White Lies (19 page)

She came to a halt beside Jake. He put an arm around her shoulder and pulled her against his side.

“What’s going on out here?” she whispered.

“Those three are hunting breakfast.”

She winced. “I hope they don’t find it while I’m standing here watching. Something tells me they don’t eat a lot of soy burgers.”

“At this hour they’re probably after rabbits.”

“What about you? Staking out your territory? Marking your boundaries?”

“In a way.”

“It better not involve peeing on the fence. I don’t mind a little back-to-nature stuff, but I’d have to draw the line at that.”

“Go ahead, take all the fun out of it.”

She laughed and turned into the curve of his arm. He kissed her there in the light of the desert dawn, sending energy splashing across all her senses.

When he raised his head at last she could see the exciting heat in his eyes.

“I didn’t buy you dinner last night,” she said. “So I’ll make breakfast instead.”

“Works for me.”

He walked into the kitchen some time later, showered and shaved and aware of a hungry anticipation that had nothing to do with food. Clare was at the center island, cracking eggs into a bowl. He could see that she had just come from the shower herself. Her hair was held back in a ponytail. She had on a pair of black pants and a rust-colored T-shirt. Both looked good on her. Both looked familiar.

He stopped in the doorway, giving himself a chance to enjoy the sight of her in his kitchen.

She looked up from the eggs, smiling a little shyly. “Hungry?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“I meant for breakfast.”

“That, too.”

He went around the counter, picked up the teapot and poured Dragon Well green into a heavy white ceramic mug. He lounged back against the counter and watched Clare work on breakfast. She seemed to have made herself very much at home, he noticed. He liked that.

Too bad he was going to have to ruin the warm, romantic atmosphere.

“I’d like to take you up on that offer to make use of your washing machine and dryer after breakfast, if you don’t mind,” she said.

“No problem.”

A non-stick frying pan was heating on the stove. Clare put a teaspoonful of Dijon mustard into the egg mixture and added some chopped fresh dill and a large dollop of ricotta.

“Something I need to ask you,” he said.

She picked up a wire whisk and went to work on the egg mixture. “Hmm?”

“Who do you think killed Brad McAllister?”

She stopped whisking very abruptly. “I told you. I have no idea.”

“But you’re not buying the interrupted burglary theory, are you?”

“No. I didn’t buy it six months ago and I really can’t buy it now. Not after what happened to Valerie Shipley.”

“Got a theory of your own?”

She concentrated very hard on putting a dab of butter into the hot pan. Then she added the eggs. He could tell she was choosing her words carefully, deciding what and how much to tell him.

“The truth, Clare,” he said.

She exhaled slowly. “I don’t know who killed Brad but I’ll tell you one thing.”

“What?”

“Until yesterday, I was very grateful to that person.”

“Because the killer came up with a permanent fix for Elizabeth’s problem?”

“That, too,” she admitted. “But there was another reason.”

“What?”

Clare looked up from stirring the scrambled eggs. “I think he or she probably saved my life.”

A chill went through him. “What are you saying?”

“I’m sure that Brad intended to kill me that night. Someone else got to him first.”

She knew she should be having some serious concerns about confiding in a man who was still, in far too many ways, a stranger. She had not talked to anyone, not even Elizabeth, about her darkest fears relating to the night of Brad’s death.

She had an uneasy feeling that the intense intimacy of last night’s blistering sexual encounter had broken through the last of her carefully constructed barricades. She had kept her secret too long, she thought. Only now did she fully realize how desperately she had wanted to discuss her nightmarish theory with someone.

If anyone could address her anxieties with cold reason, it would be Jake.

“I wake up sometimes in the middle of the night, wondering,” she said. “But I never told anyone.”

“Why would Brad McAllister want to kill you?”

“Because I was the one who pulled Elizabeth out from his clutches. The divorce was not yet final when he died. I think he figured that if he got rid of me, he could regain control of Elizabeth.”

“From all accounts, Brad McAllister was an all-around terrific guy.”

The eggs were done. Clare scooped them onto two plates and added toast.

“Brad was a manipulative sociopath,” she said. “Make that a manipulativepara -sociopath. And he was so good-looking and so charming and so damned smart that he got away with it. Elizabeth is sure he was having an affair while they were married but she could never prove it.”

“He was a member of the Society. Archer checked that out.”

“Yes. But I’m positive that Brad lied, not only about the level of his parasenses but the type, as well. I think he was a lot stronger than he let anyone know. Maybe he found some way to fake the Society testing process.”

“What kind of talent do you think he had?” Jake asked.

“My guess is, he was a hypnotist or something along those lines. It would certainly explain how he managed to fool everyone, including Archer.”

He sat down at the kitchen table. “But not you.”

She shrugged. “I am what I am. He wasn’t able to fool Elizabeth indefinitely, either. Not even the best hypnotist can keep someone in a trance twenty-four–seven for months on end.”

“So how did he manage to keep her under control as long as he did?”

“Drugs.” She sat down at the kitchen table. “He convinced a shrink that she was going crazy. I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out that Brad used his hypnotic talents on the doctor to encourage him to prescribe the meds. Then again, maybe he didn’t have to work that hard. Like I said, the bastard was incredibly charismatic.”

Jake ate some of the eggs while he contemplated that. “Why would McAllister want to make Elizabeth look like a nutcase? What was his agenda?”

“Our theory is that he did it to get control of her inheritance. Liz will eventually receive half of Glazebrook, Inc.”

“But not until Archer dies. He looks to be in really good health.”

She poured the tea and sat back. He was listening, she thought. He might not be convinced yet but at least he was paying attention.

“All right,” she said, “here’s the rest of the conspiracy theory that Elizabeth and I concocted. Neither one of us thinks that Archer would have been long for this world if Brad had lived.”

“You think he intended to murder Archer?”

“Yes. Eventually. An accident of some sort, no doubt.”

“McAllister would still have had Archer’s son to deal with,” Jake pointed out. “Matt is slated to take control of the company if anything happens to Archer.”

“I don’t think Matt would have survived long, either. If we’re right, in the end control of the company would have wound up in Elizabeth’s and Myra’s hands. And it wouldn’t have been hard to convince Myra to turn everything over to Brad. She thought he was great. Heck, everyone thought Brad was wonderful.”

“I can see why you didn’t go to the cops with this theory of yours,” Jake said neutrally.

She sighed. “I know. It’s pretty bizarre, isn’t it? The cops would have laughed. And as for other members of the Society, well, they’re already strongly inclined to believe that people like me are mentally unstable. I didn’t want to add anything to that image. I’ve got my future as a psychic investigator to consider.”

He nodded, saying nothing, and finished his breakfast.

“Great eggs,” he said finally, putting down the fork.

“Thanks. It’s the ricotta.”

“I’ll remember that.” He picked up his tea. “All right, for the sake of argument, let’s come at this another way. Everyone says that Brad was a wealthy man in his own right. Why go to all the trouble and risk of driving his wife mad and killing a couple of people in order to get his hands on Glazebrook, Inc.?”

Clare sipped some tea. This was admittedly one of the weak points in the theory.

“Some people never have enough,” she offered.

“True. Still, you have to admit the scenario you described is pretty extreme.”

“Yes.”

“How did you and Elizabeth first make contact?”

“I told you, I never intended to show up at the front door of the Glazebrook home and ruin their perfect family thing. But I kept track of all of them, especially Elizabeth, from a distance. I couldn’t help myself. She was the sister I never had. Literally.”

“Go on.”

“Her wedding to Brad McAllister was photographed for one of the glossy Phoenix-area house-and-garden magazines. The spread was beautiful. Elizabeth was so lovely. Gorgeous gown, of course. Everyone looked so happy and pleased. But when I looked at the picture of Brad toasting the bride I got a cold chill.”

He raised his brows. “You can detect someone lying in a picture?”

“It’s dicey, at best. But there was something about the way he was looking at her that scared me. The wedding had occurred a few months before the photos appeared in the magazine, of course. By the time I saw them and contacted Elizabeth via e-mail she was already well into her supposed nervous breakdown. But she managed to get back to me with a single word.”

“What was the word?”

“‘Help.’’’

“That was all?”

“Yes. I e-mailed her back immediately and said that I would be in Phoenix on the three-fortyP.M . flight from San Francisco that day. She said she would meet me at a bookstore in a mall. Turned out that was one of Brad’s afternoons for visiting his girlfriend. He didn’t know what had happened until he got home. By that time Elizabeth and I were on a plane headed back to San Francisco.”

“How did you end up in Stone Canyon on the night Brad was murdered?” Jake asked.

“By then Elizabeth had recovered from the drugs and was herself again. She stayed with Archer and Myra and made it a point never to be alone with Brad while they went through the divorce proceedings. I kept an eye on things from San Francisco. It all seemed to be going well.”

“Brad didn’t fight the divorce?”

“He made a few attempts to convince everyone that he loved Elizabeth and didn’t want the divorce but he must have realized that there was no chance of salvaging the marriage.” She paused. “At least not as long as I was in the picture. He had to know that if the situation changed in any way, I’d come back to Arizona in a flash.”

“Did you ever meet McAllister in person?”

“Yes. Once. I went with Elizabeth on the one occasion when she and Brad met with the lawyers together. She wanted me there in case Brad tried anything. But everyone was very nice and polite and civilized. I swear, there was something about McAllister that was colder than ice, though.”

“Was that the first time you met Archer?”

“No, he flew up to San Francisco as soon as he found out I had spirited Elizabeth away.”

“Did he try to talk you out of encouraging Elizabeth’s divorce?”

She tipped her head to one side, thinking. “No, he didn’t, as a matter of fact. Elizabeth was very firm about the decision. And Archer and I were both stepping very cautiously around each other at that point.”

“Go on with your story.”

“A couple of weeks after that, Elizabeth invited me down for a long weekend. I was due to arrive Friday evening. But that afternoon Elizabeth got an e-mail telling her that something had come up on my end and I wouldn’t be able to get to Stone Canyon until the following morning. She attended a reception for the Stone Canyon Arts Academy with her parents, instead.”

“The e-mail changing your arrival time was not from you, I take it?”

“No,” Clare said. “I arrived on schedule Friday evening, picked up a car, drove to the house and found Brad’s body.”

“What about the e-mail message you supposedly sent?”

“It looked perfectly legitimate. The return address was mine.”

He contemplated her across the table. “You think Brad sent that fake e-mail, don’t you?”

“It isn’t that difficult to use a phony e-mail address. Spammers do it all the time.”

“You think he wanted to lure you to the house that night in order to murder you because you were ruining his scheme.” Jake’s voice was disturbingly cool and very, very neutral.

She gripped the tea mug tightly. Maybe he wasn’t going to believe her after all. Well, she could hardly blame him.

“Yes,” she said.

“But someone else got to him first?”

“Yes.”

“Sort of a large coincidence, isn’t it?” Jake asked.

“Not if you go with the possibility that Brad’s murder was deliberately timed to take place while I was here in town,” she said.

“You think someone wanted to throw suspicion on you?”

“Maybe. Or maybe the killer staged things that way in case the police didn’t buy the interrupted burglary scenario. Maybe I was just the fall gal.”

“If you’re right, it means that both Brad McAllister and his killer knew your flight schedule that Friday,” he said.

“I’m sure it was no secret around Elizabeth’s office that I was coming into town to see her.”

“It also implies that someone knew Brad was planning to kill you.”

“Someone he trusted,” she agreed. “A partner in crime, maybe, who betrayed him that night.”

“You’ve really been working on this theory, haven’t you?” he asked.

“I’ve had six months to think about it but I had nothing to go on until now.”

“You’re referring to Valerie’s death?”

She nodded. “I don’t care what the autopsy says, I’m going to have a hard time believing it was an accident or a suicide.”

“Murder by drowning is notoriously difficult to prove. Just ask any insurance company.”

“I know,” she said.

“Okay, how about a motive? Got one of those?”

“Not for Valerie’s death,” she admitted.

“All right, moving right along, I’ll grant you that it’s theoretically possible that Brad and his partner-killer knew your schedule six months ago. But how could anyone know that you were planning to go out to Valerie’s house this afternoon?”