Sleight Malice (31 page)

Say hello
back to George for me. Is he the one showing you the ropes?

How’s work?
Are you busy? Any more trips to Melbourne on the cards?

I have a
funny story to tell you about locking myself out the other night, but it can
wait until I’m talking with you. Some things are better said over the phone
:-).

Still no
news on Laura or Ryan, but I’m hoping to hear from an old boss of Laura’s from
Perth soon. With any luck, he’ll be able to give me a lead on her family. It
would be something at least. It’s the not knowing that’s the hardest.

The police
still haven’t found any link to the dead man, Jeremy Stillson. I thought I
might find something on the Internet about him, but I haven’t come across
anything yet. I’ll keep looking. In the meantime, if you think of anything, no
matter how small, please call me. I don’t care if you think it’s stupid or not.

Tell Mum
I’ll phone her over the weekend.

xx

Desley

The phone rang as she pressed Send, the email disappearing from her
screen.

“Hi, gorgeous.”

Desley felt her cheeks redden. “Hi to you, too,” she said, her voice
going to goo like some lovesick teenager. She couldn’t help it.

“Two things. First, you’ll be happy to know that Paul Escott has
been released without charge. He’s had to surrender his passport, though.”

Her face cooled. “So, what does that mean?”

“It means they’re not quite as convinced of his innocence as you are
– the passport is just insurance against him fleeing the country. Under his own
name, at least.”

“Can he be arrested again?”

“If more evidence comes to light incriminating him, then yes.”

She breathed out. “Unless he’s involved – and I don’t think he is –
that’s not going to happen. Helen will be so relieved.”
And so am I
, she
thought. If her advice had landed an innocent man behind bars, she wouldn’t
have been able to live with herself. “All’s well that ends well. What was the
other thing?”

“Are you doing anything tonight?” She heard the smile in his voice.

“Let me check my calendar.” She counted to ten. “Looks like I might
have a free evening. What did you have in mind? Opera? Piano concerto?”

“Um…”

Desley laughed. “Only joking. They’re not really my scene.”

“Phew! I didn’t think so, but you had me worried there for a
minute.”

“No, my tastes don’t run to the highbrow. I’m a simple girl: what
you see is what you get.”

“I like what I see – a lot,” he said, his voice low and husky. “And
I would like to see more of the girl tonight.”

She swallowed. Hard.

“How does dinner at the Supper Club sound?”

Dark. Intimate. Seductive. Perfect.
“It
sounds…” A flash on her monitor distracted her. She leaned forward. “Ted
Ansell’s just replied to my email.”

“That’s sooner than we expected,” he said, his voice all
business-like again. “What’s he say?”

She double-clicked on the header-line, opening the email in a new
window. “He doesn’t know a Laura Noble. He’s definite no one by that name ever
worked at MSRH Consulting while he was there. How can that be?”

“Maybe it’s the wrong Ansell?”

She continued reading. “No, this guy worked at MSRH during the
period Laura’s résumé said she worked there.”

“Surely Coyne Systems would have checked out her references before
hiring her.”

“You would think so, wouldn’t you? But if MSRH were no longer in
business then they wouldn’t have been able to. They certainly wouldn’t have
gone to the trouble of tracking down her referee like we have. There’s a
written reference in the file – they probably decided that was enough.” She was
already bending down to the bottom drawer for the file. “I’ll scan it and email
him a copy and see if that jogs his memory.”

“Good idea. Maybe all that thin air in the Himalayas has affected
his brain cells.”

Switching the phone to hands-free, she flicked through Laura’s
personnel file until she found the MSRH Consulting letterhead, a blue illegible
signature below the typed reference. She unlatched the file clips and removed
the page, placing it facedown on the scanner bed. “I’ll send a photo of Laura
as well,” she said, already scrolling through her digital photos. “She’s not
easily forgotten.”

“Keep me posted—”

Scan complete.

“Okay…” she said, her fingers flying across the keyboard. She didn’t
know when Ted Ansell would be in front of a computer again, but if she were
lucky, her email had been one of the first he had replied to and he was still
there, slogging away through a backlog of other unanswered messages. “Bye—”

“Wait! You didn’t give me an answer.”

Answer?
She paused a moment too long.

“The Supper Club?”

“Sorry, Fergus.” She took a breath. “Sounds great. I just want to
get this email off in the hope of catching Ted Ansell before he takes off into
the mountains again.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to come and work for me? It comes with
perks.”

“Hmmn?” She attached the oldest close-up photo of Laura she could
find to her reply email. Not that her best friend had ever aged. “Sorry, what
was that?”

Fergus chuckled. “Bye, gorgeous.”

“I’ll give—” The call disconnected.

It wasn’t until the email and its attachments had disappeared from
her Outbox that Desley relaxed. Her reply was in the lap of the cyber gods. All
she could do was pray there weren’t any server outages or delays and that her
message had landed in his Inbox, whether he was there or not.

She swiveled in her chair, turning her back on the computer, and
stretched her arms above her head. The last time she had experienced the smoky
romance of the Melbourne Supper Club she had been with Trent, though she
daren’t tell Fergus that. Or should she? She closed her eyes, the haze and
heady aroma of cigar smoke, the sensual feel of the leather, the smooth jazz,
all coming back to her in a rush. She licked her lips, the dryness of a martini
lingering in her memory.

From behind her, she heard the ping of an incoming email. Spinning
her chair around, she used the edge of the desk to haul herself back to the
keyboard. Brandon. She smiled, her disappointment at it not being the expected
reply from Ted Ansell fleeting. Didn’t her brother have any work to do?

hi me again how did u find lauras old boss pls be careful sis too
dangerous stillson man alreday dead you next better leave to cops love b

She read it through once, mentally punctuating and correcting the
text, and then read it through again. What did he mean she was next? Frowning,
she picked up the phone and called his mobile. Voicemail. She tried the
garage’s number next, but it been switched over to the after hours service. She
reread it, wondering if she had misinterpreted the intent, read something into
it that wasn’t there.

Before she could give it any more thought, the incoming email alert
window popped up in the middle of the screen:
New mail has arrived. Would
you like to read it now?

She hesitated, almost afraid to open it. What if it was a reply from
Ted Ansell saying he had never set eyes on the woman in the photo before, and
that the employment reference was a fake, the signature forged? Where would
that leave them? Holding her breath, she clicked Yes.

Dear Desley

My apologies. I did indeed have the pleasure of working with the
young lady in the photo you sent me, but I hadn’t realized she had changed her
name. The person you refer to as Laura Noble, I knew as Nicole Moore. And
though the name has been altered, the reference is legitimate and I would have
no hesitation in recommending her for any position she might apply for.

Unfortunately, I know little of her family or private life. I
believe she has a brother, but I couldn’t even tell you his name.

Good luck with your search. When you do track down Nicole/Laura
please be sure to pass on my kindest regards.

Best wishes

Ted Ansell

Fergus grabbed Desley’s fingers,
stopping her from tying them into knots. “What is it? What’s happened?”

She gazed up at him, her gorgeous hazel eyes haunted, her face
beyond pale. “Laura isn’t who I thought she was.”

“What do you mean?” he asked, enfolding her in his arms. A backward
kick closed the front door.

“I mean Laura Noble isn’t her real name.”

“Come again.”

He felt her chest heave. “If Ted Ansell is to be believed, the
person he wrote that reference for and who he identified from the photo is
Nicole Moore.”

“Are you serious? Nicole as in Ryan Moore’s absent sister?”

She pushed away from him. “Unless, there are two Nicole Moores. You
can read the email for yourself.”

He followed her, his mind whirling. Siblings living together as man
and wife? Had Desley’s friend changed her name to cover up an incestuous
relationship with her own brother? What other answer could there be?

Desley brought up the email from Ted Ansell on the screen. He read
it over her shoulder, shaking his head in disbelief. Of all the possible
scenarios he could have come up with, this wasn’t one of them. “Well, it
certainly explains why they would be so secretive about their pasts. The mind
boggles.”

She stood and paced back and forward between the desk and window.
“Tell me about it. I haven’t been able to think of anything else.”

He understood why. It must have come as a real shock to find out
that the woman she had thought of as her best friend, wasn’t that woman at all.
Let alone finding out that Laura – or Nicole or whoever she was – had been
shacked up with her own brother. The mere thought of it made Fergus’s skin
crawl. “This throws a whole new light on everything. I take it you haven’t told
Grant or Kim about this development yet.”

“I’m still trying to come to grips with what it all means myself,”
she said, the heel of her hand pressed to her forehead, her eyes scrunched.

“Any theories yet?”

She chuckled. “Not any worth repeating.”

“Try me.” He had his own ideas, but he wanted to hear her thoughts
first.

“Promise you won’t laugh?”

He crossed his heart.

Rewarding him with a small smile, she sunk back down on her office
chair. “Remember this is straight off the top of my head. I haven’t thought it
through fully yet.”

He nodded.

She looked at him, gnawing her bottom lip. “What do you make of it?”

“I asked first.”

“Yes, but you know more about these things.”

“What things are we talking about? Incest? Depravity? Secrets?
Insights into the human psyche? They’re not exactly my area of expertise.”

“Don’t they teach you that stuff at the police academy?”

He cocked his head to the side and waited.

She sighed. “All right, here goes. For whatever reason – and I can’t
even begin to understand this – Laura, or rather Nicole, and Ryan became
intimate and somewhere along the line, fell in love. Even though they knew it
was wrong, they couldn’t deny their feelings and deciding they couldn’t bear to
be parted, came up with a plot to start life afresh where no one knew either
one of them. Of course for that to work, one of them had to change their name.”
She paused. “With me so far?”

Fergus nodded.

“Good, because I’m not. Okay, so they decide Nicole should be the
one to change her name and even go to the trouble of filing a final tax return
for her, telling everybody she’s gone abroad. Everything goes along according
to plan until someone from their past shows up…”

“Jeremy Stillson,” he said, filling in the blank.

“Right. We already know this Stillson guy has no scruples. He
threatens to reveal their sordid secret and they panic. Accidental or
otherwise, Stillson dies – again.” She raised her eyebrows. “They set fire to
the house, hoping to destroy any evidence and flee in Ryan’s Nissan, which is
later stolen. See, I told you I had an overactive imagination.”

“Not at all. We’re on the same track. A few holes, but I’m sure
Grant and his team will be able to fill them. Where do you think Laura…” He
corrected himself. “…Nicole and Ryan are now?”

Desley spread her hands in an open shrug. “God knows. As far away as
possible, I would imagine. Maybe not even in the country.”