“You know I love you to death,” said Star, “but you are acting really weird.”
It was only then that Diane took notice of a slight, brown-haired girl standing beside Star.
“Are you Jenny Baker?”
The girl nodded and looked as if she was a little afraid Diane might hug her, too.
“Your parents are looking for you. We saw them in the library.”
“The library? They’re looking for me? Why? I just saw them the day before yesterday.” Jenny and Star looked at each other and shrugged.
“What’s going on?” asked Star. “Why are you acting so funny?”
“There was a party on Rose Avenue last night,” Diane said cautiously.
“I know, I so wanted to go,” said Star. “It was supposed to be really cool. But you know, Paris comes first.”
“That’s really nice what you’re doing for Star,” said Jenny. “Shopping in Paris for clothes. Wow.”
“It will be my pleasure,” said Diane.
She smiled at the two of them-so overjoyed to find them healthy and whole-then quickly refocused her attention.
“We need to go find Frank. He’s searching the other side of the building.”
“What’s happened?” asked Star again. “Did the party get busted or something?”
Diane took Star’s hand. She reached over and took Jenny’s, too. Star and Jenny exchanged glances again, Jenny’s expression asking Star, “What’s up with her?”
“Diane, what is it?” asked Star.
“The house on Rose Avenue… there was a meth lab in the basement. It exploded while the party was going on and the house burned. Many of the kids didn’t make it out.”
Star sucked in her breath. The two looked at Diane, wide-eyed.
“You mean, they’re… dead?” said Jenny. She slipped her hand from Diane’s and put it over her mouth.
“Yes,” said Diane. “I’m very sorry to say that many are dead. When Frank couldn’t find you… well, you see why we panicked.” Diane looked at Jenny. “And why your parents panicked when they couldn’t get in touch with you. You need to call them.”
“I really was tempted to go to the party,” said Star. “If I wasn’t doing so bad in history…” She let her sentence trail off.
“I knew some of the people who were going,” said Jenny. “Bobby Coleman asked me to go with him,” she said to Star.
Bobby Coleman. Diane hoped her face was impassive. “We need to find Frank. If there’s a pay phone somewhere, Jenny, call your parents. If there’s not a phone you can go outside the building.” As Diane spoke, Star’s gaze never left her face.
“My parents don’t have a cell,” said Jenny.
“Then call home. Someone is probably there waiting in case you call,” said Diane. “Frank and I will be glad to take you home.”
Jenny nodded.
They both looked so young-and fragile.
Diane guessed that Frank was searching at about the same speed as she, so he could be on the same floor. They crossed over to the right side of the building. The problem was that the building had so many wings. Frank was likely to be as hard to find as Star. It was little more than chance that Diane had found her. They went down the hallways, looking into the rooms. Frank would be easy to spot. He looked nothing like the students.
They passed the two young women from the student lounge. Star spoke to them. Their gaze darted to Diane’s face for a fraction of a second as they walked by at a fast clip.
“Well, what’s wrong with those two?” said Star. “They are such snobs. Just wait till I get back from Paris with my new clothes.”
So they had known Star after all, thought Diane. They just didn’t want me to linger so they could get on with whatever they were getting on with. Damn little witches.
“What do you know about those two?” Diane asked Star as she peeked into a classroom.
“Jessica Davenport and Jamie Dempsey. I call them the Jersey Devils. They are so full of themselves.”
Diane would wait until they were alone to question Star further. But at least now she had two names to give to Garnett as possible leads. She opened a door to the computer lab just as Frank was coming out.
“Diane…” Then he spotted Star. “Dear God in heaven,” he said and put his arms around her. Star buried her head in his chest.
When Star had been under arrest and her parents and brother dead, she had tried to kill herself. With the desolation of her grief and the feeling that there was nowhere for her to go, she had lost hope that the world would ever be right again. Frank’s asking to adopt her virtually turned her around. He had made her feel that she was worth something and, more importantly, he had believed her when she said she was innocent. Star was still a handful from time to time, but Diane knew that she was truly grateful that Frank loved and cared about her.
The four of them walked out of the building and down the sidewalk to Frank’s Expedition. On the way, Jenny called home on her cell. A neighbor answered and Jenny looked surprised. But Diane knew that parents in their situation would leave someone to answer the phone, waiting for any word about their daughter.
Just as they were about to drive off, Jenny saw her parents’ car turning into the parking lot. She yelled for Frank to stop, opened the door, and got out. Her mother and father saw her about the same time and came running to her, leaving their car in the middle of the road.
After seeing so many burned bodies during the past twenty-four hours, Diane was relieved beyond words to see two happy endings. She thought of Bobby Coleman’s parents, and the parents of the girl with the blond wavy hair. Nothing would ever bring them closure. Diane knew there was no such thing.
Through her passenger-side window, Diane saw someone she recognized walking out of the Student Learning Center to the parking lot. It was the blond girl’s mother from the coffee tent. She was alone. Diane wanted to cry.
“Bobby Coleman’s dead, isn’t he?” said Star. Her voice startled Diane out of her thoughts.
“The police haven’t released any information, yet,” Diane said.
“But he’s dead. I could tell by your face. The way you had no expression. That’s what you do when you don’t want anyone to see you react-you set your face like that.”
“Yes, honey, he is. But please don’t tell anyone. I don’t know if his parents have been told.” Diane was silent for several seconds as the Expedition sped across the icy street toward her apartment. “He was the first one to be identified.”
After a minute, Diane looked in back. Star was curled up on the seat asleep. She wished she could have found Ariel curled up somewhere in the jungle. She was so thankful they had found Star.
“What’s this about your car being jacked?” Frank said in a low voice.
“Some kid running from the fire. He tried to get Keith’s car but Keith sped off. He came to me next. I was stuck in the snow.”
“Diane…,” he whispered. “I can’t leave you alone for any length of time.”
“Apparently not.”
“How did you manage? Not anything dramatic and dangerous, I hope?”
“No. He was injured from the explosion.”
She made a motion as if chopping her hand off. Frank winced.
“I persuaded him to get into the backseat and I locked him in. He couldn’t get out because the child locks were on, and he couldn’t climb over to the front in his condition. It gave me time to run. By that time the police came. That’s about all there was to it.” Besides him shooting out my car window, she thought.
“How is he?” asked Frank. “Will Garnett be able to question him?”
“Yes, he was going to do that today. The kid was one of the few survivors well enough to talk.”
They arrived at her house and Frank walked her to her door.
“I’m so grateful we found Star,” she said.
He gave her a kiss on the lips-a short kiss, then one that lingered. “I’m glad you were there to help,” he said when h
e raised his head. “I was pretty frantic. I ran into another parent in the Learning Center looking for her daughter, too. It was scary. I hope she found her.”
“Me too-and I’m glad you’re home. I missed you.”
Diane got only three hours sleep but felt refreshed when she awakened at eight o’clock. Finding Star had rejuvenated her as much as a full night’s sleep. She showered, dressed, and made a call first thing to Chief Garnett.
“Diane, I tried to find you last night. I was told that you and Frank went looking for Star. Did you find her?”
“Yes. Yes, we did. She was studying in the Student Learning Center with another missing student. It was a good end to a very bad day.”
“Good. Good. It’s bad enough when it’s people you don’t know… Everyone around here was worried.”
He paused and cleared his throat. “Uh, McNair’s been on the phone to the commissioner. He’s trying to have you and your team removed from the recovery. Says you are tampering with evidence and compromising the investigation.”
“That son of a bitch. I hope you know better than that. McNair was the one breaking the seals on the evidence bags. He’s the one who compromised evidence. I called him on it. He and I had words.”
“I’m not at all surprised. But he does have pull with the commissioner-at least his uncle does.”
“Well, you know how paranoid David is.”
“Uh, you’ve said that before, but what does that…”
“David was pretty worked up about it-as he had a right to be. It would not surprise me if he documented McNair’s misconduct by snapping some incriminating pictures with his cell phone camera. We at the crime lab are prone to that behavior. I don’t know that he did; he didn’t say, but I know David.”
“I see. I’ll be sure to smile from now on whenever I look in David’s direction.”
“If a pic does exist, I’d want to use it only as a last resort. I’d hate to expose us as the sneaky people we are.”
She heard Garnett stifle a laugh. “I’ll have a long talk with the commissioner.”
“There’s another thing. It may be perfectly innocent… ” She told Garnett her thoughts about possible drug trade at the student center and about the two girls she had seen.
“When you think about it, that would be a likely place to deal. You didn’t happen to get the girls’ names, did you?”
“Yes, I thought you might want to talk to them. They’re Jessica Davenport and Jamie Dempsey. I also have their picture.”
“Their picture? Where did you get…?”
“Yes, I, well, I took it with my cell phone.”
“I see,” he repeated. “You people in the crime lab are prone to sneaky cell phone behavior, Jeez. I’ve never even used the camera feature on my phone.”
“Well, what can I say? We all grew up watching too many James Bond movies-or Rocky and Bull-winkle. As I said, what I saw may have been perfectly innocent.”
“And it may be a lead. I’ll put a detective on it. And I’ll talk to the commissioner. McNair’s uncle has the commissioner spooked, but the commissioner doesn’t like him, and he does like us, so…”
“I’ll leave all that to you.”
After she hung up with Garnett, Diane called her assistant, Andie, to check on the museum.
“We’re doing OK. Did you find Star?” She sounded subdued. Diane guessed everyone in Rosewood did. She could picture Andie’s usually bright, happy face masked with concern. They all knew Star, and Rosewood was a small town. They were all probably waiting to find out who among their friends were dead.
“Yes, we did find her. She’s fine. She was studying on campus. She’s home with Frank now.”
“Whew, that’s so good. I can’t tell you how worried we were here.”
“We all were, but she’s fine.”
“You know Darcy Kincaid?” asked Andie.
“Sure. One of our exhibit planners,” said Diane. “Why?”
“She was at the party.”
Chapter 11
“Oh, no. Oh, Andie. Not Darcy. Not anyone from the museum.”
“She survived the explosion and the fire, but she’s in a coma. They don’t know if she’ll come out of it. We’re all kind of bummed out around here.”
“Do Darcy’s parents know?”
“They flew in from Arkansas late yesterday. Kendel met them at the airport and I found them a hotel room near the hospital. If they have to stay in Rosewood for very long, several of the museum staff have offered them a place to stay for as long as they need.” Diane loved the museum and the people in it. She wasn’t surprised they were so forthcoming with help for Darcy and her family.
She had taken Darcy to dinner, as she did all her employees, to get to know her, and they had consulted and worked together on planning and building museum displays. She remembered Darcy liked dolphins and worked one summer with them at an aquarium in Florida. She wore a silver dolphin charm on a chain around her neck. In all of her worry, the thought had not occurred to Diane that anyone from her museum might be among the victims.
“I’ll stop by the hospital to check on her this morning.”
“I heard someone tried to steal your car,” said Andie. “With all that’s going on, I forgot to ask. Is that true?”
“It’s true. I don’t know who he was. Someone running from the fire, apparently. It ended well. He’s under arrest in the hospital. I’ll tell you all about it later. I’m glad you asked. My car is impounded as evidence. I need to use one of the museum vehicles. Would you have one parked out front in my space?”
“Of course,” said Andie.
“I’m calling a taxi and will be over shortly. Call on my cell if you need me, but it looks like you all have things well in hand.” Diane hurried to get off the phone, but Andie still seemed to need debriefing.
“How long…,” she asked. “How long will you be out there-at the scene?”
“I don’t know, Andie.”
“I guess it’s pretty bad.”
“It’s worse than that.”
“Nothing like this has ever happened in Rosewood.”
“I hope nothing like this ever happens again.”
Diane wished there were some way she could make sure that it would never happen again. Although she believed what Rankin said about not being able to stop the drug trade, maybe there was a way to stop it in her corner of the world.
When Diane arrived at the museum, one of the museum’s SUVs was waiting in her parking space. Before she went back to the circus-as she thought of the tent city-she headed for the hospital. She stopped at a toy store on the way and bought a stuffed dolphin.
Diane was becoming an all too familiar face at the hospital-visiting Frank, Star, Mike, Neva, not to mention her own time in residence as a patient. Too many hospital visits, too many violent injuries. Maybe someone she knew would have a baby and she could come for a happier visit. She rode the elevator to Darcy’s floor and walked down the stark gray corridor to the ICU waiting room. She recognized Darcy’s parents right away because Darcy looked just like her mother-dark hair, dark eyes, and dimples in her cheeks and chin. The two parents sat together on a small crimson sofa. Both were looking at the clock. Waiting for another of the timed visits to ICU, Diane guessed.
“Excuse me, are you the Kincaids?” asked Diane.
“Yes, we are.” Her father stood up, his wife after him. They looked to be in their fifties, fit, and terribly worried. “This is my wife, Edwina. I’m Jesse Kincaid.”
“I’m Diane Fallon. Darcy works for me at the museum.” She held out her hand.
“Yes, she’s told us all about you,” said Mrs. Kincaid. Each took her hand and shook it in turn. “Darcy just loves working for the museum. She says it’s her dream job.”
Her father put his hands on his belt. “You folks at the museum have been so good to us. We sure do appreciate it.”
“Not at all. Anything we can do to help, just ask. How is Darcy? Do you know?”
&nbs
p; “They won’t tell us anything,” said Mrs. Kincaid.
“They don’t know anything, Edie,” he said. “They said we might know something in forty-eight hours.”
“It’s just this waiting,” Mrs. Kincaid said. “And they only let us in for fifteen minutes at a time. Darcy looks so swollen, I wouldn’t even recognize her.”
“I know the waiting is hard. It’s all hard. Do you have a car to get you places?” she asked.
“Yes, we have a rental car,” said Mr. Kincaid.
“We have a restaurant at the museum. It’s not that far from here, and if you get tired of eating hospital cafeteria food, please come to the restaurant as my guest. Just tell them who you are.”
“That’s so nice. Are you sure?” said Darcy’s mother.
“It’s a small gesture in a very trying time,” said Diane. She didn’t say, “I lost a daughter and the kindness of good people pulled me through.” She removed the stuffed dolphin from the sack she was carrying and handed it to them.
Her mother took it and held it to her chest. “Darcy just loves dolphins. You all have been so kind. We don’t know how to thank you.”
“You don’t need to. We all pray for the best for Darcy.”
Diane started to leave and Mrs. Kincaid laid a hand on her arm. “We heard that the explosion was from a drug lab. Darcy wasn’t into drugs; we would have known.”
“She probably didn’t know the lab was there,” said Diane. “The house was divided into student apartments. There were lots of people going in and out. It’s in my neighborhood. It’s a good neighborhood. I live a street over and heard the explosion when it happened. No one knew.”
“When I first heard, I thought it was a gas leak or something,” said Edwina. “This… this is just so much worse.”
“Have they arrested anybody?” asked Darcy’s father.
“They’re investigating,” said Diane “The people in the lab were killed. We’re concentrating our efforts right now on treating the injured and identifying all the victims. But believe me when I tell you, right now in Rosewood, getting to the bottom of this has top priority.”
The Kincaids were decent people, but Diane was glad to take her leave. The tragedy of this event was weighing down on her and she had too many burned body parts to process. She needed to find her way back to her objective anthropologist self.
Dead Past dffi-4 Page 7
