Genuine Lies

trip to the car, but to begin with I think you should know. This was delivered to the desk of my hotel in London.”
    Eve studied the slip of paper Eve pulled out of her bag. She didn’t have to open it to know, didn’t have to read it. “Christ.”
    “It seems to me someone went to a lot of trouble to get it there. Paul was with me, Eve.” She waited until Eve looked back at her. “He knows about the other notes as well.”
    “I see.”
    “I’m sorry if you feel I should’ve kept quiet about it, but—”
    “No, no.” She interrupted with a wave of her hand before her fingers moved unconsciously to rub at her temple. “No, maybe it’s best this way. I still don’t believe they’re anything more than a nuisance.”
    Julia replaced the paper. The moment was probably all wrong, but she wanted to give Eve time to consider before she spoke again. “I know about Delrickio, and Damien Priest, and Hank Freemont.”
    Eve’s hand fluttered to her side. The only sign of tension was the quick, instinctive clutching and releasing of her fist. “Well, that saves me from repeating the whole mess.”
    “I’d like to hear it from your view.”
    “Then you will. But we have other things to discuss first.” She started walking again, past the fountain, the early roses, the thick islands of azaleas. “I’d like you to have dinner with me tonight. Eight o’clock.” She turned inside to pass through the core of the main house. “I hope you’ll come with an open mind, and an open heart, Julia.”
    “Of course.”
    She hesitated at the front door, then opened it and stepped into the sunlight again. “I’ve made mistakes and regret very few of them. I’ve lived with lies very comfortably.”
    Julia waited a moment, then chose her words carefully. “In the past few weeks I’ve come to wish that I’d accepted my own mistakes, and my own lies as well. It’s never been my function to judge you, Eve. Now that I know you, I couldn’t.”
    “I hope you still feel that way after tonight.” She laid a hand on Julia’s cheek. “You’re exactly, exactly what I needed.”
    She turned, walking quickly to the car. Turmoil whirled around her. She barely acknowledged the chauffeur as he opened the door. Then everything fell quietly into place.
    “I hope you don’t mind,” Victor said from the backseat. “I missed the hell out of you, Eve.”
    She slipped inside and into his arms.
    Julia had developed an image of Kenneth Stokley as a rather spare, graying man on the prim side. He would certainly have to be an organized individual to have worked for Eve. Conservative, she thought, to the point of being futsy. His voice had been cultured, smooth, and scrupulously polite.
    Her first indication that she might be wrong about the image she’d conjured was the houseboat.
    It was charming, romantic, a trim square of softly faded blue with gleaming white shutters. Blood red geraniums spilled lushly from snowy windowboxes. At the apex of a fanciful peaked roof was a wide sheet of stained glass. After a stare and a blink, Julia identified the portrait of a naked mermaid smiling seductively.
    Her amusement at that faded a little when she took stock of the narrow swaying bridge that linked the boat to the dock and took off her shoes. At the midway point, she heard the passionate strains of
Carmen
soaring out of the open windows ahead. She was humming, doing her best to keep her rhythm harmonic with the sway of the bridge when the door opened.
    He could have doubled for Cary Grant, circa 1970. Trim, silver-haired, tanned to a bronze sheen, and charmingly sexy in baggy white pants and a loose pullover of sky blue, Kenneth Stokley was the kind of man who had the saliva pooling in the mouth of any female with a heartbeat.
    Julia nearly lost her balance, and her shoes, when he came out to help her.
    “I should have warned you about my entranceway.” He took the briefcase from her, then gracefully walked backward with her hand caught in his. “Inconvenient, I know, but it does discourage all but the most avid of vacuum cleaner salesmen.”
    “It’s charming.” She let out a little breath when her feet hit the more substantial wood of the deck. “I’ve never been on a houseboat.”
    “It’s quite sturdy,” he assured her while he made his own assessment. “And there’s that possibility of being able to sail off into the sunset if the whim strikes. Do come in, my dear.”
    She stepped inside. Instead of the nautical