Barbara Holloway: Desperate Measures Part 17

From the strained look on Dolly's thin face, and the strained silence that followed her remark, Barbara suspected that they did not want to discuss, or even mention, the fact that Alex had been arrested for murder. Alex had seated himself in a chair positioned in such a way that he presented the good side of his face to the room. He picked up a drawing pad and started to sketch. He was wearing a beret and his sungla.s.ses.

"Isn't his beret striking!" Dolly said then, not looking at her son. "I just don't know how many times we tried to get Alexander to wear a hairpiece. They make beautiful pieces these days, so realistic no one could tell. I don't know how many we ordered and begged him just to try on. They're very expensive, the good ones, I mean; some are even custom-made."

Alex sketched faster.

"Of course, he should have some suits," Dolly went on in a rush. "You can order the most fantastic clothes on the Internet, or from catalogs. You get several different sizes and just send back the ones that don't fit or don't look right."

When Arnold said anything at all, it was a comment about the stock market-he was worried about it; or about oil prices someone should shake the stick at OPEC; or about delays in air travel-he was opposed to regulation, of course, but there had to be a way.... He didn't look at his son, either, but addressed his remarks to Dr. Minick or Barbara.

Dr. Minick spoke once or twice, and Alex never said a word. At precisely four o'clock Barbara stood up. "I'd better be out there climbing before it gets much later," she said.

"I'll guide you," Alex said, jumping up. He hurried to his studio with the drawing pad, left it and closed the door, then joined her at the back door of the house.

"I didn't mean to drag you away," she said on the porch. "They'll want to talk to Graham," he said. "Do you want to go up, or around the back of Marchand's place?"

"The back of his place."

"I thought you might." He started to walk. "I'll lead. They think I lurked there to get a glimpse of Sleeping Beauty, don't they?"

"They seemed to imply something like that."

Very little area had been mowed here; soon they were in the forest, going uphill. She saw where he had cut firewood from blowdowns. It smelled good in the forest, earthy, pithy; here and there pockets of ferns thrived, but little else grew in the dense shade of the tall fir trees.

"I don't know for certain where his property starts," Alex said. "Somewhere around here. My usual trail goes on up, but if you want to see the back of his yard, we'll blaze a new trail. Game?"

"Yep. Lead, I follow." Now, going downhill, the way became rougher, and they clambered over tree trunks and wound around rocky places with treacherous footing. Soon brambles began to appear on her left, and she realized that they had neared the edge of the forest.

The blackberry vines were thick and high, ten feet, twelve feet high, impenetrable. Nothing was visible through the thicket. Alex led the way farther, sometimes back into the forest a bit, then toward the brambles again. Nowhere did she catch a glimpse of whatever lay on the other side of the living, exuberant screen; on this side the brambles were still blooming, white tinged with pink, with a few hard green berries. On the southern side, the sunny side, no doubt they were ripening. They came to a place where the vines had been cut down, and ahead of them stretched the filbert orchard. From here she could see the corner of the Marchand house through landscape shrubbery.

"Well," she said. "I think Sleeping Beauty is safe from prying eyes."

"Just as good as a wall of magic fire," he said. "I'll take you to a resting place and then we can start back down if you're ready."

She would have Bailey bring out his cameraman, she decided, and get some good professional pictures of that wall of brambles, maybe a video of the fortress barrier.

Alex led her upward, generally back in the direction they had just come, but higher; then he stopped. Here, smooth basalt boulders were scattered like a giant's set of building blocks. She chose a boulder backed up by another one and sat down. It had been a strenuous hike. Alex sat a short distance away, his back to her.

"An hour can be a long time, can't it?" he said. "It can, and was. Is it always that difficult?"

"Well, it's worse right now. They don't know if I'm a killer. Puts a crimp in the conversation."

"They're probably trying to talk Dr. Minick into getting you a real lawyer."

"They already did that. They think Johnnie Cochran would be a good choice."

"Or F. Lee Bailey."

"Second choice. Graham is very good with them." He began tossing small rocks at a bigger one. "Graham made me see that they can't help being who they are. You make choices all your life and you become the person you are because of them. Changing is very hard, and impossible until you decide you want to change. If you think you're okay, there's no reason to go looking for a way to change."

"You're very fortunate to have had such a wise friend," she said. He made a low, rumbling sound, which she had come to recognize as laughter.

"I am," he said then. "Fortunate." He tossed a few more stones, then said, "I really wanted to get you alone, not in the office, to tell you something. Actually, two things. I've seen you studying me, trying to decipher clues, trying to psyche me out. It used to be that when I got too anxious, cornered, afraid, whatever it was, I would pretend to be Xander and go flying away. It worked, up to a point. Not all the time, and not totally, but it was all I had. When I began to draw the comic strip, and the cartoons, it was better. I could detach myself from whatever was bugging me, sort of watch from the outside, and even think something like, I could use that. An escape hatch. It works most of the time. And it makes me a little more inhuman, I suppose. I become an observer instead of someone living a life. But it works most of the time, and that's the important thing. When it doesn't work, I chop wood, or hike, or do something else physically hard. I guess what I'm trying to make clear is that I know what I am and I've found ways of dealing with it. You don't have to be afraid of me, or of what I might do. It's under control"

She felt as if her throat was constricted too much for her to speak for a time. Finally she said, "You said two things."

"Yes." He threw rocks with unerring aim, harder and harder. "The other one is about Sh.e.l.ley. Graham said she's falling in love with me. He said you know it, too. Of course, she isn't. It's a mixture of pity, compa.s.sion, regret over her outburst when we met, a lot of things. And I've been stupid. She's the first person besides Graham, the only person my own age, I could ever talk to and I've taken advantage of that. I don't want to wound her. She's too good to be hurt because of an infatuation. I'll tell her she's like the little sister I never had."

"How old are you, Alex?" Barbara asked when he became silent.

"Depends," he said. He tossed a handful of stones into the air, and then leaned back, done with pelting the big rock. "Chronologically? I'll be twenty-nine in September. A Virgo. Other ways? Older than Graham, older than anyone. A strange thing happens when you've been hurt, surgically, emotionally, in a lot of ways; I think each hurt adds a year or two. I've been alone a lot, and that adds a year or two tucked in between real time. It helps if you can think of real time as divisible. Sometimes I feel like an ancient man who's been revitalized in a poor excuse of a frame."

"Will you let her be your friend?"

"My little sister is for life, Barbara. You ready to start back down?"

He led the way back down, and watching his easy stride, she wanted to weep.

23.

"Okay, gang, we have fifteen weeks," Barbara said on Monday afternoon in her office. Sh.e.l.ley and Bailey made up the gang. Barbara had had a choice of trial dates, October sixteenth or February something. She had opted for October.

"We have quite a few directions to follow," she said. "The day of the murder. I want a timetable. When Leona Marchand went to school during the day, when she returned home, when she prepared the food, what was in the box she took back with her. What was in that skillet and ca.s.serole...?"

She had several pages of notes, and they covered them all during the session. Bailey was making notes, page after page of notes. Sh.e.l.ley was doing the same.

Finally she said, "That's for starters. As discovery trickles in, there will be more."

"Fifteen weeks," Sh.e.l.ley said in a low voice. "Your father said a proper defense takes at least a thousand hours."

"Look at it this way," Barbara said. "Fifteen weeks times a hundred hours per week, divided between us, remember. Not so bad."

Sh.e.l.ley did not look convinced.

"And you remember that we start with a holiday," Bailey said.

"Fourth of July. Tomorrow. Hannah and I are going on a picnic."

"I told Alex I know a place where we can watch fireworks," Sh.e.l.ley said, keeping her eyes downcast. "He's never gone out to see fireworks."

Barbara looked at her own legal pad; what a good stage prop, someplace to direct the gaze when you couldn't bear to look at another person. She suspected that after tomorrow Sh.e.l.ley might not be worth much as an a.s.sociate for a time. "So let's call it a day for now," she said. "Have fun. Take earplugs. And from Wednesday on, no more fooling around."

Barbara called Will Thaxton as soon as she was alone again. She had known he would be appalled at the short time she had allowed to prepare the defense, and he was. Appalled and angry. When he demanded to know why she was shortchanging Alex, she said, "I said I'd keep you informed. I didn't say I wanted your advice or your recriminations. Just let me handle my case, all right?"

There was a pause, then very stiffly he said, "Of course. Sorry. Thanks for calling."

They hung up. She glared at the telephone, finally shrugged, and started to go through the police reports she already had in hand.

When she got home that evening, Frank was on the back porch with his page proofs.

"Is it done now?" she asked.

"Patsy said it is. It seems that it was a bit more trouble than either of us antic.i.p.ated. Anyway, one last read through it, and then I'll s.h.i.+p it off. Patsy wants to go on her vacation, but she won't leave until this blasted thing has been put in the mail."

He put the paper he had been reading on the stack, then said, "Reading through those old trials made me think of some of the people involved. Remember Bucky Case? Maybe he was before your time. Bucky and his wife, Eunice, owned a mystery bookstore in Portland, sold it a few years back to retire. Case Books, fine name for a mystery bookstore. I called Bucky a while ago. He remembers Talbot Grady. He remembers every mystery he ever read, every writer he ever met. Anyway, Grady is a pseudonym for Edward Fensterman, and he is alive and well in Clearwater, Florida. What do you think of that?"

"I think that's swell," she said. "Did you call him?"

"Yep. When Patsy leaves on her vacation, Wednesday or Thursday, I think I'll take a little trip to Florida. Get in some fis.h.i.+ng, eat grouper cheeks and crabs...."

"And chat with Fensterman," she said with satisfaction. Her book search had not come up with anything.

"Fensterrnan said he has file copies of everything he ever wrote," Frank said, "all boxed up in a spare room. He won't sell a copy, or let me borrow one, but I can Xerox anything I want, if they'll hold together long enough."

"Are you sure you're up to a trip like that? It's going to be hot as blazes in Florida in July."

"I think they've caught on to air-conditioning," he said. "And from what Bucky told me, I believe Fensterman is something of a millionaire, a real-estate developer. He got out of the writing business when he discovered money in land."

That would take care of several problems, Barbara thought then. When Patsy was off, Frank got grumpy, irritable. He would be safely out of the way for a week or so while they tracked down Mr. Wonderful for certain. And they would get their hands on that d.a.m.ned book. If what Mr. Wonderful had wanted was in the text itself, they would have it. If it had been a scribbled note, an inscription, anything of that sort, they would have nothing. But that was what they had now, nothing; what was there to lose? A Florida trip might even be good for her father.

"What made you decide the intruder was really after the book?" she asked. They had gone back and forth a lot about that missing book.

"Something Hilde's sister said. Every now and then Hilde packed up a box of books and hauled them down for her and her mother. They all liked the same kind of light reading, I guess. Anyway, if Hilde ever mentioned something like that to her friend, he might have been afraid that whatever's in that book is dangerous. If the book is what he was after, in the first place."

Another grain to add to the beach, she thought, but they needed whatever grains fate tossed them.

On Thursday morning she took him to the airport and saw him off. Late that afternoon the toxicology report was delivered. She sat at her desk and read through it, read it again, then stood up. She had to see Dr. Minick. The day before, she had glimpsed Sh.e.l.ley only in pa.s.sing; now she went looking for her. Sh.e.l.ley was trying to interview Rachel's teachers, the school secretary, friends, and trying harder to find a good picture or two of her BN-Before Nunhood. Rachel was sticking close to home, wearing no makeup, not running around with a boyfriend in a red Camaro. Practicing for the convent. Sh.e.l.ley was on her phone, Maria said; Barbara tapped on her door, pushed it open, and entered when Sh.e.l.ley said, to come in. Then she gasped.

"Good G.o.d! What have you done?"

"Is it really that bad?" Sh.e.l.ley asked plaintively, hanging up the telephone. She had cut her hair.

"It's beautiful," Barbara said. "Just a surprise. When did you get it done?"

"After work yesterday. I went straight to the salon and said, Whack it off, most of it, all of it. Whatever. It was too hot. And too... just too much." She looked sad, and older, at least a day or two older with her hair short.

"It's really beautiful, and you look terrific."

"You know what I was thinking before I decided to get it zapped? How pretty Bill Spa.s.sero and I were together. All that blond hair, what a match. People looked at us together and smiled, we were so perfect. That's not a very good reason to stay with someone. Because you look neat together. It was pretty juvenile. Vanity, vanity, begone."

"Well, what I came in to tell you is that the tox report came, and I have to go talk to Dr. Minick. It doesn't make any sense. If you're free after work, I thought maybe you could come by the house, we'll have something to eat, and put our heads together."

"Good," Sh.e.l.ley said. "I'll pick up dinner."

Traffic was fierce; it seemed that all of Springfield worked across the river in Eugene, and they all started for home at the same time. It took forty-five minutes to get to the Minick house. Dr. Minick greeted her at the door, and Alex came from his studio to say h.e.l.lo. He was wearing a beret, but not the sungla.s.ses, and he didn't bother to put them on.

"What's up?" Alex asked.

"Questions for a doctor," she said. "It's about the Hilde Franz toxicology report." She realized to her surprise that she no longer felt compelled to look away, or to force herself to pretend anything with him. He was just a guy with a hideous face, one that she was growing used to.

"Let's sit at the kitchen table," Dr. Minick said. "I made lemonade, or would you like wine, a drink, something else?"

"Lemonade is fine," she said.

Dr. Minick poured the lemonade, then sat down and read the report. He frowned and read it again.

"See the problem?" Barbara said. "The medical examiner broke it down for those of us who are math-challenged. It would take the equivalent of six hundred milligrams of meperidine HCl to get that much in her blood. That would be twelve of her fifty-milligram capsules. If she was going to take that much, why not all of it? Why stop there?"

"No one could force another person to take that many, not without a struggle, and you said there was none," Dr. Minick said.

"Could that kind of medication be dissolved in a gla.s.s of milk?

A cup of tea? A gla.s.s of wine? Anything."

He shook his head. "You'd taste it and stop drinking. Besides, as I recall, her last meal had been many hours before her death; her stomach was pretty empty."

"Try this then. Could someone have tampered with the capsules, crushed tablets to refill them? Could you get that kind of dosage in a capsule?"

"Maybe in several," he said doubtfully. "But they would have been larger capsules; she would have noticed, wouldn't she?"

"Maybe someone refilled all of them, so it wouldn't matter. If she was not a regular user, and apparently she wasn't, she might not have remembered how big they were two years ago, especially if they were all the same size."

"You really believe she was murdered, don't you?" Alex said then. "Why? Why her?"

"I don't know," Barbara said. "But I know she didn't take twelve capsules, because she didn't have twelve to take."

"Did she have the prescription refilled?" Dr. Minick asked. "No. It was the original container, with NO REFILLS printed on the label, dated two years ago."

Dr. Minick read the report another time. "If this is correct, and there's no reason to doubt it, I agree with you, she was killed by someone."

"But why her?" Alex said again. "Is there a connection between her death and Marchand's?"

"I think so, but I don't know what it is," Barbara said. Then, addressing Dr. Minick again, she asked, "What would you expect if someone took six hundred milligrams of that drug? Is it enough to guarantee death?"

He shook his head. "I don't know. Barbara, something else in that report strikes me as strange. Only a trace of the meperidine was in her stomach; the rest was in her blood already. But the problem with oral medications is that they're not a.s.similated all at once. It can take several hours for an antibiotic to be dispersed through the bloodstream, for example, and capsules don't release the medication all at once. If she had been injected with that dose, then yes, it could have paralyzed her, stopped her lungs' function, and that would have stopped her heart, but an oral dose? I don't think so. When they use that as a surgical relaxant, it's administered through an IV, and they put the patient on a respirator. Are you sure she wasn't injected?"

"They didn't find a single puncture," she said.

"Perhaps she was extremely sensitive to that particular medication," he said after a moment; then he shook his head. "It still doesn't explain how it got into her bloodstream so fast."

Barbara finished her lemonade and stood up. "I've got to go. Thanks, Dr. Minick."

Sh.e.l.ley's red Porsche was in Frank's driveway when Barbara arrived. She let herself in the front door, walked through the house and out to the porch, where Sh.e.l.ley was sitting on the steps throwing a ball for the cats to chase.