BEVERLY BARTON - Dangerous Deception

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.”