An Accidental Woman (29 page)

“Let me, Micah. I don't have anything to do until later. I want to help.”

“Can you get Heather out of jail?” he threw back, and suddenly more just spilled out. “Can you prove she isn't Lisa? Can you make Heather talk? Can you explain to Missy and Star why someone who says she loves them can hide secrets so bad she can't speak up to save her life? Can you explain it to
me?
I can't deal with this Heather, Camille. I want the one I had before. We had a good life. I want it back.”

The stricken look on her face made him regret the outburst. Not that he'd had any control. He had kept too much locked up inside, and he felt like it had been there for years rather than days.

Unable to analyze that or to think about Heather for another second, Micah raised both hands in surrender and strode off. He had tubing to lay. He was good at that. More than anything else right now, he needed the routine.

* * *

So she drove around for a bit, actually drove all the way around the lake, with no radio, only the shush of the tires where melting snow wet the road. When she had made the whole circle and was back in the center of town, she pulled in at the church. The spire was sunlit and gloriously white against a clear blue sky. She studied it awhile, then put the car in gear again and drove onto the narrow road that wound through the town cemetery. She coasted slowly, recalling various people who were buried there. At her father's grave, she felt a catch in her throat.

Pulling past it, she sat for a bit, not knowing what she felt, why she was here, what she wanted. Without conscious intent, she drove on. When she crested a small rise, her breathing grew shallow.

She had been to the cemetery in the years since her accident, mourning
not only her father, but others from town who had died. Hadn't it been Gus Kipling, John's father, just a few short months ago? She hadn't had a problem then. She had easily avoided this particular spot. Now, though, for the life of her, she couldn't drive on.

Pulling over onto the snowy berm, she let the Blazer idle. She tried to compose herself by taking deep, slow breaths; she tried to distract herself by thinking about Victoria; she tried looking anywhere else but
there.
Inexorably, though,
there
was where her eye was drawn, up past a dozen granite markers of different sizes and shapes to a simple but handsome one that stood in the back looking very much apart and alone.

Even under sun, the winter landscape felt bleak here. Dogwoods flanking the stone were scrawny and bare. What might have been a bench was now a raised rectangle of snow.

But that wasn't why this particular gravestone seemed so alone. Perry Walker had died young, and though there was space here for others of his family, they were all still alive. His stone was the only one in the whole of the family plot.

Perry's parents lived in Elkland now, forty minutes to the north. Poppy had never known if they left Lake Henry because of the accident. Nor did she know whether any of Perry's siblings were still in New Hampshire. She hadn't asked. Couldn't. Didn't want to know. She might well have heard something over the years and just tuned it out. The mind did things like that when a subject brought threat of pain.

Even now, she felt a great yawing inside, the need to veer off and escape. But her eyes clung to that stone, to the neatly carved letters that were visible even from where she sat, as though they had been designed just for Poppy, as though someone had wanted her to be able to see them from the road, to read and remember and regret. Yes, she wanted to run away. More, though, she wanted to talk to Perry.

But the thought of saying certain things aloud, even to a dead man, terrified her.

So she swallowed hard, shifted gears, and gave the Blazer some gas. When Perry called out to her, she accelerated. In no time she had left his gravestone behind. She exited the cemetery without looking back, but
that didn't mean she was done. She and Perry had unfinished business. She had to figure out the best way to approach it.

* * *

When the door opened and Heather was let in, he felt as though he knew her well. Hair dark despite its silver threads, eyes a striking gray, skin pale, mouth scarred into a smile—all were familiar, after hours spent studying her pictures.

She, on the other hand, was startled.

As soon as the door was closed, he extended a hand. “I'm Griffin Hughes, Poppy's friend. Poppy and Cassie agreed that I should come. Want to sit?”

She ignored the invitation and simply stood by the door, looking as though she might make a run for it if things went wrong. “Why aren't they here?” she asked unsteadily.

“They thought you'd feel more comfortable with just me.”

She didn't look comfortable at all. She looked frightened.

Gently he said, “They figured that it was okay if you hated me. But I don't want you to do that. I'm a friend. I'm not here to cause you harm.”

When she continued to look frightened, he took a seat. He figured that if she had a height advantage, she might feel more secure. He had already decided not to confront her about the confession she'd made to Poppy. It was enough that she'd made it. That signaled she was ready to talk. Or getting there. Maybe.

“Here's the thing,” he said. “It sounds like you won't talk, which means we don't have any leads about where you were before you came to Lake Henry. You can say that you're Heather Malone all you want, but unless we get proof, it isn't worth anything. Lisa Matlock left California fifteen years ago. We need proof that you were Heather Malone before
that time. Paperwork will do it. Same with a witness—a friend, relative, coworker. Lawyers use the word ‘corroboration.' That's what we need.”

“You're not a lawyer,” she said in that same shaky voice.

“No. I'm a writer. But I'm not here to write. I'm here as a friend, because I think I can help. My specialty as a writer is investigative journalism. My stories sell because I dig up facts that other writers don't. I can do that because I have a network of contacts. Some are my own, some are my father's. They'll do favors for me. It won't cost you a cent.”

She didn't look any more at ease.

“So what we need,” he went on in the same gentle voice, “is corroborative evidence. Ideally, we'd look for evidence on Heather Malone, but you won't talk. You won't give us a lead. My contacts are as good as any, but if they have no place to start, they can't go anywhere. We know that Heather Malone showed up in Lake Henry fourteen years ago. Before that, she worked at a restaurant in Atlanta, but only for a short time, and the trail ends there. So this is what we're going to do. We're going to look at it from the other end—from the Lisa end. We're going to try to figure out why Lisa Matlock ran down Rob DiCenza.”

Heather pushed her hands into the pockets of her orange jumpsuit. “Why isn't Cassie here? Does she hate me?”

He smiled to soften his words, but that was the extent of sugarcoating he was willing to do. “She doesn't hate you. She feels frustrated, because you won't help.”

“Micah hates me.”

“I doubt that. If he did, he wouldn't be as upset as he is.”

“He hasn't come.”

“He's up to his ears in work. And he has to keep tabs on the girls.”

She leaned against the door. “If you're going after Lisa, what do you want from me?”

“Anything you can give us on the Heather end. Anything at all. A name. A date. A place. It's kind of a last-ditch effort. See, the other end is tough. The DiCenza family has gotten to most of the people who knew anything about Rob and Lisa, so no one's talking. What I know is this: I know that Rob was abusive. Lisa made several trips to area ERs under assumed names, and she always denied the abuse. I know that she was
smart, that she was headed to college on scholarship, that she had no prior record, not even a speeding ticket. I don't think she meant to kill Rob. My guess? It was dark that night, and he bolted in front of the car. She may not have seen him. Or if she did, she may not have been able to stop. It was a field. There were cars parked all over, and he probably just darted out from between them, which would make the crime negligent homicide, rather than murder. I don't think she planned to hit him. I don't even think she knew he was dead. She probably fled before she knew that. She knew how powerful his family was, so she knew she was in trouble just for hitting him. Once she learned he was dead, she just kept going.

“And I don't blame her,” he continued. “The DiCenzas had power, and she had none. She knew—rightly—that her story wouldn't be believed. The thing is”—he grew beseechful—“someone had to have seen something in that relationship. Someone had to have heard something—an argument or a threat. Rob DiCenza was a party boy. There were people around him all the time. The records have statements from witnesses saying that Rob and Lisa were seeing each other, albeit on the sly. Some one of those witnesses had to have seen or heard something to suggest that he was less than a gentleman.”

“But you said the family got to the witnesses. If they wouldn't talk then, why will they talk now?”

“Fifteen years have passed. That's a long time for guilt to be eating at someone who may have lied. Or that person may be at a different place in his life. He may have a gripe against the DiCenzas now, one that he didn't have then. Or there may be someone else entirely who wasn't reached during the investigation fifteen years ago. Lisa's father said she had friends, but none of them came forward. One of them may be willing to do it now. Someone back then may have kept quiet out of fear. Maybe he—or she—doesn't have cause for fear now.”

She thought about that, then said in a quiet voice, “Being Heather, I wouldn't know about that.”

He tried to soften her up with a grin. “Any chance you and Lisa are identical twins separated at birth?”

She didn't grin back. Nor did she speak.

“I know,” he said. “There's the scar.”

She didn't blink.

“Help me, Heather,” he pleaded. “Help
yourself.”

She slipped down a notch on the door, held there by lightly splayed legs. “What's the use?”

“Are you kidding?” he asked. “The alternative is spending the rest of your life in prison. If you insist that you're Heather but you can't prove it, they'll convict you.”

“Maybe they'll think I'm insane.”

“If they do, you'll be locked up with insane people. I did a story once on someone who got off, quote unquote, by reason of insanity. I wouldn't call what he got ‘getting off.' It was brutal.”

Her eyes welled up.

He pressed on. “So maybe that doesn't bother you, but it will bother your friends—and your friends are as good a reason as any to at least
try
to defend yourself. They're in your corner all the way. They love you. The longer you stay silent, the more you let them down.”

Her chin trembled. Even with the scar giving her mouth the hint of a smile, she looked profoundly unhappy.