Don't Believe a Word

Cover

Recent Titles by Patricia MacDonald

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Acknowledgements

THE UNFORGIVEN

STRANGER IN THE HOUSE

LITTLE SISTER

NO WAY HOME

MOTHER’S DAY

SECRET ADMIRER

LOST INNOCENTS

NOT GUILTY

SUSPICIOUS ORIGIN

THE GIRL NEXT DOOR

MARRIED TO A STRANGER

STOLEN IN THE NIGHT

FROM CRADLE TO GRAVE *

CAST INTO DOUBT *

MISSING CHILD *

SISTERS *

I SEE YOU *

DON’T BELIEVE A WORD *

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

This first world edition published 2016

in Great Britain and the USA by

SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

19 Cedar Road, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM2 5DA.

Trade paperback edition first published 2016 in Great

Britain and the USA by SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD.

eBook edition first published in 2016 by Severn House Digital

an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

Copyright © 2016 by Patricia Bourgeau.

The right of Patricia Bourgeau to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

MacDonald, Patricia J. author.

Don’t believe a word.

1. Mothers and daughters–Fiction. 2. Murder–

Investigation–Fiction. 3. Suspense fiction.

I. Title

813.6-dc23

ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8587-6 (cased)

ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-686-2 (trade paper)

ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-750-9 (e-book)

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents

are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Except where actual historical events and characters are being described

for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are

fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,

business establishments, events or locales is purely coincidental.

This ebook produced by

Palimpsest Book Production Limited, Falkirk,

Stirlingshire, Scotland.

To my agent and friend, Meg Ruley,

for her charm and cheer, insight and integrity.

I can never thank you enough.

I am blessed with extraordinary agents and publishers at home and abroad. Special thanks to Peggy Boulos-Smith and her compatriots at JRA in NYC, Edwin Buckhalter and Kate Lyall Grant at Severn House in London, and Catherine LaPautre and Anne Michel in Paris. My deepest gratitude to my publisher at Albin Michel, Francis Esminard, who understood me, even though my French was incomprehensible. And a wistful au revoir to the incomparable Danielle Boesflug.

E
den Radley raised her c
ollar and pulled her jacket tightly around herself as she picked her way along the icy sidewalk on the Brooklyn street where she lived. She had a wool scarf wrapped high around her neck, but her nose and cheeks were stinging in the chilly night air. She glanced ahead and saw golden light from inside the Brisbane Tavern spilling out onto the sidewalk. She hurried toward the door, eager to slip into the warmth.

Normally her favorite watering hole was the bar in the Black Cat Restaurant, across from her apartment, but it was Sunday night, the Giants were playing a night game, and Eden had heard that they showed the Giants games on several large TV screens in the Brisbane. At least, if this date was a bust, she could keep an eye on the score. Judging from her past internet dating experience, she didn’t expect to be here for very long. Just a drink or two, and then she planned to watch the second half alone, in her apartment, preferably under the covers.

Eden had had over a dozen dates since she joined the online dating service. The guys she met had ranged from weird to merely dull, except for one, a lawyer whom she liked immediately. They had talked for hours, and he seemed positively reluctant to part from her. She went home on a cloud, expecting a text from him any minute to request another date.

Two weeks went by and she didn’t hear from him. She finally broke down and texted him, careful to sound casual. ‘I thought we had a good time,’ she said. ‘I was hoping we could do it again some evening.’ His reply came back: ‘I have a lot on my plate these days. If I have a window, I’ll call you.’

A window? Really? she thought. To hell with internet dating. From now on she was going back to hoping against hope that she would meet someone in a normal way. This date with Jake Latham, a chemist working for a drug company, was the last item on her dating service to-do list.

They had agreed to meet at a table in the back of the Brisbane, far from the noisy bar, but it was late in the football season and the Brisbane was packed. A table seemed to be out of the question. Eden scanned the room, trying to spot tonight’s prospect from the photos on his profile. Nobody was alone or looking around as if trying to find someone. No Jake Latham. She hesitated by the front door, and then strode up to the bar and hoisted herself on a barstool between two parties of boisterous fans. The bartender, a guy who she reckoned to be in his mid-thirties, his dark hair already shot through with gray, looked at her with raised eyebrows. She asked for a glass of white wine. He wiped off the shining dark wood surface of the bar, poured out a glass of wine and set it in front of her. The delicate wine glass looked lost in the forest of dark green and brown beer bottles which crowded the bar.

‘Game night,’ he said, almost apologetically.

‘I know,’ said Eden. ‘That’s why I’m here.’ Ordinarily, she would have felt uncomfortable to be alone, seated on a barstool, but she was a Giants fan, at ease with this group of customers. She looked up at the TV screen and sipped her wine.

‘’Scuse me,’ said a deep voice.

Eden turned to look. The guy was ruddy-faced and looked more like a bobsledder than a chemist. It was not the guy in the profile picture. She smiled at him anyway.

‘Mind if I slip in here? I’m with these guys,’ he said, pointing to the group next to her.

Eden shook her head. The ruddy-faced guy turned his back on her and high-fived the men to her right. He took no further notice of Eden.

Her face flamed but she continued to watch the game. It’s not your fault, she reassured herself. You look good tonight. She examined her reflection between the gleaming bottles on the mirrored back of the mahogany bar. Her long dark hair fell in a shining curve over her shoulders, and her blue-and- raspberry wool scarf was perfect for her pale complexion and rosy cheeks. The bartender, who was facing the mirror, caught her eye and gave her a thumbs up.

Embarrassed, Eden hesitated, and then smiled back. The bartender served the customer next to her. Then he turned to Eden. ‘So, you’re a fan,’ he said.

She shrugged. ‘Yeah. Although I’m actually here to meet someone.’

‘A fellow fan?’ he asked.

‘We’ll see,’ she said. ‘We’ve never met.’

‘Are you from the neighborhood?’ he asked.

Eden nodded. ‘But the Black Cat is my local.’

‘I like their food,’ he said. ‘Those Thai spring rolls.’

She smiled. ‘I know. Me too.’

He nodded and then answered the summons of the next customer.

Eden looked at the clock and glanced back at the door again. All of a sudden she felt her phone vibrate against her hip. She fished for it in her jacket pocket, expecting it to be from Jake, and quickly noted the name of the sender: Tara Darby, her mother. In spite of herself, Eden’s temper flared.

‘Hi, Eden. Miss you. Can you talk? Call me.’

Oh sure, Eden thought. And tell you about how I am trying to meet a stranger on an internet date? She knew exactly what her mother would think about that. Tara’s life was not about stilted, planned meetings. It was about stars colliding. During Eden’s childhood, Tara was a stay-at-home mom who worked on the accounts for her husband, Hugh’s, masonry business. When Eden was in high school, Tara took a part-time job in a local bookstore that belonged to their neighbors across the street. Tara was in charge of arranging events. She invited a short story writer from New York City, who had grown up in their village of Robbin’s Ferry, to do a reading and signing. Flynn Darby was a handsome Harvard grad, thirteen years her junior. The two of them fell hopelessly in love. Tara threw away everything – Eden, her father and their home together – for her grand passion, her destiny.

All their friends and family claimed to find Tara’s behavior unforgivable. But beneath the widespread condemnation, Eden often thought she detected a tiny hint of admiration for a woman who would follow her heart so recklessly. At the age of forty-two, Tara even had a baby with Flynn. After that, her careless rapture fell to earth with a thud. The child, Jeremy, now four, suffered from a rare genetic, usually fatal disorder, and the three of them had moved last year to Ohio to be near the Cleveland Clinic, and the one researcher who was concentrating on Jeremy’s terrible condition.

While Eden understood that choice intellectually, and was sorry that her frail half-brother had to endure such suffering, it also meant that she almost never saw her mother. And on the rare occasions when she did, Tara was always too distracted to show much interest in Eden’s life.

Eden hesitated and then texted her mother back. ‘Can’t. Watching the game.’ She slipped her phone back into her pocket.

That will piss her off, she thought. Sunday afternoons, when Eden was a girl, she used to sit beside her large, gentle father on the sofa, watching the TV, and he would patiently explain what every player did, and why. At first she only pretended to listen. She really didn’t care about the game. It was enough that her father enjoyed it, and wanted her company. But by the time his daughter was nine or ten, Hugh Radley had converted her into a hopeless fan. Sunday afternoons in the season, plus the odd Monday, Thursday and Sunday nights, if the Giants were playing, Eden and Hugh were glued to the NFL on TV.

Tara Radley, a classic beauty with long, wavy black hair, often went out to read on the porch of their charming Victorian house in Westchester County, just to escape the roar of the fans, the excited commentary of the announcers, the war whoops or cries of disgust from her husband and daughter. Sometimes, when it was a four o’clock game, Tara would escape for wine and appetizers to a bar in the trendy downtown area of Robbin’s Ferry. She would meet her friend, Charlene Harris, a realtor who was divorced, childless, and free on Sundays. Eden and Hugh would breathe a little easier once Tara was on her way, and they could watch in peace. Tara always came home mildly tipsy, but usually in a better mood than when she left.

‘I don’t know how you can stand to watch football,’ Tara said to Eden once, lifting her penetrating, brown-eyed gaze from her book and frowning, perplexed, at her only child, her daughter. ‘It’s so … violent.’

‘It’s exciting,’ Eden had said defensively.

‘Grown men knocking each other over to get at a ball,’ Tara sniffed.

‘Dad likes it,’ Eden protested.

‘I know,’ said Tara, stifling a sigh. ‘I don’t understand him either.’

At the time, her mother’s words had seemed amusing. Tara was a reader and a dreamer, not a football fan. Everyone to their own taste, Hugh Radley always said. Now, looking back on it, Eden saw it differently. Tara’s complaint had been a narrow fissure in the rock that was their world, their life together, their family. To Eden, her parents seemed content together. But beneath that placid surface, there were numerous cracks, and they were widening into crevices which would wind up breaking Eden’s world apart.

The divorce marked the end of so many things in Eden’s life. In order to divide their assets, Hugh was forced to take out a second mortgage on their house and money became extremely tight. Six months after her mother left them, Hugh suffered a heart attack and could not work for several months. Instead of attending Yale, where she had been accepted, Eden enrolled as a commuter at Mt St Vincent’s in the Bronx, and commuted from home. She had no social life at college. It was all she could juggle to attend her classes, work in the library and rush home to her father. In the ensuing years, he often told her how guilty he felt that she had missed out on so much of college life in order to stay with him, and help him recover.

It doesn’t matter, she always replied. What she actually meant was, it wasn’t your fault. You weren’t the one to blame.

‘Hear from your friend?’ the bartender shouted amiably above the din.

Eden shook her head. ‘He’s late.’ She looked at the clock again. It was nearly eight-thirty. ‘Very late. And he hasn’t called.’

‘Check your messages again,’ he suggested. ‘You can’t hear anything with the racket in here.’

Eden nodded, realizing that this was true, and pulled out her iPhone again. Sure enough, she had missed a call. She tried to listen to the voicemail, but it was a broken, garbled message, indecipherable in the noisy bar.

She was getting ready to text him. To explain that she couldn’t hear the message. To ask why he was late. She was starting to key it in, and then she hesitated. Why bother? she thought. If she were honest with herself, she was actually relieved that he hadn’t shown up. She had waited a sufficient amount of time, and she was off the hook. Why not just ignore it and go home?

She considered it for a moment, but she had been raised to be more courteous than that.
Can’t hear your voicemail
, she texted.
Where are you?

She waited for a few minutes, and finally he replied.
Traffic at a standstill.

Eden looked at the message with narrowed eyes. Was this real, or an excuse? That was the problem with dating a complete stranger. How were you supposed to know?
Let’s do this another time
, she wrote, and sent it.

‘Did you get him?’ asked the bartender, holding the bottle of wine tilted over her empty glass.

Eden shook her head and covered the glass with her palm. ‘No, I’m going to go,’ she said.

‘Stay a while. Game’s just starting.’ He had a sad-eyed smile and was good-looking, sturdy but trim. Probably an actor, or a would-be writer, she thought, bartending to make ends meet, like most of her friends in the neighborhood.

She smiled in reply. ‘No, I can’t. But thanks.’ She stuffed her phone resolutely back in her pocket, and pulled out her credit card, handing it to him.

He glanced at the name on the card and then handed it back to her, shaking his head. ‘It’s on the house, Eden,’ he said.

Eden was taken aback. She wondered if he routinely bought drinks for the girls who were stood up on his shift. Perhaps that was considered good public relations at the Brisbane. ‘Oh. Well. Thanks. That’s nice of you.’

‘Vince Silver,’ he said, extending his hand across the bar.

Eden took it and shook it. ‘Thanks, Vince.’

‘Maybe I’ll see you in the Black Cat,’ he said.

She smiled and nodded, slipping off the barstool. She could hardly wait to get out of the Brisbane Tavern. She would watch the game from her own comfortable sofa. She pulled on her coat and edged her way through the crowd, as an excited fan quickly slipped in behind her and settled himself on her vacated stool.

The game ran into overtime, and it was past midnight before it was over. Eden’s eyelids were heavy by the time the final kick won the game for Detroit. She thought about calling her father to review the game, but that was never any fun when the Giants lost. Besides, she was too tired. She brushed her teeth, turned off the light and got into bed, expecting to be asleep instantly. But the constant exchange of the lead in the game had invaded her head. She tossed and turned for over an hour before sleep overtook her.

The next morning she was groggy on the train to Manhattan, but she felt a bit more awake by the time she had walked from the subway stop to the offices of DeLaurier Publishing. She had worked for the publisher for four years, and she had recently been promoted to the position of Associate Editor, with a small office all her own. Eden greeted the editorial assistants whom she passed in the hallway with a hail of ‘Good morning’ and ‘How was your weekend?’

‘Looks like you had a rough one,’ observed Gillian Munroe, a roving assistant who worked for Eden as well as two other editors.

Eden shrugged. She was not fooling anyone. ‘I wish I could tell you I was doing something exciting. But I couldn’t sleep after watching the Giants game.’

Gillian grimaced. ‘Football?’

‘Absolutely,’ said Eden.

‘Whatever floats your boat.’ Gillian was only twenty-two, and had a peachy complexion which no amount of sleeplessness could dim. Eden thought that twenty-two seemed like a lifetime ago, although in truth she was only twenty-seven herself. But sometimes Gillian made her feel a little bit … past her prime.