The Substitute Sister

by Lisa Childs

  At least Nadine had called after what would have been her wedding day, but Sasha had been too angry and hurt to listen to her sister. And the words she’d said would haunt her…if Nadine were really dead. If Nadine wasn’t already haunting her…

  Charles sighed. “I’m sorry about that, too, but I couldn’t call you. I couldn’t face you. I felt so bad about what I did to you.” He couldn’t meet her gaze now, staring instead at her swollen wrist.

  She didn’t care how bad he felt. She’d suffered enough humiliation over his betrayal. She had no desire to discuss it anymore. What she wanted to know was how he felt about Annie, if he cared enough to claim her….

  She strove for a casual tone when she asked, “So how long did you and Nadine stay together?”

  “Sasha, we really shouldn’t talk about this,” he said, shifting uneasily where he sat on the bed next to her. “I hurt you enough…”

  “Yes, you did. But you can’t hurt me anymore.” Not unless he tried to take Annie. “Tell me. I’m curious.”

  As his fingers probed her wrist again and she swallowed a whimper of pain, she remembered the crazy saying, Curiosity Killed the Cat. Is that why someone had pushed her down the stairs? Because of her curiosity?

  Or had it been Nadine, as she’d thought? But in the cold, dim light of another dreary day on Sunset Island, her accusation seemed bizarre, especially after Reed’s assertions. A little crazy. She really needed some sleep.

  He sighed. “Okay, then. Nadine and I stayed together about a year, year and a half. It was stupid. I’d dropped out of school, and we kept moving. My parents had disowned me…”

  She’d heard that and had idly wondered if it had been over the small fortune they’d dropped on the wedding her parents hadn’t been able to afford but that they’d had to have, or if it had been because he’d dropped out of med school. But she didn’t care about that anymore.

  He went on, his voice rough with memories of Nadine. “I’m surprised we made it as long as we did. We hardly had any money. Then Nadine got caught passing bad checks…”

  Nadine had gotten caught, but he would have been part of it, too. “She went to jail?”

  He nodded. “She got arrested.”

  “So you left her there, in jail?”

  Color flooded his face as he grimaced. “It wasn’t like that. She told me to leave her. She had it under control. I’m sure she got out of it. Nadine could talk her way out of anything.”

  And into anything, even Sasha’s fiancé’s bed. She wasn’t particularly surprised by Nadine’s crime. She’d known her sister had pushed the limits. How far? Had she killed Mrs. Scott the way the old woman’s loyal staff believed?

  What exactly was Nadine capable of? Faking her own death? But as Reed had pointed out, for what purpose? Hating Sasha wasn’t enough of a motive.

  “So you haven’t seen Nadine in almost four years?” she asked, striving to sound only mildly curious.

  He shrugged. “Three, three and a half.”

  She wanted exact dates, but she lacked the most important one. Annie’s birthday.

  “I always figured she got rid of me because she found someone else. Guess I was right,” he said, a grimace contracting the features she once thought so handsome. Now she saw only weakness in the thin line of his nose and his slightly rounded chin.

  “What?”

  “Is the sheriff the little girl’s father?” His voice quavered with jealousy.

  She’d asked that once, and he’d never answered her. But she knew him now, had seen his own uncertainty about Charles being Annie’s father. And she knew him well enough to know that he would claim Annie if he knew for certain she was his. But she also knew he considered himself Annie’s father in spirit, if not blood.

  “I, uh…” she stammered.

  “You don’t know,” Charles wrongly concluded. “Be careful, Sasha. Don’t let him use you.”

  As a substitute for Nadine? As Charles had used her? She understood everything now, and maybe she owed Nadine for disrupting her wedding. Because it was a wedding that never should have happened.

  But what about Reed’s feelings for Nadine? Had that been the reason he’d kissed her? They’d been talking about Nadine, about how much she’d loved her daughter. He’d respected that about Nadine. Had he loved her?

  “I’ve learned to be careful,” she said. The hard way. After what Charles had done to her, she didn’t dare trust anyone.

  But she hadn’t been careful with Reed, she’d been needy and out of control. And if Charles hadn’t interrupted them, what would have happened?

  Her skin heated as she admitted to herself what would have happened. And while her traitorous body would have enjoyed it, she would have risked her heart on another man who didn’t want it.

  “I’m sorry, Sasha. God, how I wish things had been different. If you had never tracked down Nadine to come to our wedding…”

  She’d be Mrs. Charles Norder. Why did the thought cause a shudder to grip her body? Maybe Nadine had done her a favor. And if it hadn’t been Nadine, wouldn’t it have been someone else…sooner or later?

  If Charles had really loved her, he wouldn’t have cheated…not even with someone who’d looked just like her. Or had he been cheating on Nadine with her when he’d been her boyfriend, then fiancé, all those years?

  “I’ve come to accept that things worked out for the best,” she said as relief lightened her heart.

  “And you think the sheriff is that?” he asked, his voice tight. “The best?”

  Maybe not the best but at least a better man than Charles Norder, her former fiancé. “No, I was talking about me. I’m better off.”

  She swallowed the hysterical laugh that rose to her throat. Better off?

  She heard her dead sister’s voice calling her name and had been pushed down the stairs the night before. But she would be better off, once she left the dangers and temptations of Sunset Island.

  “What about you, Charles?”

  “Oh, Sasha, if I had it to do all over again—”

  “No.” She didn’t want a declaration of love or anything else from this man. “I meant, why are you here? Nadine called you. I know that much.”

  “The sheriff told you.” Resentment contorted his face, stealing any trace of handsomeness from it. She’d never seen Charles jealous.

  If the emotion could do that to his face, what had it done to his soul? Eaten away at it, leaving him a killer?

  She shivered and realized that Reed had been right to not want to leave her alone with Charles. She’d thought, hoped, that he’d been driven by jealousy. But now she knew it was more protectiveness, which was part of his job, than any feelings he might have started developing for her.

  He didn’t even know her.

  Like she’d never really known Charles. But even though she was alone with a possible killer, she had to ask, “Did you do it? Did you kill my sister?”

  Chapter Seven

  “I heard her,” Mrs. Arnold said as she filled up his coffee cup.

  “What?” Distracted by the fact that Sasha was alone with her ingratiating ex-fiancé, Reed hadn’t understood the housekeeper. “Heard who?”

  “I heard Sasha fall.”

  “Fall? She said she was pushed.”

  Mrs. Arnold nodded, as she placed the coffee urn back on the tray on the burled-oak buffet. Then she turned back to him, her pale eyes wide.

  “Possibly,” she admitted at last. “She did scream.”

  When he’d first arrived, the darkness of the mansion had been broken only by flickering candlelight. The older woman hadn’t acted particularly alarmed then, as the light had yellowed her pale features.

  Foolish girl walking around a strange house in the dark. She slipped. That had been her statement, which the sleepy nanny had echoed.

  “So now you believe her?”

  The older woman pursed her thin lips as she consid ered his question. “She’s not like her sister. They may look exactly the same
, but I think that’s as deep as it goes.”

  God, he needed some sleep. He couldn’t figure out the riddles the housekeeper spoke. “So what are you saying? Did you see somebody push her?”

  She shook her head, but the gray braid didn’t move from the tight bun at the base of her skull. “Oh, no. I was in my bed. And it was so dark with the power out. Couldn’t have seen anything if I was standing right there.”

  “But you heard something?” He’d asked all these questions earlier and had barely gotten more than a grunt out of either her or the nanny. And besides Annie and Sasha, they’d been the only two possible witnesses. Like Mr. Scott, the gardener slept in the carriage house. They hadn’t seen anything either, and both swore they hadn’t come up to the house last night.

  “What did you hear, Mrs. Arnold?” he asked again.

  She touched the sterling silver coffeepot, her hand trembling slightly. “Just her scream.”

  He waited, knowing that wasn’t all she wanted to tell him. All that she had suddenly decided to tell him. Why? Why hadn’t she admitted any of this earlier?

  Like Sasha, he was beginning to seriously distrust the staff. Was it safe for her and Annie to remain with them in the mansion?

  “And?”

  “When she screamed…”

  “Yes,” he prodded, beginning to understand how some detectives resorted to physically forcing information from witnesses.

  “She screamed her sister’s name.”

  Nadine.

  “That doesn’t mean…” Hell, he didn’t know what it meant or didn’t mean.

  “That she’s alive,” Mrs. Arnold finished for him, her pale eyes almost glowing. “I know.”

  His heart kicked against his ribs. “What do you know? That she’s alive?”

  “You said she was dead.”

  “No, the evidence said she was dead.” And after years spent in Homicide, he’d learned to read the evidence…and believe it.

  The older woman shrugged, unconcerned. “Doesn’t make a difference.”

  He gulped a mouthful of coffee, hoping the caffeine would bring him up to speed in this bizarre conversation. “How’s that?”

  “She screamed her name.”

  “So you’re saying Nadine pushed her?”

  “That’s what she told you.” And the housekeeper had to have been listening at the door to know that.

  What else had she learned from her eavesdropping?

  “Nadine is dead.” But was he as convinced as he’d once been? He didn’t know anymore.

  “Doesn’t make a difference.” The older woman repeated her earlier phrase.

  “So you’re saying a ghost pushed Sasha down the stairs?” he asked, not bothering to hide his scorn.

  Mrs. Arnold’s thin lips lifted into a condescending smile. “You’re a man of logic, Sheriff. I understand that. You want everything to make sense. But you have to admit that some things don’t.”

  His eyes burned from lack of sleep, from all the long hours he’d spent trying to make sense of Nadine’s murder and his helpless attraction to her twin sister. “Yes. But still…”

  “Things happen that can’t be explained, Sheriff. But they still happen. They don’t make sense. But they happen. A lot of things have happened in this house, things that can’t be explained.”

  He’d heard the rumors that the old mansion was haunted, possessed. Some people relished rumors like that, whispers of ghosts and goblins and things going bump in the night. He’d never had any time to waste on such silliness. So he ignored the goose bumps lifting the hair on his forearms.

  He’d rather believe Nadine had faked her own death.

  SASHA AWOKE TO SUNLIGHT filtering through the drapes that covered the bedroom window. The sun. Or was she just imagining that, too?

  She threw back the blankets and crossed over to the window, pulling the brocade fabric aside. Sunlight glimmered on the leaded glass panels. Her first reaction was to squint, but she forced her eyes open, drinking it in.

  Sunlight.

  She had to get Annie, had to get outside in the sun shine. Because while the sun shone on the hill, storm clouds gathered over the lake.

  After her push down the stairs, Sasha had changed from Nadine’s gown into her well-worn clothes. But after sleeping in them, she felt the need to wear something else.

  Shrugging off her reluctance, she opened the doors to Nadine’s closet. Some badly needed sleep had calmed her fears and she didn’t expect Nadine to jump out at her. But she did hesitate over reaching for her sister’s clothes, her arm suspended between her body and the hangers. The swelling had gone down on her wrist, but the edge of the redness had turned blue.

  Anger flared again, as it had when she had caught herself on the railing. Whoever pushed her had headed down the hall, probably toward the back stairs or her bedroom. Mrs. Arnold and Barbie had come from their rooms at her scream, but when the sheriff had interviewed them, they’d claimed they hadn’t seen anything.

  It could have been either of them.

  Not Nadine.

  If she believed Reed…

  Dare she believe Reed?

  She had trusted a man once before, a man she’d known a long time, a man she’d loved. But his betrayal, and time, had killed whatever feelings she’d had for him.

  She felt nothing now for Charles but suspicion, even after he had vehemently denied any involvement in Nadine’s murder. In fact, he’d been hurt that she had asked.

  But what did she feel for Reed?

  Her limbs weakened as desire oozed through her at the memory of his kiss, his mouth moving against hers…his hands gently cupping her face and then her waist.

  She felt too much for Reed.

  Annie was the only one she should trust. The only one she dared give her heart to…and just hoped that someone else didn’t try to take the little girl away from her.

  Like Charles.

  Like Reed.

  Sasha glanced back toward the window, toward the sunshine, then pulled out a sweater and a pair of jeans. After hurriedly dressing she headed to the nursery, but the nanny stopped her at the door.

  “I just put her down for a nap. She was up too early, asking for…her mother,” Barbie said, not meeting Sasha’s gaze, looking over her shoulder instead. “I was told not to wake you, that you needed your rest.”

  Who had told her? Reed? He probably thought she was losing her mind. And after kissing him back, she couldn’t argue with him. That had been crazier than thinking Nadine had pushed her down the stairs.

  She rose on tiptoe to peer over the taller woman’s shoulder. Through the rails of her crib, Annie’s riotous curls were visible, as well as the blue blanket Reed had given her. “You just put her down?”

  “Yes.”

  “So she’ll sleep for a while?”

  With an exasperated sigh and a roll of her eyes, the young woman asked, “You really don’t know anything about kids?”

  Teenagers. Not anyone whose age was marked by single digits. “How long will she sleep?”

  Barbie sighed again, long-suffering, sounding like the teenagers Sasha counseled. But then she was a little closer to them in age than Sasha. “At least an hour.”

  Sasha headed for the stairs, bathed in sunlight through the stained-glass window on the landing. At the top step, she stopped, dizziness assaulting her, so that the colors of the window swam like a kaleidoscope before her eyes. She held tight to the mahogany railing, turning her knuckles white.

  If not for catching the banister last night, she would have fallen more than the few steps she’d missed. The landing would have broken her fall…and probably her body.

  A breath shuddered out of her. Then she forced herself to descend those stairs, the soles of her tennis shoes touching each polished hardwood step as she took care not to slip. When she reached the landing, she glanced back up and caught the nanny leaning over the railing, watching her.

  Their gazes met, held, the girl’s animosity so thick that Sasha
felt it like a blow. Then Barbie turned back toward the nursery.

  She wouldn’t hurt Annie. Sasha had seen her affection for the child. But she just might try to hurt Annie’s aunt.

  Again?

  Sasha shuddered, overwhelmed by her dark thoughts. She needed the sunshine, needed it to wash away the darkness gripping her. Then maybe when she got back, she would tell the nanny to leave. But without proof that Barbie had pushed her, could she disrupt Annie’s life any more?

  At the bottom of the stairs she hesitated again. She could use the back door but then she’d have to deal with Mrs. Arnold. And despite her rest, she wasn’t up for another run-in with the older woman. But to avoid her, she had to exit through the foyer. Through the scene of the crime she sometimes doubted happened.

  She opened the heavy wood door and stepped onto the floor. Sunlight glinted off the royal-blue tiles, except where they were dulled by the bleach someone had used to clean up. The chemical still hung in the air, the odor so thick it burned Sasha’s nose. She again noticed the bloodstains on the edges of the tiles and the wallpaper where it had streaked across it.

  So much blood. She could tell that just from the stains. Nadine hadn’t lived through this…if it had been Nadine’s blood.

  No, she wouldn’t think about this now. She wouldn’t think about anything, not Nadine’s murder, not guardianship of Annie and, least of all, not Reed’s kiss.

  She would just enjoy the sunshine because it wouldn’t last long.

  The outside door creaked open with a rush of cool, rain-scented air. She breathed deep as she closed the door on the crime scene and stepped onto the porch. Last night’s rain dripped from the edge of the roof, glistening on the petals of the flowers in the hanging baskets. The pinks and reds of the geraniums shimmered in the sunlight. The rain had washed the brown of winter from the grass, leaving it a deep green.

  “Beautiful,” Sasha murmured as she admired the scenery. And for the first time she could understand why her sister had come to Sunset Island and why she had stayed. A few yards down the path she turned back to look at the house.

  Mansion. And it was. Huge and imposing with exquisite detail in its trim and cornices. The wood siding was slate blue, like the unsettled surface of the lake, with accents of purple in the trim and burgundy in the brick and cornices.