River's End

by Nora Roberts

  “But right now I’d like to know what it was like being her sister. More, her twin sister. Tell me about that, about when you were kids.”

  “It was a good childhood, for both of us. We were close, and we were happy. We had a great deal of freedom, I suppose, as children often do who grow up outside of the city. My parents believed in giving us responsibilities and freedom in equal measure. It’s a good formula.”

  “You grew up in a fairly isolated area. Did you have any other friends?”

  “Hmm, a few, certainly. But we were always each other’s best friend. We enjoyed each other’s company, and liked most of the same things.”

  “No squabbles, no sibling rivalry?”

  “Nothing major. We had spats—I doubt anyone can fight like sisters or aim for the weak spots with more accuracy. Julie wasn’t a pushover, and gave as good as she got.”

  “She get a lot?”

  Jamie nibbled on her cookie, smiled. “Sure. I wasn’t a pushover either. Noah, we were two strong-minded young girls growing up in each other’s pockets. We had a lot of room, but we were . . . enclosed all the same. We sniped, we fought, we made up. We irritated each other, competed with each other. And we loved each other. Julie would take her licks, and she’d take her swipes. But she could never hold a grudge.”

  “Could you?”

  “Oh yes.” The smile again, slightly feline now. “That was one thing I was always better at. With Julie, she’d go her round, aim her punches, then she’d forget it. One minute she’d be furious, stomp off with her nose in the air. And the next, she’d be laughing and telling me to hurry up and look at something, or it would be, ‘Oh come on, Jamie, get over it and let’s go for a swim.’And if I didn’t get over it quickly enough, she’d keep poking at me until I did. She was irresistible.”

  “You said holding grudges was the one thing you were better at. What was she better at?”

  “Almost everything. She was prettier, sharper, quicker, stronger. Certainly more outgoing and ambitious.”

  “Didn’t you resent that?”

  “Maybe I did.” She looked at him blandly. “Then I got over it. Julie was born to be spectacular. I wasn’t. Do you think I blamed her for that?”

  “Did you?”

  “Let’s put this on another level,” Jamie said after a moment. “Using an interest we both apparently share. Do you blame one rose for being a deeper color, a bigger bloom than the other? One isn’t less than another, but different. Julie and I were different.”

  “Then again, a lot of people overlook the smaller bloom and choose the more spectacular one.”

  “But there’s something to be said for slow bloomers, isn’t there? She’s gone.” Jamie picked up her glass and sipped, watching Noah over the rim. “I’m still here.”

  “And if she’d lived? What then?”

  “She didn’t.” Her gaze shifted away now, toward something he couldn’t see. “I’ll never know what would have been in store for both of us if Sam Tanner hadn’t come into our lives.”

  fourteen

  “I was madly in love with Sam Tanner. And I spent many delightful hours devising ways in which he would die the most hideous and painful, and hopefully embarrassing, of deaths.”

  Lydia Loring sipped her mineral water and lime from a tall, slim glass of Baccarat crystal and chuckled. Her eyes, a summery baby blue, flirted expertly with Noah and had him grinning back at her.

  “Care to describe one of the methods for the record?”

  “Hmmm. Well, let’s see . . .” She trailed off, recrossing her very impressive legs. “There was the one where he was found chained to the bed and wearing women’s underwear. He’d starved to death. It took many horrible days.”

  “So I take it the two of you didn’t end your relationship in an amicable fashion.”

  “Hell. We didn’t do anything in an amicable fashion. We were animals from the first minute we laid hands on each other. I was crazy about him,” she added, running her finger around the rim of her glass. “Literally. When they convicted him, I opened a bottle of Dom Perignon, seventy-five, and drank every single drop.”

  “That was several years after your relationship ended.”

  “Yes, and several years before my lovely vacation at Betty Ford’s. I do, occasionally, still miss the marvelous zip of champagne.” She lifted a shoulder. “I had problems, so did Sam. We drank hard, played hard, worked hard. We had outrageous sex, vicious fights. There was no moderation for either of us back then.”

  “Drugs.”

  “Rehabilitated,” she said, holding up a hand and flashing a killer smile. “My body’s a temple now, and a damn good one.”

  “No arguing there,” Noah responded and made her purr. “But there were drugs.”

  “Honey, they were passed out like candy. Coke was our favorite party favor. Word was after Sam fell for Julie, she put a stop to that. But me, I just kept on flying. Wrecked my health, toppled my career, screwed up my personal life by marrying two money-grubbing creeps. When the eighties dawned, I was sick, broke, ruined. I got clean and clawed my way back. Sitcom guest shots, bit parts in bad movies. I took whatever I could get, and I was grateful. Then six years ago I got Roxy.”

  She smiled over the situation comedy that had boosted her back to the top. “A lot of people talk about reinventing themselves. I did it.”

  “Not everyone would be so up-front about the mistakes they made along the way. You’ve always been brutally honest about what you did, where you were.”

  “Part of my personal philosophy. I had fame once, and I handled it badly. I have it again, and I don’t take any of it for granted.”

  She glanced around the spacious dressing room with its plump sofa, fresh flowers. “Some say Roxy saved my life, but they’re wrong. I saved my life, and part of the process was putting my relationship with Sam Tanner in perspective. I loved him. He loved Julie. And look what that got her.”

  She plucked a glossy green grape from a bowl, popped it in her mouth. “Look what getting dumped by him got me.”

  “How did you feel about her?”

  “I hated her.” She said it cheerfully, without a hint of guilt. “Not only did she have what I wanted, but she came off looking like the wholesome girl next door while I was the used-up former lover. I was thrilled when their marriage hit the rocks, when Sam started showing up at clubs and parties again. The old Sam. Looking for action, asking for trouble.”

  “Did you give it to him? The action? The trouble?”

  For the first time since the interview began, she hesitated. Stalling, she rose to refill her glass. “I was different back then. Selfish, single-minded. Destructive. He’d come into a party, make some comment about Julie being tired or tied up. But I knew him, knew that edge in his eyes. He was unhappy and angry and restless. I was between marriages to Asshole Number One and Asshole Number Two. And I was still in love with Sam. Pitifully in love with him.”

  She turned then, looking smart and sophisticated in the snazzy red suit she would wear to shoot the upcoming scene. “This is painful. I didn’t realize it would be painful. Well . . .” She lifted her glass in salute and offered him her signature self-mocking smile. “Builds character. At one of those ubiquitous parties we indulged ourselves in during that regrettable era, Sam and I shared a couple of lines for old times’ sake. I won’t say who hosted the party, it doesn’t really matter. It could have been anyone. We were in a bedroom, sitting at this ornate glass table. The mirror, the silver knife, the pretty little straws. I egged him on about Julie. I knew what buttons to push.”

  Her gaze turned inward, and this time he thought he saw regret in them. “He said he knew she was fucking Lucas—Lucas Manning. He was going to put a stop to that, by Christ, and she was going to pay for cheating on him. She was keeping his daughter away from him, turning the kid against him. He’d see them all in hell before she replaced him with that son of a bitch. They didn’t know who they were dealing with, and he’d show them just who th
ey were dealing with. He was ranting, and I pushed him along, telling him exactly what he wanted to hear. All I could think was, he’ll leave her and come back to me. Where he belongs. Instead he turned on me, shoved me away. We ended up screaming at each other. Just before he slammed out he looked at me, sneered at me. He said I’d never have any class, never be anything but a second-rate whore pretending to be a star. That I’d never be Julie.

  “Two days later, she was dead. He made her pay,” Lydia said with a sigh. “If he’d killed her that night, the night he left me at that party, I don’t think I’d have survived it. For purely selfish reasons I’m grateful he waited just long enough so I was sure he’d forgotten me again. You know, it took me years to realize how lucky I was he never loved me.”

  “Did he ever hit you?”

  “Sure.” The humor came back into her eyes. “We hit each other. It was part of our sexual dance. We were violent, arrogant people.”

  “But there weren’t any reports of abuse or violence in his marriage until the summer she died. What do you think about that?”

  “I think she was able to change him, for a time. Or that he was able to change himself, for a time. Love can do that, or very great need. Noah . . .” She came back and sat. “I believe he really, really wanted to be the person he was with her. And it was working. I don’t know why it stopped working. But he was a weak man who wanted to be strong, a good actor who wanted to be a great one. Maybe, because of that, he was always doomed to fail.”

  There was a brisk knock at the door. “Ms. Loring? You’re needed on the set.”

  “Two minutes, honey.” She set her glass aside, grinned at Noah. “Work, work, work.”

  “I appreciate your squeezing some time into your schedule for me.”

  When he rose, she eyed him up and down, with a sly cat smile on her face. “I imagine I could . . . squeeze more if you’re interested . . .”

  “I’m bound to have some follow-up questions along the way.”

  She stepped closer, tapped a finger to his cheek. “You look like such a bright young man, Noah. I think you know I was talking about a more personal session.”

  “Yeah. Ah, the thing is, Lydia, you scare me.”

  She threw back her head and laughed in delight. “Oh, what a lovely thing to say. What if I promise to be gentle?”

  “I’d say you’re a liar.” Relieved by her laugh, he grinned back at her.

  “There, I said you were bright. Well . . .” She hooked her arm through his as they walked to the door. “You know how to get in touch now if you change your mind. Older women are very creative, Noah.”

  She turned, gave him a sharp, little nip on the bottom lip that had both heat and nerves swimming into his blood.

  “Now you’re really scaring me. One last thing?”

  “Mmmm.” She turned again, leaned back against the door. “Yes?”

  “Was Julie having an affair with Lucas Manning?”

  “All business, aren’t you? I find that very sexy. But since I don’t have time to attempt a worthwhile seduction, I’ll tell you that I don’t know the answer. At the time, there were two camps on that subject. The one that believed it—delighted in believing it—and the one that didn’t, and wouldn’t have if Julie and Lucas had been caught in bed naked at the Beverly Hills Hotel.”

  “Which camp were you in?”

  “Oh, the first, of course. I got off hearing anything negative or juicy about Julie in those days. But that was then, and this isn’t. Later, years later, when Lucas and I had our obligatory affair—” She lifted her brows when his eyes narrowed. “Oh, didn’t dig that up, I see. Yes, Lucas and I had a few memorable months together. But he never told me if he’d slept with her. So I can only tell you I don’t know. But Sam believed it, so it hardly matters.”

  It mattered, Noah thought. Every piece mattered.

  Like any self-respecting resident of Los Angeles, Noah conducted a great deal of business on the freeway. As he wound through traffic toward home, he used his cell phone to try to contact Charles Brighton Smith.

  Sam Tanner’s renowned defense attorney was seventy-eight, still practicing law when the mood struck him, on his fifth wife—this one a gorgeous twenty-seven-year-old paralegal—and currently enjoying the sun and surf at his island retreat on St. Bart’s.

  With tenacity, Noah managed to get as far as an administrative assistant who informed him in snippy tones that Mr. Smith was incommunicado, but the message and request for an interview would be related at the earliest convenience.

  Interpreting that to mean anytime from tomorrow to never, Noah went to work on accessing a copy of the trial transcript.

  He toyed with swinging off the exit to his parents’ house, then decided he would treat his father professionally, try to keep their personal relationship separate. Somehow.

  It was time, he thought, to sit down at his machine and begin working out an outline for the book. He’d already decided on the form. It wouldn’t begin with the murder, as he’d once planned, but with all that had led up to it.

  A section on Sam Tanner’s rise through Hollywood, paralleled by a section on Julie MacBride’s. The meeting that had changed them, the fast-forward love affair sliding, from all reports, into a blissful marriage that had produced a much-loved child.

  Then the disintegration of that marriage, of love turning to obsession and obsession to violence.

  And a section on the child. One who had seen the horrors of that violence. A section on the woman she’d become and how she lived with it.

  Murder didn’t stop with death. That, Noah thought as he turned toward home, was something he’d learned from his father. And what, most of all, he tried to illustrate in his work.

  It hurt that the man he admired and respected most didn’t understand that.

  He parked, jingling his keys in his hand as he walked toward his front door. It annoyed him that he couldn’t seem to shake that need for his father’s approval. If I’d been a cop, he thought, scowling, that would’ve been just dandy. Then we’d sit around over a beer and talk shop, crime and punishment, and he’d brag about his son, the detective, at his weekly pinochle game.

  But I write about murders instead of investigating them, so it’s like some slightly embarrassing secret.

  “Get over it, Brady,” he muttered, then started to jab the key in the lock.

  He didn’t need to. He didn’t have to be a homicide detective to see the door was unlocked and not quite closed. The muscles of his stomach clutched into one tight, nasty ball as he gently nudged the door open.

  He stood, staring in shock at the destruction of his house.

  It looked as if a team of mad demons had danced over every surface, ripped and torn at every fabric, smashed every piece of glass.

  He leaped inside, already swearing and felt only a quick flutter of relief when he saw his stereo equipment still in place.

  Not a burglary then, he thought, hearing the buzz of blood in his head as he waded through the mess. Papers were strewn everywhere, glass and pottery crunched under his feet.

  He found his bedroom in worse condition. The mattress had been shredded, the filling spilling out like guts from a belly wound. Drawers were upended and thrown against the wall to splinter the wood. When he found his favorite jeans sliced from the waist down to their frayed hems, the buzz turned to a roar.

  “She’s crazy. She’s fucking insane.”

  Then anger turned to sheer horror. “No, no, no,” he hissed under his breath as he raced from the bedroom into his office. “Oh God, oh shit.”

  His basketball trophy was now stuck dead center in his computer monitor. The keyboard, ripped away from the unit, was covered with potting soil from the ornamental lemon tree that had thrived in the corner. His files were scattered, torn, covered with dirt.

  Before it had been destroyed, his computer had been used to generate the single clean sheet of paper and message that was taped to the base of the trophy:

  I WON’T
STOP UNTIL YOU DO.

  Rage washed through him like a tidal wave, in one vicious, screaming flood. Before he could think, he dug for his phone, then only cursed bitterly when he found the receiver smashed.

  “Okay, Caryn, you want war, you got war. Lunatic bitch.”

  He stormed back into the living room for the briefcase he’d dropped, tearing through it for his cell phone.

  When he realized his hands were shaking, he walked outside, sucked in air, then just sat down and dropped his head into his hands.

  He was sick, dizzy, with the fury still pumping through him in fast, hot beats. But under it was the baffled outrage of the victim. When he was able to use the phone, he didn’t call Caryn, but his father.

  “Dad. I’ve got a problem here. Can you come over?”

  Twenty minutes later, Frank pulled up and Noah was sitting in