Born to Die - Lisa Jackson [135]
“You don’t know her?”
“Of course I don’t. Why would I? The only reason I know about her is that my daughter Clarissa reads those tabloids and the like.”
“She was born in Helena.”
“All right.”
She felt herself falter inside a little. Could she be mistaken? He seemed genuinely at a loss. “Did you know Jocelyn Wallis?”
“Jocelyn who? I have no idea what you’re talking about!” Then something sparked. “Wait a minute. I read something about a woman who died recently. She fell while jogging?”
“Or was pushed. I don’t know the details,” Kacey admitted. “Only that her death is being investigated, maybe caused by foul play.”
“What does this have to do with me?”
“It’s because of the resemblance. See . . .” She pulled the pictures of the two women she’d mentioned from her briefcase and slid them across the desk, faceup. “These two, and Elle Alexander, who was a patient of mine.” She found Elle’s photo and slid it across as well. “I guess Mom didn’t mention this when she called?”
“She said that you were on some mission, but I was busy, didn’t pay attention to her ramblings.”
“Maybe you should have.”
“I assumed she meant you were looking for me to come out and claim you.”
“That’s not it at all.”
“I don’t know these women. Never met any of them.”
“I think they could be related to me.”
“What? These women?” He looked down at the photos again. “Through me?” He let out a short bark of a laugh, as if he expected some dark, macabre punch line. His skin reddened. “Is this some kind of shakedown?”
But there was something he wasn’t saying. She saw it in his eyes, a lie he was trying to disguise. There was more here; she just wasn’t sure what.
“Are you trying to punish me?” he demanded.
“Punish you.”
“For not acknowledging you like I did with Robert.” He said it as if it was a cold, hard fact, one they both understood.
Kacey blinked. “Who’s Robert?”
“You know.”
“I don’t.”
They stared at each other, and he seemed to be sizing her up again before he clarified, “My son? Robert Lindley? That’s what this is really about, right?”
A chill, as cold as the bottom of the sea, settled at the base of her spine. What the devil was he talking about?
When she didn’t respond, he prodded, “Janet’s boy.”
“I’m sorry. Who’s Janet?”
His lips twisted a bit. “You didn’t do all of your homework, did you? Robert’s a few years older than you, and I . . . claimed him, once Janet and her husband split up.”
How had she missed this?
“He works for the company, too, like the others. He’s in research and development. Great technical mind.”
So there was another half sibling in the mix. Her life as an only child seemed suddenly distant.
“When your mother called, I thought you wanted in, to be a part of the family, get whatever it is you think is your fair share of the company.”
Kacey snapped back. “Trust me, I’m not here about your company. I’m here for these women,” she said, motioning toward the pictures on his desk. “What you’re telling me is that you’re not their father. You’re not related to any of them.”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” he responded emphatically, but a guarded look had slipped across his face, a trace of quickly hidden deceit. Though he stared at her as if she’d gone stark raving mad, there was something more, something darker in his gaze. “I don’t know what you think you know.”
Though he readily claimed a son and now her as his children, he wouldn’t associate himself with the women who’d been killed. As if he didn’t believe he was related to them.
Had she been mistaken? He didn’t have any brothers; she’d checked. And his only other sibling had been a sister who had died in her twenties, so if not him . . . then ... ?
She glanced to the medical diplomas on his wall, noticed that he’d graduated forty years earlier.
And then, like a ton of bricks, it hit her, the elusive notion that had been nagging at her since last night’s nightmare: he didn’t know about these women, because he didn’t realize he might have fathered them.
What had JC, her husband, bragged about to her years before?
“I should have been a sperm donor, like