Page 64 of Twin Jeopardy

Tammy did as she was told, moving sideways so that her back was never to the other woman. “Where’s Mitch?” she asked. “I saw the two of you at the memorial service.”

“You didn’t think I’d miss my own memorial service, did you?”

Elisabeth was V. Tammy had figured that out when she saw the gun in her hand. But did that also mean she was Valerie? “Where’s Mitch?” she asked again.

“I left him at the bottom of a canyon, up on Dixon Pass. But apparently, my brother is helping to get him out. Or more probably, he’s retrieving his body.” She sat in a chair facing the sofa, the gun aimed at the middle of Tammy’s chest. “That’s inconvenient, but it will give us time to talk.”

The idea that Mitch might be dead hit Tammy like a blow to the stomach. She wanted to protest that that couldn’t be true, but she recognized the fruitlessness of arguing. She pushed the idea away entirely. She wouldn’t think about Mitch right now. She had to focus on Valerie, and on keeping her from pulling the trigger. “What happened to you?” she asked. “That day on the camping trip, when you were ten?”

“I knew you’d have questions. I guess that’s the reporter in you. Too bad you weren’t around when I went missing. You strike me as someone who might actually have ferreted out the truth.”

“What is the truth?” Tammy asked.

“I’ve been trying to tell you for weeks. My family—my mother and father and Vince—decided they didn’t want me anymore. They were going to leave me up on that mountain to die. Instead, a man who was camping nearby offered to take care of me.”

“The man kidnapped you,” Tammy said.

“He didn’t kidnap me. He did me a favor. I would have died without him.”

Her agitation—and the way the gun shook in her hand—made Tammy nervous. She had to resist the impulse to argue. “What was the man’s name?” she asked.

“Paul. Paul Rollins.”

“And you’re Elisabeth Rollins.”

“Paul chose the name for me. Much better than Valerie.”

“Where is Paul now?” Should Tammy expect him to walk through the door at any moment?

“He’s dead. With him gone, I didn’t have anyone left. Then I remembered my other family. The one who abandoned me.”

Tammy bit her lip to keep from arguing that the Shepherds had not abandoned their daughter. Time to change the subject again. She needed to keep Valerie off-balance. “What happened with Mitch?” she asked.

“I needed him out of the way so I could take care of Vince and my parents.” She crossed her legs and propped the grip of the handgun on her knee, her finger within easy reach of the trigger. “I would have liked to keep him around longer, at least until I had drained off more of his money. I thought I would have time to access all of his accounts before anyone discovered his body, but that may not be the case now.”

“He loved you,” Tammy said.

“So have the others.” Her smile brightened. “I guess I’m just a very lovable person.”

“I don’t understand how Paul was able to keep you a secret all these years,” Tammy said. “People were looking for you. Your parents hired a private detective. There were appeals in the media.”

“Lies, all of it. If they were looking as hard as they said, they would have found me. Paul changed my name, sure, and he took me to a fancy salon and got me a good haircut—my first one. But the rest of me was just the same. It’s not like we were living in a cave in the middle of nowhere. We lived in a beautiful house. We took vacations.”

“What about school?”

“I was homeschooled. Paul had been a teacher, once upon a time. He taught me what I needed to know to help him in his business.”

“What kind of business was that?”

That overly bright grin again. “Paul liked to say we taught people important financial lessons. We taught people to be more careful with their money.”

“You conned people,” Tammy guessed.

“Consounds so crass. What we did required more finesse. We persuaded people to trust us. Most of them did.”

“Is that why you’re here now? Because you want money?”

“I have money, and I always know how to get more. No, I’m here for a different kind of payback.”

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