Sweet Liar Read online

  “I’m going with you,” she said just as they reached the town house.

  “Like hell you are,” Mike answered, and the way he said it made Sam sure she was right: Wherever he was going tonight had something to do with Maxie. She would have been hard-pressed to be able to think of a time in her life when the knowledge that she was right made her so thoroughly happy. She could have danced a jig in the street and run along the top of the fence railing crooning, “Singin’ in the Rain.”

  But she behaved herself. As Mike paid the fare, she sedately walked up the stairs and got out her door key, but Mike elbowed her aside and used his own key. Smiling, she watched him, guessing that his old-fashioned ethics extended to door locks. She could see that he was angry, and the more angry he was, the happier she became. If he were going out on a “real” date, he wouldn’t be angry, he’d be laughing at her.

  “What do you think I should wear?” she asked brightly. “A suit or a nice pair of trousers?”

  “A nightgown and a bathrobe,” he said through clenched teeth as he closed the door behind them. “That’s all you need for staying in tonight and watching TV.”

  “There is absolutely nothing on on Saturday night, so I guess I’ll just have to go with you.”

  “Samantha,” he said, giving her a threatening look. “You are not going with me.”

  “Vanessa might be annoyed?”

  For a split second, a look of puzzlement crossed his face, then he grinned, but Samantha knew him well enough by now to know how false that grin was. No Vanessa. Hallelujah. “For your information, I’m meeting Abby for dinner.”

  “Where?”

  “You wouldn’t know the place. Upper West Side. Very posh. I probably won’t be home until late, or maybe I’ll spend the night.”

  “The nursing home will allow you to do that?”

  The quick, horrified look on his face made Sam know that she’d guessed right. He managed to get his face under control quickly, but not before Samantha was looking at him smugly. While he was saying things like, “Abby doesn’t live in a nursing home” and “She’s one hot lady,” Sam just stood there and smiled at him. No Vanessa. No actress. No model. No anybody else at all. Just Mike trying to find her grandmother.

  “Damn you, Samantha,” Mike said, sounding as though he were on the verge of tears. “Damn you to hell and back. You cannot go with me. This woman may have known your grandmother. Doc’s men might be watching her. She might—”

  “She might be my grandmother for all you know.”

  When he turned away from her, she knew that he was trying to think of arguments to persuade her that she should not, could not, go with him, and she knew that whatever he said was going to have no effect on her decision. “I don’t know why you’re looking so pleased with yourself,” he said when he turned back.

  Stepping closer, she smiled up at him. “I don’t know why I ever thought you were an accomplished liar. You’re not at all good at lying.”

  Mike’s face and body expressed his rage: His eyes flashed, his nostrils flared, his hands were fists at his side. “Maybe not, but I’m damned good at tying up little girls who are too stupid to know what’s good for them.” He took a step toward her.

  Samantha swallowed, for he did indeed look as though he meant to do her bodily harm. “You couldn’t hurt anyone if you tried,” she said with as much bravado as she could muster. She held her ground when he was standing so close he was touching her, looming over her.

  Mike’s anger dissolved in a rush, and he pulled her into his arms, holding her so tight she almost couldn’t breathe. For once, Samantha made no effort to get away from him, but instead, held onto him, snuggling her cheek against the hollow in his chest. They fit together so well, she thought. Her ex-husband had been tall and thin. They had looked odd together; they hadn’t fit at all. But Mike was perfect.

  “Look, baby,” he began, “I don’t want you involved more than you already are. I don’t even like leaving you here in the house alone tonight. In fact, I was going to suggest that you spend the evening with Blair or Vicky or—”

  “Raine?” she asked, her eyes closed, smiling as she thought of the thousand times she’d wanted to snuggle with Mike. He felt better than she’d imagined.

  “No, the idea of your spending the evening with that stick never crossed my mind.” Still holding her, he bent his head back to look at her. “You don’t really like that guy, do you?”

  “No,” she answered honestly for the second time that day, but who was counting? Smiling, he put his head back on the top of hers.

  “Okay, here’s what I’ll do. I’ll go see this old woman by myself since this is probably a wild goose chase anyway.” He shook his head in disbelief. “This woman will be the seventh old lady I’ve been to see. With each one somebody had sworn to me that she’d been at the club the night Scalpini’s men shot the place up, and each time either the woman was daffy or she was too young or she’d never heard of Jubilee. It’s all been a waste of time, and I’m sure this one is too. I’ll take you to Blair’s—she lives on the West Side—then, after I see this old lady, I’ll come back and pick the two of you up and take you out to dinner. I’ll take you anywhere in the city you want to go. We could go to the Quilted Giraffe or the Rainbow Room or—”

  “No,” she said. “I’m going with you.”

  “Sammy, sweetheart, please listen to me.” He was stroking her hair and her back as his big body was leaning over hers so she was nearly encased in him. She hoped he would spend the next three hours trying to persuade her not to go with him.

  “Mmmmm, I’m listening. Maybe we could go out to dinner after we meet her. I’d like to go to the Sign of the Dove.”

  Mike released her; he was really angry now. “You’re not going with me.”

  “All right, then I won’t go with you. If you don’t want us to search for my grandmother together then I’ll have to go by myself. How many nursing homes on the Upper West Side can there be? And, by the way, west side of what?”

  Standing there, Mike stared at her for a moment, his face running the gamut of emotions, knowing that she would do what she said. He’d never in his life seen anyone as stubborn as she. “Wear a suit,” he said tightly as he turned away from her.

  “So we can go out to dinner afterward?” she asked, but he didn’t answer.

  Samantha didn’t like the nursing home. For one thing, it was ugly, sterile ugly. Everything in it had been chosen for use with no consideration for beauty. The floors were those hideous gray plastic tiles that some creature from hell had invented, and the walls were painted in a white that was so glaring it could have been lit with neon. All the lighting was overhead and fluorescent, and every tube in the building hummed with that sound that was guaranteed to drive a sane person crazy within three days.

  Besides the look of the place, there was the smell: disinfectant and medicine. Samantha sometimes wondered how people managed to make a place smell of medicine. Did they empty pills out of those little brown bottles on the floor then crush them?

  Holding her hand, Mike looked down at her and saw the disgust on her face. “This is one of the better homes,” he said. “Some of them smell like urine.”

  Shaking her head in disbelief, Samantha looked at the ceiling. The “designer”—desecrator, actually—of the nursing home had managed to completely disguise the fact that the “home” was in a beautiful old building. High above their heads were lovely moldings, and the walls were that heavy, thick plaster that helped to make old buildings quiet. But the walls were covered with horrid photocopies of rules and schedules: no lights after nine in the evening; no loud music, in fact, no rock and roll at all; no dancing in the dining room; no running; no chewing gum. While Mike was at the desk asking about the woman he was to see, Samantha read the notices and wondered what had happened to cause notices to be put up outlawing gum and dancing and rock and roll.

  “Oh, Abby,” the nurse was saying with a little smile. It was the smile y