Playing the Game (42 page)

No one had a chance to stop Barry. The left-handed blow to Paul Paris’s face flew swiftly and landed cleanly. Paul hit the floor before anyone reacted.

But then, all hell broke loose and Roxanne felt as if she were in the eye of a hurricane. Dr. Oki took control of Paul, enlisting the aid of a nurse in the vicinity. Al grabbed Barry and this time put a grip on him that would not be undone—or Barry allowed himself to be dragged back out the door and through the crowd that had gathered. The media mob pounced on her.

“Is this true, Ms. Monet? Is there any truth to Paul Paris’s accusations?”

“What were you doing here at the hospital this morning?”

“How long have you been involved with Barry Dennis?”

“Why did you kill your husband?”

That question made her move. With Laura’s help, she pushed her way through the mob and flashing cameras to the door. She hardly saw their faces and didn’t let any more of the questions register in her mind. She only met the eyes of one reporter on her way out. Pat Banyan. He shoved a microphone toward her and opened his mouth to ask a question.

“Don’t even think about it,” she said too quietly for anyone to hear but him. For that moment she focused all her anger at him in the pinpoint of her stare. He didn’t speak. She turned away and escaped through the door with Laura.

They drove home in almost silence. Roxanne slouched in the passenger seat staring out the window, trying to keep her mind as blank and unfocused as possible. Laura shook her head and muttered under her breath, alternating with deep breathing and blowing out puffs of air as if she were in her second stage of labor.

It could have gone either way. Roxanne could have broken down into despairing sobs right then and there, or she could have laughed hysterically. She decided to laugh. Especially in light of Laura’s behavior.

“What the hell’s so funny, I’d like to know? This has been anything but funny. How can you be sitting there right now laughing?” Laura pulled the car into Roxanne’s driveway and looked at her with an incredulous stare. That made Roxanne laugh all the more. Her stomach began to get that tight ache that happened when she laughed too hard. She knew she’d better stop before she could be considered certifiably hysterical. She calmed herself and patted Laura’s arm.

“I’m sorry, but I have so few choices. Would you rather see me sob?” She finally found a more even emotional setting and tried to steady herself there.

“No. I don’t know. Maybe. I know you probably feel like it. I couldn’t possibly see how the situation could get any worse. Maybe some day this will all be funny. But it doesn’t seem that way to me today.” Laura looked at her. “And I’m really sorry because I feel responsible since it was my idea for you to go to the hospital in the first place. I should have known better.”

The hospital. Lindy. Roxanne could feel herself slipping over the edge into the abyss of pain again and she shook her head. She couldn’t do it. Not yet. Not now. There was still a long way to go. “I guess I prefer to skip over all the despair and get right to the part where everything seems comical. There must be some kind of psychological term for that. Maybe they call it denial or something.” She smiled at Laura. Her chin trembled.

Laura shook her head and laughed through her tears. Roxanne leaned over and hugged her friend. Laura had tried so hard to be valiant through the whole ordeal. She had pushed herself well beyond her normal limits of emotional endurance.

Roxanne took a tissue from the console and wiped her friend’s face. They got out of the car.

“Let’s go in and have some tea or something. What is it one does in a situation like this?” Laura asked.

“How about a shot of whiskey?” Roxanne suggested as they walked into the kitchen. Laura laughed. Bonnie had the TV on tuned into the news and they were all front and center. She shook her head and put on the teakettle. They all sat at the kitchen table. Roxanne turned off the TV and they watched the fire in the fireplace instead.

“Lucky I saved you some whiskey. After seeing that news clip, I felt the need for a shot or two myself,” Bonnie said, then sat herself down.

Roxanne tried not to notice the men out back throwing the life-sized dummy off the deck down onto the rocks. Al said they’d be doing tests. She got up to watch.

“They’ve been at it all morning,” Bonnie said. “Sure hope it does some good.”

One man, struggling, carried the soaking wet dummy up the steps. When he reached the top he let the limp figure drop onto the deck with a sickening thud. She tried not to look at the body. It wasn’t Don. But when her eyes betrayed her with a glance, she felt it all over again. The heat rose to her face, beads of sweat broke out all over her body, and her stomach clenched in revulsion. The dizzying nausea overwhelmed her until she forced herself to look away.

It was not Don.

But that hardly mattered. It had been Don.

She leaned back against the wall, squeezing her eyes closed as tight as she could, but she felt some of the tears escaping anyway. She let herself slide down the wall to a heap on the floor and let her head drop into her hands. She felt Laura and Bonnie hover over her. She heard their voices, but she didn’t hear what they said. She felt their hands on her, trying to move her. But she couldn’t respond. She fell into the solace of oblivion.

By the time Al arrived later that day, Roxanne felt she’d recovered her sanity. But with it came the unrelenting feeling of loss. Images of Lindy and Don floated through her mind. But the worse sense of loss came when she thought of Barry Dennis.

The phone rang. She sat in the kitchen in her assigned seat at the table, sipping tea. The phone rang a lot. She’d turned off her cell phone. Al picked up his cell and clicked it on. He nodded. “Did you find him?” Al asked.

Roxanne knew he was talking about Mark. She tuned out the conversation. Roxanne hated having to be so desperately counting on one man’s appearance. It shouldn’t be so hard to prove she was innocent. She shouldn’t have to. But it was, and she did.

That was the thought that had been nagging at the back of her mind these last months. Every time it came up she pushed it back down. She’d been determined to win the war of wills against Penelope.

The realization was finally taking hold, however, that maybe there was no making up for the fact that Don was dead. Someone had to pay. Marrying Don was a mistake she’d have to live with. If Penelope succeeded in making her atone for his death, she’d have to live with that too. Maybe no other penance would do.

She looked at Al as he hung up the phone. The smile he had on his face disappeared as he looked at her.

“Don’t mind me. This is my day for being morose. I’ll get over it.” She smiled at him. But she wasn’t so sure how she’d get over all this. She straightened in her chair and put more effort into her smile. She determined that she sure as hell was going to have to do her best to live with “it.” Because “it” was herself.

“This should cheer you. Thanks to the last lead, the detective is one step behind Mark and closing in. We’re making progress all around. Our forensics expert says we should have test results on the dynamics of the fall to support our theory.” Al stopped talking. “This is good news, Rox. Are you sure you’re okay? You should have let Dr. Oki give you that sedative.”

“I don’t need a sedative. Look how calm I am. I have all I need. A good lawyer and good friends.” Her smile broke out automatically this time. He took her hand and beamed a smile back. She decided she loved Al. The same way she’d loved Don. She looked away from him. She was going to have to let him go. Soon.

Chapter 21

“WE HAVE to look for bank statements, the transaction statements from the Trust Account Roxanne had set up for the fund. Accounting is administering the fund so it should be down here,” Laura said in a whisper as she stepped across the threshold, hunched over.

“What do we look for?” Tim asked, taking the huge ring of keys from the door and looking for somewhere to put them.

“Make sure all the deposits have been recorded. It will be tough to tell because in the beginning Harry trusted accounting to keep track and didn’t keep copies of the checks he sent out.” Laura didn’t bother to keep the accusatory note from her voice. She’d always told Harry he was remiss for not keeping better track of things from their end.

Harry defended himself. “All I did is send a memo with the checks for deposit to the accounting office. Who ever thought there’d be a problem? But I made a list from memory, or at least tried to. I know nothing can be proven from my mental list, but at least we’ll know and it’ll confirm our suspicions. Hey—I got us the password to the computer account, didn’t I?”

“And I got the password to Dr. Evans’s personal files,” she countered. “Now we can see the files that can only be accessed from his computer.” She didn’t want to admit how she’d gotten said password, but they didn’t need to know.

“What else can we look for?” Tim asked, looking around at all the file cabinets.

“Withdrawals.” Laura said, as she tapped at the keyboard to access the accounting files “Here’s the file for the State Street Trust Account. Wait, this is for the building project. Here’s another for the Dr. Oki research fund.” She tapped more keys and scrolled down the screen. “This is odd. Both these files were duplicated in Dr. Evans’s personal Expense Account file.” Laura looked up at the two men and smiled. Her feeling of triumph overrode her horror at the situation.

“What kind of withdrawals are we looking for? There’s a bunch here, but I have no clue what they’re for. Only dollar amounts are listed.” Harry said from across the room as he flipped through a massive binder filled with computer printouts.

Laura went over. “Are these the reports for the Dr. Oki Fund Trust Account? Let me see.” Laura took it from Harry and sat back down to check the official reports against what she found on Dr. Evans’s computer. “This is impossible. I’ve been doing all the check requests and I’ve been very explicit about specifying what they’re for.” She looked at Harry and her heart began thudding at an alarming rate “I’ve kept very good records.” She took a deep breath. “There are withdrawals from this account that match deposits to Dr. Evans’s account.”

“Who else is authorized to withdraw from this account?” Tim asked her.

“Only me and … Roxanne.” Harry and Tim looked at each other. Her heart pounded harder.

“Wait a minute,” she said.

“All the deposits look kosher, but look at these withdrawals.” Harry said, leaning over her shoulder.

“I don’t believe it. He’s been setting her up.” Laura let her fear have free reign.

“But why? What’s he doing with the money?” Tim questioned.

“The guy from accounting said they’d been channeling it toward the building fund. But I doubt he was aware of the extent to which it had been going on—or the fact that Roxanne never authorized those withdrawals in the first place. And Dr. Evans thinks he’s covered if anyone ever said anything. It was Roxanne’s name on the check request.”

“But the building project was well funded. Why did he need all this extra cash? There is a piece missing here,” Tim pointed out.

Laura smiled. “Exactly. That would be the deposits into Dr. Evans’s accounts which line up nicely with some of the withdrawals from the building account.”

“Now things are starting to make more sense to me. The National Institute of Health would have looked at this building trust in their audit. The least they would have come up with is mismanagement of funds. That’s why Evans discouraged the refiling of an NIH grant,” Harry speculated as he looked over Laura’s shoulder at the computer screen at Dr. Evans’s private account file. “But we need more to prove our theory. I’m going through the transaction statements on the construction project account to get some specifics.”

“We can’t stay here. I’ll make printouts now.” Laura hoped they would find the smoking gun fast for Roxanne’s sake.

“Good. Then let’s get out of here. Being in this place after hours like this gives me the willies. It’s like any minute security is going to come bursting through the door and we’ll all be arrested like in some rerun of a private dick series.” Harry shivered. They all laughed.

“Don’t worry. I told Bob, the security officer, I had to pick up a check from this office. He trusts me completely. He gave me his whole set of keys, didn’t he?” Tim said.

“Shows what a good judge of character he is,” Harry snorted.

“Yeah. Shows how much we’re willing to put ourselves on the line for Roxanne. I only hope it does some good. I hope the deck isn’t already stacked too high against her.” Laura shut down the computer and looked at Tim for reassurance.

“Don’t worry about that. I think between us we have enough credibility to unstack a pretty tall deck.”

Harry laughed. “You do have a way with words. We ready to blow this joint?” Harry looked at Laura.

“I think you’re starting to take this private dick role a little too seriously,” she said. They all laughed. She picked up the printouts and they left the office in a hush.

“I don’t know why you didn’t let me come into your office today. I haven’t been out of this house for days and it’s driving me crazy.” Roxanne greeted Al at the door. The January sunshine glared on this gloriously crisp Friday morning.

Al gestured over his shoulder toward the now familiar figures of media reading in their cars across the street. “That’s why. After the fiasco at the hospital I don’t want to take any more chances.”

She led him into the kitchen. She didn’t know exactly when she crossed over from apathy, but she now hated this house. She couldn’t wait until the place was sold.

They sat at the kitchen table.

“Roxanne, I saw the DA’s file on you. Among other things, he has signed affidavits from witnesses swearing they heard you threaten Don’s life at a party and that you had several very public fights. Is this true?” He looked at her like an angry teacher at a student.

“Yes. We had fights. But I never threatened his life. I threatened to divorce him in public maybe. No, definitely.”