First Family

by David Baldacci

  drove him back against the wall one more time. Breathing hard, Daryl told his father what he’d done.

  “Why in the hell did you do that?”

  “After the lady got killed I got scared. Thought we’d throw’em off that way.”

  “What you did, boy, was stupid.”

  “I’m sorry, Daddy.”

  “You sure as hell are sorry.”

  “But the way I wrote it down no way they gonna figure it out.”

  “Tell me exactly how you wrote it.”

  Daryl grabbed an old seed catalogue from the workbench, tore off a page, and wrote the letters down on it, using a Bic pen.

  Quarry took the paper, read through it.

  “See, Daddy, it’s gibberish to them, right? You know what it says, right?”

  “Course I know what it says,” he snapped. Quarry walked outside and stared at the sky, which was still light, though the lowering sun was coloring the clouds a flaming red like the underbelly of lit charcoals. He didn’t notice that Daryl had followed and was now staring at him with a face that just begged for some sort of praise for thinking of this subterfuge. Thus he would never know it was the same pleading look Quarry had given his mother on her dying day.

  Quarry struck a match and burned the paper to a black puff. He watched it drift away, propelled by a slight breeze until it crumbled to earth a few feet away.

  “Is it okay, Daddy?” Daryl said nervously.

  Quarry pointed to the black puff. “That’s your second strike, boy. One more, it’s all over, son or not.”

  He turned and walked off.

  CHAPTER 37

  THE MAXWELL FAMILY, along with Sean King and a large crowd of mourners, watched as the preacher had his say. He read in a suitably devout tone from the scriptures, and then stepped aside to let folks come forward and touch the flower-draped coffin and have a private word with the deceased. Michelle’s brothers walked up as a single group, followed by others. Later, as the crowd slowly trickled away, Frank Maxwell put his hands on his wife’s coffin and bowed his head.

  Michelle stood next to Sean and watched her father. He finally touched his eyes with one hand and, head still down, walked past them and on to his car. Michelle had started to reach out to grip his arm, but at the last second pulled back.

  Sean said, “Are you going to go up?”

  “Up where?”

  “To the coffin? Last respects?”

  Michelle stared up at the mahogany box holding her mom. In the background, cemetery workers stood ready to lower it into the ground. The sky was overcast. The rain would be coming soon and they were probably anxious to get on with their work. There were other funerals today; accommodating the dead was very much a full-time occupation, it seemed.

  There were few things Michelle Maxwell was afraid of. But she was staring at one of them right now.

  “Will you come with me?”

  Sean took her arm and they walked together up to the front. She put her hand on top of the coffin, her fingers flicking at some of the flower petals.

  “She never liked lilies,” said Michelle.

  “What?”

  Michelle indicated the flowers on the coffin. “She preferred roses.” As soon as she said the word, she jerked her hand back like she’d been stung.

  “Are you okay?”

  She stared down at her hand. There was nothing there. She hadn’t been stung or bitten or anything. And lilies didn’t have thorns.

  She looked up at him.

  “Michelle, are you okay?” he said again.

  “I… I don’t know.” She added more firmly, “Let’s get out of here.”

  Back at the house there were mounds of food, friends stopping by; quiet, somber talk mixed with the occasional joke and twitter of laughter. In the middle of it all Frank Maxwell sat on the couch and stared off. Anyone who approached him to offer condolences was soon on his way when the man failed to even acknowledge their presence.

  Sean watched Michelle, who was watching her father. When a group of people came in, Frank Maxwell finally did stir. The scowl on his face made Michelle and Sean turn to see what he was looking at. Six people had come in the door, four men and two women. They were carrying platters of food and were chatting among themselves. Michelle recognized a few of them from the funeral service. When she turned back to her father, she started.

  He was gone.

  She and Sean exchanged glances. Sean motioned toward the back hall where the master bedroom was located. Then he tapped his chest and nodded at the new group of folks. Michelle blinked her understanding at him and headed for the bedroom.

  She tapped on the door.

  “What!”

  Her father sounded angry.

  “It’s me, Dad.”

  “I’m just taking a minute,” he said. His tone was calmer but she could still sense the underlying fury.

  “Can I come in?”

  A thirty-second silence passed.

  She tapped again. “Dad?” she finally said.

  “All right. Jesus, come in.”

  She opened the door and then closed it behind her. Her father was sitting on the edge of the bed holding something. She sat next to him and glanced down.

  It was their wedding photo. They’d done it right. A big church service with her mom looking radiant in flowing white and her crew-cut dad in tie and tails. Only twenty-one, he’d just returned from Vietnam. He was tall, tan, and handsome with a confident smile. Sally Maxwell, not yet twenty, was beautiful. There was much of her mother’s good looks in Michelle, though growing up she had never focused on that. She had been closer to her father, the classic tomboy who wants to impress big, strong, tough Daddy.

  She took the photo from him and placed it back on the nightstand. “Do you need anything?”

  “I’m peopled out, Michelle. I can’t go back out there.”

  “Then you don’t have to. I’ll take care of it. Maybe you should get some sleep.”

  “Yeah, right,” he said dismissively.

  “Has your lawyer contacted you?”

  He glanced up sharply. “What?”

  “You said you had a lawyer. I was just wondering if you’d talked to him yet.”

  He just shook his head and looked back down.

  She waited another minute but he didn’t say anything. She finally rose to leave after giving him a hug.

  As she reached the door he did say something. It caused her to freeze with her hand on the doorknob.

  “You think I killed her, don’t you?”

  She slowly turned back around. He was holding the wedding photo again, though he wasn’t looking at the happy young couple captured for all time there. He was staring straight at her.

  “You think I killed her.” He held up the photo as though the evidence to support that accusation was all right there.

  “I never said that.”

  “You didn’t have to say it,” he snapped.

  “Dad—”

  He cut her off. “Just get the hell out of here. Now!”

  She fled the room.

  CHAPTER 38

  EVERYONE HAD GONE, the food was put away and the tears had been cried. The Maxwell brothers were clustered in the backyard talking quietly over their beers. Frank Maxwell was still in the bedroom.

  Sean and Michelle sat in the living room as outside the dusk slowly evolved to night.

  “So he accused you of thinking he was a murderer?”

  Michelle nodded slowly, obviously still trying to wrap her arms around this notion. “I guess I can’t blame him,” she said. “And once a cop always a cop. He knows the lay of the land. He’d be a suspect under the usual parameters.”

  “That’s true. When a wife dies violently, it’s usually the husband.”

  “I don’t think they loved each other.”

  Sean put down his can of soda and stared at her. “Why?”

  “They never really had anything in common, other than the five kids. Dad was always working. Mom was a
lways at home. When he retired they barely knew each other. Remember when they went on that trip to Hawaii to celebrate their anniversary? They ended up coming back early. I talked to Bill about that later. He said Dad told him they’d run out of things to talk about after one day. And they didn’t even have anything they liked to do together. They’d just grown apart.”

  “They ever consider divorce?”

  “I don’t know. They never mentioned it to me.”

  “But you weren’t that close to your mother, were you?”

  “Closer to my dad, but even that got strained over the years.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m not in the mood to get psychoanalyzed right now.”

  “Okay, I was just asking a question.”

  “Who were those people that came in right before Dad shot to the bedroom?”

  “You didn’t know any of them?” said Sean.

  “I don’t know any of my parents’ friends.”

  “I made the rounds. Mostly they were friends of your mom’s. Played golf, cards, shopped together. Did a little charity thing.”

  “Nothing out of the ordinary? It seemed like my dad didn’t want to even see them.”

  “Nothing that stuck out. They seemed genuinely sorry about your mom’s death.”

  They turned when they heard the door open. Frank Maxwell was past them and outside before they even rose off the couch.

  Michelle made it to the front door in time to see her dad climb in his car and drive off a lot faster than he should have.

  “What the hell was that about?” asked Sean, who’d joined her at the door.

  Michelle just shook her head. She glanced at the hall leading to the bedroom. “Come on.”

  The first thing that Michelle noticed when she walked into the room was that the wedding photo was not where it should have been.

  Sean happened to glance in a corner. He reached over and picked it up. “Why would he have put this in the trash can?”

  “I’m getting a really bad feeling about something.”

  Sean looked down at the photo. “Your mom’s dead. On the day of her funeral he chucks their wedding photo in the trash. What would make him do that?”

  “Do you think Pam Dutton ever threw her wedding photo in the trash?”

  “Because Tuck was screwing around on her? You think your mom…” He obviously couldn’t finish the thought in her presence.

  “I’m just… I don’t know.”

  “You sure you want to go down that road?”

  “I want to get to the truth. Any way I can.”

  “There are usually some telltale signs.” He added, “Other than wedding pictures in trash cans.”

  Michelle was already opening the drawers of the bureau while Sean checked through the closet. A few minutes later Michelle held up some pretty revealing lingerie with the price tags still attached while Sean had pulled from the closet three new-looking outfits and a pair of spiky boots.

  They eyed each other, but left the obvious thought unspoken.

  They put the clothes back and Michelle led him to the small den across from the dining room. There was a desk in one corner. She started going through the drawers. She pulled out the checkbook and handed it to Sean. “My mom handled the bills.”

  While Sean sorted through the check register, Michelle methodically examined the credit card statements.

  A few minutes later she looked up. “There’s hundreds of dollars’ worth of recent charges for men’s clothing from four different online retailers. I didn’t see any stuff from those stores in the bedroom.”

  He held up the check register. “There’s an entry here for a local golf tournament fee. Did your dad play golf?”

  “No, but Mom did. So that’s not out of whack.”

  Sean held up a piece of paper he’d pulled from the desk. “This is part of the entry form for the golf tournament. It’s fifty bucks per person, but the check was for a hundred.”

  “So two people.”

  “Michelle, the form says it’s a couples tournament.”

  Michelle snatched the paper from him and glanced down it before laying it aside.

  Sean looked uneasily at her. “Don’t you think your father could have easily found all this out? I mean, we did in about ten minutes.”

  “My mom didn’t seem to work very hard to cover it up. Maybe she didn’t care. Maybe he didn’t.”

  “Your dad doesn’t strike me as the type to meekly accept being cheated on.”

  “You don’t really know my father, Sean.” She looked down at her hands. “And maybe I don’t either.”

  “What’s going on here?”

  They both looked up. Bill Maxwell was staring at them. He glanced around at the checkbook and credit card statements.

  “What’re you doing, Mik?”

  “Going through some of the bills. I know Mom took care of that and I didn’t want Dad to get messed up on something.”

  She shoved the items back in the drawer and rose. “Dad left.”

  “Where’d he go?”

  “I don’t know. And he didn’t ask my permission.”

  She glanced at the beer can in his hand. “Is that what you guys plan to do all the time now? Drink beer and gab?”

  “Geez, Mik, we just buried our mother. Cut us some slack.”

  “I’m sure she didn’t mean it that way, Bill.”

  Michelle snapped, “Yes I did.”

  She grabbed her keys and headed for the door. Sean gave Bill an apologetic look and hurried after her.

  Sean caught up to Michelle as she was climbing in her SUV.

  “Where are we going?”

  “To see Donna Rothwell again.”

  “Why?”

  “If my mom was having an affair, she probably knows who it was with.”

  CHAPTER 39