An Accidental Woman (5 page)

She lifted a shoulder in a muted shrug.

“Did you tick off someone in town?”

Another headshake.

“Have you ever heard of that other woman?”

Heather started to cry. Micah didn't know if that meant she had or she hadn't, but he looked at Cassie in desperation. “She isn't that person. What do we do?”

Cassie had stayed on the far side of the small room, giving them these few seconds together. Now she came closer. She touched Heather's shoulder, the gesture of a friend, but didn't say anything. After a minute, she exerted the smallest pressure to make Heather look up.

“I need to ask this, honey,” she said, “because I wouldn't be doing my job as a lawyer if I didn't. Are you Lisa Matlock?”

Heather's eyes were wet. “I'm Heather Malone.”

“There,” Micah said, annoyed. “You have it. What now?”

Cassie continued to study Heather's face. After what felt to Micah like an unnecessarily long time, which riled him all the more, she exhaled and looked at him. “Now we fight.”

He set his annoyance aside. “How?”

“We go into that hearing in a little while and contest the proceedings. That's basically saying that Heather is innocent of the charges and that we will not waive extradition.”

Heather made a frightened sound. Micah verbalized the source of her fear. “Extradition?”

“If we were to waive it,” Cassie explained, “she would be immediately taken to California to answer the charges they've lodged.”

“Would that be admitting she is Lisa Matlock?”

“No. It would be saying that we'll let the courts there prove that along with the other charges.”

“Since she isn't Lisa Matlock, the charges don't apply.”

“Right, but what I think and what you think and what she says is one thing. What the people in California think is apparently something else.”

“Well, they're wrong. I want the charges dropped.”

Cassie smiled sadly. “If it were as easy as that, I wouldn't have much work. Our system of criminal justice functions in roundabout ways.”

“Innocent until proven guilty,” Micah reminded her.

Cassie hesitated several seconds too long. “Not always,” she said, shaking her head.

With those words, Micah had the awful fear that the trouble was just beginning.

* * *

She built the fire in the stone hearth to a blaze, made a pot of coffee, and sat back with a steaming mug of it to look at the lake, all the while wondering where Heather was, and what she was doing—and it wasn't just a nominal interest. Poppy had other friends she'd known longer than Heather, but Heather was the one she liked best. She felt closest to Heather, had from the first time they met. Poppy had been a sophomore at the state university, and Heather, who spent her work week inside at Charlie's, loved the great outdoors. Each weekend, a group of them went mountain climbing, and though Poppy had more in common with the college students in the bunch, Heather was the one she talked with the most.

Thinking back, Poppy realized that she had done most of the talking.
Heather was a good listener, and Poppy, who felt constrained by the town in general, and her family in particular, had needed to vent. Then Poppy's accident happened, and, through the nightmare of recovery, Heather had been there for her. She seemed to know what to do without being told. She didn't dole out pity or offer patronizing words of solace. Her underlying attitude was to accept what had happened and move on. That quiet approach had been a relief.

Poppy was thinking about that quietness—about listening rather than talking, and whether there had been a reason for it that went beyond Heather's basic nature—when a light blinked on the phone bank before her. Pushing that unsettling thought from her mind, she put on her headset, pressed the appropriate button, and said, “Lake Henry Library.”

“Leila Higgins, please,” said an unfamiliar woman.

“I'm sorry. The library doesn't open until noon on Wednesdays. Who's calling?”

“This is Aileen Miller. I'm with the
Washington Post.
I understand that Heather Malone worked at the library. I was looking for a comment from Ms. Higgins.”

Poppy was dismayed, but not unprepared. When it came to handling the media, she had gone through trial by fire the fall before. Now she said, “Tell you what. If you give me your number, I'll pass it on to Ms. Higgins when the library opens.”

“Who is this?”

“The answering service.”

“Do you have a home number for Ms. Higgins?”

“Tell you
what,”
Poppy offered sweetly. “Give me
your
home number, and I'll pass
that
on to Ms. Higgins.”

There was a pause, then a magnanimous, “Oh, I don't want her having to pay. I'd be happy to call her.”

“I'm sure you would,” Poppy replied.

After another pause, Aileen Miller responded with resignation. “She can call me at work.”

Poppy wrote down the woman's name and number, then disconnected the call and made one of her own.

“Police office,” came a grumble on the other end.

“Willie Jake, it's me. What do you know about Heather?”

There was a pause, then a testy, “What do
you
know?”

“Only that she was arrested. How could you let that happen?”

“I didn't ‘let' it happen,” came the indignant reply. “I'm local. I can't control the Feds.”

“Do they have evidence that Heather was someone else?”

“You know I can't tell you that. But would I have let them arrest her if they didn't?”

“What kind of evidence?”

There was a sigh. “I can't
tell
you that, lest I bias the case. But I'll tell you this—it was all circumstantial. A bunch of old photos of someone who might'a looked like Heather, reports of a scar, handwriting comparisons—all real iffy. But I say it again, these were Feds. I tried my best to change their minds, but in the end they did what they wanted to do. There's no messing with these guys when they set their minds to something, and when they have the paper to back it up . . .” He sputtered a drawn-out, “Whelllll . . .”

Poppy's private line blinked and John's number appeared. “Okay, Willie Jake. I get your point. Gotta run now.” She ended the call and punched in the blinking button. “Any luck?”

“She's at the federal courthouse in Concord. A hearing's going on right now.”

“What kind of hearing?”

“On the warrant. I don't know anything more. I got this from my buddy who covers the courthouse for the
Monitor.
He couldn't talk. He wanted to get into the hearing.”

“Did you ask him to keep it quiet?”

“Oh yeah,” John said, sounding dryly resigned. “He shot that idea down fast.”

“Why? Heather's a nobody!”

“Well, the guy Lisa Matlock allegedly killed is a somebody.
Was
a somebody. His father was a United States senator from California at the time, earmarked for his party's vice presidential nomination, which he got three weeks after his son's death, in part thanks to the sympathy vote.
The ticket lost, and DiCenza didn't run for the Senate again, but he's still a force in the state, and he keeps the torch alive.”

Poppy thought fast. “And you picture our Heather as the type who would mingle with political movers? I don't. She's too private, too shy, too down to earth. Sorry, John, but something doesn't jibe.”

“Hey, I'm just telling you what my buddy told me. This was a high-profile case at the time. My guess is it'll get lots of attention now. I'm driving down there myself. Armand will want a story in the paper, and the best way to get it right is to see what's happening firsthand.”

“Find out
why
it's happening,” Poppy pleaded, “why it's happening to
Heather.”

“I'll try. I'll call you when I get back.”

Poppy didn't want to hold him up. If anyone would give Heather a fair shake, it was John. So she simply added, “Please,” and disconnected the call.

Slipping off the headset, she took up her coffee and looked out at the lake. She tried to imagine what Heather was feeling—wondered if it was confusion or numbness or fear, or something else entirely. She tried to imagine Heather sitting in a cell in Concord, but couldn't give the image a face that fit. Heather always looked too . . . gentle. The scar did that. It was small, not more than half an inch long and curved gently upward from the corner of her mouth, the eternal optimist's smile.

Scars like that gave a person distinction. Many people had them.

Another button lit on the console, Poppy's private line again. This time, the number was that of Marianne Hersey's bookstore. Putting one end of the headset to her ear, she pressed the button. “Hey.”

“What is going on?” Marianne asked. She was one of five women who had dinner at Poppy's every Tuesday. Formally, they were the Lake Henry Hospitality Committee. Informally, they were good friends sharing news, laughter, and gripes. Heather had been with them the evening before, as she was every week. “I just got to work and was sitting down with my coffee and doughnut, thinking that maybe I'd catch an author on the morning talk shows, and suddenly there's breaking news from Concord. Do you know what they're saying about Heather?”

“On television? Oh God. What are they saying?”

“That she deliberately ran down former Senator DiCenza's son, then fled from the scene of the accident and wasn't spotted again until a member of the cold case squad got a lead from someone who was here last fall. What do you know?”

“Not as much as you do. I'm going to go watch. I'll call you back.” Poppy swiveled her chair, aimed the remote at the television, and turned on the set. No more than a second or two into channel surfing, she spotted a “Breaking News” banner. Since the story was just beginning, she suspected she had hit a different channel from the one Marianne had seen. This was not a good sign.

The reporter had barely begun to talk when Poppy's private line lit again.

“It's Sigrid,” came the voice on the other end. “Are you watching this?” Sigrid Dunn was another of the Tuesday-night group. By day, she did large-loom weaving. The television was often on while she worked.