TENDER DECEIT (Romantic Suspense Mystery Novel): First Love Series ~ Book 1 (4 page)

She blinked. There was a new message underneath the previous one.

Sorry I had to rush off. It was good to see you, Leah. I’d like to see you again—will you have dinner with me tomorrow night? 6:30pm at HarbourFront Tower Two. Toran.

There’s nothing more horrible than waking up in the morning to find that you’ve fallen asleep in your clothes, without cleaning your teeth and with your make-up still on. Leah staggered into the bathroom and recoiled at the sight of herself in the mirror: panda eyes, wild hair, and a bloodless face that would have made a vampire run for cover. After twenty minutes of standing under a hot shower, though, she had scrubbed her face clean, got some colour back into her cheeks, and was feeling more human again.

Leah dressed and went down for breakfast, more for the sake of having something to do than because she was feeling hungry. It was as if her stomach had gone into hibernation after the forced starvation yesterday. Her appetite was soon awakened, though, by the sight of the enormous breakfast buffet laid out in the hotel dining room.

Freshly made pancakes, waffles, omelettes, and scrambled eggs were on offer from the open kitchen. Crispy bacon, succulent sausages, and golden hashbrowns rested in heated trays alongside grilled tomato halves and sautéed mushrooms. A three-tiered stand displayed a selection of delectable pastries while a grill toaster nearby ejected hot, toasted bread at regular intervals. The central table hosted an assortment of fresh fruits and exotic salads, and a row of glass dispensers provided a choice of cereals and muesli: fruit, organic, bircher, raw, toasted, nut-free… For those who fancied an Asian-style breakfast, a counter to the side provided a huge pot of steaming rice
congee
with a selection of condiments, from tiny fried anchovies to crispy shallots, pickled mustard greens to marinated seaweed.

Leah smiled to herself. Eating was the national pastime in Singapore and she’d forgotten about the incredible breakfast buffets on offer here. She walked over to the drinks stand and after considering the selection, which included everything from fresh coconut juice to fresh roasted coffee, she made herself a cup of strong, black tea and found a free table.

Half an hour and several trips to the buffet later, Leah leaned back and sighed. She was definitely feeling more human now. And also feeling slightly sheepish about her reaction last night. Seen in the bright light of morning, the story about Toran’s death seemed ridiculous. There had to have been some simple explanation, some mistake or oversight, and her tiredness and jet lag had made her jump to crazy conclusions. There would be an amendment on the news later, she was sure, stating that there had been a reporting error and Toran James was not really dead. And she would be seeing Toran himself later tonight. She had replied to his message, agreeing to the dinner date. She was sure he would explain everything.

In the meantime, she thought, standing up briskly and heading for the hotel lobby, she had to get on with what she came to Singapore to do: deal with her father’s death.

It turned out that lawyers did have lawyers after all. David Fisher had entrusted his affairs to a young colleague, Stanford Lim, who met Leah with polite condolences and brisk efficiency.

“Your father’s body has been taken to the Centre for Forensic Medicine Mortuary at the Singapore General Hospital,” Stanford Lim said. “Standard procedure in such cases when there seems to be a non-natural cause of death.”

Leah looked at him sharply. “I wasn’t sure I heard correctly on the phone—they think my father might have been run over deliberately? But why would anybody do that?”

He cleared his throat. “It is one of the possibilities the police are considering. It was late and your father was walking on the side of a poorly lit road. The most likely scenario is that the driver may have genuinely missed seeing him and been going too fast to brake in time. Then they may have panicked when they saw what they had done and driven away.”

“But?” Leah pressed.

“But…” he said reluctantly. “There were skid marks on the road which suggest that the car could have accelerated
towards
your father, rather than tried to swerve away from him.”

Leah felt a cold chill touch the base of her spine.

“It’s just a theory,” said Stanford Lim hastily. “A possibility, that’s all. As far as I know, the police are not treating it as a case of foul play—they think it’s much more likely to be a careless driver—but they’re just considering all the possibilities. I believe they may do an autopsy and the police would like to see you tomorrow. I’ve scheduled an appointment for you at the CFM Mortuary later this morning to identify the body.”

Stanford Lim gave Leah a wary glance, obviously wondering about her lack of emotion. He pushed some documents and a set of keys across his desk. “Your father left instructions to give you these in the event of his death: a copy of his will, and there’s also an inventory—actually, he added that just last Thursday; it was lucky I happened to be in the office when he came in. And these are the keys to your father’s house. I’m sure you’ll want to go through his private possessions…”

Leah took the documents and the keys, listened to the rest of his instructions, signed papers as directed, and then took a taxi to the mortuary, all in a slight daze. Even when they ushered her into the cold room where her father’s body lay, she found herself viewing it all as if through an underwater lens. The coroner pulled back the sheet and she looked down at the still, waxen face. She nodded wordlessly. Gentle hands guided her out of the room again and then she was in a sort of waiting room, with a steaming cup of jasmine tea thrust into her hands.

Leah cupped the hot drink, savouring the heat that seared through her fingers. It was good to feel
something
. She thought of that still body lying back in the mortuary and waited for the tears, the horror, the anger to hit her—but there was nothing.

Lunch was done on autopilot and then Leah looked down at the keys that Stanford Lim had given her. She didn’t remember taking the taxi to her father’s house—her old home—but somehow, Leah found herself standing on the verandah of the villa where she had spent most of her childhood. Letting herself in, Leah stood in the cool, dark hallway, feeling like she had stepped back in time.

She walked slowly through the house, her eyes searching for signs of change, but she was surprised to find that it was almost exactly as she remembered. In the kitchen, she stopped as something stuck to the fridge door caught her eye. A childish drawing of a lion, done after a daytrip to the Singapore Zoo—one of the few outings Leah could remember going on with her father. She stared at the drawing. He had never mentioned the trip again and never given the impression that he had enjoyed it much—and yet he had kept that silly drawing all these years and given it pride of place in his kitchen.

Her mind churning, Leah continued through the rest of the house. At the rear of the villa, she came to a closed door: David Fisher’s study, which looked out onto the gardens at the back. She hesitated as she reached for the door handle. How many times had she stood here in her childhood and teens, listening and wondering what her father was doing in the still silence inside?

Leah took a deep breath and pushed the door open, stepping into the room. Then took another breath in sharply. The leather executive chair was tipped on its side; papers were scattered across the surface of the glossy, mahogany desk and books were tossed carelessly from the shelves; a giant Chinese porcelain vase lay shattered by the door; and the contents of the filing cabinet had been emptied onto the floor.

Her father’s study had been ransacked.

Leah went into the study and walked cautiously around, stepping over the papers and books strewn across the floor. As she rounded her father’s desk, she could see that all the drawers had been pulled out, the contents rifled with. The doors of the cabinet alongside the desk had been flung open, items spilling out carelessly, and even the cushioned seat of the deep, leather armchair by the windows had been slashed. Someone had been making a quick and rough search for something.

But what had they been looking for?

Leah glanced at the glass doors leading to the garden. One of them was partially open and, on closer inspection, she could see that the lock had been jimmied. So this was how the intruder had got in.

She turned back to look at the mess in the room again. This was no ordinary burglary—the computer was still at the desk and her father’s sleek Macbook Air was resting undisturbed on the top of the side cabinet; his collection of Chinese jade carvings lay untouched on one of the shelves; the framed
sefer
—an antique Hebrew manuscript—still hung on the wall and the valuable Tang horse statue stood safe in its glass case. No, the intruder had been searching for something specific.

Leah sank into the torn leather armchair and tried to think. Money? She didn’t think her father ever kept large sums of cash in the house. Besides, if they had been after money, why hadn’t they stolen the antiques and computers? No, it had to be something else. Her gaze wandered over the walls again and she noticed that several of the paintings were askew. As if they had been moved or taken off and replaced in a hurry. What did people look for behind paintings? The answer came to her suddenly.

A safe.

They had been looking for her father’s safe. Leah shut her eyes as a memory suddenly assailed her. She had been little—only slightly taller than her father’s desk—and she had stood here in this study, clutching her doll, watching as he had put something into a safe. He had turned back and smiled at her as he had done it. It was the smile that had stuck out in her memory. David Fisher had rarely smiled.

Leah opened her eyes, stood up quickly, and went around, lifting each of the paintings. Behind the third one, she found the square metal door with the round dial. She set the painting down on the floor and touched the safe door. It moved under her hand. Someone had cracked it open and not bothered to lock it again.

Leah swung the door aside and peered inside. A stack of notes in various currencies, a soft pouch containing a gold Rolex, a folder of documents that looked like certificates, a pile of bearer bonds, David Fisher’s passport... She couldn’t tell if anything had been removed, but somehow, she felt the intruder had not found what he was looking for here.

Leah stepped back from the safe, frowning. Something was niggling at her. She closed her eyes and tried to conjure up the memory again. Her father had been crouching
down
to the safe, not stretching up at the wall. She opened her eyes again and looked around the room with fresh interest. It had been a different safe in her memory, she realised. A concealed safe, which hadn’t been discovered by the intruder. A safe no one knew the existence of—except her.

Leah walked back to her father’s desk and stood at the corner, just like she did in her memory. Crouching down, she tried to view the room as her seven year-old self would have seen it on that day. Her eyes flicked over the bookcases, the side bureau, the potted bamboo, then halted on the antique gramophone cabinet in the far corner. Another of her father’s purchases—David Fisher had been quite a collector of antiques—and something that she remembered seeing in her childhood.

Leah approached it eagerly. The top raised to show the turntable and stylus, covered in a fine layer of dust. She dropped to her knees in front of the cabinet and pulled the doors open. Neatly divided brackets for storing vinyl records filled the space inside. Her father had used them for storing papers and folders. She inserted her hand into one of the brackets and felt around, her fingers touching the solid wood at the back of the cabinet. Nothing.

She swung the double cabinet doors shut again and sat back on her heels, disappointed. She had been so sure… Leah stood up with a sigh and was about to lower the lid down on the turntable when she paused. Looking down at the cabinet from above, it seemed to her that it looked a lot deeper than the space she had just seen inside.

Leah crouched down again, but this time, instead of pulling at the double door handles in the centre, she ran her hands over the sides of the cabinet. She could feel hinges on both sides, but when she looked closer, she also saw something else. A very faint line—like a deep crack—running up one side, just behind the hinges, across the top and down the other side of the cabinet. She dug her fingernails into the crack on the left side and pulled.

Nothing happened.

She tried again, pulling harder.

Still nothing.

Leah blew out a breath of frustration. Then she ran her fingers over the cabinet again, this time sliding them down to the bottom and into the gap underneath, where the four short legs raised the cabinet off the floor. She was about to give up when she felt it. A tiny lever, tucked alongside the front left leg. She depressed it and, at the same time, dug the nails of her right hand into the crack again and gave the front of the cabinet a good tug.

The next minute, Leah nearly fell back as the entire front of the cabinet, including the hollowed-out compartment for the brackets, suddenly swung outwards and sideways. She gaped at the space revealed at the back. The cabinet had a false back inside, she realised, with additional space built into the structure behind the normal compartment. It wasn’t a large space—she pulled out the few items stored inside. A small album of photographs, a hospital ID bracelet, a jewellery box containing two gold rings, a small, pink square of paper with some faded numbers printed on it, and a thick bundle of what looked like handwritten letters.

Carefully Leah turned the items over, looking at each in turn. Her heart stuttered as she suddenly saw her mother’s name printed on the hospital ID bracelet.
Was this what she had been wearing the night she gave birth to me? The night she died, giving birth to me,
Leah reminded herself bleakly. She flipped open the album and found that it contained photos of her mother. She had rarely seen pictures of her mother. Aside from the treasured one Leah had in her possession and her parents’ wedding portrait, there were no other pictures of her mother in the house. Now, she looked at the images hungrily and was shocked to realise how much she looked like her mother. The same startling deep blue eyes in a heart-shaped face, the same dark brown hair falling in waves down past her shoulders. Her mouth was wider and her body less petite than her mother’s, but the resemblance was uncanny.

Was this why her father had never seemed able to look at her? Feeling her throat tighten suddenly with tears for the first time since she had left London, Leah set the album aside and opened the jewellery box with the two gold rings. They were her parents’ wedding rings, she realised, as she saw the date and their names engraved on the inside. She picked up the bundle of letters last and carefully slid the elastic off, fanning the letters out on her lap. Her eyes widened as she realised that they were written in her father’s slanting handwriting and that they were all addressed to her.

Dear Leah…

From the dates in the top right-hand corners, they went back months, years… all the way back to the year her father had sent her to boarding school in England. Letters written and never sent. Thousands and thousands of words from the father who had hardly ever talked to her. Leah’s hands shook slightly as she picked up one of the letters, but her eyes blurred with tears when she tried to read the first sentence. She put it down again abruptly, then gathered all the letters together with jerky movements. Suddenly, she was scared—scared of finding out what her father had been keeping from her all these years. She bundled the letters together and snapped the elastic around them again with a final gesture.

Leah drew a long, shuddering breath and looked up. She didn’t know how long she had been in the study, but the light was fading in the garden outside and she was sitting in semi-darkness. She got up stiffly and switched on the desk lamp. The orange glow flooded the room, making the windows go dark. Carefully, she put all the items from the concealed safe into her handbag, then swung the front of the cabinet back into place, hearing the faint
click
as it latched.

Leah looked around the room again. She would have to report the break-
in to the police, she realised, but not today, she decided. She had had enough of questions about her father and confronting the past. She went over to the windows and slid the door shut as well as she could with the broken lock, then turned to switch off the desk lamp.

As she did, a movement outside the window caught her eye. She whirled around and stared into the darkness.

Nothing.

But she hadn’t imagined that feeling. The feeling of being watched. Her eyes searched the darkness outside, looking for shapes among the shadows of the bromeliads in the garden. She was certain that somebody was out there. With the darkness outside and the lamp glowing brightly in here, everything inside the study would be lit with even more clarity.
How much had they seen? Had they seen her shutting the hidden safe?

Cursing herself for not thinking of it earlier, Leah yanked the string to draw the blinds and shut the world out. Then she gave the study one last look, switched off the lamp, and left the room. The darkened villa felt oppressive now and she didn’t linger.

He watched as a taxi pulled up in front of the villa and Leah hurried out of the front door. She was clutching her handbag tightly to her chest, in a protective gesture that was more revealing than any tell-tale bulge on the side of the bag. Toran wondered what she had in there.

Leah threw a furtive look behind her, back at the villa, and although dusk had sunk everything in a purple gloom, he caught the glint of fear in her wide eyes. Something tightened inside him. He fought a sudden urge to reach out and soothe her.

But even as he shifted his weight, he saw something else that made him freeze in the shadow of the rattan palm, where he was hidden. A figure was stepping out of the side gate of the villa gardens just as Leah climbed on board and the taxi door slammed shut. A figure of a man, with greying brown hair, in a navy suit.

So I’m right—they
are
following Leah, Toran thought grimly as he saw the man move stealthily forwards to watch the taxi drive away. What do they suspect she knows?
What will they do to find out?

He thought again of the way Leah had clutched the handbag to her chest and wondered if the man had seen that too. He knew instinctively that Leah had found something—something that had drawn her deep into this web of deceit and danger. He had to learn what she’d found—to know whether it changed things. Toran set his jaw. He would find out tonight.