Whispers and Lies
PRAISE FOR THE POWERFUL NOVELS OF
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR
JOY FIELDING
WHISPERS AND LIES
“[A] page-turner … [with] an ending worthy of Hitchcock.… Once again, the bestselling author tests the complex ties that bind friends and family, and keeps readers wondering when those same ties might turn deadly.… Those familiar with Patricia Highsmith’s particular brand of sinister storytelling will recognize the mayhem Fielding so cunningly unleashes.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Fielding delivers a plot turn so surprising that all previous events are thrown into question. The author keeps the tension high and the pages turning, creating a chillingly paranoid atmosphere.”
—Booklist
“Fielding does a very good job in building her story to a totally unexpected denouement.”
—Sun-Sentinel (Ft. Lauderdale, FL)
GRAND AVENUE
“It’s hard to sit down and read a few pages of one of [Fielding’s] novels and not want to read the rest. Right now.”
—The Knoxville News-Sentinel (TN)
“Riveting? You bet. Powerful? 10,000 horsepower. A real page-turner? And then some. Must-read? And how. Clichés, but so true of Joy Fielding’s Grand Avenue.”
—The Cincinnati Enquirer
“Fielding deals confidently and tenderly with her subjects, and her plots and subplots are engaging. It’s a comfortable, engrossing book for anyone who wants to spend some time with four average, and therefore remarkable, women.”
—Houston Chronicle
“A multi-layered saga of friendship, loss, and loyalty. Grand Avenue reminds us of how fear, unfulfilled dreams, and a thirst for power can ravage the closest of relationships.”
—Woman’s Own
“Fielding elevates her narrative with great, sweeping, surprisingly moving paragraphs devoted to the nature of friendship and family. Don’t forget to keep a family-size box of Kleenex handy in preparation for the tear-jerking finale.”
—Booklist
“Emotionally compelling … hard to put down.… Fielding fully develops her four women characters, each of whom is exquisitely revealed.”
—Library Journal
“[A] romantic drama with a thriller twist.… With her usual page-turning flair, Fielding [writes] a swiftly paced story that acquires real suspense when one of the characters meets a surprising fate and the meaning of friendship is put to the ultimate test.… A tense denouement.”
—Publishers Weekly
THE FIRST TIME
“Well written and enjoyable.”
—Quill & Quire
“Dramatic and heartrending … the emotions are almost tangible.”
—Richmond Times-Dispatch
“[An] affecting drama.… Fielding is good at chronicling the messy tangle of family relationships.… A three-tissue finale.”
—Publishers Weekly
“This is rich stuff.… Fielding has again pushed a seemingly fragile heroine to the brink, only to have her fight back, tooth and nail.”
—Booklist
NATIONAL ACCLAIM FOR JOY FIELDING’S
PREVIOUS FICTION
“A winner.”
—People
“A knockout!”
—The New York Times
“Fielding masterfully manipulates our expectations.”
—The Washington Post
“A drama that hits home.”
—The Cincinnati Enquirer
ALSO BY JOY FIELDING
Grand Avenue
The First Time
Missing Pieces
Don’t Cry Now
Tell Me No Secrets
See Jane Run
Good Intentions
The Deep End
Life Penalty
The Other Woman
Kiss Mommy Goodbye
Copyright © 2002 by Joy Fielding, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Seal Books and colophon are trademarks of
Random House of Canada Limited.
WHISPERS AND LIES
Seal Books/published by arrangement with Doubleday Canada
Doubleday Canada edition published 2002
Seal Books edition published July 2003
eISBN: 978-0-385-67462-1
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Photos: Patti McConville/The Image Bank; IPS/Photonica,
Tim Feiler/Photonica
Seal Books are published by Random House of Canada Limited.
“Seal Books” and the portrayal of a seal are the property of Random House of Canada Limited.
Visit Random House of Canada Limited’s website: www.randomhouse.ca
v3.1
For Shannon,
my daughter, my helper, my friend.
Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
As always, a special thank you to Owen Laster, Beverley Slopen, and Larry Mirkin, good friends as well as trusted advisors. Thank you also to Emily Bestler, the editor of my dreams, and her assistant Sarah Branham, for their assistance and good humor in the creation of this novel. I also count myself very lucky to have the support of Judith Curr, Louise Burke, Cathy Gruhn, Stephen Boldt, and all the other terrific people at Atria and Pocket who work so hard to make my books a success.
Writing this novel would have been very difficult without the help of Donna and Jack Frysinger, who gave generously of their time and energy to provide me with all the information I needed to bring the charming, ocean-side city of Delray to life. I look forward to seeing you there soon.
My love to Warren, Shannon, Annie, Renee, Aurora and Rosie, and all my friends in Toronto and Palm Beach. Thank you for being patient, loyal, and always interesting (especially important for a writer). Note to Annie: You could be a little less interesting for a while.
And lastly, a special thank you to those readers who have sent such wonderful messages to me via my Web site. While there’s not enough time to thank you each in person, please know that your letters have meant more to me than I can ever adequately express. Your kind thoughts and good wishes buoy my spirits and make my day. Thank you.
ONE
She said her name was Alison Simms.
The name tumbled slowly, a
lmost languorously, from her lips, the way honey slides from the blade of a knife. Her voice was soft, tentative, slightly girlish, although her handshake was firm and she looked me straight in the eye. I liked that. I liked her, I decided, almost on the spot, although I’m the first to admit that I’m not always the best judge of character. Still, my first impression of the amazingly tall young woman with the shoulder-length, strawberry-blond curls who stood tightly clasping my hand in the living room of my small two-bedroom home was positive. And first impressions are lasting impressions, as my mother used to say.
“This is a real pretty house,” Alison said, her head nodding up and down, as if agreeing with her own assessment, her eyes darting appreciatively between the overstuffed sofa and the two delicate Queen Anne chairs,the cushioned valances framing the windows and the sculpted area rug lying across the light hardwood floor. “I love pink and mauve together. It’s my favorite color combination.” Then she smiled, this enormous, wide, slightly goofy smile that made me want to smile right back. “I always wanted a pink and mauve wedding.”
I had to laugh. It seemed such a wonderfully strange thing to say to someone you’d just met. She laughed with me, and I motioned toward the sofa for her to sit down. She immediately sank into the deep, down-filled cushions, her blue sundress all but disappearing inside the swirl of pink and mauve fabric flowers, and crossed one long, skinny leg over the other, the rest of her body folding itself artfully around her knees as she leaned toward me. I perched on the edge of the striped Queen Anne chair directly across from her, thinking that she reminded me of a pretty pink flamingo, a real one, not one of those awful plastic things you see stabbed into people’s front lawns. “You’re very tall,” I commented lamely, thinking she’d probably heard that remark all her life.
“Five feet ten inches,” she acknowledged graciously. “I look taller.”
“Yes, you do,” I agreed, although at barely five feet four inches, everyone looks tall to me. “Do you mind my asking how old you are?”
“Twenty-eight.” A slight blush suddenly scraped her cheeks. “I look younger.”
“Yes, you do,” I said again. “You’re lucky. I’ve always looked my age.”
“How old are you? That is, if you don’t mind …”
“Take a guess.”
The sudden intensity of her gaze caught me off-guard. She scrutinized me as if I were an exotic specimen in a lab, trapped between two tiny pieces of glass, under an invisible microscope. Her clear green eyes burrowed into my tired brown ones, then moved across my face, examining each telltale line, weighing the evidence of my years. I have few illusions. I saw myself exactly the way I knew she must: a reasonably attractive woman with good cheekbones, large breasts, and a bad haircut.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Forty?”
“Exactly.” I laughed. “Told you.”
We fell silent, frozen in the warmth of the afternoon sun that surrounded us like a spotlight, highlighting small flecks of dust that danced in the air between us, like hundreds of tiny insects. She smiled, folded her hands together in her lap, the fingers of one hand playing carelessly with the fingers of the other. She wore no rings of any kind, and no polish, although her nails were long and cared-for. I could tell she was nervous. She wanted me to like her.
“Did you have any trouble finding the house?” I asked.
“No. Your directions were great: east on Atlantic, south on Seventh Avenue, past the white church, between Second and Third Street. No problem at all. Except for the traffic. I didn’t realize that Delray was such a busy place.”
“Well, it’s November,” I reminded her. “The snowbirds are starting to arrive.”
“Snowbirds?”
“Tourists,” I explained. “You’re obviously new to Florida.”
She looked toward her sandaled feet. “I like this rug. You’re very brave to have a white carpet in the living room.”
“Not really. I don’t do much entertaining.”
“I guess your job keeps you pretty busy. I always thought it would be so great to be a nurse,” she offered. “It must be very rewarding.”
I laughed. “Rewarding is not exactly the word I would use.”
“What word would you use?”
She seemed genuinely curious, something I found both refreshing and endearing. It had been so long since anyone had expressed any real interest in me that I guess I was flattered. But there was also something so touchingly naive about the question that I wanted to cross over to where she sat and hug her, as a mother hugs her child, and tell her that it was all right, she didn’t have to work so hard, that the tiny cottage behind my house was hers to occupy, that the decision had been made the minute she walked through my front door.
“What word would I use to describe the nursing profession?” I repeated, mulling over several possibilities. “Exhausting,” I said finally. “Exacting. Infuriating.”
“Good words.”
I laughed again, as I seemed to have done often in the short amount of time she’d been in my home. It would be nice having someone around who made me laugh, I remember thinking. “What sort of work do you do?” I asked.
Alison stood up, walked to the window, and stared out at the wide street, lined with several varieties of shady palms. Bettye McCoy, third wife of Richard McCoy, and some thirty years his junior, not an unusual occurrence in South Florida, was being pulled along the sidewalk by her two small white dogs. She was dressed from head to toe in beige Armani, and in her free hand she carried a small white plastic bag full of dog poop, a fashion irony seemingly lost on the third Mrs. McCoy. “Oh, would you just look at that. Aren’t they just the sweetest things? What are they, poodles?”
“Bichons,” I said, coming up beside her, the top of my head in line with the bottom of her chin. “The bimbos of the canine world.”
It was Alison’s turn to laugh. The sound filled the room, danced between us, like the flecks of dust in the afternoon sun. “They sure are cute though. Don’t you think?”
“Cute is not exactly the word I would use,” I told her, consciously echoing my earlier remark.
She smiled conspiratorially. “What word would you use?”
“Let me see,” I said, warming to the game. “Yappy. Pesky. Destructive.”
“Destructive? How could anything that sweet be destructive?”
“One of her dogs got into my garden a few months back, dug up all my hibiscus. Trust me, it was neither sweet nor cute.” I backed away from the window, catching sight, as I did so, of a man’s silhouette among the many outside shadows on the opposite corner of the street. “Is someone waiting for you?”
“For me? No. Why?”
I edged forward to have a better look, but the man, if he’d existed at all, had taken his shadow and disappeared. I looked down the street, but there was no one there.
“I thought I saw someone standing under that tree over there.” I pointed with my chin.
“I don’t see anyone.”
“Well, I’m sure it was nothing. Would you like some coffee?”
“I’d love some.” She followed me through the small dining area that stood perpendicular to the living room, and into the predominantly white kitchen at the back of the house. “Oh, would you just look at these,” she exclaimed with obvious delight, gliding toward the rows of shelves that lined the wall beside the small breakfast nook, her arms extended, fingers fluttering eagerly in the air. “What are these? Where did you get them?”
My eyes quickly scanned the sixty-five china heads that gazed at us from five rows of wooden shelves. “They’re called ‘ladies’ head vases,’ ” I explained. “My mother used to collect them. They’re from the fifties, mostly made in Japan. They have holes in the tops of their heads, for flowers, I guess, although they don’t hold a lot. When they first came out, they were worth maybe a couple of dollars.”
“And now?”
“Apparently they’re quite valuable. Collectibles, I believe, is the word they
use.”
“And what word would you use?” She waited eagerly, a mischievous smile twisting her full lips this way and that.
I didn’t have to think very hard. “Junk,” I said concisely.
“I think they’re great,” she protested. “Just look at the eyelashes on this one. Oh, and the earrings on this one. And the tiny string of pearls. Oh, and look at this one. Don’t you just love the expression on her face?” She lifted one of the heads gingerly into her hands. The china figurine was about six inches tall, with arched painted eyebrows and pursed red lips, her light brown curls peeking out from under a pink and white turban, a pink rose at her throat. “She’s not as ornate as some of the others, but she has such a superior look about her, you know, like some snooty society matron, looking down her nose at the rest of us.”
“Actually, she looks like my mother,” I said.
The china head almost slipped through Alison’s fingers. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry.” She quickly returned the head vase to its original position on the shelf, between two doe-eyed girls with ribbons in their hair. “I didn’t mean …”
I laughed. “It’s interesting you picked that one. It was her favorite. What do you take in your coffee?”
“Cream, three sugars?” she asked, as if she weren’t sure, her eyes still on the china heads.
I poured us each a mug of the coffee I’d been brewing since she’d phoned from the hospital, said she’d seen my notice posted to the bulletin board at one of the nurses’ stations, and could she come over as soon as possible.
“Does your mother still collect?”
“She died five years ago.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Me too. I miss her. It’s why I haven’t been able to sell off any of her friends. How about a piece of cranberry-and-pumpkin cake?” I asked, changing the subject for fear of getting maudlin. “I just made it this morning.”
“You can bake? Now I’m really impressed. I’m absolutely hopeless in the kitchen.”