The Ex Who Wouldn't Die (10 page)

He'd manipulated her as surely as he'd manipulated all his other victims.

If he w
ere
n't already dead, she'd kill him.
Rip his
lying
tongue out of his filthy mouth,
cut off his arms and legs with a chain saw, then shove his body
in a wood chipper
set
on
slow.

She glanced across the room to her father. He met her gaze briefly but couldn
'
t maintain eye contact. Judge Caulfield could stare down the toughest
lawyer or
criminal in the courtroom, but he was a marshmallow when it came to his daughters.
Charley had a family, and her father had known it before today. A long time before today, she'd guess from his reluctance to face her.

Detective Jerk
, on the other hand, was studying her intently.
"
You
'
re saying you didn
'
t know anything about your husband
'
s family? He never took you home to meet his parents? No holiday dinners with the in-laws?
"

Amanda glared at him. She
'd just realized the enormity of her husband's deception, been confronted with the probability of her father's,
and this
creep
wanted to twist the knife. She drew in a deep breath, straightened her spine and leaned forward, returning the detective
'
s gaze defiantly.
"
What part of
con artist
do
you not understand? Charley conned me just like he conned everybody else.
"

"
He married you.
"

"
Con artists don
'
t marry their victims?
" She flipped her hand through the air.
"
Give me a break.
You hear about that on the news every day.
"

"
When the
victim is
wealthy. You
'
re not. Your parents are, but they
'
re both in good health. You won
'
t be inheriting money for a long time, and you
'
ve never made
a lot
at any of your short-lived jobs.
"

Amanda's eyes narrowed
.
"Thank you for pointing that out."

"
So,
"
the rude detective continued,
"
if it was all a scam, what was the scam? What did Charley Randolph expect to gain from marrying you?
"

Amanda was pretty sure she knew the answer to that one, but she wasn
'
t about
to admit it to this creep
. Anyway, sh
e felt sure from the man's
shrewd expression that he had done his homework and already knew the answer.

How many times had her father bailed Charley out of trouble, used his influence to get the charges dropped
or
provided a lawyer who could keep Charley out of jail
?

For a long time, maybe until this very minute when so many truths had been shoved in her face, she had believed that, in his own selfish way, Charley had loved her, that amidst all the deceit
, that one element had been genuine
.

She
'
d
realized
shortly after their marriage that Charley lied to her when he came into the real estate office where she worked, claiming he wanted to buy a house. He had no money to rent a house, much less buy one. He
'
d sheepishly admitted, when confronted
with his deception
, that he
saw
her entering the building and
fell
in love at first sight, so he
'
d told
"
a little white lie
"
in order to mee
t her. Only after he'd begun to talk about marriage had she told him her father was a judge, and he'd seemed surprised. A judge would not, he'd said with a giant sigh, want his daughter to marry someone with Charley's dubious background.

Until she could get her fa
ther alone, she had no idea why he had kept secret his knowledge of Charley's family
, but she
had an icy feeling that,
when she unraveled all the secrets, she
'
d find that
Charley knew
, the day he walked into that real estate office and smiled at her, she was the daughter of a judge.

"Mrs. Randolph?"

She rose from the wooden chair.
"
Apparently, Detective Daggett, you know more
than I do about my ex-husband. Since I can tell you nothing else,
I assume we
'
re finished
and I can go home
.
"

"
Ex-husband
? Your divorce wasn
'
t final, Mrs. Randolph.
"

"Perhaps not, b
ut death did us part. I think that
'
s about as
ex
as it can get.
"

The cop
gave her a tight smile.
"Go home.
But
d
on
'
t plan
any long
trips.
"

She returned the pseudo-smile.
"
I
'
ll be sure to send you a copy of my itinerary.
"

Brian took her left arm and her father her right as they hustled her out of the interrogation room. She let them. She wanted
to get
out of there. She
'
d had enough of answering questions. She wanted to get her father alone and interrogate him. She wanted answers
instead of questions
.
She doubted those answers would be anything she wanted to hear, but she needed to know the truth. There'd been little enough of that since she married Charley Randolph.

***

Amanda's first chan
c
e to talk to her father alone came that evening
when she s
ettled inside
his
silver Mercedes
for the drive home. She
perched
tensely
on the edge of the leather seat as they pulled out of the garage into the pleasant May evening.

The neighborhood had a rich aura, cool and shady and prosperous.
Mature trees lined both sides of the street, and the low sunlight touched the leaves
, spinning the greens from light to dark as they fluttered in the gentle breeze
. Though she couldn
'
t hear birds from inside the well-insulated car, she
knew
the
lilting
songs
of the robins and cardinals, the raucous summer calls of the blue jays and the ever-changing
chorus
of the mockingbirds
. If you didn
'
t look too closely behind the solid
wooden
doors
of the houses on this street
, the neighborhood was Utopian.

The drive from her parents
' house in Highland Park to her place
off Harry Hines Boulevard was only a few miles, but the distance was more than spatial, a journey from the upper crust to the lower, to an area where Amanda could operate her motorcycle shop, live above it and have relatively low mortgage payments.

"
It
'
s going to be all right,
"
her father said, turning the corner
and heading
away from the quiet
,
tree-lined street.
"
They have no evidence against you that isn
'
t circumstantial.
"

Amanda studied his profile, the strong nose, stubborn jaw and clear brown eyes. He had always been her hero
, her best friend
and her opponent.
Her inheritance of
his ind
ependence and his obstinacy
guaranteed t
he two of them would butt heads, b
ut he
'
d never lied to her. At the moment, however, she suspected he was making an ef
fort to divert her from asking for the truth, from forcing him to either admit to something awful or to lie to her. He wouldn't lie. She couldn't believe he'd lie.

But he c
ould refuse to tell her
.

"
How long have you known about Charley
'
s family?
"

For a couple of blocks they rode in silence.

Eventually, her father did not disappoint her.

"
I ran a complete background check on him as soon as you said you were thinking about marrying him.
"

"
Why didn
'
t you tell me?
"

Another long silence.
"
Charley didn
'
t want you to know.
"