time for armed robbery of a convenience store.”
“That’s music to my ears.”
Diane looked at Susan and gave her a thumbs-up. Susan pulled off the road and parked the car.
“I need you to send the information to a lawyer here in Birmingham. I’ll get his fax number and then call you right back,” Diane said. “Did you get a chance to look at the mug shots?”
“Yup,” David said. “They’re clearly fake. The head has been glued over the background and the number has been pasted over that. Easy to see when you get down to the pixel level.”
Diane let out a sigh of relief and smiled at her sister. “What’s going on at your end?” she asked David. “How is Neva?”
“She’s really pissed. I don’t blame her. She told me she’s staying at Frank’s tonight. That’s a good idea. Someone has it in for her.”
“You and Jin keep on the lookout, too.”
“Always. As you know, I’m paranoid, and I’m training the others well.”
Diane laughed. “Thanks, David. I’ll call you back in just a minute.”
She grabbed a pen and paper from her purse, called Reynolds’s office and relayed everything that Frank and David had given her.
“What’s your fax number? My crime lab is going to fax the fingerprints and an analysis of the altered mug shots to you.”
“You work fast, don’t you, girl?” Reynolds laughed as he read her his fax number.
“It helps to know the right people,” she said.
“I hear you there. I believe we can get your mother out by tomorrow. In the meantime I’ll try to get her moved to a private cell. My assistant has gone to the bank to find out if it was actually robbed. Since apparently it wasn’t, she’ll get an affidavit from the manager. You and your sister go home and relax. I’ll call you in the morning.”
“Thanks for getting on this quickly.”
“The only thing that gets under my skin worse than injustice is stupidity, and we seem to have both here.”
When Diane finished talking to Reynolds she called David with the fax number. Susan started the car again and pulled out into the traffic. “All that sounds like good news,” she said.
“Reynolds thinks he can get Mother out tomorrow,” Diane said.
“Are you serious? Alan said that his contacts told him it could take months.”
“Alan probably approached those people by saying something like, ‘What are the chances of getting someone out of a federal facility who’s been picked up as a material witness in connection with terrorists?’ I’m sure Alan didn’t doubt his own initial analysis of the situation and framed all his questions based on that.”
Susan sighed. “That is a little like him. Gerald isn’t fond of Alan.”
Diane was completely surprised by Susan’s admission.
“Gerald has always struck me as a no-nonsense kind of guy. I imagine you have to be, in his business,” she said, trying to both agree with Susan and to not strike a chord that would set her sister off into defensive mode. It was a game she had learned to play when they were children. The way it usually played out, however, was that Diane would get tired of it and lose her temper, and all her careful phrasing was for nothing.
“Gerald is very levelheaded. I don’t know what Dad and I would have done without him these last few weeks.”
“I’m sure he and Dad are going to be relieved at the news we’re bringing home. Reynolds is going to have Mother moved to a single cell tonight.”
“What does that mean? Isn’t she in a cell now?”
“I haven’t been completely frank with you, Susan.” Diane decided to go ahead and tell Susan about the prison their mother was in. She didn’t want it to be a complete shock to Susan when her mother told them about her experience in the prison. “Tombsberg is one of the worst facilities in the country. It’s severely overcrowded and riddled with disease. Most of the inmates are housed in a dormitory-young and old together. She probably has a bunk in with several hundred others. She’ll need to disinfect herself when she gets out, and she’ll have to see a doctor. The place is rife with
Susan sat driving in silence, her eyes never leaving the road. Diane noticed tears rolling down her cheeks.
“I’m sorry,” said Diane. “I didn’t want to worry you.”
“What if this has changed her?”
“It will have. Let’s just hope she can get her old self back. It’ll help if she sees a therapist. Would she be willing to do that?”
“I don’t know. Let’s not tell Dad about that. Not right now. Let’s just tell him that we think she’ll be coming home.”
“Okay. I’ll follow your lead on that,” Diane said, acknowledging that her sister understood their parents much better than she did.
They turned and drove up the winding drive of their parents’ home. A Lincoln not unlike Susan’s was parked in the garage. Next to it was a silver-blue Jaguar.
“That’s Dad’s car,” Susan said as she pulled in behind the Lincoln. “The Jag belongs to Alan.” She pulled down the visor, looked in the mirror and carefully dried her eyes. She took out a compact and lipstick from her purse, smoothed her makeup with a little powder and applied color to her lips. “We have a good life here. Why would anyone do this to us? We haven’t hurt anybody.”
“I don’t know. There’s a lot of mean people in the world. Just as I was leaving to come here, someone broke into the home of one of my employees and trashed everything she owned. I have no idea why.”
“How do people get like that? I just don’t understand.”
“I’m not sure there is any understanding it, Susan.”
Diane hadn’t visited her parents in a couple of years. Not since she had returned from South America. Not since they had shown no sympathy whatsoever when Diane’s daughter died, simply because Ariel was not born to Diane, simply because she was a native South American Indian. That memory cut through Diane like a sharp knife.
They got out of the car and she followed Susan into the house.
Chapter 22
“Diane, dear, it’s good to see you,” her father said. Nathan Fallon, Diane’s father, rose from his chair as they entered the den to give a hug and kiss to her cheek.
He looked much as he had the last time she’d visited. Hardly aged, but he did look tired. His hair was silver only on the sides, as she remembered, and he was still slender and well dressed as ever in an expensive suit. It was a warmer reception than she usually got. Her family weren’t huggers. He held her at arm’s length and looked her over.
“You look good. It’s been too long. You need to come visit more often.”
“Hello, Diane, it has been a long time.”
Diane just noticed Alan Delacroix, her ex-husband, sitting in one of the stuffed chairs in the den. He wasn’t aging as well as her father, but it had been more than a decade since she last saw him. Alan had the dark hair and dark eyes of his mother’s Irish side of the family more than his father’s French side. His once-black hair was now salted with gray, and his former leanness had given way to an added twenty-five or thirty pounds. The one thing that hadn’t changed about him was that his smile still looked like a badly disguised smirk. What had she been thinking all those years ago?
“Alan. Yes, it has been a long time.”
The den was her father’s favorite room. He called it the library because of lawyer’s bookcases on one wall. Practically everything in it was made either of dark cherry wood or leather. He and Alan had been sitting on
