by Zara Chase
Paige gulped. She’d forgotten that was the American way. Personally, she thought looking at a dead body in an open casket was a bit macabre. “Okay,” she said. “Do you want me to pick out something for her to wear?”
“It’s okay. Nick already sent over several things for me to choose from.”
“Good.” And so typical of Nick. “I’d have probably chosen something quite inappropriate.”
“Sam and his family are flying in from New York on Sunday night. They’ll stay here with us, obviously.”
“I expect it will make you feel better, having your brother with you.”
Anger briefly flared in Lana’s eyes and was as quickly gone again. “You can’t pretend to know how I feel.”
“Of course. I’m sorry. This is so hard—”
“No, I’m the one who’s sorry.” Lana briefly touched Paige’s hand. “I had no business snapping at you.”
“We’re both on edge.”
“Hardly surprising, is it? The police have been here, and we’ve had reporters hanging round, knocking on neighbors’ doors when we wouldn’t speak to them, asking all sorts of intrusive questions. Goodness only knows what they must think of us.”
Paige quelled the desire to roll her eyes. Lana’s only concern appeared to be for what the neighbors would think, which told Paige a lot about the mindset of Ellie’s stepdaughter.
“It’s hardly your fault if your stepmother was murdered.”
Lana inhaled sharply. “Don’t call her that!”
“Sorry.” Paige shot a confused glance Lana’s way. “Have I upset you?”
“No, it’s not you. It’s just hearing Ellie referred to as my stepmother. I never thought of her that way, you see. She was always just, well…” Lana shrugged. “More of a big sister, really. Stepmother sounds so impersonal.”
“Yes, it’s sort of like no-man’s-land.”
“Exactly.” Lana flashed a strained smile. “You haven’t touched your tea. Something wrong with it?”
Paige guiltily took a sip. As she’d expected, it tasted stewed and slightly bitter. She was a Brit through and through and liked her tea the same way she liked her men—fresh and hot.
“No,” she lied. “It’s fine. Ellie doesn’t want anyone to wear black at the funeral. You know that, right?”
“Yes, she insisted on the same thing at Dad’s funeral.” Lana pursed her lips. “Personally I think it’s a sign of respect to wear black in memory of the deceased.”
“Everyone manifests their grief differently. Ellie wants this to be a celebration of her life.”
Was it Paige’s imagination, or did that statement elicit a slight shudder?
“Well, anyway, I’ve arranged for the funeral cards to be printed,” Lana said. “I chose the wording without consulting you. I hope that’s all right.”
“Of course. You knew Ellie for a lot longer than I did.”
“Yes.” Lana looked as though she was sucking on a lemon. “That’s certainly true.”
“Isaac Drake is going to give the eulogy. I thought Nick ought to do it. I mean he knew your father and Ellie for much longer—”
“He worked for them,” she said, a trace of bitterness in her tone.
“Yes, but even so.”
“Nick isn’t an educated man—”
“What’s that got to do with it?” Paige asked, surprised but automatically springing to Nick’s defense.
“Well, he wouldn’t be comfortable standing up in front of a crowd. Isaac will do it much better.”
Interesting. This time Paige decided to push a little. “You don’t like Nick.”
“Let’s not pretend, Paige.” Lana expelled a long breath. “I know all about Ellie’s pastimes, and I know she got my father involved in her depravity.”
“Depravity? I don’t think—”
“You don’t have to be a genius to figure out what Ellie and Nick got up to alone in that big house after Dad passed.”
“You don’t approve?”
“What did you have in mind for the catering?” she asked, inverting her chin to indicate the subject was closed. “Do you want formal or a finger buffet?”
Paige wondered if Lana realized how cold and unfeeling she sounded. They were discussing the arrangements for the funeral reception of a woman they were both supposed to love. Paige was consistently on the verge of tears, but Lana’s face was an emotionless mask.
“Sorry,” Lana said, as though reading Paige’s mind. “I find the best way to keep my mind off the awfulness is to remain detached.”
“No apology necessary.” Paige took another small sip of her iced tea, frowning at the peculiar taste as she threw the pamphlets aside. “I hadn’t seen Ellie for several months,” she said. “She invited me over a few weeks ago, but I couldn’t get away.” Paige’s sadness wasn’t feigned. “I regret putting work before friendship now, of course.”
“Ellie was a workaholic, too.”
“Yes, she was.”
“When did you last see her?”
“On the day she died, actually.”
Paige elevated her brows. “Oh, I didn’t know that.”
“I didn’t get to speak to her. There was a directors’ meeting, and since I was in Tampa anyway I said I’d meet Mike for lunch. I just saw Ellie coming out of the meeting. She didn’t see me though.”
“So you didn’t get to say good-bye either?”
“Well, I would hardly have said good-bye, even if I had spoken to her.” Lana cocked her head to one side, listening as a child’s cries drifted from an upstairs window. “Damn!” She stood up quickly, looking frantic when the cries increased to ear-splitting level. “After all, I didn’t know she was going to get her head bashed in with a glass award, did I? Excuse me, I must just check on his highness.”
Paige’s entire body had tensed, but she said nothing as Lana scurried away. Had concern for the child made her forget herself? Paige didn’t know Ellie had been hit with one of the industry awards she’d won over the years and kept on a shelf behind her desk. As far as she knew, details of the weapon hadn’t been made public. Coldness crept through her as she thought about that. Would Lana realize that she’d slipped up? And if she did, what would she do to cover her tracks? How far would a desperate woman be prepared to go?
Chapter Sixteen
Paige, deep in thought, turned at the sound of Lana’s feet on the tiled floor. The expression on the other woman’s face chilled her to the bone, and an involuntary gasp escaped her lips.
“You know, don’t you,” Lana said in a lifeless tone. “That’s why you’re really here.”
“Know what?” Paige lifted her shoulders. “What are you talking about, Lana?”
Lana had given up all pretense. Paige was pretty sure that wasn’t a good thing. “You’re as bad as Ellie,” she said, her pretty features twisted into a mask of disapproval. “You must be. She only had people stay in that house of hers if they followed her perversions, and you stayed there every time you came over.”
“I really don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Of course you don’t.” Lana’s voice oozed sarcasm. “You were nothing special to Ellie, which is why she left you her London house. Which is why she left the rest of her estate to her other playmates, Isaac and Nick.” Lana screwed up her features. “The three of you are probably having a right old time of it over there, living it up on the pretense that Ellie would have wanted you to.”
“Ellie was a free spirit. There was nothing wrong with the way she lived, and she was entitled to leave her property to whoever she damned well pleased. What’s more,” Paige added, switching to attack mode, “even if I did have fun with Ellie, what goes on between consenting adults is really no business of yours.”
“Except when it ruins my life.”
“Oh, please!” Paige rolled her eyes. “Spare me all the Freudian navel gazing.”
“My mother and father were perfectly normal.”
“Define normal.”
“You know what I mean. We were a happy family unit. Dad worked hard, and Mom stayed at home looking after us kids. Then Mom got cancer and everything changed. She came into our lives, got her talons into Dad, and he was a different person after that.”
Paige examined Lana’s face as she hung herself with her own words. Or then again, perhaps she didn’t. She probably knew about the cameras in the St. Pete house and would never have opened up in this way over there. Here, it was just two women talking, and Paige couldn’t actually prove anything against Lana.
At least not yet.
She had made that careless throwaway remark about the murder weapon, of course. Lana seemed to have forgotten about that. Paige needed to get out of here fast and check that out with Lieutenant Weir.
But Lana was still talking, and it made sense to hang on a bit longer and see what else she let slip. It seemed the desire to let out all the hurt she’d bottled up for years had won out over common sense, and now that she’d started, she didn’t seem able to stop the flow of words.
Ellie was a discreet person. Anything told to her in confidence remained that way. That was probably why she’d never said much to Paige about Greg’s first wife. The one or two snippets she had let drop painted a picture of a straight-laced, attractive woman who looked upon sex as a distasteful chore to be dispensed with as quickly and infrequently as possible. Paige got the impression of a lights-out, missionary-position sort of person. It was a mindset that she’d obviously passed on to her only daughter.
“She infected Dad with her perverted ways and took him away from us.”
“You were ten when Ellie married your Dad, weren’t you?”
“So?”
“Old enough to understand that he needed company. It didn’t mean that he loved your mother any less.”
“He had us. Why did he need anyone else?”
She sounded like a child again, and Paige seriously wondered if she was mentally unbalanced. If she was, she’d hidden it well all these years, but wasn’t that often the way with obsessive people? They seemed perfectly normal until something triggered their neuroses.
“He needed adult company, too. You’re an adult yourself now, so surely you can understand that?”
“I lived in fear that people would find out what those two did,” she said, shaking her head as though the memory still gave her nightmares. “I never would have been able to face my friends again if they knew.”
Paige thought the knowledge would probably have enhanced her standing with them but refrained from saying so.
“And yet no one did find out,” Paige said softly. “And you went on to marry Mike and have three lovely children. It all worked out fine. Why carry on this grudge against Ellie?”
Lana’s face turned an ugly shade of crimson, and the anger blazing from her eyes made Paige shiver.
“You don’t know, do you?”
“Know what, Lana?” Paige frowned. “You’re not making any sense.”
“Mike, the perfect man my father encouraged me to marry, turned out to be a pervert, too.”
“What!”
“Six months after we were married I caught him prancing around the bedroom in my underwear.”
Paige laughed. Staid old Mike. Who would have thought it? “Is that all?”
Lana’s upper lip curled with disdain. “Isn’t that enough?”
“A lot of men enjoy cross-dressing. It isn’t sexual.” At least Paige didn’t think it was. She didn’t really know much about it. “They just enjoy bringing out their feminine side occasionally.”
“I was horrified. It was history repeating itself. Like Ellie’s specter had intruded on my perfect marriage.”
“Hardly that. Besides, it was nothing to do with Ellie.”
“Easy for you to say.” Lana crossed her arms beneath her breasts and glowered at the sparkling water in the swimming pool. “He promised me he’d try and stop, but of course it never happened. I found he’d had this extra cupboard built into the back of his dressing room and he kept his secret wardrobe locked in there.”
In spite of the seriousness of the situation, Paige was gripped by the desire to giggle. “Well, at least he was being discreet,” she said, biting her lip to keep that giggle from escaping.
“It was disgusting.”
“If you felt so strongly, why didn’t you divorce him?”
“And admit to my father that I’d failed?” Ah, so she was still trying to get Daddy’s approval. “That wasn’t an option. He liked Mike, probably would have shared your relaxed view about his fetish and accused me of being a prude.” Lana shook her head. “No, we came to an agreement. He’d be super discreet, only indulge in private when there was no possibility of the kids seeing him, and I’d pretend I didn’t know.”
“That arrangement must have worked.” Paige shrugged. “I mean, you’re still married and now have three kids.”
“It worked, I suppose. Until about a year ago when he started going out once a month to the house of another guy with similar persuasions. He said four of them met up, had a meal, and just chatted about the things they liked to do. I wasn’t happy about it, but Mike put his foot down and I had to give in.”
“Everyone has to have a hobby,” Paige quipped.
“But he lied to me.” Lana spoke over Paige’s flippant interruption. “They started going to some club or other and—”
“And, let me guess, Ellie saw him there and recognized him.” Understanding came crashing in on Paige, numbing her thought process. “That’s why Mike stopped opposing Ellie at directors’ meetings.”
“I was furious when I realized what must have happened. Ellie had won again, don’t you see? She’d taken Dad away from me, and now she could manipulate Mike.”
“How did you know Ellie had seen him? Did he tell you?”
“Yes, he came home looking white as a sheet. I always know when he has something on his mind and soon got it out of him. He thought Ellie would be able to ruin his career. We both did.”
“I very much doubt if Ellie even mentioned to Mike that she’d seen him in that club,” Paige said. “She wouldn’t use knowledge from her private life to influence his business decisions. Did you ask Mike if she had?”
“He said she hadn’t, but I didn’t believe him. I figured he was just telling me what I wanted to hear. Then, when he stopped opposing the things Ellie wanted to do at the agency, I knew she must have put pressure on him.”
“Perhaps Mike approved of the direction Ellie wanted the business to take.”
“Representing all those Z-list celebs and self-promoting nobodies that dominate the TV talent shows?” She shuddered. “I don’t think so. My father had standards, even if Ellie didn’t, and someone has to make sure they’re maintained.”
“Like it or not, it’s what the masses want to know about.”
Paige glanced at her watch. Where the hell were Isaac and Nick? They should have gotten here ages ago.
“Someplace you need to be?” Lana asked, her face once again completely emotionless. Fingers of fear trickled down Paige’s spine. This woman might have warped ideas, but she was also ruthless. She had too much to lose and couldn’t let Paige leave here. That didn’t stop Paige from trying to bluff it out.
“Yes, I’m expecting Isaac. He should be here any minute.”
“No you’re not.” Lana took a purposeful step toward Paige. “I happen to know that he’s in a business lunch with Mike. Then they have to go back to the office and get the new client to sign the paperwork.”
“Oh well then, perhaps I’ll nip over to Tampa and meet him there.”
Lana’s acidic smile froze Paige to the spot. “I don’t think so.”
“Why did you have to kill Ellie?” Paige asked, deciding to drop all pretense and keep her talking. She didn’t know if Lana was telling the truth about the lunch, but even if Isaac didn’t come, surely Nick would? She just needed to buy him some time. “You did kill her, didn’t you?”
&nb
sp; “Mike and I argued over lunch. He refused to see reason and change his position. Then his phone rang. I knew who he was talking to and that it would be a long call. On impulse I sneaked out the back door and slipped over to the office. I figured I’d have a word with Ellie, at least try and get her to stop bending Mike to her will, if only for my dad’s sake.” Lana’s chest puffed with indignation. “She just laughed at me. Said she hadn’t manipulated Mike and never would. I begged with her to think of Dad, to do what he would have wanted. She said he would have wanted her to move with the times and make as much money as possible.”
“He probably would.”
“Well, you would say that, wouldn’t you, but it isn’t true. I lost it when she sat there, looking at me almost with pity in her eyes, like she knew what Mike’s perversions must be doing to me.” She strode back and forth in front of Paige, never moving far enough away from the door for Paige to make a run for it. “A red mist of fury clouded my eyes, and I was ten years old again, watching my dad beg her to whip him harder. I felt bile rising in my throat and had to make those vile images go away somehow. I walked behind Ellie’s desk and found I’d grabbed one of those gaudy award statues she was so proud of. I just…I just hit her until the pictures of her and Dad stopped flashing through my mind.”
Paige gulped back the bile that had risen to her own throat. “You’re left-handed?”
“For throwing.”
And caving women’s skulls in, apparently. “Did you know she was dead?”
“I didn’t care. She fell to the floor, blood gushing from her head. I panicked and ran.”
“The police didn’t find your fingerprints on the statue,” Paige said, taking a wild guess.
“I wiped them off.”
Not so panicked then. “And left Ellie where she was, without checking to see if she was alive or dead and without calling for help?” Paige glowered at her. “What sort of monster are you?”
“The sort that will do whatever it takes to protect my family’s reputation.” Her reptilian smile chilled Paige to her core. “You can’t be allowed to leave here, of course.”