Sweet Liar Read online

“I wish I could have met her,” Samantha said, stroking Abby’s hand, her eyes with a faraway look in them. “I heard so much from Granddad Cal about her and from my father.”

  “Cal,” Abby said softly, her frown disappearing and a slight relaxed, peaceful smile taking its place. “Maxie spoke of him. Was he all right after Maxie left or did he die in a place like this?”

  “No,” Samantha said brightly, happily. “He stayed with us, with Dad and me, the last two years of his life. I was going to school so we had to hire a nurse/housekeeper for him.”

  “Was his nurse nice?”

  “No, she was dreadful and Granddad Cal made her life miserable.”

  Abby smiled but didn’t say anything, so Samantha continued.

  “She was a horrible, bossy woman and she treated Granddad Cal as though he were a stupid child. He would have fired her, but he said that getting her back gave him a reason to live. He used to do awful things to her, such as putting salt in her shampoo so it’d sting her eyes. One day while she was outside mowing the lawn he made a big pitcher of iced tea for her, only it wasn’t iced tea. It was Long Island tea, you know, that stuff that’s all liquor. She drank three big glasses of it then passed out on the kitchen floor. While she was passed out, Granddad Cal shaved her mustache.”

  Both Abby and Mike laughed.

  It was at that moment that the nurse reentered the room. First she scolded Samantha for sitting on the bed and not on the chair, then she scolded Abby for making her machine fluctuate.

  “They love patients who are in comas,” Abby said. “They’re the only ones who obey all the rules.”

  “Now, now, Abby, you don’t mean that. Say good-bye to the nice people.”

  Abby looked around the nurse’s bulk toward Samantha. “Think electrolysis,” Samantha said, and Abby grinned so hard her needle bounced. The nurse shooed them out of the room.

  20

  “Where are you taking me for dinner?” Samantha asked happily as they left the nursing home. “I saw an Italian restaurant, Paper Moon, on Fifty-eighth, and it looked very pretty.”

  Grabbing her elbow, he said, “We’re going home for dinner,” then narrowed his eyes at her. “We’re going home and you’re going to show me the box of things your father left you.”

  “But, Mike, I’m hungry.”

  “You can order in, like you always do. Call up Paper Moon and order, whatever you want to do, but tonight, you’re showing me that box.”

  As Mike hailed a cab, Samantha couldn’t resist a little smugness. “It doesn’t feel very good to have people keep secrets from you, does it?”

  His hand on her arm, he squeezed hard. “Do you realize that the secret to why whoever tried to kill you may be in that box?”

  “No…” she said slowly.

  As he opened the taxi door, he asked, “What is in the box?” When she was silent, Mike gritted his teeth. “You haven’t looked inside it, have you?”

  “Going through a dead person’s effects is not my idea of a good time. Maybe you’re ghoulish that way, but I’m not. I opened the box—it’s the old hatbox you carried downstairs for me—saw the photo on top, took it out, and that’s all. The box looked to be full of old clothes, clothes that belonged to someone who might have run away with a gangster.”

  “A box full of things that may tell us a lot. It might tell us something that could keep someone from again attempting to kill you.”

  In spite of herself, Samantha put her hand to her throat. “You don’t think I’m still in danger, do you?”

  “Yes,” he said softly. “I think that with every person we talk to, you’re more in danger than you were before.” His voice lowered. “I think it’s possible that you’re in so deep now that even if you went to Maine you’d still be in danger.”

  Samantha turned away, looked out the window, and took a deep breath.

  Thirty minutes later they were in Mike’s house, and he had the hatbox on the breakfast table. Sam had insisted upon ordering dinner before they opened the box, and Mike had reluctantly agreed. Had she tried, Samantha wouldn’t have been able to explain her reluctance to open the box. She knew it was full of her grandmother’s possessions, and in other circumstances, she would have been curious to see what was in it, but she wasn’t at all sure that she wanted to see the contents of this box. Pandora’s box full of the world’s evils. Somehow, she was sure if they opened this box, they would start something that would have to be played through to the end.

  When Mike reached out to pull the lid off the box. Samantha put her hand on the top.

  Watching her. Mike waited while she took a few deep, calming, breaths. After a while, she nodded and stepped back, holding her breath while Mike lifted the lid.

  Standing over it, he peered down into it, a frown on his face, until Samantha, curious, stepped forward. “What is it?” she whispered.

  “I don’t believe it,” he said, his voice sounding apprehensive.

  “What?” Stepping close to him, she looked down into the box. When Mike grabbed her arms and said, “Gotcha!” she jumped two feet. Her hand to her heart, her face red, she hit him on the shoulder. “You!”

  Laughing, Mike reached into the box. “I don’t know what you’re afraid of, it’s just an old dress.” He pulled out a red silk dress and handed it to her.

  At first Samantha didn’t want to touch the dress, but when Mike moved his hand, she saw something sparkle. Taking the dress from him, she slowly let it unfold, holding it up by the shoulders to look at it. “Lanvin,” she whispered in awe, reading the label at the back of the neck, speaking in reverence of the Paris couturier’s name.

  It was a beautiful dress, red moiré with a fitted bodice, narrow shoulder straps, and a heavenly draped bias-cut skirt that was hemmed to midcalf in front with a bit of a train in back. On the right side of the waist was a sunburst design done in diamanté.

  “Looks like you got over your fear,” Mike said sarcastically, but she ignored him as she looked at the dress, admired the way it flowed when she moved it.

  Mike took a pair of shoes from the box. They had been made to match the dress: red moiré T-straps with diamanté running down the vertical strap and Louis heels. Samantha knew the moment she saw them that they were exactly her size.

  “Look at this.” Mike handed her a small box covered in blue velvet. Resting on the velvet inside were a pair of earrings, but not just any earrings: These were long and pear shaped, diamonds from the earlobe to the base, with three large pearls hanging off the bottom edge.

  Mike gave a low whistle.

  “Doc’s earrings,” Samantha whispered. “The ones he said he gave Maxie the night she disappeared.”

  Mike pulled underwear from the box: a peach silk crepe de Chine bra trimmed with delicate ecru lace and matching panties. A tiny sexy garter belt and flesh-colored silk hose were folded together.

  In the very bottom of the hatbox were tossed a long string of pearls and two diamond bracelets. Holding the bracelets to the light, Mike examined them. “I’m not a jeweler, but it’s my guess that those are real,” he said as he handed them to Sam, then ran the pearls across the back of his fingernail. Rough enough to use for emery boards, a roughness found only in genuine pearls.

  “Real?”

  “Absolutely,” he said, adding the pearls to the pile on the table.

  Samantha put the bracelets down, and the two of them looked at the articles on the table: the red evening gown, the matching shoes, the fabulous earrings, the bracelets, the necklace, and the underwear. It was obviously everything a woman had been wearing from the skin out on a night in 1928.

  “If these things were in your father’s possession,” Mike said, “it removes any doubt that your grandmother was Maxie.”

  “Yes,” was all Samantha could answer, but she didn’t have to make another comment because the doorbell rang and the food arrived. They sat at one end of the table eating, not saying much as they looked at the pile of clothes and jewels draped across the