"Enough of the bleeding-heart speech," O'Malley interrupted. "What are you offering?"
As if through a fog, Duncan heard the woman's words.
"They plead guilty and serve the minimum time on each count. Seven years for each charge—a total of twenty-one. With any luck, they'll be out in fifteen."
"Ridiculous," Boxer O'Malley shot back. "Absolutely absurd. What have you got? An ex-con who's agreed to roll for a reduced sentence and an indignant bimbo who lost her job and has a beef with her employer. Not exactly unimpeachable or objective witnesses. Unless you can give me one good reason why I should even consider this offer, we'll take our chances at trial."
"Restitution," the woman said quietly.
"What do you mean, restitution?"
"Your clients have caused Miss Chaney and Miss McAlister immeasurable harm. They called him—" she pointed at Underwood, " Uncle Jack. Did you know that? He was like a member of the family. They trusted him. And him—" her accusatory finger swung around and aimed like a pistol at Duncan's chest, "they called Daddy. He raped his older daughter, stole her child, had her committed to a mental institution, lied to the younger one, and together he and his attorney conspired to cover up the crimes. They hired Shiv Willis to do their dirty work, and if Willis hadn't bungled the job, they probably would have succeeded in killing Miss Chaney." She paused and leveled her gaze on Boxer. "Neither of your clients has ever once taken any responsibility for the ruin they brought to these two young women's lives. Plead them out, O'Malley. Let them stand in open court and say, 'Guilty.'"
All during her speech, Duncan had struggled to keep a firm grip on his resolution to stay quiet. But the tiny conference room was as close as a coffin; it had begun to shift, just slightly, and he felt his head reeling. He couldn't breathe. The assistant D.A.'s litany of his sins ground into his brain like salt on a gaping wound, and the final word, guilty, pierced like a red-hot knife into his skull. An invisible jackhammer slammed into his temple, pounding . . . pounding . . .
"No!" he yelled, jumping to his feet so quickly that his chair flung itself against the bookcase behind him and bounced back to clip him in the knees. "She's the one who's guilty!"
He watched as his arm stretched out and his finger, shaking violently, pointed at the woman sitting across from him. His daughter. Or was it his wife? He couldn't tell, couldn't quite remember. For a moment he felt as if he had been lifted from his own body and was watching the scene from high above—from the ceiling fan, or the top of one of the tall bookcases. Maybe he had become that fly which had been buzzing around all morning. Maybe he was dead . . .
His voice came again, sounding oddly strained and foreign to his ears. "She got what was coming to her! It was my right; she had a duty to me! She wanted it!"
"Shut up, Duncan. Shut up NOW!"
He heard Boxer's strangled plea, but paid it no mind. "We worked it all out, you and I, didn't we, Jack? It was brilliant. A mental institution—that would keep her quiet, and even if she told, who'd believe her? She was crazy! She could have ruined everything, but we took care of it."
The hammering in his head grew louder, and his daughter's face swam before his eyes, as if she were submerged in shallow water. "Nobody knew, did they? Nobody knew the secret. We kept it from them all, didn't we, Jack? Even Cecilia didn't know. Then why did she stop loving me? Why did she turn away and say those terrible things to me?"
O'Malley was yelling now, trying to get control of the situation. But Duncan had the floor, and he wasn't about to relinquish it. They were going to hear him out, and then they'd understand. "We fooled them all, didn't we, Jack?" he shouted. "I made it. I was respectable, honored. Everybody loved me. They even put a bronze plaque of me on the courthouse . . . "
Both of his hands were stretched out now, shaking uncontrollably, as if they had suddenly developed Parkinson's disease. He watched them with detached curiosity as they reached in her direction. "I loved you. I always loved you. Just like your mama, so pure and beautiful and undefiled. But you couldn't keep quiet, could you? You had to talk, had to tell—," one hand wavered in Diedre's direction, "had to tell her."
Jack reached for him, trying to pull him back down into the chair. "Get off me!" he screamed. "You know this is her fault! If she had just kept her mouth shut—if she had only stayed away. And now it's gone . . . gone. Everything's gone, all because of her. She's the one. SHE'S THE GUILTY ONE . . ."
Amber sat frozen in her seat as her father disintegrated into a quivering heap. She felt Diedre next to her, holding onto her, sobbing against her shoulder, but she couldn't move.
Jack stood behind Daddy with both forearms clenched around his chest as if to keep him from jumping up again. But there was no danger of that. The man who had once been her father had no place left to go.
"We'll take the deal," the defense attorney was saying in a subdued voice. "Notify the judge and tell her we're changing the plea."
41
Strange Justice
Diedre stood on the front steps of the stone mansion and hesitated. "Should we ring the bell, do you think?" she asked Amber. "I doubt that Vesta's still here, but I've got a key." She rummaged in her bag, then stopped when she felt Amber's eyes on her.
"This feels so eerie," Amber murmured. "Like I'm stepping back in time. I always hated this house—it held so many terrible memories. But there were good ones, too." She drew in a deep breath and sighed it out again. "Until now, it hasn't seemed real that Mama's gone."
Diedre's eyes stung. "Everything's gone," she murmured.
"Not everything." Amber's dark gaze met and held Diedre's, and for just a moment, Diedre felt as if she were looking into Mama's eyes. "We've got each other."
Each other The words should have comforted Diedre, but she felt nothing. She was dead inside, wasted and empty as a vast desert. Even the memory of seeing Daddy and Uncle Jack standing before the judge pleading guilty, and the knowledge that they were now both in prison, hadn't brought the closure and resolution she had longed for.
She wasn't sorry justice had been served, but it gave her no satisfaction. The hatred she had felt when she'd first learned what Daddy had done to Amber had metamorphosed into aching sorrow, and just a little pity. But oddly, she missed the anger. It had brought her strength, and now that it had dissipated, she felt drained and hollow. The final verdict had come, but it had turned out to be an anticlimax.
Diedre nudged Amber's elbow and pointed toward the glider and chairs that stood on the far side of the wide front verandah. "Let's sit out here for a few minutes."
They settled into the chairs and sat gazing across the expanse of lawn to where the yard fell away into a magnificent view of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The morning was warm and clear, and a faint breeze blew off the ridge and stirred the rhododendrons that surrounded the house. Diedre unhooked Sugarbear's leash, and the dog took off at a run, sniffing every bush and blade of grass and bounding like a puppy with the joy of being back on her home turf.
"Well, it's over," Diedre sighed. "How do you feel?"
Amber stared down at her bandaged hands and shook her head. "I'm not quite sure. I'm glad we didn't have to go through a long, drawn-out trial. But I have to admit that I was pretty shaken by Daddy's meltdown. And I wish—" She stopped suddenly and shook her head.
"Wish Daddy had taken responsibility for his actions?" Diedre supplied. "Wish he had at least said, I'm sorry'?"
Amber nodded. "Because the molestation charge was thrown out, I'm afraid I'm left feeling, well, not quite vindicated."
"Me, too," Diedre admitted. "But what do we do about that?"
"There's nothing we can do, except go on with our lives."
"I'm not sure I have much of a life to go on with."
Amber cocked her head and gazed at Diedre curiously. "What do you mean? You're twenty-five years old, honey—you have your whole life ahead of you."
"But you're going back to Washington. And I certainly can't live here—" she waved a hand at t
he gray stone facade.
"If you need me to stay, I will."
The words fell on Diedre's soul like water on dry ground, but she shook her head. "I can't ask that of you. You belong with Twojoe. He loves you. You love him."
"Yes, I do. But I love you, too." Amber leaned forward and smiled earnestly. "You are my daughter. I want to be with you, to get to know you better, to be part of your life. If I need to stay in North Carolina in order for that to happen, that's what I'll do."
A rush of gratefulness welled up in Diedre's heart. "I have a better idea. Carlene and I already talked about it—she doesn't really need me to set up the shop, and as we both know, I have some emotional work to do, work that's going to require the help of a counselor."
Amber raised one eyebrow. "And?"
"And I was thinking—well, maybe I should come back to Washington with you for a while. Your priest friend Susan is a good therapist, isn't she? I could find a place to rent, do some freelance photography, maybe even sell some of my photos through Andrew Jorgensen's gallery. It would give us time together—and a chance for me to get my life in order. A change of scenery might be good for me."
For a minute or two Amber didn't say a word, and Diedre wondered if perhaps her brilliant idea wasn't so brilliant after all. Maybe Amber wouldn't want her hanging around all the time, getting in the way of her relationship with Twojoe. Maybe—
"Let's go in," Amber said, getting to her feet. "We've got things to do."
"Like what?"
"Well, for one thing, I need to call Meg and Twojoe. And then we'll need to make a run to the store."
"To the store? Why?"
She leaned down and kissed Diedre lightly on the cheek. "Boxes," she said. "If you're going to pack, we'll need lots and lots of boxes."
Duncan McAlister could barely remember his outburst in the D.A.'s office, or standing before the judge entering a guilty plea. It was all a blur, like a vague dream that vanishes in that split second between hearing the alarm clock and waking to consciousness. He knew it had happened; it just didn't seem real.
But his incarceration was real enough, and it was no dream. They had not, as both Jack Underwood and Boxer O'Malley had promised, been sentenced to a minimum security white-collar "country-club" prison. This was the real thing, with clanging iron bars and armed guards and tiny, high windows that barely let any sunlight into the cells. The noise level—shouting, cursing, banging at all hours of the day and night—was enough to drive a man mad. And the smells! Stale sweat, disinfectant, urine, mildew—the combined stench seeped from the cinder block walls like ooze from an open sore.
Even worse than what was, however, was the fear of what might be. Since the moment he had been led into this place and shoved roughly into his cell, anxiety had gripped Duncan like a bad case of dysentery. His cellmate, Rufus Kiley—a tattoo-covered Neanderthal who went by the nickname Blade—had sized him up with narrowed eyes and a guttural warning to keep out of his way. Duncan took the man seriously and had not spoken a word to him since.
Breakfast was over. Somewhere in the cellblock a bell rang, and the bars slid sideways with a clank. Duncan got to his feet and stood two steps behind Blade, whose bulk completely filled the open cell door.
A guard came down the corridor with a clipboard in his hands and paused outside the cell. "Kiley, McAlister—laundry," he muttered. "Get moving."
Duncan's heart sank. Laundry duty was the nastiest, smelliest, sweatiest job imaginable. Jack had been assigned there on his first day, and at dinner last night, had been complaining about how awful it was. If there was any hope of surviving in here, Duncan would have to get on the warden's good side—and fast. If he could just get himself out of this brain fog, show the man how adept he was at administrative duties—
Blade craned his neck and gave him a leering grin, revealing a crooked row of tobacco-stained teeth. He jerked his head and set off down the hall, with Duncan following behind like a cowed dog.
If Duncan thought the chaos in the cellblock was bad, it was nothing compared to what he encountered in the laundry room. The yelling, the noise of the machines, the steam, and the humid, stifling heat convinced him that his initial evaluation of this place was accurate: he had been sentenced not to prison, but to hell itself.
A tall, skinny black man—apparently the prison trusty who ran the laundry—pointed toward a bank of washing machines. "In the back on the right!" he shouted in Duncan's ear. "You'll work with Kiley!"
Duncan looked. Blade Kiley, who obviously had been here before and knew the ropes, stood between two bins of dirty laundry, grinning and motioning to him. The trusty nudged him from behind. "Go on."
Duncan made his way down the row between the machines, feeling as if he were negotiating a narrow city street. Along both sides, and higher than his head, the huge machines thumped and whined. It was like walking through a nightmarish mechanical maze. When he got to the back of the room, he took a right in the direction Blade had indicated, and—
"Augghhh!" The air rushed out of him as something solid as iron collided with his midsection. Stunned, Duncan doubled over, grasping the nearest laundry bin for support. He looked up to see Blade standing over him, pounding one fist into the other open palm. Around Kiley in a jagged semicircle stood eight or nine other inmates, all glaring at him. Blade grabbed the front of his jumpsuit and jerked him forward, and the circle closed in around the two of them.
Duncan tried to scream, but no sound would come, and even if he had been able to yell, no one would have heard him above the noise of the laundry. Frantically he looked around; there was not a single guard in sight.
Blade hit him again, a blow to the jaw that drove Duncan's lower teeth all the way through his tongue. Something warm and liquid filled his mouth. He gasped for air and spit out a mouthful of blood.
His heart was pounding a wild, erratic beat, and his head spun.
Kiley drew him up by the collar, so close Duncan could smell the man's foul breath. "Think you're such a big man?" he spat out. "A big important man? We know about you." He let fly a string of curses directly in Duncan's face, and the circle of inmates closed in tighter.
Someone snaked a leg out, catching Duncan around the ankles, and he felt his knees crack when they hit the concrete floor. Blade grabbed a fistful of hair and lifted Duncan's face upward. "We know what you did to your little girl, you piece of garbage. It's time you learned exactly what happens in a place like this to a slime ball like you."
Diedre pulled open the bottom desk drawer and began loading its contents into a cardboard box. Amber sat on the bed watching, and Vesta, who hadn't been able to stop smiling in the past two hours, hovered about like a protective angel.
They hadn't been able to see Vesta at all since they had returned to North Carolina—neither Diedre nor Amber had been willing to take the chance of running into Daddy. After the aborted trial and sentencing, Vesta could have simply left the house and gone back to the little cottage she had inherited when her parents died, but she hadn't. She had stayed alone in the big, old mansion, braving its memories, its ghosts. Waiting. Waiting for her girls to come home.
The reunion between Amber and Vesta was a joy to behold. Vesta kept stroking her, touching her, calling her "my baby," and fussing over her burned hands. In a private moment, Amber had confessed to Diedre that she hadn't expected Vesta to seem quite so . . . so old. It had been more than twenty years since Amber had seen Vesta, of course, but Diedre had to admit that Vesta had aged noticeably just in the past few weeks. She seemed frail and nervous. Her spotted, brown hands shook, and she had a worried, exhausted look around her eyes.
It was no wonder, given what she had been through. First Mama's illness and death, then Diedre's absence, Daddy's arrest and imprisonment, and now Amber's return and the revelation that she was Diedre's mother.
But once she had heard the entire story and gone through the cycle of tears, laughter, and more tears, Vesta seemed remarkably able to adapt. "I reckon it's abou
t time for this old woman to retire anyway," she said. "I'll just take my old self home, prop my feets up, and watch Murder, She Wrote reruns until the Good Lord takes me on to glory."
"I'll pay you what Daddy owes you," Diedre promised, although she had no idea how she would come up with the money. She had nothing of her own, and all Daddy's assets were frozen. Now that she thought about it, she was, in fact, destitute. Nearly everything she owned would fit in a few small boxes.
"What about this house?" Amber asked as Diedre went on packing. "Is there a mortgage on it?"
Diedre shook her head. "It was paid off five or six years ago. But I have no idea what will happen to it now. I guess it'll just sit here empty until it falls in on itself."
Amber let out a cynical laugh. "An appropriate monument to Duncan McAlister's life, I'd say. But it is a shame to let it go to ruin."
"I wouldn't live in it. Would you?"
Amber shook her head. "Heavens, no. This house represents my worst memories and my most vivid nightmares. Still, it seems like a waste."
Continuing to sort through items from her desk drawer, Diedre pulled out two green slips of paper and grinned to herself. "Vesta," she said over her shoulder, "do you still have a driver's license?"
"Course I do, child. I ain't decrepit, and I got eyes like a hawk." She chuckled. "A real old hawk, maybe."
"You want a brand new Lexus with a CD player and power every-thing?"
Vesta gave Diedre a puzzled frown. "Most anything'd be better than that beat-up old Ford I got. Spends most of its time in my nephew's shop."
Diedre flipped the title over, signed it, and handed it to Vesta. "Mama willed it to me when she died. Now it's yours. I'll keep my Camry. It's only got twenty-two thousand miles on it; for a Toyota, that's barely broken in. Except for the tires. Driving in the mountains is murder on tires. Do you think your nephew could get me a deal on new ones?"
The Amber Photograph Page 28