“We need to talk about the ruby,” she said.
“You want to talk about where you hid it, after you stole those gems seven years ago?”
“I didn’t steal the gems,” she said.
“Dad may go to jail, but I know somehow, you’re at the bottom of this. So take your story somewhere else. I’m not buying.”
I had a pregnant liar to deal with. A public image that was going to take the beating of a lifetime if Jim Blackwell had his way.
“It’s not a story, I. I just…is it so wrong to want to see you? To want someone in this family to know the truth?”
It had been twenty years since Vanessa had dropped me, along with my brother, Tyler and sister, Savannah, off with our grandmother, Margot. Ten years since she’d resurfaced to bribe me into lying for her on the stand. And now, suddenly, she thought she deserved a chance to tell her side of the story?
“This family wouldn’t know the truth if we sat on it,” I snapped. I turned to leave, walking up the slight hill toward the end of the alley.
“I didn’t steal the gems and I didn’t plant them in the house. You’re right. I was looking for them months ago, but I didn’t find them. But now that the diamond has surfaced, everyone is going to come looking for that ruby and it could get ugly. For all of us. If they’re not at The Manor, there’s a chance Margot has them on her.”
“Margot?”
“She could be in danger, Carter.”
“I can’t believe this,” I sighed. “You’re trying to convince me you care? About us? Or someone else getting their hands on the ruby.”
“Do you think I would be here if I wasn’t worried? If I wasn’t serious?”
“Yes.”
She sighed, exasperated. “I paid that girl a thousand dollars, Carter.”
Right. Money. Not something Mom parted ways with easily.
Vanessa opened her mouth, but from the end of the alley, I heard Jim Blackwell’s voice talking to Amanda.
“I don’t know where he is,” Amanda was saying, very loud.
“You know,” Jim said, “for a PR gal, you’re a shit liar.”
“Monday night,” I said to Vanessa, resigning myself to the fact that I needed to manage my family, because out of my control, they could ruin everything. “At 8 p.m., outside of my office. Anyone asks who you are, you lie.”
She nodded and stepped into the shadows, the faint click of her heels against the asphalt fading away as Jim Blackwell appeared at the top of the alley.
“I never pegged you as the deadbeat daddy type,” Jim said, his face awash with victory. “Not very nice of you.”
I stalked up the alley, wishing, truly wishing that my job wasn’t so important to me so I could just haul off and punch Jim in his fat mouth. But the work I did, the work I wanted to do, it all mattered.
“No comment,” was all I said as I stomped by. “And I’ll have your job if even one word of this is blown out of proportion.”
“Come on, now, Carter. I’m a newsman, I only want to tell the truth. I just don’t understand why you have such a problem telling it.”
I ignored him and continued to my car, where a very stressed Amanda stood.
“What?” I barked, trying to look past her for a glimpse of the lying pregnant elf. The backseat was empty. “Amanda?”
“She’s gone,” Amanda said. “The girl. She just vanished.”
JIM
“This really happened?” Tom Gilbert asked, coming to perch his skinny butt on the corner of my desk. Tom was to the City Desk what lunch ladies were to playground bullies—ineffective and overzealous. In a word, useless.
“Of course it happened,” I said, not looking up from my five hundred words about Carter O’Neill’s testimony for his mother ten years ago.
I’d already handed in my story about Carter O’Neill’s love child.
Honestly, this might be one of the best days of my life.
“Jim?”
“You’ve got a picture,” I said, rolling away from the keyboard to face my boss. “It happened. I’ve got two old ladies saying they had no idea Zoe Madison was having a thing with the mayor pro tem. What more do you want?”
“News,” Tom said, smacking the copy against his knee.
“Carter O’Neill, who is going to announce his candidacy for mayor any minute, knocks a girl up and walks away?” I laughed. “That’s not news?”
“I don’t think it’s true,” Tom said and I sat up.
“You accusing me of lying?”
“No, Jim,” Tom sighed. “Christ, you’re so defensive I can barely talk to you. What I’m saying is I don’t think it’s a story. The Mayor Pro Tem office is going to issue a statement saying O’Neill’s never even heard of this girl, and I don’t want to have to print a retraction in two days for a story tomorrow.”
“That might not happen, Tom.” You lily-livered, soft-handed coward, I thought. “And right now, you’ve got a public official involved in some pretty crummy stuff. I know it’s been awhile since you were out there, but that is news. The girl’s broke—a dance teacher or something—she has no insurance, and she just accused Golden Boy Carter O’Neill of knocking her up. It’s gonna be all over the region, it’s so good.”