The Other Laura

by Sheryl Lynn

  Teresa nodded. Becky continued to smile pleasantly. There was no telling what she thought.

  “And you,” Becky said to Ryder. “You hired Park Lewis to figure out if she was Laura or Teresa.”

  “Why did he call you in?”

  “He doesn’t like wife-killers any better than I do. Laura has a long, detailed history of loving abusive men. Why shouldn’t you be one of them?”

  Gary cleared his throat. “Investigator Solerno, might I remind you this is a voluntary interview. We shall have no name-calling. My clients have committed no crimes.”

  “We don’t know that. Teresa, is your memory back? Do you know who shot you?”

  “This sounds crazy. I have a recurring dream. I think it might be from the day I was shot. I don’t recognize any people, but I’m sure Donny Weis was there.” Ryder’s tough-skinned hand gave her confidence. She told the investigator about Donny’s visit and extortion demand.

  “Did he leave a copy of the tape?”

  “No.”

  “Did he make arrangements for you to pay him?”

  Teresa shook her head, her nervousness growing. Becky remained smiling, but something had shifted. She seemed colder, harder.

  Becky focused her dark eyes on Ryder. “So where is your wife?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Is she alive?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Teresa leaned forward, “Look, Becky, when I thought I was Laura and Donny Weis was going to kill Ryder, I called you right away. If I was trying to hide anything, I wouldn’t have called. I wish I knew what happened and who shot me, but I don’t. All I know is, Donny has a tape of Laura telling him to kill Ryder. Donny thinks I’m Laura and he’s trying to blackmail me. Other than that, I don’t know anything. Ryder doesn’t know anything.”

  Gary Holstead rose from the chair. “Investigator Solerno, you have enjoyed full cooperation from my clients. This is a highly unusual situation, in which I’m positive my clients are the victims. Now, if you insist upon treating them as suspects, then I will make the recommendation that they refrain from making any statements to you.”

  “All right, I’m hearing you.” Her dimples deepened. “You’re right, too, in calling this unusual. I’m not exactly sure what kind of situation we have here. Would your clients be willing to take polygraphs?”

  Teresa exchanged a look with Ryder.

  “This is nutty enough it has to be true. But I’d like to make sure I’m getting the straight poop from you two.”

  “I’ll take a polygraph,” Teresa said. “I’ll talk to anyone you want me to.”

  “Same here” Ryder looked at his attorney. “If that’s all right with you, sir?”

  “My clients have no objection,” Holstead said with an air of magnanimity. He held up a hand in warning. “I demand a list of questions beforehand and strict adherence to a script. You will not, under any circumstances, turn this into a fishing expedition.”

  RYDER AND TERESA passed the polygraph examinations to Becky Solerno’s satisfaction. She even managed to apologize to Ryder for suspecting he’d somehow figured out a way to switch wives for his own gain. Then the investigator, accompanied by a technician, returned to the ranch. The technician wired the telephones with recording equipment, setting the trap for Donny Weis.

  The greatest victory was that no one mentioned Abby or the status of her custody.

  The next morning, Teresa and Ryder went to the studio.

  “The book dream,” Teresa said. “That’s the key to what happened.” Arms crossed, one foot tapping, she stared at the desk in the office. Behind her, Ryder leaned a shoulder against the doorjamb.

  “It’s no dream, I’m sure of it now. I’m remembering the day 1 was shot. Where were you that day?”

  He cocked back his hat with his thumb. “Colorado Springs. But first I stopped in Monument, looking for you. I left before Laura got out of bed. She always slept until at least noon.”

  “Where was everyone else?”

  “Mrs. Weatherbee left around one or so to pick up Abby and then to go grocery shopping. Tom was repairing fences up in the north pasture. That’s on the other side of the hill. Can’t see the house from there. Mrs. Weatherbee was the first to notice the wreck. She spotted you on her way home from the store.”

  The blank holes in her memory made her crazy. Somewhere inside her scarred brain lay the answers. She hadn’t a clue as to how to extract them. She rubbed the small of her aching back and pulled out the desk chair. Past Ryder she could see Abby standing before an easel with the legs shortened for her height. Wearing a white cowboy hat, holding a palette and brush, she looked like a miniature version of Ryder.

  According to Mrs. Weatherbee, Abby had been a perfect angel at the amusement park and while visiting her great-aunt’s house. She hadn’t fussed or acted naughty all day. She’d been on such good behavior, it was almost painful to watch. Teresa guessed the girl feared making an error or angering somebody and having her precarious world destroyed.

  She turned her attention to the desk. “Okay, let’s go over this step by step. Laura fired me—” Catching Ryder’s grin, she lost her train of thought. “What’s so funny?”

  “You. I don’t know how I missed recognizing you. Welcome back, Tess.”

  “You’re making jokes.” His smile tugged at her heart, making her want to sigh. The melancholy had returned to his eyes, darkening them to midnight. She made herself look away. “We have serious work to do here.”

  He heaved a heavy breath. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “You said Laura said she fired me because she caught me stealing jewelry.”

  He shook his head. “Caught you trying on her clothes and maybe trying to steal. But I don’t believe it. I was out of town so I think she saw her chance to get rid of you.” He frowned, pulling on his jaw. “She was always jealous of you, but you and I weren’t involved. It doesn’t make any sense that you didn’t talk to me. You knew where I was. You knew when I got back. You knew I’d listen to you.”

  She snapped her fingers. She sorted through the report Park Lewis had compiled. In the interview of Teresa’s former landlady was the statement that Teresa had called Laura a liar and thief. “I bet Laura found a way to accuse me of being a thief. The checkbook ledger in my dream must contain the proof I needed to show you I wasn’t stealing from you.”

  “I’m not following, darlin’.”

  “I’ve been through this office with a fine-tooth comb.” Her cheeks warmed as she clamped down the urge to tell him why. “There’s a ledger missing. I can account for some of the checks it contained, but not all of them.” Even as she said it, the illogic caught up to her. “You never gave Laura any grief about money, did you?”

  He shook his head. “She spent what she wanted.”

  “So why would I call her a thief?” She clicked her tongue and scowled. Realization rushed in like a gust of icy air. “Because she was trying to conceal where she got the money to pay Donny.”

  He glanced over his shoulder at Abby before moving to a chair in the office, out of hearing range. He straddled it, resting his forearms on the chair back and his chin on his arm.

  “On the tape Donny played, Laura said she’d paid him five thousand dollars. Now that’s a healthy chunk of money. If you had turned up murdered, the police might question it.” She swiveled in her chair and turned on the computer. She opened up the accounting program and turned to the last entries she’d made before the accident.

  She highlighted the out-of-sequence checks she’d noticed in the ranch account. “Look at the date. September, quarterly taxes are due. So I must have been pulling everything together for your accountant. I find two checks out of sequence, totaling five thousand dollars.”

  Ryder gazed solemnly at the computer screen. “And?”

  “It seems suspicious to me that this is the only ledger book I can’t find.”

  “Tom Sorry is the only person who uses that checking account. He buys feed, supplies
, whatever.”

  “And when he needs a check, he comes into this office and writes it. Which means Laura could have done the same thing. I bet I caught her doing it. It should be easy to find out. We’ll ask the bank for copies of the checks.”

  Teresa called the bank and asked for the accounts manager. She asked the manager to fax copies of the checks in question. The manager told her the fax would be forthcoming within twenty minutes.

  “Laura spent money like a congressman,” Ryder said. “Five thousand doesn’t prove she bought a hit man.”

  “We’ll let Becky figure out what’s proof and what isn’t.”

  When the fax finally arrived, Teresa was ready with invoices and receipts Tom Sorry had written. The checks in question had been written out for cash—something Teresa couldn’t find noted on any other checks Tom had written on the ranch account. Neither Teresa nor Ryder could discern if the signatures were different, but Ryder pointed out that the rest of the writing on the checks didn’t match Tom’s.

  “Do you have any samples of Laura’s handwriting?” she asked.

  “Laura wasn’t much for reading and writing.” He snapped his fingers. “Her address book. I’ll fetch it.”

  Abby threw down her brush and palette to follow her father, but as soon as she saw Teresa was still in the office, she ran in there.

  “Where’s Daddy going?” she demanded.

  “It’s okay, baby. He just went to the house.” Teresa petted the girl’s shining hair. “Relax. We won’t desert you. I promise.”

  Keeping an eye on Teresa, the girl went back to her painting. Teresa sighed, unable to squash the bad, bad feeling of impending doom.

  While waiting for Ryder, she searched through the spreadsheet and compiled a report showing every cash withdrawal or check written for cash or cash advance Laura had made in the six months prior to the accident. Ryder walked in while Teresa was printing out the report.

  “What did Laura do with herself?” she asked. She picked up the papers from the printer catch tray. The total—nearly thirty thousand dollars—astonished her.

  Ryder shrugged. He dropped the address book on the desk in front of Teresa before resuming his backward seat on the chair. “She went to parties. She shopped.”

  “She spent a lot of money.”

  He shrugged again.

  “I’m appalled.” She handed him the report. “She pulled out enough cash to hire an army of hit men.” She opened the address book and begin comparing the handwritten entries with the facsimiles of the checks. Laura had definitely written the checks. “I don’t get it. It’s obvious you didn’t track how much she spent. Why steal money from the ranch account?”

  “Donny probably told her to. Laura isn’t all that smart, but Donny’s got more than half a brain.”

  “Some smart guy,” she said dryly. “It never occurred to either of them that Laura already used large amounts of cash. Do you think I found out she was trying to kill you?” She glanced at the door. “Wait a minute. Did I have a key to this office?”

  “Sure did.”

  “Okay, so let’s say I was doing the books, noticed the missing five thousand dollars and—” She laughed and swung her gaze to the fax machine. “I would have done the same thing, asked the bank for copies of the checks. I would have known they were forgeries.” She grabbed the telephone and punched in the number of the bank. She asked the accounts manager to find out if Teresa Gallagher had made an inquiry into Ryder’s ranch account back in September. Put on hold, Teresa said to Ryder, “They log everything into computers.”

  Unfortunately, her claim was overly optimistic. The accounts manager was unable to tell her if she’d inquired about the checks in question.

  She hung up. “Even so, that’s what I would have done.”

  “When you called Laura on it, she fired you. She threatened to say you stole the money.”

  “Right. Only I came back. I had the checkbook ledger.” She closed her eyes and rubbed her temples, calling up images of her dream. “She’s furious, screaming at someone about wanting...screaming about wanting you dead. I caught her, Ryder.”

  “Who was she screaming at?”

  “Donny?” Her gaze went distant. “It had to have been Donny, and she wasn’t just angry about his failure to kill you. She used the word blackmail.” She snapped her attention to Ryder. “Oh, my God, he knows I’m not Laura. He was here. He’s probably the one who shot me.”

  Picking up on her thread of logic, Ryder nodded eagerly. “They try to kill you to cover up their scheme, but they mess up. So they panic and run. It was Laura using the ATM card.”

  “Now she and Donny are out of money. So Donny comes for a visit to find out how much I know. He’s decided my amnesia is real, so they’re blackmailing me.” She leveled a hard gaze on him. “Becky is going to love this.”

  “What if she can’t catch Donny? What happens to Abby?”

  She slumped on the chair. Ryder might as well have a sign tattooed on his forehead—My Daughter Is My Achilles Heel. “You’re the best father in the world. Nobody is going to take her away from you.”

  “Haven’t you been watching the news? The courts don’t care who’s the best parent or what’s good for the kids. All they care about is who’s blood and who isn’t. Biological parents can be the lowest belly-crawlers on earth, but they’re blood and that’s all that matters.”

  “Laura and Donny can’t get Abby if they’re in prison.”

  “No.” He huffed a snort of disgust. “Then the social workers will take her. They’ll put her in foster homes. They’ll make her a ward of the state. If that happens, darlin’, I’ll never get her back.”

  “What does Mr. Holstead say?”

  He lowered his face onto his arm. “He says the courts are hostile toward stepfathers. Especially stepfathers seeking custody of little girls.”

  Frustrated with his pessimism, she exclaimed, “Are you sure you aren’t her father? Women lie about paternity all the time.”

  He pulled a face.

  “Abby looks like you, she acts like you, she sounds like you. You said you and Laura had an affair. Haven’t you ever done a paternity test?”

  “When Laura showed up, Abby was only a week old. So Laura would have had to carry her for over ten months. Even a cowpoke like me can do the math.”

  “She lied.”

  “I’ve got Abby’s birth certificate.”

  Having seen it herself, all she could say was, “Oh.” She went to him and placed her hands upon his shoulders. “We have to draw Laura into the open. We have to convince her to sign over custody to you. She doesn’t want Abby.”

  He laughed. It held a pained note. “You’re right, she doesn’t want Abby, she wants to kill me.”

  She lifted his hat off his head so she could see his eyes. The pain and worry she saw squeezed her heart as if with an iron fist. “I know how to bring her out in the open. I know how to catch her.”

  “How?”

  She finger combed his thick, hat-flattened hair. “When Donny tries to take your money, I’ll make him sign a paper giving you the right to adopt Abby.”

  His features skewed in puzzlement. “He’ll never go for that.”

  “More importantly, Laura will never go for it. Abby is her only weapon.”

  “Then what?”

  “Don’t you see? If she had a plausible story to explain her role in my shooting, then she’d have come forward already. It must drive her crazy knowing I’m in her house, spending her money. Loving her man. This will push her into making a mistake. We’ll catch her.” She looked straight into his eyes. “I’ll give her a choice. If she relinquishes all rights to Abby then I won’t press charges about the shooting.”

  “You’re nuts! Solerno will never go for it.”

  She caressed his cheek. “You used to pay me to solve your problems. That’s what I’m good at. Trust me. I’ll convince Becky this is the way it has to be. She can’t catch Donny without me. She has to have my coop
eration.”

  He stood abruptly and pulled the chair from between them. He gathered her against his broad chest and hugged her tightly. “I don’t want to lose you, Tess. Not you, not Abby. We belong together. We’re a family.”

  She melted in his arms, loving what he said, loving him. “We’ll beat her at her own game, Ryder, I promise.”

  TRUST HER. That admonition played through his thoughts like a thread through canvas. Ever since he’d known Teresa, she’d proven herself capable, careful and smart. Besides, the more he thought about her plan, the more it seemed plausible.

  Watching her now, as she argued with Solerno over the telephone, he admired her strength. Without being mean or strident, she held her ground, explaining patiently and logically why she believed Donny knew she wasn’t Laura and how Donny and Laura were in cahoots.

  After she hung up, she swiveled the chair to face him. “She’ll get back to me.”

  “Abby’s an issue now, isn’t she?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Get back to you,” he mused aloud, feeling sick. “You know she’ll be talking to child services and shrinks.”

  “Becky is a good person. She’s always been straight up with me. We have to trust her now.” She lowered her gaze, and her chin trembled. “She, uh, did make a passing comment about child endangerment. After all, Laura did try to have you killed.”

  His back prickled and he got the same case of dry mouth he’d felt when he learned about the cut brake lines.

  Laura wanted him dead. Not merely out of her life, but six feet under. He’d loved her, tried everything he knew to make her happy, never asked anything except that she be kind to Abby, and she wanted him dead. As an added insult, she couldn’t bother hiring a real hit man, but had asked her ex-husband to do the honors.

  “I’m going to find Tom Sorry. I want to ask him about these checks.”

  “Does Tom know who I am?”

  “He knows I suspect it. Should I tell him?”

  “Might as well.” She turned to the computer. He felt her reluctance to look too long at him. Yearning for what she didn’t rightly own must hurt her as much as it hurt him. “I’ll take the kid.” He left the office.