Page 87 of The Perfect Deception

Sit­ting back in her chair, the rabbi thought a mo­ment. “Well, there is one thing. His fa­ther is the one who fired him, right?”

Dina nod­ded.

“So could you bring the in­for­ma­tion to his fa­ther? Of course, you’d have to be sure his fa­ther would tell him; oth­er­wise you’d have to tell Adam any­way and then you’d be ex­pos­ing a fault in his fa­ther to his son, which isn’t very right­eous.”

“His fa­ther is many things, but even I can’t imag­ine he wouldn’t tell his son the truth.”

As Dina left the rabbi’s of­fice, she thought about their con­ver­sa­tion. Adam’s fa­ther wasn’t the nicest man, but he wouldn’t want his com­pany to suf­fer. He’d want to ex­pose the truth so his rep­u­ta­tion would be pris­tine. All she’d have to do is meet with him, ex­pose Ash­ley’s lies, and frame it so it was a mat­ter of honor to tell Adam. They’d both win. Adam’s fa­ther would know the truth, as would Adam, and she wouldn’t have to see him.

It was per­fect.

Chap­ter Twenty-Four

Dina paused in front of Adam’s fa­ther’s house. Her “per­fect” plan might not be so per­fect af­ter all. She’d called his fa­ther at work and asked to meet with him, telling him she had news to share that was too im­por­tant to dis­cuss over the phone. In­stead of pick­ing a time dur­ing the week as she’d ex­pected, he’d in­vited her over to his house to­day, Sun­day, at eleven o’clock. Re­luc­tant to go to his home, she’d tried to of­fer al­ter­na­tives, but he’d been adamant. So here she was. At least she was guar­an­teed not to run into Adam.

The house in­tim­i­dated her. The man in­tim­i­dated her. This life­style in­tim­i­dated her. Ev­ery fiber of her be­ing wanted to turn around and leave, for­get about what she knew and go back to her cozy apart­ment to curl up with a book.

But she was right­eous and had a duty to tell the truth.

Dammit.

Find­ing her back­bone, she pushed the door chime and lis­tened to it echo through­out the house. Mere mo­ments later, the mar­ble door opened and the same for­mal woman stood in the door­way. There was no smile of recog­ni­tion, no wel­com­ing ges­ture.I guess hired help is paid to be neu­tral.

“Hi, I’m Dina. I’m here to see Mr. Man­del.”

“Come in.” She stepped back and mo­tioned for Dina to fol­low her. This time, she wasn’t led into the liv­ing room. She was shown to a room off of the foyer. Dec­o­rated in shades of blue and cream, with white or­chids on the ta­ble and a small Queen Anne sofa, it had a more fem­i­nine touch. Dina sat on the sofa and gazed at the Mon­ets on the wall as some of her nerves dis­si­pated.

“This was my wife’s fa­vorite room,” Mr. Man­del said.

Dina star­tled at his silent ap­pear­ance and rose to greet him. “I can see why,” she said, hold­ing out her hand to shake his. “It’s lovely.”

“My son never sets foot in here.”

She did not want to talk about Adam any­more than she had to. “I’m sure it’s a re­minder she left. Thank you for see­ing me to­day.”

He sat in a blue and cream striped wing­back chair, across from her and the woman who’d an­swered the door brought in a tea ser­vice. When Dina nod­ded to the silent ques­tion, she poured tea and handed Dina the sugar, be­fore ar­rang­ing a cup for Mr. Man­del.

When she’d left, Adam’s fa­ther leaned for­ward. “You said you had news for me?”

The bone china teacup rat­tled as she placed it on the saucer and she wished there had been al­co­hol added to it to steady her nerves.

“I have proof Ash­ley lied about ev­ery­thing.”

“Ash­ley…?”

“The woman ac­cus­ing Adam of never giv­ing her the mo­tions she was sup­posed to file.” Did he re­ally not re­mem­ber who she was?

“You know her?”

“I went to high school with her, al­though I never knew her, other than by rep­u­ta­tion.”

“What’s your proof? Be­cause I was never able to find out any in­for­ma­tion. The par­ale­gals in my of­fice pre­sented a united front and de­fended her.”

She told him about the re­union and about Cheryl and Sta­cie and Ash­ley and all the rest of the “mean girls.” She re­counted her din­ner with Cheryl and fi­nally, she handed him her phone.

“The screen­shots are of texts Ash­ley sent her group of friends. Ash­ley is cur­rently try­ing to steal Cheryl’s boyfriend and this is Cheryl’s way of get­ting pay­back.”

“And these girls are your friends?” His dis­dain showed on his face and even though it was un­de­served, Dina winced.

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