White Lies (5 page)

“Must have been bad,” he said quietly.

“It was.”

He said nothing for a moment. “How did it happen that you were first on the scene?”

“I flew into Phoenix that evening to see Elizabeth. There was a mix-up with a message I had left for her. She thought I was due in the following morning. She was out attending a reception for the Stone Canyon Arts Academy when I arrived. I drove straight to her place. The front door was open. I walked in and found Brad’s body.”

He didn’t need his parasenses to pick up the lingering traces of shock and horror under the simple, straightforward words.

“Archer told me that the safe had been opened,” he said. “It certainly sounds like an interrupted burglary scenario.”

“Yes. But that hasn’t stopped Valerie from concluding that I was the killer. She thinks I was having an affair with Brad and that I murdered him because he refused to leave Elizabeth.”

“Elizabeth and McAllister were separated at the time. Any idea what he was doing at her house that evening?”

“No,” she said.

He did not want to ask but the hunter in him needed to know.

“Were you sleeping with McAllister?” he asked without inflection.

She shuddered. “Lord, no. There’s no way I could have been attracted to a man like that. Brad McAllister was a liar.”

His stomach clenched. She probably hated liars.

“Everyone lies at one time or another,” he said.Including me.

“Well, sure.” She sounded startlingly casual about that simple fact. “I don’t have a problem with most lies or the people who tell them, at least, not since I learned how to handle my talent. Heck, I tell lies myself sometimes. I’m pretty good at lying, actually. Maybe it goes with having a gift for detecting lies.”

He was dumbfounded. That did not happen very often, he reflected wryly. It took him a couple seconds to regroup.

“Let me get this straight,” he said. “You’re a human lie detector and you don’t mind that most people lie?”

She smiled slightly. “Let me put it this way. When you wake up one morning at the age of thirteen and discover that because of your newly developed parasenses you can tell that everyone around you, even the people you love, lie occasionally and that you are going to be driven crazy if you don’t get some perspective, you learn to get some perspective.”

He was reluctantly fascinated. “Just what kind of perspective do you have on the subject?”

“I take the Darwinian view. Lying is a universal talent. Everyone I’ve ever known can do it rather well. Most little kids start practicing the skill as soon as they master language.”

“So you figure there must be some evolutionary explanation, is that it?”

“I think so, yes,” she said, calmly serious and certain. “When you look at it objectively it seems obvious that the ability to lie is part of everyone’s kit of survival tools, a side effect of possessing language skills. There are a lot of situations in which the ability to lie is extremely useful. There are times when you might have to lie to protect yourself or someone else, for example.”

“Okay, I get that kind of lying,” he said.

“You might lie to an enemy in order to win a battle or a war. Or you might have to lie just to defend your personal privacy. People lie all the time to diffuse a tense social situation or to avoid hurting someone’s feelings or to calm someone who is frightened.”

“True.”

“The way I see it, if people couldn’t lie, they probably wouldn’t be able to live together in groups, at least not for very long or with any degree of sociability. And there you have the bottom line.”

“What bottom line?”

She spread her hands. “If humans could not lie, civilization as we know it would cease to exist.”

He whistled softly. “That’s an interesting perspective, all right. I admit I’ve never thought about the subject in those terms.”

“Probably because you’ve neverhad to think about it. Most people take the ability to lie for granted, whether or not they approve of it.”

“But not you.”

“I was forced to develop a slightly different perspective.” She paused. “What I’ve always found fascinating is that the vast majority of people, nonparasensitive and sensitive alike,think they know when someone else is lying. That’s true around the world. But the reality is that the research shows that most folks can detect a lie only slightly better than fifty percent of the time. They might as well flip a coin.”

“What about the experts? Cops and other law enforcement types?”

“According to the studies they aren’t much better at picking out liars, at least not in a controlled lab situation. The problem is that the cues people assume correlate with lying, such as avoiding eye contact or sweating, generally don’t work.”

“You can’t count on Pinocchio’s nose growing, huh?”

“It’s not a total myth,” she said. “Physical cues do exist but they vary a lot from one individual to another. If you know a person well, you’ve got a much better shot at picking up on a lie, but otherwise it’s a crapshoot. Like I said, lying is a natural human ability and we’re all probably a lot better at it than we want to admit.”

“You said that Brad McAllister’s lies were different.”

“Yes.”

“What did you mean?”

“Brad was a different kind of liar,” she said quietly. “He was ultraviolet.”

“Ultraviolet?”

“My private code for evil.”

“Heavy word.”

“It was the right one for Brad, trust me. The ability to lie is a very powerful tool. In and of itself, I consider it to be value-neutral, sort of like fire.”

“But like fire it can be turned into a weapon, is that it?”

“Exactly.” She folded her arms. “You can cook a meal with fire or burn down a house. In the hands of a person with evil intent, lying can be used to cause enormous damage.”

“What makes you think Brad McAllister was evil? From all accounts he was a devoted husband who stuck with Elizabeth through her nervous breakdown.”

She whipped around in the seat, suddenly fierce and furious. “That image was the biggest Brad McAllister lie of all. And it really pisses me off that it still stands, even though the bastard is dead.”

He absorbed that. “What did McAllister do to make you dislike him so much?”

“Brad didn’t stick by Elizabeth while she went through her nervous breakdown. Hecaused her breakdown. But Elizabeth and I have given up trying to make anyone, including Archer and Myra, believe that. As far as the whole town of Stone Canyon is concerned, Brad was a heroic choirboy right to the end.”

Jake gave that some thought. “Okay, what’s your theory of the murder?”

She hesitated and then sank slowly back into the seat. “There doesn’t seem to be any reason to doubt the cops’ version of events. Brad probably did interrupt a burglary in progress.”

“Now who’s lying? You don’t believe that for a minute, do you?”

She sighed. “No. But I don’t have a better answer, either.”

“Not even a tiny theory?”

“All I know is that Brad was evil. Evil people collect enemies. Maybe one of them tracked him down and killed him that night.”

“But you have no motive, aside from the fact that Brad was not a nice person.”

“Sometimes that’s enough.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Sometimes it is.”

There was a short silence.

“By the way,” Clare said after a moment. “We need to watch for the Indian School Road exit.”

“Why?”

“Because my motel is on a street off Indian School Road,” she said patiently.

“Thought you said your hotel was out at the airport.”

“I lied.”

The best that could be said about the Desert Dawn Motel was that it made no pretense of being anything other than what it was: a run-down, low-end, budget-class establishment from another era. The two-story structure was badly in need of a coat of paint. Rusted air conditioners thundered in the night.

Most of the landscaping had died back in the Jurassic. Only a few hardy barrel cacti and one wilted palm had survived. The letters in the red and yellow neon sign snapped and crackled and blinked annoyingly.

Clare felt a distinct pang of embarrassment when Jake eased the BMW into a parking space near the entrance to the shabby lobby. She suppressed it immediately.

Jake turned off the engine and regarded the limp palm tree that graced the cracked concrete sidewalk.

“You know,” he said, “if you had mentioned that you were coming into town this evening the Glazebrook travel department would have been happy to make reservations for you at a slightly more upscale hotel. I’ll bet they could have found you something where the bathroom isn’t down the hall.”

“There’s a bathroom in my room, thank you very much.” She unclasped the seat belt and opened the door.

Jake got out and took her wet clothes out of the trunk. Together they walked toward the lobby.

“Mind telling me why you chose this place?” he asked politely.

“Maybe you didn’t know that I was fired from my job six months ago. I haven’t had much luck finding a new position. So I’m on a strict budget these days.”

“Your father is one of the wealthiest men in the state,” he pointed out mildly.

“I don’t consider Archer Glazebrook to be my father in anything but the biological sense.”

“In other words, you’re too proud to take any money from him.” He shook his head, amused. “The two of you sure have a lot in common.”

He pushed open the grimy glass door. Clare went past him into the postage stamp–sized lobby.

The desk clerk stared at Clare, taking in the sight of the bathrobe and towel turban.

“You okay, Miss Lancaster?” he asked uneasily.

“Late night swim,” Clare said.

“I’m going to see Miss Lancaster to her room,” Jake said.

The clerk sized him up and then shrugged. “Sure. Whatever. Just keep it quiet, will you? There’s a couple from the Midwest in the room next door.”

Clare frowned. “What are you talking about? Why should I care if there are people next door?”

The clerk rolled his eyes.

Jake grabbed her arm and hauled her toward the stairs.

“What’s going on here?” Clare asked, bewildered. “Am I missing something?”

Jake waited until they reached the next floor and started down the dingy hall before answering.

“The guy at the desk thinks you’re a call girl who is using this motel to entertain clients.”

“You being the client?”

“Yes.”

“I suppose the bathrobe gives a poor impression.”

She stopped in front of room 210. Jake took the key from her and inserted it into the lock.

The door to room 208 opened. A middle-aged woman with a helmet of graying curls peered disapprovingly through the crack.

Jake nodded politely. “Evening, ma’am.”

The woman slammed the door shut. Jake heard voices through the walls. The door opened again. This time a balding, overweight man dressed in a pair of plaid Bermuda shorts and an aging white T-shirt looked out. He stared hard at Clare through the opening.

Clare inclined her head. “Nice night, isn’t it?”

The man shut the door without speaking. Jake heard the loud snick of the dead bolt sliding into place.

“I don’t think the night clerk is the only one around here who is wondering about your career path,” he said.

“Little do they know that I don’t even have a career at the moment.”

Jake opened the door.

The interior of the small room was as unprepossessing as the exterior. At the far end cheap sliding glass doors opened onto a tiny balcony that overlooked a small pool. Clare switched on the weak overhead light.

Jake glanced at the single, roll-aboard suitcase sitting on the stand.

“Doesn’t look like you packed for an extended stay,” he said.

“I’ll give Archer one day to explain why he dragged me down here. As long as I’m in town, I’ll spend some time with Elizabeth. But after that I have no reason to hang around.”

“Going back home to San Francisco?”

“I’m job hunting. Six months of unemployment has put a major dent in my savings. I don’t want to have to start borrowing from my mother and my aunt. I need to find work.”

He nodded. “Probably for the best.”

He was obviously looking forward to getting rid of her. Why was that depressing?

“Thanks for the ride,” she said. “It has been an interesting evening, to say the least.”

“My dates say that a lot.”

She smiled. “In case you didn’t notice, this wasn’t a date. You were just doing your job. Taking care of problems for Archer Glazebrook.”

She closed the door very gently but very firmly in his face.

Jake drove back to Stone Canyon and parked in the garage of the house he rented. He opened the trunk of the BMW, took out the computer that was never far from his side and went indoors.

He had intended to spend the night prowling through a couple more homes belonging to members of the Glazebrooks’ circle of acquaintances, searching for some indication of what he had been sent here to find. It was how he had spent most of the other nights in Stone Canyon. Thus far he had managed to rummage through the closets, drawers and wall safes of twelve residences.

But the arrival of Clare Lancaster had changed his plans for the evening. Ever since his first sight of her, his hunting senses had been on high alert. She was important. He could feel it. And not just because he wanted to take her to bed, although that was pretty damn important, too.

In the kitchen he flipped on a light and set the thin laptop on the table. He poured himself a glass of scotch, sat down and powered up the computer.

He did not want any more surprises.

The heavily encrypted files on the Glazebrook family that had been given to him contained only sketchy information on Clare Lancaster. He reviewed it quickly.

Clare came from long lines of registered Society members on both sides of her family. There was an asterisk next to her Jones Scale number. It meant that, although she had been assigned a ten, her particular type of sensitivity was so rare that the researchers did not have enough examples to guarantee that the rating was accurate.

There was a similar asterisk next to the number ten on his para profile, too.