Dead Secret (14 page)

Chapter 22

“Diane, dear, it’s good to see you,” her father said. Nathan Fallon, Diane’s father, rose from his chair as they entered the den to give a hug and kiss to her cheek.

He looked much as he had the last time she’d visited. Hardly aged, but he did look tired. His hair was silver only on the sides, as she remembered, and he was still slender and well dressed as ever in an expensive suit. It was a warmer reception than she usually got. Her family weren’t huggers. He held her at arm’s length and looked her over.

“You look good. It’s been too long. You need to come visit more often.”

“Hello, Diane, it has been a long time.”

Diane just noticed Alan Delacroix, her ex-husband, sitting in one of the stuffed chairs in the den. He wasn’t aging as well as her father, but it had been more than a decade since she last saw him. Alan had the dark hair and dark eyes of his mother’s Irish side of the family more than his father’s French side. His once-black hair was now salted with gray, and his former leanness had given way to an added twenty-five or thirty pounds. The one thing that hadn’t changed about him was that his smile still looked like a badly disguised smirk. What had she been thinking all those years ago?

“Alan. Yes, it has been a long time.”

The den was her father’s favorite room. He called it the library because of lawyer’s bookcases on one wall. Practically everything in it was made either of dark cherry wood or leather. He and Alan had been sitting on chocolate-colored leather-upholstered chairs. The dents in the seats of the matching ottomans said that both had had their feet up.

Diane liked the room. She didn’t like seeing Alan in it. It wasn’t so much that she harbored any ill will toward Alan—she was the one who had wanted out of the marriage—but because in the divorce Alan had gotten custody of her family.

“You look well,” said Alan. “A little tired, perhaps.” His compliments always came with a barb. He had changed very little.

Susan stood, looking uncomfortable. Diane wondered if her sister was afraid she would “start something” as she called it. Her father simply smiled.

“Alan has some good news,” he said. “He has an appointment with a contact in the Justice Department to talk about Iris’s situation.”

Alan beamed as he looked from Diane to Susan. They both opened their mouths to speak but were interrupted by the entry into the library of Susan’s husband, Gerald Abernathy. He put an arm around Diane’s shoulders.

“You look great,” he said, kissing her cheek. “You don’t live that far away. We need to see more of you. Susan and I’ve been thinking about bringing the kids to visit your museum.”

“I’d like that,” said Diane. Susan smiled thinly, and Diane wondered if they had ever had a conversation about visiting her.

Gerald’s hairline had receded a little more since the last time Diane had seen him. His square-built body seemed as active as ever, the way he flitted from Diane to Susan to give her a peck on the cheek. Diane noticed Alan frowning at him. He probably didn’t like Gerald interrupting his big announcement.

“As your father was just saying, I have an appointment with someone from the Justice Department to talk about Iris.”

“We think Mother will be getting out tomorrow,” said Susan abruptly. “It’s what we’ve been doing all day, Diane and I, arranging it. Well, Diane mostly.”

Their father stared at them, openmouthed. “What? Tomorrow? How do you know? How can that be?”

Alan looked crestfallen. Gerald grinned.

“Diane has a detective friend who looked into it, and we consulted a lawyer who specializes in that kind of thing.”

“The only hangup might be if some of the people in charge get defensive about the mistake,” said Diane just as her cell phone rang. She quickly pulled it out of her purse, and checked the display to see who was calling before she answered.

“It’s Daniel Reynolds, the lawyer,” she told them before answering. “Yes?”

“Dr. Fallon,” he said. “Just wanted to keep you up-to-date. My assistant has confirmed that the bank was not robbed, and has obtained an affidavit to that effect. I received the fax on the fingerprint and mug-shot photograph analysis. After looking at those materials, I filed an emergency petition for a writ of habeas corpus with a district federal judge requesting his expedited review of the false evidence and release of your mother. Based on my testimony to him, the judge has ordered the immediate move of your mother to a guesthouse on the prison grounds. I’ve sent the judge the documents and fully expect an order for your mother’s release to be issued tomorrow morning. She should be able to come home until a hearing can take place to clear this all up. Could you meet me at my office in the morning at eight? We can drive down to Montgomery.”

Diane didn’t say anything for several seconds. “Yes . . . yes, we’ll be there. Thank you, from me and my family. Thank you.”

“We have some persuasive evidence. I don’t expect any delay from the Feds or the officials at Tombsberg. They know they are in a world of trouble.”

Diane thanked him and put her phone back in her purse.

“We’re going to pick Mother up tomorrow morning. They’re moving her to a guesthouse tonight.”

“I don’t believe it,” said her father. He looked at Alan. “I don’t understand.”

“Mother was a victim of identity theft,” said Susan. “Or someone hacking into the police computers—one or the other. Isn’t that right, Diane?”

“Yes. Right now it looks like someone hacked into the Justice Department computers and created a fugitive arrest warrant in her name.”

“How? Why?” asked her father.

Glenda, the housekeeper who had been with her parents since they moved to Birmingham, came in and announced dinner.

“Hello, Miss Diane. It’s good to see you home. It’s been a while. I put you in Mrs. Fallon’s Yukon room, as she likes to call it. It’s my favorite. Real cozy.”

“Hello, Glenda. You haven’t aged a day since I last saw you.”

“It’s all them Botox injections,” she said, laughing. “But did I hear right? Is Mrs. Fallon coming home?”

“You did, indeed, Glenda,” said Diane’s father. “I think we’ll have some champagne after dinner. This calls for a celebration.”

“Yes, it does, Mr. Fallon. This has been just the craziest thing I’ve ever heard of. It’s no wonder we have such a high crime rate: The police don’t know nothing,” Glenda said as they all walked out of the room.

The dining room was the same as Diane remembered—stucco walls colorwashed in shades of gold, a dark-pine sideboard with terra-cotta tile inlays, a polished dark-pine dining table and chairs with tapestry-covered seats. The still-life of grapes, apples and pears above the sideboard was new. It was a room with warmth and seemed so opposite to her family, Diane thought.

Diane realized that she hadn’t eaten all day and was starving. She sat down eagerly and heaped her plate from the platters of food passed to her. Over a dinner of roast lamb, new potatoes and grilled asparagus, Diane and Susan took turns explaining what happened.

“The fingerprints they used in her fake file belong to a Jerome Washington. They also made fake mug shots,” said Diane.

“Alan, I thought your people were telling you that it had something to do with Homeland Security?” said her father.

“That’s what the indications were,” Alan said. He forked a piece of meat and stuck it in his mouth, perhaps to forestall the expectation of further words.

Diane noticed that Alan had a lot of color in his face this evening. He was sullen throughout the meal. No one but she and Gerald seemed to notice. Once, Gerald looked at Alan, then at her, and winked. Diane hadn’t realized that she had an ally in her brother-in-law. It also surprised her how much Susan seemed to enjoy showing Alan up. She would never understand her family.

“This is the best news we’ve had in . . . I can’t even remember how long,” her father said. “How did you find out what happened? What made you think it was identity theft or hacking?”

“A friend of mine, Frank Duncan, is a detective in the Metro Atlanta Fraud and Computer Forensics Unit. He deals with identity theft all the time.” Diane told them what he had found. “Just about the only reason they would put her in a place like Tombsberg without a trial is if they thought she had already had one.”

“These days,” began Alan, “they are sending lots of people to prison without a trial. About all they need is suspicion or grounds to detain you as a material witness.”

Diane was shocked that Alan knew so little about current law. But he’d probably never set foot in a criminal court-room. He knew only about laws concerning trusts, wills and anything to do with money. Still, she thought to herself, surely he should know better. She suspected he got his knowledge of criminal law from television.

“Not American citizens,” said Diane. “And there would have been a process she would have gone through. They wouldn’t just throw her in prison. Besides, Mother would have remembered if she had witnessed a bank robbery.”

“I didn’t say she actually witnessed a robbery. I only said that the authorities may have thought she had. That is the only way it all made sense. We all know that she couldn’t have robbed one herself.”

“Well, what matters now,” said her father, “is that Iris is coming home.”

Diane wanted to say that something could still go wrong, but she didn’t want to ruin his happy mood. At any rate, if everything didn’t exactly go as planned, it would only delay the release for a few days. And she had a feeling that Daniel Reynolds had put the fear of God into the prison officials.

“Who would do such a thing?” said Gerald. “And why, for heaven’s sake? What was to be gained?”

“I’ve been thinking about that,” said Diane’s father. “The market has been down lately. You remember the Wolcotts were very unhappy with the performance of their portfolio. Very unhappy. They lost quite a sum of money. Money makes some people do strange things.”

“The FBI, the Bureau of Prisons, and the federal marshals will all come out of this looking bad,” said Diane. “They will want to know who got into their files.”

“I agree,” said Gerald. “But enough about all that for now. Like you said, Nathan, this is the time to celebrate. Diane, tell us about the museum. It’s a large operation, isn’t it? Annual budget in the millions?”

Diane described the dinosaurs, the Egyptian exhibit, the elegant rocks, butterflies, seashells, the huge paintings of dinosaurs on the walls containing hidden unicorns in each one, the nature trail, the restaurant and even the museum store.

“Christopher loved the collection of model dinosaurs you sent him for Christmas,” said Gerald. “Especially that big—what do you call it—brachy-something?”

“Brachiosaur.”

“Yeah, that’s it. He really liked that one. Carried it around by the neck all the time.”

“And what is your position in the museum?” asked Alan.

“She’s the director,” said Susan.

“The director?” her father said. “Isn’t that wonderful? I’m proud of you, Diane.”

Diane had been estranged from her family so long, she’d forgotten they didn’t really know what she did for a living.

And his response surprised her. She had never recalled that her parents had expressed pride in what she did. She was always doing things that were so opposite of what they wanted. She grew up thinking that it was her grandparents’ job to be proud of her.

“Director. Impressive,” said Alan.

“I suppose you like not having anyone to answer to,” said Susan.

“Oh, I’m sure she has a board to answer to,” said Alan. “That’s the way museums are set up.”

“Actually,” said Diane, “the board answers to me.”

“What? You have them intimidated?” said Alan.

“No. The governance of RiverTrail Museum is set up differently than most. The board is advisory. All final decisions are mine. A man named Milo Lorenzo, the founder of the museum, wanted it that way.”

“I know him, don’t I?” said Diane’s father. “Wasn’t he a teacher at the college in Rosewood? Didn’t you take some advanced something-or-other there when you were in sixth grade? Went back a few summers to take courses after we moved, if I recall.”

Diane was shocked that her father remembered that small a detail about her from so long ago.

“History,” she said. “He was a professor. I took his history course and some others during the summers in a special program.”

“As I recall, he was rich,” said her father.

“Yes, he was. He endowed the museum very well. He didn’t like the idea of committees making decisions. So he set up the museum the way he wanted it. He was to be the director, and hired me as assistant director. Unfortunately, he died suddenly, but all his power went to me when I stepped into the position.”

“You must like that,” said Alan. “Absolute power.”

“Not absolute, but close.”

Diane was getting uncomfortable with the conversation. Alan was turning it into something about her personality. She searched for another subject to talk about, but everything she liked—caves, bones, even science fiction—was a red flag for either Alan or her family. She settled on another subject.

“We have an new geology exhibit opening in a few months. It should be very popular with the kids. It’s designed to look like they are traveling down through the layers of the Earth.”

“Gerry would like that,” said Susan. “He’s crazy about rocks.”

“Then you need to come to the opening. We always have a gala to celebrate a new exhibit. Usually black-tie. It’s a lot of fun.”

The phone rang in another part of the house. The ringing stopped abruptly as the housekeeper picked it up.

“Oh, Mr. Fallon,” she said as she came running in with the phone. “It’s Mrs. Fallon. She’s on the phone.”

Chapter 23

While her father talked to her mother on the phone, Diane wandered onto the terrace with a cup of coffee. Alan followed.

“You’ve done well for yourself,” he said.

“Yes, I have. I have a good life.”

Diane tried to remember living with Alan. She couldn’t really—not the day-to-day life they shared for eighteen months. Just events. Arguments. Regrets. Nothing to make a scrapbook of. Nothing she wanted to remember.

“If we’d stayed together, we’d be married seventeen years next month,” he said.

“Where’s your wife?” asked Diane. She had noticed that she was conspicuously absent, but just assumed she didn’t want to dine with her husband’s ex-wife.

“We’re separated.”

“I’m sorry.”

It was twilight and still hot. Diane would have taken off her blazer, but hadn’t wanted to explain her bandage. She sat down at the wrought-iron table with her coffee, trying to think of some polite way to tell Alan to go away. But he sat down opposite her. In the coming darkness he looked younger and handsome. He had always been a good-looking man and had always known it. Alan had the upbringing of an only child with doting parents.

“I loved you,” he said. “I really did.”

“No, you didn’t.”

Even in the shadows, she could see the flush rise in his face.

“Don’t tell me what I felt.”

“When we were married you wanted to change everything about me. I had too much desire to get an education. I was too adventurous. I had a smart mouth, and my hair was too short. There was nothing about me that you liked.”

“I just wanted you to be happy.”

Diane felt her face getting hot and the anger rising. After all these years, he could still goad her into an argument. “I was happy doing all those things you didn’t like. You wanted me to be happy doing what you wanted me to do. That just wasn’t me.”

“If you had just tried. . . . You didn’t try.”

“Do you have any idea how that sounds? God, Alan. Why are we having this conversation? You know, in the divorce papers there was this line that said our relationship was now like we had never been married. Our marriage is history and should stay that way.”

“You never really loved me, did you?”

That was the way their arguments always went. Alan would ignore Diane’s response and go on to the next thing he wanted to take issue with. Alan could certainly suck the joy out a celebration.

“Don’t, Alan. It’s been seventeen years. Let it go.”
Surely,
thought Diane,
he doesn’t want to get back together.
“I did try. I tried for a year and a half, but I wasn’t going to give up graduate school. I wasn’t going to give up caving. I might have relented on the hair. All we did was argue. We both were miserable.”

She suddenly felt like making a dash for the door. She rose and started back into the house.

“Dammit, Diane, can’t you just listen for once?”

Alan grabbed her arm. His fingers pressed hard against the tender incision. Searing, crippling pain shot through Diane’s arm. Bile rose in her throat.

“You’re hurting me,” she cried out. “Let go.”

“Don’t be silly. I can’t be hurting you.”

The lights to the terrace suddenly came on. Susan and Gerald rushed through the patio doors.

“Stop,” said Susan. “She’s injured.”

“Dammit, man. Let her go,” said Gerald. “Look at her face. She’s about to pass out.”

Alan let go and Diane started to sink. Gerald put a chair under her.

“Shit, that hurt,” she said.

“Let me see if he broke the stitches.” Susan helped her take off the light cotton jacket she’d worn over her short-sleeved shirt.

“This is a long cut, Diane,” said Susan, looking through the translucent bandage at the line of stitches. “It looks like it was deep.”

“The doctor said it was to the bone. I had to have some muscle repair.”

“I didn’t realize,” sputtered Alan.

“You did,” said Diane, “because I told you that you were hurting me.”

“It didn’t make sense that my grasp was hurting. How was I to know?”

“It’s weeping,” said Susan. “But the stitches look intact.”

“Alan, that kind of logic is exactly the reason we are not married.” Diane’s arm throbbed. She turned to her sister. “I see Dad coming. Help me on with my jacket. We aren’t going to mention this.” She bored a hole through Alan with her gaze.

“There you are,” said her dad, coming through the patio door. “I talked to your mother. She’s in a cottage on the prison grounds. As you can imagine, she is greatly relieved. She suffered so much in there.” His voice broke.

“Sit down, Dad,” Susan said as she guided him to a chair.

“They had her in a dormitory with five hundred other women. Five hundred. Some were ill and vomiting. They have elderly people in with young people. Many of them were vicious. She said one woman died during the night and they couldn’t get a guard to come and see about her until noon. It was awful. Just awful. Someone is going to pay for this. Alan, I want you to start a lawsuit immediately.”

“I’ll look into it.”

“Don’t look into it. Do it!” he snapped.

“Of course. That’s what I meant,” Alan sputtered.

They skipped the champagne. The joy at getting her mother out of prison was dampened by the knowledge of the frightful conditions. Diane knew what to expect, but hearing it from her father was still sickening. Alan had the good sense not to say that prison was not supposed to be Club Med, as he had often voiced in the past.

Diane excused herself early, telling her father that she was tired from the flight.

“I understand. I’m going to bed myself. We have to get up early and get Iris away from that place. I tell you, they are going to be sorry they picked on a Fallon.” He kissed her cheek and headed for his room. “God, I’m tired,” he said, going down the hallway.

Alan went home, and Diane hoped it would be the last time she saw him. He apparently couldn’t bring himself to apologize for hurting her. An apology would be an admission of guilt, and that was simply beyond his ability to accept.

“I’ll go up with you and dress your arm,” said Susan.

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.