A Family of Strangers

by Emilie Richards

  “Did you try to tell my father what was going on?”

  “I did try, but by then it was clear he wasn’t going to believe a word I said.”

  Dad had rejected Ella’s story, but now I wondered if it would help him accept the truth, if or when things with Wendy finally came to a head.

  “I’m sorry. I keep saying that, but I am.” I touched her hand, which was still hovering over her sandwich. “You didn’t deserve any of this.”

  “If all this comes out in the open, and your father realizes he fired the most loyal employee he’ll ever have? If somehow that little miracle occurs?” She looked up. “I don’t want my job back. I don’t want anything from any Gracey, except to be left alone.”

  “I won’t bother you again. You gave me more than I had a right to know.”

  “I don’t think you’re anything like Wendy, if that’s any comfort.” Ella picked up her sandwich and took her first bite.

  Maybe it was a comfort, but not much of one. I stood, left my sandwich on the table hoping she would take it home for dinner, and walked out of the café.

  * * *

  At home after lunch with Ella, Glenn’s email was no surprise. He asked if I wanted him to send the two dozen or so photos he’d retrieved from the flash drive, while also implying it would be a bad idea to do it over the internet. I was in no mood to wait, so I took my chances. When I had finished clicking through them, I knew that Ella had only discovered the tip of the iceberg.

  I also understood why Wendy had hired Jonah to empty the safe. Six men, probably all Gracey Group investors of one kind or the other, were now prime candidates for blackmail. It didn’t take an experienced investigator to realize what Wendy, in various stages of undress, had planned.

  I wondered if the photos were just insurance, something she’d planned to tuck away and pull out if her other life plans fell apart. If so, the disintegration had begun. I wondered if Bryce had caught her with a fellow officer or two while she was honing her covert photography skills. But even with a divorce, Wendy was still in line to take over Gracey Group, pay herself an extravagant salary and live happily-ever-after.

  Of course, if Bryce ever explained his side of the divorce to Mom and Dad, it was possible our father would fire her. Then she would be left with nothing.

  Except the flash drive.

  Since everybody who invested in Gracey Group properties had a substantial income, the photos were as good as gold bullion. Some, if not all, of the men in the photos would probably give Wendy whatever she asked.

  My sister, the capitalist. If this scheme hadn’t been so sleazy and despicable, my father would’ve been proud.

  Since I hadn’t eaten, I grabbed crackers and cheese from the refrigerator and went out to the screened porch to stare into the woods beyond.

  Was I surprised when the burner, my constant companion, began to buzz? Wendy and I had once been linked by an umbilical cord. No matter how I regarded our relationship, we would always be connected. I could almost hear her thoughts. The holidays were over, and she didn’t have to pretend she’d been depressed and lonely without all the people she loved so well.

  I put the phone to my ear. “Wendy...” I waited.

  “Are you alone? Can you talk?”

  “Yes to both. I’m on the screened porch. Where are you?”

  As expected, she ignored the question. “It was horrible missing the holidays.”

  “I’ll bet.” I waited.

  “The girls... They’re okay? Did Bryce come home? Did you tell him about me?”

  “The girls had a good holiday. Bryce didn’t come home. And so far I haven’t told him anything. But I’m at the end of my lies, and the next time I talk to him, I’m going to be honest.” I paused just a second so she wouldn’t begin speaking again. “Honest like he was honest with me when he told me you two are getting a divorce. Only you aren’t holding up your end of that bargain, are you?”

  She sniffed. Her voice was teary. “I should have told you myself.”

  “You think?”

  “You have no idea...” More sniffs. “I’m raising those beautiful little girls alone, Ryan. He’s never there. I’m supposed to do it all. Work, be Mom, be the perfect submarine commander’s wife. I just couldn’t do it anymore. I thought if I asked for a divorce, maybe he’d come to his senses.”

  Although he hadn’t exactly said so, I wondered if Bryce had been the one asking for the divorce. “It’s going to be pretty hard to get a divorce if you’re hiding from the police. Maybe you should come home and straighten this out.”

  “You sound so distant.”

  “I may be. As far as I know, you could be in Australia hanging out on a cattle station.”

  “I mean emotionally.”

  “I’m sorry. What would you like me to say...Mom?”

  She gasped. I had to give her credit. This time she actually did sound surprised, but how could I tell if Wendy was acting from genuine feelings or faking them? I wasn’t even sure she had feelings.

  “So...you know?” she asked in a small, sad voice.

  “Yep, you led me right to the truth. It took a while, but I saw my father’s photo in a yearbook, and it all came clear.”

  “I loved him, you know. Sean was such a sweetheart.”

  “I’m curious why you never told Mom and Dad his name?”

  “I didn’t want to ruin his life. He had such big plans.”

  “Like enlisting so he could get killed in the Gulf War? It never occurred to you that if you married him, or at the very least admitted the truth, Dad might have hired Sean at Gracey Group? Or sent you both to college?”

  “I...guess I didn’t think of that.”

  I thought it was more likely that Wendy hadn’t known exactly who my father was, not until I’d turned into the spitting image of Sean Riley. The thought stung, but it made sense. Claire Durant had intimated as much. My sister, she’d said, had always had a lot of boyfriends.

  “Well, thanks for giving birth to me,” I said. “I’m glad you went through with it.”

  “I was seventeen, Ryan. I did my best. And I didn’t want to give you up, but Mom and Dad made me. Then I had to come home and pretend I was your sister. It was horrible. You have no idea.”

  Anger boiled inside me, but a small, rational voice told me to stay calm. In order to get to the bottom of everything, Wendy had to continue to call me.

  “I’m sure it was tough.” My tone was credible, if not warm.

  “I wanted to tell you, I promise, but Mom wouldn’t allow it. She didn’t want you to know. I guess even now, after all these years, I still couldn’t go against her. She spent all those years raising you, and what was I going to do? Waltz in and tell you I was your real mother? So I let you go on a little quest, hoping you might realize the truth.”

  “Why the subterfuge? So I wouldn’t tell Mom I learned it directly from you?”

  “That, and because I think people ignore whatever they don’t really want to know. I thought that you’d only figure out the whole truth if you were ready. And if you weren’t, you would stop looking and push whatever you’d learned aside so you could go on believing what you always had. I didn’t want you to be hurt. I love you.” Now that I had stopped filtering every word through the bonds of family, I could hear everything she didn’t say. I want you to believe this because I need your help. If I pretend to love you, you can’t turn me in.

  I had a brand-new appreciation for all the people I’d ever investigated, all those poor souls who had repeated far-fetched stories they’d been told by somebody they loved, never imagining they were passing on lies.

  “So you sent me to Claire.”

  “Everything else is so awful now, I wanted that one little thing. For you to know. For you to love me for the person I really am in your life.”

  I almost hung up. But on the
patio table in front of me was a drawing of pink reindeer that Noelle had made for me. She’d drawn it right after we’d had the Santa Claus talk, something, like the tooth fairy, that her parents should have been there to handle. Luckily, I’d avoided the truth—nobody did that better these days. Sweet little Noelle still believed the man in the red suit slid down the chimney every Christmas Eve, or in our case, sneaked in through the garage.

  The drawing and the reminder of Noelle and Holly helped. The girls and my parents had to be my focus.

  I squeezed out my reply. “I’m sorry everything is so awful. I’m sorry you missed Christmas with the girls.”

  “Did you make it a good one?”

  I dug my fingernails into my palm until I knew I’d drawn blood. “Yes, but everybody missed you.”

  She sniffed again and while she sniffed, I lied. “We’re close to finding Milton Kearns.”

  “Are you?”

  “We are. But Wendy, I have to know the truth.”

  I took a deep breath. I had rehearsed what I would ask her if and when she called again. I had decided not to tell her about catching Jonah, or about opening the safe. And she certainly didn’t need to know my friendly spymaster had managed to decrypt the photos on her flash drive. But I did want her to know something else.

  I couldn’t let her know I had her passport, so I lied yet again. “I checked with the Gracey Group travel agent. You’ve been to Brazil. Twice. I’m guessing you went for cosmetic surgery. I’m also guessing Vítor Calvo might have been your doctor. So his death at the same resort you were evaluating in Santa Fe seems more than suspicious. Is that why you’re on the run?” I paused for one more second. “Or are you running because you really did murder him?”

  “I didn’t!”

  I had to admire how she poured a ton of outrage into three syllables. “Okay, but were you meeting him there? Was that why you were at the resort?”

  “No.”

  “When you were in Brazil, was he your doctor?”

  “Listen, I had two small cosmetic procedures at his clinic when I was in Brazil on vacation. I love Rio. I loved getting away for a little while. It meant nothing. But yes, he was my doctor. So that’s why when I saw him at the resort, I asked him to have a drink. It was 100 percent innocent. He was charming, and he even pretended to remember me. But don’t you see? That connection, as vague as it is, makes it more likely the police will come after me.”

  “It really does, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes, it does! Thank you.”

  “And everything else is the same? You’re not holding anything back?”

  “I am not. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you right up front. But, to be honest, I was a little embarrassed I’d had surgery. I didn’t want to admit it.”

  “I can see that. It just doesn’t help when you lie to me.”

  “I won’t anymore. Look, just find Milton Kearns. Then we can get the police to question him. Then I’ll talk to them and tell them everything I know. Hopefully I can finally walk away.”

  “Well, like I said, we’re getting close.”

  “Where is he?”

  “It’s complicated. But the next time we talk, maybe I’ll have good news.”

  “Ryan, take care of your...sisters.”

  I disconnected when I heard the familiar beeps. But I didn’t move for a very long time. I sat staring at pink reindeer and plotted what I would do next.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  When I arrived in Gulf Sands, the Christmas decorations in my parents’ front yard were being carefully removed to go back to a nearby storage facility. The realistic topiaries with velvet bows and handblown bulbs that had flanked the door, and the twin golden reindeer as tall as my nieces were now under the care of two energetic young men with T-shirts that read “Stohr and Moore: Store More.”

  Not surprisingly, Mom was supervising from the porch. “Don’t forget the three nutcrackers on the lanai. Remember they have moving parts.”

  The guy wrestling the last reindeer into the truck made one final adjustment. “They’re already in the truck. We’ll be finished in a few minutes.” The back of his T-shirt said he was Jerry Moore. When the other man turned his said Greg Stohr. The gimmick was cute.

  Mom didn’t say anything to me until I was standing beside her. “The girls are back in school?”

  “As of this morning. I only have an hour before I pick them up, but I need to talk to you. Without Dad overhearing.”

  Adding that last sentence was key. Her expression changed from austere to worried. “Bryce is very upset.”

  “He should be.”

  Her eyelids fluttered, and for a moment I thought I might need to steady her. But she straightened. “Your father’s napping. We’ll go out by the pool.”

  She thanked the men and handed Jerry a check. Obviously a tip was included, because he looked delighted.

  Through the house and out to the lanai, she didn’t say a word. But when we were seated in the shade, she wasted no time.

  “You’ve been hiding things from me since the day your sister disappeared. But how can you keep her husband in the dark, too? He’s the father of those girls. He has every right to know what’s really going on with Wendy because it affects them. And I am tired of waiting!”

  “Before you recommend Bryce for sainthood, you need to know he hasn’t exactly told the truth, either.”

  I had her full attention so I plowed on. “A divorce has been in the works for a while. In his defense, he probably thought Wendy should be the one to tell you. Apparently she said she’d go along with it, but now he can’t find her to move the paperwork along.”

  “A divorce?”

  “He told me himself, and Wendy confirmed it.”

  She looked stricken, but that didn’t stop the questions. “When? You’ve talked to her again?”

  “About half an hour ago. For the first time in a month.”

  “You don’t know how to get hold of her? You can’t call her and tell her to talk to Bryce and straighten this out? Is she staying away because she doesn’t want him to serve the papers?”

  “I’m going to start at the beginning, but it’s not a pretty story, Mom.”

  “You think I haven’t guessed that much?”

  Touching traditions didn’t apply today. I covered her hand. “I’m going to tell you what Wendy told me, and then I’m going to tell you what I think about it. I’m not trying to make you choose between daughters. You need facts, and then you can make your own decisions.”

  “Get it over with.”

  I started with Wendy’s first phone call. I could see Mom was prepared to hear that Wendy’s absence was all about the divorce. She wasn’t prepared to hear that her older daughter might be accused of murder.

  When I finished, she seemed dazed, as if she was trying to fit my words into a more acceptable pattern. “Wendy could be right,” I said. “She might be pulled into a murder she has nothing to do with. It can happen.”

  “But if she didn’t know him, if she was just staying at the same hotel that night...”

  “Unfortunately, that part’s not true.” I told her the basic details of Vítor Calvo’s murder, then about Wendy having a drink with him earlier in the evening. “She denied knowing him and said he was just a nice guy she met in the bar, but today the story changed. She admitted she’d been to Brazil twice to have cosmetic procedures at his clinic. So that connection makes it even more likely the sheriff might be interested in her.”

  “Brazil? When did she go to Brazil?”

  I explained and waited for Mom to insist I was wrong, that Wendy would never lie to her that way. Instead she shook her head, but not in denial, more as if she hoped a good shake would set the facts straight.

  Sadly, the shake dislodged more questions. “Why is she telling you this? She wanted you to take care of the gi
rls because at the time I couldn’t, I see that. But why is she telling you about the murder? If she lied about Brazil, surely she could have lied about her reasons for not coming home.”

  “Not easily. Look how suspicious you’ve been. And she involved me because I have contacts and experience. She thought I could help her find the man who had drinks with her and the doctor that night.”

  I finished telling her about the events right before Calvo died and Wendy’s explanation for why she was at the resort in the first place. Finally I told her about Milton Kearns.

  “Wendy claims if the police can find and talk to Kearns and nail down his story, she won’t be a suspect.”

  “Why hasn’t anybody in New Mexico contacted your father or me to find her? Or Gracey Group? Have you spoken to anyone from the sheriff’s department?”

  “So far I don’t think they’ve identified her as the woman with Calvo that night.”

  “Then she can come home. Why doesn’t she? She’s not a suspect.”

  “Wendy thinks it’s a matter of time until someone comes forward and leads them to her. When that happens, she wants to be able to give them Kearns. She thinks that’s the only way she’ll be safe.”

  “Do you believe this?”

  We’d come to the hardest part. “No.”

  “Why?”

  I wasn’t about to go into all the sordid details—Jonah, the attempted break-in, the safe and the photos. Instead I sorted through what I knew and ended up with the common denominator.

  “Wendy can’t be trusted, Mom. I’m sorry, but she’s lied, and I’ve caught her more than once. She’s done other things, worse things than lying. She claims she had nothing to do with Calvo’s murder, but I can’t take that as a given.”

  She could have asked a dozen questions, most notably what I meant by “worse things than lying.” I’d fully expected her to, so the question she asked instead surprised me.

  “And what will you do if you find out she’s lying about the murder? What will you do if she had something to do with it?”