Sweetie's Diamonds (21 page)

“And what was the nature of these calls?” the president asked.

“That Mrs. Boston be fired immediately.”

“I see.
 
And did you receive any phone calls today after the story appeared in the daily newspapers?”

“Yes.”

“How many?”

“Last count was one hundred and fifty-six.”

“All for the termination of Mrs. Boston?”

“All but six.
 
Those callers expressed admiration for Mrs. Boston.”

There was a marked silence for a few moments and then Mrs. Wilcox looked at Diane.
 
“Mrs. Boston?”

“Yes?”

“Suppose you tell us what all this is about.”

Diane took a breath and began.
 
“The stories being printed about me are false.
 
It's true that there was an actress in those adult movies that looks like me, or rather, how I looked over twenty years ago.
 
But it's not me.”

“Is this one of these movies?”
 
Mrs. Wilcox held up a videocassette in a plain white box.
 
“I'm told that the actress in it is you.”
   

Diane was startled.
 
“Where did you get that?”

“An interested party turned it over to us,” the president said.
 
“I understand there were a few of these movies back in the seventies.”

Davis
, she thought.
 
It had to have been him.
 

“Mrs. Boston, I'll repeat the question.
 
Are you or are you not the actress in the movie?”

Best to get it out in the open.
 
There was no turning back now.

“What I'm about to say can't leave this room,” Diane said.
 

Mrs. Wilcox paused and said, “I can't guarantee that.
 
You're a high school teacher at a public school.
 
This business is already in the news, Mrs. Boston.
 
I think you had better tell us the truth.”

“The actress in the movie was my twin sister, Dana,” Diane replied.

The reaction in the room was palpable.
 
Already the other board members were shuffling their feet and looking embarrassed as if they really did have egg on their faces.
 
One man murmured, “Oh my God,” while another said, “Ooops.”

Mrs. Morgan looked at Diane and indicated for her to continue.

“My sister Dana had gone to Hollywood in the late seventies to try to be an actress.
 
Needless to say she got involved with the wrong crowd and started making those movies.
 
When I found out, I was mortified and I tried to get her out of it.
 
But the West Coast mafia ran the entire operation.
 
They had her hooked on drugs and it wasn't a pretty picture.
 
When she finally tried to leave the business she just disappeared.
 
I believe she was murdered.”

Diane calmly looked down at her hands on the table.
 
The room was beyond silent.
 
She had completely shocked them with this bombshell.
 

It seemed that several minutes went by before Mrs. Wilcox spoke again.
 
“Mrs. Boston, I'm very sorry to hear this.
 
I assume that you plan to hold a press conference to clear your name?”

“No.”

The board president was clearly taken aback.
 
“Why not?”

“Because I've protected my sister's name all these years.
 
I shall continue to do so.”

“But if she's dead and your name is being smeared… wouldn't you want to correct that wrong?”

“Frankly, I don't care,” Diane said.
 
She couldn't help angrily speaking her mind.
 
“I'm appalled that I was dragged in here to bring up these painful memories.
 
If you ask me it's Peter Davis who should be in here facing suspension.”

Mrs. Wilcox asked, “Mrs. Boston, is there anything else you would like to tell us?
 
I'm afraid I don't find it satisfactory that you're unwilling to clear your name.
 
It just doesn't make sense.”

“A lot of things in life don't make sense,” Diane answered.
 
“It didn't make sense that my sister was murdered, but she was.
 
Am I free to go?”

Mrs. Wilcox looked around the room and got a few indications of uncomfortable acquiescence.
 

“Yes, you are.
 
Could you just wait outside for a few minutes?”

“Certainly.”
 
Diane stood and left the room.
 
In the teachers' lounge she got herself a cup of coffee, sat on a couch, and waited an interminable seven minutes before Principal Morgan emerged from the conference room.
 

He came over to her and said, “Diane, the board has agreed to look into this matter further over the coming week.
 
There will be another meeting here at this same time a week from today.
 
That's when they'll let you know what action they'll be taking.
 
I suppose what you do in the meantime will influence their decision.”

“I see,” she said.
 
He looked sheepish so she added, “There's something else, isn't there.”

He nodded.
 
“You're suspended with pay until next week's meeting.”

She looked away and fought back the tears welling in her eyes.
 

“I'm sorry,” he said.
 
“It wasn't my idea.”
 

“Thank you, Jim,” Diane replied.
 
She stood and moved toward the door.
 
“I'm just going to my classroom to get some things, okay?”

“Sure.”

Devastated, Diane left the lounge and walked quickly through the labyrinthine halls back to her room.
 

I'
m sitting in one of the offices at Dad's workplace, Boston Ford.
 
I'm in Happy Jules' office because he's out sick today.
 
I don't know why they call him Happy Jules.
 
His name really is Jules but I don't know where they get the Happy part from.
 
He's always in a bad mood every time I've seen him.
 
Maybe it's a joke that the other salesmen play on him.
 

My Mom is still at school and I have to stay here until Dad can get word to her to come pick me up.
 
Apparently he's too busy to take me home.
 
I don't know why.
 
It looks to me like he's just in his office on the phone and stuff.
 
It would take ten minutes to drive me home and ten minutes to drive back.
 
He could have dropped me off after he picked me up from school but he didn't want to.
 
I have a feeling he brought me here just so Mom would have to go out of her way to pick me up.
 
That would give him an excuse to start a fight with her or something.
 
He seems pretty sore at her for the porn movie stuff.
 
I guess I don't blame him.
 
If I found out my wife used to be in porn movies and I didn't know it before I married her, I'd be upset too.
 
But she keeps saying it's not true.
 
Isn't there a thing in this country that everybody is innocent until proven guilty?
 
Even though I saw the tape with my own eyes and it sure looked like my Mom when she was young, I suppose I will wait to pass judgement until all the facts are in.
 

Gosh, I guess I sound like a lawyer or something.

I sure feel stupid about the fight I had with Matt Shamrock.
 
What a jerk.
 
He's a real asshole.
 
He has shit for brains and he's got his head up his butt.
 
At least I punched him a good one.
 
I really hurt him, I could tell.
 
He didn't hurt me much.
 
I don't even feel it anymore, but I do have a red spot on my cheek.
 
My stomach kinda hurts where he hit me there.
 
I hated having to say he knocked me out.
 
He really didn't.
 
It was my goddamn heart that did it.
 
I KNOW there's something wrong with it, I don't care what my Dad says.
 
Dad told me today that I didn't have a heart condition and that Mom made it all up to protect me.
 
Protect me from what?
 
I don't get it.
 
Why would he say that?
 
He knows I have a heart condition.
 
He was there when the doctor told us all about it.
 
I was really little but I remember being in the hospital.
 
I was three years old and I remember it.
 
It was awful.
 
I was in the hospital again when I was seven.
 
That was even worse because they did all kinds of weird tests on me.
 
I got poked by needles a hundred times.
 
I never want to go back to the hospital.
 
It smelled bad.
 
It smelled like DEATH.

I wonder what I should do about Billy.
 
I think he lied to me about the videotape.
 
But what the hell, I lied to my own Mom about it.
 
I guess it's human nature to lie.
 
Probably the best thing to do would be for me to go up to him tomorrow and tell him that it's okay and for him not to worry about it.
 
Maybe then he'll tell me the truth.
 
THEN I can be mad at him.
 
LOL!
 

I sure hope Mom is okay.
 
I could tell this morning that she was nervous about going to school.
 
There were probably lots of jokes going around in the halls.
 
I heard them in MY school.
 
I can just imagine what it was like at hers.
 
It's really stupid that people have to act that way about something that happened twenty or thirty years ago to someone.
 
If it really did happen.
 

Maybe I should tell Mom the truth about Billy and the videotape.
 
I'll have to think about it.

M
oses Rabinowitz was amazed by what he saw in the
Sun-Times
.
 

There she was in black-and-white, the mysterious blonde woman who had been selling him the diamonds all these years.
 
The photo was not too good and it was very old but it was definitely the same woman.
 
She looked about twenty in the photo and was just as good-looking then as she was now.
 
Diane Boston was her name.
 
A schoolteacher in the suburbs.
 
Very interesting.
 

And she was some kind of porn star back then.
 
Very interesting indeed.

Rabinowitz wondered if there was a connection between that porno business and the diamonds.
 
She had always been careful to conceal her true identity and she had made him swear to keep their transactions a secret.
 
The paper intimated that organized crime on the West Coast controlled the porno industry back then and that she had gone missing.
 
What if those gangsters were looking for her?
 
It would explain a lot of things.
 

What it didn't explain was why his brother was murdered.
 

Rabinowitz had returned to Chicago the previous day after attending Hiram's funeral in New York.
 
He was still in shock from what had happened.
 
When Hiram hadn't answered his home phone over the weekend, Moses wasn't too worried.
 
But on Monday Hiram hadn't picked up the phone at the shop either.
 
Moses called Hiram's son Julius, a banker who lived in Manhattan, and asked him to find out where the young man's father was.
 
Julius called back a few hours later with the bad news.