An Accidental Woman

by Barbara Delinsky

  When it was time for Poppy to head for the airport, Thea wouldn’t hear of it. “We have to take Poppy to the club for dinner,” she begged her father. “It’s so nice there.”

  “What about your exam?” Norman asked.

  “I’ll study. I’ll study for an hour now, then more when we get back. You can stay over, Poppy, can’t you? I heard you tell Griffin that you’d be getting in very late, and why should you do that, when you can just as easily fly out tomorrow morning? We have a gorgeous guest room. Our travel agent can change your reservations. I have to be at school by eight, anyway. We can drop you at the airport, then go on to school.”

  “That’ll mean a very early morning for you,” Norman cautioned his daughter.

  Thea shot him a look of dismay. “It’s okay. I can’t let Poppy go to the airport alone.” She turned to Poppy. “Will you stay?”

  * * *

  Cassie couldn’t accomplish all she had to do without electricity and phones. That meant packing up her files and her assistant, and driving over to Center Sayfield, which did have electricity and phones, to use the copying machine and fax at the office of a friend. From there, she called the attorney general of California. In the hour it took before she actually had him on the phone, she fine-tuned her notes.“There’s been a new development on my end,” she told him. “I know that you’d rather I work through Bud Grinelle, but since he’s only going to have to check with you, I thought maybe we could bypass the middle man. So I FedExed the package directly to you for delivery tomorrow morning. It contains letters of agreement and affidavits that lay out our case.”

  “Which is?” the man asked politely.

  Cassie would have done almost anything to avoid full disclosure. Unfortunately, plea bargaining entailed showing the other side how strong one’s case was. This maneuver involved risk. If the plea bargain failed and they went to trial, the prosecution would know her case in advance and be fully prepared. But it couldn’t be helped. She did have a strong case. Now she had to convince the attorney general of that.

  “We found the child,” she said. “We have a signed agreement from her father allowing her to participate in DNA tests. Heather will submit to the tests, also, so we’ll be able to prove that she is the child’s mother.We’ll be petitioning to have tests done from blood on the clothing Rob DiCenza wore that night. I understand your state police have it. Our lawyer out there—”

  “What lawyer?”

  “J. C. Beckett,” she said with some satisfaction. It had been a coup getting J. C. to work on the case. He was a renegade who headed his own firm and had a history of courtroom wins. The prosecution detested him. He, on the other hand, loved to tweak the noses of people in power, and since the DiCenzas were the epitome of that, he was willing to work on the case pro bono. “He’s writing up the petition. He doesn’t see any reason why it won’t be granted, since the evidence is already there. It’s a win-win proposition. If it turns out the child isn’t Rob’s, that’s the end of it. If it turns out the other way, we have a whole other ball game.”

  “I take it you think the child is his.”

  “I know the child is his. Heather—Lisa—was not with anyone else. No one, out of all those people your guys interviewed after the accident, even remotely suggested that she was. They made lots of other allegations, but never that. Oh, I know. Rob said that it wasn’t his baby. But there’s been no other man. No one’s come forward to claim that child—not back then and not now.”

  There was a brief silence. Then he said quietly, “Go on.”

  Pleased that he wasn’t fobbing her off on Bud Grinelle but was listening to her himself, Cassie grew bolder. “If the paternity issue falls into place, it gives credence to other arguments we’ve made that the DiCenzas have refuted. And then there’s Aidan Greene.”

  “Ahh. So it was you nosing around about him?”

  “Yes. And we found him. He was Rob’s best friend. He was right there through much of what went on in that relationship, and since he never testified under oath, he can’t be charged with perjury.”

  “He can be charged with giving misleading information in an investigation.”

  “He didn’t. We have the transcripts to show it. They’re in the pack you’ll be receiving. You’ll see that Aidan answered every question that he was asked. If the investigators didn’t ask the right ones, he can’t be held liable for that. Actually,” she said, because she sensed that the DiCenzashad influenced the investigation, “if your guys didn’t ask the right questions, I’d like to know if possibly they were instructed not to look too deeply into Rob’s side of this.”

  “Let’s get something straight. These were not ‘my’ guys. I wasn’t in office then.”

  Cassie liked his defensiveness. “Then it might be in your best interest to take your predecessor to task.”

  “That’s neither here nor there. What’s your argument? Spell it out, please. I don’t have all day.”

  “We contend that Lisa Matlock was impregnated by Rob DiCenza. When she refused to get the abortion that he wanted, he threatened her life and that of the child, and he did it at the party that night. When she got into her car, her only thought was to get away from him. He came out of the dark and jumped in front of the car. She couldn’t stop.”

  “She left the scene.”

  “She had no idea Rob was dead. She was terrified of him. The fact is, sir, that we have a strong case, should this go to a jury. We have a dark night, lots of cars, and a drunk man running between them. We have a poor, powerless young woman taken advantage of by a privileged, politically powerful man who was older than her. We have a relationship with a history of physical abuse, to which doctors from two different clinics will attest. Those papers are in your pack, too. We have a pregnancy, a demand for an abortion, a threat of physical harm, with an independent witness willing to testify to all three. We have an attempt at a cover-up by the family.”

  “Hold on. You have nothing of the sort.”

  “We may, by the time we’re done. Do all those people who said they saw nothing still love Charlie DiCenza? All we need is one disenchanted soul to admit that he was asked to be kind to their boy. Aidan Greene says it; that’s in the sworn statement that he gave to me last week, and a copy of that statement is in your pack. But there’s more. If this case goes to trial, we’ll put people on the stand testifying that Lisa Matlock wasn’t the only woman Rob DiCenza beat.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake. What’s the point of that? The boy is dead.”

  Cassie couldn’t believe he’d said that. The remark was totally biased,totally unprofessional. Livid now, she didn’t need to look at her notes. Everything she wanted to say was on the tip of her tongue. “You’re right. He’s dead. This whole case should be dead, because Rob’s death was nothing more than a tragic accident. That’s what a jury will find, only to prove it, we’ll have to bring up all the rest. Will the family like that? I doubt it. But that’s their problem. They’ve brought this on themselves. They certainly didn’t have any trouble bad-mouthing Lisa Matlock—or now, Heather Malone—in a very public way. They’ve looked for the limelight in this case, and that’s exactly where this new information will come out if we don’t settle it within the next day, in a quiet and fair way.”

  “The next day? ”

  “Okay, I’ll give you two. Forty-eight hours. After that, I’ll have to go to the press.”

  “I can prevent that with a gag order.”

  “Do that, and you’ll really have the charge of a cover-up in your lap, only it’ll have nothing to do with your predecessor and everything to do with you. Let’s talk about free speech and freedom of the press. Let’s talk about my client’s civil rights. Thanks to the DiCenzas, there’s no way that Heather can get a fair trial. Only one side has come out. The other side needs an airing.”

  “In court. Before a jury.”

  Cassie refused to buckle. “If it doesn’t come out now, it’ll come out then. And in open court, with all the hoo
pla that the DiCenzas were hoping to use to get a conviction. You need to talk to them. Ask if they want their son dragged through the mud. Ask if they want a financial claim made on them by a fourteen-year-old child who may be proven to be their grandchild. If we don’t get a deal by Thursday afternoon, that’s what’ll happen.”

  “Okay,” the attorney general said, clearly humoring her, “what kind of deal do you want?”

  Cassie aimed high. She had nothing to lose. “I want the case dropped.”

  “Dropped?”

  “Dropped.”

  “I can’t do that. Not with a murder case.”

  “Of course you can.” She had thought this through. “You can either say that after reviewing the case, given the amount of time that’s passed since that night and the potential for fuzzy memories, there isn’t enough evidence to convict. Or you can say that new evidence has emerged that casts doubt on any murder charge.”

  “The press will want to know what that ‘new evidence’ is, which does all the dirtying, anyway. The family will never go for that.”

  “Then take the first option. You, as attorney general, advise the family that it’s in their best interest to let this case die. You save face by coming forward as the compassionate arbiter of the situation. The family saves face by taking the lead and requesting that the charges be dropped. They can say that it is simply too painful for them to have to relive this tragedy.”

  “You want her to go scot- free? ”

  “I want the charges dropped,” Cassie insisted. “All of them. It wasn’t murder. She was fleeing for her life, and he ran in front of her car on a dark night in a crowded, unlit parking lot. Drop those charges, and if there’s no crime, there’s no charge of flight to avoid prosecution.”

  “Christ, you don’t budge. Give me a crumb, here. What about vehicular homicide?”

  “It wasn’t that. He was drunk, and he ran out from between parked cars. There’s no vehicular homicide here. My client has paid dearly for knowing Rob DiCenza. If she weren’t as quiet and gentle as she is, and if she didn’t have a quiet and gentle life here, I’d have her turn around and sue the DiCenza family for defamation of character. But she is quiet and gentle. All she wants is to return to her family here. I don’t even want her going to California to appear in court for dismissal of the charges. There’s no need for that.”

  “Give me something, Ms. Byrnes.”

  “Agree to all of the above, and my client will agree not to divulge anything related to Rob DiCenza or this case, but I want her released from prison as soon as we make our deal. She isn’t a danger to society. She shouldn’t have to spend even one more day in jail. That’s why I want thisdone fast. I want every part of it done fast. You can make that happen.” He might be a lousy lawyer, but he surely knew about political expediency.

  “You give me too much credit,” the man muttered. “I don’t have the final say here.”

  Cassie understood that. “The DiCenzas are in town. I’ve checked this out and know they are. I also know that you can be very persuasive when you want to. If you want,” she added, knowing that he was an adoptee himself, “you can make the argument that a fourteen-year-old who has a loving adoptive family shouldn’t have to relive the sins of her birth parents. I’ll look forward to hearing from you.”

  * * *

  After calling Micah with a report, Cassie packed up everything at her friend’s office and drove back to Lake Henry. She dropped her assistant at home along the way and stopped at the office only to close up the place for the night. Then she headed home. As she drove, she planned dinner, which she would be able to cook since she had a gas stove. She decided on games that she wanted to play with each of the kids, youngest first so that one went to bed as she moved on to the next. She mentally located every candle she had in the house, intent on lighting at least a dozen for games to play with Mark when the house settled down.She arrived home to find a note on the kitchen table saying that he had taken the kids to Concord for fast food and a movie.

  Feeling a letdown, and the irrational sense that her family was moving on without her, she made herself macaroni and cheese from a box, built up the fire in the living room, and settled in on the sofa to wait. In less than twenty minutes, she was asleep.

  * * *

  Micah was sweating. He was so hot he thought he would die of it, as he poured off the latest batch of syrup and carted the tank toward the filtering system he had rigged up. Granted, the heat in the sugarhouse was a good thing, what with the girls playing with dolls in a corner of the room. The house was cold, and now that everyone had gone home, therewas no one to stoke the fire there. Missy and Star had their sleeping bags here and would stay as long as Micah did.“How’s this depth?” Griffin asked. He was standing over the finish pan, which was newly replenished with sap that was nearing the syrup stage. Skimmer in hand, he was at the ready should anything start to foam.

  Micah glanced over and nodded that it was fine, but quickly returned to the task at hand. The sweat that trickled down his body wasn’t only from work. Much of it was the product of fear. He was behind in the process. Having to filter everything by hand was slowing up the works. Even with Griffin helping, he would be working past midnight. He wouldn’t mind that, if it wore him out enough so that he could sleep for five hours straight, something he hadn’t done in a while. Niggling problems kept waking him up.

  One problem was solved. As of late afternoon, all of the tubing was clear and running.

  That created another problem. If he was backed up now, after a day’s sap flow from barely half his trees, with everything running tomorrow he would be twice as backed up. He needed the electricity back on for the filter press, but the power company wasn’t promising help for another two or three days.

  By then he would be dead on his feet, and maybe that was okay, too. If he was too tired to think, he couldn’t think about Heather, and if he didn’t think about Heather, he wouldn’t have trouble breathing. He took a breath now and tried to relax, but the tightness was still there. It was the product of fear—fear of Heather returning, fear of her not returning, fear of his not knowing the person she was when and if she did return.

  Cassie said they had to wait. He was in purgatory.

  The sugarhouse door barreled open, and Skip Houser backed in. Micah hadn’t seen Skip since that day at the gas pumps, and was about to ask what in the hell he was doing, when he saw that Skip and another man were struggling to carry in something that looked familiar enough.

  Micah continued pouring syrup through the filters.

  Glancing behind him, Skip backed up to the nonfunctioning electric filter. He squatted to put his end of the small generator on the floor.When his partner had done the same, Skip straightened. He pulled off his gloves and stared at Micah.

  “This was s’posed to go up to the job site. I figured no one’d notice if it was a couple days late. You didn’t see me bring it, though,” he warned and set to hooking it up to the machine. In less than fifteen minutes, the filter press was running and he was headed out the door.

  “Hey,” Micah said. “Thanks, man.”

  Raising a hand in acknowledgment, Skip disappeared.

  * * *

  Two hours later, after the last of the day’s sap had been boiled into syrup, passed through the filter press, poured into quart tins, and sealed, Micah sent Griffin home. He finished up the washing himself, rather enjoying the cleansing, thinking that this year he would give gallons of syrup to all the people in town who had helped. He wouldn’t have thought Skip would be one of them, which went to show how little Micah knew.Wiping down the sink, he hung the rags to dry, then knelt by the little lumps buried in sleeping bags and gently shook the girls awake. “Time for bed,” he whispered, and started gathering the sleeping bags as soon as they crawled out. “Boots on,” he prompted. When it was done, Star put her arms up. He set her on his hip. “Get the lantern, Missy, and stay close.”

  There was an instant then—just an instant�
�when the warmth lingered, the scent of sugar wafted from the rafters, and the three of them stood so very close that he felt a fullness near his heart. Right here, right now, his past, present, and future coalesced. Only one thing could have made it better.

  Guiding Missy along, he closed the sugarhouse door on shelves that were neatly lined with new tins of syrup. “Quick, quick,” he whispered once they were outside, because though the moon lit the path, it was cold. The house wasn’t much better, but the sleeping bags retained warmth. Missy went right to bed and was asleep in minutes. Star left an arm around his neck when he would have tucked her into bed.

  “Daddy?” she whispered.

  He sat, pulling the sleeping bag around her to keep her warm.

  “Does Momma have a baby?”

  He had a flash of that instant back at the sugarhouse, when the only thing that could have deepened the fullness he felt would have been Heather and a baby of their own. Of course, that wasn’t what Star meant.

  “She did once,” he told her, because he knew that if the women had talked of this at the house, Star would have picked up on it.

  “What happened to it?”

  “She couldn’t take care of it, so she gave it to some people who could.”

  “Why couldn’t she take care of it?”

  “She was too young.”

  “Did the baby cry when she gave it away?”

  “I think the baby was too little to know.”

  “I’d cry if you gave me away.”

  He tightened his hold of her. “Well, I would never do that. So you don’t have to worry.”

  “Does Heather’s baby miss her now?”

  Micah didn’t know that. He didn’t know what Poppy had found. Nor did he know what Heather felt about it all. “The baby isn’t a baby anymore. She’s almost grown up, and she has her own daddy.”