Dangerous Deception

“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.”