Genuine Lies

was very confused, very vulnerable. She worked the streets for a while, then went to Vegas. She worked a floor show and turned tricks. That was where she metDelrickio. She’d have been about twenty then, sharp as a tack. He saw potential and began using her as a hostess for his more important clients. They had an affair that went on for several years. Somewhere along the line she fell for him. She didn’t want to entertain his clients anymore. She wanted a straight job, and some sort of commitment from him.”
    “The lady showed real poor taste,” Frank said over a mouthful of sandwich. “And poor judgment. Delrickio kept her in Vegas, and when she caused a scene, he had one of his boys teach her a lesson. That quieted her down for a while. The way she tells it, she still had a thing for him, couldn’t let go. She found out he was boffing some other babe and she went after her, cut her up some. Delrickio liked her initiative, and strung her along.”
    “Then Eve came into the picture,” Paul put in. He stroked a hand up and down Julia’s arm, slowly, rhythmically, as if he were afraid to break contact. “This time it was Delrickio who fell hard. When Nina wouldn’t shake loose, he had some of his muscle try to convince her. Eve got wind of it, and since she’d just found out—through Priest—how far Delrickio would go, she went to see Nina herself. Nina was in the hospital, pretty racked up, and the whole thing spilled out of her.”
    “And when Eve found out she was Charlie’s daughter,” Julia said quietly, “she brought her here.”
    “That’s right.” Paul looked up at the portrait. “She gave Nina a fresh start, friendship, had Kenneth train her. And for all the years in between, Eve lied for her. When Eve decided she wanted to clean up the lies, that she wanted the truth to be part of her legacy, Nina panicked. Eve promised she would wait until she trusted you before she told you everything, but she felt Charlie deserved honesty. And she reasoned with Nina that she was a symbol of how far a woman could come.”
    “Nina couldn’t handle it,” Frank continued. “She liked the image she’d developed. The cool, competent career woman. She didn’t want all of her upper class contacts to know she’d been a whore for a Mafia don. She didn’t plan to kill Eve, not consciously, but when she found out she’d put thewhole story down on tape and was going to give it to you, she snapped. The rest is easy.”
    “She followed Eve down to the guest house,” Julia murmured. “They argued. She picked up the poker, hit her. Nina would have been scared then, but very organized. She’d have wiped her prints off the weapon, taken the keys—because she’d have remembered how I’d fought with Eve the night before.”
    “She heard you drive up,” Frank told her. “Saw you walk into the garden. That’s when she decided to throw suspicion on you. She got the hell out. She was the one who turned the security back on. It scared her when she found the main switch off. She figured it would complicate things, so she turned it on again and went back to work. Oh, and she made sure to call down to the kitchen, so Travers and the cook would know she was busy transcribing letters.”
    “But she didn’t know Drake had seen her.” Julia leaned back and closed her eyes.
    “He tried to blackmail her.” Frank shook his head as he built another towering sandwich. “She could afford the money, but not the loose end. With him dead and you heading for prison, she knew she was away free. Travers was so loyal to Eve that she would never have told anyone about Nina’s background—and she’d have no reason to.”
    “I heard them,” Julia remembered. “The night of Eve’s party I heard someone arguing. Delrickio and Nina. She was crying.”
    “Seeing him again didn’t do much for Nina’s state of mind,” Frank put in. “She still loved the sleaze. He told her she could prove it by getting Eve to stop the book. She must have really started to crack that night. I got to figure some of her mother’s poison was still swimming around in her system. When she couldn’t stop Eve one way, she stopped her another.”
    “It’s funny.” Julia said half to herself. “It all began with Charlie Gray. He gave Eve her start. His was the first story she told me. And now it ends with him.”
    “Don’t spill that sandwich on the way out, Frank,” Paul murmured, and gestured to the door.
    “What? Oh, yeah. The