Scandalous Lies: An addictive, sexy beach read

by Nigel May

  After dining on another Chloe-made evening meal, a moussaka that wasn’t black, Victoria rose from the table where she and the family were eating and gingerly made her way to the sink to pour herself a glass of water.

  ‘Here, Victoria, let me help you,’ offered Scott. It was obvious to him that his wife was in pain.

  It was a thoughtful gesture but one that Victoria was determined to turn down. Since the accident, her inability to do much for herself was already damaging her deeply, and she was determined to do as much as she could to get back to normal, and regain some independence.

  ‘No, it’s okay, I can manage.’ It was clear that she couldn’t as she raised her hand to turn on the tap. She took a sharp, loud intake of breath and bent forward as pain lacerated her side. She dropped the glass she was holding and it cracked into two separate pieces in the sink.

  ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake!’ Her anger was both loud and bitter. Both Lexi and Leo stopped what they were doing at the kitchen table to stare, open-mouthed at their mum. They’d never heard her use a naughty word before, and especially not that one.

  Scott ran to her side to help. ‘Come on, let me do that for you.’ He picked up the two broken pieces of glass and placed them to one side. ‘And mind your language in front of the kids, eh?’ he whispered. He wasn’t angry with her, as he could feel her frustration. ‘You go back to bed for some rest. You’re trying to do too much. The doctor said you’d experience pain for a while as you have taken quite a battering. Your body’s black and blue.’

  ‘Along with being a bit saggy, out of shape and in need of an MOT,’ snapped Victoria.

  ‘And self-deprecation isn’t going to help, Victoria.’ There was a now a soupçon of annoyance in Scott’s voice. ‘You’ve been through a heck of an ordeal.’

  She had, but her failing body was not helping with the feelings of failure that she had already been experiencing prior to the accident. And it certainly wasn’t helping her temper. She needed a painkiller. How many had she taken today? She’d lost count. But however many it was, it wasn’t enough.

  ‘Go back to bed. You need to rest, you look tired. And you’re obviously getting a little narky.’ It was a fact, not a criticism. ‘Chloe, can you take Victoria back upstairs, please? I’ll finish off down here.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Chloe, dutifully doing as requested.

  As Chloe escorted her from the kitchen, Victoria could hear Lexi asking her father, ‘Daddy, why did Mummy say a rude word? We know not to say things like that.’

  Victoria cursed herself inwardly. She’d have to control her temper.

  ‘Mummy’s just feeling a little unwell and not herself at the moment,’ said Scott. ‘Now, which of two scamps would like to help their dad load the dishwasher? Any willing volunteers receive lemon and raspberry sorbet for pudding.’

  Victoria couldn’t see the twins raising their hands but she knew, as Chloe assisted her upstairs, they would be.

  Chloe helped Victoria climb into bed.

  ‘Isn’t your job description to tuck in the children, not the mother of the house?’ smiled Victoria.

  ‘Yes, but I think they’re fine with their dad right now. He seems to be coping well,’ replied Chloe.

  ‘He does, doesn’t he? Do you like working here, Chloe?’

  ‘I love it. The twins are great.’

  ‘What about Scott and me?’

  It was a strange question and one that Chloe seemed unsure how to answer.

  ‘Um … you’re both great, too. Wonderful to work for. I enjoy my job.’ Something told Chloe that the conversation was leading somewhere she didn’t want to go. ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘No reason, Chloe. I just wondered. The children really like you and I suppose a good nanny is always a terribly hard thing to find so I just wanted to make sure you’re happy here. Especially now you’re playing nurse maid too. Doesn’t give you much time for anything else, does it?’

  ‘No, I suppose not.’

  ‘Do you have a boyfriend, Chloe?’

  ‘Not right now, no.’ Chloe shuffled a little uneasily at the questioning.

  ‘Men can be a real pain, especially if they start to get in the way of your job. I suppose you have to be certain that they’re the right one for you.’

  Okay, this is all becoming a bit too cryptic for my liking, thought Chloe. She was keen to change the subject.

  ‘Is there anything else I can do for you?’

  ‘Just one thing, can you fetch me a glass of water? I think I’m going to take another painkiller and try to doze a bit.’

  ‘Certainly I can. Hold on two seconds.’ She left the room and returned a few moments later with the glass of water. ‘Is that all?’

  ‘Just one other thing. Can you ask Scott to phone the doctor for some more painkillers for me? I only have a handful left and this pain is not subsiding.’ Victoria was counting out her tablets on her palm as she asked.

  ‘Of course.’ Chloe handed Victoria the glass and bid her goodnight. ‘If you need anything else then give me a shout.’

  ‘I will.’ Victoria watched as Chloe shut the bedroom door behind her. She was chewing over her thoughts about Chloe as she swallowed one of the painkillers.

  Pleased to feel the coolness of the cotton bed sheets underneath her, Victoria lay down and closed her eyes. She could feel any clouds of temper vaporising as she drifted into a much needed sleep.

  It was dark when Victoria woke up. The pain in her body had returned once more. She automatically reached for the painkillers. She placed one in her hand and grabbed her glass. It was empty.

  She looked at the clock. It was just before midnight. She didn’t want to shout for Scott as she might wake the twins. Scott had been sleeping in a separate bedroom since Victoria’s return from hospital as he didn’t want to disturb her sleep with late nights and early mornings. Victoria missed his body alongside hers.

  Slipping out from under the sheets, she moved towards the bedroom door. She opened it and headed as quickly as she could, considering the pain in her side, to the nearest bathroom. She left the lights off for fear of waking Leo and Lexi.

  It was as she walked back to her room that she heard a noise. A soft whimper. One that chilled her to the core. It was coming from downstairs. She knew what it was even before peering over the landing banister to the living room below. She was horribly aware of what she was about to see. A betrayed woman’s instincts.

  Victoria stared down to see the naked backside of her husband thrusting as quietly as he could between the open, willing legs of Chloe. Even in the dim light, Victoria could see that Chloe’s eyes were shut and the expression on her face showed that she was enjoying the ride.

  Her body pained now with a new misery, Victoria simply turned back to her room and tried to eradicate what she’d seen from her thoughts. It just confirmed what she had known all along and had been too tired to face.

  Victoria took the painkiller, happy in the knowledge that at least it would blitz some of the aching she was feeling. Then she just lay awake. She was still wide awake as the first rays of light began to seep through the bedroom curtains the next morning.

  Thirty-Four

  She’d been told what to say, how much to ask for, what orders to give. The voice, female she thought, had told her that if she did this then maybe her time in this hell would come to an end. An end where nothingness wasn’t the final destination. Maybe this was a droplet of hope in a repugnant, fetid sea of desolation.

  The slap across her cheek, already numb with pain from lying on the floor, had woken her from darkness yet again. The brightness of the light scored into her brain once more. She had been dragged to a sitting position, the ropes binding her hands used as leverage. She had nothing to fight with, allowing her captor to drag her as they chose. The ropes burnt at her wrists. Did they draw blood? She couldn’t tell. She didn’t care. Maybe death would be a better option.

  The voice in the darkness told her what to say again. Did she understa
nd? She did. She’d do what was required and see what happened after that. Would somebody come for her? There were those who cared. Those closest to her. They wouldn’t give up, would they? Even if her own spirit was close to submission.

  She spoke the words as instructed into the camera. Her voice was dry and raspy, her tone no more than a croaked whisper. As the light clicked off after her words, the room plunged into darkness once more. A chink of light appeared from a doorway illuminating the room slightly. Was it above her? She wasn’t sure. She wasn’t sure of anything anymore. She felt her wrists being untied and a plate of food appeared in front of her. A sandwich. Alongside it, a drink. Her reward for playing ball. Maybe. She placed her hands around the drink and put it to her lips. Water. Lukewarm but water nevertheless. She downed it in one.

  ‘Now eat.’ The voice was an order.

  She picked up the sandwich and placed it to her mouth. As the silhouette of her captor carried the camera and tripod from the room, the door shut once more and the chink of light vanished, leaving only darkness.

  She attempted to swallow the mouthful of sandwich. It seemed alien to her and caused her to retch.

  She began to cry. Tears for herself. For her family. For those she’d left behind. Surely somebody would be coming for her. Somebody. Anybody …

  Thirty-Five

  Georgia had risen before dawn on her second day in LA and driven the nine-hour journey to Hell’s Canyon, Siskiyou County, to the place where Foster’s body had been found. She’d borrowed one of Nova and Jacob’s bank of cars.

  Jacob had told her that the journey would take her most of the day and had even offered to hire a plane for her, but Georgia was adamant that she would drive. The time alone would give her a chance to think. She had no idea where she was really going other than the coordinates she’d set on the car’s inbuilt sat nav; she wasn’t sure what she was going to do when she arrived there and indeed what she hoped to achieve, but she knew it was something that she had to do.

  She had arrived in Hell’s Canyon by mid-afternoon. It was the flip-side to what she had been experiencing in LA. Instead of flashy, trashy Hollywood homes and displays of vulgar riches at every turn, life around the area of the Canyon was simple and relaxed. It was rich in greenery as opposed to million-dollar properties. She could immediately see why Mitzi and Foster had chosen to visit. It was light years away from the illuminations of any television dance floor.

  Georgia ventured briefly into the Canyon. She needed to experience what her friend had seen. The sun overhead was relentless as she stepped out of her car and surveyed the enormity of the area before her. Georgia loved the sunshine but this was an extremity like no other she had felt before. Her skin immediately cowered as it felt the change of temperature, scared of its brutality and afraid to be away from the comfort of her car’s air conditioning. The scene before Georgia was a desolate one. Any greenery that thrived and flourished outside the Canyon itself seemed to stand no chance here. The form of the rocks and the contours of the land shaping almost a bowl of fieriness that was not just red hot, it was almost scarlet. The land was beautiful but arid. Dynamic yet as dangerous as a virus. And despite the beads of sweat already forming on her skin as she looked into the Canyon, the thought that Mitzi had been here just a few short weeks ago warmed her more. It made her feel a few steps nearer to her missing friend.

  Georgia’s visit to the Canyon was brief. There was nothing she could do there. In an ideal world she would walk the canyon floor and find an as yet undiscovered piece of evidence that the local authorities had been too clueless to notice. Maybe a note hinting at what had really happened, a vital sign that Mitzi was still alive. But this world was far from ideal and any clues would surely have already been unearthed by the police teams who had been working the area since the discovery of Foster’s body. She took some photos and uploaded them onto her Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts. Maybe something, no matter how seemingly irrelevant, would jog somebody’s memory. What else could she do?

  Georgia had expected to see posters of Mitzi displayed in the local shops. A ‘Have You Seen …?’ to give her hope that the search was ongoing. There were none. It was a fact she took up with the police when she visited the local police station.

  ‘Miss, things like this are not good for tourism around here,’ the officer at the front desk had told her. ‘And believe you me, we’ve had teams of people searching every hidden part of that Canyon since the body of that young man was found. If your lady friend was there we would have found her by now.’

  ‘But somebody must have seen something. If you had posters up reminding people of what had happened then maybe it would jog somebody’s memory. In all kinds of cases evidence comes to light weeks, months, maybe even years after the crime actually happened. You can’t give up.’ Georgia’s voice was streaked with frustration.

  She felt helpless. It was as she left the police station that she felt any last ounce of hope leaving her body. She tried to fight it. She couldn’t allow herself to feel this way, she just couldn’t.

  ‘Two more days and I’ll be there with you.’

  It was good to hear Charlie’s voice. She needed a splash of something uplifting as her day had been both fruitless and exhausting.

  ‘So, where are you now?’ asked Charlie.

  ‘Sipping warm beer in the bar of the hotel I’m staying at. Jacob booked it for me as the thought of driving another nine hours back to Bel-Air after the day I’ve had was about as appetising as the burger I’ve just eaten in the restaurant.’

  ‘Not good?’

  ‘It could have been grizzly bear for all I know. No taste whatsoever, but I wasn’t really very hungry. I am just about ready to call it a day.’

  ‘You’re off to bed. I’m just heading into work. I have to interview some young buck who’s just joined the cast of that soap my mother loves, Peregrine Palace. I’ll book my flight and I should be with you the day after tomorrow. I’ve missed you.’

  ‘I’ll head back to LA in the morning and try to work out what to do next. We can’t give up on Mitzi, Charlie, we can’t.’

  As she hung up the phone, a wave of tiredness washed over Georgia’s body. She was just about to stand and leave to go to her room when a young woman approached her.

  ‘Excuse me, were you just talking about somebody called Mitzi?’

  The mention of her friend’s name on a stranger’s lips jolted Georgia back into alertness. ‘Yes, I was, who are you?’

  ‘My name’s Alice Kilbride, I work on reception here.’ The woman was no older than her late teens, with small round glasses perched on her nose, her hair scraped back severely off her face in a tied bun. She was nearly pretty but not quite.

  ‘I wasn’t listening to your conversation, honest, but I heard you mention that girl Mitzi. She was the one who disappeared with her friend and now he’s turned up dead in the Canyon, isn’t she?’

  Georgia simply nodded, eager to not interrupt what the girl had to say.

  ‘I met her. She came in here a while back. I remember her name as I thought it was so unusual. Kind of exotic.’

  ‘You met Mitzi?’ A burst of excitement exploded within Georgia. Maybe the day wasn’t going to be so fruitless after all.

  ‘Yes, it was a few weeks back, just before the disappearances were reported.’

  ‘Was she alone?’

  ‘Yes, or at least I think she was. I didn’t see anybody else with her. She was all upset. She wanted to clean up as she’d been crying.’

  ‘Clean up? She could have done that in her camper van, surely? Why did she come in here?’

  The girl shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I didn’t see any camper van but then I didn’t look. My dad runs the hotel and I just get paid to work here and help people if they have any questions.’ There was a simple honesty to the girl’s voice.

  Georgia was keen to extract as much information as possible. ‘Why was she upset?’ The thought of her crying scratched at Georgia.

&nb
sp; ‘She said she’d had a fight. I think her lip was bleeding – there was some blood on her face.’

  ‘And there was no sign of Foster? Her boyfriend?’

  ‘No, just her. She used the restroom, cleaned up all the dirt and blood and then asked me how long it would take her to get to Mexico. I told her the border into Tijuana is about ten hours from here. Then she left. She was so pretty and I loved her accent. I didn’t really think about her again until the body turned up. When I read that it was her boyfriend, I kind of assumed that maybe she had done it. You know ...?’ The girl left her words hanging although her meaning was crystal clear.

  ‘Have you told the police all of this?’ Georgia knew that she would do so herself even if the girl, as she suspected, hadn’t. Her feelings were correct.

  ‘No, my dad didn’t really want the hotel linked to a murder case. It’s not good for filling rooms. What would I say? She was obviously heading out of town.’

  Georgia’s mind raced with questions as Alice made her way back to the reception area. Had Mitzi fled to Mexico? Was she running away or on the run? From her own guilt or from danger? Why was she bleeding? Was the blood on her face in fact hers? Who had she been fighting with? Another question kept Georgia wide awake as she lay in bed that night. Was it Mitzi who had killed Foster? She wouldn’t allow herself to believe it.

  Thirty-Six

  ‘Welcome to Los Angeles, Mr. Rose. My name is Addison Downes. It’s great to meet you. I’ll be your contact here in LA. If there’s anything you need then feel free to contact me day or night. And naturally I’ll be arranging all of the details for your audition.’

  Now this was a life Aaron could get used to. The blonde, who had met him at LAX airport and had manoeuvered him into the back of a waiting limousine, was hotter than a chilli pepper. The dark roots just tinting the top of her glossy LA locks showed that she was not a natural blonde and she wore the merest hint of make-up to enhance what was already a nigh-on-perfect Pamela Anderson pre-surgery beauty. Her nails were long, polished and splashed with the sexiest red Aaron had ever laid his eyes on. Her teeth were as white as her nails were red. Aaron guessed she was in her mid-twenties, maybe a little more. Feeling his loins stir as he melted into the backseat of the car with Addison, Aaron had a feeling he might be phoning her for all sorts of reasons given the chance.