Golden Lies Read online

  "Of course I don't have to see him. I don't want to see him. He didn't care enough to see me." Alyssa paused, her mind catching up with everything that had been said. "You said he was attacked in the alley?"

  "Yes. He was struck in the head. He has been unconscious since then." Jasmine's voice caught, and she lowered her gaze to the floor.

  Alyssa felt as if she were seeing her mother for the first time. She had known that her mother had loved a man, and obviously slept with him since she'd been born as a result, but Jasmine hadn't dated anyone since then. She'd always been alone, content she said with her daughter and her painting. Now Alyssa couldn't help wondering what her mother felt for David Hathaway. Was it possible she still cared about him? It seemed unthinkable. He had left her to fend for herself alone, with a child. But Jasmine had never said one angry word against him. She'd never complained about her life, just accepted her fate.

  It wasn't fair. David Hathaway had so much, and they had so little.

  "You must not blame him," Jasmine said, breaking the silence.

  She met her mother's gaze. "How can I not?"

  "There are things you don't understand. I feel responsible for what happened to him."

  "Why would you be responsible?"

  "He came to show me something. If he hadn't come, he wouldn't be hurt."

  "What did he show you?"

  Jasmine hesitated. "The dragon, Alyssa. He found the dragon."

  Alyssa's gaze flew to the wall, to the serpent-like creature her mother had painted so many times Alyssa could have drawn it herself simply from memory. "You said it didn't exist."

  "I know now that it does. I held it in my hands."

  Alyssa's body tightened. That dragon had been a part of her life for as long as she could remember. On many nights her mother had awakened from sweat-drenched nightmares, mumbling about the dragon. Sometimes it saved her. Sometimes it threatened her. Sometimes she couldn't find it.

  "So he..." She couldn't bring herself to call him her father yet. "He has the dragon?"

  "I think it was stolen from him in the alley."

  "Why? Who would steal it? Is it valuable?"

  "It must be."

  Before Alyssa could ask her to elaborate, a knock came at the door, surprising them both. "I'll get it," she said, rising to her feet. She didn't know whom she was expecting when she threw open the door, but it certainly wasn't two uniformed police officers.

  "Jasmine Chen?" one of the officers asked.

  "I am Jasmine Chen," her mother said from behind her.

  "We'd like to talk to you about a robbery that occurred down the street and a man you may know -- David Hathaway."

  * * *

  Paige walked into her apartment and shut the door with a weary sigh. She'd spent the night at the hospital, catching a few hours sleep on a couch in the waiting room. She could have gone home. Her grandfather had hired private nurses to stay with her father twenty-four hours a day, but after Jasmine's surprise appearance in her father's room, Paige had felt compelled to remain close by. Even though neither Jasmine nor her mother had answered the question about Alyssa's parentage, Paige knew the answer. She'd seen it in Jasmine's eyes. And she'd seen it in her mother's eyes before they'd both left the room, leaving Paige alone with her father. She'd stared down at him for a long time, wishing he would wake up so she could ask him the questions burning her tongue, but he had slept, and he was still sleeping now. At least, that's what she liked to call it. Sleeping sounded so much better than coma.

  Setting her purse on the table, she considered her options. She could nap, go to work, take a shower ... she usually had a dozen things on her to-do list and today shouldn't have been any different, but it was. Since her father's attack, her priorities had shifted. She picked up her favorite family photograph from the table. Her father looked so young, vibrant and healthy. How she wished she could have that man back. Her mother looked good, too, happy as they posed in the front yard on the occasion of her grandfather's birthday. Her grandfather stood in the back, his tall, sturdy body like a solid tree, his arms around his son on one side and his daughter-in-law on the other. Paige and her sister, Elizabeth, sat on a bench in front of them, dressed in beautiful, fluffy white dresses.

  Looking at her sister's sweet face, a face that had never grown old, never worn makeup, never kissed a boy, made her incredibly sad. Maybe it was the reminder that it was almost Elizabeth's birthday that brought tears to her eyes. Her father had to wake up soon. He hadn't ever missed Elizabeth's birthday. He had a present for her, a present only he could give.

  Maybe it was a sick tradition, as her mother thought. But at the moment Paige clung to it, because continuing the ritual meant everything was going on the way it was supposed to go on. Paige set the photo down. The happy family portrait was really nothing more than an illusion. Her father had had an affair. He'd slept with another woman. Jasmine Chen was hardly the prettiest, sexiest woman Paige had seen. Maybe she had been in her day. Obviously their affair went back twenty-something years.

  Alyssa was twenty-two years old, and Elizabeth had been dead almost twenty-three years. That meant that her father had had this affair almost immediately after Elizabeth's death. Paige's pulse quickened as she calculated the possibilities. Was that why it had happened? Had her father been so lost in grief, despair, and unhappiness that he'd reached out to another woman?

  Or was she just trying to excuse his behavior the way she always did?

  The doorbell rang, and she started, glancing down at her watch. It was ten o'clock in the morning. Who would be calling on her now? She went to the intercom and said, "Hello?"

  "It's Riley. Can I come up?"

  Riley? Her heart skipped a beat. Did she want him to come up? It seemed as if they were living in each other's pocket these days. And yet, at the same time, it felt as if it had been too long since she'd last seen him. The bell rang again, more insistently. Patience was not his strong suit. She buzzed him in.

  She made a quick dash to the mirror. Her hair was falling out of its ponytail. There was not a speck of makeup left on her face, nothing to hide the shadows under her eyes. And her clothes were wrinkled. She was basically a mess, and she hated to face Riley looking like this. But he was already knocking at the door; she had no choice but to open it.

  She wished she could say he looked as bad as she did, but it was just the opposite. His hair was damp from a recent shower, his skin scrubbed and glowing. He smelled good. He looked even better in a pair of black trousers and a long-sleeve, gray knit shirt.

  "You look awful," he said. "Did you sleep in those clothes?"

  "As a matter of fact, I did."

  "Any change in your father's condition?"

  "None. I don't know why it's taking so long for him to wake up. But he will wake up. I just have to be patient."

  Riley walked into her apartment. "This is nice."

  The apartment wasn't really her. While she'd expressed her independence by getting her own place, she'd followed true Hathaway form by allowing her mother to decorate it with antiques, paintings, and expensive furniture. A cleaning lady came once a week to keep everything sparkling clean, and since Paige never made a mess, the apartment was always spotless, but not particularly warm and inviting.

  "I feel like I just stepped into the page of a magazine," Riley continued. "Where's the clutter? The shoes you kicked off when you got home, the newspaper you just read, the keys you tossed on the table when you came in?"

  "My shoes are still on my feet. The newspaper is in the recycle bin, and the keys are in my purse where they belong."

  He raised an eyebrow. "Obsessive-compulsive?"

  "Just neat. Do you have a reason for being here?"

  "I have some information for you. I called Raymond Li at home. His daughter told me he's on vacation, and she doesn't know when he'll be back." He paused. "Raymond Li wasn't scheduled for a vacation, was he?"

  "I don't know. I don't keep track of the vacation time of every e
mployee."

  "She said it was a sudden trip, destination unknown."

  "You make it sound mysterious."

  "As far as we know, Mr. Li is the only other person at Hathaway's who had a chance to examine the dragon. He might also be the only other person who knows why your father went to Chinatown. I'd say that makes him a key player. The fact that he's now nowhere to be found is too big of a coincidence for me."

  "Do you think that Raymond Li had something to do with the assault on my father? I can't believe that. He's worked at the store for twenty years. He's had plenty of opportunities to steal, if that's what you're implying."

  "I'm not implying anything. Just saying his sudden vacation is suspicious. Let's say that he knew your father took the dragon out of the store. He might have even known where David was going. Or he could have followed him. I don't think someone just happened by that alley, found your father, and took advantage of his presence by robbing him. Someone followed him to Chinatown or knew where he was going and set the whole thing up. We know your father saw Jasmine a little before five o'clock and that the police found your father around nine o'clock. It certainly didn't take him four hours to walk those short blocks from Jasmine's apartment. And it doesn't appear that he was lying there for four hours, either. I'm figuring he went somewhere else and was coming back, maybe to tell Jasmine what he learned. Or else he had business in that area and was leaving that location."

  Paige hated the way Riley was dissecting everything so clinically, so dispassionately. This was her father they were talking about. Just thinking about his attack made her feel sick.

  "I've asked my assistant to see if she can locate Mr. Li," Riley added. "For now, I think we should concentrate on the Chen family."

  She turned away from the sharp look in his eyes. She knew what was coming next, and she didn't want to hear it. Instead she walked back over to the table and picked up the family photograph. She handed it to him. "This is my family."

  "Nice picture. Who's the other girl?"

  "My sister, Elizabeth. She died when I was six, and she was seven. That picture was taken just a few months before she got sick."

  "You had a sister who died?" He looked surprised. "I never heard about that."

  "It's not a secret, but it happened a long time ago."

  "How did she die?"

  "She had leukemia. It was awful." A word that didn't begin to describe the horrible disease that had stolen Elizabeth's life. "Nothing was the same after she died." Paige stared at the photograph in his hand. "It happened almost twenty-three years ago. If that girl, Jasmine's daughter, is really my half sister, then she was born in the year after Elizabeth died. Maybe that's why the affair happened. Or maybe that's what I want to believe. Either way, I'm not sure I can accept this other girl as my sister. Elizabeth is my sister. It would be wrong to put anyone else in her place. It would be as if she hadn't existed."

  "Alyssa Chen isn't going to make you forget or love your real sister any less."

  "I'm not so sure." She debated telling him what she was feeling, but her emotions and words seemed to run amok when Riley was nearby. "Sometimes I forget what Elizabeth looked like, sounded like, smelled like," she confessed. "I see the pictures and I remember her, but I'm not sure I remember her from my memories or from the pictures. Does that make sense?"

  "It makes a lot of sense. It's been a long time, Paige. Memories fade. And you were a little girl. How much do you remember from when you were six years old?"

  "Probably not as much as I should." She took the picture from his hand and set it back on the table. "Every year on Elizabeth's birthday, my father and I go to the cemetery, and he gives her a birthday present. It's always a dragon. She loved dragons. My father started her collection, and he still contributes to it every year. In fact, we're going to display the collection in the new Hathaway exhibit at the Asian Art Museum."

  "A dragon like the one my grandmother had?" Riley asked sharply.

  "Any kind of dragon. The gifts have all been different. But, yes, he was interested in your grandmother's dragon for that reason, as well as a dozen others, I'm sure. Elizabeth's birthday is next Wednesday. He has to wake up before then."

  "I hope he does, but everything you've told me, Paige, only makes me believe that your father knew something about that dragon that we don't. We have to find out more about it."

  "You're right. Now I wish I'd majored in art history instead of business economics."

  "You majored in business economics?" he asked with a raised eyebrow.

  "After my mother. She said it was more important to be able to run the business than to appreciate the goods that we sell. Unfortunately, right now that's not helping us at all."

  Riley's cell phone rang, interrupting their conversation. "I better take this," he said, checking the number. "Hello? Grandma?"

  Paige watched Riley's demeanor change. His face tightened. His eyes grew hard. He looked as if he wanted to hit something or someone.

  "Stay at Millie's," he said. "Don't go back to the house. I'll be there as soon as I can."

  "What happened?" Paige asked as he ended the call.

  "My grandmother's house was broken into."

  "Is she all right?"

  "She's fine. She wasn't home when it happened. I have to go."

  "I'm coming, too." Paige grabbed her purse as she followed him to the door. "What do you think they were looking for? Your grandmother doesn't have the dragon anymore."

  "Maybe someone thinks she has the other one." He sent her a pointed look. "Didn't that story say there might be two?"

  Chapter Ten

  The drive across town seemed to take forever as the Friday morning traffic was heavy in the downtown area. Riley hit the brakes hard as yet another red light stopped him in his tracks.

  "You couldn't have predicted this," Paige said quietly.

  "I certainly should have. Dammit." He hit the steering wheel with his fist. "As soon as you told me that story about the two dragons, I should have connected the dots. And those hang-up calls—"

  "What hang-up calls?"

  "My grandmother said someone kept calling and hanging up. She thought it was my mother, which I immediately dismissed as ridiculous."

  "Why would your mother be calling and hanging up? That seems odd."

  He uttered a short, bitter laugh. "That's my mother, odd."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Never mind." He turned the corner sharply and pulled up in front of his grandmother's house before she could press him further.

  Riley jumped out of the car and ran up the driveway to where Millie and Nan were standing. Paige followed, feeling a strange tightness in her throat as she watched him hug his grandmother with a fierce tenderness.

  "Good heavens, Riley. You're squeezing the breath out of me," Nan told him. She smiled and stroked his face with her fingers. "I'm fine. But the house is a mess. They went through everything, dumping out my drawers and undoing all the beds. I don't know what kind of fortune they thought I was hiding in there, but I don't think they got much for their trouble. I couldn't have had more than twenty dollars in cash lying around. And my jewelry isn't worth much."

  "I'm going to check it out. You wait here. Paige will keep you company."

  "Oh, dear. I didn't even see you, Miss Hathaway." Nan looked from Riley to Paige, then back to Riley. "Did I interrupt something when I called?"

  "Nothing that can't wait. I'll be back in a few minutes. Just stay put. You, too," he told Paige.

  As Riley sprinted across the yard, Paige found herself being perused by two pairs of very curious eyes. "It's nice to see you both again. I'm sorry the circumstances are so distressing."

  "Let's go to my house and have some coffee," Millie suggested, leading them next door.

  Paige followed them into the kitchen, where Millie filled several mugs with coffee and placed a chocolate cake on the table in case anyone was hungry. Then she excused herself to answer the phone, leaving Nan and Paige alone.


  "I was so sorry to hear about your father," Nan said, patting Paige's hand where it rested on the table. "How is he doing?"

  "He's still unconscious." Paige paused. "I'm sorry your dragon has gone missing in the midst of all this. I feel terrible. The House of Hathaway has never lost an art object before."

  "Someone wanted that dragon very badly. What I don't understand is why anyone would break into my house. I don't have it anymore."

  Paige wasn't sure if she should tell Nan about the possibility that there might be two dragons. It was only a theory, and not much of one at that.

  "I'm a little afraid it might be Mary behind this break-in," Nan said, surprising her with the comment.

  "Who is Mary?" Paige asked.

  Nan looked a little guilty at the question, as if she wished she hadn't brought it up. "She's my daughter, Riley's mother."

  "Why would your daughter break into your house?"

  "Well, she wouldn't." Nan shook her head. "I'm sure none of this has anything to do with her. She left Riley with us a long time ago, when he was a teenager. Even before that she was barely around. She wasn't much of a mother to him, that's for sure."

  "That's too bad. Riley said something about hang-up calls?" she queried.

  "Sometimes I think Mary is calling me and hanging up because she just doesn't have the nerve to speak." She sent Paige a thoughtful look. "I'm surprised Riley mentioned his mother to you. He must like you."

  "Barely mentioned, and he doesn't like me at all. He thinks my family is trying to cheat you."

  Nan brushed that away with a wave of her hand. "Riley always believes people are out to con him. He doesn't trust anyone. That's the legacy my daughter left him with, I'm afraid. I wish I could have stepped in sooner to take care of Riley, but she took him away from us early on, and there were years when we didn't know where they were."

  Paige saw regret and sadness in Nan's eyes. It must hurt her deeply to speak ill of her daughter. Nan seemed like such a nice lady. Paige couldn't help wondering how her daughter had turned out so badly.