Island of Bones(63)

Diane looked down at the gold band and then took it from Vince. She looked at it blankly for a moment, putting it on the tip of her right ring finger, just above her mother’s wedding band. Then she slipped off Frank’s ring and balled it up in her fist. She turned quickly and pushed open the doors, almost running down the hallway.

Louis followed, catching up with her in the lobby. She was fumbling in her purse. She pulled out her keys with shaking hands, dropping them and the wedding band. The ring rolled away on the tile. Louis bent to retrieve it.

Diane had picked up her keys and was just standing there, a hand over her eyes. She took in several deep breaths and looked at Louis.

“You dropped this,” he said, holding out the ring.

She took it and put it in her purse. “Is there anything else?” she asked. “Do I have to sign something, do anything else?”

Louis shook his head.

“I guess I have to call a funeral home,” she said. It came out almost like a question.

“Diane,” Louis began. “I’m not convinced your father killed anybody.”

She just stared at him.

“Maybe it’s just a feeling, I don’t know,” Louis went on. “But I’m going to try to keep this case open and find out who did kill those women.”

Louis could tell from the look in her eyes that Diane Woods didn’t share his feeling. She had already accepted the fact that her father was a murderer and all she wanted to do was to bury him and find a way to live with his ghost.

“Help me clear his name, Diane.”

Her eyes flicked to the hallway. “The other day,” she said quietly, “when you came to my school and you said that thing, you know, about my father not having a past before I was born?”

Louis waited. When she looked back at him there was something in her expression that he had never seen before. It was as if the principal, the professional woman, the careful daughter who drank her gin from crystal goblets suddenly didn’t have the faintest idea who she was.

“You have something you want to tell me?” Louis asked.

She hesitated. “I found my birth certificate,” she said. “There was no hospital listed. It said I was born at home.”

“So?”

“That’s strange, don’t you think? Like...primitive.”

Louis didn’t tell her what he was thinking —- that he had been born at home. But home was a shack in Black Pool, Mississippi, something Diane surely would have no empathy for.

“Lots of people are born at home,” he said. “Did your birth certificate list your mother’s name?”

When she didn’t answer, Louis went on. “Look, Diane. If you know the name, give it to me. If I can track down something about your father’s past, maybe I can clear him.” He paused. “And you.”

She pulled in a deep breath. “Sophie Reardon. I think she was from St. James City.”

She quickly dug in her purse, pulled out sunglasses and put them on. “I have to get back to school,” she said tightly and started to the door.

“Thanks,” Louis said.

She didn’t answer him or look back as she hurried out into the sunlight.





CHAPTER 30




Louis paused on the porch of Frank’s house. He looked back out at the empty street then reached up into the planter for the key. He unlocked the front door and slipped inside.

The house was hot and smelled bad. It had been closed up since Horton’s men had finished and Louis doubted Diane had been here since her father’s death.

He switched on a lamp and the room came to gloomy life. He stood, hands on hips, looking around but not at all sure what he was looking for.

Some sign of Sophie Reardon maybe? Diane had told him her mother had died when she was seven. Maybe that was why this place had the feeling that no woman —- no wife —- had ever cared for it.

He went to the bedroom, switching on the overhead light. The place was such a mess he wasn’t even sure where to start.

At the dresser, he opened the top drawer. That is where he kept his own cache of personal stuff —- the pictures of his brother and sister he hadn’t seen since he was seven, and the blurry snapshot of the man who had abandoned them. But there was nothing in Frank’s drawer but a tangle of socks and underwear.

The other three drawers were the same —- faded pajamas, T-shirts, and shorts, a couple of old cardigans. Louis closed the bottom drawer and stood up, surveying the room.

He went over to the bookcase. It was a cheap, assemble-it-yourself job, and its particleboard shelves were sagging under the weight of all the books. But as messy as it was, there seemed to be a logic to the arrangement of the books.