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“Shut up! Everyone, stop talking!” Edward’s face reddened, his nostrils flared. “All this quibbling isn’t getting us anywhere.” He turned to Dom. “You’re the professional, Mr. Shea. What do you recommend?”
Torn between being angry at Lausanne Raney for making him look like a fool and wanting to believe that she hadn’t committed a crime, Dom hesitated briefly before answering. “Call the police. As a matter of fact, I’ll do that for you. I can update them on all the pertinent information.” He glanced at Lausanne. “As for you, keep quiet until the police arrive. You can tell your story to them and to us at the same time.” He wanted to add, Do you understand? I’m trying to help you without betraying my client.
Why the hell did he want to help her? What if she was lying? What if she was somehow involved in Audrey Perkins’s disappearance? For all he knew, this woman could be a cold-blooded killer. But if she was a criminal, she wasn’t a very smart one; otherwise, she wouldn’t have been traveling around the southeast passing herself off as Audrey Perkins while she added up huge bills on the woman’s credit cards.
“Very well,” Edward said. “I think we should all adjourn to the living room and allow you some privacy to telephone the police.” He glanced at Lausanne. “We’ll leave Ms. Raney—if that’s her real name—in your custody.”
Loman followed the others out of the room, closing the study door behind him. Once they were alone, Lausanne rushed over to Dom, who held up a restraining hand. She stopped immediately and stared at him, her eyes dry, her expression stern.
“They don’t believe me, do they?” She searched Dom’s face, then said, “And you don’t, either. You actually think I might have done something to Audrey Perkins and stolen her credit cards.”
“Did you?”
“No, I did not.”
“Why should I believe you?”
“Oh, I don’t know—maybe because I’m telling the truth.”
“The way you were telling me the truth when you told me that you were Audrey Bedell Perkins?”
“I was playacting. She hired me to impersonate her. I swear—”
“Save it for the police, honey.”
She grabbed Dom’s arm and gazed into his eyes. “I’m going to get railroaded on this and we both know it. It’s happened to me before. I’m just lucky that way. I should have known the deal I made with Ms. Perkins was too good to be true, that somehow, someway, it would come back and bite me in the butt.”
“Are you saying you’ve been arrested before, that you have a criminal record?”
She released her hold on his arm. “I have never committed a crime, but this isn’t the first time I’ve been blamed for something I didn’t do.”
Dom nodded. God, how he wanted to believe her. Idiot!
“Have a seat.” He pointed to a nearby chair, then walked over to the desk and picked up the telephone receiver. He reached inside his coat pocket, removed the card with Lieutenant Bain Desmond’s phone number that Sawyer had given him and punched in the digits.
The detective answered on the third ring. “Yeah, Desmond here.”
“Lieutenant Desmond, this is Domingo Shea. I’m with the Dundee—”
“Yes, Mr. Shea, Sawyer McNamara told me I might be hearing from you. So what can I do for you?”
“Did Sawyer fill you in on any of the details?”
“Nope.”
“Okay, here it is in a nutshell—Edward Bedell’s daughter, Audrey Perkins, disappeared nearly two weeks ago. Bedell hired Dundee’s to find her. We traced her whereabouts through her credit card activity. I found her in Palm Beach, Florida, where somebody made a botched attempt at either kidnapping or killing her. I brought her home to her father this morning. But lo and behold, the woman turned out not to be Audrey Perkins, but some lookalike who claims her name is Lausanne Raney. She swears Audrey Perkins hired her to impersonate her so that if dear old dad hired a PI—that would be me—to find her, he’d find the impersonator instead.”
“Whoa…that’s quite a story there, Mr. Shea.”
“Yeah, tell me about it,” Dom replied.
“Does this Raney woman have any proof that Ms. Perkins hired her?”
“Don’t know. Haven’t asked.”
“Okay, so I guess this means you’re waiting for me to do all the questioning, right?”
“Right.”
“Sawyer gave you my cell phone number. I’m off duty right now, but if you’ll give me about an hour to round up my partner, we’ll meet you at the Bedell estate.”
LAUSANNE HADN ’T BEEN this scared in a long time. Not since she had been arrested as an accessory to armed robbery. Not since she’d trusted the wrong man and paid for her mistake with five years of her life. She felt like the biggest fool on earth for believing she’d hit it lucky when Audrey Perkins offered her a deal she couldn’t refuse. It would be so simple, Ms. Perkins had explained. All she had to do was travel around from city to city, stay at four-star hotels, move every few days, and go on shopping sprees as often she wanted. And to seal the deal, Ms. Perkins had given her fifty thousand dollars, which Lausanne had promptly deposited in a savings account. That money was earmarked to pay for an investigator to unearth the whereabouts of Lausanne’s daughter.
I’m going to find you, sweet darling. I’m going to make sure you’re well and happy and want for nothing.
Lausanne had no intention of interfering in her child’s life. But she had to know, had to be certain, that her daughter was living the kind of life she deserved.
That fifty thousand could well be the only proof she had that Ms. Perkins had hired her to gallivant around the southeast pretending to be Audrey. Damn! She’d been paid in cash, something that hadn’t concerned her at the time. After all, it wasn’t as if she’d thought she’d need to prove she hadn’t killed Audrey Perkins and stolen the money from her.
“Is your name really Lausanne Raney?” Dom asked.
She snapped her head up and glared at him. “I’m Lausanne Inez Raney, born twenty-eight years ago in Booneville, Mississippi.”
“You know that I can run a check on you and find out if you’re lying to me.”
Her lips twitched in a hint of a smile. A hard, sarcastic smile that told him she wasn’t afraid of him and wouldn’t succumb to any bullying tactics.
“So check me out,” she said. “I’m not lying.”
“Want to fill me in on—”
“No, I don’t. I’ll tell the police what I know, then if either they or you want to know more, y’all will have to dig up the info on your own. Why should I make things easier for you, especially considering the fact that you don’t believe me?”
“You sure fooled me, honey.” He sat down in a chair directly across from her.
“And that galls you, doesn’t it? It wounds your male pride. You really believed I was Audrey Perkins.”
“My male pride will survive. This wasn’t my first mistake and it won’t be my last. The thing I don’t understand is why you insisted on being brought back here to Chattanooga, straight to Edward Bedell.”
“Somebody tried to kill me—kill Audrey. Impersonating Audrey for money and the perks of first-class travel and expensive shopping sprees is one thing, but I didn’t sign on to be a body double in a murder case.”
“So why not just split?” Dom asked. “Why come back to Chattanooga to see Audrey’s father and be found out?”
“Because he has the right to know that someone wants his daughter dead and that I’m not going to be her stand-in any longer. He’s a rich, powerful man. He can do something to save her life…and mine.”
Dom studied her curiously, and she knew he wasn’t sure he could believe her. “Do you think Audrey hired you because she knew someone wanted to kill her and set you up as a moving target?”
“Yeah, the thought has crossed my mind a time or two since that guy tried to slit my throat this morning.”
“You do realize that the police might come up with another theory.”
“I did not kill Audrey Perkins. I didn’t harm a hair on her head.”
“Can you prove it?”
“Can you or the police prove otherwise?”
“No, but if we can’t find Audrey, you might want to hire yourself a good lawyer.”
Lausanne shrugged. “I guess I should have known that once you found out I wasn’t a rich heiress, you wouldn’t give a damn about me, that you wouldn’t be on my side, wouldn’t stand by me.” She shrugged. “That’s the story of my life.”
“The story of your life, huh? So, you’ve impersonated a rich heiress before?”
She emitted a mirthless chuckle. “No, this was a first for me. What I meant was that this isn’t the first time a guy who whispered sweet nothings in my ear wound up disappointing me. The only difference is I don’t think you’re really an uncaring, unreliable son of a bitch like the others.”
Dom stared at her, but said nothing.
Then again, maybe he was just like the others, only wrapped in a prettier package. Just because Dom professed to be one of the good guys didn’t make it true.
So, here she was one her own once again. All alone and in trouble up to her eyeballs. She couldn’t count on Dom Shea to help her. The only person she could rely on was herself.
SERGEANT MIKE SWAIN stood five-nine, was built like a fireplug and chewed gum while he talked. His carrot-red hair was cut military short and his large brown eyes were hidden behind a pair of thick glasses. His superior, Lieutenant Bain Desmond, was older, close to forty where Swain wasn’t a day over thirty. Tall and lean, with an easy smile that proclaimed him a good old boy, Desmond entered the Bedell living room as if he owned it. The guy wasn’t cocky, just self-confident. He surveyed the group of people one by one, then turned his baby blues on Lausanne.
“Start at the beginning, Ms. Raney, and tell us exactly how and why Dom Shea found you in Palm Beach impersonating Audrey Bedell.”
Lausanne swallowed hard. This wasn’t the first time she’d been interrogated by the police nor was it the first time she’d been presumed guilty.
“I’ve been working as a receptionists at Bedell, Inc. for the past six months. Ten—no, eleven days ago, I received a telephone call from Audrey Perkins, asking me to come to her home. She said she’d seen me when she’d visited the main office and thought I’d be perfect for a special job she needed done.”
“And so you went to see her?” Desmond asked. “At her home?”
“Yes, I went to her home. After all, she was Audrey Bedell Perkins, the boss’s daughter.”
“Was there anyone else there when you arrived, a maid…a secretary…anyone who can verify that you met with Ms. Perkins?”
“No, there wasn’t anyone else there. She’d made certain that we met alone, in private.”
“I see.” Desmond nodded. “Go on.”
“When I arrived at Ms. Perkins’s home, she asked me if I’d like to earn fifty thousand dollars and—”
“Did Ms. Perkins pay you that amount?” Desmond asked.
“Yes, she did.”
“Cashier’s check, personal check—”
“Cash,” Lausanne replied and heard the collective ah-ha sigh reverberating around the room. “I deposited the money in a savings account. Regions Bank.”
“And what service were you to provide to earn the fifty-thousand?” Lt. Desmond watched her carefully.
“Ms. Perkins offered me the money, plus an extravagant vacation, new clothes, and use of her credit cards. And all I had to do was travel from one city to another, moving every three or four days, registering under the name of Audrey Bedell Perkins and pretending to be her for a few weeks. She said that the reason she’d thought of me for the job was because she remembered seeing me at the office one day and had noticed that we were about the same height, same size, same coloring and even close to the same age. When she offered me a chance to earn fifty-thousand dollars, she also promised me that my job at Bedell Inc. would be waiting for me when I returned to Chattanooga, that she’d make certain of it.”
When murmurs rose from others in the room, Sergeant Swain requested quiet; then Desmond continued with his questioning.
“Did Ms. Perkins tell you why she wanted you to impersonate her?”
“Yes, she did. She told me that she intended to run away with her boyfriend and she didn’t want her husband or her father to find them, that all they needed was a good head start on any search her family might instigate.”
“And you didn’t have any qualms about—”
“Yes, I had my doubts, but when she handed me a bag filled with cash, I pushed aside all my doubts. Fifty-thousand is a great incentive for most of us who don’t have that kind of money.”
Desmond nodded, as if agreeing. “Do you have any idea where the real Audrey Perkins is right now?”
“No, sir. I have no idea.”
“And do you have any proof—other than fifty-thousand dollars in your bank account—to back up what you’ve just told me?”
“No,” she admitted. “The only person who can verify that what I’ve told you is the truth is Audrey Perkins.”
“And Ms. Perkins just happens to be missing.”
“Yes, sir. And considering the predicament I’m in, I want her found as much, if not more, than anyone else in this room.”
Dom had watched and listened, studying Lausanne’s body language, her voice, every aspect of her responses. He wanted to believe her; some part of him did believe her. But was that part his head or his heart? Or a region a little farther south?
“I don’t believe anything this woman has told you.” Cara Bedell’s declaration broke the momentary silence. “She’s lying. She knows where Audrey is.”
“I agree,” Grayson said. “Audrey would never concoct such an elaborate scheme just so she could run away with one of her lovers. She’s gone off with other men before this and never found it necessary to—”
“But she’s never been in love with any of the others,” Patrice pointed out. “Bobby Jack Cash was different.”
“Yes, he was different,” Edward said. “He was a lowlife scum. And he was dangerous. Why Audrey would give a man like that the time of day is beyond me. She was far superior to him in every way.”
No one else noticed the stricken look on Lausanne’s face at the mention of the name Bobby Jack Cash, but Dom had been staring right at her. He got a sick, sinking feeling in the pit of his belly. He’d bet his last dime that Lausanne knew the man, that there was a connection between them. And here he’d been on the verge of believing all her lies, of being taken in by her sweet, innocent appearance. An ugly scenario formed in his mind, one that put Lausanne Raney and Bobby Jack Cash together in a wicked scheme that ended in murder.
“Ms. Raney, do you know Bobby Jack Cash?” Dom asked.
CHAPTER SIX
LAUSANNE HAD TWO CHOICES —lie or tell the truth. But considering the trouble she was in and the fact that the truth was bound to come out, she chose complete honesty.
Mentally preparing herself for Dom’s condemnation and suspicion, she looked directly at him when she responded to his question.
“Yes, I know Bobby Jack Cash.”
A loud rumble of angry, accusatory voices bombarded her, but once again Sergeant Swain quieted the Bedell family with a stern warning.
