Chapter Thirty-Two Her

Chapter Thirty-Two Her

Present Day

Detective Sessions looked the exact opposite of cocky now. His mouth had drawn into a tight, thin line. His swagger was long

gone.

He’d closed the door on Mom, trapping her inside the suffocating space, and ushered Elias and me into the windowless room

next door. Detective Sessions barely waited until we sat down before launching into the jumble of thoughts in his head. “There’s

no way that woman is your mother. She’s far too young. I might believe sister but not mother.”

The groan escaped before I could stop it. “Please don’t say that to her.”

The detective kept frowning. “You’re almost the same age.”

He thought she’d told the truth about her age. Adorable. He better up his game or Mom would have him running in circles. That

might be interesting to watch if it didn’t mean I also had to deal with her.

No matter how good Mom looked, she was never as young as she claimed to be. She hadn’t lived an easy life but none of the strife or deceit showed on her face. She hid her underlying deviousness and murky morality behind big brown eyes and a body toned from years of dancing. Pretty with a bright smile and killer legs, she could pass for far younger. And she did. All the time.

The detective opened a file in front of him. He’d probably been carrying it earlier, but I’d missed it until now. “I’ve seen

her driver’s license and the birth date on it makes her thirty-nine. You’re twenty-seven. You’re saying she gave birth to

you when she was twelve?”

“It sounds like Mom accidentally wrote the wrong birth date down. Again.” She’d been knocking off time every birthday over the last decade. In another few

years Mom would claim to be younger than I was and have the fake documents to prove it.

“You’re saying she lied when she got her license?”

I almost felt sorry for the detective for moving into Lizzy’s orbit.

“I’m betting she’ll be stunned—positively shocked—that the wrong birth date is on there.” More like stunned she got caught.

“Then she’ll explain that some sort of operator or computer error must have caused the problem and she missed it.”

She loved to mess with people. She got off on being noticed and hit her stride whenever anyone praised her hotness. She reeled

men in and played flirty games until they showered her with gifts and money.

She wasn’t a grifter. She was more of a serial girlfriend and sometime wife who lavished attention on the men she targeted

to get what she wanted in return. Dating was nothing more to her than an acceptable way to obtain goods—meals, televisions,

apartments, checks—in exchange for sex.

I judged her for many things but not that. People were too precious about sex. She recognized it as a persuasive tool and used it. She knew her talents and capitalized on them, which I admired. If a man had done the same thing he’d be viewed as a player. Why should Mom be held to a different standard? She insisted on being paid. What other people saw as relationships, she saw as work, and she’d been working hard for a long time.

“My mom was sixteen when she had me. She’s forty-three now, though she tries to get away with saying thirty-five. If she used

a date that made her thirty-nine, that actually shows emotional growth on her part.” More likely, she’d lied about her age

so often that she forgot what it actually was.

Elias held up both hands, which strangely enough stopped the whirl of conversation. “Let’s start over.”

The detective read from the file. “Her name is Elizabeth Jenkins.”

“She goes by Lizzy.”

“What about the Jenkins part?” Elias asked.

A fair question since Mom and I didn’t share the same last name. She borrowed mine, the one I had before my marriage to Richmond—Lance—years

ago from a male friend. The name on my birth certificate was one she’d made up and abandoned before I was in elementary school.

“Jenkins comes from husband number four.”

“She really does have more than one dead former husband?” Elias sounded fascinated by the idea.

I knew Richmond had tried to investigate my past to use it against me. Little did he know, the clueless bastard. He didn’t

get far because I’d lived in a patchwork of places and spent years trying not to create a paper trail.

My mom found me anyway.

“One husband was killed as part of a botched robbery when I was ten.” That was a mom-created story and I never strayed from it. “Another died of a heart attack during sex with Mom. I was a teenager when that horror happened. One died after they split up. A car accident that my mom is convinced was staged by the guy’s kids from his first wife in order to get his money. The last one, Arthur Jenkins, is very much alive, or he was a few weeks ago.”

Elias nodded. “Which one is your father?”

I fought to keep my tone even. “None of them.”

The detective took over again. “You met with Ms. Jenkins on at least—”

“Lizzy.” Thinking of Mom as Ms. Jenkins was... well, I couldn’t. She’d always been Lizzy in my head. She preferred I called

her that so no one would think she had a twenty-seven-year-old kid. I called her Mom mostly out of spite.

The detective flipped through the pages in front of him. “We’ve seen the security video from the diner where you were at the

time of Richmond’s murder. You met this woman at the same location several times, in secret and away from your marital home.”

Funny how the detective skipped over the main point. “We met in public . That’s the exact opposite of in secret .”

Elias cleared his throat. I took the noise as a warning to tread carefully.

“You gave her six thousand dollars in cash a week before Richmond was killed.” The detective dropped that morsel as if the

two items were related.

The timing did suck. “She told me on an earlier diner meetup her car died. She needed a new one for work.”

“Where does she work?” Elias asked.

“A casino in Atlantic City.” I couldn’t remember the name be cause she’d switched jobs several times over the last two years. I kept an eye on her, usually from afar, to prevent her from sneaking up on me, though that strategy had failed more than once.

Detective Sessions made a humming sound. “Why did she meet you at the diner?”

“First, to ask for money. Then another time to collect it.” No need to lie. That was the truth... mostly. “And that tells

you all you need to know about my mom.”

The detective didn’t appear convinced. “You could have invited her to your house.”

Oh, hell no. “Yeah, Richmond would have loved that.”

“Had she met him?” The detective didn’t wait for an answer. “Was she at your wedding? Has she been to your house?”

“No to all of those.”

“I’m guessing I’m going to have trouble finding anyone in town who knows her.”

I hoped that was true. “We aren’t close.”

“Yet you handed her thousands of dollars.”

Because that’s how emotional blackmail worked. Lizzy excelled in that area. “Do you have a mother, Detective?”

He leaned back in his chair and watched me. A minute passed before he treated us to his insight. “This is all very convenient,

Mrs. Dougherty.”

Talk about missing the point. “I assure you, Detective, there’s nothing convenient about Lizzy Jenkins.”

The questioning continued for another fifteen minutes. Elias batted away every insinuation and accusation. He also pointed out that the diner’s security video confirmed my location at the time of the murder and that a mother and a daughter sharing a few meals wasn’t a crime. The detective’s theory about Mom being my paid accomplice or contract killer, or whatever he thought, unraveled until Elias finally put an end to all the fishing.

After quick introductions between Mom and Elias and a bit of mindless small talk, Elias went to get the car, leaving me standing

with Mom outside the police station. Just the two of us. A combination that never went well for me.

“You had one job, Addison.” She smiled at the people who walked by, but her voice came out in a harsh whisper. “I don’t understand

how you could have messed this up so badly.”

I didn’t respond because she didn’t want me to. This was the Lizzy Jenkins show, and my role was to act like an obedient,

non-speaking side character.

She shook her head. “You’re lucky I’m here to fix this Richmond mess.”

Yeah, lucky. “I didn’t kill him.”

She snorted. “Even I don’t believe that.”