The Perfect Liar (Last Stand 5)

"I'm taking my new girlfriend and her boy fishing." He winked at her.

"Gotta get in good with the kid, you know?"

The excess gel and cologne should've warned her. Her stepfather was on the make, hunting for another woman to take care of him, and he'd found a new target.

Ava felt sorry for the poor, unsuspecting soul. "But I was planning to hang out at home. It's Sunday."

"Liz doesn't have to work because it's Sunday. This is the perfect time."

For him, maybe. "I--Dad didn't tell me. I haven't even showered. And I have company."

Pete favored Luke with a knowing grin. "Come on, Geoffrey's not company. You've been together for over a year." He lowered his voice and nudged her with his elbow. "And so much for acting like you two don't get it on."

His chortle grated on Ava's nerves. She could tell Luke didn't like it, either. He stood a little closer, as if he wanted to interrupt but was too polite to get involved.

"Stop it, Pete."

He ignored her. "I'm actually kind of glad to see it," he confided to Luke. "Her dad and I've been worried she might be frigid. You're the first--"

"Are you for real?" Ava cried. "I can't believe you show up at dawn and start telling my...my boyfriend, who isn't really my boyfriend by the way, that--"

A car door slammed by the pier and what she was about to say was lost as Pete whipped around to stick his head out the open door. "Oops.

There she is. Now smile and be nice, Ava. I'm trying to make a good impression," he said, and hurried out to meet his new love interest.

Ava turned to Luke. "There are days when I almost understand why my mother did it." Now that he knew about Zelinda, she needed to cover for it, make light of it, but he didn't follow up on the comment. He didn't even return her smile. He seemed angry as he jerked his head toward her room.

"Get dressed. I'm taking you to breakfast."

Chapter 21

Exhausted from her long night and an energetic early-morning interlude with Jerry, who was now driving, Kalyna was asleep in the bed at the back of his cab when her phone rang. She roused herself to glance at the screen, saw that the call was coming from the mortuary and silenced it.

She couldn't use her cell phone. She'd seen enough true crime shows to know that the police would be able to locate her via a method called triangulation if she did. She should actually turn it off. She wasn't positive, but she suspected they could track down any phone that was on.

But as she lay awake for several minutes afterward, she realized that it was too soon for the police to be involved. More likely, Tatiana or Dewayne had just stumbled on Norma's body and were trying to piece together what had happened. And even if she was wrong and the police had already been called, she was traveling in the cab of a semi. If she tossed out the phone, they'd never find her.

Entering the code to reach her voice mail, she listened to her sister's panicked message.

"Kalyna, where are you? Please, call me. Mom's dead. We just...we found her on the kitchen floor. I'm hoping she had a heart attack, that you had nothing to do with this. But her purse is right here, and all her stuff's scattered beside her. And Dad is...Dad's on the phone to the cops. I--I don't know what to think." She broke into a sob. "I'd assume somebody hurt you, too, but your bags are gone, and so is your car."

Kalyna considered her options. She could remain silent, get rid of her phone and let the police start searching for her. Or she could call her sister back and throw up a few smoke screens.

She decided to go with the smoke screens.

Tatiana answered on the first ring. "Kalyna?"

"I got your message. What's going on?"

"I don't know!" Tati wailed. "Dad thinks you kil ed Mom. But you didn't, did you? Someone else must've done this."

"Mom's dead?"

Tati gulped for the breath to speak. "You didn't know?"

"How would I? I couldn't sleep. I was too worried about getting back to the base, so I left around midnight. Mom and Dad were in bed as far as I could tell."

Her sister paused, sniffed and sounded more hopeful. "You left before it happened, then."

"Unless she was lying there and I didn't see her. I didn't turn on any lights. I didn't want to wake anyone."

"Thank God. It must've been a robbery."

"I guess so. I feel terrible. Mom and I didn't get along, but...I never would've wished for something like this."

"Of course not."

If someone else had done it, that person would've needed a way in, so Kalyna supplied this information seamlessly. "I did find it a little odd that the house wasn't locked up...."

"It wasn't?"

"I must've forgotten when I came in from the car. I feel so bad."

"It wasn't locked when we got up, either."

"See? I'm terrible about being cautious. I never dreamed anyone would break in. To a mortuary? Give me a break!"

"Some people wil break in anywhere."

"I'm surprised I didn't bump into whoever it was. Was Mom shot or--"

"No, not shot. She wasn't stabbed, either. We don't really know what kil ed her. Maybe she hit her head when she fell but Dad thinks she was strangled. She's all...blue, Kalyna. And her money's gone."

"Why would I take her money? That should've told you it wasn't me!"

"That's what I said to Dad. I told him you had plenty of your own money when we were at the mall yesterday. And you wouldn't take her wedding ring. What would you want with that?"

Kalyna held her hand in front of her to admire the sparkle of that square-cut diamond. She wasn't sure how much she could get for it, but she planned to visit a pawn shop as soon as possible. "Who could've kil ed her?" she asked.

Tatiana lowered her voice. "I think it was Mark."

"Mark who?"

"Mark Cannaby."

Kalyna shoved herself into a sitting position. "Mark hasn't worked for Mom and Dad in a long time. They fired him before I went into the air force.

We don't even know where he is."

"Yes, we do. He's running the cemetery. He's been doing that for over a year."

For once, knowing Mark as wel as she did might be an advantage.

"Have he and Mom been having problems?"

"She's hated him ever since she caught him...you know...with that corpse. She says he's a necrophiliac, that he shouldn't be free to circulate in society. Two weeks ago, she ran into the woman he's dating at church and told her all about him. He wasn't happy when he found out. He called here a few times and left some threatening messages, telling her she'd better mind her own business and stay out of his."