An Accidental Woman

by Barbara Delinsky

  She broke off when the door opened again.

  Micah’s insides lurched. Heather was there with a guard, who gestured her forward. She looked ghostly pale and even more terrified than she had been back at the house. Her silver eyes found his and held them, as though clinging for support.

  At first he didn’t move. There was a split second when he thought of the part of Heather’s past he didn’t know, the knapsack he had stashed away and the words that the federal agent had said. We have evidence that her real name is Lisa Matlock, and that fifteen years ago she committed murder in California. If Heather was hiding something like that from him, it would explain the fear in her eyes.

  Then again, if she was innocent of the charges and feeling overwhelmed by something that was out of her grasp, her fear was justified.

  He focused on that thought. She had no sooner stepped into the room when he crossed the floor, pulled her into his arms, and pressed her face to his chest. He didn’t want to see those fear-filled eyes. But he could feel her trembling, which was nearly as upsetting. His Heather had always been calm and even-tempered. She had always been brave, as sure of herself as anyone could be who was a newcomer to a town as insular as Lake Henry.

  He remembered thinking that about her the first time they’d met. It had been fall. With the syrup season long done, he was in carpenter mode. Charlie had hired him to install a wall of windows in the café to open it up to the birches. During the course of the job, he was in and out of the kitchen a dozen times a day. Heather was working there, first as a dishwasher, then helping prepare the food for cooking. She hadn’t said much. To this day she wasn’t a big talker—but neither was he. He remembered her being quiet, even shy, but self-assured. She had seemed comfortable with what she was doing, at peace, certainly not like a woman who was on the lam and had something to hide.

  The guard stepped out into the hall and closed the door, leaving them alone with Cassie.

  Micah said the first thing that came to mind, murmured against her hair. “Did you have breakfast?”

  Heather shook her head against him and whispered, “They offered. I couldn’t eat.”

  He held her tightly for another minute, then lowered his mouth to her ear. “Where’d this come from?”

  She lifted a shoulder in a muted shrug.

  “Did you tick off someone in town?”

  Another headshake.

  “Have you ever heard of that other woman?”

  Heather started to cry. Micah didn’t know if that meant she had or she hadn’t, but he looked at Cassie in desperation. “She isn’t that person. What do we do?”

  Cassie had stayed on the far side of the small room, giving them these few seconds together. Now she came closer. She touched Heather’s shoulder, the gesture of a friend, but didn’t say anything. After a minute, she exerted the smallest pressure to make Heather look up.

  “I need to ask this, honey,” she said, “because I wouldn’t be doing my job as a lawyer if I didn’t. Are you Lisa Matlock?”

  Heather’s eyes were wet. “I’m Heather Malone.”

  “There,” Micah said, annoyed. “You have it. What now?”

  Cassie continued to study Heather’s face. After what felt to Micah like an unnecessarily long time, which riled him all the more, she exhaled and looked at him. “Now we fight.”

  He set his annoyance aside. “How?”

  “We go into that hearing in a little while and contest the proceedings. That’s basically saying that Heather is innocent of the charges and that we will not waive extradition.”

  Heather made a frightened sound. Micah verbalized the source of her fear. “Extradition?”

  “If we were to waive it,” Cassie explained, “she would be immediately taken to California to answer the charges they’ve lodged.”

  “Would that be admitting she is Lisa Matlock?”

  “No. It would be saying that we’ll let the courts there prove that along with the other charges.”

  “Since she isn’t Lisa Matlock, the charges don’t apply.”

  “Right, but what I think and what you think and what she says is one thing. What the people in California think is apparently something else.”

  “Well, they’re wrong. I want the charges dropped.”

  Cassie smiled sadly. “If it were as easy as that, I wouldn’t have much work. Our system of criminal justice functions in roundabout ways.”

  “Innocent until proven guilty,” Micah reminded her.

  Cassie hesitated several seconds too long. “Not always,” she said, shaking her head.

  With those words, Micah had the awful fear that the trouble was just beginning.

  * * *

  Poppy had no calls to take for a while, which was typical of a Lake Henry morning in winter. During other seasons, when fine weather beckoned, people were out and about doing whatever tickled their fancy. Rainy days, snowy days, cold days tended to keep them at home. They were answering their own phones. They were reading the paper, cleaning up breakfast, stacking wood, hacking ice from the eaves, and if not that, they were starting to think about getting geared up to settle down to work in the easygoing way that Lake Henryites had.She built the fire in the stone hearth to a blaze, made a pot of coffee, and sat back with a steaming mug of it to look at the lake, all the while wondering where Heather was, and what she was doing—and it wasn’t just a nominal interest. Poppy had other friends she’d known longer than Heather, but Heather was the one she liked best. She felt closest to Heather, had from the first time they met. Poppy had been a sophomore at the state university, and Heather, who spent her work week inside at Charlie’s, loved the great outdoors. Each weekend, a group of them went mountain climbing, and though Poppy had more in common with the college students in the bunch, Heather was the one she talked with the most.

  Thinking back, Poppy realized that she had done most of the talking.Heather was a good listener, and Poppy, who felt constrained by the town in general, and her family in particular, had needed to vent. Then Poppy’s accident happened, and, through the nightmare of recovery, Heather had been there for her. She seemed to know what to do without being told. She didn’t dole out pity or offer patronizing words of solace. Her underlying attitude was to accept what had happened and move on. That quiet approach had been a relief.

  Poppy was thinking about that quietness—about listening rather than talking, and whether there had been a reason for it that went beyond Heather’s basic nature—when a light blinked on the phone bank before her. Pushing that unsettling thought from her mind, she put on her headset, pressed the appropriate button, and said, “Lake Henry Library.”

  “Leila Higgins, please,” said an unfamiliar woman.

  “I’m sorry. The library doesn’t open until noon on Wednesdays. Who’s calling?”

  “This is Aileen Miller. I’m with the Washington Post. I understand that Heather Malone worked at the library. I was looking for a comment from Ms. Higgins.”

  Poppy was dismayed, but not unprepared. When it came to handling the media, she had gone through trial by fire the fall before. Now she said, “Tell you what. If you give me your number, I’ll pass it on to Ms. Higgins when the library opens.”

  “Who is this?”

  “The answering service.”

  “Do you have a home number for Ms. Higgins?”

  “Tell you what,” Poppy offered sweetly. “Give me your home number, and I’ll pass that on to Ms. Higgins.”

  There was a pause, then a magnanimous, “Oh, I don’t want her having to pay. I’d be happy to call her.”

  “I’m sure you would,” Poppy replied.

  After another pause, Aileen Miller responded with resignation. “She can call me at work.”

  Poppy wrote down the woman’s name and number, then disconnected the call and made one of her own.

  “Police office,” came a grumble on the other end.

  “Willie Jake, it’s me. What do you know about Heather?”

  There was
a pause, then a testy, “What do you know?”

  “Only that she was arrested. How could you let that happen?”

  “I didn’t ‘let’ it happen,” came the indignant reply. “I’m local. I can’t control the Feds.”

  “Do they have evidence that Heather was someone else?”

  “You know I can’t tell you that. But would I have let them arrest her if they didn’t?”

  “What kind of evidence?”

  There was a sigh. “I can’t tell you that, lest I bias the case. But I’ll tell you this—it was all circumstantial. A bunch of old photos of someone who might’a looked like Heather, reports of a scar, handwriting comparisons—all real iffy. But I say it again, these were Feds. I tried my best to change their minds, but in the end they did what they wanted to do. There’s no messing with these guys when they set their minds to something, and when they have the paper to back it up . . .” He sputtered a drawn-out, “Whelllll . . .”

  Poppy’s private line blinked and John’s number appeared. “Okay, Willie Jake. I get your point. Gotta run now.” She ended the call and punched in the blinking button. “Any luck?”

  “She’s at the federal courthouse in Concord. A hearing’s going on right now.”

  “What kind of hearing?”

  “On the warrant. I don’t know anything more. I got this from my buddy who covers the courthouse for the Monitor. He couldn’t talk. He wanted to get into the hearing.”

  “Did you ask him to keep it quiet?”

  “Oh yeah,” John said, sounding dryly resigned. “He shot that idea down fast.”

  “Why? Heather’s a nobody!”

  “Well, the guy Lisa Matlock allegedly killed is a somebody. Was a somebody. His father was a United States senator from California at the time, earmarked for his party’s vice presidential nomination, which he got three weeks after his son’s death, in part thanks to the sympathy vote.The ticket lost, and DiCenza didn’t run for the Senate again, but he’s still a force in the state, and he keeps the torch alive.”

  Poppy thought fast. “And you picture our Heather as the type who would mingle with political movers? I don’t. She’s too private, too shy, too down to earth. Sorry, John, but something doesn’t jibe.”

  “Hey, I’m just telling you what my buddy told me. This was a high-profile case at the time. My guess is it’ll get lots of attention now. I’m driving down there myself. Armand will want a story in the paper, and the best way to get it right is to see what’s happening firsthand.”

  “Find out why it’s happening,” Poppy pleaded, “why it’s happening to Heather.”

  “I’ll try. I’ll call you when I get back.”

  Poppy didn’t want to hold him up. If anyone would give Heather a fair shake, it was John. So she simply added, “Please,” and disconnected the call.

  Slipping off the headset, she took up her coffee and looked out at the lake. She tried to imagine what Heather was feeling—wondered if it was confusion or numbness or fear, or something else entirely. She tried to imagine Heather sitting in a cell in Concord, but couldn’t give the image a face that fit. Heather always looked too . . . gentle. The scar did that. It was small, not more than half an inch long and curved gently upward from the corner of her mouth, the eternal optimist’s smile.

  Scars like that gave a person distinction. Many people had them.

  Another button lit on the console, Poppy’s private line again. This time, the number was that of Marianne Hersey’s bookstore. Putting one end of the headset to her ear, she pressed the button. “Hey.”

  “What is going on?” Marianne asked. She was one of five women who had dinner at Poppy’s every Tuesday. Formally, they were the Lake Henry Hospitality Committee. Informally, they were good friends sharing news, laughter, and gripes. Heather had been with them the evening before, as she was every week. “I just got to work and was sitting down with my coffee and doughnut, thinking that maybe I’d catch an author on the morning talk shows, and suddenly there’s breaking news from Concord. Do you know what they’re saying about Heather?”

  “On television? Oh God. What are they saying?”

  “That she deliberately ran down former Senator DiCenza’s son, then fled from the scene of the accident and wasn’t spotted again until a member of the cold case squad got a lead from someone who was here last fall. What do you know?”

  “Not as much as you do. I’m going to go watch. I’ll call you back.” Poppy swiveled her chair, aimed the remote at the television, and turned on the set. No more than a second or two into channel surfing, she spotted a “Breaking News” banner. Since the story was just beginning, she suspected she had hit a different channel from the one Marianne had seen. This was not a good sign.

  The reporter had barely begun to talk when Poppy’s private line lit again.

  “It’s Sigrid,” came the voice on the other end. “Are you watching this?” Sigrid Dunn was another of the Tuesday-night group. By day, she did large-loom weaving. The television was often on while she worked.

  “Just tuned in,” Poppy said.

  “What are they talking about?”

  “Let me listen.” She raised the volume.

  “ . . . a major break in the investigation of the murder of Robert DiCenza fifteen years ago in Sacramento. DiCenza, who was twenty-five at the time, was run down as he was leaving a political fundraiser for his father, then a United States senator from that state. The car that hit him was driven by an eighteen-year-old named Lisa Matlock, whom, sources say, had threatened him earlier that evening. The FBI alleges that Lisa Matlock has been living in New Hampshire for the last fourteen years under the name Heather Malone. She was apprehended early this morning at her home in Lake Henry. She surrendered quietly and was transported to federal court here in Concord. A hearing has just concluded, during which Ms. Malone’s lawyer formally contested the proceedings. That means that she will be fighting extradition. Since extradition is a state issue, the federal proceedings were dropped, and she has been turned over to the Office of the Attorney General of New Hampshire. She will be transported to the superior court in West Eames for a hearing there later today. This is Brian Anderson for Channel Nine, with breaking news in Concord.”

  “Do you remember hearing about this murder?” Poppy asked Sigrid.

  “No, but fifteen years ago I was in the Peace Corps in Africa, so I wouldn’t have seen the news. Is this our Heather they’re talking about?” she asked in disbelief.

  Poppy was just as befuddled. “Well, it’s our Heather who’s in custody, but it can’t be our Heather who did that.” She paused, thinking of the rapport she and Heather had, the sense that they felt things other people didn’t. “Can it?”

  “No. Absolutely not. We know Heather. I mean, we don’t spend Tuesday nights talking about the weather. We talk about private things. We talk about intimate things. She couldn’t hide something like that from us.”

  Poppy was trying to remember stories Heather had told about her childhood, but she could think of none. Heather was always more of a listener on Tuesday nights. She listened and asked questions—insightful questions that always got the others to talk more.

  “We don’t really know all that much about her,” Poppy said quietly. “It’s just that Heather’s not a violent sort.”

  “It’s just,” Sigrid echoed archly, “that someone’s up to no good. Someone in the press must have been pissed at us last fall. This is tit for tat.”

  “John says no.”

  “The news said that someone who was here last fall tipped off the cold case squad. Okay, so maybe John’s right. Maybe it isn’t revenge. But someone was looking at things he wasn’t supposed to be looking at.”

  “Come on, Sigrid. They look at the crowd. Heather was in the crowd.”

  “Actually, not,” Sigrid pointed out. “She wasn’t milling around when the cameras were here. Missy had chicken pox. Remember?”

  Now that she mentioned it, Poppy did remember. Heather hadn’t ventured
any farther from home that week than the pediatrician’s office and the general store. Poppy herself had given Heather a blow-by-blow of all that she’d missed.

  Except someone hadn’t missed as much as Heather had. Someone had seen a face, imagined a similarity, and thrown a wonderful woman’s life in limbo. Poppy wanted to know who that person was.

  Chapter Three

  Standing near the large leather sofa that dominated the living room in his New Jersey townhouse, Griffin Hughes held the phone to his ear. On the other end was Prentiss Hayden, once the most powerful member of the United States Senate, now in his eighties and retired to his farm in Virginia. Griffin was ghostwriting Hayden’s biography and had run into a glitch.“I don’t want it mentioned,” Hayden insisted.

  “But it’s part of your story,” Griffin argued gently. One didn’t argue any other way with a man of Hayden’s age and accomplishments, much less with a man one respected greatly, as Griffin did this one. They simply disagreed on the extent of disclosure. “No one will think less of you for having had a child out of wedlock. You took full responsibility. You gave that child everything you gave the rest of your children. Do the others know about him?”

  “In my family, yes, but the public doesn’t. I’m not of your generation, Griffin. I can’t rub this in the noses of my contemporaries, and that’s who’s going to read this book, y’know—old farts like me.”

  “You’re wrong there, sir,” Griffin cautioned. “There’s a whole younger generation that wants to know how it was done—”

  “Done in the good old days?” Hayden cut in. “Yes, well, we didn’t talk about these things in the good old days. We talked about honorable debate and gentlemen’s agreements. We were civil men. Why, I remember . . .”

  Griffin listened to the memory, but he’d heard it before. Idly, he pickedup the television remote, turned it in his hand, clicked on the set, but it was a minute of surfing before he caught something of interest. It was a breaking story from Concord, New Hampshire. Careful to offer Hayden a thoughtful “Uh-huh” at appropriate times, he listened to the news with growing interest, so much so that he must have missed one of those thoughtful “Uh-huh”s.