Dead Secret

phone camera. She had clicked several pictures by the time he put down her clothes and walked out her bedroom door.
    What was he doing? Diane stayed in the closet for several moments, waiting for him to come back. When he didn’t, she stepped out and breathed a sigh of relief. She suddenly thought of her father downstairs. What if he was making his way down to him? What if he had suddenly turned into a maniac?
    Diane grabbed her robe and dashed across the room, cautiously looking out the door and listening. She heard his footsteps going down the stairs and ran on tiptoe in the opposite direction down an alternate set of stairs to get to the first-floor hallway—where her father’s room was. At the bottom landing, she listened for steps. It was quiet. Leaving the concealment the stairs provided, Diane walked down the hallway toward the kitchen end of the house. Was that a door slamming? She ran to the kitchen and into the utility hallway that connected to the garage, following the noise. At the end of the hall through the window she saw a flash of light, like headlights turning down the drive. She ran to the living room and looked out at the lit driveway just in time to see Alan’s car turn the curve.
    “Okay, that was weird,” she said to herself.
    “What’s weird, dear?”
    Diane whirled around.
    “Dad.”
    So much for her good ears. She hadn’t heard him at all. He stood in the doorway to the living room, looking out the windows, probably searching for whatever she was looking at.
    “I saw a flash of light—like a car.”
    “You didn’t see that from your room?”
    It was more of a question than an accusation.
    “No.”
    What was she going to say— I’m down here protecting you from Alan gone mad?
    “I had a slight headache and I came down to get some aspirin. The bottle in my bathroom is out-of-date. I thought Glenda might keep some in the kitchen.”
    “I believe she does. If not, I have some in my bathroom.” He smiled at her. “Cars sometimes use our drive to turn around in. No reason for alarm.”
    She followed him into the kitchen, where he reached up into one of the dark oak cabinets and retrieved a bottle of aspirin.
    “These are no good; they’re children’s aspirin. Glenda probably takes one of these every day. Oh, here’s another bottle.”
    He handed it to Diane and she jiggled a couple out into her hand, wondering what she was going to do with them.
    She was caught now. Why had she said that? If she took them, they would probably cause her wound to bleed or weep. But she couldn’t tell her father about that, so she had to do something with them.
    “Maybe you need to eat an apple or drink a glass of milk. It’s not good to take those on an empty stomach,” her father said.
    “Would you like me to pour you some milk, too?”
    “That might help. I can’t sleep either.” He sighed. “I keep thinking of your mother in that place.”
    “I know, Dad. But she’s safe now and we’ll have her out tomorrow.”
    Diane turned to take a carton of milk from the refrigerator and dropped the aspirin into the pocket of her robe. She poured two glasses of milk and they sat down at the kitchen table. She pretended to put the aspirin in her mouth, then took a drink of milk, feeling like a kid who had done something wrong and was hiding it from her father.
    “That’s one good thing about your crime work: At least you know your way around the system. I’m afraid poor Alan was out of his depth. He’s a financial lawyer, you know.”
    Her crime work. Diane and the case of the secreted aspirin, she thought. “It was a friend who helped the most. Frank Duncan.”
    Her father puckered his brow. “How do I know that name?”
    “We date.”
    “Oh, I think I remember something about him. A good man?”
    “A very good man. He’s a detective in Atlanta. Does mainly white collar crimes. When I told him about Mother, he knew right away what might have happened.”
    Her father looked very sad. He stared at the milk, not drinking. “You know,” he said, “I can’t help thinking that this may have been my fault.”
    “Your fault? How?”
    “The market’s not been good lately. Some of my clients have had losses. Of course, if they’d just stayed the course . . . But some of them blame me.”
    “I doubt it has anything to do with that,” said Diane, though such a motive had crossed her mind too. “That’s a rather severe reaction for an investment downturn.” She took a drink of the