The Liar Read Online Free PDF Page A

she’d had.
    And he’d given her the name of another shop that would look at Richard’s watches.
    She stretched her luck with Callie, tried two more banks, then gave it up for another day.
    Callie picked a
My Little Pony
DVD, and Shelby bought herself a laptop and a couple of flash drives. An investment, she justified. A tool she needed to keep everything straight.
    Business, she reminded herself. She wouldn’t think of the fake jewelry as another betrayal, but as something that gave her some breathing room.
    She spent naptime creating a spreadsheet, entered the jewelry, the payment for it. Canceled the insurance policy—and that would help her expenses.
    The utilities on the big house, even with rooms closed off, were a killer, but the money from the jewelry would help there.
    She remembered the wine cellar Richard had been so proud of, hauled the laptop down and began to catalog the bottles.
    Somebody would buy them.
    And what the hell, she’d splurge on a bottle for herself, have a glass with her dinner. She selected a bottle of pinot grigio—she’d learned a little about wines in the last four and a half years, and at least knew what she liked. She thought it would go just fine with chicken and dumplings—a Callie favorite.
    By the time the day was done, she felt more in control. Especially when she found five thousand dollars tucked into one of the cashmere socks in Richard’s drawer.
    Twenty thousand now in the fund for cleaning up the mess and starting over.
    Lying in bed, she studied the key.
    “Where do you fit, and what will I find? I’m not giving up.”
    She could maybe hire a private detective. It would likely take a good chunk of that cleaning-up fund, but might be the sensible thing to do.
    She’d give it a few more days, try some banks closer to the city. Maybe go into the city.
    The next day she added thirty-five thousand on the sale of Richard’s collection of watches, and two thousand three hundred more for his golf clubs, skis and tennis racket. It so boosted her mood that she took Callie for pizza between banks.
    Maybe she could afford that detective now—maybe that’s what she’d do. But she needed to buy a minivan, and her research told her that purchase would take a deep chunk of her fifty-eight thousand. Plus, it was only right she use some of that to bump up the payments on the credit cards.
    She’d work on selling the wine, that’s what she’d do, and hire the detective that way. For now, she’d just check one more bank on the way home.
    Rather than haul out the stroller, she propped Callie on her hip.
    Callie got that look in her eye—half stubborn, half sulky. “Don’t want to, Mama.”
    “Me either, but this is the last one. Then we’re going to go home and play dress-up tea party. You and me, baby.”
    “I wanna be the princess.”
    “As you wish, Your Highness.”
    She carried her now giggling daughter into the bank.
    Shelby knew the routine now, walked to the shortest line to wait her turn.
    She couldn’t keep hauling Callie around this way, every day, disrupting routine, in and out of the car. Hell, she felt pretty damn stubborn and sulky herself, and she wasn’t three and a half years old.
    She’d make this the last one after all. The very last altogether, and start seriously researching private investigators.
    The furniture would sell, and the wine would sell. It was time for optimism instead of constant worry.
    She shifted Callie on her hip, approached the teller, who glanced at her over the tops of red-framed cheaters.
    “Can I help you?”
    “Yes, ma’am. I need to speak with a manager. I’m Mrs. Richard Foxworth, and I have a power of attorney here. I lost my husband last December.”
    “I’m very sorry.”
    “Thank you. I believe he had a safe-deposit box in this bank. I have the key here, and the power of attorney.”
    Much quicker than fumbling around, she’d learned, telling bored bank people she’d found the key, didn’t know what it went