If the Witness Lied (18 page)

Then she calls Jack. “Good news, I have the briefcase and the laptop. Bad news. Cheryl caught me.”

*   *   *

The ringtone wakes Tris up. Groggy and cranky from the brevity of his nap, he doesn’t want to be with two sisters he
doesn’t even know. He climbs into the front with Jack and rubs his eyes against his big brother’s shoulder. Madison collects the toy cars and hands them to Tris, but he turns his face inward to the comfort of the brother he knows. He listens in to Jack’s brief conversation and perks up. “Diana’s coming,” he says. He scrambles over Jack’s lap to reach the door handle. “Diana is my friend,” he explains to Madison and Smithy.

*   *   *

“We’re at the state beach,” Jack tells Diana, and adds, “Don’t let anybody follow you.”

“People have been following you? Awesome.” Being followed, or following somebody else, is a lifelong dream.

“Not successfully,” brags Jack.

Driving toward the beach, Diana checks her mirror. Nobody.

The heavy rain subsides. By the time she reaches the beach, it’s drizzling, and by the time she reaches the west parking lot, it’s stopped. In the lowering dark of early evening, she just barely makes out Tris running toward her, and Jack racing to catch him. She stops where she is and lets Tris help her out of the car.

“I had donuts!” Tris says excitedly. “At school I finger painted! My painting wasn’t dry. We left it there.”

Diana often wonders what Tris thinks about. Moments like this amaze her. In the midst of chaos, nightmare, sudden sister appearances and long bike rides in the rain, an almost-three-year-old thinks first of food (donuts) and second of his own
accomplishments (finger painting) and third of his own worries (will he ever see his painting again?)

Diana picks Tris up and gives him the circle-swing he loves, holding him under his arms and whirling, so his feet stick out. Then she hands Jack his father’s briefcase and laptop. “It wasn’t just Cheryl who caught me. There are guys with cameras there. Furthermore, I had to leave the stairs down. Cheryl knows about the storeroom.”

“Do you think she’ll go up there?”

“Someday, but not now.”

Tris leads Diana to Madison’s car. Madison and Smithy have gotten out. Smithy looks very young in clothes that are too large and Madison looks belligerent, ready to pick an argument.

Tris examines them briefly, as a visitor to a zoo might pause in front of a habitat. “Those are my sisters,” he tells Diana.

The girls give each other tight awkward smiles.

“I’m soaking wet,” says Diana. “Do you mind sitting in my car to talk? We can all fit in mine. I need to turn the vent on high and dry myself off a little.”

Tris has never sat in Diana’s car. He’s excited and wants to be the first one in and get the best seat. “It isn’t locked,” says Diana. “You go on, Tris. Take Madison and Jack.”

Diana and her former best friend are alone.

*   *   *

Smithy knows that she has to start. “I’m sorry, Diana.”

Diana doesn’t say, “Oh, it’s okay.” She doesn’t say, “It doesn’t
matter.” She says, “It was awful, Smithy. It hurt that you never wrote or called or answered my e-mails. It was mean.”

It is a gift of sorts: Diana missed her.

“It was mean,” Smithy admits. “But at school I decided never to think. Thinking hurt. You can make a decision not to have thoughts. It’s probably like dieting.” Smithy has never been on a diet. The Fountain kids are lean. “You just decide to cut something out.”

“But you cut
me
out!”

“Yes. And I also cut out my older brother, my little brother and my sister.”

“Yell at each other later,” calls Jack. “Right now we have to figure out what to do.”

*   *   *

Madison does not want to be in Diana Murray’s car. She isn’t clear why Diana is here to start with or why they need her around. This isn’t Diana’s business.

She forces her mind to the central issue—how to get Cheryl out. They need more leverage than those photographs. They didn’t come up with anything that might have happened before the murder, and they can’t guess what happened the instant of the murder. Certainly Cheryl will never tell them. Is there a clue in what happened after the murder?

“Come and live with us,” said Nonny and Poppy, when Dad’s funeral was over. When they had actually lowered a box holding their very own father down into the cold ground.

But if the children had gone to Missouri, they would have left behind every trace of their parents. Somebody would have bought their house. Nobody would be able to tell that Laura and Reed Fountain had ever lived there. Nobody would go into the little woods to see the initials carved in a heart on a tree. Nobody would visit the graves. (Not that anybody does now; Madison cannot stand getting near the graves. The worst thing about burying Dad was reading over and over again the stone next to his:
Laura Courtney Smith Fountain.)

Again Nonny pleaded. “Live with us.”

Aunt Cheryl took the children aside. “Your grandmother is destroyed by your father’s death. Your grandfather has health problems. You must not worry them. They’re sweet to ask you to live with them, but they can’t handle it.”

Jack summoned the courage to say, “We’ll stay here. We belong here.”

But almost immediately, they didn’t belong there. Cheryl hired a maid and stopped doing any housework. She stopped cooking and bought dinners at a catering deli. It was her house now, and she was all house, all the time. The kids were treated like furniture, expected to sit quietly against the walls and make no noise.

Somewhat to Madison’s surprise, there is a clue in this. If the children had departed to live with their grandparens, Cheryl’s free ride would have been over. So Cheryl did capitalize on Dad’s death—keeping the kids so that she could keep her job. But that does not mean that Cheryl would kill to keep the job.

Smithy and Diana are trying to catch up with each other. “How long have you had this car?” Smithy asks.

“Dad picked it out for me when school started,” says Diana. “I was so surprised. I wasn’t sure they’d let me drive at all, never mind give me my own car.”

Mr. Murray. Reed Fountain’s friend. Close friend. “Diana,” says Madison slowly. “Your dad and our dad were tennis partners. They played golf. They barbecued. Do you think your dad might know something about why Cheryl did”—she speaks carefully in front of Tris—“what we think she did?”

*   *   *

That’s ridiculous. How could her father possibly know anything about Cheryl Rand? Diana does not want to bother him. He’s still at work. He’s like Mr. Fountain—long hours, extra days, big distances. Luckily she can get out of this easily. She nods toward Tris. They are all talking in circles so he won’t follow the conversation.

Smithy interferes. “Tris, want to go down on the sand with me and find the best seashell to bring home?”

“No.”

Jack tries. “Would you find me a seashell, though? I need one.”

“And me,” says Madison. “I need a seashell.”

Tris looks at Diana, as if she’s babysitting and has the last say. This does not go over well with Madison or Smithy. Diana sighs. “Seashells are good,” she tells Tris. “I bet Smithy is a good shell hunter.”

“I’m a good shell hunter,” says Tris immediately.

“Better hurry,” says Jack, and once again, Tris vaults out. On
her own, Diana wouldn’t let him. It’s getting dark. The sand will be very cold. The waves will be high and frothy. But Smithy is his sister. It’s time for her to be the babysitter and keep him safe.

“Here,” says Jack. “Look.”

Diana lines up the photographs. She stares them up. Rearranges them. Whispers captions. Then she looks at Jack. “How can you sit here in some stupid parking lot? You should be at the police station!”

“No. We don’t want Tris back in the news. We don’t want the police, Diana.”

They cannot possibly leave the police out of this.

But Jack is a puppy, begging. Diana melts. She adores him, of course, all the girls do. She has the advantage, living so close and babysitting so often. Sadly, in Jack’s eyes, she’s just a replacement sister. But a girl has to work with what she has. Diana calls her father’s cell phone.

“Hey, sugar,” his voice booms. “Home from school? How was your day?”

“Hi, Daddy. It was good. Do you have a minute?”

“I have five,” he says, and knowing her father, he means this precisely. “What’s up?”

“Jack and I were talking and I was sort of wondering. Daddy, did Jack’s father ever talk to you about Cheryl Rand? Was she, like, a problem of some kind? To Mr. Fountain in particular?”

“What was your conversation with Jack that you’re asking about this?”

“Smithy’s back. So everything’s on the table again.”

“Smithy’s back? That’s terrific! How’s Jack taking it? He’s
been a trooper and she’s been a shit. It won’t be easy to be buddies again.”

Good thing Smithy is not in the car to hear this. “But I was wondering. Did anything happen the last month or so before Mr. Fountain died? Was he mad at Cheryl or anything?”

“Well, I don’t think he was mad, but he was uncomfortable. She began hinting that she wanted to marry him. He was looking around for a replacement nanny or housekeeper, but he hadn’t taken action yet.”

Marriage? Cheryl thought
she
could replace five-star Laura? It is in Diana’s nature to feel sorry for Cheryl, hoping to be a good wife when Mr. Fountain just wanted a good maid.

“Then came the accident,” her father continues. “Talk about good luck—Cheryl was still around. Who else was there to take care of the kids? Of course, the grandparents, they wanted the kids, but they wanted them to move to Missouri, and everybody thought it was better for the kids to stay in the same house.”

“Everybody thought so, Daddy? Who is everybody?”

“Oh, the psychiatrist and the doctor Cheryl took the kids to.”

Diana knows, because she and Smithy were close friends back then, that no psychiatrist and no doctor saw the Fountain kids until much later.

“The doctors felt those poor kids were so traumatized,” her father goes on, “that shipping everybody and their stuff across the country would be another death. I have to run, honey. We can talk more tonight.”

Diana’s phone call is over. She closes her cell phone like a clam shell, as if to hide the news in there.

Jack is shaking his head. “Dad? Marry Cheryl? If Cheryl proposed to me, I’d start laughing.”

“That could be it,” says Madison seriously. “Even I might run over a person who laughs at the idea of marrying me. Maybe they’re out there on the driveway, and Dad leans out of the Jeep and tells Cheryl he’d rather be dead than marry her, so she says fine. You’re dead.”

Jack actually grins. “No. If Cheryl proposed to him in the driveway, Dad would just roll his eyes and drive off. He wouldn’t take the time to discuss it.”

“I have to agree. Still, it gives us a reason why Cheryl could be mad enough to hurt Dad. Now we need a reason for Dad to get out of the Jeep.”

This is not Diana’s affair. She should stay on the sidelines. Speak only when asked. But Jack and Madison are so busy figuring out the logistics of their father’s death that they are forgetting their immediate situation.

Tris and Smithy appear over the sand dunes, heading back. Diana is embarrassed to find that she is relieved, as if she really thought Smithy would not be sufficiently careful. Then she talks fast. “When Cheryl knows what you have, when you show her those photographs, when she sees there is proof of what she did—you can never let Tris be alone with her again. You can’t be alone with her either. Think of every cop show you’ve ever seen. People who murder once find it easy to murder twice. And you can’t discuss this in the morning. In the morning she’ll be in control again, and you’ll just be kids under her roof. Starting tonight, it has to be your roof. You have to make it clear that she has no
choice except to leave. And not only does she have to leave tonight, she has to leave without a scene. Because in the Fountain family history, scenes bring television crews.”

*   *   *

The sun is gone.

The day is done.

They have two cars, a bike and no car seat.

They have a plan, which has little chance of working, but it’s all they can come up with. If Cheryl is alone, maybe they can pull it off. But if Angus or the crew is there, they are crippled. “TV is like an occupying army,” says Madison. “We’ll never get them out.”

“A TV crew has to be paid,” argues Jack. “Since we never came home to be filmed and since there are probably breaking stories to cover, they’re long gone.” Jack is lying faceup on the backseat of Diana’s car, with Tris lying facedown on top of him. Tris has distributed his gifts of shells and pebbles and is sleepy again. He’s not quite out. Jack rubs his back. Please go to sleep.

“Even so, Angus might still be around. And Gwen,” says Madison.

“It’s four-thirty on Friday. I bet they want their weekend as much as anybody. I bet they’re gone.”

“I’ll call and ask,” says Diana. She dials the Fountain house phone. No one answers. Cheryl never lets a phone go unanswered. “It’s weird she’s not home.”

“Probably out shopping,” says Smithy.

“When all four of you are missing? When she doesn’t know where Tris is and she’s selling herself as the loving aunt?”

“Out for dinner, then,” says Madison. “Angus took her, I bet.”

Jack can’t see that happening. The television producer already owns Cheryl; he doesn’t need to buy her a thing. And it’s early even for early-bird specials. Angus Nicolson seems more like the type to eat dinner at nine o’clock than at four-thirty.

“Maybe they’re at the day care, filming,” offers Smithy.

“No,” says Jack. “We’ve got the star. They’re not going to waste time unless the star is there.” Tris’s breathing is deeper. He doesn’t know he’s the star.

“It doesn’t matter,” says Madison. “In fact, it solves one of our problems. We can get in the house without anybody knowing and we can get started.”

Smithy locks Jack’s bike to a picnic table. If there is anything normal in their lives in the morning, they will come back for it. Smithy rides with Madison.