Found Money - James Grippando [137]
Amy looked at her with concern. She had definitely noticed the look on Marilyn’s face when Jeb had made the innocent comment about the submarine races. “Are you sure you’re okay with this?” asked Amy.
“Sure. This will be just fine.”
Amy squeezed her hand. She squeezed back, but it unsettled Amy. The touch was very unlike Marilyn. It was remarkably weak.
“I hope so,” said Amy, her eyes clouded with concern.
Across the dam, on the opposite side of the canyon, Ryan and Norm waited in the Range Rover. The phone rang. Norm answered it on the speaker.
Dembroski’s voice boomed inside the truck. “Hey, it’s Bruce. I finished that handwriting analysis you asked for.”
Norm snatched up the phone, taking him off speaker. Ryan grabbed the phone back and cupped his hand over the mouthpiece so Dembroski couldn’t hear. “Norm,” he said in an accusatory tone, “what’s he talking about?”
“Bruce was trained in handwriting analysis when he was with the CIA. I asked him to compare the handwriting samples we have for Debby Parkens. The letter she wrote to your father. And the letter she wrote to her daughter—the one Amy gave you.”
“Great. So now he knows Marilyn Gaslow is involved.”
“No. I blocked out her name in the letter.”
“What the hell did you do this for, Norm?”
“Because I don’t want to see you get killed out here tonight, all right? I was hoping that if Bruce could tell you the letter was fake or genuine, maybe that would be enough for you.”
“I didn’t come all this way to turn around and go home.”
“Humor me. Let’s just listen to what he has to say.”
Ryan calmed his anger, then nodded once. He placed the phone back in the holder. Norm put the call back on speaker. “You still there, Bruce?”
“Yeah.”
“What do you think?”
“Well, this was pretty quick. I’d like to study them some more.”
“Yeah, yeah. What’s your gut reaction?”
“My gut says the letter is genuine. Meaning that whoever wrote this letter to Amy Parkens also wrote the letter to Frank Duffy.”
Ryan and Norm looked at one another.
“But,” said Dembroski, “I’m somewhat troubled by a couple things in the second letter—the letter to Frank Duffy.”
“What?” asked Ryan.
“The wording is a little off, for one thing. People tend to have a way of expressing themselves in letters. I see different word choices, different turns of the phrase in these two letters.”
“That’s probably because the one letter is written to my father and the other one is written to her seven-year-old daughter.”
“That’s a good point,” said Dembroski. “But then there’s the matter of the shaky penmanship. The handwriting in the letter to your father is a little unsteady.”
Norm asked, “What do you make of that?”
“Could be a lot of things. She could have been drunk. Could have been tired. Or—it could be something else.”
“Like what?” asked Ryan.
“This is a wild guess. But you take the shaky handwriting and combine it with the awkward phraseology, and I can offer one theory. She wrote the letter to your father, all right. But not of her own free will.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying somebody could have told her what to write. Forced her to write it.”
“You mean someone had a gun to her head?”
“Yes,” he said. “Quite literally.”
There was silence in the truck. Ryan glanced at Norm, saying nothing. Norm picked up the phone.
“Thanks, Bruce. If you can, stay by the phone tonight, just in case.”
He hung up, then looked at Ryan. “That sure opens some new possibilities.”
“Not really. It’s a wild theory, if you ask me. And even if she was forced to write it, that doesn’t mean it’s false. Seems to me I’m in the same place I’ve always been. The letter isn’t dispositive. Only Marilyn Gaslow can tell me if my father raped her.”
“I’m thinking beyond rape.”
“Huh?”
“Take a worst-case scenario. Let’s say Debby Parkens was forced to write a letter saying Frank Duffy was innocent. Say the letter was false, which means your father really was a rapist. Say her death wasn’t a suicide, meaning that somebody conveniently got rid of her. There’s only one person who had motive to