False Premises (5 page)

“No,” he said bleakly. “None that would stand up in a court of law, at any rate.”

“That’s what I was afraid of . . . it explains why she was willing to risk returning to Crestview.”

I started to open my door, but Sullivan touched my thigh, then quickly jerked his hand away. “Do me a favor, Gilbert. When she comes to the door, pretend you’re madly in love with me. Just for Laura’s benefit, I mean.”

“I can’t.”

“You
can’t
?”

“It’s too late for that. Women talk, you know. I told her all about John. She told me all about Dave.”

“But you never mentioned
me.
Obviously.” He got out of the van and slammed the door savagely.

“Obviously,” I told him. “I doubt she even realized that you and I know each other. She probably just called Interiors by Gilbert at random.”

He shook his head. “You’re not getting it, Gilbert. The woman is a
professional
con artist.
Nothing
Laura does is ‘at random.’ Besides, she’d have known your name from me.”

“But . . . we barely knew each other back when you two were together.”

“Yeah, but I used to complain to her about Interiors by Gilbert moving into town just down the street from Sullivan Designs. She’d have thought she was hiring my archrival when she hooked up with you, and she’d have loved every minute of it.”

“And yet look at us now,” I said evenly, through a deliberately forced-looking smile. “Bosom buddies.” We headed up the sandstone walkway, Sullivan maintaining such a purposeful march with his long legs that I had to trot to keep up with him. He pressed the doorbell so hard I half expected the button to crack into pieces.

A moment later, a positively radiant-looking Laura Smith threw open the door. Surprisingly, I felt a surge of anger at the sight of her that could easily be akin to hatred. Even more surprising—and frustrating—to me, tears stung my eyes.

Laura beamed at Sullivan as though she’d been expecting this visit, and squealed, “Oh, my gosh! Stevie! It’s
so
good to see you!”

Chapter 3

Sullivan backed away, avoiding Laura’s embrace. “Where’s Evan?” he growled.

She donned a facial expression poised beautifully between hurt and perplexed. “Do you mean Evan
Cambridge
? Your slimy former partner?”

“Cambridge . . . Collins . . . whichever alias he was using while you two were working together!” Sullivan dragged his fingers through his tousled hair with both hands, as if to give them something to do other than strangle her.

“Evan and I have never worked together, and I honestly haven’t got the faintest idea where he is.”

“Bullshit!”

Her eyes welled with tears. She gave me a glance that managed to make her look both injured and confused, then returned her attention to Sullivan. Softly she said, “Stevie, why are you acting like this? What we once had was
special.
Just because things didn’t work out doesn’t mean you have to hate me.”

“Cut the crap already! I’m totally on to you! You and Evan stole my money! You stole my car! I want it back! All of it!” He raised his hands and took a step closer, but then stopped himself from grabbing her shoulders. Instead he shouted into her face, “I want my
life
back, Laura!”

If Steve did take a swing at her, I wasn’t sure I could blame him; I surely couldn’t
stop
him. I glanced behind us, but there were only two houses with any view of this porch, and none of Laura’s neighbors was outside. Dave, though, if he was still home, would surely be roused to join us any second now.

Laura started to cry openly. She searched Sullivan’s eyes and said gently, “Oh, Steve. What’s happened to you? And what kind of a monster do you think I am? I loved you once, and I thought you loved me, too. Can’t you see? I had nothing to do with
anything
that Evan did to you.”

Sullivan scoffed, “You’re going to stand there and blame it all on Evan? Even though you knew about my getting ripped off . . . and
you
left town at the very same time!”

“Of course I
heard
about it . . . eventually.” She swiped at her tears. “I asked around about you. When I moved back into town five months ago. Someone told me what Evan had done, and I felt terrible for you.”

A chilly gust swept down the mountainside, knocking the three of us a little off balance with its force. The instant I’d regained my balance, my vision fell on the fake antique mirror behind Laura. I could see its shoddy craftsmanship, even at a distance. Resuming her Academy Award–caliber performance, Laura dried the last of her tears and said, “Why don’t you both come inside? We’ll try to unscramble this misunderstanding.”

“No way!” Steve balled his fists. “I just want to know where Evan is . . . and where my money is. Then I want to get the hell away from you, forever! I did lots of detective work, Laura, and I know exactly how you two managed to scam me. Evan posed as me, and the two of you drove my Lexus to St. Louis and sold it. Then you bought two plane tickets and flew to Paris together from St. Louis.”

Laura was shaking her head the entire time Sullivan was shouting his accusations at her. When he paused for air, she said emphatically, “No, Steve, you’re wrong. I took a
taxi
to DIA, and my flight to Paris connected in St. Louis. I
did
happen to bump into Evan there, but that was just a strange coincidence.”

“Jesus! I don’t believe this!” Sullivan whacked his forehead with the heel of his hand.

As if thinking I was the only one rational enough to believe her, Laura turned to me. “There was a delay in St. Louis, so I went out to the ticketing area to see if I could switch flights. Evan and I happened to bump into each other there, and he claimed Steve had sent him to France to scope out some foreign suppliers for a major new client of theirs.” She returned her attention to Sullivan. “I had no
possible
way of knowing that he’d stolen your money, Steve. You and I had just broken up, and I was heartbroken. I . . . needed a shoulder, so I waited in line with Evan, and we managed to get seats next to each other. We went our separate ways after we landed, and I never saw him again.”

“My God, Laura!” Sullivan cried. “You don’t actually expect anyone to believe that crock of shit, do you?”

Now Laura was finally starting to show some anger, though it was a mere fraction of his. “Yes! It happens to be the truth!” The wind was whipping her dark hair around, and she tucked it behind her ears and told him: “For what it’s worth, I can certainly see how it must look to you. And that’s precisely why I didn’t call to tell you I was back in town. Once I heard what Evan had done . . . and knowing that I’d accidentally sat next to him on the flight . . . I was afraid you would assume the two of us were in league together.” She sighed and glanced over her shoulder at the open doorway, as if longing to escape the cold. “Besides, I figured it was probably best left that way in the long run . . . you could go on blaming me for our breakup.
I
was willing to play the part of the bad guy, if that made things easier for you.”

Sullivan let out a growl. To my dismay, he shifted his attention to me. “This . . . sugarcoated
poison
is what I swallowed for over a year. The thing is,
Laura
”—he jabbed a finger at her—“the police learned that a woman matching
your
description, who claimed to be my
wife,
sold
my
Lexus to a used-car dealer in St. Louis! She was
with
Evan Cambridge, who posed as me, and was armed with a forged driver’s license.”

She took in his accusations without so much as a blink of her beautiful brown eyes. “What can I say, Steve? Your information is wrong. I can prove precisely when I flew from Denver to St. Louis. In fact, I’m fairly certain that I still have my boarding pass. I used it as a bookmarker in some dreadful tome that I eventually gave up on. Do you want me to find it and show it to you?”

“That wouldn’t prove anything,” he shot back. “You flew to St. Louis while Evan drove out in my car. Then the two of you hocked my car and flew to Paris together.”

“Wrong! I was only in St. Louis for three or four hours. I never left the airport. If you keep slandering me like this,
I’ll
be forced to get the authorities to pull the records so that they can verify the times!”

“
Then
what would you do? Sue me? You’ve already ripped me off for every dime I ever earned!”

Laura said quietly, “You poor thing. You really can’t accept that I simply chose to leave you.”

Sullivan let out another growl and stepped toward her. Hastily, I thrust myself between them. I needed to calm him down before his temper completely exploded.

“Whoever the woman was that helped Evan steal your car, it wasn’t
me,
” Laura insisted. “She was probably a friend of Evan’s in the St. Louis area. You know how easily Evan can hoodwink people. After all, he fooled both of us completely.”

“But
you
took my title for the Lexus out of the desk in our bedroom, Laura! Evan wouldn’t have known where to look for it.”

“Or maybe, since you only had the
one
desk at home, he took an educated guess where it would be.”

A black sports coupe pulled into the driveway and stopped behind my van. The driver shut off the engine and got out. It was Dave Holland; this time he wore sunglasses. “Hey,” he shouted. “Laura? What’s going on? Is everything okay?”

Steve sent a scalding glance in Dave’s direction, then said firmly, “The police have a warrant for your arrest, Laura. Yours and Evan’s.”

Sullivan’s bluff had no effect on Laura. She spread her arms. “That doesn’t scare me in the least. I’ll tell them the same thing I just told you, and they’ll have to let me go, because I’m innocent.”

Dave marched past us to Laura’s side and threw his arm around her protectively. She buried her face in his jacket, whimpering, “Thank God you’re finally home.”

He hugged her and whispered, “It’s all right, sweetie.” Then he snapped at Steve, “Get it through your thick skull, asshole! It’s over! She’s never coming back to you! So get the hell out of here!”

“Dave,” I cried, “we’re just here to try to locate Evan Cambridge, Steve’s old partner. You’ve obviously already heard what—”

“Yeah,” he retorted. “I know exactly what Cambridge did to Sullivan. And we figured out that you’d think my Laura was involved. But she
wasn’t
.” He grimaced and wagged his finger in Steve’s face. “Considering the way you treated her after you duped her into leaving me, you had—”

“Give me a break!” Steve fired back. “I never mistreated her!”

“Like hell you didn’t!” Dave yelled, gently pushing Laura behind him until he was blocking her from Steve. “You think you need to use your fists on a woman to make you feel like a man, you coward!”

The men’s anger was scaring me. “Steve—” I began. “That’s a crock!” Steve snarled. “She’s lying to you, man! She’s playing us against each other! She told me when she first left you for me that
you
beat
her
!”

Laura was tugging at Dave now, saying, “Come on inside, honey. He’s making this all up to save his hide.”

Steve took a step as if to follow them. Desperate, I once again blocked his path. “No, Steve! Don’t!”

“It’s the truth, Holland!” he hollered over my head. “Laura had a black eye when she moved in with me!”

The carved oak door slammed shut. Steve stood still. “Jesus! He believes her! He actually thinks I hit her!”

“Come on, Steve. Let’s go.”

Though I had to pull him by the arm at first, we made our way to my van. Dave’s car—a rather ordinary-looking Toyota Camry in comparison to Laura’s top-of-the-line BMW—was blocking my van. Sullivan sat in stony silence, staring out the front window while I maneuvered back and forth and finally managed to squeeze past the Toyota.

The moment we’d left the driveway, however, Sullivan pounded the fleshy parts of his fists on the dash and growled, “That miserable, lying bitch!”

“You’re going to break your hands,” I warned. “As well as my dashboard.”

He sat back a little in the passenger seat. “
Now
you know why I hate women!”

I tightened my grip on the steering wheel but said evenly, “Evan Cambridge was in on the whole thing. He may well have been the mastermind. Do you hate all
men,
too?”

“We’re going straight to the police, Gilbert. Right now. We’re going to get them to drag that lying bitch out of her house in chains. We’ll make her tell
them
her story, and all the lies she’s told about me. I’ve never hit a woman in my life! I’ve never hit anyone!”

“I believe you, Steve. And yet now you’ve got bruised hands, and you’re practically foaming at the mouth.”

“So what? I’m pissed at her! Wouldn’t
anybody
be?”

I took a curve a little too fast and inwardly chastised myself; I had to stay focused on my driving. I ached for Steve; his confrontation with Laura made me realize just how emotionally devastated he truly was by what she had done. I merely replied, “Yes, but that’s not the point.”

“What
is
your ‘point,’ Gilbert?”

His voice was sarcastic and ugly, and if he were a child, I would have pulled the car over and reprimanded him. As it was, I struggled not to lose my own temper and, after a moment, answered, “Sorry, Steve, but I’m not taking you to the police station when you’re like this. You’d wind up spewing all this venom while you make your report, whereas Laura will be all calm and rational . . . batting her big brown eyes at the policemen.
You’re
the one who’s going to come off as the raving lunatic. It’s going to look like you’re just vengeful and trying to hurt her for leaving you. You’ve got to pull yourself together before you go to the police.”

Steve opened his mouth as if to protest, but then shut it and turned to face forward. He remained silent for the next two miles. Then he said, “The funny thing is, Gilbert, she almost had me convinced. You believe that? Even now. Even after everything I know full well she did to me, I wanted to believe that she had nothing to do with Evan’s treachery.”