Sleight of Hand (6 page)

Now when she lapsed into her silences, it was to pick up another tidbit from the platter and attack it almost savagely.

She had been a fool to believe Jay, but she had wanted to believe him. And the weeks passed, with her growing more uneasy until she decided she had to see for herself how Connie was faring.

She picked a time when Jay would be at the dealership and she had been aghast at Connie's condition.

"I've been running the center a long time," Adele said, "and I know an addict when I see one. She was addicted to something. Tranquilizers? Sedatives? I went to her medicine cabinet and had a look. My God, it was a pharmacy! I tossed everything in a bag and called Joan Sugarman. I told her I was bringing in an emergency case and I stiff-armed Connie out of the house and to her office."

Barbara knew Joan Sugarman, the volunteer doctor on call for the center. She was available for emergencies at all times.

Joan had wanted to sign Connie into a detox center immediately, but Connie had refused. Jay was taking care of her. They were taking care of each other. In the end, Joan simply rewrote the prescriptions, reducing the dosage. It would have been too dangerous to stop abruptly. Adele had taken Connie home, and replaced the old medications with the newly filled prescriptions. She told Connie not to mention the matter to Jay, but she knew that was unnecessary. Connie was not up to initiating anything.

For weeks that was the routine she followed. Joan kept a close watch on Connie and kept reducing the medications carefully.

"It was like watching someone emerge from a coma," Adele said. "First a finger twitches, or a toe. The flutter of an eyelid. It took months before she was clean."

The platter was empty and their dinners arrived, grilled halibut steaks, pesto mashed potatoes, salads.

In spite of herself, Barbara had been drawn into the drama of Connie's grief, marriage, addiction. "Didn't you talk to her? You could see the pattern, the isolation, separation from her friends, the whole works."

"Early on it wouldn't have done any good. She was an addict," Adele said dryly.

"You ever try to reason with an addict?" She didn't wait for an answer. "Later, I tried, but she wouldn't have it. As the drugs left her system, the grief flooded back.

She was not yet done with grieving. It had been put on chemical hold. She was passive, silent, unquestioning, just accepted pain and guilt as her due. And she would not hear a word about Jay. He had been trying to help, she insisted. She had needed him, and he needed her."

She snorted. "She said he understood what she was going through because his first wife had abandoned him and deprived him of all visitation rights to his two children.

They were dead to him, just as much as her child was dead to her. She had the impression that the daughter was a hopeless psychotic locked up in a state institution, and the son had turned to a gay lifestyle and had cut all ties to both parents. I asked if Jay had told her that and she didn't know. It was what she believed. I asked if she'd like to meet her stepchildren."

Chapter 10

Adele had to persuade Connie. Although at first she shrank from the idea of meeting anyone at all, much less someone who might be ill, she was too apathetic to offer strenuous resistance to Adele s determination to make the meeting happen. Stephanie and Reggie were harder to convince, she said.

Barbara stopped her. "Who's Reggie?"

Adele laughed, a short almost barking kind of laughter as much in derision as mirth.

"She's an unpublished writer with a folder full of rejection slips to prove it. She's about thirty-one, thirty-two, and she's been with Eve and Stephanie for nearly six years. The first companion for Eve who would stay. At first it was a job, no more than that. Kept a close eye on Eve when Stephanie was at the shop. Anyway, Reggie had written a short story in a writing class at the U of O, and the teacher thought it was a mess. I read it. A mess. She graduated, got a job, but kept thinking of the story and came around to agreeing with the teacher. She had tried to cram too much into too small a space. It was novel material. A fantasy novel full of weird creatures and other worlds. Lots of magic. She's been working on it for four years now, and it's grown again. She's thinking trilogy. So, even if the pay is very low, she has a room of her own, two now that Eric's gone, a lot of time off, nothing much to do except think and plot when she's earning her pay. Ideal situation for her."

Adele smiled, then said, "But a funny thing happened over the years. Reggie has become a big sister. She's a big girl, good-natured and a great sister. She's as protective of Eve as Stephanie and Eric. They go bike riding, walk to the university library, bike to the public library and through their neighborhood. They made a garden together and tend it. Cook together. They even bicker a little. A wonderful big sister. And she was really opposed to having Connie butt in."

She looked out the window, remembering that scene. "What on earth made you think I'd agree to having Jay's new wife come here?" Stephanie had demanded.

"What does she want from us?" Reggie had said.

"She should meet her stepchildren."

"She didn't set any speed records getting around to it," Reggie muttered.

Adele told them a little about Connie, then said, "She thought Eve was in a mental hospital. She doesn't know how she got the idea, but that's what she believed."

"Jay can do that," Stephanie said in a scathing tone. "He can twist words until you not only believe the earth is flat, but you think you originated the idea yourself."

"Whatever. I'm going to bring her over on Friday afternoon."

That hadn't ended it immediately, but that was what happened. Adele had been determined.

"On Friday," Adele said to Barbara, "Stephanie was like a cat on full alert, poised, ready to bristle and lash out, and Connie was ready to bolt and run. Eve and Reggie were on the patio when we arrived, and I took Connie by the arm and made her walk out with me. There's a lattice cover with a clematis vine that was just starting to bloom, casting deep shade on half of the patio. Eve and Reggie were sitting under it.

Reggie had been reading to her. She does that, reads parts of her manuscript and Eve sketches while she listens.

"Seeing Eve and Connie eye each other was like watching two timid fawns, too shy and fearful to say a word, but curious. Then Connie looked at the garden, and said something like how lovely it was. That was the start."

Their food was gone and they were waiting for coffee. "When we left, about half an hour later, Connie asked Stephanie if she could come back the next week. It was the first initiative she had shown since the accident, just asking permission to return. The next week I went back with her and I knew she was on her way. She and Eve had not said more than half a dozen words on her first visit, but this time they talked about flowers a little. And Connie said she used to have a flower garden. They did

—she, David and Steve had planted a flower garden and called it their secret garden.

It was the first time she had been able to refer to the past even obliquely.

"It was all a matter of climbing out of the pit from there on," Adele said.

The light on the river was changing with the lowering sun. Ripples that had flashed silver were taking on golden hues and the ambient light was softening subtly.

"Let's walk by the river while the sun sets," Adele said.

Barbara waved her credit card and a few minutes later they were heading down the steps to the river path. More birds were flying low over the river, on their way to wherever home was. Not many other strollers were on this side of the river, although on the other side the path was busy with bicycle and foot traffic.

"She started coming to the center again," Adele said, walking slowly in the golden light. "First she just sat in on the group therapy sessions, but then she began helping out. Every year we have two sessions of self-defense classes for women. She attended. She said she was so out of shape, she had to start getting some muscles back."

Adele lapsed into silence again for several seconds, then said, "Howie Steinman is the martial arts instructor, and Howie fell in love with Connie." She sighed. "He was born to suffer, and he'd be the first to tell you all about it. It seems he has one unfortunate fixation after another, a visiting professor once, a singer with the opera company who moved on and Connie. Always the star on the Christmas tree, unattainable and irresistible. He was madly in love again."

Adele spotted a bench ahead and motioned toward it. They sat down and listened to the music of the river for a minute or two. "That last Friday," Adele said, keeping her gaze on the water, gold ripples on black now. "After the class Connie came to the office. She asked what she should do about Howie. He had started sending her little presents, flowers, candy, a book of poetry. She was embarrassed and didn't know how to handle it. I told her to tell him to get lost," Adele said dryly. "Well, she decided to go have coffee with him and be gentle, and tell him to get lost in a nice way. She called Eve from the office to say she'd be around on Saturday, that something had come up." Adele closed her eyes. "That was the last time I saw her."

Barbara let the silence stretch out long enough to assume that Adele was not going to break it. Then she said, "Jay said that she was suicidal."

"Bullshit! He called people who hadn't seen Connie for a couple of years, not since she'd seemed suicidal, and they backed him up."

"He called you?"

"Yes. I told him it was bullshit."

"From all indications, he was frantic."

"So they say." Her tone had been reflective, melancholic, tinged with regret and unhappiness, now it became hard, even bitter. "Look, Barbara, I knew Jay years ago, when he was married to Stephanie and I haven't had a thing to do with him since.

For all I know, he changed, became a new man, or some damn thing, but the Jay I knew never cared about anyone except Jay."

"Tell me something about him," Barbara said. "He accused my client of stealing a valuable gold boat. That's not a trifling matter."

"God help your client if he took it, and if Jay was in any position to follow through.

All that Egyptian stuff was collected by his grandfather, passed on to Jay's old man and then to Jay. And anything that was ever his was meant to stay his until hell does its thing."

"Can a leopard change its spots?" Barbara murmured. "Tell me more about the Jay you knew."

"Okay. His grandfather built the house, and he set rules that Jay's father had to follow, and Jay saw nothing wrong with those rules and kept them when it was his turn. The kids weren't allowed in the front rooms of the house unless he summoned them to display for guests. His living collection. They were beautiful children. They still are, in fact. Anyway, they weren't allowed to speak at the table unless in response to an adult. Then it was to be 'Yes, ma'am,' or 'No, sir.' Respect authority, and he was the authority. Obedience required at all times. No outdoor shoes inside.

Take them off at the door. Come and go by way of the back door. Use the back stairs. Keep your toys in your own room or the den. If he found one out of place he threw it away. And he was miserly. He spent lavishly on his selected guests, but the kids had to earn every cent that came their way." She drew in a long breath, then laughed in her peculiar barking mirthless way.

"You might gather that I had little use for him. Damn right. A tyrant at home. He had a circle of friends that he cultivated the way a pot grower might cultivate a planting, always aware of the usefulness of individual plants, nurturing those of value, culling out the inferior ones. His pals were those he saw a use for immediately, or a possible future use for, directly or as a means to get to someone else. He had a box at Autzen Stadium, and he hosted events there, bigwigs, corporate visitors, people like that.

Useful people. He had the biggest TV screen in the area, and invited his pals over to watch sports, football games, basketball games, golf tournaments. Drink a lot, good food, make contacts. Locker-room humor. Good old boy stuff. Everyone was a contact. Gung ho for development. More strip malls, more subdivisions, more business. Land-use laws were the work of the Satanic tree huggers, who should be pinned to their beloved trees and used for gun practice. A real sweetheart." She stopped because she had run out of breath.

Barbara laughed. "In a minute you'll tell me what you personally thought of him. But it's curious that first Stephanie married him, and later Connie did."

"Stephanie was young and stupid," Adele said promptly. "And Connie was out of her mind. Stephanie got married and a year later there was Eric, and then Eve. She felt trapped by then. You know, for the sake of the children. Everyone could tell at an early age that Eric was gay, years before he realized it, in fact. And Eve.. .she was not quite right from five or six on. We could see that, too. Stephanie was trapped.

Or thought she was."

Barbara knew that story well. She had heard it from too many of her own clients.

"Sometimes they break loose," she said. "Sometimes they find the courage and take off."

"Stephanie would have stuck it out longer for Eve's sake," Adele said after a moment. "She knew what was in store for the kid —doctors, hospitals, home care or institution. Jay was bitterly disappointed in his children, and then disappointed in Stephanie. They were her fault, of course. His mother had always deferred to his father, he expected as much from his own wife, but she got involved in the shop, and she sided with the kids, and he could see that he was losing control. When he couldn't deny Eric's homosexuality, he booted him." She nodded, as if to herself.

"That was the key to Jay —control. A place for everything, and everything kept there. Control of his family, his home, his business. He had to be in charge. First Eric. He couldn't control his homosexuality, so out. He couldn't control Eve's mental illness. Out. Then Stephanie. He forced her out, too. He knew that if he made Eric leave, she would go, too. In his own way, he was still in control."

The light had changed again. The gold was gone, the river black now, with shimmering ever-shifting reflections of the path's lights dancing on it. Abruptly Adele stood up. "We'd better go. It's getting cold."

They started back the way they had come. "Was Connie breaking away from him?"

Barbara asked when they reached the steps heading up.

Adele stopped and said slowly. "I don't know. A few weeks ago she said she was grateful that I made her come back from the dead because Eve needed her, what she could do for her. That was the key to Connie. She had an overwhelming need to be needed, not just donations to worthy causes, but personally needed. And she had lost the only ones she felt had truly needed her. Now there was Eve. I don't know if she still felt that about Jay. But if she wasn't breaking away yet, it was coming, and sooner rather than later."

Back in her apartment Barbara put on coffee, then made copious notes, most of them seemed unrelated to the case she was dealing with. But they were connected, she told herself. Everything is eventually.

When done, she stood holding her coffee in the darkened room and watched the reflection of lights on the swimming pool in her apartment complex. They had cleaned and opened it during the past week. The lights moved slowly up and down, an undulating motion under a slight breeze, and she considered what Adele had told her about Jay.

Meg had been dead-on, she thought then, to be afraid for Wally If Jay hadn't been killed, he would have pressed charges. No doubt, Jay would have brought in a number of witnesses to testify to his good humor, generosity, benevolence, his civic-mindedness, but losing a valuable art object, a family treasure, could not be tolerated.

She trusted Adele s assessment of Connie's mental state. She said Connie had not been suicidal and Barbara believed her. And that meant a double murder as the most likely alternative. Someone in a black van took Connie to the coast and killed her, and a week later drove the same black van to Jay Wilkins's house and killed him.

That would make the boat matter irrelevant, since it was found at the house. Wally would be out of it. Forgotten.

But if the investigators wrote Connie's death off as a suicide, and had only one murder to solve, Wally's name would be high on their list of suspects. Trying to avoid a prison sentence was a damn good motive for murder.