Sweet Liar

by Jude Deveraux

  A smile came over Maxie’s face. “A young man sat beside me and said, ‘You look like I feel. You want to get something to eat and talk about it?’ I looked into his kind brown eyes and said, ‘Yes,’ and that was how I met Calvin Elliot. He took me to a cafe, we drank coffee and ate, and I told him everything, while he listened completely, listened without judging me. When I’d finished he told me about himself. He’d just been discharged from the army and two years before both his parents had died of heart failure, and four months ago the girl he’d loved since elementary school had eloped with a man she’d known for six days. And three days ago the army had told him that a bout of mumps two years before had left him sterile.”

  For a moment Maxie had to fight for breath, while Samantha resisted the urge to tell her to rest, to be quiet, but both of them knew that now no amount of rest was going to save Maxie.

  When she continued, Maxie’s voice was just a whisper. “Cal and I sat there and looked at each other, neither of us knowing what to say next, when Cal said we ought to get married. He said it made sense, that he was never going to have kids of his own and it would be a shame if I had a child who had to grow up without a father. He said we didn’t love each other now and we might never love each other, but we’d love the child and that would be enough.”

  “And you said yes,” Samantha said, holding Maxie’s rapidly weakening body.

  “Not right away. I told him how dangerous it would be if Doc’s men found me. But Cal said we’d create a new identity for me, and they’d never find me. I tried to talk him out of it. I told him there was nothing in it for him, but Cal laughed and said I hadn’t looked in a mirror lately.”

  “So you married him.”

  “Three days later,” Maxie said, closing her eyes for a moment. “And Doc didn’t find me until he saw the photo in the paper, so I left, but even that didn’t save your mother.”

  “And you did come to love him.” Samantha’s words were too loud as she changed the subject, as though her grandmother’s closed eyes frightened her. She wanted to pray for God not to take her, but Samantha wasn’t that selfish. Maxie had never said a word, but Sam knew that she was in constant pain that intensified daily; the doctor said that since Samantha had come into her life Maxie wouldn’t take her pain pills because she didn’t want to be groggy and miss a moment with her dear granddaughter.

  “Yes,” Maxie continued, her eyes fluttering open. “Loving Cal was very easy. He wasn’t exciting like Michael, and he was never one for surprises, but he was always there when I needed him.”

  She looked up at her granddaughter with love in her eyes. “Cal always loved me, just as I loved him.”

  And that’s how Maxie died, with a look of love on her face.

  37

  “I’m worried about her,” Blair said to Kane. They were in Mike’s town house, sitting beside each other on stools at the little counter in the kitchen, listening to the sounds coming from behind Samantha’s apartment door. From inside they could hear Samantha crying—crying as Blair had never heard anyone cry before—and, what’s more, it had been going on for hours. Maxie had died at about two in the morning. Afterward Mike had carried Sam from the room and taken her back to the town house, Blair and Kane following them. Mike’s parents had taken Kane’s boys and were spending the night at Blair’s apartment.

  As soon as the four of them had entered the house, Mike had taken Samantha upstairs. Through the door, Blair and Kane had heard Mike shouting, “Cry! Goddamn you, cry! Your grandmother is at least worth giving away some of those precious tears of yours!”

  “Of all the—” Blair began and started for the stairs, horrified by what she’d heard Mike say. How dare he treat someone like that after what Samantha had been through?

  Stopping her, Kane looked hard into her eyes. As children Mike and Kane had been more than brothers, they were like clones of each other, and she doubted if either of them had ever considered keeping a secret from the other. She could tell from the look in Kane’s eyes that there were things going on that she didn’t know about but Kane did, and he was asking her to trust Mike.

  There were more shouted words from Mike. Then suddenly, abruptly, they could hear Samantha crying, great, wrenching sobs of misery that seemed to echo through the house like a ghost that had died in agony.

  Sitting downstairs, Blair and Kane listened in silence, neither of them speaking. What could they say while hearing the despondency and despair that was coming from Samantha?

  After two hours, Blair said she couldn’t stand it anymore, then opening her bag, she got out a hypodermic. “I’m going to give her something to make her sleep.”

  Kane put his hand on hers. “Samantha has years of tears inside her,” was his cryptic answer.

  Reluctantly, Blair put the hypodermic away and, instead, filled a pitcher with water. “She’s going to be dehydrated,” she said and went up the stairs. When she returned, Kane looked at her in question.

  “Mike is holding her, and she’s still crying as though she never intends to stop.” Pouring herself another cup of coffee, Blair sat down with Kane to continue their silent vigil.

  When they first heard Samantha’s voice raised in anger, both Blair and Kane jumped and looked at each other. Samantha’s voice became louder, then they heard her start to curse, curse so creatively that Kane raised his eyebrows in admiration.

  When the first dish smashed overhead, Blair got up, as though to go upstairs and put a stop to this nonsense, but Kane put his hand over hers and halted her.

  The shouting, the cursing, the sound of dishes crashing and shattering, and what had to be furniture being tossed about went on for over an hour. During that time they heard the words father, Richard, sex was mentioned often, Doc, and Half Hand.

  Just when Blair was beginning to think that Samantha was never going to stop, there was a sudden silence, and she and Kane looked upward, wondering what was happening now.

  After a while Mike came down the stairs, and Blair had never seen him look so awful, but there was happiness behind the black circles underneath his eyes. “She’s going to be all right now,” he said, taking the stool vacated by his brother, who had his hand on Mike’s shoulder. “She’s sleeping.”

  Seeing the skepticism on Blair’s face, Mike took her hand and squeezed it. “Really, she’s okay. Pour me a brandy and a big glass of milk for Sam, will you? I’m going to wake her up and tell her something.”

  At those words, he exchanged looks with his twin, neither of them needing words to know what Mike was going to tell Sam.

  With the brandy and the milk on a tray, Mike went upstairs to Sam where she lay exhausted on her bed. The living room was a mess, and in the rest of the apartment she’d broken a great many things that had been chosen for her father, for at last she had been able to scream her rage at him for deserting her after her mother died and for practically forcing her to marry a man like her ex-husband.

  Setting the tray on the bedside table, Mike woke her, took her in his arms, and told her that people die and people are born and that’s what life is all about.

  “Mike,” Samantha said tiredly, “what are you talking about?”

  “Babies,” he said. “New life replacing the old.” When she still looked puzzled, he placed his hands on her stomach. “You’re carrying a new life, a life that will replace Maxie and your mother and your father and your granddad Cal.”

  Samantha was so tired that she could hardly understand him, but when she did, she put her hands over his on her stomach. “Do you think so?” she said, trying to sound calm.

  “I’m sure of it.” He wasn’t fooled by her apparent tranquility, for her heart was pounding against his arm. “In my family I’ve had enough experience with morning sickness that I know when a woman’s going to have a baby. I’ve held the heads of my pregnant sisters, cousins, aunts, even my mother when she was carrying Jilly. Samantha, my love, you’ve been having morning sickness for nearly a week now.”

  She w
as stroking her stomach and Mike’s hand. “Do you think I might have twins?”

  Mike kissed her ear. “Kane gave his wife twins on the first try and I wouldn’t want him to beat me, so I guess it has to be two of them, so drink your milk and make my kids healthy,” he said, handing the glass to her.

  “Michael, I lo—”

  He put his fingertips over her lips. “I know.” He didn’t want to hear the words, words that were in every book, on TV, everywhere you looked until the words had become common—and meaningless.

  “By the way,” he said brightly, “are you planning to make my kids bastards?”

  Smiling, she closed her eyes for a moment. “Mike, may I have a big wedding, a really very big, huge wedding?”

  Mike was glad her eyes were closed so she couldn’t see his grimace. “One of those weddings where they pray a lot and talk about ‘uniting the love of these two fine young people’?”

  Samantha opened her eyes, and the expression on her face matched his. “Heavens no! I want a cajun band and crawfish étouffé and enchiladas and lots of tequila and dancing that goes on for three days. I want lots of laughter and…and lots of children born nine months later.”

  Mike was looking down at her with shining eyes. “I knew the first moment I met you that I loved you, I just had no idea how much.”

  “Mike,” she said as she licked away a milk mustache, “how long can we continue to, you know, before it hurts the babies?”

  “In the delivery room,” he said seriously as he ran his hand up her leg.

  “Is that true?” Samantha asked, playing the ingenue.

  He stretched out beside her. “Trust me, I know about these things.”

  “Wouldn’t that, er, inconvenience the doctor?”

  He was moving on top of her, running his hand down her side. “Naw, the doctor will be a relative, and they understand about my family.”

  “Our family. I’m going to adopt them.”

  “Sure, sweetheart, whatever you say.” He was fumbling with her skirt. “Where’s the goddamn button on this thing? Ahhh,” he said at the sound of ripping cloth. “There’s your button.”

  Epilogue

  Samantha followed Mike out of the elevator, her stomach going ahead of her like a tugboat that she was moving in the wake of. Just this morning Blair’s tests had shown that Samantha was indeed carrying twins, and while Sam sat on her chair, stunned, tears of happiness streaming down her face, Mike listened to the prenatal care that Blair prescribed for her.

  Afterward, they went to F.A.O. Schwarz and bought toys, then bought maternity wear for Samantha. She wasn’t big enough to need anything but loose garments yet, but she had insisted on wearing a maternity top out of the store.

  “Show-off!” Mike had said, grinning with pride at her, wondering if in two weeks, when they were to be married in Colorado, in a reception with nearly five hundred guests, she’d wear a white maternity gown. Sam was so proud of being pregnant that he had no doubt that she would.

  The only sour note in the day was that this morning an express letter had arrived from his brother Frank and in it was a key. Mike hadn’t yet told Sam about the letter or the key, because the letter concerned Maxie’s will, which she had given to Frank, naming him as her executor. Sam hadn’t had enough time to recover from Maxie’s death, and Mike knew that the death of Doc from what had apparently been a suicide had also affected her.

  Maxie had left a letter telling that she had taken Half Hand Joe’s diamonds with her when she left Louisville in 1964 and gone to Amsterdam and sold them. She’d also spent a little of the cash Half Hand had left her, but she was afraid to spend too much of it, afraid of being caught and leading a trail back to Cal and her family.

  Frank, who, among other things, had a law degree, had made out the will for her and with his usual finesse had asked her what she’d done with the millions she must have received for the diamonds. Frank wrote Mike that Maxie had laughed and said she’d spent every penny of it. Mike could almost hear his brother’s disdain for that remark, because Frank didn’t believe in buying anything that wasn’t going to triple in value.

  One of the things Maxie had bought was an apartment in New York, where she’d lived in relative seclusion for many years after she left her husband and son, having decided to live in the city where she could keep an eye on what Doc was doing. Maxie told Frank that her biggest regret in life was the picture that had appeared in the newspaper after Samantha was born, for it had caused her to have to leave and, ultimately, it had caused the death of Allison Elliot. Doc had tired of searching for Maxie after he’d found her in Louisville only to have her disappear as she’d done after she’d crippled him in 1928. So, years later, he’d sent a man to find out if her family knew anything about where she’d gone. Unfortunately, Allison had been the one the man had caught.

  In her will, Maxie left the apartment and the contents to Samantha, and that was where he was taking Sam now, having waited until she was in such good spirits that nothing would be able to bring her down.

  Still glowing from Blair’s report, Samantha floated into the apartment—and came up short at a picture of herself as a baby in a silver frame on a narrow table in the foyer.

  “This is my grandmother’s apartment,” Samantha said softly to Mike, and he nodded.

  With her hands on her belly that she dearly wished were larger, she walked about the apartment. It was spacious, what the realtors called a classic six, a penthouse with three terraces. Samantha thought the apartment was decorated beautifully, not contrived as too many interior decorators made a place look. Maxie’s apartment was the home of a beautiful woman to whom taste was as natural as breathing.

  When Samantha walked back into the living room after exploring the other rooms, Mike was leaning against the mantelpiece, an odd expression on his face.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I think I know what Maxie bought with Half Hand’s millions.” When Samantha looked puzzled, he said, “Did you look at the pictures in this place?”

  Like an English country house, the walls were covered with paintings, as were the tabletops and nearly every flat surface. “They’re lovely,” Sam said. “Don’t you like them?”

  Mike looked at a tiny watercolor on the mantel. “When I was in college I had to take an elective course in art so I chose something called Lost Art. It was a study of art that has disappeared over the centuries. A lot of architecture has been torn down, gold sculpture melted, jewelry broken up, that sort of thing, and many paintings have disappeared in the last one hundred years. The Russian Revolution, World War II, et cetera. I wasn’t seriously interested in the course, but if my memory is right, I think I see three of those paintings on the wall behind you.”

  Pausing, he waited as Samantha turned to look at the oils—French Impressionists. “If my memory for paintings isn’t good, I do remember numbers,” Mike continued. “Sam, if these paintings are some of the lost art and if you can prove ownership, I think you may be a very rich young lady.”

  “Very rich?” she asked.

  “Very, very, very rich.” He quirked an eyebrow at her. “What do you plan to do with your newly found wealth?”

  Smiling, Samantha answered instantly. “I am going to open some nursing homes,” she said, as though she’d been thinking about what she’d do if she suddenly came into a great deal of money. “Nice nursing homes. Places where the people are treated with respect and the lights don’t buzz. And I’m going to call them ‘Maxie’s.’ ” Then, with a soft smile of satisfaction, a smile that conveyed her feeling of irony, she said, “And the first one I’m going to open will be in Doc’s Connecticut estate.”

  With a startled look, Samantha put her hand on her stomach. “Mike, do you think it’s too early to feel the twins kick?”

  “Yes,” he said softly. “I think that was Maxie giving her approval for what you want to do. Come on,” he said, holding out his arm for her, “let’s go feed my babies.” Pausing a moment, he loo
ked at the late afternoon sun that touched her hair, turning it golden. “All three of my babies.”

  Thank You

  I couldn’t have written this book without all I’ve learned about New York over the last ten years, and I’d like to think that I couldn’t have written it without the fulfillment of a dream: I bought my own apartment in my dear, beloved city.

  I’d like to thank Paula Novick, realtor extraordinaire, of Douglas Elliman, for taking me to see town houses in New York and for finding my lovely apartment for me—and for becoming my friend along the way.

  Nancy Miller of the Bank of New York (51st Street branch) helped me attain my dream and made me laugh while doing it. Thank you.

  The people of Pocket Books readily wrote and rewrote letters of recommendation for me so that I could pass the co-op board:

  Jack Romanos, who wrote about numbers, as well as said kind things about me.

  Bill Grose, who went to the apartment with me and gave his approval and his advice.

  Richard Snyder, who so graciously helped me with every aspect of my apartment.

  Lily Alice’s dad, a.k.a. Irwyn Applebaum, my publisher, who writes letters for me, cheers me up, gives me money, takes me to lunch, and makes me laugh until I can hardly stand up.

  Thank you very, very much.

  I’d like to thank Carrie Feron of Putnam-Berkley, for showing me some interesting parts of New York, such as the street fair and the antiques market on Second Avenue. Carrie was also one of the first readers of Sweet Liar and didn’t mind telling me again and again that she liked the book.

  I’d like to thank the people at the Santa Fe ComputerLand for selling me all nine of my computers, as well as eight printers—nearly all of which I still have. (I love the exasperating little dudes.)