t. And I did ask her.” She paused, but Gabe didn’t react. “She seemed baffled by the question. Good idea, though.”

  Gabe walked back and forth across the tweedy carpeting, three tall strips of window behind him, as she described her discussion with Nora, the documents she could get, and the insider paperwork. No family photographs were on the desk Gabe used, she noticed. No certificates or diplomas on the walls, no degrees or honors or indications of his real name or history.

  Reminded her of her own apartment.

  Finally Gabe pulled up a chair beside her. Put his coffee mug on top of two out-of-date New Yorkers stacked on the glass coffee table next to a brass figurine of an owl. “You’ll have Nora on video?”

  Ellie shook her head. “Audio only. She’s told me everything I need for my story and she’s agreed to be your law firm’s whistleblower too. She’s deeply upset about Pharminex. About what they’re doing to women.”

  “Awesome. Does she have proof? Like what?”

  “Training materials, she says. She’ll give them all to us, at some point. And listen to this. She say the company has prescription pads printed, already filled out for Monifan, just waiting for a doctor’s signature.”

  “That’s not illegal,” Gabe said. “But it’s certainly cynical.”

  “And she’s getting samples. And—ta-dah—included in the training materials? Proof Pharminex instructed their sales reps to push the drug for off-label use for ‘infertility mitigation.’ Which is—well, not only illegal, but dangerous. And they know it.”

  Gabe sighed, whether in sorrow, or disgust, or skepticism. He shifted on the chair, leaning away from Ellie.

  She shifted too, risking it, leaning closer to him. “And that’s what our Abigail said happened to her too. The same story. That her doctor admitted Monifan sometimes made women infertile.”

  “Which doctor prescribed Monifan for her?”

  “She won’t say.” Ellie flopped back against the couch’s soft leather. “But I’ll eventually convince her to.”

  “How do you know she’s even telling the truth?”

  “I don’t,” Ellie conceded. “I can only know what Abigail told me. That’s why you’ve got to get the real records,” she persisted. “There’s no way I can obtain actual patient reports, they’d never tell me. Or Nora.”

  Gabe nodded. “True. You get your ducks in a row. We will too. Then hit them with it. Right before their precious award event. Pharminex will battle a scandal like they’ve never seen.”

  Ellie took a deep breath. The implicit threat from the break-in continued to haunt her. Reporters always dealt with angry targets, and that anger meant they were on the right track. But this was unusually personal. “Listen. Gabe. Someone broke into my apartment.”

  “Broke into—are you okay?” Gabe stood, then looked at the phone on his desk. “Did you call the police?”

  “Meg did. It’s fine. I wasn’t home at the time, and they didn’t take anything.” She explained the whole episode in fast bullet points. “Finally, the cops just said ‘be careful.’ So maybe you should be careful too.”

  “Maybe.” Gabe nodded, pacing again. “You think it was Pharminex?”

  “Yeah. I guess I do.”

  “Because they know you’re a reporter working on a story about them?”

  “Yeah. I mean, why else?”

  “Because they want to make you uncomfortable, and let you know they’re aware of where you live?”

  “Yeah. I agree.”

  “Uh-huh.” Gabe seemed to be contemplating that. “And they’re trying to scare you away?”

  She nodded. “That’s what they do, right?”

  “And there would be no other reason Pharminex would be suspicious of you?” Gabe stopped and looked down at her.

  “Not that I can think of,” she said.

  Ellie felt a frown gather across her forehead. People only asked questions in a tone like Gabe’s if they thought they already knew the answers. And were testing to see whether the responses would be a lie.

  “What are you getting at?” Every cell in her body urged her to run. She’d been right to be suspicious of him. Her instincts had screamed at her from the moment she’d glimpsed him at Spinnaker. This Gabe had another agenda. He’d been lying to her.

  Pharminex had engineered Kaitlyn’s car accident, she was sure of it. And now, maybe, they’d sent their handsome-but-deadly goon to eliminate her. He’d tricked her into being alone with him. In a place where no one had any idea she was. A place where the corridors were empty, the offices locked, and if she screamed and screamed, no one would even hear her. She gathered herself to run.

  “Instead of interrogating me, why not simply tell me why you think they broke in.”

  “Maybe it’s because Pharminex knows you’re not always Ellie.”

  “Not always me?” She flattened a palm against her chest, protesting. “What?”

  “Come on, Ellie.” Gabe leaned against the edge of the desk, legs stretched out in front of him on the tweedy carpeting. “Because maybe Pharminex knows, just like I do, that sometimes you’re someone else. Aren’t you, Nora?”

  BEFORE

  CHAPTER 26

  LACEY

  The music from the church organ, Pachelbel’s “Canon,” of course, wafted out of the sanctuary and into the arch-ceilinged lobby where Lacey Grisham soon-to-be Vanderwald waited, by herself as she’d requested, the sweetly promising notes curling around her white satin pumps and rising to catch in her throat.

  How many brides had heard this same music? Brides in white lace, like she was, and crystal tiaras like hers, counting their blessings and thanking their lucky stars and clutching somethings borrowed and blue. All she’d wanted, all, was a family. Predictable, comfortable, with nannies and swing sets and husbands with bulging portfolios and country club memberships and maybe even happiness.

  And when they had children, soon soon soon, she’d have someone to truly love. No one could stop her from that. And when she was a mother, she’d do better, she’d be better, she’d shower her daughter—or son, even better—with affection and support and reassurance and companionship. Today was a day for vows. She made them, now, to herself.

  The music changed to the lilting progression of Mozart’s D-Major flute concerto, the signal that the ceremony was moments away. Tears came to her eyes with a vision of the past, then of a lush dark curtain closing off her history forever. The next step she took would be into a new life.

  Lacey touched the solitary diamond around her neck, a family heirloom—not from her family, of course—and wished. Hard. Now that her dreams seemed to be coming true, she feared they might turn out to be her imagination. Poised to shift and change and vanish, pivot away, like everything good in her life always seemed to do.

  In the moments before they walk down the aisle, Lacey had read, some women know their marriages won’t last. As they take each measured and stately step toward the altar, past smiling relatives and disappointed competitors and scented grandmothers and a writhing child or two, as they smile and properly position their cascading lilies and roses waist-high, they know it’s a mistake. Not Lacey. Goodbye, mother, she telegraphed a bitter farewell. You cannot hurt me anymore.

  This engagement had been an education. In the past months, planning and organizing, she’d learned a new emotional ledger. Been introduced to her new power structure. The calculus of her new family. Over the pre-wedding months of luncheons and teas, shared social events and shopping trips, even in the midst of engraved-or-not invitations and passed-or-plated catering decisions, it was all about mother-in-law Brinn. Brinn, who always had her thumb on the scales. Telling Lacey what to do, making choices, designing and describing and—the balance—paying for it all. “Do call me ‘Mother,’” she’d insisted.

&
nbsp; It hadn’t only been about shopping.

  Brinn—who Trevor had warned her was the family’s pill-pusher-in-chief—seemed to revel in her sphere of pharmaceutical power, hinting that if Lacey’s “lady system” needed a boost or a tweak, or her nerves were frazzled, or sleeplessness threatened, their family’s access to doctors and medications could effortlessly provide everything she would ever need.

  “It’s all in the cabinet, darling. I’ll show you. Or just ask me,” Brinn had whispered, her breath fragrant with a lunchtime vodka-tonic. “Modern medicine is a miracle, dear. And we’ll have all the Vanderwald heirs, little Trevor the fourth, maybe? And Trev’s trust fund will take care of them all, and you, dear, of course.”

  “You are so wonderfully generous, Mother,” Lacey had said. She remembered her younger self, sneaking Southern Living from the drugstore racks, watching how the models sat, with ankles crossed and careful posture. She’d devoured articles about proper entertaining and appropriate conversation. She’d studied the successful women as her personal mentors. Never have a photo taken while holding a cocktail. Thank-you notes must be handwritten. While her own mother edged further into her emotional netherworld, Lacey erased her, making glossy magazines her textbooks for advancement. Wasn’t that what one was supposed to do? Advance? When she took the next step, into the St. Erasmus sanctuary, she’d advance. Goodbye to those years that went before. She’d won. She’d be happy.

  People will believe what they want to believe. They believe what they hope is true. She could work with that.

  The flute stopped, and then the church organ rumbled into life, this time with Lacey’s music, the “Here comes the bride” that so many little girls long to hear. The music meant a new beginning, the acceptance of a new role. A bride, then a wife. And then, something more. A mother. Her dreams coming true. Truly true.

  I do, she thought.

  She turned the corner into the sanctuary, alone, as she’d requested. They’d roped garlands of eggshell-satin ribbon and strands of pearls and her favorite white gardenias on each pew. She knew tall silver candelabras, heirlooms, had been placed at the altar, and by now the bridal-white candles they held would be gently flickering.

  Lacey turned the corner and saw it all come to life—candles, ribbons, relatives, future. She heard a murmur of approval as the congregants stood, then the rustle of their silk and seersucker. They came to honor her, the bride, the newest Vanderwald.

  In the front row, the Vanderwald pew. Brinn—“Mother”—in ice-blue silk, Winton in black tie. Brooke, morose as only a sixteen-year-old girl could be, fidgeting in the simple copper silk sheath she’d finally agreed to wear. She’d refused to stand at the altar like a proper bridesmaid, and Lacey had been fine with that. No other bridesmaids either, which she’d convinced a disappointed Brinn was for the best. “It’ll keep the spotlight on Trevor and me, won’t it?” They’d giggled together, two smart women who knew what was good for them.

  Her nerves dissolved, and some kind of confidence filled every cell of her body so intently, so intensely, so passionately, that she almost floated away. A soft breeze from somewhere lifted her gossamer veil, and the last rays of evening light filtered through the stained-glass windows, illuminating haloed saints and white-winged angels.

  She saw Trevor, ten rows away, hair neatly trimmed and already a hint of a tan, shoulders square and bow tie perfectly horizontal. She saw his face change when he saw her, a light that came from within and not from the glow of beeswax candles. Wives and husbands were supposed to share, they vowed to share, for better or for worse.

  Trevor was all about for better.

  And she was about to become a new person. Leave her old life and all its baggage behind. She was about to transform, entirely, into Lacey Vanderwald.

  CHAPTER 27

  ELLIE

  The stuffy air in the WorkHere office felt charged between them. Ellie could almost see Gabe’s question hanging in the air. His discovery. And she could not deny it.

  Goodbye, Nora, Ellie thought. You’ve been useful, but this is your final curtain.

  “Right?” Gabe persisted. “Nora?”

  “So what? I was undercover.” Ellie came out from behind the coffee table, putting them on equal footing. She jabbed the air toward him with a forefinger. Staying on offense. “You think I was gonna blow that? You think Pharminex would hire a reporter as an employee? I had to get inside that company and the only way to do it was to be Nora. And Nora had to stay my secret. Only mine.”

  Her mind raced. Nora, her cover blown and her usefulness over, would have to vanish. Now she—Ellie—had to pin Gabe down about his own motives. And his identity.

  “And listen, dude. Here’s what’s way more important. What the hell are you doing? Right? I was undercover for my job. But you tried to trick me. All that stuff about my imaginary green nightgown, and the mole and—” She shook her head, remembering his phone calls. “What the hell was that about? You get off on seeing if you can charm women into—”

  “Hold on, Ellie.”

  “Hold on?” She ticked the names off her fingers as she recited his alter egos. “You were Gabe to me. But Guy to Nora. Right? Right? That’s some juggling act, I must say. Bravo. But how was that supposed to work? Was it your idea? Why?”

  She let herself picture that evening at Spinnaker, how she’d seen “Gabe” through the fake greenery, recognized him as Nora’s “Guy,” and realized she had a situation. She’d almost bolted.

  But then she got curious. Decided to play it out. But he hadn’t flinched when she sat down. Had not shown one glimmer of recognition.

  “And—wait. Wait wait wait.” She narrowed her eyes, baffled at her own conclusion. “You had to know the minute you offered to meet me at Spinnaker that your Guy masquerade would fall apart.”

  To her annoyance, Gabe laughed.

  “Bingo,” he said. “That’s why I figured it was time for Guy to disappear. I decided you, Ellie-you, were sincere in your goal to expose Pharminex. I told you we’re investigating the same thing. You think you’re the only one who goes undercover to get information? I’d targeted your whole class of recruits—hung out in doctors’ offices to see which sales reps might be willing to divulge secrets in return for—well, whatever I could do for them.”

  “But why’d you pick me? And hey—did you ‘target’ just me? Is there anyone else who thinks you’re whoever you pretended to be? Do you have a whole cadre of women you’ve duped?”

  Gabe put up both palms, as if fending off her attack. “No. No, honestly. I saw you—Nora—swiping through a dating app in one of the doctors’ offices.” He held up his cell phone. “So I knew you were looking. I, uh, followed you after you left. And lucky for me, you eventually went to Seaboard. Mentioning Shakespeare is always successful.” He paused, looked at her for a moment. “Turned out, you were all I needed.”

  She rolled her eyes, remembering her fantasies and cursing her stupid imagination. Remembering their nights at Seaboard, their matching black turtlenecks, the truffle fries.

  Did anyone ever tell the whole truth?

  “You are such a jerk, Gabe. Or whoever you are.”

  “Come on, Ellie or Nora or whoever you decide to be. Surely you wouldn’t condone duplicitous behavior for yourself—but not for me.”

  “You were pretending all that time?” she asked. “That you didn’t know Nora was me?”

  “Yup.”

  She frowned, remembering even more. “Wait. Do the police really think Nora had something to do with Kaitlyn’s death?”

  “Nope. Not that I know of, at least. I just wanted to see if that’d smoke you out.”

  “Jerk.”

  “Hey. You did the same thing to me, remember. At Spinnaker. Asked if I’d met any new ‘friends.’ That was pretty funny.”

  Ellie eyed the brass owl on the coffee table, and briefly contemplated throwing it at him.

  She tried to play back all their encounters, the times she’d adjusted her b
lond Ellie wig, or called attention to her red Ellie glasses. The times she’d patted herself on the back for her successful disguises. How she’d thought she’d fooled everyone. Well, she had. Except for Gabe.

  “I didn’t fool you at all?”

  “Nope.” He gave half a shrug. “Women always think men don’t notice them—in the right way, at least. I let you think I’d fallen for your masquerade. Wanted to see how far you’d push it.”

  Ellie weighed the owl in her hand, turned it over and over. “Is this a valuable thing? If I throw it at you, will it break?”

  “Who knows? This isn’t my office,” he said. “I only use it when I need to. Look. I told you, Ellie, straight up, that I suspected Nora was a fraud. Remember? Fake accent, dyed hair, I said. Frankly, I thought maybe you’d own up to it then. But it was you who kept up the playacting. You knew Ellie’s Gabe was the same person as Nora’s Guy. And yet you said nothing. What if I had been a bad guy?”

  “Exactly!” Ellie made a duh expression. “You might have been a spy from Pharminex. Or from somewhere else. I figured if I went along with it, I’d be more likely to find out.” She pointed the owl at him. “Is your name really Gabriel Hoyt?”

  He pulled a leather wallet from his jeans pocket, held up a D.C. driver’s license. “Good enough for you? But I have one more question.”

  “Shoot.” Ellie heard her phone buzzing in her purse. Someone was texting Nora, but she ignored it. There was no more Nora.

  Funny how it felt, to be only one person. The actual physical release, the relief, the elimination of the Nora part of her life. No more visits to doctors’ offices, with their waiting rooms full of women so needy she almost cried every time she left. Of doctors so malleable and cynical they’d believe the persuasion of salespeople for whom the sole purpose in life was to make money for the company. Not to help their patients.

  No more Nora. Even if she’d been doing it for the right reasons, she’d always felt uncomfortable being Nora. Doing the wrong thing for the right reason wasn’t the conscience-soother she’d hoped. She could just be Ellie now, the good one, the crusader, the one with an important cause, the powerful journalistic voice that brought this company to its knees.