by Lisa Jackson
Before she could answer, the phone rang sharply.
“Now what?” His expression sober, Nick checked his watch, strode into the foyer, and grabbed the receiver before the telephone jangled again. “Hello?” A pause. The lines around his mouth deepened. “Marla Cahill? Right here.”
Marla’s heart dropped.
“Just a minute.” Nick carried the receiver into the sitting room and handed it to her. His eyes locked with hers. “It’s the nursing home in Tiburon.”
Her father. Doom settled in her heart. “This is Marla Cahill,” she said, though she wasn’t certain.
“Good morning, Mrs. Cahill,” a strong, female voice greeted. “This is Kara Dunwoody, the administrator at Rolling Hills Care Center in Tiburon. I’m afraid I have some bad news. Your father passed away this morning . . .”
“You wanted a break in the Pamela Delacroix case?” Janet Quinn asked as she dropped into the chair opposite Paterno’s desk. She was carrying her oversized briefcase and set it on the floor beside her.
“At least one. Two or three would be better.” He reached into the drawer, discovered he was out of gum, and leaned back in his chair. “What’ve you got?”
Janet grinned. “We found Marla Cahill’s purse. With the impact of the accident, it had been thrown about fifty feet and slid down an embankment. We would never have located it if she hadn’t been so insistent that it was missing.” Janet’s eyes were bright behind her glasses, as if she was privy to an important secret. Paterno had seen the look before and recognized it. She was holding something back. Something important.
“And?” he prodded.
“And we found her wallet . . . well, actually more than her wallet. But there’s an interesting little twist here. The credit cards, driver’s license, and checkbook weren’t issued to Marla Cahill. All of them, every piece of ID was in the name of Kylie Paris. She lives here in the city.” Janet reached down, snapped her briefcase open and withdrew a small handbag, wrapped in plastic and tagged, then pulled out a larger plastic bag filled with other items, all tagged as well. Through the plastic, Paterno viewed the driver’s license. “Notice anything?” Janet asked.
“Only that Marla Cahill and Kylie Paris could be twins.” He stared at the image.
“Believe me, they’re not.”
“And I thought the resemblance between Marla Cahill and Pam Delacroix was close. It is nothing compared to this.”
“Think what it could be, if, after she was in the car wreck, the surgeons altered her face a bit. You know, people would expect that after the accident and the plastic surgery, Marla Cahill just might look a little different from the way she did before Pam’s Mercedes did a nose dive off the highway.”
“Who is this woman?” Paterno asked, waving Kylie Paris’s ID at the other detective.
Janet was only too happy to answer; she’d been waiting for that question. “According to state records, Kylie Paris was born a couple of years after Marla Cahill, to a woman named Dolly Paris, who, at one time, worked as a waitress at a men’s club where Conrad Amhurst played cards and golf. She wasn’t married at the time, had no permanent boyfriend, but managed to get pregnant. There were some rumors that the kid was fathered by a member of the club, but no father was listed on the birth certificate and Dolly died nearly five years ago. Heart disease. Kylie grew up with a series of . . . almost stepdads, for lack of a better term. Smart kid, did well in school, got herself some scholarships and worked her way through college. After graduation she talked her way into a job at an investment firm downtown. Very ambitious girl. Even had another offer at a competing firm.”
“Had?”
“Yep. She quit. About a year and a half ago. Just out of the blue. Didn’t give much of a reason, but it was out of character as she was determined to claw her way up the corporate ladder, no glass ceiling for this girl. She wanted the good life and how. But then, one day, just up and gives it up.” Janet’s eyes gleamed. “None of her friends have heard from her since. She just seemed to drop off the face of the earth.”
“She died?”
“Nope. Don’t think so. Otherwise the rent on her apartment and her utilities would be delinquent.”
“And they’re not?” Paterno said, his mind racing. Who the hell was this woman—this potential half sister to Marla Cahill. What was the connection?
“Paid every month to the leasing company.”
“Really?” he asked, feeling that tingle of exhilaration, that spurt of adrenalin that he always sensed when a case was about to be solved. “Why did she quit her job?”
“This is where it gets good. I think she quit to have a baby—a baby she didn’t want anyone to know about. Marla Cahill’s baby.”
“Whoa. Wait a minute—”
“Marla Amhurst Cahill was sterile. It turns out that she had a hysterectomy a few years back, one her father didn’t know about. It was all hush-hush, the hospital records where Dr. Robertson works sketchy, but I dug up an old insurance claim and bingo—there it was. A full hysterectomy. There is no way Marla Cahill is James Cahill’s mother. So when her old man, Conrad, nutcase that he is, changes his will, cutting her out unless she comes up with a male heir, she manages to come up with one.
“A Cahill heir, not an Amhurst.”
“The old man had always wanted a son. Even though he treated Marla like a damned princess, he wanted a boy.”
“He had one,” Paterno reminded her.
“Yes, but Rory was in an institution, would probably never father any children.”
“So his daughter concocted a scam to give him a grandson?” Paterno was still skeptical. “Talked this half sister or whoever she was into having a kid for her . . . into stepping into her goddamned shoes?”
“That’s the way I figure it. It was a good thing Kylie Paris was avaricious and would do just about anything for a buck, had the same blood type, O negative, and managed to produce a boy.”
“That’s beyond lucky if you ask me.”
“They are half sisters—same blood type as their father. That’s where the negative comes in. It’s a lot less common than positive.”
Paterno’s eyes narrowed. “What if the husband didn’t go along?”
“Have you ever seen a Cahill turn down money?”
He snorted. “Just the black sheep.”
“Nicholas Cahill’s different.”
That much was true.
“I wouldn’t put it past Alex Cahill to have masterminded this whole sick scheme. He and the missus weren’t always tight, you know. They’d split before and rumors were that neither one held very fast to their marriage vows. She had a fling with the brother before she and Alex were married and I talked to a maid who had been fired a couple of years ago. She’s the one who tipped me off about the hysterectomy. From there I searched through old records. The maid told me that Marla might have had a quickie affair with her cousin, Montgomery, just to piss Alex off at one time” Janet tossed her bangs out of her eyes. “But through it all Marla and Alex stayed together. Because of love? I don’t think so.”
“You think it was the money?”
“I’d bet my life on it.”
That much Paterno wouldn’t argue, but he still wasn’t convinced that Janet was anywhere in the vicinity of the mark. “How would Marla explain her pregnancy—the real Marla.”
“Either the two women would trade places, which would be tricky because there are so many people living in that mansion, or, she could have worn pregnancy pads, the kind actresses wear. The she’d have to make sure no one saw her without her clothes. Faking morning sickness and all the other symptoms would have been relatively easy—she could have even put on a few pounds just to round out her face. Remember, I think not only the husband but the family doctor—Robertson—was in on this.”
“Why would Robertson play along?” Paterno argued. There just wasn’t enough to go on here, and yet . . . maybe.
“The same as everyone else. Money. The Cahill’s give a lot to his clin
ic and Bayside and probably Phil Robertson’s private retirement account.”
“You’re sure about all this?” He rubbed the kinks from the back of his neck and gave Janet’s idea some thought. She was never very far off the mark, but this time her theory seemed too far-fetched. “There are still a lot of holes to fill,” he said.
“Ya think?”
“More than a damned sieve,” he grumbled, but some of the story fit. His stomach was beginning to burn again and he opened his drawer, looking for his ever-present bottle of antiacid.
“Well, it’s just conjecture until we prove it.”
“Jesus,” Paterno whispered, staring at Janet with a jaundiced eye. “I don’t know if I’m buying it. There are just too many gaps.” He opened the bottle and popped four or five tablets into his mouth. “What if someone found out? How would Marla pull off the pregnancy scam? Wouldn’t someone at the hospital or the house know and spill the beans? And what if Kylie balked, or had a girl . . . hell . . . this is just too damned unbelievable.” He chewed the antacids. They tasted like crap, but did the trick.
Janet’s grin widened. She was so goddamned sure of herself. “Let’s go see, shall we?”
He swallowed the pills. “You think you’ve nailed this one, don’t you?
She snorted a laugh. “That’s why I get the big bucks.”
“And the glory.” Paterno chuckled without much humor. “Don’t forget the glory.”
“Never.”
Paterno swung his gaze to his bulletin board where the photos of the accident scene and Pam Delacroix’s mangled, bloodied Mercedes were posted. “So why the accident? Why try to kill off Marla?”
“That, I don’t know,” Janet admitted as Paterno turned his attention back to the pictures on Kylie Paris’ drivers license. They looked enough alike to pull it off, and yet, there were too damn many unanswered questions. He tossed the license back to Janet. “Well, I guess we’d better find out if your theory holds water.” He felt a moment’s satisfaction that at least they had something new to go on, thin as it was. “Let’s go have a chat with Mrs. Cahill.”
“If that’s who she really is.”
Chapter Nineteen
Clutching James as if she thought someone would snatch him from her arms, Marla leaned against the back of the elevator in the apartment building on Fulton Street. Over seventy years old, built of yellow brick, the apartment house was wedged between the University of San Francisco and Alamo Square, close enough to the house on Mount Sutro, the elegant old manor she’d called home ever since leaving the hospital. The elevator seemed eerily familiar, the smells and sounds of this tired building nipping at the worn edges of her memory.
Had she lived here? If so, how long, and how had she ended up as Alex Cahill’s wife, or pretending to be his wife? She’d been in this elevator before. She knew it. At the thought, her legs turned to rubber and her throat went dry. Trepidation battled with curiosity. She needed to find out who she was, what was behind the door of Kylie Paris’s apartment. Yet it scared her to death.
You have to find out. You have no choice.
Nick stood next to her. Gaze trained on the digital display of the floors, he waited as the elevator landed. His shoulders were tight, the cords in the back of his neck evident, the air thick.
James cooed softly against her neck and she closed her eyes. No matter what, she wouldn’t give him up.
Never.
She’d die first.
The doors to the elevator car parted. Marla’s heart jolted. She found herself staring into a long, oval mirror on the wall facing the elevator.
The woman in the reflection looked haunted. Tall and slender, gripping a baby as if she thought he might disappear into thin air, the image was a woman she didn’t know. There were no more bruises on her skin, no visible stitches. Short mahogany-colored hair feathered around high, pronounced cheekbones, wary green eyes, arched brows and a straight nose dusted with freckles. A wide, sensual mouth trembled before her lower lip was caught between white, remarkably straight teeth.
Marla Cahill?
Kylie Paris?
Who?
She met Nick’s eyes in the reflection, saw his iron will in the set of his jaw, the determination in the thin line of his mouth, the shadow of fear in his eyes. “Let’s do this,” he urged.
She nodded. Fought the urge to run.
Lies. Her life had all been lies, she thought as, by instinct, she turned right and entered a hallway that was eerily familiar. Her heart thudded, her chest was tight, nervous sweat broke out on her back. “I’ve been here before,” she said to Nick, swallowing hard. “Damn it, I know it.”
They stopped at the door of 3-B. The place Kylie Paris called home. Nick knocked, rapping hard.
Not a sound issued from inside. No murmur of the television set, no scuffling of feet, no gasp of surprise, no eye in the peephole, no greeting warning the visitors that an inhabitant was on her way to the door. Nothing but silence. Dead air.
“What now?” Marla asked, standing on worn gray carpeting in this narrow, poorly ventilated corridor. The lights were dim, the whole feeling dingy and colorless. “I don’t have a key.”
“Then we’ll get one from the doorman.”
“How?”
Nick scratched at the day’s growth of beard on his cheek. “Let’s see if he thinks you’re Kylie. Give me the baby and go downstairs, insist that you lost your key. See if he lets you in.”
“All right,” she said, certain that his ploy wouldn’t work.
She was wrong. The doorman, who hadn’t been at his post when they arrived, offered her a patient smile showing off a gap in his teeth, and produced a key from a locked box in a closet. Pushing seventy, with thick silver hair and an amused expression, he said, “You know, Ms. Paris, you should make a duplicate and hide it somewhere. What would you do if old Pete wasn’t here to bail you out?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted truthfully.
“Sorry to hear about your baby,” he added and she froze. “Terrible thing to lose one after carrying it so long.” Her insides turned to ice.
“Y—yes,” she said, her skin crawling. Had she told this man that her baby had died?
“Well, yer young yet, they’ll be more.” He raised an eyebrow. “Next time maybe it would be better to get yourself a husband first.”
“Would it?” she snapped sarcastically, as if she’d done it a hundred times before.
He didn’t so much as flinch. “It’s what the Good Book says.”
“And doesn’t it also say something about ‘Judge not, lest ye be judged’?”
“That it does, but me and the missus we’ve been married nearly fifty years, had our kids all four of ’em afterwards. A baby needs a mother and a father, but then, you already know that, I s’pose. Anyway, sorry about the loss.”
“Yes. Yes, of course, thank you,” she said and knew the blood had drained from her face. The doorman thought she was Kylie . . . and Kylie had been pregnant . . . oh, dear Lord.
Grasping the precious key, she backed away, then hurried up the shabby stairs rather than wait for the wheezing elevator. On the third floor she ran down the hallway to the door of 3-B where Nick, holding a sleeping James, was waiting.
“See what you can do if you put your mind to it,” he said with a smile.
“You wouldn’t believe,” she whispered and told him her conversation with the doorman as she slid the key into the lock.
She stepped through the door and back in time.
With her first sweeping glance of the tidy apartment, a thousand memories assailed her. She froze, her heart thudding as piece by painful piece the memories of her life came into clear, sharp focus. Clutching the doorknob she saw a green corduroy couch—the couch she recognized that she’d bought at a yard sale. An afghan was thrown across it—knit by her mother, not wasp thin, dour faced Victoria Amhurst, but a warmer woman who smelled of cigarettes and perfume laced with vanilla. Dolly . . . her name had been Dolly. “Mo
m,” she whispered, knowing the woman who had raised her was dead. Her knees threatened to buckle.
She wasn’t Marla. Just as she’d suspected. Her name was Kylie Paris. And she’d been driving to Monterey the night of the accident, at the wheel of Pam’s Mercedes, in an attempt to find her baby. Dear God, she knew, remembered why she’d been with Pam. Involuntarily she looked at James. Precious, precious child. It began and ended with James. After being released from the hospital, Kylie’d had the fight with Alex, figured out that he and Marla were keeping the baby hidden away in Monterey and asked Pam to help her.
But it had all gone wrong. Somehow the trip had been boobytrapped, as if it had been a setup! Alex had tried to kill her. He had to have been the one . . . and Marla . . . she’d been in on it, too. Kylie felt the blood drain from her face.
“Are you all right?” Tenderness and concern shone in Nick’s eyes.
Kylie’s stomach clenched and her throat worked. “This . . . this is my home,” she said, her voice hoarse, tears filling her eyes. She walked through the rooms remembering the double bed she’d bought with her first paycheck, from the bank where she’d worked before joining the securities firm; the bureau was an antique, she’d refinished it with her own hands; a Tiffany lamp was her prize, she’d paid a small fortune for the colored glass. She ran her fingers over the bureau and stared into the bathroom, pink tile and matching floor mats.
On the frame of the mirror was a magnet.
Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right.
That saying had become her mantra, the code she’d lived by. And she’d lived here, alone, though there had been men in her life, a succession of lovers who had come and gone . . . Good-time Charlies, the kind of men she would never settle down with, because she had no intention of settling . . . for anything less than the best.
Now, she leaned against the doorframe to the bedroom and saw their handsome, strong faces in her mind’s eye. Ronnie. Sam. Benton . . . and there were others . . . but none had touched her as Nick had. None had been near the man, or the lover that he was.