Dead Secret dffi-3

by Beverly Connor

  Diane was suprised. There weren’t that many times during their childhood that they had acted sisterly toward each other. But something had changed between the time she talked with Susan on the phone yesterday and now.

  They walked up the stairs and down the hall to what Diane’s mother called the Yukon room. The centerpiece of the room was a huge pine bed covered with a duvet of red-and-hunter-green plaid and littered with fleece pillows. All the furniture was rustic, from the dresser to the table and chairs in the corner. It was a cozy room.

  Susan rummaged through the bathroom for fresh bandages. “Is it still hurting?” she called from the bathroom.

  “Unfortunately it is. I’m going to take a painkiller tonight, so please call me in the morning when you get up.” Diane took off her jacket and her blouse.

  “I’m going to put some Betadine on the wound.” Susan frowned at Diane. “Are you telling me that this didn’t hurt when it happened?”

  “I felt something like a pulled muscle. It was crowded, and my attention was focused elsewhere.”

  Susan left for a couple of minutes and came back with a bottle of Betadine and some cotton pads.

  “I still can’t believe Alan grabbed you like that,” Susan said as she sat down next to Diane on the bed. “Diane, when you were married to Alan, did he. . was he. .”

  “Abusive? No. He tried to be controlling.”

  “Mother and Dad should have told him that wouldn’t work.”

  Diane smiled at her. “Alan’s main deal was pouting when he didn’t get his way. That didn’t work either. I was happiest when he wasn’t talking to me. He also liked to try to wear me down until I agreed with him. He was like a dog with a bone trying to get me to drop out of graduate school. I could dig my heels in when I’d a mind to, so we argued constantly. He locked me out of the bedroom once for some reason, thinking that would be a deterrent to my disagreeing with him. I was very happy on the couch,” Diane said with a laugh as she swiveled her body sideways slightly so that Susan could reach her arm.

  “Why did you marry him?” Susan asked.

  Diane felt her sister blot the incision with a cotton pad soaked with Betadine. It was cool on the hot wound.

  “Alan proposed. It was Mother and Dad’s wish that I accept. I wanted them to approve of something I did, so I accepted. It was a big mistake, and I regretted it immediately.”

  Susan taped a fresh sterile pad on Diane’s arm. Diane turned back toward her and noticed how worn-out her sister suddenly looked.

  “Diane, I need a favor,” she said after a long, awkward moment. “I know we haven’t gotten along. . ever, I guess. But you’ve always been good to my kids. You remember their birthdays and Christmas. You write them letters. Kayla loves getting letters from you.”

  “What’s the matter, Susan? Has something happened?”

  “Something. Yes. Something happened. I made a terrible mistake, and I don’t know what to do. I need you to speak to Gerald. He respects you.”

  “I didn’t think anyone in the family respected me.”

  “Do you think that, really?” Susan looked at the painting of a moose at the edge of the woods that hung on the wall opposite the bed. “You’re the smart one. Everyone respects that.”

  Yes, the smart one. . and Susan’s the pretty one, Diane thought. That was how Diane’s mother described her children. Diane guessed her mother was trying to tell people that each had her own special qualities, but what it had always sounded like to her-and she guessed to Susan too-was that Diane was the ugly one and Susan was the dumb one.

  Susan must have been thinking the same thing. “Prettiness fades with time,” she said. “I didn’t realize that when I was young, and if that’s all you have. . ” Susan looked down at her hands and twisted her wedding ring on her finger.

  “Would it do any good for me to tell you that is not all you have and that you are plenty smart. . and still pretty? What’s this about, Susan?”

  “Last New Year’s Eve, Alan and I kissed. It was nothing. I don’t know why I even did it. But that’s all it was. Honest. We never went beyond that one rather silly kiss.”

  “Did Gerald see it or something?”

  “No. Alan”-she spit his name out like it tasted bitter-“Alan told Gerald this morning.”

  “Why?”

  “I know you think Alan is a good financial lawyer, but he isn’t. Dad had to find him a job because he was fired from the firm where he worked before.”

  Actually, Diane didn’t think Alan was a good lawyer. She had just been trying to soften her remark about Alan’s not being a criminal lawyer. “Fired? I thought he would have been a partner,” she said.

  “No. We all thought it was a raw deal. . jealousy, infighting. Mother and Dad think the world of him, so Dad got him a job with the firm that Fallon and Abernathy use. Alan’s made some mistakes with their accounts. He told the partners that Gerald is the one who gave him the information and told him how he wanted things handled. Gerald found out this morning and called him. They had a row, and that’s when Alan told him. Now Gerald thinks we. . that we had an affair. I swear we didn’t. That’s why we sent the children to his sister’s. We didn’t want them to witness us sorting this out.”

  “I’ll tell Gerald that I believe you, if you think that will help.”

  “Do you?”

  “Believe you? Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I have experience with people who lie.” Diane didn’t say that one of the people she had experience with was Susan herself when they were children, and that Diane knew exactly when Susan lied and when she was telling the truth.

  “Gerald is a good man, and I don’t want a divorce.”

  “Is that what Gerald is threatening?”

  “He hasn’t come out and said it, but. . Alan really rubbed his nose in it.”

  “I’ll talk to him tomorrow.”

  “I appreciate it, Diane. I’d better get back. I don’t want Gerald to think that I’m. .” She left the rest unfinished.

  Susan kissed Diane’s cheek as she left for home. Her family got downright affectionate during times of stress. She realized that she hardly knew them. Perhaps that was her fault. She could be as stubborn and intransigent as they in her opinions. On the other hand, they had never understood how much Diane loved her daughter. That lack of empathy was hard for Diane to forgive.

  Diane undressed and tossed her clothes over the back of a chair. She put on her nightgown, fished a paperback of Foucault’s Pendulum out of her duffel bag and crawled into bed. Her eyelids were heavy, but she was looking forward to continuing what she started on the plane-and getting her mind away from current events.

  Something caused her to jerk awake. The book had fallen to the floor. That was probably what woke her up. She picked up her cell and looked at the display. After eleven. She got out of bed, retrieved the book and turned out the bedside lamp.

  She had one knee back up on the bed when she heard soft footfalls in the hallway. On the carpeted floor the sound was only a whisper, but Diane had a good ear for faint rhythm. Her father, probably. He was the only other person in the huge house. And when she and Susan were little, he would look in on them before going to bed. She started to call out, but instead she picked up her cell phone, moved away from the bed and secreted herself in the closet, looking out through the space between the louvers.

  Okay, now what was she going to say to her father-I’ve been personally attacked so many times that I automatically run for cover at the sound of footsteps? She put a hand on the door to push it open, but stopped when she saw a shadow come into the room. Her father would have knocked-unless he was just checking. The shadowed form passed through rays of moonlight from the window. It was Alan.

  Chapter 24

  Diane held her breath for several seconds and slowly let it out. A sick knot formed in her stomach. What was he up to? Her father was downstairs and too far away to call. She could dial 911. She started to, holding her hand over the pho
ne display to hide the light, but she hesitated. She knew instinctively that Alan would say she had invited him to her room, and her father would probably believe him. She would have caused an uproar at one of the worst times in their lives. She stayed her finger, but held the open phone.

  “Diane,” Alan whispered in the darkness.

  Diane watched as he approached her bed and stood looking down at the crumpled sheets. He glanced for a few seconds toward the open bathroom door. Diane readied herself for an approach to her hiding place. But his gaze didn’t linger on the closet. He turned around and retraced his steps, stopping at the chair where she had thrown off her clothes. Picking up her camisole, he held it to his face and breathed in. Diane raised her eyebrows and her phone camera. She had clicked several pictures by the time he put down her clothes and walked out her bedroom door.

  What was he doing? Diane stayed in the closet for several moments, waiting for him to come back. When he didn’t, she stepped out and breathed a sigh of relief. She suddenly thought of her father downstairs. What if he was making his way down to him? What if he had suddenly turned into a maniac?

  Diane grabbed her robe and dashed across the room, cautiously looking out the door and listening. She heard his footsteps going down the stairs and ran on tiptoe in the opposite direction down an alternate set of stairs to get to the first-floor hallway-where her father’s room was. At the bottom landing, she listened for steps. It was quiet. Leaving the concealment the stairs provided, Diane walked down the hallway toward the kitchen end of the house. Was that a door slamming? She ran to the kitchen and into the utility hallway that connected to the garage, following the noise. At the end of the hall through the window she saw a flash of light, like headlights turning down the drive. She ran to the living room and looked out at the lit driveway just in time to see Alan’s car turn the curve.

  “Okay, that was weird,” she said to herself.

  “What’s weird, dear?”

  Diane whirled around.

  “Dad.”

  So much for her good ears. She hadn’t heard him at all. He stood in the doorway to the living room, looking out the windows, probably searching for whatever she was looking at.

  “I saw a flash of light-like a car.”

  “You didn’t see that from your room?”

  It was more of a question than an accusation.

  “No.”

  What was she going to say-I’m down here protecting you from Alan gone mad?

  “I had a slight headache and I came down to get some aspirin. The bottle in my bathroom is out-of-date. I thought Glenda might keep some in the kitchen.”

  “I believe she does. If not, I have some in my bathroom.” He smiled at her. “Cars sometimes use our drive to turn around in. No reason for alarm.”

  She followed him into the kitchen, where he reached up into one of the dark oak cabinets and retrieved a bottle of aspirin.

  “These are no good; they’re children’s aspirin. Glenda probably takes one of these every day. Oh, here’s another bottle.”

  He handed it to Diane and she jiggled a couple out into her hand, wondering what she was going to do with them.

  She was caught now. Why had she said that? If she took them, they would probably cause her wound to bleed or weep. But she couldn’t tell her father about that, so she had to do something with them.

  “Maybe you need to eat an apple or drink a glass of milk. It’s not good to take those on an empty stomach,” her father said.

  “Would you like me to pour you some milk, too?”

  “That might help. I can’t sleep either.” He sighed. “I keep thinking of your mother in that place.”

  “I know, Dad. But she’s safe now and we’ll have her out tomorrow.”

  Diane turned to take a carton of milk from the refrigerator and dropped the aspirin into the pocket of her robe. She poured two glasses of milk and they sat down at the kitchen table. She pretended to put the aspirin in her mouth, then took a drink of milk, feeling like a kid who had done something wrong and was hiding it from her father.

  “That’s one good thing about your crime work: At least you know your way around the system. I’m afraid poor Alan was out of his depth. He’s a financial lawyer, you know.”

  Her crime work. Diane and the case of the secreted aspirin, she thought. “It was a friend who helped the most. Frank Duncan.”

  Her father puckered his brow. “How do I know that name?”

  “We date.”

  “Oh, I think I remember something about him. A good man?”

  “A very good man. He’s a detective in Atlanta. Does mainly white collar crimes. When I told him about Mother, he knew right away what might have happened.”

  Her father looked very sad. He stared at the milk, not drinking. “You know,” he said, “I can’t help thinking that this may have been my fault.”

  “Your fault? How?”

  “The market’s not been good lately. Some of my clients have had losses. Of course, if they’d just stayed the course. . But some of them blame me.”

  “I doubt it has anything to do with that,” said Diane, though such a motive had crossed her mind too. “That’s a rather severe reaction for an investment downturn.” She took a drink of the milk.

  “You know, sitting in front of a computer doing mischief. . that’s a pretty safe way to get even with someone. You don’t have to even leave home, you don’t have to worry about confronting anyone, you just hit a few buttons and wreck someone’s life.”

  “It’s tricker than that in this case. The police don’t take kindly to people hacking into their system, and it may have left an electronic trail they can backtrack.”

  “Then why did they take such a risk?” He shook his head. “Diane, you need to come home more often. Get to know us. Let us get to know you again.”

  “I know, Dad. I will.” She searched for a change of subject. “Susan tells me Kayla would like a job in the museum next summer.”

  “Yes, she said that. I didn’t realize until this evening at dinner that you actually run the museum. That’s a big job.”

  “There’s a lot of satisfaction in it. I learn new things all the time.”

  Her father had run out of things to say to her, too. He fingered his glass and downed the rest of his milk.

  “I guess we’d better get some sleep. Maybe the milk will help. Just put the glasses on the sink. Glenda will get them tomorrow.”

  Diane walked with him to his door and went up the back staircase to her room. She locked her door and put a chair under the knob. Then she checked the window to make sure it was locked, even though she was on the second floor and she doubted that Alan could climb anything.

  She got into bed and turned on her bedside lamp so she could look at the photos of Alan she had taken with her camera. They were too dark. She knew they would be, but perhaps the brightness and contrast could be improved. David could do wonders with bad photographs, though she had doubts that there was anything here to work with. She e-mailed them to her computer at the museum and then sent an e-mail to Jin, telling him where to find them and asking him to see what he could do with them. She also sent an e-mail to David and told him to check out Alan Delacroix for an alibi. It had occurred to her that maybe it was Alan who had stabbed her. Though she didn’t know why he would stab Mike. Jealousy, perhaps? But how would he even know Mike? Could Alan have been stalking her?

  It took a few minutes to send the photos and write messages to Jin and David using the buttons on the handset. When she finished, she flipped her phone closed, put it under her pillow and went to sleep.

  Tombsberg Prison for Women looked like a cheap cinder-block fort in the middle of a field of dead grass. It was surrounded by a chain-link fence topped by razor wire.

  The prison was built just after World War II and meant to house only four hundred inmates at most. The current population hovered around two thousand and was little more than a warehouse for women prisoners. Tombsberg didn’t have any e
ducational programs, rehabilitation programs, occupational programs or any other activities to occupy the prisoners’ time. It was riddled with disease, and medical care was better in third-world countries. On any list of prisons, Tombsberg would rank at the bottom.

  Diane and her family arrived in the early morning. Gerald drove. Diane’s father had sat beside him in the front seat while Susan and Diane sat in back. They followed Daniel Reynolds’s car through the gates and into visitor parking and got out of the car. Diane stretched her aching muscles. She longed for a good run.

  “Oh, God,” said Susan. “This is terrible. I can’t believe Mother is in this place.”

  “The warden knows we’re coming,” Reynolds said. “We’ll have to do some paperwork, but it shouldn’t take long.”

  They all made their way to the warden’s office and waited while Reynolds and his assistant made arrangements for Diane’s mother to be released. The waiting room looked as cheaply constructed and decorated as the rest of the place. They sat uneasily for two hours on dingy lime-green couch and chairs, hardly talking.

  Finally the door opened and Diane’s mother stepped through, escorted by Daniel Reynolds. A guard closed the door behind them. She ran to Diane’s father as soon as she saw him. The look on her mother’s face reminded Diane of what she had seen in the faces of refugees.

  “Oh, Nathan, I can’t believe this nightmare is over. It’s been so horrible.”

  Diane’s mother was usually well dressed and well coiffed. Her dark-brown-and-silver hair was now pulled back in a bun at the back of her neck in a way she would never wear it. Her clothes looked like she had slept in them for a week-they had probably been rolled up in a bag and returned to her just before their arrival, to wear in place of the orange prison coveralls.

  Iris Fallon hugged Susan and Gerald, then Diane last. “Your father tells me you are the one to thank for getting me out of here.”

  “I had help from a detective friend who discovered the falsified records and recommended we go to Mr. Reynolds. Mr. Reynolds is the one who got you out.”

  Diane’s mother went to the lawyer and took his hands in hers. “I don’t know how to repay you.”