“Er…very nice,” he said.
Tom smiled. “Barbie is beautiful, honey bun. I love all those pink diamonds. Why don’t you try dressing her in a skirt to match? Then she can go to the ball.”
Morgan frowned. “She’s not Cinderella. She’s Barbie.”
“Right. But Barbie can go to a ball if she wants.”
Morgan considered this in silence for a second or two, then shrugged. “Daddy, tell Peter not to pull the heads off of my Barbies.”
“Peter, are you listening? No chopping off Barbie’s head, okay?”
Peter interrupted his turret building long enough to give a reluctant nod.
“Okay, be good both of you. Don’t fight. I’ll be right back.” Tom appeared unaware of anything in the least strange about his conversation with his kids. Maybe discussion of head-removal was a normal exchange when you were dealing with preschoolers? Since he’d been thirteen by the time Megan was four, Liam had spent very little time playing with his sister but for sure he couldn’t recall harboring any murderous impulses toward her Barbie dolls.
Liam followed Tom out of the family room, trying to remember when he’d last spoken to a human being under the age of twelve. He supposed it must have happened at least once or twice during the past fifteen years, but he’d be damned if he could remember the occasion.
A slender, pretty woman sat at the kitchen table across from a tiny little girl with poker straight, mouse-brown hair who was coloring with magic markers. The child’s head was bent so intently over her task that it was impossible to see her face. The little girl didn’t send a single glance toward the newcomers, but the woman rose to her feet, her smile not quite hiding both fatigue and worry.
“Liam?” She pushed her chair away from the table and stood up, holding out her hand. “Hi, I’m Alexia, Chloe’s sister. I’m so glad you’ve agreed to help us. I’ve seen you on TV several times and your glowing reputation precedes you.”
Liam let the possible reference to Sherri Norquist’s trial slide over him. Surprisingly, it barely stung. “With any luck we’ll be able to get Chloe’s problems squared away fast,” he said. “Then your sister won’t need my help or anyone else’s.”
Alexia didn’t look reassured. “I’m not optimistic about this being resolved quickly,” she said, her voice low. “The whole situation is made-for-TV perfect and, boy, are they reveling in the mess.” She glanced quickly toward Sophie, who gave no sign that she’d even noticed Liam’s arrival in the room, much less that she was paying attention to the conversation. Once again, Liam was forcefully reminded of his own family’s situation only two months earlier. Media intrusion then had been a nightmare for his mother and sister. He could barely imagine how much worse it would be if you were trying to shield young children from a brutal reality.
“I have a couple of questions for you,” Alexia murmured, walking over to the sink where she stood staring at the dish detergent as if she couldn’t remember why she was there.
Liam followed, gesturing toward Sophie when Alexia didn’t speak. “Is your niece going to be upset at being picked up by a complete stranger?”
Alexia shook her head. “I’ve told her the truth—that you’re here to drive her home—so I’m sure she’ll go with you willingly. She’s taking the loss of her father very hard. She’s been frighteningly quiet today.” She gave a quick shrug. “Although I guess that’s a dumb thing to say. How else could she take Jason’s death except badly?”
“It’s a difficult situation all around and the media attention makes everything that much more difficult.” Liam winced at the platitude but he was sneaking covert glances at his daughter and didn’t have much brain power to spare for conversing.
“Especially in our family. Did you know that our father—Chloe’s and mine—is the deputy superintendent of schools in Colorado Springs?”
“No, I wasn’t aware that Chloe had parents in the state.”
“We all moved here in the late eighties, when Chloe started serious training for the Olympics. Once we were here, we fell in love with Colorado and never left.”
He’d been ignorant of that, along with virtually every other fact about Chloe’s life. “Is your father’s profession significant for some reason?” he asked.
“Well, just that he’s such an important figure in their community and the notoriety of Jason’s murder is already proving horribly difficult for him and my mother.” Alexia sighed. “Dad always tries so hard to set a good example for his students. Family is really important to him and to my mother. This is just the pits.”
Tough for dad, maybe, but the situation wasn’t exactly easy on Chloe, either. “I’ll do my best to prevent the situation getting any worse than it already is,” Liam said coolly. “I recommend, however, that you and your parents avoid piling any more burdens on your sister’s shoulders, even by implication. She’s carrying a heavy enough load as it is.”
Alexia flushed. “I’m sorry. I must have sounded like a jerk just now. That’s what comes of listening to my mother cry into the phone all afternoon. She’s terribly worried about Chloe, of course.”
But not worried enough to have driven up from Colorado Springs, apparently. Liam stowed that fact away for future reference. “I’m optimistic that I’ll be able to keep your sister out of jail,” he said. “You can pass that information on to your parents if it will make them feel any better.”
Alexia stared at him in mute horror and he realized that, despite everything, the possibility of her sister ending up behind bars hadn’t hit home until this moment. She rubbed her forehead, as if trying to send away a sudden headache.
“The talk show hosts have been salivating at the possibility of Chloe in prison for the past couple of hours,” Alexia admitted. “The fact is, I was so angry at their outrageous comments that I dismissed everything they said as ridiculous.”
“Most of what they said probably was. Still, we have to manage the timing of your sister’s arrest—if it comes—in such a way that the police have no excuse to hold her in jail overnight while we wait for a bond hearing. That can be trickier than it sounds. Accused murderers are usually required to wait trial in custody, but I’m optimistic we can persuade a judge not to lock Chloe up.”
Alexia took a few seconds to absorb the horrifying prospect of her sister awaiting trial behind bars. Apparently, she couldn’t handle the implications and changed the topic. “It’s mind-blowing that the media can use Jason’s murder as entertainment,” she said. “Chloe was the most loyal wife you could imagine, but the TV reporting today managed to make her sound like a nympho on steroids. They interviewed every guy in Colorado she ever dated from the time she was sixteen and edited the sound bites so you’d have thought she spent her life hopping from bar to drunken party and back again. How the hell do they think she won her Olympic medals? By falling out of bed and whizzing down the ski slopes between parties? Have they any idea—any remote clue—what it takes to train for such dangerous and grueling races?”
The annoying thing about the media, Liam reflected cynically, was not that they were so often wrong, but that they were occasionally dead right. Alexia seemed to think Chloe was a saint; Sophie’s existence proved she was, at the very least, capable of breaking her marriage vows and committing adultery. He sneaked another glance at the top of his daughter’s head, which was all he could see since she was still coloring with fanatic concentration. He doubted if Sophie could hear what was being said and he reassured himself that there was no chance that a three-year-old—an age level that apparently had trouble distinguishing red from blue—would be able to grasp the significance of the conversation.
Liam