Читать книгу Missing - Jasmine Cresswell - Страница 9

May 4, 2006, Thatch, Stark County, Wyoming

Megan heard the sound of a car braking to a halt alongside the porch and the pounding inside her head instantly grew worse. She peeked through a crack in the living-room blinds, her stomach knotting at the prospect of seeing yet another reporter parked on the driveway.

The car was a red Ford Freestyle, not one of the roaming TV-satellite vans that had been tormenting her for the past day and a half. Unfortunately, the absence of a broadcast antenna wasn’t necessarily good news. She’d discovered that print journalists could be every bit as aggressive as their on-air counterparts.

Tucking her gingham shirt into her jeans, Megan prepared herself to walk outside and repeat for the umpteenth time that she had no comment. The trick, she’d found, was to head off the journalists before they could bang on the door and disturb her mother. The next trick—even more difficult—was to get rid of them without losing her temper and providing them with juicy copy.

A tall man got out of the car, dressed in a gray business suit, his thick, light brown hair blowing in the late-afternoon breeze and his tie hanging loose around his unbuttoned shirt collar. The sun was shining through the window into Megan’s eyes and it took her a second to recognize her brother.

“Liam!” She ran out of the house, flying down the porch steps, the dogs bounding at her heels. “Liam!” She hurled herself into his arms, hugging him as hard as she could, caught off guard by the rush of her own emotions.

Liam wasn’t usually what you’d call a warm-and-fuzzy kind of a guy and she felt his split-second hesitation before he hugged her back. But for all his reserve, his voice was deeply affectionate when he spoke. “Hey, squirt. You look great, especially considering everything that’s going on.”

He patted Bruno and Belle, who thrust their muzzles against his legs and whimpered ecstatically, tails thumping. “How are you holding up, Meggie?”

“Better now that you’re here.” Megan not only loved Liam, she’d worshipped him as her hero, ever since she was three and he was the twelve-year-old big brother patiently leading her around on the pony their father had just bought as her birthday present. Still, she didn’t know him as well as she would have liked. With their nine-year age difference, Liam had been off to college by the time she was starting fourth grade and he’d almost never visited the ranch over the past few years. He lived in Denver and she’d spent time with him there as often as she could, but she always sensed a barrier that allowed her to get just so close and no further. Despite that, the bond between the two of them was important to her. She suspected it was equally important to Liam, for all that he was so emotionally guarded.

“It’s really good to see you.” Her voice, embarrassingly, was thick with emotion. “I didn’t realize how much I needed you until I saw you getting out of the car.”

Liam ruffled her hair, then uncharacteristically dropped a kiss on the top of her head, an easy spot for him to reach since he was a good ten inches taller than her five foot three. “I never expected to live long enough to hear my kid sister admit that she needed me.”

“It’s been a rough couple of days,” Megan acknowledged.

“I can imagine.” Liam’s words sounded more ironic than sympathetic, but he crooked his finger under her chin and tilted her face up, using his thumb to brush away the tears that kept welling up in her eyes despite her best efforts to contain them. Unlike her brother, she was cursed with emotions that bubbled over at the slightest provocation.

He knew how much she despised her own easy tears and, with welcome tact, he bent down and gave the dogs his full attention, allowing her a moment to regain control. “Hey, Bruno. Hey, Belle. Hate to tell you guys this, but you’re getting fat.”

The dogs ignored the insult and licked his hands in slobbery friendship, clearly remembering him fondly, although it was at least two years since they’d last seen him.

“Okay, you’re great dogs, both of you, and now I’d like my hands back.” He snapped his fingers and pointed to the ground. The dogs, who considered Megan’s commands no more than playful suggestions, instantly quieted. They seated themselves with their front paws on top of Liam’s shoes, tongues lolling out of the side of their mouths as they panted their enthusiasm for his return.

Liam turned his attention back to Megan. “I’m sorry I couldn’t get here sooner, squirt.”

“That’s okay—”

“No, it’s not. As usual, I was unavailable when you needed me.” He took off his tie and shoved it in the pocket of his suit jacket. “I wasn’t ignoring you, Meg.”

“It never occurred to me that you were. When I didn’t hear from you last night, I assumed you weren’t home.”

“You were right. I didn’t get your message until this morning. Then I had to reschedule my court appearances for the next few days before I could leave Denver. I tried to call on my way to the airport, but the ranch phone was constantly busy and your cell number kept switching me to voice mail.”

“I took the ranch phones off the hook because I got tired of telling reporters that I had nothing to say, and cell phones still don’t work out here so I can’t pick up my messages.”

Megan asked no questions about Liam’s absence the previous night, although she could make a pretty good guess as to why he’d been away from home. If her brother had been running true to recent form, he’d spent the night with some gorgeous woman he would almost certainly never see again.

In high school, Liam had been a jock more interested in football and skiing than girls. During the entire seven years he spent in college and law school, he’d dated no more than half a dozen different women. Then he’d moved to Denver, taken the bar exam and joined a partnership of criminal-defense attorneys. He’d gone out with a fellow lawyer for over a year and Megan had expected to hear at any minute that the two of them were engaged. Instead, their relationship abruptly ended. Overnight, Liam seemed to acquire the ambition to have sex with every attractive single woman in the state of Colorado. Megan wished he could find a woman he liked enough to settle down, but since her own relationships seemed to have all the depth and staying power of wet tissues, she wasn’t exactly in a position to criticize.

“I hoped the ranch might be too far off the beaten track for TV crews to waste time driving out here.” Liam leaned into the rental car and took out a soft leather duffel bag. With a skill acquired in childhood, he stuck out his foot and blocked the dogs from jumping into the backseat. “Obviously I underestimated the news appeal of Dad’s disappearance.”

“It’s not just the fact that he’s disappeared. It’s the fact that he was a bigamist. You don’t get too many of those nowadays.” Megan stopped Bruno from chasing a rabbit by scratching the precise spot behind his ears that guaranteed to make him squirm in ecstasy.

Liam pulled a face. “Just how bad have the reporters been?”

She gave a short, hard laugh. “Somewhere north of rabid. A crew from Channel Six drove down from Jackson Hole within a couple of hours of our hearing the news. The producer demanded an exclusive interview. He informed me that we owed him an interview because Channel Six is our local station and the people of Wyoming have a right to know how Mom feels about Dad’s other wife and daughter!”

Liam muttered an expletive beneath his breath. “I trust you told him precisely where he could shove his demands.”

“I sure did, for all the good it did me. The crew from Jackson Hole was only the first, and not even the most pushy. I’ve developed a whole new sympathy for movie stars who punch out paparazzi. Living with these people in your face 24/7 would be enough to drive anyone crazy.”

“Since you’ve been sweeping reporters off the front porch all day long, I guess you won’t be too surprised to hear that when I drove into the ranch a roving camera crew was busy setting up shop at the entrance gates.”

Megan sighed. “Not surprised, just sick to death of having to deal with them. I finally called Harry a couple of hours ago and asked for help. He came right out, thank God, and ordered them to clear off our land. Unfortunately, I guess there’s no way to stop people parking on the public road outside the boundary fences.” She shaded her eyes from the sun and stared down the long driveway. “I don’t see anyone coming.”

“Hopefully we won’t. I told the crew I was the family lawyer and threatened to have them arrested for trespassing if they drove so much as their front wheels onto ranch property. They seemed to listen.”

“Maybe they’ll get bored and go away if there’s no activity.”

“In your dreams.” Liam clearly didn’t think there was a chance in hell that the reporters would leave.

“The neighbors might refuse to talk.” Megan was more wistful than optimistic. “They’re a pretty nice bunch of people and they don’t have much patience for big-city folk.”

“Yeah, but there’s always one neighbor who’s dying to see himself on TV and won’t care what lies he needs to invent as long as his story gets him on camera.”

“You’re probably right. Unfortunately.”

“Count on it. And even if the reporters can’t squeeze any good copy out of our neighbors, you can bet Dad’s other family in Chicago will have plenty of so-called friends who are only too willing to gossip for the cameras.”

Megan shrugged. “Personally, I’d be thrilled if the media gave up on us and fixated on them. At least Mom would be left in peace.”

Liam sent her a sympathetic glance. “They’re victims, too, you know.”

She sighed. “I know. One day I may start to empathize with them, but right now I can’t. There’ve been too many shocking revelations and too little time to absorb them.” Megan was reluctantly fascinated by the idea that she had a half sister, but she wasn’t yet ready to cope with the tumultuous emotions precipitated by her existence.

“Have you seen pictures of them?” The question was torn from her against her better judgment. She’d been loath to switch on the TV today not only for fear of seeing herself and the ranch house plastered all over the airwaves but even more for fear of being inundated with images of her father’s other family.

Liam nodded. “You can’t avoid seeing them. The story of Dad’s disappearance was the lead story on every channel when I walked through the airports in Denver and Jackson Hole.”

Megan grimaced. “Complete with pictures of the ranch, I suppose?”

“’Fraid so. Along with endless shots of the penthouse in downtown Chicago where Dad’s other wife apparently lives. The media are fascinated by the contrast between the two homes.”

Megan drew in a quick breath. “I don’t mind being portrayed as a country bumpkin if that means the journalists get bored with us sooner.”

“That’s good, because they already have you and Mom typecast as exactly that. Apparently Avery Fairfax is big on the social scene in Chicago—she’s chaired several important charity events and the TV stations have photos and file footage of her looking incredibly sophisticated and glamorous. Mom comes off sounding as if she’s Mrs. Homebody from 1950. It makes for great copy and who cares if there’s no truth to the images they’re creating?”

“In a way, the distortions protect Mom’s privacy, so I’m not sure she’ll mind.”

“Maybe not. Although the cable news channels keep mentioning the fact that the penthouse where Avery and Kate are living is currently valued at six point five million dollars, whereas Mom’s house would probably sell for less than fifty thousand. That might irritate her somewhat.”

Megan brushed the information aside. “Thank goodness the journalists don’t dig deep with their research. The truth is, some resort-development company offered Mom more than a million dollars for the Flying W land only a couple of months ago.”

Liam didn’t look impressed. “A million dollars for six thousand acres, as opposed to six point five million dollars for five thousand square feet of Avery’s penthouse. That would pretty much piss me off if I were Mom.”

She couldn’t let herself get caught up in anger over the money, Megan decided. There were so many other things her father had done that were more worthy of her rage.

“What do they look like?” Part of her wanted desperately to know. Another part of her wasn’t ready to give substance to her cloudy mental images of her father’s second wife and her half sister.

“Tall, blond, very photogenic,” Liam said. “Actually, the daughter has facial features that are a lot like Dad’s. The same wide-set eyes and high cheekbones.”

“Your features are a lot like Dad’s, too.”

“I know.” Liam shrugged. “Unfortunately, I can’t change my face short of plastic surgery and I’m not willing to grant Dad that much importance in my life.”

“I didn’t mean that. I meant if you and…Kate…both look like him—she must look like you. Especially since she’s tall.” Megan drew in an unsteady breath. “She probably looks more like your real sister than I do.”

“Maybe.” Liam gave her a quick, reassuring grin. “But she’s a stranger despite the biological link, whereas you’re the annoying kid that for some crazy reason I’ve loved since the moment Mom brought you home from the hospital. Looking mighty wrinkled and unappetizing if you must know, although Mom tried to make the best of you with a frilly hat and cute socks.”

She answered his smile. “And that’s your way of reassuring me? If so, I have to tell you, your charm offensive needs work.”

“Hey, I’m your brother. It’s the best I can do. Besides, think about what Kate is going through right now. She doesn’t even have a sister or brother to share her frustrations with. We’re the lucky ones.”

“I promise to feel sorry for her sometime soon. Right now, I can’t. I’m too busy alternating between feeling betrayed and totally, incredibly stupid.”

“You weren’t stupid,” Liam said. “Dad was criminally deceptive. Don’t take his crimes onto your shoulders.”

“I’m working on it.” Megan managed another smile although she could feel it wobble at the edges. “Let’s go inside. You must want to see Mom. She’ll be so glad to know you’re here—”

Liam put out his arm, preventing her from walking into the house. “Talk to me for a minute longer before we go into the house. Somehow it’s easier not to get eaten up with anger out here in the fresh air. How’s Mom holding up?”

Megan considered for a moment. “She broke down when she first heard about Dad’s other wife, but now I’m not sure what she’s feeling. You know how she tends to keep people at arm’s length by occupying herself with some chore or other? That’s what she’s doing right now. She won’t let me get close enough to offer real sympathy. Just scurries off insisting she has some vital new task that has to be attended to. Immediately, of course.”

“She’s always been the queen of busywork,” Liam said, his expression showing his frustration. “It’s very effective as a distancing mechanism and it’s driven me crazy for years.”

“Me, too.” Megan gave a rueful smile. “I wish she’d bend her steel spine a little and confess that she needs a friendly shoulder to cry on. Or at least admit that she’s angry as hell at Dad.”

Liam whistled to call Belle back from chasing a squirrel. “Has she? Admitted that she’s angry at Dad, I mean?”

“Not to me, that’s for sure. To herself? Who knows.”

“Is she in denial? Clinging to the hope that Dad isn’t dead?”

Megan shook her head. “She resisted the idea that he was dead for a couple of hours, but she’s definitely not in denial anymore. Every report that comes in from Miami seems a bit more conclusive. She spent the morning going through papers, sorting out relevant documents to establish that she’s Dad’s legal wife and we’re his legitimate children. Then this afternoon she started working on organizing a prayer service for Dad—”

“Right after she’d spent hours trying to prove she was actually married to him?” Liam’s voice rose incredulously. He shook his head. “Why am I surprised? It’s so typical of Mom to ignore the fact that the son of a bitch totally screwed her over.” His mouth tightened. “What she ought to be doing is celebrating the fact that he’s met the end he deserved.”

Megan flinched at the venom in her brother’s tone. “Nobody deserves to be murdered.”

“I’ve reminded myself of that several times since I got your message, but I can’t pretend I’m in deep mourning—”

“He was a great dad when we were growing up,” Megan protested.

“Yeah, I guess. But anytime I start to feel grief-stricken, I just take another look at the TV images of Avery and Kate. Somehow, that dries all the emotion right up.”

Liam’s rage at their father was palpable, and Megan could certainly understand why. Oddly, she wasn’t angry with their father, at least not yet. She had enjoyed growing up on the ranch and Ron had been a loving parent, despite his frequent absences. Did she have to discard hundreds of happy childhood memories because they were now tainted by the knowledge that her father had been a liar? It was going to take her a while to come to terms with the fact that her idyllic childhood on the ranch had been sustained only at the cost of a series of lies spanning more than twenty-five years.

Megan turned the conversation back to the subject of their mother, which was marginally easier to deal with than her own confused feelings about their father. “Despite the brave facade, I’m pretty sure Mom is devastated. But she’s told me in no uncertain terms that she can handle everything herself, including the arrangements for the prayer service. I suggested that maybe since we don’t have Dad…since we don’t have his body…we could use that as an excuse not to have any sort of memorial service.” She raised her shoulders in a frustrated gesture. “Mom told me to butt out.”

Liam gave a disbelieving shake of his head. “Has Mom considered that it might be a tad awkward to throw a prayer service for a man who hasn’t yet been officially declared dead? Not to mention the even more awkward fact that he was a bigamist when he was alive? What in the world does she expect our neighbors to say when they try to offer their condolences?”

Megan drew in a sharp breath. “I don’t believe she’s allowed herself to think through the practical realities. Part of the problem is that she didn’t sleep last night, so she’s exhausted, and of course you can guess how she reacted when I suggested taking a sleeping pill. The other problem is that she’s walled herself off so completely that she’s getting no input from anyone. She refuses to see anyone except Harry, and although she accepts that Dad is likely dead, she won’t talk about the fact that he seems to have been violently murdered, much less ask at least a few questions as to why. Most especially she won’t talk about the fact that he had another wife and daughter. Last night she cut me off every time I tried to discuss Dad’s bigamy. This morning she flat out told me not to mention those women in Chicago again. Almost as if they were the people to blame instead of Dad.”

“The past few hours have obviously been even rougher for you than I imagined.” Liam dumped his duffel bag onto the swing and put his arm around her. “The truth is, I haven’t been pulling my weight for the past several years. You’ve been left alone to deal with family crises far too often.”

“You’re giving me way too much credit,” Megan said. “I’ve been nowhere near as close to Mom and Dad as you’re assuming. Jackson Hole is only ninety miles from here, but it might as well be on another planet in terms of lifestyle.” She sent him a regretful sideways glance. “I had no more trouble burying myself in my work at the hotel than you did burying yourself in becoming Denver’s most successful divorce lawyer. Somehow, I’ve managed to kid myself for the last five years that if I kept my sights fixed on the goal of being promoted to assistant manager at the hotel, all the problems in my life would be resolved.”

And now that she’d spelled out what she’d been doing, she realized how pathetic her coping mechanism had been. She could have given an ostrich advanced lessons in head-burying, Megan reflected ruefully.

Liam was quiet for a moment. “I guess we’re the poster kids for our dysfunctional family—”

“I guess we are. But until I heard the sheriff say that Dad had another wife and daughter in Chicago, I never even realized we were dysfunctional. How dumb is that?”

“Not dumb necessarily. We were carefully conditioned by our parents—both of them, not just Dad. We were taught not to probe too deeply into the family dynamics and we obeyed our training. You have to keep reminding yourself that Dad’s the person who screwed up, not us.”

“Why do you think he didn’t just divorce Mom?” Megan asked. “As far as I’m concerned, that’s a bigger mystery than who killed him.”

“Who the hell knows? It can’t have been lust, can it? Not for twenty-five years.” Liam’s voice was harsh. He swiveled around on the porch steps and looked out over the land to the distant pasture where a few heifers grazed. “Do you think Mom knew about Dad’s bigamy before he died?” he asked.

“Good heavens, no! Absolutely not!” Megan was shocked by her brother’s question.

“Why are you so sure?” he asked. “The two of us grew up accepting what we were told about Dad traveling a lot on business and getting caught at the airport in snowstorms so he couldn’t make it home for Thanksgiving and so on and so on. But Mom was an adult. How could he have scammed her?”

“Well, he worked hard at it, I guess, and he was a really good liar—”

“Twenty-five years of lying and she never twigged? A quarter of a friggin’ century?”

Megan felt her stomach knot even tighter as she searched for an explanation. “When he was here, he always seemed so happy and committed. There was no reason for us to wonder if he might be leading a double life. Even now, knowing the truth, I have a hard time accepting that he was deceiving us.”

“He was definitely deceiving the two of us. But Mom? She’s a smart woman. How come she never noticed there was something totally screwed up about her marriage? I love Mom, but I can’t buy into that level of blindness.”

Megan threw the question back at him. “If she’d discovered the truth, why would she have stayed?”

“Maybe for some of the same fucked-up reasons Dad didn’t get a divorce.”

“Such as?”

“Follow the money,” Liam said cynically. “If there’s one lesson being a divorce lawyer drums home, it’s that when married couples behave weirdly, there’s always money involved. Money—or power that potentially leads right back to money.”

Megan rejected that idea at once. “Mom couldn’t care less about that. Good grief, Liam, I’ve never met anyone less motivated by money than Mom!”

“I agree that she doesn’t care about cash in the bank or the stock market, but what about the ranch? More than a third of the land that’s now part of the Flying W came from her family, remember. That’s over two thousand acres of her direct family heritage at stake.”

“True, but any divorce settlement would take that into account.”

Liam conceded her point. “Yes, Dad would have had a hard time selling the ranch without her consent, however expert his lawyer was in finding loopholes in marital property law. But the ranch has no practical value without money to run it.”

“Why do you say that?” Megan shot him a puzzled glance. “Flying W cattle are in huge demand.”

“Even so, the cattle operation barely breaks even,” Liam said flatly.

“Are you sure?”

“I’m positive. And with the threat of mad cow disease cutting into semen exports, the ranch is soaking up money. With a halfway competent divorce lawyer, Dad could have divvied up their assets so that Mom was left without a penny to run the cattle operation. Maybe she kept quiet and pretended not to know anything about his other wife so that she wouldn’t be forced to watch the ranch fall back into wilderness.”

Her mother loved the Flying W enough that she might have stayed in an unhappy marriage to protect the land, Megan conceded silently. But in a marriage where she knew her husband was married to another woman?

She shook her head, vehement in the strength of her denial. “Mom is way too honest to live in that sort of a sham marriage. She’d never condone bigamy, not for a moment, let alone for almost thirty years. I’m sure Mom had no clue. When Harry and I told her about Dad’s wife in Chicago, she was devastated. It took her a good fifteen minutes to get any of her protective barriers back in place even though the sheriff was with us and she clearly hated breaking down in front of him. She didn’t know Dad had another wife and daughter. I’d stake my life on it.”

Liam still looked doubtful. “I would never have believed a man could pull off that sort of deception without complicity from one wife or the other,” he said.

Megan thought for a moment. “Maybe the wife and daughter in Chicago knew.”

“Maybe. Although the same question applies. Why would they tolerate it?”

“I can’t imagine. But then, we don’t know the first thing about them, so we can’t possibly guess at their motives.”

“The bottom line is that like any other scam artist, Dad exploited the fact that we trusted him.” The bitterness was back in Liam’s voice. “I dare say he exploited the same thing with his other family.”

Megan looked at her brother. “Was that a random question you asked just now, or is there some specific reason why you thought Mom might have known about Dad’s bigamy?”

Liam remained silent a moment longer. “I knew,” he said at last. “I figured she must have known, too.”

“You knew?” Megan gripped the porch railing to steady herself. “You knew that Dad was a bigamist?” Her mouth was so dry that the words seemed to stick to her tongue. She felt betrayed all over again, first by her father and now by her brother. The betrayals were so huge that they annihilated all that was familiar, leaving her without signposts to guide her through the landscape of what had once been her relationship with her family.

“Yeah.” Liam gave a terse nod. “I’ve known for a few years.”

Megan’s world shattered and re-formed in a different pattern. So many things that had been difficult to understand about her brother suddenly became clear. His decision to leave the practice of criminal law and open his own firm specializing in divorce took on a whole new meaning. Talk about an in-your-face insult hurled at their father! And no wonder Liam had barely visited the ranch over the past few years. Obviously, he had been doing his best to avoid contact with his parents.

“How did you find out about Dad’s other family?” Megan demanded. “Have you seen them? Met them?”

“No, I’ve never met them.”

“Talk to me,” she said tersely. “Don’t retreat into one of your usual damn silences. Why did you keep quiet about something so incredibly important?”

“I was trying to protect Mom. And you.”

“Protect me?” Megan’s emotions had been in turmoil for forty-eight hours and Liam’s crazy excuse was enough to send anger boiling to the surface. “How the hell does it protect me if I’m allowed to go on believing a massive lie?”

She could see her brother retreat even further into himself as he always did when the emotional atmosphere heated up, but he did at least answer her. “You’re talking with the advantage of hindsight. I was making decisions and trying to guess the consequences for everyone—”

“In another month, I’ll be twenty-seven years old! For heaven’s sake, Liam, I’m not a kid sister you’re permanently obliged to protect. I’m an adult.”

“Sometimes habits die hard—”

“That’s a pretty pathetic excuse.”

“Cutting you out of the loop was an insulting decision, I see that now.” Liam gave an apologetic shrug. “I seem to have made a bunch of bad decisions over the past few years. But I was trying to do what seemed right. At least believe that….”

“You should have told me,” she repeated and turned away, still struggling with her anger.

He touched her on the shoulder. “I’m really sorry, Meg.”

She moved away from him. “You’ve been lying to me for years, at least by omission. That’s hard to forgive.”

“Don’t let this force a wedge between the two of us.” Liam’s voice had lost all trace of its usual ironic edge. “Dammit, that’s exactly what I was trying to avoid by remaining silent.”

“It’s bewildering—make that infuriating—to discover that two of the people I trusted most in the world were lying to me.” Megan shoved impatiently at her hair, feeling as if her entire body was misaligned and out of sorts. “I hate that you kept me in the dark.”

“I didn’t want to put you in a position where you would have been forced to lie to Mom. It was bad enough for me, and I only saw her a couple of times a year.”

“I wouldn’t have lied to Mom. I’d have told her the truth.”

“Yes, you probably would have done,” Liam said. “And that’s a big part of why I didn’t confide in you.”

“Why were you so determined to shield Mom from the truth? I don’t understand why you covered for Dad. Or why you felt Mom was in such great need of protection.”

“You think of Mom as a pillar of strength….”

“Yes, of course. Because she is.”

“She’s a pillar of strength here at the ranch, surrounded by everything she loves. Without the ranch, she’d wither away.”

Megan gave an impatient shake of her head. “You underestimate her. Just as you underestimated me.”

“Maybe. I wasn’t willing to put Mom’s happiness to the test and Dad exploited that vulnerability. Basically, he blackmailed me into keeping quiet. He warned me not to make him choose between his wives, because he swore that he’d choose Avery.”

Each new revelation seemed to bring a little more pain than the last. If Avery had been Ron Raven’s favorite wife, had Kate been his favorite daughter?

Megan pushed away the insidious jealousy. “How did you find out about his other family, anyway?”

“By chance. And even then, I practically had to be beaten over the head with the evidence before I put the pieces together.” Liam was visibly relieved to change the subject, even if only slightly. “Six years ago, I went to Atlanta for a business meeting. The night before I was due to fly home I happened to run into Dad at a political fund-raiser for one of the local senators—”

“In Atlanta?”

Liam nodded. “Avery’s family is from Georgia, and she was with him at the party. It was obvious that she and Dad knew each other well. It was equally obvious that he was desperate to shepherd her away before I could speak to her. She’s a beautiful woman, a few years younger than Mom, and I assumed they were having an affair.”

“Why didn’t you confront them before Dad could hustle her away?” Megan demanded.

“I was with the senior partner of the law firm where I worked in those days, and we were being hosted by one of our most important clients. I didn’t want to expose my own father in front of a client, so Dad managed to make his escape.”

“Did you confront him later?”

Liam nodded. “But only after some internal debate. Naturally, the truth never crossed my mind and I wasn’t sure if it was my place to shove my nose into my parents’ marriage by accusing Dad of having an affair. In the end, I made a special trip to Chicago, just to talk to him. He assured me the ‘affair’ was already over. That being caught by me at the fund-raiser had made him realize the risks he was running and how much he cherished his relationship with Mom. And so on and so on, through the laundry list of lies.”

“And you believed him?”

“At the time.” Liam’s smile was bitter. “You won’t be surprised to hear that Dad lied very convincingly. It was another two years before I found out that Avery was much more than a passing affair—that our father had actually gone through a formal marriage ceremony with her and that they had a daughter a few months younger than you.”

“How did you find out those important details?” Megan heard the shake in her own voice. She wasn’t sure if the tremor was caused by anger or something more complicated and even more painful.

“Again, by accident. I was sent unexpectedly to Chicago by my law firm. They needed me to take depositions for a criminal case we were working on. The witness I was sent to interview had offices in Oakbrook—“

“In Oakbrook?” Megan repeated. “That’s where the offices of Dad’s company are located.”

Liam gave a tight, angry smile. “Yeah, that’s what I thought, too. In fact, I was working only six or seven blocks away from where I believed R & R Investments was headquartered. So when I finished taking the depositions, I decided to drop in on Dad and invite him to dinner. We’d been estranged since the incident in Atlanta, and I figured it was time to get our relationship back on track.”

“I remember the offices,” Megan said. “Dad took us there the summer you graduated from high school. I was in fourth grade and I spent at least an hour making Xerox pictures of my hands on the copying machine. Then Mom and I went back for another visit years later when I was about to start college. Dad suggested that we might like to come to Chicago and do some shopping. He said it would be a good opportunity to meet his office staff and his partners.”

Liam laughed, the sound harsh. “You have to give the guy credit. He sure had outsized balls. And you met his staff, of course? And his partners?” Her brother’s questions were heavy with sarcasm.

“Well, yes, we did—”

“No, you didn’t,” Liam said, his fists clenching. “You met a bunch of actors. Both times. Both visits.”

“What?”

“I guarantee that every so-called employee you were introduced to during that visit with Mom was an out-of-work actor, hired for the day. Just like they were the time you went there with me. R & R Investment Partnership isn’t even the real name of Dad’s corporation.”

“What’s his company called?” Her dry, cracked lips had to be forced to shape the words.

“The company is called Raven Enterprises, and the head office isn’t in Oakbrook. It’s miles away, northwest of Chicago, in Schaumburg, near O’Hare airport.”

Megan shook her head, which did nothing to clear the fog of befuddlement. “Dad actually set up a fake company and a fake set of offices just to deceive us?” She sat down on the porch bench because her legs suddenly wouldn’t hold her up.

“He didn’t keep the fake company active on a permanent basis. Just long enough to convince us that we’d visited the headquarters of his company—the mythical R & R Investments.”

Megan rubbed her forehead although she’d given up hope of banishing her headache anytime soon. “But even if he hired actors to play his employees, how did he have access to office space?”

“That was easy. He owns the building in Oakbrook and leases it out. He invited us there when he was between tenants. He even had an automated phone service set up so that if Mom or any of us called there, we’d be greeted by a message supposedly from R & R Investments.”

A shiver crawled down Megan’s spine. She’d learned a lot that she didn’t like about her father over the past couple of days, most of it pretty major stuff. It was odd that these relatively trivial deceptions bothered her so much. “It makes his dealings with us seem so calculated. So petty and…cruel.”

Liam’s eyes glittered, dark with anger. “The extent of his lying takes some getting used to, doesn’t it? It was quite a shock for me when I arrived unannounced at the Oakbrook offices and discovered the employees of an import-export firm working at the address I thought was the headquarters of R & R Investments.”

“What in the world did you do? Did you assume there was some sort of honest mistake?”

“No. Not for an instant.” Liam shrugged. “I guess at some level I’d been suspicious of Dad for a while—”

“You suspected he was a bigamist?” Megan heard the incredulity in her voice.

“Not that, but I was pretty sure he was lying to us about something important. To be honest, I’d begun to worry that maybe his business wasn’t a legitimate legal enterprise.”

Megan drew in a quick, nervous breath. “Is it?”

“As far as I know, yes, and I’ve researched the whole setup with a fair degree of intensity. We don’t have to worry that Raven Enterprises is a front for organized crime. Which, under the circumstances, has to be considered a major plus.”

It was a measure of how far she’d traveled in her view of her father that Megan wasn’t entirely reassured. “I hope you’re right.”

“I have a lot of experience researching criminal business enterprises. I was a criminal lawyer, remember? Last time I ran a check, I can pretty much promise you that Dad’s business partnership was clean. He’s a shrewd, successful businessman.” Liam corrected himself. “He was a shrewd, successful businessman.”

Megan seized the hope that none of her father’s business dealings had taken place on the shady side of the law and clung to it. Given that Ron Raven had been murdered, it struck her as depressingly possible that he’d been involved in at least a few ventures that wouldn’t have passed muster with the Better Business Bureau. A criminal deal gone wrong struck her as one of the more likely causes for murder.

She drew in a shaky breath, reverting to their previous topic of conversation. “I don’t quite see how you made the leap from realizing that Dad had deceived us about his office address to the fact that he was a bigamist.”

“Obviously, from the moment I walked into the Oakbrook offices it became clear that Dad had been doing some heavy-duty lying. I decided not to approach him and ask for an explanation. I figured that was likely to trigger nothing but more lies. Instead I initiated a full-scale investigation, tackling the problem exactly as if he were a suspect in a criminal case.”

Megan grimaced. “Which he was, more or less.”

Liam nodded. “Yep, he was. Once I got serious, it was only a matter of hours before Dad’s entire web of deception started to unravel. For example, it took me two minutes with a Chicago phone book to discover that there was no company called R & R Investments listed, but that a company called Raven Enterprises was headquartered in Schaumburg. A phone call to Raven Enterprises was all it took to discover that Ronald Howatch Raven was the senior partner. Once I knew that, the rest of his lies began to disintegrate. Amazingly fast, in fact. Dad pulled off his twenty-five-year scam basically because none of us questioned him. A couple of inquires, though, and it was all over.”

“I guess he could never risk having us visit his real office because of his other wife and daughter. They probably dropped in all the time, given that they live right in Chicago.”

Liam nodded. “I’m sure that was one reason he needed to keep us away. The other is that Dad’s business partner, Paul Fairfax, is Avery’s older brother.”

“Oh, no. Oh my God.” Megan couldn’t say anything more. She gripped Belle’s collar so tightly that the dog yelped in protest. Her world, which had seemed totally ordinary only a couple of days earlier, now seemed like a horror movie made by a director who specialized in creating bizarre alternate realities.

“Yeah, that about sums up how I felt when I found out. Speechless, alternating with disbelieving curses. Of course, Dad was deceiving his business partner as well as you and me and Mom. He wanted to keep Paul Fairfax away from us as much as the other way around.”

Megan stared at the distant mountain range. For once, the grandeur of the Tetons provided no solace. “I’m starting to get so angry with him that it scares me.”

Liam turned toward the mountains, following her gaze. His expression became even more bleak. “Now you understand how I’ve felt for the past few years.”

Megan put her arms around Belle, controlling a sudden shiver. “Probably ninety percent of everything Dad ever told us was at least partly untrue.”

“And the other ten percent was a lie by implication.”

“I still don’t understand why you didn’t tell me what you’d found out. And Mom.” Megan drew in a shaky breath. “Good grief, Liam! How could you keep this from her? She absolutely deserved to be told.”

“When I finally learned the whole truth—especially that Dad had another daughter—I tried to force him to face up to his responsibilities and come clean to both his families.” Liam lifted his shoulders, the gesture more despairing than dismissive. “He was very good at applying emotional blackmail. Like I told you, he claimed that if he had to choose between Mom and his other wife, he’d choose Avery. And that he’d not only leave Mom penniless, he’d make sure that she couldn’t keep the ranch.”

The spitefulness of that threat was another blow to the loving image of her father that Megan had been clinging to despite the revelations of the past forty-eight hours. “Well, at least that’s one thing that’s worked out to Mom’s advantage.” She finally recognized the same note of bitterness in her voice that she’d heard earlier in her brother’s. “Since Dad is dead, presumably Mom is going to inherit the ranch.”

“I sure as hell hope so. Who knows how Dad may have written his will.” Liam swung away, his body rigid with tension. “Goddammit, I’m a lawyer and I haven’t the faintest idea what my mother’s financial and legal situation is right now. For all I know, Dad left every penny he owns to Avery Fairfax.”

“If he did, surely Mom has grounds to fight.”

“Absolutely. But we could be in and out of court for years, and in the meantime, the ranch would go belly up. If Dad’s left all his cash to Avery, it’s going to be a real fight to keep sufficient operating funds for the ranch to survive.”

Megan bit back the urge to scream imprecations at her dead father. She was so emotionally drained that she felt exhausted. “What a hideous mess. I’m so furious with Dad that I’m numb.”

“Trust me, however angry you are with him, you’re nowhere near as angry as I am with myself.”

“A little while ago you told me not to blame myself for Dad’s sins. Now I guess I’m saying the same thing to you. The truth is, he put you in an impossible situation and then manipulated your feelings for Mom in order to protect himself. Put the blame where it belongs, Liam. With Dad. Right slap bang with him.”