All That Lies Broken (Ashmore's Folly Book 2)

by Forrest, Lindsey

  Lucy went back to the table and opened her folder. “I went to Oak Bend this morning. Here are Dad’s takeoff and landing cards for that day. He leaves at 3:30, so that gives him 54 minutes to get to Ash Marine, find Laura, assess her condition, and call the police.”

  She laid the cards down flat on the table.

  “He does not return until that night, so I am guessing he flies to Newport News, parks the plane somewhere, and spends the evening monitoring Laura’s condition at the hospital. He returns to Oak Bend just before eleven. Then a few minutes later—”

  She laid the next card down.

  “—Cam St. Bride flies in, and my bet is that Dad meets him there and they return to the hospital together. Dad’s landing and his are just too close together for them not to meet. For the next three days, conveniently, Cam parks his plane in Dad’s hangar.”

  Another card.

  “The next day, Dad and a passenger fly to the island, and Dad returns alone. It’s not a quick turnaround trip. I am speculating here, but I think Dad takes Cam out there, and they do something that takes an hour, and then Cam drives the car off.”

  She walked back to him. He stood there, motionless, gone deep inside himself. She couldn’t help the tide of regret. She was about to drag his secrets out of him, secrets that she suspected he had wanted to keep hidden forever, and he might well never forgive her for it.

  “I called St. Ciprian’s this afternoon,” Lucy said. “They quite properly told me to mind my own business. I won’t be able to find the medical records on my own; they’re covered by privacy laws. So I went to the storage area where we put Dad’s office records when we closed down his practice. It took a while, but,” she shrugged, “at least it was air-conditioned.”

  “I find it difficult to believe,” his voice had turned arctic, “that Dad actually created a record on Laura.”

  “No,” said Lucy. “But I found his appointment calendar for the days in question.” She pulled out the photocopies. More exhibits – she wished now she had marked them. “At 2:15 on August 6, he canceled his remaining afternoon patients, citing a family emergency. The next morning, he canceled the rest of his patients for the week. I looked up the date, Richard. August 6, 1991, was a Tuesday. He lost three and a half days of appointments.”

  He left the window then and came over to the table. For a long time, he stared down at the flight cards and the photocopies. She had surprised him. He hadn’t known this until now.

  “I find it strange,” said Lucy, “that Dad canceled his patients at 2:15 that day, when he didn’t leave for the island until 3:30. Look at his flight card. There’s an hour and fifteen minute gap in there, and I’d be very curious to know what he was doing during that time.”

  Richard said nothing, but she saw a muscle move around his mouth.

  “Another thing,” she said. “Dad administered preliminary aid to Laura. It’s as if he went out there expecting to find someone in trouble. In fact, the whole timing of his flight is strange. Dad was such a conscientious doctor. It must have taken something truly terrible for him to cancel his patients so abruptly.”

  He turned his head, and she met him stare for stare.

  “What’s also strange,” said Lucy, “nowhere does this police report mention one Francie Abbott. So you have to wonder where she was. By the time the police got there, she was nowhere around, and she apparently didn’t drive off, since the car was still there.”

  She waited for him to say something, and felt sick to her stomach. But Peggy and Philip hadn’t raised her to run away from trouble.

  “But you know, don’t you, Richard? You know exactly where Francie was.”

  There it was, the gamble taken, the dice rolled. Never ask a question… but she did know the answer. She had known since the moment she had seen his landing card.

  He stood so still and silent that she felt suddenly, terribly afraid. Afraid that he might not answer. Afraid that she had pushed him so hard that he would never answer her again. She felt grief welling up for the loss of all they had been to each other.

  But she had to ask. “How did Francie leave Ash Marine, Richard?”

  A long moment. He stared beyond her shoulder and said without inflection, “She left with me.”

  Lucy made her voice gentle. “And did you drop her from the sky into the ocean?”

  “Of course not.” Still no inflection in his voice. “She landed at Oak Bend with me.” He gave her a short hard look. “Still breathing.”

  The words fell into the well of silence between them. Lucy looked down at the table.

  His voice was cool. “As you know very well. If you have Dad’s flight card, then I assume you have mine from the same day.”

  “Yes.” Lucy kept the same mild tone. She had never seen the point of treating a witness harshly, even as she stripped away flesh. “I have it right here. You left for the island at 11:20, before noon. You had no passengers. Almost three hours later, you returned, and this time,” she took out a photocopy of his card out and laid it down on top of the folder, “you did have a passenger. A passenger who knew how to fly, apparently, because you whited out the first signature for the landing and signed it yourself – if you can call that chicken scratching a signature.”

  He picked up the photocopy and studied it. Then he put it down again. “Where is the original?”

  Lucy’s heartbeat picked up. She opened her folder and pulled it out. “Here.”

  They both looked at the original card. During the afternoon, she had used a solvent to wipe away part of his signature and the white-out beneath. Smeared by the solvent, but still legible, was part of the original signature: Franc.

  After a while, Lucy resumed. “Francie flew your plane back from Ash Marine and landed at 2:05. You were the passenger. She filled out the landing card and signed it, because for some reason you could not pilot the plane or sign the card. Later, you came back, and you asked for the card – I admit I’m reaching here, but help me out – and you whited out her signature and substituted your own. Except—”

  She pointed to the chicken scratching.

  “Something was wrong with your right arm. You signed with your left, and that’s why there’s that dragging of the ink across the top. You see it all the time with people who aren’t used to writing with their left hands. They drag their hand across what they’ve just written.”

  Richard only looked at her. He was indeed going to stonewall her. Her heart sank.

  “In all the years I’ve known you, Richard, you’ve never let anyone take the controls of your plane, not even Dad. But here you let Francie fly, over water, no less, and around restricted airspace, and you let her land.” She held up her left hand and ticked off points with her right. “Within ten minutes after you land, Dad suddenly cancels all his appointments and leaves his office. But – and this is huge – it is over an hour before he takes off for Ash Marine himself, so Laura lies there undiscovered in the cove for all that time, sunburning and convulsing and miscarrying. So I have to believe – tell me if I’m wrong – you went out to the island, and you became incapacitated, and Francie got you back to the mainland, and one of you called Dad for help, and he dropped everything to come to the rescue.”

  Richard turned on his heel and walked to the other side of the table. She must be hitting close to home now. He was resisting her with all his will.

  “I thought about this a lot this afternoon,” Lucy said. “I couldn’t imagine what on earth prevented you from taking the controls, so I concluded it was something pretty bad. You didn’t have a headache. Something was wrong with your right arm, and of course, that’s the arm you use for the stick when you fly, and that’s your writing hand.”

  He said shortly, “I wrenched it.”

  “Then,” she tapped the police report, “I read the auxiliary notes. They’re not typed up, and Sergeant Whosis had terrible handwriting, so it took me a little while. Because, you see, something about the setup that day aroused this guy’s suspici
ons.”

  She sat down. He leaned against the opposite wall, shielding his face in the shadows. He did not want her to read him.

  “The sergeant thought something didn’t hang right about Dad going out there and happening to find a woman lying in the cove,” Lucy said softly. “He thought – as I did, the second I read this – that Dad expected to find someone in trouble. So, after the air ambulance left, Dad took off, and the sergeant watched him. This is what he wrote.”

  She read from the report, “Witnessed Cessna take off and bank south-southwest. During sharp bank, pilot appeared to have trouble with side window. Wings wobbled for approximately thirty seconds. Concerned plane was experiencing mechanical trouble. Pilot righted plane and flew off. Appeared pilot threw something from window into bay.”

  She swallowed. “So the sergeant got suspicious, and he went looking to see what he could find. He started with Dominic’s cottage because they had found Laura’s ID and handbag there. He found a small overnight case with some clothes and a bottle of prenatal vitamins. It appeared that Laura had at least spent the night there – he found a couple of washed tea cups sitting on a side board in the kitchen. The bed was unmade. And it appeared,” she paused delicately, “that she had not been alone.”

  When he spoke, she could tell he was making an effort – probably not to throw her right out of his office. “Of course she wasn’t alone. Francie was there with her.”

  “I am afraid,” said Lucy, “that you are not taking my meaning. Come on, we’re both adults. Certain things about sex are just plain messy. The sergeant could tell – do not make me spell this out – that the lady who had been occupying the bed had entertained a gentleman caller.”

  More silence. Then Richard swore a curse that she had seldom heard him say, at least not to a woman.

  Lucy let the word fall between them.

  “Precisely,” she said. “And from the condition of the sheet, the gentleman had been there within the last couple of hours. Don’t look at me like that, this is basic crime scene stuff, the police always check for that. If you watched CSI instead of the History Channel, you’d know that. Well, the sergeant put two and two together, and he came up with four – namely, that Dr. Philip Ashmore had had sexual relations with Laura St. Bride—”

  “What!”

  “—and that the entire story of his flight to the island, his accidental discovery of her, and his not being able to identify her was bogus. His assumption,” Lucy said, “was that Dr. Ashmore had an afternoon tryst with the lady, they had a fight during which things got heated, and she ran off crying and fell into the cove. Then, after a while, Dr. Ashmore got worried, went looking for her, found her, and called for help. After all – they were the only two people that the sergeant knew to have been on the island.”

  “God almighty,” Richard said wearily, and sat down across the table from her.

  His guard was slipping. He knew how well she could piece together a puzzle. Maybe, just maybe, he understood that he couldn’t stonewall his way out of this.

  And he hated the idea of his father taking the heat for something he had done himself.

  “But there was that moment when he thought that the pilot threw something out the window,” Lucy said, “and then there was that blood splatter on the door, and the bullet hole in the door frame.”

  Something terrible flashed across his face then, but not shock, not surprise.

  “In a follow-up phone call, Dr. Ashmore said that he had accidentally fired a gun several months before and hadn’t gotten around to fixing the door frame yet. When asked about the blood, Dr. Ashmore thought he must have cut himself recently on a trip to the cottage.”

  Richard held up his hand. “Lucy. Stop. Stop right there.”

  “No, I won’t stop!” She leaned across the table to stare him right in the eye. “I’m not stopping until I have my say, and you, oh friend of mine, you are going to sit there and hear me out. And you know why you are going to sit there and hear me out? Because you lied to me, you SOB. I asked you, time and time again, I said, Richard, have you ever heard from Francie? Do you know where she is? And what did you say to me, time and time again, Richard Ashmore?”

  Her voice rose.

  “You said no. You said you had never heard a word. You knew how I worried about them. They’re my baby sisters. You knew I was trying to find them, you knew I was running ads and hiring that PI – and the whole time, you knew where she was. You knew! You had been in contact with her. You – you had sex with her, for God’s sake. You knew.”

  In the face of her fury, he remained as always – stoic, unmoved. That stupid Vulcan mask of his! For the first time, she understood Diana’s visceral need to ruin that beautiful face.

  Diana had always thought small. Lucy wanted to go the distance. She wanted to beat the crap out of him.

  He waited until it became apparent that she had said her say. Then, quietly, “No, I did not know where she was. And I didn’t know – I swear to you, Lucy, I did not know – where Laura was.”

  “I don’t believe you.” She couldn’t hold back anymore. “You knew – and what’s even worse, Dad knew! He knew! Why didn’t he ever say anything!”

  She collapsed in her seat and covered her face with her hands, and she didn’t care if he hated feminine tears or not. She deserved these tears; she had held them off since the moment she had seen that report in the long-forgotten police file. Let him see that he had broken her heart! Let him see the damage he had caused with his stupid, thoughtless actions that day!

  She had trusted three men totally in her life, and two of them had let her down in the most terrible way. They had lost her her sisters.

  She heard him moving, coming around the table to sit down beside her, but she did not look at him. A few seconds later, he pulled her gently against him and cradled her head on his shoulder. “Shh,” he whispered, “don’t cry, Lucy. Don’t. It’s not good for you.” He tightened his arms around her, rocking her, her big brother again, her champion and defender. “I am so sorry you had to find out about this. I never wanted you to have to deal with any of this.”

  She sobbed against his shoulder, “Can’t put the genie back in the bottle.”

  “No,” and he patted her back. “Or the toothpaste back in the tube.” She managed a broken laugh. They had heard that from Philip so many times when they were small and something had turned up broken and they had run out of dogs, cats, hamsters, and goldfish to blame it on.

  After a minute, she pulled away. He let her go but kept his arm loosely around her, and she realized he needed the contact too. She glanced at him; he looked as raw and upset as she felt. “Will you tell me what happened? Please?”

  “Wait here.”

  He got up and disappeared into his darkened office next door. A minute later, he reappeared and handed her some tissues and a box of Thin Mints. “Here. From my secret stash.”

  Lucy wiped the tears from her face and reached for the Thin Mints. “Maybe one. Two. But only because the baby likes chocolate.”

  He gave her a smile. “Can’t have the baby needing a chocolate fix.”

  They munched companionably for a couple of minutes. Chocolate soothed the soul and made everything a little brighter. Lucy felt herself calming down. The world had righted itself. Richard was going to clear everything up. This all had to be a horrible misunderstanding. Francie hadn’t tried to kill anyone. Richard hadn’t slept with Francie. Philip hadn’t kept Laura’s whereabouts a secret from her.

  Richard said finally, “Before we go any further, I want you to know something. Until this evening – until you told me – I had no idea Dad went to the island that day.”

  “Really?” But she believed him.

  “Really. I knew nothing about Laura being in the cove or getting flown out to a hospital. For damn sure I knew nothing about St. Bride showing up here.” He exhaled. “Dad never said a word about that.”

  “Why do you think he never said anything? He knew how much
I wanted to find them. I can’t think why he wouldn’t have told us.”

  He said slowly, “Whatever his reason, it must have been a good one. It must have been something that overrode your need to know – Mom’s need to know, for that matter. Dad wasn’t a capricious man. He was one of the most selfless men I’ve ever known. That he perpetrated this silence—” He shook his head. “I don’t know why.”

  They sat for a minute, contemplating the impossible. Richard had to be dealing with the same thing she was facing – the surreal notion that Philip had acted dishonestly.

  She finally asked, “Why did you go out there?”

  He answered without hesitation. “Because Francie called me to meet her there.”

  Lucy stared at him. “Francie called you? Why?”

  “I don’t know,” said Richard. “I was at my desk at work – this was before Scott and I left McGuire Cantrey – and I got a call from her. She said she was out at Ash Marine and she needed to talk to me.” He looked into the box of cookies and grimaced. “And, like a damn fool, I went running, moth to the flame, to tell her to stay the hell out of my life.”

  “Richard – this makes no sense.” She ran her fingers through her hair. “She’s on this murderous rampage. She calls Di to come out there so she can kill her in cold blood. She already has Laurie there, and presumably she knows the two of you can keep her from hurting Di. Why would she call you? That just puts another obstacle in her way.”

  He shrugged. “Got me.”

  “All right,” said Lucy, “you go out there and – instead of her killing Di, you two end up – whatever. And then something happens to you, and Laurie falls into the cove. What happened? Did Laurie walk in on the two of you and very properly run away screaming?”

  Something flickered on his face. “No. Laura did not walk in.”

  She decided to be blunt. “What happened?”

  “Lucy – I am not going to tell you. Don’t push.”

  That disappointed her, but she wasn’t surprised. Even if Francie hardly deserved his protection, Richard was not going to break a lifetime of habit by kissing and telling.