An Accidental Woman Read online

  “ . . . 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 beentwelve 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 andHeather 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?”

  There was a second’s silence, then a quiet, “Low blow, Griff.”

  “She’s been gone for seven years now, put Mom in her grave, sent Dad out tomcatting, made family gatherings such a nightmare we don’t bother much anymore.”

  “I wasn’t the brother who got her hooked. That was James.”

  “So did we know?” Griffin asked aloud as he had so often silently. “Did we look the other way? Could we have stopped it?”

  “Our family has ghosts. Most families do.”

  Griffin refused to reason the situation away. “Cindy’s no ghost. She’s alive out there somewhere. If you ever put in half the effort trying to find her that you’ve put into ruining a good woman’s life, she’d be back in the fold.”

  “Hey,” Randy suddenly said in a way that signaled a blow-off, “I’m driving into the garage under my building. No reception here. Talk later.”

  The phone went dead. Not that Griffin had more to say. He was thinkingback on meeting Heather that day in October four months before. She had been concerned about one of her children and had medicine in her hand. The look on Poppy’s face while they talked vouched for affection and respect. Poppy would never have a friend who was a killer.

  * * *

  Poppy was dying to be at the courthouse in West Eames. Like John, she wanted to see for herself what was going on. More than that, though, she wanted Heather to see her there and know that she cared. Same with the magistrate or judge or whoever was deciding Heather’s fate. That person needed to know that Heather had friends who trusted and loved her.But Poppy stayed in Lake Henry. For one thing, with Micah and Heather in West Eames, she needed to be close by for the girls. For another, though the courthouse was handicapped-accessible, she had no idea what the parking situation was with snow and ice thrown into the mix. For a third, a contingent of others from town were going there.

  In addition to all that, she had work to do herself. By late morning, nearly all her phone lines had lit up. Some of the calls were from townsfolk wanting to confirm what had happened; these involved a simple repetition of facts on Poppy’s part. Others were from the media, and Poppy knew all the right words to say. The challenge with those calls came in remaining patient and polite. With each additional call—each additional media outlet trying to sniff out dirt at Heather’s expense—her civility was further tried.

  Hardest of all, though, were calls like the one from Poppy’s sister Rose, because they involved speculation, and speculation raised issues for which there weren’t any answers.

  “What if they keep her in jail?” Rose asked. “What will Micah do then?”

  “They won’t keep her in jail,” Poppy replied. “She hasn’t done anything.”

  “They can do it, Poppy. So what’ll Micah do?”

  “She’ll be home.”

  “What if she isn’t?”

  “She’ll be home.”

  “What if they keep her for a while?”

  “Please, Rose.”

  But Rose persisted. “Do you think Micah’s worried?”

  “Of course he’s worried. He loves Heather.”

  “Forget love. Think about the girls. Who’ll take care of them if Heather’s in jail? Who’ll help with sugaring?”

  Poppy’s stomach began to knot. It often did that when she talked with Rose, who was an alarmist of the first order. Rose was the youngest of the three sisters—the “Blake blooms,” as they were known in town. Lily was the firstborn, typically introspective, sensitive, and focused. Poppy was the rebel, far more easygoing than the other two. And Rose? Rose was a clone of their mother, which meant that she saw the dark side of every issue.

  Unfortunately, it was easier for Poppy to accept the fear of calamity in Maida, their mother, than it was to put up with it coming from Rose.

  “Why are you fixated on this?” she asked now. “Heather will be out. ”

  “I’m fixated on it,” Rose returned, “because I know things you don’t. Heather got all sorts of business ideas from Art”—Rose’s husband, Art Winslow, whose family owned the local textile mill—“and she’s put them to good use. New evaporator, new logo, new accounts. So here’s Micah, who’s just grown the business, thinking Heather would help, and suddenly she isn’t there. The weatherman’s forecasting sun. If the days start to warm, the sap could be flowing in two weeks. The timing of this is terrible.”

  “Rose.”

  “How did it happen?”

  “I don’t know,” Poppy ground out and, ending the call, proceeded to worry about all of the points Rose had raised.

  * * *

  Griffin’s mistake was in not packing up and hitting the road the instant his brother had hung up on him, because that led to an even greater mistake—he turned on the television again. Two seconds into channel surfing, he caught a news flash about the case. Two seconds after that, theanchor introduced a reporter who was on the scene, and Griffin was hard-pressed to look away.“Lake Henry is refreshing,” the reporter was saying. “In a day and age of complex lives often ruled by machines, the town is a throwback. With a population just over seventeen hundred, it is an old-fashioned kind of place where everyone knows everyone else and people protect their own. The town is situated on a lake of the same name in central New Hampshire, and this, folks, is the stuff of which getaway dreams are made. There’s no making a wrong turn in a maze of avenues here; a single main street runs through the center of town and continues all the way around the lake. Uh, excuse me”—he thrust the mike toward a man who approached—“excuse me, could you tell us—”

  The man walked by before the request was out.

  Undaunted, the reporter resumed his narrative. “Behind me, you see the police station, the church, and the library. These three buildings hold all of the official business that is part and parcel of town life.”

  Griffin had been in each of the three buildings, and felt pleasure seeing them again. Each was made of wood and painted white with black shutters. The police station was low and long; the library was stately and tall; the church had a storied look, with a spire that stretched high into the tops of the trees.

  “The town clerk and the registrar work out of the police station,” the reporter explained. “The library rents its top floor to the Lake Henry Commission, and the basement of the church houses the historical society. The Commission, by the way, focuses on environmental issues, and since these are the top priority for the local folk, the Commission is the powerhouse of the town. When it comes to deciding other issues, Lake Henry is one of the last in the state to retain a town meeting form of government. Led by a duly-elected moderator, the townsfolk
gather in the church for two nights every March to vote on issues of concern to the town for the upcoming year.”

  Griffin knew all this. Having grown up in Manhattan, though, he was as charmed hearing about these things now as he had been learning them last fall.

  “The post office is that brick building across the street,” the reporter said, and the camera zoomed in. “The yellow Victorian behind it is the local newspaper office. But if you want to experience the heart of this little town, you cross the street to my right.” The camera shifted to a sprawl of crimson clapboard. “That is the general store, owned for generations by the Owens family. This is where townsfolk pick up groceries, medicines, newspapers, greeting cards, and gifts. Charlie Owens and his wife, Annette, run it now, helped in shifts by their five children, and they have expanded and changed it to keep up with the times. The café still serves breakfast all day, but the quiche on the menu is as likely to contain porta-bello mushrooms as cheddar cheese, the bread is homemade, thick, and filled with goodies like wheat germ and nuts, and the lunch sandwiches are served on baguettes with avocado slices and bean sprouts. Uh, excuse me?” He tried to snag another passerby, a woman this time. When she too walked on, he smiled at the camera without missing a beat. “Back at Charlie’s, though, some things never change. The main part of the store centers around a woodstove, just as it did when Charlie Owens’ grandfather had his little one-room shop. Townsfolk gravitate toward the chairs around that stove to talk about the weather and share the latest gossip. This is particularly true in winter,” he added, pulling up his collar over cheeks that were already ruddy.

  It was cold in New Hampshire, but that didn’t discourage Griffin. He had initially seen Lake Henry in autumn, when the roadsides were awash with color and the air smelled of sweet cider. During his last trip there, it had snowed. As frustrated as he had been at making no progress with Poppy, he had loved that snow. Seeing it there on the ground now, he smiled.