VC04 - Jury Double by Edward Stewart Read Free Book Online Page A

is going to wreck it all.” Kyra’s teeth pressed down into her lower lip. “Could you save my life, Annie? And Toby’s? Could you please please please take a half hour off and go down to the court and sit in for me?”
    “Sit in for you?”
    “Pretend to be me. It’s only a formality. It’ll only take a minute or two.”
    “How could I do that? It’s illegal.”
    “But Mark’s going to get me off, so what difference does it make?” Kyra’s eyes beseeched. “Please, Annie—please?”
    That tone and that look did it. They always had. Anne felt herself softening like candle wax. “But no one will think I’m you.”
    Kyra pushed Anne down in front of the dressing table glittering with silver and tortoiseshell. “All you have to do is brush your hair like this. …”
    Anne looked at their reflections in the mirror. She saw Kyra—groomed and fashionable even in her distress, silken colors coordinated to bring out her strong points: the hazel-green eyes; the hair with its auburn highlights; the pale, milk-smooth skin with jeweled accents twinkling at her ears and throat.
    And then she saw herself—the colorless sister, too practical to bother with froufrou, simple and sensible in a gray blouse and jeans from the Gap and a necklace of amber beads from a vendor on 63rd Street who she’d felt sorry for.
    Kyra removed Anne’s barrette and jumbled the hair and patted it down loosely. “See?”
    Now they looked like an actress playing identical twins in one of Anne’s TV movies, a dual high-contrast role. “But what about our clothes?”
    “I’ve taken care of that.” A little needlepoint-and-pigskin Vuitton suitcase sat on the easy chair, as though Kyra had been preparing an overnight getaway. “I packed a few of my things.” She laid the suitcase on the bed and snapped it open. The sleek, simply cut clothes screamed style and taste and money.
    “And a little present.” Kyra pulled a Lady Seiko watch out of a pocket in the suitcase lining. “You get to keep it.”
    “Kyra, I couldn’t—”
    “And some perfume. Because Mark would know the difference. You don’t mind wearing Joy.” Kyra spritzed her with the tiny beaded atomizer.
    A perfumed dew settled. Besides scoring, I’m not doing anything tomorrow , Anne thought. Nothing that I can’t put off a few hours … It would be killing two birds with one stone. Kyra pulls out of this tailspin; and Anne gets to be queen for a day.
    “All right,” Anne said. “But just for tomorrow.”
    “Hey,” Toby called. “Somebody forgot something.”
    “His good night kiss.” Kyra pulled Anne into Toby’s half-darkened bedroom.
    Toby sat in bed with a laptop computer, tapping instructions into the keyboard. “Look, Mom, I figured out a way to access the Internet without paying.”
    “That’s not legal,” Kyra chided.
    “Sure it is. All you do is dial the eight-hundred number of your software provider, enter your user code, and—”
    “That’s enough net-surfing for today.” Kyra set the laptop on the bedside table. “Now say good night to your aunt.”
    Toby turned and scowled at Anne. “You’re not going away, are you?”
    The suitcase , she realized. “No such luck. Just borrowing some things from your mom.”
    “Good. I don’t want you to ever go away.” He threw his arms around her neck and tugged her into an embrace. She kissed him on the forehead.
    “I love you, Aunt Anne.”
    She winced at the sound of the words Aunt Anne . They seemed to put her somewhere between unmarriageable and buried. “I love you, too, Toby. Sleep tight.”
    “Hey, Mom. It’s too dark. Turn the TV on?”
    Kyra flicked it on but lowered the sound. “Now get some sleep.” Thin lines of light and shadow pulsed across the life-size poster of Joe Montana of the Kansas City Chiefs, which kept guard above the bed.
    “Mom?”
    “Yes, honey?”
    “I wish we were all together again—you and me and Dad.”
    “I do too. But sometimes things just don’t work