“Of course I’m Chelsea’s father,” Porter said. “What are you trying to do here?”
“Look at this photo of Elias,” I said. “Really look at it. The shape of his eyes, his complexion, the way his upper lip curves a little more on his right side when he smiles. It’s subtle, but if you really look, you can see the similarities.”
He stared at the photo, said nothing.
I took my phone out of my pocket. “Let’s call Chelsea. When she gets here, we’ll show her the photo and see what she thinks.”
Porter pressed a hand to his chest, patting himself once, twice, then three times. I waited, gave him time to catch his breath.
“Let’s sit down,” he said. “But first, I need a drink.”
He walked into the kitchen, removing three glasses and an unopened bottle of whiskey from a cabinet. He filled each glass half full, passed them around.
“Thanks,” I said, when he handed a glass to me, “but I don’t—”
“Don’t be a prude, Miss Jax. Drink the damn thing. Okay?”
I hated whiskey—the pungent smell, the peaty taste—but I downed it in one giant swig anyway, hoping he wouldn’t offer me another. Finch set his glass on the counter, whiskey still inside. Porter drank the glass he’d poured for himself, reached for Finch’s, and drank it too.
“This is three-thousand-dollar whiskey,” Porter said to Finch. “If you can’t appreciate it, I sure as hell am not letting it go to waste.”
Porter grabbed the whiskey bottle and held it out in front of him, allowing the bottle to lead the way to the living room. The three of us filed in and sat down.
“Does Chelsea know you’re not her father?” I asked.
He sighed. “Before I reply to your question, what makes you think she isn’t?”
“When she was at my hotel earlier, she was adjusting the sleeve of her shirt, and I noticed a birthmark on her shoulder. The same birthmark in the photo I just showed you.”
“What do you plan to do if I tell you the truth?”
“If you’re asking if I have any intention of revealing it to anyone else, I don’t. Not unless I have to. Does Chelsea know?”
He shook his head. “She doesn’t, and I don’t know you enough to know if I can trust you.”
Whether he could or couldn’t, he no longer had a choice.
“You can trust her,” Finch said. “Joss would never lie to you, especially about this.”
Porter looked at Finch like it didn’t matter; he didn’t believe him either. “It’s a hard question to answer. I’m her father. I’m just not her biological father.”
“How do you know Chelsea doesn’t know?”
“Because her mother and I worked hard to keep it that way. It was one of the only things we agreed on actually.”
“How long have you known?”
Porter tipped the whiskey container, poured himself another drink, stared at an abstract painting on the wall of two girls stretching on a parallel bar in ballet class. His expression was disheartened, as if recalling an unwanted memory. “Chelsea was around five years old when I learned the truth about who her father really was. By then, we’d already bonded. She was mine. Still is.”
“How did you find out? Did Alexandra admit it to you?”
He shook his head. “I doubt Alex would have ever told me unless there was an advantage for her to do so.”
“How did you figure it out then?” I asked.
“Chelsea’s always had that half-inch birthmark on her shoulder. Looks like a bird in flight. I never thought much of it, just assumed it was a strange little oddity some kids have. One day Alexandra was going through some old files in her office. A folder fell on the floor. Pictures slipped out, scattered everywhere. I bent down, helped her pick them up. And that’s when I saw it.”
“Saw what?”
“A photo of Elias Pratt. One I hadn’t ever seen before. The one you just showed me. I noticed the same thing you did. He had the exact same birthmark in the exact same place.”
“Did you confront Alexandra?”
“It wasn’t necessary. She saw the look on my face and she knew there was no point denying it. For years I’d raised Chelsea thinking she was my daughter because the woman I loved, the woman who was supposed to be my confidant and best friend, thought it was better to lie to me than tell me the truth. You want to know the saddest part? She never would have told me if I hadn’t discovered it for myself.”
It was a despicable secret, and I knew why Alexandra had done it. If the public ever found out about the baby’s true father, they’d also find out about her wrongdoings. She probably would have never had an interview with a man behind bars again. Her perfect image, the one she worked so hard to develop over the years, would have been marred forever.
“How did Alexandra manage to be intimate with Elias when he was locked up?” I asked.
He tipped his glass in my direction. “According to Alexandra, there are ways around everything. Even in prison.”
But Elias wasn’t just in prison. He was on death row.
“Was it a one-time thing?”
“She said it was, but then, she was a gifted liar, wasn’t she?”
“In your opinion, were there genuine feelings between Alexandra and Elias?”
He nodded. “Until the day he fried, and even then it didn’t stop. She visited his grave once a month for ten years. She didn’t know I knew, but I did.”
He downed another shot, set the glass down, poured another. I exchanged glances with Finch, neither of us saying a word. For days, I’d despised Porter, convincing myself he was a manipulator, a person who used Alexandra for her money, flaunting his relationships with other women in her face for his own amusement while extorting her on the side. Now I wasn’t sure who he was or if I’d misjudged him.
“What happened after you found out the truth about Chelsea?” I asked.
“Alexandra begged me to stay in the marriage, to give us another chance. Not because she loved me, and not because she was sorry, but because she wanted to keep our perfect illusion of a life intact. How could I after her betrayal?”
“If you felt that way, why didn’t you file for divorce and move on with your life?”
“I thought about it. Almost went through with it a couple of times. It’s like I said before. Chelsea wasn’t mine by blood, but to me, she was still my little girl. If we divorced, Alex would have done everything in her power to keep Chelsea away from me, even if it hurt Chelsea in the process. It would have been her way of making me pay for not giving her what she wanted.”
I thought about Alexandra, about how different people could be when the veil was lifted. Once the true identity was revealed, the perfect picture took on a stain that couldn’t be removed.
“What about the money she was giving you?” I asked.
“I wasn’t extorting money from her. Early in the marriage, before I found out about Chelsea, I used some of the money I made from my own accounting business on investments. At the time, I tried to involve Alexandra in those investments. She had no interest. That’s what I’ve been living on all these years. Aside from the regular bills any couple has, I haven’t asked that woman for a dime in ages.”
“You would rather have me believe you were a womanizer, interested in Alexandra’s money, than be honest with me?”
“If it kept the truth from coming out, yes. Chelsea may act like she hates me right now, but she’ll come around. She always does.”
“Why did Alexandra go to so much effort to paint you like a villain?” I asked. “She tried turning Chelsea against you.”
“Alexandra was in love with Roland Sinclair. She planned to marry him.”
“How? He’s already married.”
“Not many know this, but his wife is dying. I don’t believe she’ll be around in three months. Alexandra planned to be there for him after his wife died. In my opinion, this was the reason she was writing one last book. She was burnt out on the whole process. They would have finally been free to build a life together.”
“And Chelsea? When did Alex plan to give her the news?”
“After Chelsea’s marriage, but Alex had already planted the seed, telling Chelsea I’ve been with other women, making me look bad so she would despise me and welcome Roland into her life when the time came. Alex probably hoped Chelsea would see Roland as some kind of savior to her grieving mother.”
“How long have you known about Alexandra’s plans with Roland?”
“A couple weeks.”
“You know how bad that sounds, right?” I said.
“I do.”
“You’re the one with the most compelling motive, the one person who needed Alexandra dead the most.”
“I just told you the truth, and I believe you know that. I also believe you no longer think I had anything to do with her death, because I didn’t.”
Telling me what he thought I should believe didn’t make me certain of his innocence. I wasn’t sure of anything anymore. “Even if you didn’t kill your wife, I’m still convinced you took her laptop.”
Porter stood, walked into another room, returning seconds later with a gray laptop clutched in his hand. “I took this the night before the police came to search the house, so I could read the book Alexandra had written.”
“Why?”
“The person who killed Alex is now going after my daughter. If something she’d written was tied to Alex’s murder, I wanted to know about it.”
“What can you tell me about the book?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
“What do you mean? You’re holding the laptop. You must have found something.”
“I knew the password to get into Alex’s computer, but the book file is protected. I can’t get into it.”
“Who else knew about the book?” I asked.
“Barbara Berry.”
“Anyone else?”
“I don’t know. Roland possibly, and then whomever she talked to or interviewed prior to her death.”
“Barbara Berry told me she didn’t know what the book was about,” I said.
He laughed. “Of course she did. The woman is a liar.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Trust me. Alex would have told her agent.”
I recalled my previous conversation with Barbara. If she knew about Alexandra’s book, what else was she hiding? I thought about the two names written on the piece of paper Barbara gave me. “Barbara suggested you killed Alexandra.”
He cocked his head back, laughed. “Witch. Doesn’t surprise me.”
“She also suggested Doyle Eldridge.”
Porter swished a hand through the air. “Doyle’s harmless. He’d never hurt Alex. He’s just a longtime fan with a crush.”
“Maybe. Either way, you need to turn Alexandra’s laptop over to the police. They can open the file, figure out what’s really in that book. Take it in, give it to Detective Murphy.”
“And I’m just supposed to trust he’ll keep his mouth shut if the book contains what I think it does?”
“Tell him your concerns. I believe you can count on him to be discreet. I’d also like you to think about talking to Chelsea. She’s going through a lot right now, but the way things are going, I believe the truth is going to come out. You don’t want it coming from someone other than you.”
He nodded several times, entwined his fingers over one knee. “I’ll think about it. In the meantime, here’s something you should think about. Barbara Berry lied to you and then tried to get you to believe I had something to do with Alex’s murder. Maybe you need to ask yourself why.”