Bed of Lies (8 page)

“Now you go over there and pick up every single piece you knocked off that board,” he ordered. “Do you hear me? Do it now.”

Leila rose from the bed. “Ev, she doesn't—”

He held up his hand to silence Leila. “Every . . . single . . . piece,” he repeated, enunciating each word with a deliberateness that let Leila and Isabel know he meant what he said.

The room fell silent. Isabel's shaking only increased, but she took a hesitant step toward him then slowly bent down to the carpet. She grabbed one of the plastic pieces and set it on the bed. For the next five minutes, she gathered the missing pieces and cards, crying softly as she did so. When she was done, she kept her head bowed and wiped her nose with the back of her hand.

“Now, the next time you decide to talk to your mother like that, I want you to think very carefully before you do it,” he continued, ignoring the beseeching look Leila was giving him. “Because you got off easy this time, but it won't happen again. I won't allow that kind of behavior in my home, Isabel. Not under my roof.”

She mumbled a reply that he couldn't hear.

“What did you say?” he asked, taking a step toward her.

Isabel stopped trembling. She raised her head and met him with a defiant gaze. “I said, ‘Then I don't wanna live here!' ” she shouted between sniffs as tears spilled onto her cheeks. Isabel then turned and ran toward the bedroom doorway, stumbling slightly near the entrance before fleeing into the hall.

Leila glared up at him. “You didn't have to talk to her like that.”

He stared at Leila in amazement. “Talk to her like what?”

“Like she was some underling at your fucking company! You can use that tone in the boardroom, but you can't talk like that to a seven-year-old.”

“Oh, come on, Lee! I wasn't talking to her like she was an underling. I was talking to her like she was a disobedient kid, which she was! And, I might add, I was also defending you!”

“Defending me to my own daughter?
You shouldn't have said anything, let alone punish her! She's
my
child, Evan.” She pointed at her chest. “
I'll
handle her. Not you! Besides, I had it covered!”

“Oh, you did?” He barked out a laugh. “Is that what you would call it? Her screaming and throwing shit around the room . . . is that what you call having it ‘covered'?”

Leila didn't answer him. Instead she marched to the bedroom door. “I'm going to find Izzy,” she mumbled, not looking back at him as she said it.

Evan watched Leila disappear into the hall. He tiredly fell back onto the bed, bouncing slightly on the bedsprings.

“To hell with it,” he muttered minutes later after furiously rising to his feet.

Terrence wants to slowly kill himself, so be it
, Evan thought as he stripped off his clothes, tossing them carelessly to the bedroom floor.

Charisse wants to drag her feet on the divorce, I couldn't care less
, he thought as he walked into his expansive closet and grabbed a pair of swim trunks.

Leila wants to let her daughter rule her life and decide the fate of our relationship, then there is absolutely nothing I can do about that
, he thought as he headed to the east wing to take out his frustrations in the indoor pool.

He'd had it with the people around him. As far as he was concerned, everyone—from Terrence to Charisse to Leila—could do whatever the hell they wanted with their lives and their life dramas. He was staying out of it.

An hour and a half later, Evan was finishing yet another lap in the pool when he saw Leila's distorted image above the water's surface. She was gazing down at him with her hands on her hips. She was still gazing at him when he climbed out of the pool a minute later and sat on the tiled edge, his body sapped of all energy.

“I thought I'd find you in here,” she said, handing him the towel he'd left sitting on one of the stone benches lining the pool.

“I needed to clear my head,” Evan mumbled, taking the towel and wiping the droplets of water from his face and body. He didn't meet her eyes.

She sat on the stone bench as he toweled off. “Look, Ev, I'm . . . I'm sorry.”

He paused and lowered his towel.

“I know you were only trying to help. I shouldn't have told you to butt out. You're going to be Izzy's stepfather and I can't keep treating you like some interloper. I . . . I apologize for doing that.”

Evan rose from the pool's edge and sat on the bench beside her, feeling the cold air on his bare back and shoulders and the cold bench on his bottom. He sighed and rested his elbows on his knees as he peered at the water in the pool, watching how the overhead lights gleamed off of its blue surface.

“Look, Lee, maybe you were right. Maybe I'm just trying too hard. I'm a square peg trying to bang myself into a round hole. Maybe I'm just not one of those guys meant to be a dad.”

She suddenly sat upright and stared at him. She shook her head. “That's not true, Ev. Don't say that! Of course you'd make a good dad!”

“But we have to consider the possibility that I won't. It's not like I have a good example to follow. You know how my dad was—withdrawn, demanding, and manipulative. Maybe I would better serve Izzy and you if I don't try to take on a fatherly role with her. She says that she has only one dad, so let her have just one. I'll just be her mom's husband. The guy she goes to when she needs money or a letter of recommendation.”

Leila winced and squirmed uncomfortably beside him. “That's not funny.”

“I'm not trying to be funny! I'm being honest. Maybe, with time, my relationship with Isabel will change, but for now, I'll back off. I'll stay in my lane, so to speak. Besides, parenting isn't my strong point.”

“It
has
to be your strong point, Ev.”

“No, it doesn't.” He reached out, held her hand, and squeezed it reassuringly. “Look, I'm not throwing in the towel completely. I'll still keep trying with Isabel. I'm just saying that being a father isn't something I had planned to—”

“I'm pregnant,” Leila blurted out, making him pause again.

“What?”

She pulled her hand out of his grasp, closed her eyes, and gradually exhaled. “I said, I'm pregnant. We're going to have a baby.” She opened her eyes again and gave him a timid smile. “That's why I went to the doctor today. I wanted to make sure the at-home pregnancy tests I took were right before I told you for sure.”

He stared at her, now struck speechless.

“I know it isn't what we planned. I was on the pill, though frankly, I've never been very good at taking it. That's how I ended up with Izzy. And you're still married to someone else. This probably isn't the ideal time to have a baby, but”—she lowered her hand to her stomach and rubbed it gently—“life happens, right?”

Life happens.
That was the understatement of the year! Had all the air left the room? Evan suddenly felt light-headed.

“So, I hope parenting can become ‘your thing.' I hope you can envision yourself as a real father because you're . . . you're going to be one whether you're ready or not.”

“I'm going to be a father,” he repeated dazedly.

“Yes, you are going to be a father, Evan Murdoch.” Her smile faded. She tilted her head and eyed him apprehensively. “Please tell me you're okay with all of this. You're not going to faint on me, are you? Or run out of here screaming?”

He slowly shook his head, still too stunned to speak. He was going to be a father!

Evan had given up on the idea years ago, after Charisse had had miscarriage after miscarriage and their marriage took a tumble off a steep cliff. He had told himself that he wasn't the type of guy who would make a great father anyway, with his screwed-up childhood and the lifestyle he had. He worked long hours and sometimes traveled at a moment's notice. Not having a child was for the best.

The lies we tell ourselves
, he now thought, beyond amazed.

But life happens when you least expect it and now the chance to be a father had come again. Evan didn't know whether he was ready, but he didn't care. Short of Leila, he hadn't wanted anything so badly in his life than to be this baby's father.

“Evan,” Leila whispered, “please say something. You're starting to scare me.”

“I'm going to be a father!” he yelled, making her jump in surprise. His voice echoed off the tiled walls and high ceilings. He was pretty sure the entire mansion had heard him yelling. He then wrapped his arms around Leila, making her laugh. He drew her close and kissed her senseless.

Chapter 8

Paulette

“A
ll right, you can sit up now,” the doctor said. “Do you need some help?”

Paulette nodded and held out her hand. “I'd appreciate it, Dr. Rodriguez. Thanks.”

Whenever Paulette got on her back nowadays, it took a lot of shimmying and rocking back and forth to get upright on her own. If she stayed down for too long, she started to feel faint, thanks to the baby resting on a major artery.

The joys of pregnancy
, Paulette thought with exasperation.

“One, two, three,” Dr. Rodriguez said after taking her hand in a firm grasp. She hoisted Paulette from the examination table with a soft grunt. Paulette sighed with relief as she sat upright and gazed around the examination room. Several magazines on parenting and newborns sat on the ledge near the window facing the hospital parking lot. A chart on the wall showed a dilated vagina during the stages of labor. Several plastic fetuses sat on a shelf near the door.

“Well, Mrs. Williams,” the doctor said before glancing at her chart, where she scribbled a few numbers. “Your labs look pretty good. You're starting to experience some swelling in the legs and ankles, which is normal at this stage in the pregnancy. Just keep an eye on it.” She glanced at the chart again. “Yep, everything looks fine, but . . .”

Paulette frowned when she heard the “but.”

“The baby is measuring small for twenty-two weeks,” Dr. Rodriguez said, pursing her full lips and narrowing her brown eyes at something on her chart. “Smaller than I would like.”

Paulette's hands instinctively flew to her stomach, where her son now squirmed, perhaps sensing his mother's anxiety. Paulette had considered herself lucky that she was still so small. It made covering up the pregnancy a little easier than she had hoped, being this far along. To cloak her changing body, she had switched from billowing wool winter sweaters to loose-fitting halter dresses and sheaths accompanied by shawls now that the weather was warmer. Besides Dr. Rodriguez and herself, no one else seemed to know she was pregnant. But now it turned out Paulette's small size meant she wasn't quite as lucky as she'd thought.

The doctor sat down in her rollaway chair. “You're not gaining much weight, either. Are you eating well, Mrs. Williams? You aren't skipping meals, are you? Some women get so concerned about pregnancy weight gain that they can be a bit too restrictive with their diets.”

“I've been trying to eat, but I haven't . . . well, I haven't had much of an appetite.”

Dr. Rodriguez inclined her head. “Why's that?”

“I've been a little stressed out, I guess,” Paulette said softly, releasing a nervous laugh as she rubbed her stomach again.

“Stressed out about what?”

Keeping my pregnancy a secret
,
my marriage falling apart, and my husband possibly killing my lover,
Paulette thought.
You know . . . the usual.

“Just . . . stuff,” she said, in no mood to unburden herself to her OB/GYN. “Lots and lots of stuff.”

Dr. Rodriguez nodded, making her springy curls bob.

“Well, whatever that stuff is, please learn to let it go or take care of it. We don't want it to affect your health or the health of your baby.” She placed her chart on the desk next to her and gazed at Paulette. “For now, I'm going to order an ultrasound with a specialist to confirm that everything is okay with the little one. After that, we can decide what steps to take.”

“What do you mean, ‘steps to take'? What . . . what steps, Dr. Rodriguez?”

“Well, if the specialist thinks you're experiencing intrauterine growth restriction and that's the reason the baby is measuring so small, we might consider bed rest or a stay at the hospital, where we can do intravenous feeding. We'll just have to see.”

Paulette blinked. “W-what?”

She didn't know how she could possibly explain a stay at the hospital or bed rest to Antonio or anyone else without revealing her pregnancy. She rubbed her stomach more furiously now and the baby squirmed even more. Her lies and secrets were getting more and more complicated and now she ran the risk of losing not only her marriage, but also her infant son.

The doctor rose to her feet and smiled. She reached out and grabbed Paulette's hand. “Hey, I didn't tell you this to make you stress out all over again. The bed rest and intravenous feeding are just possibilities at this point. Let's see what the specialist says and then make a decision. All right?”

Paulette gradually nodded.

“I'll see you at your next appointment and keep your chin up. If anything comes up, we'll take care of it.”

“Thank you, Dr. Rodriguez,” Paulette whispered as the doctor stepped out of the exam room, closing the door behind her.

 

Paulette pulled into her driveway a half hour later, just as her mother-in-law opened the front door and shut it closed behind her. At the sight of her, Paulette rolled her eyes. The older woman had had a key to Paulette and Antonio's home since they had moved into the four-bedroom colonial. Paulette had asked Antonio to take back the key to give them more privacy, and he did for a while. But since the affair, Antonio seemed to disregard all of Paulette's wishes and requests. It looked like Reina Washington had full access to their home again and she was taking full advantage of it.

“Well, well! Look who's here,” the large woman exclaimed sarcastically before throwing her rattan tote bag over her shoulder. Reina was decked out from head to toe in a plum-colored top, capri pants, a wide-brimmed hat, and ill-fitting ballet flats that squeezed her fat feet so tightly that they looked like two brown, plump sausages on an open spit. In her current getup, Reina vaguely resembled Barney the Dinosaur.

“I left some brisket and biscuits in the fridge. Tell Tony he can heat it up for dinner.”

Paulette opened her Mercedes car door and stepped onto the asphalt. “
Why don't you tell him yourself?
” Paulette wanted to say, since Reina spoke to her son daily, but Paulette prudently kept silent. She didn't want to argue with Reina. She just wanted her to leave.

“I wondered if you were out grocery shopping since there doesn't seem to be any food in that house but”— Reina glanced at Paulette's empty hands—“that don't seem to be the case.”

“Hello, Reina, it's always a pleasure to see you,” Paulette said flatly, slowly climbing to her feet and shutting the car door behind her.

“Uh-hunh,” Reina grunted before looking her up and down. “So, do you plan to buy groceries someday, or is the only home-cooked meals my Tony gets gonna be the ones that I bring to him?”

“When I have the time, I'll go shopping. I've been a little bit busy lately,” she said as she stepped around the older woman and headed to her front door. “Trust me. He isn't starving.”

“I guess young women these days don't consider it their responsibility to take care of their husbands and their homes,” Reina said loudly over her shoulder, “but in
my
day, you weren't much of a woman if you couldn't do that.”

Paulette stopped midway of inserting her key into the front door. Her jaw tightened.

“I told Tony you weren't gonna be much of a wife. ‘Sure, she can sit around and look pretty, but that's just about all she'll do.' Yep, that's
exactly
what I told him.” Reina dropped a hand to her ample hip and narrowed her eyes at her daughter-in-law. “And I was right. You don't take care of my boy. He seems less happy now than he was before he married you. If you ask me, he'd be better off cutting you loose.”

Paulette clenched her keys in her hand. It took all her breeding, all the years of her mother, Angela, encouraging her to “behave like a lady at all times,” to resist the urge to hurl her keys at Reina's big, fat head. Instead she turned and painted on a syrupy smile. “It was nice having you over, Reina. I guess you'll be leaving now. Drive safely, okay?” she said in a false, chirpy voice.

She then opened the front door and slammed it shut behind her, not giving Reina a chance to say anything else—insulting or otherwise.

Paulette locked the door, tiredly set her purse on the polished foyer table, and walked into the spacious kitchen, unwinding her shawl from around her shoulders. She exhaled and opened the stainless-steel fridge in search of lunch, following her doctor's orders to finally eat something.

“What does Mommy want to eat, bean?” she asked her son as she rubbed her belly and scanned the metal shelves. “There has to be something in here!”

It turned out that Reina had greatly exaggerated. Though the fridge wasn't stocked with lots of food, it wasn't exactly empty, either. Paulette managed to find a loaf of multigrain bread, lettuce, several slices of deli ham, slightly hardened Swiss cheese, and a jar of mayo that had just enough left for her to make a decent sandwich. Five minutes later, she walked into her living room and fell back onto the couch with a sandwich in one hand and a glass of apple juice in the other. Just as she set both on the coffee table and raised the remote to turn on the flat-screen television over her fireplace, the doorbell rang. She sighed heavily and slowly hoisted herself to her feet. It rang again.

“I'm coming!” she shouted.

She glanced longingly at her sandwich before grabbing her shawl, draping it around her shoulders, and making her way to the front door. She drew back the curtain near the door and gazed at the front steps, surprised to find a man in a drab, navy blue suit standing there. She unlocked the door and stared at him uneasily.

“Yes?”

He was short with a sweaty bald head and ruddy cheeks that made it look like he had just finished running a mile, but he really had only been standing still for the past two minutes. His suit looked even worse up close. It was wrinkled and made of a cheap polyester blend that Paulette would never wear. His laced-up black shoes also looked cheap, though they were at least polished.

“Mrs. Paulette Williams?” the man asked gruffly. His blue eyes scrutinized her with laser-like intensity, making her unease multiply tenfold.

“Y-yes. May I help you?”

He reached into his suit jacket pocket and pulled out a wallet. He flipped it open and showed his ID. “Ma'am, I'm Detective Joe Nola with the Mannock County Sheriff's Office. I've tried to reach you by phone, but had no luck. Have you not received my messages?”

Paulette swallowed audibly. Yes, she had gotten Detective Nola's voice-mail messages. He had called three times in the past two weeks. Every time she heard them on her cell phone, she promptly deleted them. She knew why the detective was calling her and she had no interest in talking to him.

“Well, regardless,” he said, closing his wallet and tucking it back into one of his suit jacket's inner pockets, “we're still investigating the death of Mr. Marques Whitney. We're following up on all leads. Do you mind if I come inside and ask you a few questions, ma'am?”

No! Go away,
her mind silently screamed.

“Uh, Marques Whitney? Umm, I-I don't know how I could help you, Detective. I just . . . I just knew him from the gym,” she lied.

The detective squinted at her and she immediately looked away.

“Well, we have information to the contrary, Mrs. Williams.”

Her eyes snapped back to his face, zeroing in on those cold blue eyes. She frowned. “Ex-excuse me?”

“I'd really like to speak with you and ask you a few questions, if that's all right.”

“Tell him that you want to talk to a lawyer first!” a voice yelled frantically in her head. “Tell him that unless you're being charged with something, you don't want to be part of his stupid investigation. Hell, just tell him that you're busy!”

But she didn't make up an excuse or tell him to go away. Instead, she slowly nodded and opened the front door even farther before motioning him to come inside.

“All right, but please . . . can we make it quick? I was just about to eat lunch.”

“This won't take much of your time, Mrs. Williams,” he said, before stepping inside her home. “I can assure you of that.”

Maybe the detective knows something I don't
, she thought as she watched him shrewdly scan the room around him, like signs of some crime were painted on the walls or hanging from the windows like silk drapery. She had been wondering for months whether Antonio had murdered Marques. It had eaten her up inside and made her doubt the man she loved the most. Maybe the detective could shed some light on the mystery that had been plaguing her. Maybe he could finally calm her fears.

“Would you like some water or tea?” she asked, shutting the door behind him. “I could—”

“No, that won't be necessary.” He stalked toward her suede sofa and plopped down. He pulled out a notepad and began to flip the pages.

“Please, have a seat,” she murmured sarcastically before walking into her living room and sitting in one of the armchairs facing the sofa.

“So you say you knew Mr. Whitney from your gym?” he asked, taking out a pen and scribbling on his notepad.

“Yes, he was . . . he was one of the trainers there.”

“Was he your trainer?”

“Uh, no.” She reached for the glass of juice that sat on the coffee table. “Just a trainer at the gym. I ran into him a few times, I guess.”

“Uh-huh.” He flipped a page in his notepad as she sipped her drink. “Is there any reason he would be calling you then? We saw your cell phone number appear several times in his phone records, especially on the night of the murder.”