Not in the Heart (28 page)

C
HAPTER
44

Though I didn't want to tell Ellen, I felt compelled to give her the information about her cell phone and the man who had taken it. She turned white when she heard where I had found it. She tried to retrace her steps to figure out if she had seen him, how he had taken it. The thoughts tripped her up and I assured her the man wanted to keep us quiet and wouldn't make contact again. “He's like the big, bad wolf, huffing and puffing and threatening to blow our house down.”

“Remember how that story ended,” Ellen said. “He ate two of the pigs.”

Bad analogy.

She showed me a glazed look, her words coming from some deep pool. “That means you're onto something. Someone's scared about what you're doing.”

“I don't know what it means, but I can't stop turning over rocks now.”

She nodded and gave me a trembling hug.

From a purely literary standpoint, this was no diary of Anne Frank. From a spelling standpoint, Diana got a C at best. She didn't reveal much about her inner life and struggles; I didn't discover what made her the person she was, her hopes and fears and losses. Her entries were simply observations and laundry lists of things she'd done, things she needed to do, and how much certain customers ticked her off. But there were flashes of revelation, lightning strikes of creativity where she was able to expose more than just the surface.

Of course, she had not meant for anyone else to see these words, and since much of it was incomprehensible because of the moldy pages and water stains that had caused the ink to run and pages to stick together, she had nothing to fear. But there were snippets from her life that provided insight into her elation and fear.

March 4

Saw CT today. Had the day off from the salon and we spent some uninterupted time together. Things are pergressing, but he says we still need to keep everything a secret. I can't wait for the day when we don't have to hide our love. Some day that will happen and I look forward to the freedom of it.

He says [unintelligible for several lines]. I am just trying to hang onto my heart until this can all work out. Part of me feels really bad about all of this and when it comes into the light it will be talked about a lot. I know it's wrong, but I can't help it.

Just reading it made me feel sick, which was happening a lot lately. The stress mixed with the uncertainty and all of the relational/emotional/physical/financial clouds over my own life made me want to run to Walgreens every other hour for something that would calm my stomach, help me sleep, or both. Maybe I could invent MaaQuil, the new upset stomach/sleep aid.

The first thing Abby did was take the diary to the nearest Kinko's to copy every page we could even remotely read. Unfortunately, there was a prohibitive cost for that, so a quick call to Oleta gave us use of the aged copier at her office. Abby took it there, not telling Oleta what we had found, fearing that might give her false hope.

Over the next few days I worked Diana's words into a separate section of the book, putting the pieces I understood together, knowing there was much more I didn't understand.

Abby and I were particularly interested in the dates circled in her planner. Unfortunately, some of those diary entries had been destroyed by the water and aging process. However, we did find the earliest date that was circled.

January 22

Freelance opurtunity this afternoon. Very exciting. I was aproached after work Monday. No idea what or who but it could mean a couple hundred extra each month. Supposed to be a secret, I guess. I just have to be avaleable and they pay. I can handle that. Maybe Mom and I can get a new TV.

Abby and I went back and forth on what to do with our find. I wanted to show the diary to Mrs. Wright and get her reactions, but Abby thought Diana's mother would be brokenhearted by seeing her daughter's scrawl. If she hadn't touched Diana's room after all this time, why would she want to read her last words, even if it did help find the real killer?

The police were another matter. It was clear they didn't want to be bothered with the facts; they already had their man and were going to put this all behind them with Terrelle's death. I figured Detective Chandler would dismiss the information outright. Abby thought it was worth one more shot.

All of our mental gymnastics were futile until we answered the question of the mysterious blond man.

The next afternoon at a local Starbucks, away from any possible bugs in our house (though I had checked the phones), Abby and I talked freely about what we knew.

“The freelance has to involve Tompkins, right?” she said.

I pulled up the section I had typed into my manuscript, an entry from early February that said,
I don't have any contract, it's all on a handshake, but I was handed $500 for January.

“Nice handshake,” Abby said. “What would she have done for five hundred dollars?”

“Maybe she painted somebody's house.” That was from an old joke that went right over Abby's head.

“Seriously, Dad, this has to be her delivering drugs or doing something worse for Tompkins. She writes his initials all over the place. I just can't understand how she could fall for a guy like that.”

“A little green will make a plump old guy look a lot more appealing. And who knows, maybe she got strung out on something and he held it over her.”

There was one section of the diary we didn't talk much about, one I wanted to hide from Abby. I'm not a prude when it comes to sex, but there are some things you don't want your daughter to see, even though I assume if she has a boyfriend . . . Well, never mind.

I don't read romance novels, but it appeared Diana had. Turgid, misspelled prose of things she and Tompkins had done and where they had done them and details of the quick seduction. How she had never planned to do anything like this, especially with someone like him. How surprised her mother would be if she found out. How surprised everyone was going to be. Details included specifics about the existence of a tattoo in a curious spot on her lover. This revelation made me want to join the same gym as Tompkins and catch him in the locker room, but even if I did find the tattoo, it wouldn't mean that Tompkins had killed her, just add to the mounting evidence.

Of course all of these thoughts took away from the writing of Terrelle's story, but as I saw it, this
was
his story. I felt I had stumbled onto the B side of a hit record from the past, and both songs tied the sickening melodies together and could lead to a resolution that none of us had expected.

Most troubling were the last few entries. Diana questioned her involvement with CT and there was remorse mixed with confusion, doubt, and outright fear.
I think I was followed last night after work. I can't understand why this is happening.

In another entry she wrote,
That funny feeling is back this morning. I'm seeing CT tomorrow and am struggling with whether to talk to him about my fears.

Against Abby's judgment, which I weighed heavily, I decided to stop at Mrs. Wright's house for another heart-to-heart. Her mangy mutt held me at the front door until she unlocked it and spoke through the small crack.

“Where's the Piggly Wiggly bag?” she said.

“I'm shopping at Kroger these days. Can I come in and ask a couple more questions?”

She opened the door just enough and put one of her misshapen legs in front of the dog. I entered and she turned the volume down on the dusty TV.

“Did Diana buy that for you?” I said, sitting on the worn couch.

She nodded and settled into her faux leather chair with a few creaks, mostly from the chair. “One of the last things she did. Every time I turn it on, I think of her.”

What a sad legacy.

“Where did she get the money?”

She shrugged. “I didn't ask. She just seemed so happy to be able to give it to me. To buy it for
us
.”

I sat forward on the couch, noticing the hair remnants of the dog and its pungent smell. I realized as he curled up beside me that I was an intruder, though he seemed to tolerate me a bit more than the first time. “In the last few months of her life, did you notice any change in Diana?”

“What kind of change?”

“Anything. Was she more happy? Sad? Scared? Upset?”

She ran her tongue over her lower dentures and stared at the wall. “In those last months, she seemed like she was happier. Preoccupied with something, but she'd never talk about it.”

“Did you suspect she was seeing someone?”

“It crossed my mind. I even asked her if there was someone and she laughed at me. But it was the kind of laugh that made me think I'd hit something. We'll never know, will we? And it doesn't matter anyway because Conley confessed.”

“Why didn't you tell me this before?”

“You never asked. And I was intimidated by you, after seeing you on TV.”

Funny, she did not act the least bit intimidated. I let it slide. “Who do you think it might have been?”

“I assumed, because she never said anything, that it was Curtis from the salon. She knew I didn't trust him and would have wanted to hide that from me.”

“Did you ever think he might have been involved in her death?”

“It crossed my mind when she disappeared, but when they found her and all the evidence against Conley, I knew Curtis didn't do it. Plus, I told you he was kind to me.”

I paused long enough for her to look at me. “We found Diana's diary. The journal she kept.”

“I know. Your daughter took them from the closet.”

“No, not those. The last one she was working on. She'd hidden it.”

She closed her eyes. “Don't you do this. Don't bring up all that old stuff. It's almost over, and here you come bringing up everything I've tried to forget.”

“Mrs. Wright, your daughter was murdered. She didn't deserve that. Her words speak from her grave. I think there's a lot we don't know.”

“What does she say?”

“Lots of things. But we're pretty sure it shows the killer wasn't Terrelle.”

“Then why did he confess?”

“Because he wants to help my son. He sees his execution as something that's going to happen no matter what, so if good can come from it, so be it. But if he didn't do it, I want to help him.”

“What kind of father are you if this cuts off your chances for your son to get a new heart?”

I stared at her. “You think I haven't wrestled with that? I go back and forth every three minutes—leave it alone, let my son live, shut up. But what kind of human being would I be if I let an innocent man die?”

She chewed on that for a moment. I chewed on it as well. I remember a book Ellen left by her bed, written by a reporter who had been an atheist and turned to Christianity. He asserted that Jesus was the only person in history who didn't deserve to die but did it willingly. I read the whole thing. It wasn't enough to make me jump off the deep end of the faith pool, but right then it kind of hit me hard, with Mrs. Wright's words hanging in the air.

“Are you saying I let my daughter down all those years ago?” she said.

“You didn't let her down. You didn't know.”

“I should have known. If what you're saying is true, I should have been able to pick up the signals. What does she say in the journal?”

Where do I start? Certainly not the romance material. “She talked about the love she had found and how excited she was about the future. She talked about her freelance work and making money on the side. That must have been where she got the money for the TV. And then things turned pretty dark.”

“What do you mean?”

“We can't say for sure what happened—”

“We?”

“My daughter, Abby, and me.”

“You're the only ones who have seen it?”

“So far, yes.”

“Your daughter is a nice girl. I'm surprised she came from you.”

“Her mother's side of the gene pool is better than mine.”

She smiled, at least as much as Helen Wright could smile under the circumstances.

“From what we can piece together,” I continued, “she had a relationship with Tompkins that somehow went south. One entry talks about a ‘funny feeling' she had in the morning and telling him about it. Abby is not with me on this, but I wonder if there's a chance she thought she was pregnant.”

Helen put her head back on the cracked cushion and let out a painful yelp, then covered her face with her hands. “Oh, for heaven's sake, why do you tell me this? Why do you want to rip my heart out?”

The dog jumped into her lap, which helped calm her. She put her hand on the dog's head and held him to her chest.

“I checked the autopsy results. There was no pregnancy. The blood test showed that. But the important thing is she thought she was.”

“Why is that important?”

“If the killer knew this, that Diana thought she was pregnant, perhaps he encouraged her to get an abortion, and—”

“She would never have done that. It's hard enough for me to imagine her pregnant, but there's no way she would have done that. She knew that would have killed me.”

“I understand. But let's say she resisted and there was pressure put on her, perhaps that explains part of her fear. If she had become involved in some of Tompkins's questionable side business endeavors, she may have gotten in too deep. Things came to a head and someone was hired to take her life.”

“Hired?”

“Tompkins had an alibi for every moment of the day she was killed. That seems suspicious for a guy who spends a lot of time alone. Plus, there's evidence of a man who may have followed Diana.”

She thought about that for a minute. “The night before she went missing, she looked out the window a lot. Several times.”

“How do you remember that?”