Her Dark Lies Read online

  Fatima looks at her coldly, and barks in Italian, “It is not safe for him to be wandering around alone.”

  The nurse bows her head. “I know. I fell asleep. It will not happen again.”

  “See that it doesn’t,” Fatima says, and stalks off.

  Jack hands his grandfather over to the nurse, who looks relieved to have found her charge in good hands.

  “Va bene?” Petra asks Jack warily, and he nods and replies in English, “Just fine. We had a nice chat.”

  “I’m glad.” She nods once, then scuttles after Will, scolding him lightly. “You scared me, you can’t wander off like that.”

  Will says over his shoulder, voice fading as he strides off, “G’night, Jacky. Petra, get me two fingers of Oban. And quit hovering. I’m not a child.”

  Jack sags back against the wall. As heartbreaking as that had been, it was good to connect with Will.

  Jack knows he should go back to the crypt, satisfy his curiosity, but the idea is suddenly distasteful. What purpose will it serve? Dragging up the horrible memories of the night Morgan died, what good will that do? It is a way to cling to the past, to continue accepting the blame for her death.

  He resolves to stop looking back. He wants to look forward. To carve out his love story. His childhood nightmares seem far, far away. Seeing Will talking to May’s spirit was comforting. There was such peace between them. Such love, and such peace.

  One day, he wants Claire to weep over his body, or he, hers. He doesn’t want his life with her to start sullied by the vision of the blanched bones of his first wife. He knows himself well enough. That vision is something he will never, ever be able to erase. It’s time to let the ghosts of his past rest, and focus on stopping whoever is trying to hurt him now.

  30

  Love Is Blind

  Don’t let him fool you. This is simple. An unassailable truth.

  We met. We fell in love. We were perfect together. Everyone said so.

  So, we married.

  And then he killed me.

  * * *

  And he’s going to kill her, too.

  I’m going to make sure of it.

  THURSDAY

  “Though she be but little, she is fierce.”

  —William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

  31

  Hide and Seek

  Karmen rubs her eyes and leans back in her chair. She’s been up all night chasing down the identity of the man who broke into Claire and Jack’s house in Nashville. The fake ID—for it was a fake ID, of that she’s now certain—wasn’t well backstopped. Amateur hour. A case of identity theft and good papers, good enough to get a credit card, a driver’s license, and a rental car, but that was about it. The Nashville police will be responsible for investigating further, though this sort of identity theft, alongside personal property crimes, aren’t exactly lighting fires under the boys and girls in blue these days.

  The deceased’s fingerprints, though, are something else entirely. The Nashville police finally made their match official and sent along the files at three in the morning. The man cooling in the Forensic Medical morgue drawer in Nashville is named Shane McGowan.

  And Claire Hunter knows him. Intimately.

  McGowan came up in Karmen’s exceedingly thorough background check of Claire, the first thing she’d done when Jackson made it clear he was seriously considering marrying the girl. In her report, the family had been warned—Claire dated a boy in high school who went on to land himself in jail on several occasions, finally taking up residence in San Quentin. Though it could be an embarrassing media story should it get out the wrong way, it was deemed a nonissue. Claire couldn’t be held accountable for bad judgment as a fifteen-year-old, and McGowan wasn’t set for parole for another ten years. A crisis management plan was attached to the file in case of problems surfacing down the road, and the file archived. They’d cross the bridge of Shane McGowan when—if—he got parole, or the media found the connection and chose to make something of it. Karmen was good at her job, though. She could usually make these sorts of spurious stories go away.

  But... McGowan got bumped up the ladder when the state of California early released a bevy of nonviolent drug offenders, and Karmen had missed it.

  That wasn’t a firing offense. That he’d made his way to Nashville, somehow managed to bypass Compton Security, enter the home of a family member, and nearly kill them?

  Karmen might as well prepare her resignation, because when she tells Ana and Brice Compton about her little fuckup, she’s going to be kicked out the door without a second thought. Unless she can find the truth, and fast.

  They’re lucky McGowan is dead, lucky Malcolm is willingly taking the fall. This is Malcolm and Gideon’s purview, after all, personal protection of Jackson Compton. The Nashville police have been handled—the ex-lover getting out of jail and making a visit to right old wrongs theory held water for them. There was a threat, it was neutralized in standard operating procedure, and the police won’t dig any deeper into who pulled the trigger.

  Assuming video doesn’t surface. The cameras planted in the house create their own problem. Who is behind this? McGowan? Someone else? Does video or still shots exist of Monday night? And if the answer is yes, what do they show? Are they damaging?

  Karmen doesn’t know how she’s going to manage that part yet. She still has to talk with Claire, tell her the identity of the intruder.

  Tell the girl who she killed.

  Karmen’s office in the Villa is equipped with a small kitchen. She slices an apple, gets a glass of water. The big brunch for the wedding guests is today; she will not be there. Which is fine. She doesn’t expect to be a part of the family. She’s responsible for protecting them. Protecting Brice, primarily, though her personal protection days are over. Now she runs everything security related, and it will be her head on a spike if this isn’t handled perfectly.

  Sustenance onboarded, she sits back at the desktop and starts pulling the video files of the people she interviewed when she did Claire’s background check.

  She clicks on the files, one after another, looking for the interview that mentions Claire’s troubled past. The file she’s looking for is labeled K_Elderfield. She’d hit the mother lode with Claire’s best friend, Katie Elderfield. None of the other interviewees revealed much, but Katie was a treasure trove.

  Karmen pulls the transcript of the interview, too. She reads along as she listens, highlighting the relevant sections. She speeds through the interview to the spot she wants and hits play.

  Elderfield: Her dad, Dr. Hunter, was a pediatrician, a nice guy, too. We all went to him as kids. I used to love doctor’s appointments, no matter how wretched I felt. He had superhero Band-Aids and lollipop rings and his sweet nurses called me honey and darlin’. When I had a sore throat, he sanctioned ice cream in bed, and when I needed a shot, he’d put an ice cube against my skin first so I wouldn’t feel the needle. When it was clear I wasn’t going to be the tallest girl in my class, he tweaked my nose and told me all the best things come in little packages. And then he insisted my parents enroll me in martial arts so I could always defend myself. He thought it was too easy for smaller women to become victims of violent crimes. He convinced them I needed to be able to fight off an attacker.

  Harris: That comes in handy. I took martial arts, too.

  Elderfield: And you’re even shorter than me. [Laughs] I assume you already know about the scandal?

  Harris: Why don’t we pretend I don’t know anything.

  Elderfield: This is all private, right?

  Harris: Absolutely. For my eyes and ears only, assuming there’s nothing we need to explore further. I can’t imagine there is. Claire seems like a very nice girl.

  Elderfield: She is. She’s a good girl. Always has been. Well, except for that little while... Claire’s mother—she drank a lot, by the w
ay—was having an affair with one of the English teachers, Mr. Henry. I don’t know how it got out, but it did, and the Hunters got into a messy, nasty custody case. It felt like everyone in Nashville knew about it. It was so public, like, in the Tennessean public. I always felt so bad for them.

  Harris: Sounds hard.

  Elderfield: Totally. Before the divorce, Claire was larger than life. She was a smart girl, and a damn good artist, too. She could draw, paint, sculpt, the works. It was a no-brainer that she’d end up a professional artist of some kind. She had that tortured creative streak running through her, carried around Camus like he was a god, quoted Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, dragged everyone who would go to a Virginia Woolf play at the Belcourt Theater one year, and to the Frist for the modern art exhibits. She liked all that stuff. She painted this massive, throw-paint-at-the-canvas Jackson Pollock–esque piece for the talent show one year—live, on stage, in front of the whole school. She was a rising star, the darling of all the teachers.

  Harris: That’s pretty cool. She sounds like a fun friend.

  Elderfield: Mmm, at times. Sometimes, too fun. You know the legend of Icarus. Claire flew too close to the sun and it nearly killed her. After the scandal broke, she acted out. Started seeing this older guy from Hillsboro High School. Stopped painting, her grades dropped. Something was wrong, clearly, but we were kids, we didn’t have the same sort of overdeveloped radar we have on these things now. Looking back, I’d bet cash money he was abusing her, but I never saw any bruises, and she never said a word. I know he was providing her with drugs. He got her into all sorts of trouble.

  Harris: You were a kid. No one expects you to know bad things are happening. She never confided in you?

  Elderfield: No. Anyway, he was trouble on a stick, just that kind of kid who you know is going to end up in jail, at the very least, or the penitentiary. Claire went wild for a while. Drinking, drugs, tattoos, piercings. I helped with some of that.

  Harris: Your tattoos are beautiful. Artwork.

  Elderfield: Thanks. I planned everything, both sleeves. Claire drew a few of them for me. Anyway, she’d always had a nihilist streak, which was fun for me, but it really messed her up. She got expelled from Harpeth Hall for cheating our junior year, and that was the summer of the accident.

  Harris: The accident?

  Elderfield: You know about that, surely. She and Dr. Hunter were in a terrible car accident. He died, she was badly injured. Broke a vertebra in her back. They thought for a while she might be paralyzed. They did all kinds of surgeries and she got the use of her legs back. After that, she was a totally different person. The fire was...dimmed. Not gone, but she wasn’t the same girl. It was like the accident stripped her of all her defiance, and she turned into an obedient child again. She got back into her art, started teaching classes at an art studio downtown. The Before Claire was so dynamic, so alive, so intense and vivacious. The After, she really fell apart. She kind of turned into this seething bag of hatred. She and I weren’t really close for a while. She pushed everyone away.

  Harris: You knew the boyfriend, right? What was his name?

  Elderfield: Ugh, yes. Shane McGowan. He was such an asshole. I don’t know what she ever saw in him, outside of what drugs he could get. He wasn’t even that cute.

  Karmen hits Stop. She pulls McGowan’s sheet from the FBI’s NCIC database. As a security professional, she is granted access. She’s seen this before, but goes through it again, just in case, flicking through page after page. McGowan was a frequent flier, with arrests in multiple states. Property crimes, possession, a gas station stop and rob. No sexual stuff, but plenty of bookings for assault. He was pled down on a manslaughter charge three years ago, then immediately picked up for possession with intent. Third strike.

  Then the jails got overcrowded, and the laws changed, and Mr. McGowan was spit out into the world again.

  So what happened between his release from SQ and his arrival at the house in Nashville? Was he plotting the break-in all along? Was he watching from afar? Was he smart enough, talented enough, and creepy enough to evade Karmen’s own security protocols and install over twenty micro cameras in Claire and Jack’s home?

  She puts a pin in that question for the moment. Karmen is an excellent compartmentalizer. She’s not going to deal with the cameras, not yet. First, she needs to figure out something else. Something that’s been bothering her, that makes her senses come alive whenever her mind lands on the name for a moment.

  Who is Ami Eister, the phantom art dealer who visited Claire’s studio?

  Because it’s always her first step when investigating people, she plugs that name into the NCIC database. Might as well see if the woman is legit or not.

  The computer whirs for a moment, and a file appears on the screen. Sure enough, Eister is a criminal. What luck.

  Karmen congratulates herself for her smarts—she knew something was wrong with that story—then settles in to read.

  Ami Rebecca Eister. Thirty-one, Caucasian female, black on blue, five nine, one-twenty. Several trespass violations, felonies, pled down to misdemeanors...ah, Eister was a member of PETA over a decade ago, the trespass charges were group things, trying to get animals out of labs. Nothing violent, just the actions of a young conscience.

  She types the name into Google, and within moments, several entries come up. The first is an obituary notice.

  This Ami Rebecca Eister is deceased. She died six months earlier, while on vacation in the Bahamas.

  Karmen finishes off the last of the water and stands, stretching her back.

  She’s missing something. She searches again. The name is common enough, but there is only one Ami Eister with ties to the arts scene. Perhaps Claire got the name wrong.

  Karmen glances at her watch, it’s nearly 9:00 a.m. Surely the bride and groom are up. She grabs her notebook and her blazer, straps her Glock into its holster under her arm. She needs to run this down, now.

  32

  Rules for Life

  Harper Hunter’s photography rule number one: never shoot family. She’d fought against it, albeit halfheartedly, when her sister called to break the news.

  “Guess what? We’re getting married. In Italy! His family has a small island off the western coast of Italy. I’ve seen photos. It’s very romantic. There are ruins.”

  “Nothing like the evidence of the decline of Western civilization to add a little ambiance.”

  “Don’t grumble. I thought you’d be thrilled. You love to travel. Italy will give you tons of opportunities for sponsorships.”

  Oh, the exasperation of a sister making sense. “I do love to travel. And yes, I will be able to make hay with it. When is this blessed event occurring?”

  “June. Naturally. I need a favor.”

  “Oh, no. No way.”

  “You’re the world’s most famous Instagram photographer. Your work has appeared on the cover of every travel magazine known to mankind. You are practically a household name, a revered online icon.”

  “Claire. Reciting my CV won’t change my mind. I am hardly the world’s most famous anything. I only have a million followers.”

  “You’re the best photographer I know.”

  “Flattery... Is the dad going to be there?”

  A pause.

  “Brice? Of course. His son is getting married.”

  “I wonder...”

  “I’m not asking for you to document the whole thing, Jack’s family will hire a photographer and videographer. But a few shots of us, done with your eye, in your style? I would really appreciate it. I’ll pay you.”

  “Get me a gig with Brice Compton, and I’ll do it. And you’re not paying me. I’m your sister.”

  “I don’t know, Harper. Brice is notoriously private. He may not want to be photographed, even by you.”

  “Not a session. An interview. You know I’m branching
out, writing freelance for some of the magazines. And you’re about to be his daughter-in-law. At the very least, ask. It would be good for both of us.”

  Claire, shockingly, had asked. Brice, shockingly, had agreed. So not only was Harper going to take a few pictures of the wedding of the decade, she had landed an interview with one of the richest men in the world. She’d pitched the story to Flair, and they said yes. Goodbye Instagram, hello real journalism.

  The hydrofoil ferry leaps through the waves, bringing Isle Isola closer and closer. Rain drums on the roof and decks, splashing water onto her arms. Harper has her phone up, doing an Instagram Live of the channel crossing to the island.

  “It’s raining pretty hard now, so I’m going to sign off. And just so you know, I’ll have to be offline for a few days, friends, because there’s a—” she turns the camera back on herself “—media blackout. I’ll try to sneak a few photos into the feed for you, though. Have a lovely weekend, and remember, always shoot for the stars. This is Harper Hunter, signing off.”

  She waves and grins at the camera, then stops the video.

  Her mother sits in one of the hard plastic seats nearby, clutching her purse to her chest. She’s looking green, and Harper thinks the rocking ferry has nothing to do with it. Trisha seemed very loose this morning, and smelled minty fresh, so minty and so loose Harper wonders if perhaps Trisha got into the minibar last night. She has no idea when her mom started drinking again. Harper has adopted a don’t ask, don’t tell policy. They’ve been in Italy for a week, sightseeing, wandering ruins, shopping, and of course, eating tons, and so far it’s just been a glass of wine or two at dinner, but who knows what’s happening when Trisha and Brian are behind closed doors. This isn’t good, Trisha has a long history of problems with alcohol, but if they can just get through the weekend, Harper will have a talk with her as they head home. Get her back into rehab, or at least going to meetings again. That’s where she met Brian in the first place. Harper hasn’t seen him drinking at all, though he wouldn’t meet her eyes when Trisha ordered that first bottle at dinner.