The Wife Who Knew Too Much(84)
“I didn’t do anything. Just listen, okay? This isn’t just background, it’s my explanation, and you said you’d keep an open mind. About ten years ago, Lissa got her adoption records unsealed, and she discovered that her birth mother was Gloria. Gloria, the housekeeper here.”
I knew that was true. Again, it didn’t justify his conduct.
“So what?”
“I’m about to tell you what. Lissa was desperate to know her birth mother. She wrote to her begging for a meeting, but Gloria said no, it would be too painful. That’s when Lissa found out the truth about her identity. Gloria wrote her a letter explaining that she’d been raped when she was seventeen and forced to give the baby away. Well, it didn’t take much digging for Lissa to figure out that Edward Levitt was the perpetrator—and her father.”
“I believe that Edward would do something like that. But don’t think you can use it to excuse what you and Juliet did.”
“I didn’t do anything. Will you please not say that, at least until you’ve heard the whole story? Okay?”
“Go on,” I said grudgingly.
“At that point, Lissa had nothing. She was twenty years old, a college dropout, with no money, no job, no prospects, fragile mental health. And she’d just discovered she was the daughter of this fabulously wealthy man. So, she sued for paternity. But the case wasn’t viable. Because she was over eighteen, Edward no longer had any support obligation, and there was no requirement that he give her a penny. She settled for a hundred thousand bucks, plus a no-show job at some shell company of Edward’s.”
“Protocol Shipping Solutions?”
“Yes, how did you know?” he said, taken aback.
“Finish your story, then we’ll talk.”
He nodded. “So, they settled. Lissa was required to sign an NDA and agree never to contact Edward or his family.”
“You’re trying to tell me that’s the reason for the false name, so she didn’t violate the settlement?”
“Partly. But the main reason for the false name was because of Gloria. Everything Lissa did—at least at the beginning—was because of Gloria. She’d never given up the idea of knowing her birth mother. But the lawsuit, which was something of a bust financially, had a terrible effect. It set Gloria against her. Apparently, Lissa’s lawyer had tried to subpoena Gloria to court, which made Gloria very uncomfortable. And after Edward died, when Lissa reached out again, Gloria basically said get lost and never contact me again. This just made Lissa crazy. To her, it was, like, this huge injustice. She couldn’t let it rest. She became fixated. She was obsessively following all things Levitt online, and that’s how she discovered that Nina was hiring an assistant. She decided to apply. I know that seems weird. Even twisted. But in her mind, it was a way into that world, so she could get to know her mother. But she had to do it under a different name, or they’d know it was her.”
“Okay, fine. Say I accept what you’re saying as true. That only tells me about Juliet’s motive. She’s not my concern, you are. Let’s talk about you, Connor. Your motive, your lies, your actions.”
“Me? I just needed a job. Lissa knew I was looking. She heard of the position in the Levitt Global PR department, and she passed that tip on to me. She offered to put in a good word, but only if I promised to keep her name change between us.”
“And you agreed to that? At that point, you knew something really sick was going on.”
“Sick? That’s an overstatement. You have to understand, Lissa was a friend, with a tragic story, who was trying to help me get a job. I thought what she was doing was weird, yes. But at that point, I’d never met Nina. And whatever Lissa was up to, it didn’t involve me. I didn’t feel any obligation to out her. Not then.”
“Connor, just so you know, I’m not losing sight of the fact that you ended up married to Nina, and Nina ended up dead. This stuff about poor little Lissa is just some smoke screen. You better be honest, because I’ll know if you’re not.”
“Yes. I swear. And here’s where the bad stuff starts. This is where I fault myself. This is when I should’ve known better, should’ve washed my hands of Lissa, and didn’t. As time went on, I realized she had a vendetta against Nina. She blamed her for everything. For forcing Edward to send her away. For making him be ruthless in the lawsuit. Which—I know Nina, and I know Edward by reputation—that just isn’t true.”
I recalled the words in Nina’s journal. “You sent me away.… You ruined my life.” Juliet had blamed Nina. I knew that much was real.
“The point is, I knew she harbored these feelings towards Nina. She started talking about getting back at her. I thought she was blowing smoke. I never took her seriously until—”
He paused, taking a deep breath.
“Until she came up with this crazy plan.”
“What plan?”
“To throw me together with Nina and see where it went.”
I stared at him, slack-jawed.
“I prayed there was some innocent explanation,” I said. “But there isn’t. Your marriage was a conspiracy from the beginning. Juliet hadn’t succeeded in getting her hands on the Levitt fortune through the lawsuit, so you did it for her.”
“No, it wasn’t like that. She never said, Let’s kill Nina and take her money. If she had, I would have done something. She presented it more as, almost, a practical joke. Let’s mess with her. To me, it wasn’t that. It was just … an opportunity. Hell yeah, I’ll go to this party. I’ll meet this rich, famous, beautiful woman. I’ll hang out with her, have sex with her, enjoy what she has to offer. I’m not proud I did that. But it’s not the same as conspiring to kill her. That, I would never do.”