Living Lies (7 page)

Chapter Seven

She could pretend to be out. After all, did she really want to deal with a potential killer in her home? Haley sighed. It would never work. Her lights were on and her car was in the driveway. From the window, Haley watched Dean press the bell again, then his eyes met hers through the glass. He smirked. Crap.

She walked to the door, turned the bolt, and pulled it open. “When I said you had until tomorrow, I didn’t think you’d show up at my door in the middle of the night.”

He glanced at his watch. “It’s ten-thirty, hardly the middle of the night.”

“It’s late,” Haley said, rubbing her bare arms. The frigid wind whipped through her thin T-shirt and cotton pajama bottoms as if she wore nothing at all. “What do you want?”

“It’s what you wanted. Can I come in?”

“I’m not in the habit of inviting accused murderers into my home.”

“This may come as a shock, but I never was actually accused. Questioned. I was questioned and that’s all. Never charged, never convicted. For whatever that’s worth.”

“Only because no one could prove it.”

His eyes flashed. “That’s right, criminal mastermind that I was, at nineteen I achieved what so many career criminals only dream of.
I
committed the perfect murder.”

Haley glared at him through the mesh of the screen door, mildly impressed. He could give Paige a lesson in sarcasm.

“Look—” he waved the envelope at her, “—in the morning I go to the police with this. You can see it now or hear about it tomorrow.”

She pushed the screen door open. “Won’t you please come in?”

“I thought you’d never ask.” He stepped past her into the small foyer, brushing against her as he did. Goose bumps spread over her skin, having nothing to do with the cold. She stepped back quickly and he smirked again.

“You’re in. Now, let me see what you have.” She reached for the envelope, but he snatched his hand back.

“May I sit down?”

“Sure, why not? Maybe I could get you something to drink, fix you something to eat.”

“I’d love a coffee.”

“Then you should have picked one up on your way over,” she snapped before flopping onto the sofa.

Dean lowered himself into a frayed armchair opposite her and glanced around the small room. Did the battered, mismatched furniture surprise him? Had he expected the beautifully finished antiques that had filled her parents’ home? Her father had loved his work. And she wasn’t her father.

“What?” she demanded.

He met her gaze. “This is a nice place. Cozy.”

“I’m so glad you like it. Are you going to tell me what you’re doing here?”

He looked away from her, dropping his gaze to the envelope in his hand. He lifted the flap and tilted the envelope so the papers slid into his palm.

“I didn’t kill Michelle,” he began. “But I know who did.”

Haley leaned back and folded her arms over her chest. “Really? Who?”

He hesitated as if searching for the right words. “I only came to be a suspect because I argued with Michelle in front of half the bloody town the day she disappeared.”

“I think it may have been the content of the argument that did you the most damage. When she accused you of stalking her, and telling people that you were still sleeping together months after you’d stopped dating that might have come off as a tad suspicious to some.”

“Two things I never did, by the way. I had no idea what she was talking about. Christ, I broke up with her.”

That was true. Haley worried her bottom lip. He had ended their short relationship. She remembered standing with Paige, their ears pressed to the thick door dividing the shop from the store, listening to Dean and Michelle argue. Michelle had been furious. Being dumped by someone two years younger than her with his background had probably been quite a blow to her ego. Haley had been secretly pleased. She never liked them together anyway.

“So who sent her all the flowers and started the rumor that you were still seeing each other?”

“Lara started the rumor.”

“Lara was her friend.”

“She was, and look who she married. I think we can safely assume the motive.”

Ridiculous. The whole thing sounded like a bad made-for-TV-movie. “How do you know it was her?”

“I had a nice talk with Lara earlier tonight.” He shook his head, almost to himself. “She confirmed everything.”

“So, what are you thinking here? Lara killed Michelle so she could marry well and then let you take the blame?”

“No.”

She sighed. “I think I’m missing your point.”

“The point is, I didn’t do it, and without that confrontation, there’s really nothing else to implicate me.”

“A witness saw the store’s delivery van empty on the side of the highway past midnight.”

“Lots of people had access to that van.”

“But you were the only one who had stolen it before."

“No, I’m the only one who got caught. Your brother and sisters took the van regularly without your father or Nate knowing.”

“Fine, you’ve exonerated yourself in my eyes, but why bother if you know who the killer is?”

“I just don’t want you to think that I pulled a name out of the air.”

She narrowed her eyes, apprehension tickling the base of her skull. “What name?”

“Your father killed Michelle.”

Fury flooded her veins. She leapt from her seat and pointed at the door. “Get out.”

“Listen to me—”

“No. Get out!” What had she been thinking, listening to him?

“Haley, by this time tomorrow the whole town will know. Do you want the heads up or not?”

“How could you do this to him? You would have gone to jail, if it hadn’t been for him.” If it hadn’t been for her asking her father to give Dean a chance. “He saved your sorry ass.”

“I wanted to be wrong. I never wanted it to be him.”

“So you say, but that’s not going to stop you from accusing a man who, conveniently, is no longer here to defend himself.”

He continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “I suspected him almost from the start. When Al called and told me that Michelle had been found, and where, I was certain.”

“My grandmother’s house?”
The detective.

He nodded.

“Anyone could have hidden her body there. My grandmother lived with us for nearly a year. She was still living with us when she died.” Haley stopped and took a deep breath, while she tried to ignore the tightening in her throat. “Anyone, yourself included, could have gotten into her house.”

“Why didn’t he sell? It’s not like he kept it for the income potential. He never rented the place.”

She hated Dean then, for forcing her to make excuses for her father. “He also never believed she was dead.” Memories of her father diving for the phone when it rang, even years after Michelle had been gone, assailed her. She took a deep breath and steadied herself. “He hoped that if for some reason she was afraid to come home she would try to contact my grandmother. He didn’t want someone else living in the house in case she did. He also kept her phone line active and had an answering machine that he checked three times a day until he died.”

“It could have been a cover.” Dean shrugged.

She dug her fingernails into her palms. “A cover?”

“Like I said, the house just tied the rest of it together.”

“What else is there?”

“The day I was fired I found a bag with his coveralls in it, and they were stained with what looked like blood.”

His calm, quiet voice scraped her nerves raw. “You’re lying.”

“I’m not.”

“You have them now?”

“No. I showed them to Nate. He convinced me it was furniture stain and put them back in the crawlspace behind the tool cage. When I looked a few days ago, they were gone.”

“You believed Nate then, but not now?”

“I never believed him. I wanted to, but I didn’t.”

“It had to be stain.” It had to be.

“Nothing we worked with smelled like that. Besides why hide the bag? Why not just throw it out?”

“Maybe to get it out of the way.”

“Someone took everything out of the tool cage and pulled shelves out because the bag was underfoot? Come on Haley, you were never stupid.”

“I don’t know about that, I’m still listening to this bullshit. Even if the coveralls were stained with blood, you had access to them. It was you who conveniently pulled them from their hiding place.”

He opened his mouth to speak, but she cut him off. “You have yet to tell me something that truly implicates my father. The only thing I’ve heard so far is an opportunist trying to pin a murder on the only person no longer here to defend himself. So tomorrow you can tell anyone you want about this because there’s nothing here that can’t be explained or tied to you.”

Dean tossed a sheet of paper onto the table between them. “That’s a copy of your father’s death certificate. His first one.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Look at the date. The year. According to this, your father died when he was three years old.”

“Obviously that’s a mistake,” she snapped impatiently.

“I’m afraid not. Everything your father did was very deliberate. Especially changing his name.”

“What do you mean?”

“Once I realized your father had changed his name, I wasn’t sure how to go about finding out who he’d been. Then I remembered Nate and your father endlessly reminiscing about their high school days when I worked for them. So I tracked Nate’s records until I found his high school.” Dean thumbed through the papers until he found the one he wanted. He slid it from the pile and dropped the photocopy in front of her. “From an old yearbook. Your father’s real name was Thomas James.”

Before she could say anything else, he added another sheet. “That’s a copy of a marriage license with your father’s name on it, dated two years before he married your mother.”

“My father wasn’t married before.” Her voice had a strange, almost robotic quality, to the tone.

He set down another photocopy. “This is a copy of a newspaper article about his first wife going missing. These—” more papers on the table, overlapping the others, “—are articles explaining that your father had been questioned as a possible suspect. Nothing ever came of it. Without a body, the police lacked sufficient evidence to move on him. He and I had a lot in common, wouldn’t you say?”

The blood drained from Haley’s face as she stared down at the photocopies, and Dean wondered if she might pass out or throw up. When her dark bewildered gaze met his, it was like a kick in the gut. He looked away, hating himself.

He’d wanted truth, he’d wanted vindication, and this was the cost. Again he hardened his resolve. The opportunity to clear his name had come, and he was taking it.

“How did you find all this?” she asked, the heat gone from her voice.

“I started at the clerk’s office and followed the leads.”

Haley lifted the marriage license and slowly lowered herself onto the couch. “This has to be a mistake.”

“It’s not.”

“But this says he lived in Toronto. He never did. He moved here from Ottawa.” She set the license down and reached for one of the articles.

Dean shrugged. “He lived there for about two years, working as a loans officer. He met his wife, Eleanor, at the bank where he worked. She’d been a teller there. They’d only been married about five months when she disappeared.”

“You learned all that from the clerk’s office?” Her brow quirked.

“No.” He shook his head. “I spoke to Eleanor’s brother. He’s still alive and well. Still blames your father for what happened.”

“You think this proves my father murdered Michelle?”

“I think he’s a much more likely suspect than I ever was.”

“Why would he have killed his daughter?”

“I don’t know,” he told her. “That’s the only part I can’t figure out.”

“Because he didn’t kill her. Everything you have here is interesting, but none of it proves a thing.” Her hands trembled and she was so pale. His stomach churned. “You’re just shifting the blame to get yourself off the hook.”

“I was never guilty.”

“So you just wildly accuse someone else?”

“No. I accuse the man responsible.”

“My father has an alibi, unlike you, and no motive, unlike you.”

Temper smothered conscience. “Really? I’d be interested to hear about this alibi.”

“He and my mother were at a dinner party. They got home around eleven and went to bed. Together.”

He shook his head. “Do you honestly believe that after a party your mother would know if he was there or not?”

“Bastard.”

Maybe, but what he said was true. He couldn’t remember Claire without a cocktail in her hand. As far as her drinking went, Michelle’s disappearance had only sped up the inevitable.

“And as for my motive, no one was more baffled than I was when Michelle accused me of stalking her.”

“You think it was all Lara?”

“I don’t think, I know. She also agreed to admit it to the police.”

His words seemed to give her pause. She stared at him for a long moment then asked, “How long have you been trying to pin the blame on my father?”

“I wasn’t trying to pin the blame on him. I was trying to clear my name.”

“How long?” she ground out.

“Close to two years.”

“Why wait until now to come out with it?”

“I told you, where Michelle was found made me certain.”

She nodded slowly as if digesting all that he’d told her.

God, what a bastard he was. Hours ago she’d been attending her sister’s memorial and now he was shoving the proof that her father was a murderer in her face. He needed to go, to get out of there. For every minute he stayed looking at her so small and shaken, his resolve eroded a little more. “I’m sorry,” he said, getting to his feet. “I really didn’t want it to be him.”

“I appreciate that.” Her voice sounded dispassionate, a million miles away. Then she stood and met his gaze. A faint, vertical frown line marred her forehead just above her nose. He shoved his hands in his pockets to stop himself from smoothing it.

“I wonder if you could do me a favor?” she asked.

“What?”

“Give me a day to prepare Paige and Garret and my mother before you go to the police.”