The Mistress Deception

by Susan Napier

  ‘Are you sure you’re OK to come back to work?’

  ‘Just a bit of a headache,’ she said, adjusting her nervous grip on her briefcase and its explosive contents.

  Frank gave her a hard look. His naturally suspicious nature had made him a good detective, and as David’s only surviving relative he had been very protective of his younger brother. He hadn’t much liked Rachel when she and David had started dating, and even after they’d got engaged the relationship had never been particularly relaxed. Frank was divorced himself, toughened by his profession and cynical about marriage.

  ‘If you’re not well enough, you shouldn’t be here.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ she insisted. Frank was so hard-bitten himself that he had little respect for the weakness of others. She hated it when he condescended to understand that she might not feel up to the job.

  She decided in that instant that she wasn’t going to tell Frank about her humiliating problem—not while there was any chance she could quietly handle it herself.

  ‘OK, that’s good, because we have a major problem looming,’ said Frank, following her into her small sunny office.

  ‘What kind of problem?’

  ‘Matthew Riordan!’

  ‘W-what?’ Rachel’s briefcase slipped from her nerveless hand and crashed against the side of a filing cabinet. ‘Why? What’s he done now?’ she asked with brittle casualness.

  ‘It’s not what he’s done, it’s what he’s going to do,’ fumed Frank. ‘His father’s had a heart attack.’

  ‘Kevin Riordan?’ Rachel was genuinely upset. She had liked the brash and ebullient head of KR Industries, who had shown a flattering admiration for ‘feisty’ women. He had been a welcome surprise after his infuriating son. ‘When? Is he all right?’

  ‘Keeled over at his desk on Monday. All I know is that he’s in hospital and likely to be there for a while.’

  ‘Oh, no, how awful…’ she said, thinking of his boastful plans for an energetic retirement. ‘He isn’t even sixty-five yet…’

  ‘Yeah—awful for us.’ Frank dismissed her unselfish concern with a scowl. ‘Because Matthew Riordan’s stepped in to effectively run KR Industries, just when our fraud prevention package is on the table for a final decision, and so far he’s got a one hundred percent kill-rate on our deals!’

  Rachel was confused. ‘But—I thought he had no official standing at KR—surely Neville—’

  ‘Neville is away in Japan—I got a fax from him last night,’ Frank said, drumming stubby fingers on top of the filing cabinet. ‘He’ll obviously take over when he gets back, but at the moment he’s out of the loop. With him pushing our case the old man was bound to have approved our bid, now with Junior minding the store we might not get it signed by the deadline. That would mean having to go through the bid process all over again.’

  ‘But Matt Riordan’s not going to make any major decisions if he knows he’s only keeping the chair warm.’

  Frank’s paranoia was running rife. ‘Don’t you believe it. Neville told me that he doesn’t trust the bastard an inch. If Riordan has overall power of attorney for his father he can virtually do whatever the hell he likes. With his position and influence he could do a lot of damage in a few days. I wouldn’t put it past him to try to sabotage our bid…’

  Rachel thought of the contents of her briefcase and felt her stomach lurch as Frank plunged on. ‘I think we need to face the fact we may not be able to make that balloon payment after all…’

  ‘I could mortgage the townhouse—’

  ‘No!’ Frank rejected the offer as forcefully as he always had before. ‘David gave that to you free and clear and it’s going to stay that way. Anyway, it would put your equity in the company at more than the whole is worth right now. If the worst comes to the worst we can maybe try downsizing, or even selling our client base…

  ‘We have to be realistic, Rachel,’ Frank told her. ‘We were banking on that KR contract coming through and without it our chances don’t look good. I’ll sort through our options and try and figure out something, and, in the meantime, why don’t you do some personal digging around on Riordan himself? See if you can come up with anything that might be useful.’

  His tone doubted that she would. If he had seriously believed that an investigation was likely to be productive he would have put one of their senior men on the job, but unknowingly Frank had provided Rachel with the perfect excuse to devote the rest of the next few days to stalking her prey and plotting his downfall.

  Wanting to make the most of her fast-dwindling time with Robyn and Bethany, she had used her illness as an excuse to cancel the rest of the week’s gym appointments and several massage bookings at the physiotherapy clinic, so she had no other demands on her time until the following Monday.

  Now, Rachel softly depressed the accelerator, rolling her car slowly forwards past the row of parked cars as Matt Riordan began to ease his Porsche out of his parking space further down the road.

  She pulled down her baseball cap and adjusted her sunglasses. She didn’t know exactly what she expected to achieve by tailing him around, but it was better than doing nothing. David had always believed that dry fact-gathering was no replacement for personal observation when trying to guess what a suspect’s next move might be.

  After spending all of the previous day delving into the microfiche files of old newspapers at the central library, checking property and legal records and making numerous phone calls under a variety of names, Rachel had been chafing to take some real action.

  After calling to check that he was still in the building, she had driven over to KR Industries head office and waited until dusk in order to find out which of the three Riordan-owned Auckland properties Matthew was currently calling home. If it did come down to forcing a confrontation, she’d rather it was well away from the public eye.

  His destination had turned out to be not his own city apartment, but the family’s three-storeyed modern mansion on Auckland’s millionaires’ mile. Rachel had followed the black Porsche’s tail-lights through the city streets, careful to change lanes irregularly and hang one or two cars back, and had felt a little thrill of triumph when she’d seen Matt Riordan finally swing in through the electronically operated iron gates which guarded the estate, still unaware of her presence. Her hands had been sweaty on the steering wheel and her heart had fluttered with exhilaration as she’d continued on past and parked further up the street, in the inky shadows of an overhanging pohutukawa tree, and savoured the small victory—her first solo tailing job!

  Using her company cellphone, she’d checked her voice messages, then rung Robyn to let her know that she was on her way home. As she’d been saying goodbye she was startled to see the gates reopen and the black Porsche sweep out again and purr off into the night. He must have only called in to drop something off or say hello to his mother, she’d thought in dismay.

  By the time she had got her engine restarted and fumbled her gears it had disappeared around the corner, and at the next intersection it had been only a wink of a brake-light at a distant curve, heading back towards the city. Rachel had pursued the streak of black metallic paint pulsing under the orange street lights on the straight stretch ahead as fast as she’d dared, and had actually believed she was catching up when she’d been flagged down by a uniformed police officer standing by her unmarked car, and handed the indignity of a speeding ticket and an on-the-spot breath test.

  ‘What about that Porsche ahead of me? He was going just as fast—why didn’t you stop him?’ she’d complained.

  ‘Because he had the sense to slow down as soon as he spotted me and not register over the speed limit on my radar,’ the female officer had said drily.

  Flushed with annoyance, Rachel had tucked the ticket in her notebook and set off again at a sedate pace, resigned to the fact that she had no chance of catching up with her quarry. She had driven past Matthew’s apartment building, noting the darkened windows of his top floor corner eyrie, and vowed not to
be taken off guard so easily the next day.

  Now, pulling into the heavy lunchtime traffic behind the gleaming Porsche, Rachel thought that at least there would be no chance of breaking the speed limit today!

  Expecting him to head to another business meeting, or go back to the office, she was intrigued when he turned off towards a leafy suburb—until she remembered that it was where the city’s newest private hospital was located. She had looked it up in the telephone book the previous day when she had wanted to find out Kevin Riordan’s medical condition.

  Rachel drove into the open car park and surfed into an empty spot on the waves of heat which shimmered off the surface of the new black seal. She nibbled on her lower lip as she watched Matthew lock his leather briefcase into the boot of his car and shoulder back into his jacket as he made for the double glass doors of the hospital. What she wouldn’t give to be able to rifle through the contents of that briefcase!

  A thick-set uniformed security guard—unfortunately not one of Westons’—was strolling between the cars, and Rachel thought he might think it suspicious if she remained lurking in her car rather than seeking the air-conditioned coolness of the hospital. Besides, a comfort stop was a growing imperative. Rachel was already suffering from sitting for too long in a small metal box under the blazing sun. Her short-sleeved silk tunic top was sticking to her back, and while the car was stationary the fan blowing air around her sweeping skirts was merely recycling the oppressive heat.

  The hospital looked big enough and busy enough to provide plenty of cover, she reasoned. Perhaps she might even manage a quick snoop to find out how Kevin Riordan was really doing behind the smokescreen of official information. Taking a charitable view, maybe it was the stress and worry over his father that had caused Matthew to flip out. Maybe he had stooped to a sordid act of blackmail while the balance of his mind was disturbed?

  She shivered in spite of the oppressive heat. Those had been very the words quoted in a news clipping about twenty-four-year-old Leigh Riordan’s tragic death. Most of the details had been suppressed, but not the coroner’s final decision—that she had taken her own life ‘while the balance of her mind was disturbed’.

  But, no, she told herself, the charitable view was difficult to take when the fact was that Matthew had had those sleazy photos taken over a week prior to his father’s heart attack.

  The coronary care wards were on the third floor, and, unwilling to risk being caught in a lift, Rachel ran lightly up the stairs, two at a time, blessing her rapid return to fitness. She wasn’t even breathing hard as she peeped around the heavy smoke-stop door on the third floor, reassured by the evidence that lunchtime was a popular visiting hour. Opposite her was a spacious dayroom peopled with a mix of elegantly dressed visitors and bathrobe-attired patients.

  Halfway down the polished corridor she could see a T-intersection, where the nurses’ station was situated, and more people moving about—the staff distinguishable only by the open white coats they wore over their smart clothes. In her thigh-length sand-coloured tunic worn over her filmy, patterned brown skirt Rachel was confident of blending in.

  A logo on a door across the way caught her eye and she darted for the women’s restroom with a sigh of relief. While she was in there she took her plastic pump bottle out of her capacious shoulder-bag and refilled it from a filtered water dispenser, and spritzed a dash of refreshing cologne across her throat and wrists.

  Replacing her sunglasses, she cautiously exited and walked towards the nurses’ station, her eyes flicking over the patients’ names posted outside the individual private rooms.

  She had almost reached the intersection when she glimpsed a grey suit around the corner of the right-angled reception desk and shied backwards. At the same time that she realised the suit-wearer was a woman, her reversing heel ground down on something soft and uneven.

  Her cry of dismay mingled with a similar one of pain as she lurched around, her sunglasses tumbling off her nose to join the cascade of envelopes and the bunch of flowers which her swinging shoulder-bag had knocked out of the clutches of the tiny grey-haired woman woefully flexing one crushed foot.

  ‘I’m most dreadfully sorry. That was entirely my fault. Are you all right?’ Rachel burst out, thanking the Lord that she was wearing flat sandals. From her pain-creased features, Rachel judged the woman to be somewhere in her mid-sixties and, knowing how brittle older bones could be, she crouched to inspect the damage, relieved to see only a faint impression of her sole on the reddened top of her victim’s foot.

  ‘It looks like you’ll just have some bruising. I’m so sorry; I know how painful something like that can feel!’

  She hastily gathered up her sunglasses, scrabbling together the scattered mail and injured flowers before rising back to her full height. The other woman couldn’t have been much more than five feet tall, and Rachel immediately felt like a clumsy giant as she loomed over the tiny figure in the fashionable powder-blue summer suit.

  ‘It’s really not that bad,’ said the lady bravely. ‘And it couldn’t have happened in a more convenient place, could it?’ She tested her foot gingerly back on the ground and smiled kindly at her sheepish assailant. ‘Are you on the staff?’

  ‘Oh, no—I don’t work here,’ Rachel responded with a weak smile. ‘I don’t think the hospital would be too keen to employ someone who goes around trampling people down!’

  ‘I don’t know—you could generate them some very brisk business.’ The woman laughed. Although she was expensively dressed, and the triple strand of pearls around her neck undoubtedly genuine, the vibrant Kiwi twang in her accent bespoke down-to-earth origins.

  ‘Or get them sued out of business. I’m afraid your flowers may be a little bit bruised, too.’ Rachel smiled apologetically as she handed them back.

  ‘Oh, well, I don’t suppose my husband will notice. He’ll be too busy complaining I haven’t brought him whisky and chocolates.’

  Rachel was amused by her expression of loving exasperation. ‘In a coronary care unit?’

  ‘He’s a very bad patient,’ the little lady admitted ruefully. ‘He’s always been so proud of being as tough as old boots—never had a sick day in his life until this…’

  ‘Is he very ill?’ Rachel asked warily.

  ‘He had a heart attack, but they’ve decided it’s not his heart that’s really the problem—so now they’ve scheduled him for a triple by-pass.’ An age-spotted hand worried with her pearls. ‘The surgeon says it’s very straightforward nowadays…’

  ‘I’m sure your husband’s in the very best of hands,’ reassured Rachel firmly. ‘Is your family visiting with you?’ she asked, beginning to hand over the thick wad of cards and letters she had picked up, waiting patiently as the woman sorted them to fit them in her grasp.

  ‘Well, my son was supposed to meet me here,’ the woman confided. ‘But he probably arrived early in order to interrogate the doctors to within an inch of their lives and order them not to upset his sweet little old mum by going into too much gruesome detail—never mind that I’d prefer to know everything there is to know. He’s a lovely boy, really, but he can be so very managing…’

  Her irritation showed and Rachel grinned. ‘I know the type.’

  ‘But you’re so wonderfully tall,’ admired the older woman, making herself an instant friend for life. ‘I wish I was like you. I always get a crick in my neck when I have to argue with my husband or my son. It must be lovely to be able to stand up to bossy men and look them straight in the eye.’

  ‘Or, better still, look down on them,’ grinned Rachel.

  She found herself on the receiving end of an assessing look as the grey head cocked to one side, soft curls framing the still-pretty face. ‘You might be taller than my boy, but not by much…’

  Rachel answered the silent question. ‘I’m a hair off six foot.’

  ‘Ahh. So you’d have almost a whole inch with which to lord it over my son. He doesn’t seem to have cottoned onto the fact that we�
�re really the superior sex. Mind you, that’s partly my fault—he was a late baby, you see, and an only child, so he was doubly spoiled. I wasn’t in the best of health for a while, so that probably encouraged him to regard women as generally rather fragile beings. Then his father insisted he be sent off to boarding school to toughen him up and acquire the correct degree of polish.’ She sighed. ‘Unfortunately I think it succeeded too well. He was a passionate, sensitive little boy who became a rather introverted adult. He had one or two bad experiences with women—he married once, when he was twenty, but it came to a wretched end—so now he seems to reserve all his passion for his work…’

  Rachel was getting a very bad feeling. Her eyes fell to the last envelope she was in the act of passing over—a thin foolscap rectangle whose neatly typed address jumped out and hit her in the face.

  Her fingers unconsciously tightened on the envelope, preventing it from leaving her hold as she blurted, ‘You’re Mrs Riordan. Mrs Kevin Riordan?’

  ‘Why, yes—I’m Dorothy…do you know my husband?’

  Of all the ghastly coincidences!

  ‘Only slightly. My firm has quoted for some business with him. When I heard yesterday that he was ill I rang the hospital to see how he was but all they would tell me was that he was in a stable condition.’ Rachel heard herself babbling while her brain screamed at her to get out of there as fast as she could!

  ‘And now you’ve come down to make a personal enquiry?’ Dorothy Riordan’s small face lit from within. ‘That is kind of you. Kevin’s not having visitors yet, but I’ll tell him you called, Miss…?’

  As Rachel dithered over whether to lie a cool voice denied her the chance.

  ‘Blair. Rachel Theodora Blair.’ A grey-clad arm reached between them and plucked the envelope out of her white-knuckled hand. ‘Thank you, Rachel, I’ll take that!’