The Liar

by Nora Roberts

  “It wasn’t a ploy, just a bonus.” She smiled, took the towel he offered. “Griffin, my hair’s like another person, and that other person also needs a towel.”

  “Right.” He went in for another, and the beer she’d taken and set on the counter.

  “So what were you researching?”

  “Oh.” She’d wrapped the first towel around her body, and now bent from the waist to gather her hair in the second. “You don’t want to talk about that. It’s all the other things. The Richard things.”

  “You don’t want to talk about it?”

  “I do.” She straightened, somehow tucking parts of the towel into the whole in a way that fascinated him. “I want to talk to somebody about it who’d have some perspective on it. I thought I’d run all of it by Forrest, maybe tomorrow, even though he’s probably thought of half of what I just thought of already, but . . .”

  “Put on the new dress, and we’ll talk about it while the loaf of meat is cooking.”

  23

  She turned up the oven, put on the dress, banded back her hair so it wouldn’t explode as it dried.

  She joined him on the back porch, with wine, and just sat a moment, looking out at the mountains with their soft peaks and ridges rolling up into the sky.

  “I was paying bills today when the kids were napping, and I thought about how Jimmy Harlow—it has to be him—would be looking at all my business. The lawyer stuff, the creditors, the accounts I’ve kept of what I was able to sell. I thought how embarrassing that is, a stranger poking around in all that, and told myself it was worth the embarrassment if it made him realize I don’t have anything he wants.”

  “That’s good thinking. Smart, positive.”

  “Then I was thinking more. He’d see all the photos I have on the laptop. I keep them all in files on there—I transferred them from my old one once I got it back from the authorities. I never got around to going through them all, deleting any from . . . from the time I was with Richard because there was just so much else to do. It occurred to me he’d—Harlow—he’d seen, especially from that first year or so, all the places we went. He could follow right along, like a map.”

  Griff nodded. “And so could you.”

  “Yes! That’s what I realized. So could I. Griff, I think Richard took me all those places for a reason—I understand now he never did anything without an angle to play. I was like his disguise. I—and then when Callie came along, we—made him a family man. What if he stashed the jewelry or the stamps, or both, in one of those places, or sold some of it off as we went? And I started thinking more, once I started looking through the pictures, he was probably doing his work, too. On his honeymoon—or so I thought—then with his pregnant wife. Such a handy disguise, the pregnant wife.”

  “I’m going to agree with you, even though I know it has to burn some.”

  “I’m past the burning. Looking through the pictures, the letters I sent home, I started remembering what he’d always say to me—at least for the first months or year. Whenever we were going to meet somebody, he’d say, ‘Just be yourself, Shelby.’ How that would charm them. Not to worry, I didn’t know anything about art or wine or fashion, that sort of thing. I was never nervous about meeting new people, but I started to be.”

  “He made you feel awkward, and . . . less.”

  “He did, and as the ‘be yourself’ started changing to how I shouldn’t try to impress whoever it was because they’d just see through that. I guess I didn’t have a lot to say, and that made a good disguise for him.”

  She sipped the wine, set that part aside for now.

  “I thought maybe I could look at articles online, matching them with the time we were in a certain place. Was there a robbery? A fraud? Even worse? And I had more to use because Mama saved all my letters and postcards. Every one. So I could read through, remind myself what we did, where we went in Paris or Madrid, who we met. I was full of details at first, so swept up in it all.”

  “Does anything stick out now, when you look at it from what you know now?”

  “A couple of things. Why was he in Memphis? I don’t believe he just stuck a pin in a map. But there he was, and only four days from when he robbed that woman—Lydia Redd Montville—and shot her son.”

  “Four days after, according to the brunette, he double-crossed her and Harlow, ran off with the take.”

  “That’s right. I think he must have had that take with him, or he’d stashed it. A bank box, maybe. He had his new identity, and he had a fat roll of cash. Or it seemed like it to me. And there I was, just primed to be dazzled and swept up.”

  “Do you want my angle on that?”

  She drew in a breath. “I guess I do.”

  “The cops were looking for Jake Brimley, a man on his own. He had to know his partners would rat him out. He didn’t go into it without a plan in place. The new ID, the seed money, a change in looks. But he needed one more thing. He needed to be a couple.”

  “I think that’s true.”

  “He wouldn’t want someone like the brunette, someone who could play his game. He’d want innocence, youth, someone malleable and trusting. And ready to be dazzled.”

  On that she could only nod, let out a long breath. “I sure fit the bill, right down to the ground.”

  “He was a professional manipulator, Shelby. You didn’t stand a chance once he zeroed in on you. He ends up with a young, striking redhead, so he’s not only not traveling alone, he has someone people notice. Notice first, remember last. Where did he take you first?”

  “He spent four days in Memphis. I’d never met anyone so charming, and exciting, too, the way he talked about all his travels. Our gig was over, and I planned to come home for a week or so before the next one. But when he said he had to go to New York, for business, and asked me to go with him, I went.”

  She let out a half-laugh. “Just like that. It was just going to be a few days—an adventure, I thought. And it was thrilling.”

  “Why wouldn’t it be?” Griff countered.

  “We flew on a private plane. I’d never known anyone who’d been on a private plane.”

  “No security, no luggage check. You can take anything you want on private, right?”

  “I hadn’t thought of that. He almost always flew private. At the time it was just one more thrill. I’d never been anywhere like New York, and he was so sweet and charming and . . . well, he seemed dazzled by me. It wasn’t the money, Griff, though I can’t say I didn’t love that he’d buy me nice clothes and take me to restaurants. It was the sparkle of it, all of it. It was blinding.”

  “He made sure of it.”

  “Even now it’s hard to believe he didn’t mean the things he said back then. How I was what had been missing from his life. I wanted to be that—I wanted to be what had been missing from his life. So when he asked me not to go back, but to go with him to Dallas—more business—I went. I threw everything away and went with him.”

  “Another major city.”

  Closing her eyes, she nodded. “Yes. You see that pattern already? We always went to a big city, always stayed for only a few days. Sometimes he’d give me a wad of cash, tell me to go out shopping because he had meetings. Then he’d come back with flowers—white roses. He said how he lived on the road or in the air right then, but how he was ready—now that he had me—to settle down somewhere.”

  “Exactly what you’d want to hear. It was his business to read people, to be what they wanted or expected.”

  She sat silent for a moment, appreciating the softening light, the whisper of air in the trees, the bubble of the stream.

  “If I’d built a man I’d fall for, at that point in my life, it would have been Richard. The thing is, Griff, in those first few weeks, we crisscrossed the country.”

  “Covering his tracks.”

  “I think so, and I wonder, did he have places along the way where he left part of the take from that Florida robbery? If he had a bank box in Philadelphia, maybe he had others. Me
linda Warren indicated that. He never seemed to run out of cash, so I think maybe he had those boxes to pull from, or he was stealing along the way.”

  “Probably both.”

  She shifted toward him, angling so they were face-to-face. “I think it was both. Looking through the pictures and letters, I remembered when we were in St. Louis, and I woke up to find him gone. He’d go out for walks—that’s what he said. Thinking time. He didn’t get back until nearly dawn, and he was excited. Just quivering with it. We left that morning. He rented a car and we drove to Kansas City. Just a quick stop, he said. He had a business associate to meet up with. And he pulled this Cartier watch out of his pocket, said he’d picked up a little something for me. A couple years later, I went to put it on, and it was gone. He got angry, said I’d been careless and lost it, but I hadn’t been careless. Anyway, I went on the Internet and I looked back, matching up the dates, and found there’d been a burglary that night in St. Louis. Jewelry again, about a quarter of a million in jewelry. And watches.”

  “Steals them in St. Louis, fences them in Kansas City.”

  “I guess he figured the watch was my cut—for a while. There were other times. I’m going to see if I can match them up like St. Louis.”

  He reached over, gave her arm a rub. “What’ll that tell you?”

  “I know I can’t change any of it.” She dropped her gaze to her hands, thought of her notes, her stacks of photos and postcards. “But maybe he did steal in those places, and at least I can give what I know, or think I might know, to the police. It feels like I’d be doing something.”

  “You are doing something.”

  “Right now I should be putting dinner on the table.” She rose. “I appreciate you listening.”

  “Why wouldn’t I?” He walked in with her. “I’ve got a list of my own started.”

  “What kind of list?”

  “I don’t have the information you do.” He glanced at the memory box, the laptop. “I wouldn’t mind having a look at it. Mine’s pretty much a list of names, events, times. Warren, Harlow and Brimley—as he was known then. Miami robbery, the shooting, the double-cross. You come next. I didn’t realize it was only days after Miami, but had to figure it wasn’t long.”

  “It’s like I was as tailor-made for him as I thought he was for me.” She put the meat loaf on a trivet, got out his only platter. Transferring the meat and vegetables, she glanced around as he’d gone quiet.

  “What is it?”

  “I don’t want to upset you more than all this already does, but I don’t think he just walked into the club where you were playing that night and decided, okay, she’s my cover.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think he spent a couple days checking you out. You’re a looker, Red, and I bet you were a looker at nineteen, on stage. Your name’s right there, so he could look you up, ask a few questions. You’re single, unattached.”

  Thoughtfully, she garnished the platter with curly parsley and rings of red and green peppers. “A bumpkin from a little mountain town in Tennessee.”

  “You’ve never been a bumpkin. But there you are—young, fresh, inexperienced, but game. It takes game to get on stage. He checks you out, then he moves in, feels you out. By then he’s got a good sense what you’re like, what you like. And he makes himself exactly what you like.”

  “What if I’d said no, no, I can’t just run off to New York City with you?”

  “He’d have moved on, found somebody who would. I’m sorry.”

  “No need to be. It’s a relief in its way to feel like it was never really about me. It was never really personal. It makes it more of a puzzle to solve.”

  “Okay. Wow, that looks great.”

  Pleased, she set the completed platter on the eating counter. “My mama would tell you presentation counts. So even if it doesn’t taste good, at least it looks good. Let’s hope we have both. Sit down. I’ll serve it up, and you can tell me what’s next on your list.”

  “Houston, right?”

  “It was Houston for about six months.”

  “Then Atlanta, Philadelphia, then Hilton Head. You said Richard never did anything without a reason. Why did he want you and Callie to go with him to Hilton Head?”

  “You think he might have had some sort of deal going there, and we’d have been cover again.” She plated a hefty slice of meat loaf with generous portions of potatoes and carrots. “Oh God, Griff, what if it wasn’t an accident? What if the deal went bad, and he was killed? Dumped in the ocean?”

  “You’re probably never going to know the answer to that one. He put out an SOS, didn’t he?”

  “Somebody did, but . . . Griff, Forrest said Harlow escaped around Christmas. Richard—that was just a couple days after Christmas.”

  “Killing Richard wouldn’t be a smart way to get to the millions.”

  “No, you’re right. But there could’ve been a fight, an accident, and you’re still right. I’m probably never going to know, at least unless they catch Harlow.”

  She put a smaller portion on her plate, sat. “It probably happened just the way the police think. He liked taking risks. Driving fast, skiing the fastest slopes, scuba diving, rock climbing, skydiving. He wouldn’t have let a squall stop him. But it did. What else?”

  “The PI. Maybe he’s just what he claimed, but—” After the first bite of meat loaf, Griff stopped. “Wow.” Sampled another bite. “Okay, that seals it. I’m keeping you. This meat loaf’s better than my mom’s—and if you tell her I said that, I’ll swear you’re a liar.”

  “I’d never insult another woman’s meat loaf. You really like it?”

  “Ask me again after I’ve licked the plate.”

  “Must be the beer. In the meat loaf.”

  “There’s beer in the meat loaf?”

  “An old family recipe.”

  “Definitely keeping you.” He stopped eating long enough to cup a hand at the back of her neck, pull her over for a kiss.

  “I haven’t made meat loaf in years, so I’m glad it turned out.”

  “Prizewinning.”

  “Tell me what you think about that detective.”

  “Right. I fell into an altered state due to beer-laced meat loaf. So the PI, he tracks you to Philly, follows you down here. He’s either dedicated or he has an agenda. He’s licensed and all that, and he swears the brunette wasn’t his client. Forrest says he won’t name the client.”

  “I didn’t get that much out of Forrest.”

  Griff shrugged. “We were talking. He’s alibied for the night of the murder, so there’s no legit cause to hassle him. Yet.”

  Head cocked, she stabbed a bite of carrot. “You know more.”

  “Bits and pieces. I know Forrest says the widow and her son both deny hiring the PI. The insurance paid out, and they’ve put the whole ugly business behind them. The Miami police talked to them, and it looks like they’re alibied for the murder, too.”

  “You’re just a well of information.”

  “He’s worried about you—Forrest. Mostly it’s negative information, so I guess he didn’t want to dump it on you.”

  “Knowing’s better than not.”

  “Now you know. Most of the rest is pure speculation. We can speculate pretty confidently Harlow’s been in the Ridge. It’s no big leap to speculate he killed the brunette, if for no other reason than who else, and he had motive since she’d claimed he shot the widow’s son—and maybe he did—but since the gun you found in Philadelphia in Richard’s safe-deposit box was the one used, it’s more logical to—”

  “What? What did you say? The gun I found—Richard’s gun?”

  Griff decided he needed a long drink of wine. “Okay, listen, he—Forrest—just got the information on that today. The Miami cops did the ballistics, verified the gun you found in the bank fired the bullet that wounded the son. I happened to run into him this afternoon, and he told me.”

  “Richard. Richard shot someone.”

  “Mayb
e. Maybe he just grabbed the gun after, but . . . logical speculation. His gun, his shot. Harlow always denied it, and he’d never taken a hit on weapons charges before this.”

  “She lied. She was in love with Richard—Jake to her. At least in her way she loved him. She lied, even after he betrayed her. It wasn’t just the money, the take, that had her tracking me here. She was jealous, angry and jealous that he’d spent those years with me. Had a child with me.”

  “Most likely.” Since he’d come to the same conclusion, Griff nodded. “And more, a lot of people project. You know what I’m