David Baldacci - First Family

He was gone.

She and Sean exchanged glances. Sean motioned toward the back hall where the master bedroom was located. Then he tapped his chest and nodded at the new group of folks. Michelle blinked her understanding at him and headed for the bedroom.

She tapped on the door.

"What!"

Her father sounded angry.

"It's me, Dad."

"I'm just taking a minute," he said. His tone was calmer but she could still sense the underlying fury.

"Can I come in?"

A thirty-second silence passed.

She tapped again. "Dad?" she finally said.

"All right. Jesus, come in."

She opened the door and then closed it behind her. Her father was sitting on the edge of the bed holding something. She sat next to him and glanced down.

It was their wedding photo. They'd done it right. A big church service with her mom looking radiant in flowing white and her crew-cut dad in tie and tails. Only twenty-one, he'd just returned from Vietnam. He was tall, tan, and handsome with a confident smile. Sally Maxwell, not yet twenty, was beautiful. There was much of her mother's good looks in Michelle, though growing up she had never focused on that. She had been closer to her father, the classic tomboy who wants to impress big, strong, tough Daddy.

She took the photo from him and placed it back on the nightstand. "Do you need anything?"

"I'm peopled out, Michelle. I can't go back out there."

"Then you don't have to. I'll take care of it. Maybe you should get some sleep."

"Yeah, right," he said dismissively.

"Has your lawyer contacted you?"

He glanced up sharply. "What?"

"You said you had a lawyer. I was just wondering if you'd talked to him yet."

He just shook his head and looked back down.

She waited another minute but he didn't say anything. She finally rose to leave after giving him a hug.

As she reached the door he did say something. It caused her to freeze with her hand on the doorknob.

"You think I killed her, don't you?"

She slowly turned back around. He was holding the wedding photo again, though he wasn't looking at the happy young couple captured for all time there. He was staring straight at her.

"You think I killed her." He held up the photo as though the evidence to support that accusation was all right there.

"I never said that."

"You didn't have to say it," he snapped.

"Dad-"

He cut her off. "Just get the hell out of here. Now!"

She fled the room.

EVERYONE HAD GONE, the food was put away and the tears had been cried. The Maxwell brothers were clustered in the backyard talking quietly over their beers. Frank Maxwell was still in the bedroom.

Sean and Michelle sat in the living room as outside the dusk slowly evolved to night.

"So he accused you of thinking he was a murderer?"

Michelle nodded slowly, obviously still trying to wrap her arms around this notion. "I guess I can't blame him," she said. "And once a cop always a cop. He knows the lay of the land. He'd be a suspect under the usual parameters."

"That's true. When a wife dies violently, it's usually the husband."

"I don't think they loved each other."

Sean put down his can of soda and stared at her. "Why?"

"They never really had anything in common, other than the five kids. Dad was always working. Mom was always at home. When he retired they barely knew each other. Remember when they went on that trip to Hawaii to celebrate their anniversary? They ended up coming back early. I talked to Bill about that later. He said Dad told him they'd run out of things to talk about after one day. And they didn't even have anything they liked to do together. They'd just grown apart."

"They ever consider divorce?"

"I don't know. They never mentioned it to me."

"But you weren't that close to your mother, were you?"

"Closer to my dad, but even that got strained over the years."

"Why?"

"I'm not in the mood to get psychoanalyzed right now."

"Okay, I was just asking a question."

"Who were those people that came in right before Dad shot to the bedroom?"

"You didn't know any of them?" said Sean.

"I don't know any of my parents' friends."

"I made the rounds. Mostly they were friends of your mom's. Played golf, cards, shopped together. Did a little charity thing."

"Nothing out of the ordinary? It seemed like my dad didn't want to even see them."

"Nothing that stuck out. They seemed genuinely sorry about your mom's death."

They turned when they heard the door open. Frank Maxwell was past them and outside before they even rose off the couch.

Michelle made it to the front door in time to see her dad climb in his car and drive off a lot faster than he should have.

"What the hell was that about?" asked Sean, who'd joined her at the door.

Michelle just shook her head. She glanced at the hall leading to the bedroom. "Come on."

The first thing that Michelle noticed when she walked into the room was that the wedding photo was not where it should have been.

Sean happened to glance in a corner. He reached over and picked it up. "Why would he have put this in the trash can?"

"I'm getting a really bad feeling about something."

Sean looked down at the photo. "Your mom's dead. On the day of her funeral he chucks their wedding photo in the trash. What would make him do that?"

"Do you think Pam Dutton ever threw her wedding photo in the trash?"

"Because Tuck was screwing around on her? You think your mom…" He obviously couldn't finish the thought in her presence.

"I'm just… I don't know."

"You sure you want to go down that road?"

"I want to get to the truth. Any way I can."

"There are usually some telltale signs." He added, "Other than wedding pictures in trash cans."

Michelle was already opening the drawers of the bureau while Sean checked through the closet. A few minutes later Michelle held up some pretty revealing lingerie with the price tags still attached while Sean had pulled from the closet three new-looking outfits and a pair of spiky boots.

They eyed each other, but left the obvious thought unspoken.

They put the clothes back and Michelle led him to the small den across from the dining room. There was a desk in one corner. She started going through the drawers. She pulled out the checkbook and handed it to Sean. "My mom handled the bills."

While Sean sorted through the check register, Michelle methodically examined the credit card statements.

A few minutes later she looked up. "There's hundreds of dollars' worth of recent charges for men's clothing from four different online retailers. I didn't see any stuff from those stores in the bedroom."

He held up the check register. "There's an entry here for a local golf tournament fee. Did your dad play golf?"

"No, but Mom did. So that's not out of whack."

Sean held up a piece of paper he'd pulled from the desk. "This is part of the entry form for the golf tournament. It's fifty bucks per person, but the check was for a hundred."

"So two people."

"Michelle, the form says it's a couples tournament."

Michelle snatched the paper from him and glanced down it before laying it aside.

Sean looked uneasily at her. "Don't you think your father could have easily found all this out? I mean, we did in about ten minutes."

"My mom didn't seem to work very hard to cover it up. Maybe she didn't care. Maybe he didn't."

"Your dad doesn't strike me as the type to meekly accept being cheated on."

"You don't really know my father, Sean." She looked down at her hands. "And maybe I don't either."

"What's going on here?"

They both looked up. Bill Maxwell was staring at them. He glanced around at the checkbook and credit card statements.