An Accidental Woman (6 page)

“Just tuned in,” Poppy said.

“What
are
they talking about?”

“Let me listen.” She raised the volume.

“ . . . a major break in the investigation of the murder of Robert DiCenza fifteen years ago in Sacramento. DiCenza, who was twenty-five at the time, was run down as he was leaving a political fundraiser for his father, then a United States senator from that state. The car that hit him was driven by an eighteen-year-old named Lisa Matlock, whom, sources say, had threatened him earlier that evening. The FBI alleges that Lisa Matlock has been living in New Hampshire for the last fourteen years under the name Heather Malone. She was apprehended early this morning at her home in Lake Henry. She surrendered quietly and was transported to federal court here in Concord. A hearing has just concluded, during which Ms. Malone's lawyer formally contested the proceedings. That means that she will be fighting extradition. Since extradition is a state issue, the federal proceedings were dropped, and she has been turned over to the Office of the Attorney General of New Hampshire. She will be transported to the superior court in West Eames for a hearing there later today. This is Brian Anderson for Channel Nine, with breaking news in Concord.”

“Do you remember hearing about this murder?” Poppy asked Sigrid.

“No, but fifteen years ago I was in the Peace Corps in Africa, so I wouldn't have seen the news. Is this
our
Heather they're talking about?” she asked in disbelief.

Poppy was just as befuddled. “Well, it's our Heather who's in custody, but it can't be our Heather who did that.” She paused, thinking of the rapport she and Heather had, the sense that they felt things other people didn't. “Can it?”

“No. Absolutely not. We know Heather. I mean, we don't spend Tuesday nights talking about the weather. We talk about private things. We talk about
intimate
things. She couldn't hide something like that from us.”

Poppy was trying to remember stories Heather had told about her childhood, but she could think of none. Heather was always more of a listener on Tuesday nights. She listened and asked questions—insightful questions that always got the others to talk more.

“We don't really know all that much about her,” Poppy said quietly. “It's just that Heather's not a violent sort.”

“It's just,” Sigrid echoed archly, “that someone's up to no good. Someone in the press must have been pissed at us last fall. This is tit for tat.”

“John says no.”

“The news said that someone who was here last fall tipped off the cold case squad. Okay, so maybe John's right. Maybe it isn't revenge. But someone was looking at things he wasn't supposed to be looking at.”

“Come on, Sigrid. They look at the crowd. Heather was in the crowd.”

“Actually, not,” Sigrid pointed out. “She wasn't milling around when the cameras were here. Missy had chicken pox. Remember?”

Now that she mentioned it, Poppy did remember. Heather hadn't ventured any farther from home that week than the pediatrician's office and the general store. Poppy herself had given Heather a blow-by-blow of all that she'd missed.

Except someone hadn't missed as much as Heather had. Someone had seen a face, imagined a similarity, and thrown a wonderful woman's life in limbo. Poppy wanted to know who that person was.

“I don't want it mentioned,” Hayden insisted.

“But it's part of your story,” Griffin argued gently. One didn't argue any other way with a man of Hayden's age and accomplishments, much less with a man one respected greatly, as Griffin did this one. They simply disagreed on the extent of disclosure. “No one will think less of you for having had a child out of wedlock. You took full responsibility. You gave that child everything you gave the rest of your children. Do the others know about him?”

“In my family, yes, but the public doesn't. I'm not of your generation, Griffin. I can't rub this in the noses of my contemporaries, and that's who's going to read this book, y'know—old farts like me.”

“You're wrong there, sir,” Griffin cautioned. “There's a whole younger generation that wants to know how it was done—”

“Done in the good old days?” Hayden cut in. “Yes, well, we didn't talk about these things in the good old days. We talked about honorable debate and gentlemen's agreements. We were civil men. Why, I remember . . .”

Griffin listened to the memory, but he'd heard it before. Idly, he picked
up the television remote, turned it in his hand, clicked on the set, but it was a minute of surfing before he caught something of interest. It was a breaking story from Concord, New Hampshire. Careful to offer Hayden a thoughtful “Uh-huh” at appropriate times, he listened to the news with growing interest, so much so that he must have missed one of those thoughtful “Uh-huh”s.

“ . . . Griffin?” Hayden prompted.

“Yes, sir,” Griffin replied.

“I thought I'd lost you. Damn cell phones aren't anywhere near as reliable as the regular kind.”

“Can I call you back, Senator Hayden? Later today, maybe tomorrow?”

“Well, of course, but I don't want that issue mentioned. I won't be changing my mind.”

“We'll talk tomorrow,” Griffin said. He clicked off the phone and proceeded to stare at the television with a morbid fascination that held him glued even when he switched channels. Listening to one live report after another from Concord, he vacillated between disbelief and dismay. By the time the last of the clips ended, with Heather heading for the county seat at West Eames, and with promises of updates by reporters later that day, he was out-and-out furious.

Stabbing at the off button, he tossed the remote aside and snatched up the phone. He punched in his brother's number, and, while the phone rang on the other end, paced to the window and looked out over Princeton's main drag. He saw little of it today, though even in winter he had always thought the view had charm. His thoughts now were on Lake Henry. He hadn't been there in over a month.

Wondering if Randy—the
rat
—was in Lake Henry now, he waited only until his brother's answering machine picked up, then ended the call and punched in the cell phone number he had programmed into his phone. After a single ring, his brother's voice came through.

“Yo.”

“Where are you?” Griffin asked without preamble.

“Right now? Three blocks from work.”

Not Lake Henry, then. Washington, D.C. Griffin was grateful for that,
but not enough to be defused. “I've been watching TV, this stuff about Heather Malone. I'm trying to figure out where it came from, and I don't like what's coming to mind. Tell me it wasn't you, Randy.”

Randall Hughes, Griffin's senior by two years, sounded pleased with himself. “I'll give you a clue. I'm headed into the office for what will be the first of many interviews today.”

“Tell me it wasn't you,” Griffin repeated, tense and tight-jawed now, but if Randy sensed his anger, it didn't dampen his spirits.

“Damn right, it was me. Is this cool, or is this cool!”

“God
damn
it, Randy. That day in your office, I was thinking out loud. I remarked on a similarity. All I said was I had seen someone who
looked
a little like that picture on your wall. I never said it was her.”

“That's right, and I picked it up from there,” Randy said with pride. “This is unbelievable. I mean, her face has been starin' back at the occupant of this office for fifteen fuckin' years, and that's been me for the last fifteen months, and then my own brother gives me the tip. That's how it happens with cases like this. You pound the pavement all you want, but it's something totally unexpected that points you in the right direction.”

“I didn't point you anywhere,” Griffin insisted, wanting to erase the whole thing, certainly any possible role he had played in it himself. “All I said was that there was a resemblance. Know how many people look like
me
in this world? Or like
you
? When was the last time someone asked if you were related to Redford? Happened to me again last week. It's the jaw—that's all—the jaw that's square like his, so they ask, but it's an idle question. They don't honestly think we're related to the guy. Same with this thing. I just said the picture reminded me of a girl I saw. Did I even say it was in that town?”

“It didn't take a genius to figure it out. You'd just come from there. Every other word out of your mouth at the time had to do with that town.”

That was because Griffin had come home enamored of Poppy Blake. Needing to tell someone about her, he hadn't even stopped in Princeton but had driven straight on to D.C. Randy and he, being the two youngest of the five Hughes brothers, had shared girl talk since they had been
twelve and ten, respectively, and not once had Randy breathed a word of it to anyone else. Griffin had expected the same discretion now. He felt betrayed.

“You don't understand, Randy. These are good people. You can't do this to good people.”

“Hey,” Randy cautioned, suddenly sounding very much the law enforcement officer that he had always wanted to be. “I don't know what she's like now, but the law's the law. Fifteen years ago, that little lady took a walk. It's about time the Bureau caught up.”

“With the wrong woman!” Griffin cried.

“No way, Red. Even if she'd had plastic surgery so we couldn't see the facial similarity—even if she'd had that little scar removed—we have her on the handwriting sample. It worked so well, I still can't believe it. I mean, I'm up there a couple weeks ago, and she's working at the little local library. I ask for a book; she doesn't have it; I ask if she'll write down the name of the nearest bookstore, and bingo! Matched right up to the writing sample we took from her high school files. We have her,” he said with smoldering glee. “We have her cold.”

“You asshole.”

There was a pause, than an indignant, “What's wrong with you?”

“I'd never have said anything to you if I'd known you'd do this.”

Randy sounded wounded. “Griffin, she killed a man!”

“Allegedly, and that's assuming she
is
this other woman. But did you have to use me to do it?”

“I didn't use you. You said something; it touched off something else in my mind; I followed through, did my research, investigated, went up to that little town, and nailed her—and what's it to you, anyway? You stopped going there. You lost interest.”

It might have looked that way to Randy, but Griffin hadn't lost interest in Poppy. Not by a long shot. He had been intrigued since the first time he'd called Lake Henry wanting to do a story on her sister Lily, and Poppy had been the one to answer the police chief's phone. Spunk. That was the first thing he'd sensed in her. Right off the bat, she'd shown spunk.

I'm a freelance writer putting together a story on privacy for
Vanity Fair,
he'd said that day last September.
I'm focusing on what happens when privacy is violated—the side effects to the people involved. I thought that the Lily Blake situation would fit right in. Lake Henry is her hometown. It occurs to me that people there may have thoughts about what's happened to her.

Damn right we do,
Poppy had answered with feeling, and, that simply, he had felt refreshed. He liked her honesty. He liked her loyalty. The more obstinate she was, the more interested he became—and it wasn't just a game, the love of the chase that drove some freelance writers on. He had felt something melt inside when he had seen her for the first time in that wheelchair. The goddamned thing was lightweight, state of the art—and turquoise. Turquoise. That alone was as much of a statement of who she was as her short dark hair.

He'd had to cajole her before she agreed to let him take her to dinner, but they'd had an incredible time—had talked a steady stream for three straight hours.

At least, he thought they'd had an incredible time. But when he had wanted to arrange for a follow-up, she resisted. She let the machine answer when he called, and when he finally reached her, she said that he really needed someone else.

He knew what she was thinking. How not to? She had blurted it all out in the very first words she'd said to him face-to-face.
I can't run. I can't ski or hike. I can't work in the forest the way I was trained, because I can't get around in a chair on rutted dirt. I can't dance. I can't drive a car unless it's been specially adapted. I can't pick apples or work the cider press. I can't even stand in the shower.

He understood that for twelve years she hadn't thought about those things. Now, with the interest he showed in her, she did, and she'd been taken by surprise. She needed time.

So he had given her that. He had dropped by later on the pretense of just passing through town, staying no more than a few hours, and every few weeks, he sent her a postcard from wherever he was. But he hadn't called in a month. That didn't mean he had been idle. He had gone to extremes, including a few under the table, to learn everything he could about Poppy.

One of the things he had known from the start was that she and
Heather Malone were best of friends. Heather had been on her way out of the general store that day when he and Poppy had come for lunch at the café. She hadn't stopped for more than a quick introduction to Griffin and a brief exchange with Poppy, but that exchange had been in the intimate tones of women who were close. Griffin was certain—beyond any reasonable doubt—that if Poppy found out that he was the one who had tipped off the cold case squad, she would never talk to him again.

“Is it her?” Randy asked.

Of course it was her.

“You said she didn't want a relationship,” Randy argued. “If that's changed, you should've clued me in.”

Griffin didn't know whether it had changed or not, but he wasn't saying that to Randy. He had his pride. He also had great hopes, which his brother could dash in an instant. So he said, “If you ever—
ever
—tell anyone that you got the lead on this case from me, you're a goner.”

“Whoa. That's a threat.”

“Coming from your brother, it sure is. I can make you mincemeat in this family. All I have to do is start talking about Cindy. You spend hours tracking down strangers, but you can't find your own sister?”