Liar, Liar Read online

  Books by Lisa Jackson

  Stand-Alones

  SEE HOW SHE DIES

  FINAL SCREAM

  RUNNING SCARED

  WHISPERS

  TWICE KISSED

  UNSPOKEN

  DEEP FREEZE

  FATAL BURN

  MOST LIKELY TO DIE

  WICKED GAME

  WICKED LIES

  SOMETHING WICKED

  WICKED WAYS

  SINISTER

  WITHOUT MERCY

  YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW

  CLOSE TO HOME

  AFTER SHE’S GONE

  REVENGE

  YOU WILL PAY

  OMINOUS

  RUTHLESS

  LIAR, LIAR

  Anthony Paterno/Cahill

  Family Novels

  IF SHE ONLY KNEW

  ALMOST DEAD

  Rick Bentz/Reuben Montoya

  Novels

  HOT BLOODED

  COLD BLOODED

  SHIVER

  ABSOLUTE FEAR

  LOST SOULS

  MALICE

  DEVIOUS

  NEVER DIE ALONE

  Pierce Reed/Nikki Gillette

  Novels

  THE NIGHT BEFORE

  THE MORNING AFTER

  TELL ME

  Selena Alvarez/Regan Pescoli

  Novels

  LEFT TO DIE

  CHOSEN TO DIE

  BORN TO DIE

  AFRAID TO DIE

  READY TO DIE

  DESERVES TO DIE

  EXPECTING TO DIE

  Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation

  LISA JACKSON

  LIAR, LIAR

  KENSINGTON BOOKS

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Also by

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  PROLOGUE

  PART 1

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  PART 2

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2018 by Lisa Jackson LLC

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  Kensington and the K logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

  Library of Congress Card Catalogue Number: 2018932830

  ISBN: 978-1-6177-3467-0

  First Kensington Hardcover Edition: July 2018

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  For the sake of this story, I did take a few liberties with the locations and police procedures within the pages of Liar, Liar.

  PROLOGUE

  San Francisco

  Now

  No! No! No!

  Forcing her way through a gathering crowd that had been barricaded across the sloped street, Remmi shielded her eyes with one hand and stared upward through the thickening fog to the ledge of the Montmort Tower Hotel. “Oh, God.” Squinting through the fog to somewhere near the twentieth floor, she saw a woman balanced precariously on a ledge, her back to an open hotel room window, sheer curtains billowing behind her.

  It couldn’t be.

  It just couldn’t!

  Not when Remmi was so close . . . so damned close. Please, no!

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, she’s gonna jump!” a tall man said under his breath. He wore a heavy jacket and stocking cap, and a one-year-old in a hooded snowsuit was strapped to his chest. He quickly sketched the sign of the cross over his chest and the baby. Red-faced from the cold, the child began to whimper, but his father barely seemed to notice.

  Sirens wailed as fire trucks and police cruisers collected near the base of the stalwart San Francisco hotel, an Art Deco edifice of concrete and marble that had withstood earthquakes and fires, riots and time, rock stars and politicians. It pulsed with the fierce, eerie lights of emergency vehicles. People were talking and milling around, jamming the roped-off area of the steep San Francisco street.

  High on the ledge, a woman with short, platinum hair, the hem of her pink dress dancing around her knees, wobbled on her matching heels, swaying enough to make some of the onlookers gasp, while others screamed.

  Don’t do it!

  Heart in her throat, her pulse a surf in her ears, Remmi pushed her way through the throng held at bay by police officers and yellow tape strung hastily over A-frame barricades. Twilight was descending, the lights of the city winking through the thickening mist, the streets shiny and wet, the bay nearly invisible at the bottom of the steep hillside. Most of the crowd, heads tilted back, stared, gape-mouthed, hands to their chests, up to the thin ledge where the woman balanced so precariously.

  “This is horrible. Horrible!” a woman in a stocking cap and padded jacket whispered. She was transfixed, as they all were, but couldn’t turn away. Her gloved hand was clamped over that of a boy with ragged brown hair and freckles, a baseball cap crammed onto his head.

  “Let me through.” Remmi shouldered her way closer to the police line. “Come on.”

  The gloved woman observed, “She looks like Marilyn Monroe.”

  “Marilyn who?” her son, all of about twelve, asked, earbuds visible beneath his baseball cap, acne vying with fuzz on his jaw as he stared upward to where the would-be jumper stood.

  “A–a beauty queen . . . actress from the fifties.”

  “So really old.”

  “No, no . . . she’s dead.” Gaze aloft, the woman shook her head. “Died a long time ago. Overdose of sleeping pills. Or . . . or something.” Her forehead crumpled as she thought.

  “Then it’s not her.”

  “I know.”

  “Just someone who looks like her.” The kid’s eyes were focused on the ledge high overhead. “Is she really going to do it? Will she land in that fountain?”

  His mother was shaking her head. “I hope not. I hope she doesn’t . . . Dear God.” She, too, made a hasty sign of the cross over her chest.

  “Impersonator?” a man in a long overcoat who had overheard the exchange asked.

  “I–I guess.” The woman again.

  “There’ve been a lot of them,” the man said with a snort, as if the woman’s life was of no importance. Callous jerk.

  “The outfit. Pure Marilyn.” The woman in the stocking hat was nodding, her head bobbing slowly, graying curls springing from beneath the knit cap. “But one impersonator . . . in particular. Kind of famous. What was her name?” She snapped the fingers of her free hand, the sound muted through her glove. “It was . . . it was, oh, I almost had it . . . But gosh, I can’t remember. Doesn’t matter.”

  Didi. Her name is Didi Storm, Remmi thought, her heart frozen in her chest. And it does matter! What’
s wrong with you people? Acting as if a woman contemplating suicide is just an interesting sideshow!

  Overcoat pulled a face of disbelief. “An impersonator of a dead woman . . . long dead, by the way. She’s gonna take a swan dive off the Montmort? Doesn’t make sense.”

  “Does suicide ever make sense?” Knit cap snapped, her lips pursing a little.

  “Sorry. I was just sayin’—”

  On the ledge above, the slim woman swayed, and the crowd gasped. Firemen were gathered at the base of the hotel, and someone in a uniform—a sergeant, Remmi thought—was addressing the throng: “Stand back. Give us a little room here.”

  Water beading on his Giants cap, the kid observed, “Man. It looks like she’s really going to do it.”

  “Oh . . . oh, no. Come on, let’s go. I can’t watch this.” The mother hustled her son through the gathering throng of horrified lookie-loos, and the boy, reluctantly, his gaze glued to the would-be leaper, was dragged past nearby observers holding cell phones over their heads in sick efforts to capture the horrible moment. Mother and son disappeared, melting into the ever-growing throng.

  Remmi didn’t listen to any more speculation. Heart pounding, fear driving her, she pushed her way through the crowd, past a businessman in a raincoat who, like so many others, was filming the macabre scene with his phone, while people around her murmured or gasped. All were transfixed by the horror unfolding right before their eyes. Traffic had been halted, headlights of the stalled cars glowing in the fog, horns honking, emergency workers barking orders. Somewhere a deep voice was humming an old song she’d heard in Sunday school class. What was it? Then the words came to her:

  This little light of mine,

  I’m gonna let it shine.

  Remmi’s eyes turned upward, the song fading, her gaze transfixed on the woman teetering high above, the fog wisping around the building. Don’t do it, Remmi silently begged as she forced her way through a knot of women with umbrellas. Throat tight, she glanced up at the ledge. Please, Mom, don’t jump!

  To Remmi’s horrified dismay, as if the would-be leaper could actually hear her, the woman moved suddenly, a high heel slipping over the edge. The crowd gave up a collective gasp, then a scream, as she suddenly plummeted, arms pinwheeling, hair a shimmering, moving cloud in those horrifying seconds as she tumbled in free fall through the thick San Francisco evening.

  Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine . . .

  PART 1

  CHAPTER 1

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  Twenty Years Earlier

  “You can do this,” Didi told herself as she drove her vintage, specially equipped Cadillac through the city. Neon lights sparkled and shone as daylight slipped away and Las Vegas became a beacon in the twilight desert.

  God, she loved this town, with its hot, dry air, bustle, and excitement, and, most importantly, the glamour and glitz of the tall buildings that spired upward into a vast, star-spangled sky. The city itself was almost surreal in its stark contrast to the quiet, serene, eerie desert at night.

  Well, it wasn’t quite night yet, and she had no time to think about anything but her mission, one she’d been planning for the better part of a year. A tiny frisson of excitement sizzled through her blood, and the back of her mouth was suddenly dry with anxiety.

  “You can pull this off,” she said, the words a familiar mantra intended to calm her jangled nerves, push back her fears. She stepped on the gas as she reached the outskirts of town. Her chest was tight, her fingers clammy over the steering wheel, a million doubts creeping through her mind.

  She would have preferred to have the top down on the big car, to let the warm Nevada breeze stream across her face and through her hair, but she didn’t want to muss her makeup, nor her hair, and, really, with the twins, it was best to keep the convertible’s roof snapped into place and just leave the windows cracked enough to let in some air.

  In the back, strapped into their car seats, were her two infants. Her heart twisted at the thought of her precious little ones. A boy and a girl, six weeks old and sleeping, cooing softly as she drove, not knowing their fates. “Oh, babies,” she whispered, guilt already gnawing through her soul. What she was planning was unthinkable. But she was desperate, and everything would work out for the best. No one would get hurt.

  She hoped.

  Despite herself, she crossed the fingers of her right hand as she gripped the wheel. Was she making a mistake? Probably. But, then, it certainly wasn’t her first—or fiftieth, for that matter.

  Swallowing hard, she fought a spate of hot tears and steeled herself. She had to do this, had to; it was her one chance, their only chance for a better life. Sniffing, she blinked and wouldn’t let the tears fall and ruin her mascara. She needed to look good, perfect, to pull this off. Not like a sad sack of a clown with black streaks running down her cheeks.

  Involuntarily, seated in the soft white leather, she straightened her shoulders. You can do this, Didi. You can. She pressed a high heel a little more firmly on the gas pedal, and the Caddy responded, leaping forward, tires eagerly spinning over the dry, dusty asphalt.

  But what if something goes wrong?

  “It won’t.”

  It couldn’t.

  Just to be on the safe side, she sent up a quick prayer, something she hadn’t done much of since she’d shaken the Missouri dust off her boots, bought a bus ticket, and headed west when she was still a teenager. She’d left her family, and God Himself, in the huge Greyhound’s exhaust.

  Tonight, everything would turn around.

  Over the roar of the car’s big engine, she heard a soft sigh, one of the babies probably dreaming.

  Oh God.

  Setting her jaw, she flipped her visor down to shield her eyes against the sun’s glare and reminded herself that she couldn’t back out now—her plan was set, the wheels in motion. As Las Vegas became a strip of glorious lights reflected in her car’s oversize rearview mirror, she pushed in the cigarette lighter, then let her fingers scrabble on the seat beside her for her purse. She shook a Virginia Slims from the glittery cigarette case she scrounged out of her clutch. A few hits of nicotine would calm her. She cracked open the side window and, after lighting up, held her cigarette near the window—no second-hand smoke for her babies! That was definitely a thing these days, and as long as she was a mother . . . oh, Jesus, how long would that be? . . . she would keep the babies safe.

  Really? Who are you kidding?

  Condemning eyes reflected back at her in the mirror as she headed steadily west, where the blazing sun was settling over the cliffs of Red Rock Canyon. While the nicotine did its job, she turned on the radio to an oldies station and heard the Beatles singing “Let It Be.”

  Bam!

  Paul McCartney’s voice was drowned out as she hit a pothole, and the car shuddered, a loud thud sounding from the rear end of the Caddy.

  Oh, puh-leez.

  She couldn’t break down. Not now. Not when she’d finally screwed up her courage and set her plan in motion. Fearing that one of the car seats was too loose, that the strap securing it might have failed in this old car, she glanced over her shoulder. Nothing seemed out of place. And the car was running well, no popped tire, no bent axle. The babies were still safely bound in their car seats.

  For now.

  “It was nothing,” she said aloud. Maybe something had shifted in the trunk or a prop had gotten away from its bindings in the specialized cargo space she’d had retrofitted into the big car so that she could use it in her act. God, how she loved to pop out of the “empty” white Caddy, in a scanty outfit . . . well, those days were gone, at least temporarily, until she got rid of the remaining fat and sagging skin from her latest pregnancy with the twins. So far, she’d lost a lot of that weight, but things had shifted, and her skin was not as taut as it used to be when she’d been a nubile teenager, and tonight she’d had to wiggle into some damned tight undergarments to even slip into her current outfit—her favorite pink Marilyn Monroe dress.r />
  The jeweled gown’s seams were straining, but scarcely being able to breathe was well worth the trouble. Didi knew she looked spectacular.

  Cutting the radio, she kept the pedal to the metal, all the while listening for that disturbing noise again. She detected nothing more than the thrum of the engine, the whine of the tires, and the rush of wind through the partially opened window. Since the clunk had stopped, and there didn’t appear to be anything mechanically wrong with the car, thank God, she clicked on the radio again, this time to a current pop station. She squashed her cigarette on the tab in the ashtray, adjusted her sunglasses to fight the glare of those last eyeball-searing minutes before the sun sank over the ragged mountaintops, and told herself she was ready.

  Tonight, her bad luck was going to change.

  Forever.

  * * *

  Remmi hardly dared breathe in the tight cargo space of her mother’s ancient Cadillac. She rubbed the back of her head where it had bumped against the inside of the wall when Didi, at the wheel, had hit something and Remmi had bounced enough to slam the back of her head against the metal roof. Ouch! She was surprised her mother hadn’t heard the thud, stopped the car, and discovered her oldest daughter stowed away in the area where Didi usually hid the props for her stage act, a part of the voluminous trunk sectioned off in this boat of a white Cadillac.

  Fortunately, Remmi had bit back a scream despite the radiating pain.

  Now, she was sweating. A lot. Drops drizzled down her forehead and off her chin, and covered her back. The space she was wedged into was tight. Claustrophobic. But she didn’t want to think about how she could so easily be trapped inside. There was a latch of course, but it could jam. She didn’t want to think about it and swiped at the beads of sweat on her chin.