The Perfect Liar

by Brenda Novak

  Regardless of what his request might be, she wasn’t sure she could deal with it right now. But this was her father. She never got to pick the time or the place for whatever sacrifice he required.

  “Everything okay with Carly?” she asked.

  “They’ve been better.”

  She’d kicked him out. Ava could tell by the sheepish expression on his face. “Where’s your luggage?” she asked.

  They were only two feet from each other, and he had yet to comment on her tear-streaked face. But that didn’t come as a surprise. He’d never been that interested in what was happening in her life. “I haven’t packed up yet. She was throwing things. I left before she could cause too much damage.”

  “I see. Are you going back for your stuff or hoping it’ll all blow over?”

  He glanced away. “I’m too old to start over again, Ava.”

  She drew a deep breath. Of course. He’d go back to Carly if he could. That, too, came as no surprise. “Okay. Would you like an iced tea while you wait for her to cool off?”

  He didn’t answer. “What’s going on with you?” he asked.

  What? He’d finally deigned to notice?

  She attempted what she hoped was a convincing shrug. “Nothing. Just a tough case.”

  He studied her for a moment, but ultimately nodded. He didn’t know her well enough to argue with her. And he wasn’t going to argue, anyway. That fell under the category of “dramatic displays of emotion.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you cry before,” he mused.

  Not for years, anyway. Although he and Carly had sat through most of Zelinda’s trial—Carly had been fascinated by the whole sordid case—Chuck had been absent the day the verdict came in, and Ava hadn’t cried since. Carly had said he wasn’t feeling well, that he had a touch of the flu, but he’d been well enough to bring an extra set of keys to the houseboat that night.

  Ava had always wondered if he’d missed the culmination of the trial on purpose. They’d all seen the evidence, heard the arguments, knew which way it would go. Maybe he hadn’t wanted to hear the final verdict, hadn’t wanted to face something so negative. Maybe he feared he’d feel responsible for his first wife’s decline. She’d been a very different woman when she’d married him.

  “Why bother? Tears don’t help anything,” she told him, and forced a smile as she unlocked the door to the cabin.

  “Your mother told me you want us to move into a motel, but we’re not going to leave our home, Luke. This woman, whoever she is, has no reason to hurt us.”

  If Kalyna was as crazy as she sometimes seemed, she wouldn’t need a reason. But Luke wasn’t sure whether or not he should push his father on this. Now that he knew Kalyna was here in town with him, it seemed a bit extreme. “She’s acting a little more stable than I was expecting. But I’m telling you, Kalyna’s unpredictable, and she has your address. You have to be careful.”

  “I’ll keep an eye out,” he said.

  Ed thought he could handle Kalyna. He had no idea how she could twist things in her own mind. But Luke couldn’t imagine her driving down to San Diego to harm his family without some provocation, and he hadn’t given her any, not this morning. “Mom told you she might’ve killed the woman who adopted her and a young teen, didn’t she?”

  “She told me. You’ve really got yourself mixed up in something, haven’t you?”

  He had. And he felt he deserved it for being careless enough to step into Kalyna’s trap. “Just do me one favor,” he said. “If she calls you guys, don’t talk to her, okay? And if she sends you a package or a letter, don’t open it. Call me first.”

  “I will.”

  “Good. Let me deal with her.”

  “I take it you’re not going to marry her.”

  He laughed without mirth. “No, I’m not going to marry her.”

  “Is she really pregnant?”

  He thought of that paper from the clinic. Positive. “She showed me the results of a pregnancy test she took yesterday. Looks like she might be. But I’m not certain the baby’s mine.” He was still holding out hope, although he had eight months to wait.

  “Why would she tell you it’s yours if it isn’t? That’s easy to disprove.”

  “I know.” But Kalyna had done enough weird shit where he was concerned that he wouldn’t put it past her, not for one second. “She’s doing anything she can to hold my attention.”

  “You don’t think you could ever grow to like her?”

  “No. Definitely not.”

  “Okay. Well, I’m glad the rape charges are being dropped, anyway. It was terrible worrying about what might happen to you.”

  Luke hadn’t had a chance to feel very relieved. If that baby was his, he was looking at a life sentence spent shackled to Kalyna. Part of him actually wondered if he might prefer five to ten. But at least he’d been able to call off McCreedy, which meant most of the money he’d put on retainer would be returned to him. “This hasn’t been my best week.”

  “It’d be nice if you could meet someone and settle down,” his father said.

  His parents told him that all the time. He usually rolled his eyes and tried to distract them with another subject. Today, however, he pictured Ava as she’d been in the moonlight, staring up at him. Her lovemaking had been intense; he’d been completely consumed by it.

  “I will. Someday.” He hated that he’d been so rude to Ava when she came to his apartment. Maybe he’d expected too much from her this morning. When Geoffrey had shown up, she’d been shocked and embarrassed. Sending him off as if their time together had meant nothing might’ve been a knee-jerk reaction, a self-defense mechanism snapping into place. She’d been trying to shove him away since the very beginning. But that prickly “I don’t need anyone” exterior protected one of the softest hearts he’d ever known. He’d seen that for himself last night.

  Had he reacted differently, with more understanding, maybe they’d be planning to see each other tonight.

  He wondered what she’d say if he called her….

  “Luke?”

  “What?”

  His father repeated what he’d apparently missed. “I said you’re nearly thirty. Don’t you want a family?”

  “Yes, I want a family.”

  “Then maybe you should get serious about finding a wife,” he said. And, for Luke, that was the deciding factor. He wasn’t sure Ava would be the woman he married. But he felt something for her he hadn’t felt for anyone since Marissa. He wasn’t going to give her up quite so easily.

  After hanging up with his father, he dialed her cell number, but it went straight to voice mail.

  “Ava, it’s Luke. I’m calling because…last night wasn’t just another night for me. I’d like to see you again. Will you call me?”

  30

  “Honey, don’t talk like that. Come on, we have a good marriage…I wasn’t sneaking around. I told her you wanted me to take Buffy to the vet, that I’d have to call her later.”

  Hearing her father in the living room doing his best to cajole his wife, Ava remained in her bedroom. Her stint in the shower had been much shorter than she’d originally intended, but with her father around, she hadn’t felt comfortable taking a longer one. She wouldn’t have worried about it if she’d known he’d get into a marathon argument with her dear stepmother, however.

  Purposely wasting time, she checked the mirror to see if her eyes were still puffy.

  “…I did tell you she called,” her father was saying. “It’d already been two days. I felt I should get back to her…”

  Fortunately, the swelling had gone down. Now that she’d done her hair and put on some makeup, as well as a blouse and skirt, she didn’t look too bad.

  “…I can’t ignore her. I was married to her once. She was part of my life…”

  Ava didn’t want to walk out and embarrass her father. He had to feel like an idiot sucking up that much. But now that she was finished in the bathroom, she didn’t know what to do with herse
lf. She hesitated to go to work today. She feared Geoffrey might’ve stopped by the office to see her since their run-in this morning and revealed that some cataclysmic event had changed their lives. Even if he hadn’t, she couldn’t abide the thought of facing Skye or Sheridan or Jonathan, knowing she’d slept with one of her clients. So maybe she wouldn’t go in.

  Or maybe she would. They’d probably be glad to hear she was no longer seeing Geoffrey. But she was almost as reluctant to acknowledge that as she was to admit the truth about Luke. Her friends had been trying to tell her that something important was missing from her relationship with Geoff. Because she’d clung so stubbornly to the belief that her life was just the way she wanted it, pride wouldn’t allow her to admit that they’d been right all along. Not yet. There were too many other emotions swirling around inside her.

  “…Boo, stop…”

  Boo? Ava grimaced. She didn’t want to hear this, didn’t want to witness her father begging the forgiveness of a spoiled, selfish woman half his age. A woman who wasn’t one-tenth the person Zelinda had been before her fall from grace.

  Ava had to distract herself—but with what? She could work from home, of course. She had some of her files here. But most of her open cases required her to place a few calls, and she couldn’t do that while her father was using her cell phone. Apparently, he’d scooted out of his house so quickly he’d left his own cell behind. That made it easy to guess what Carly’s behavior must’ve been like at the time. Besides, Ava’s laptop was in the dining room, which was on the other side of the living room.

  A brief silence gave Ava hope that the conversation had come to an end. She opened the door to her bedroom, but then her father started again.

  “We have a child together, Car. Can’t you understand why I’d return her call?…It’s not because I’m still in love with her! Neal’s getting married. It was nice of her to let me know. It’s not like he would’ve told me.”

  Her half brother was tying the knot? No one had bothered to inform Ava.

  God, her family was screwed up. No wonder she worked all the time. She was about to go back into the bathroom to do something really exciting, like repaint her toenails or clean her toilet, when silence fell again. And this time it lasted.

  Because there’d been no resolution or even a goodbye, she knew Carly had hung up rather abruptly—probably very abruptly. Her father’s pleading hadn’t been enough to mollify her this time.

  “You hungry?” she asked as she walked out.

  He was sitting on the couch with his eyes closed, head bowed and resting on the hand that held her phone, but he looked up when she spoke. “Uh, yeah, I could eat.” Attempting to conceal his dejection, he smiled.

  “I’ll make us some lunch. What would you like?”

  Standing, he waved her toward the door. “Don’t bother cooking. Let’s get out of here. I’ll take you to my favorite spot.”

  Ava didn’t hide her surprise. “You’re going to take me to lunch? Just the two of us?” She knew what that would mean if word of it got back to Carly. He’d be in worse trouble than he was now.

  “This place is claustrophobic. Let’s go.”

  She suspected the houseboat only seemed claustrophobic because it was all he had to look forward to if he couldn’t patch things up with Carly.

  Seeing the cabin through new eyes, Ava drew a deep breath. The houseboat wasn’t hers. She’d return it to her father as soon as he and Carly broke off their relationship, which was coming. Ava couldn’t see the marriage lasting much longer. They might struggle on for another year or two, but then her father would be on his own—older but none the wiser, if his track record was any indication. And where would that leave her?

  She’d be completely free, without anchor or tether, just as she’d always wanted.

  But was it really?

  Kalyna hid in the trees while she watched Ava come out of the houseboat with an older man. Who was he? A friend? A client? A relative? And was this Ava’s place or the man’s? Hard to tell….

  Ava and whoever he was climbed into the truck next to her Volkswagen and drove off. Kalyna waited for a few minutes, to make sure they didn’t come back. Then she walked over to where Ava had parked. The car was unlocked, probably because there wasn’t much inside to protect—just a pair of sunglasses. Slipping into the driver’s seat, Kalyna tried them on and checked her reflection in the rearview mirror. She didn’t care for the way they made her look, but she took them, anyway. Ava wasn’t going to be around long enough to need them.

  Clipping the sunglasses to her shirt, Kalyna got out of the car and strode down the pier. The door to the houseboat was locked, but the panel felt pretty flimsy. She could break it open. But that would reveal someone had been here, and there was no need to put Ava on alert when surprise would serve Kalyna’s purposes so much better.

  She took a quick turn around the boat and found a window that was open a few inches. Once Kalyna cut the screen with the knife she carried in her jockey box, she was able to get her fingers through. From there it was only a matter of sliding the window open and climbing in.

  She entered through a spare bedroom that looked like any other bedroom. Other than the fact that it sat on the water, the house itself wasn’t unusual, either. The kitchen, dining room and living room were joined. There was another bedroom and a second bath in the back, near the spare room.

  One thing was obvious, however. This wasn’t just a vacation home. Someone was living here on a regular basis, and it was easy to tell who that someone was. Pictures of Ava with various people—a man who had his arm around her on a windy pier, the two women Kalyna had met that day in Ava’s office, the man who’d just left with her—graced the shelves above the television. A stack of mail, already opened, waited on the kitchen counter. It was all addressed to Ava at some post office box.

  Kalyna thumbed through several bills, pausing when she came to a bank statement. It was gratifying to be able to violate Ava’s privacy this way, to paw through a list of her recent purchases and get some idea of where she spent her money.

  Judging by the statement, Ava paid her bills on time, but she didn’t have much in the bank. The statement showed automatic deposits that totaled quite a bit less than Kalyna made at the base. The stupid woman was facing down rapists, wife abusers and murderers for mere pennies. Why bother?

  “Loser,” she muttered, and helped herself to a couple of cookies she found in the cupboard while she tried to think. She wanted Ava dead. Gone. Out of her life, and out of Luke’s life. But how? She had to be careful. Thanks to Mark and his recent threats, she’d be able to wriggle out of the blame for her mother’s death, but she couldn’t be connected to another murder investigation. The cop she’d spoken to on the phone would be arriving tomorrow, but she interviewed well. There was still a chance she could put her life back together without having to leave the country. Losing her mother gave her a good excuse for not showing up at work this morning—she was too emotionally distraught. That wouldn’t erase the fact that she’d been absent without leave before Norma died. But her loss should evoke some sympathy in her superiors. Maybe her punishment wouldn’t be as serious as it would’ve been otherwise. Even if they demoted her, she’d have a job, a place to live and Luke, and she could reapply for advancement in another year or so.

  Things would work out. If only she could think of some way to get rid of Ava. Ava was the one who’d ruined everything. Seeing that she died a violent and painful death appealed to Kalyna. But torturing her would bring about another investigation. Even if it was just a stabbing or a shooting, the media would get involved and the police would be under pressure to solve the murder of someone so well-known in the area.

  There had to be an easier way….

  Turning, Kalyna stared out the window—and that was when the obvious occurred to her. Ava lived in a house surrounded by water. It wouldn’t be too surprising if she were to drown. Rivers could be dangerous; people died in them all the time. Something as
simple as slipping on a rock and banging her head—a freak accident—could have the same result and would warrant only a short mention in the paper.

  Kalyna smiled at her thoughts. Better yet, it would be easy to accomplish, especially since she could set it up right now. She’d put the sunglasses back—leave everything the way she’d found it, including the partly open window. She’d smooth the screen so the cut she’d made would only be noticeable if someone was actually looking for it. Then she’d be able to use the same point of entry when she came back tonight.

  Excitement brought a rush of adrenaline. As her plan took shape, she walked through the house a second time. She needed to make sure she could navigate the layout without bumping into furniture in the dark, needed to know where to find Ava when she was sleeping.

  “She’ll be right here,” Kalyna murmured as she entered the master bedroom. “And she won’t suspect a thing.”

  Although Ava’s room was clean, her bed wasn’t made and there was a sweatshirt tossed over a chair. Kalyna could see part of the logo on that sweatshirt—and the familiarity of it made her clench her jaw. Why would Ava own an air force sweatshirt? Especially one so large?

  She didn’t, of course. The sweatshirt belonged to Luke.

  “That bitch!” Kalyna screamed, and threw it on the floor. She wanted to tear the place apart, tear Ava apart, too. She wouldn’t share Luke; she wanted every tiny piece of him all to herself.

  But the only way to get what she wanted was to use her head.

  Taking a deep breath, she struggled to calm down. She couldn’t get worked up, couldn’t succumb to the cutting or scratching or banging temptation that grabbed her when she was upset. She wasn’t the one who’d be hurt tonight. She’d save her rage for Ava—but she wasn’t leaving that sweatshirt behind.

  With steely determination, she tied the sweatshirt around her waist and began to search through Ava’s drawers. If she had a weapon, Kalyna needed to know about it, just in case Ava got loose or something else went wrong.