Sleight of Hand (9 page)

Chapter 16

When Bailey returned, Barbara was on a stool by the bar, Eric on the other side. He broke off what he had been saying and leaned back as Bailey entered.

"Lets move out of the way," Barbara said. "Let him get some shots of the bar."

They both moved away to watch him. When he was done, he snapped a few pictures of the rest of the room. Then Barbara said slowly, "Eric, maybe you'd like to step out a few minutes. I want to see how the crime was actually committed, as well as I can, anyway."

He shook his head. "I'm okay. I'll keep back and watch."

She took the police photos of the scene and put them on the bar and she and Bailey examined them.

"This stool was leaning against that one," Bailey said, positioning a stool. "And that one was all the way down. That's what he hit when he fell. It broke his neck." The autopsy report said the blow to the head had not been fatal, but would have had sufficient force to stun him, even render him unconscious. Bailey frowned at the picture again, then at the repositioned stools. "How the devil...?"

"Start further back," she said. "Bark mulch was tracked in, about here. They are close to each other and the assailant reaches for the pitcher, swings it and hits him in the temple." She frowned, too, then. "And what is Wilkins doing while the other guy arms himself? Just waiting?"

"Lets try again," Bailey said, standing both stools upright. "They're going at it. One guy is backed up to the bar." He stood with his back against the bar. "Okay. He reaches behind him and grabs the pitcher and swings it before the other guy can duck." He reached for an imaginary pitcher and followed through with the motion.

Then he took the victim's role. "So he's hit and reels back, and bumps the first stool as he's falling." He twisted himself and hit the stool hard enough to make it tilt over.

"He keeps twisting, maybe trying not to fall, and goes down. But he lands on the other stool rung and it gets knocked down, and also breaks his neck."

They both looked at the police photograph again. This time Barbara nodded. "That must be it." She looked closely at the bar stool, now on the floor, imagining a head coming down in such a way as to fall between the seat and the brass rung. There was plenty of space, and the brass was thick, the legs of the stool heavy teak wood, it could easily have broken his neck if he fell hard enough. "I think that's it." She and Bailey exchanged a look and he nodded. Neither of them mentioned that in the photo Jay Wilkins's head was free of the stool. It appeared that he had been moved after he died.

Eric had watched the reenactment with fascinated horror as the attorney and her investigator dispassionately played out the death scene. He turned away.

"Okay, Bailey, you're done here," Barbara said briskly, standing the stool upright again. "Get me copies as soon as you can."

"Okey dokey" he said. "See you." He picked up his duffel bag, and ambled out.

Barbara replaced the photographs in a folder, put it back in her big bag, then said to Eric, who was still facing away, "Are you okay?"

Not looking at her, he said, "Sure. I was just thinking how much it would have meant to a kid to watch
Star Wars
on a screen like that. I was never allowed in here in those days, and now you couldn't pay me to sit on that sofa, watch that TV." He turned around. He was pale, his jaw rigid. "I put a six-pack in the fridge when I got here. Let's go out to the kitchen."

He led the way through the halls, past closed doors, another hall, then into a huge kitchen with enough cabinets to have served a restaurant.

"You want a beer?" he asked, going to the refrigerator.

"Thanks, but no. I'm fine."

"Coffee? How about a double espresso over ice? Good summer drink."

She started to say no again, but then, understanding that he wanted something to do for another minute or two, she said that sounded great. She walked to a back door and gazed out over a small, beautifully landscaped area. Behind it Hendricks Park climbed the butte, topped with a wonderland of rhododendrons.

When the coffee was ready and they were seated at a big kitchen worktable, Eric opened his beer and took a long drink.

"You were telling me about the wills," she reminded him.

"Yeah. Both lawyers said it could be months before everything's settled. There are legal issues with the dealership, others involved or something. Mother can't believe it, and won't until transfers are made and money's in the bank. I can hardly believe it, either."

Suddenly he grinned and said, "We're out of it, the murder, I mean. The police checked. My partner—" He stopped, keeping his gaze on her intently, then said,

"You know about me? I'm gay?"

She nodded.

Apparently he was waiting for a reaction. When there was none, he continued. "Paul, my partner, turned thirty that week and we had a party for him that Saturday. Big thirty. Celebrate or mourn? He wanted to mourn and we wouldn't let him. Lots of food, beer, music, a couple of downloaded videos, and then a bunch of us sat up talking for hours, settled all the world's problems, and conked out around dawn." He drank again.

She knew exactly what kind of party he was talking about since she had attended many just like it at his age.

He was going on. "Mother's completely out of it, too," he said. "Eve had a break that evening. Mother calls them episodes, but they're psychotic breaks even if she can't admit it. Eve just collapses. Wherever she is, whatever she's doing, doesn't matter. She sinks down into a fetal position and she'd stay like that for days, maybe until she died, if someone wasn't there to help her. She can't move by herself, can't control her functions... Anyway, she's never left alone, especially when she's helpless like that." More softly he said, "I don't think Mother's had a real day off for more than ten or twelve years."

He talked for a long time that afternoon while he sat at the table, sometimes looking at Barbara, then at the view outside, but most often, she thought, gazing into a troubled past. Much of what he told her was little more than a different viewpoint of what she had heard from Adele, but some of it was new. His grandmother, Jay's mother, had been demented, he said. She heard voices, gradually began talking back to them, and by the time Eric was five or six, she was screaming obscenities at the voices only she could hear.

"I didn't know an old woman like that even knew those words. I had no idea what a lot of them meant. They put her away. The story was that she'd had a debilitating stroke, was vegetative, but that was a lie. She was psychotic." He turned to gaze outside.

"That's what scares Mother the most, how that old woman lost it. The doctor says it isn't going to happen to Eve. She's being treated, monitored, and the fact that she went two whole years without a break is an excellent sign. They never had a doctor for Grandmother, no treatment, just put her away, out of sight, out of mind, too shameful to admit. And he called us Mother's twisted children." For the first time he sounded bitter.

"There's a genetic tendency, and it comes from his side, not hers. But the line stops here. It's for sure I'm not going to have any kids, and neither will Eve. End of the line."

In a dispassionate tone he told her about Jay's will. "I'd be willing to bet he hired someone to look up that branch of the family in New England, make sure their blood was pure, no sign of mental illness, or other weirdness." He finished his beer and got another one.

When he talked briefly about Connie's death he showed more emotion than his father's murder had elicited. "That's shitty. She made a real difference in their lives, Mother's and Eve's. This past break was the first time Mother didn't have to borrow money to pay the hospital bill. And later, there's going to be plenty to make sure Eve will be taken care of as long as she lives. She'll never have to end up in an institution.

Just knowing that makes a huge difference."

When Barbara asked if he thought Connie might have been suicidal, his answer was quick and emphatic. "No way! She had a deep sadness, you could see it in her expression sometimes, but I think Eve made a difference in her life almost as much as she did in Eve's. She seemed determined to help my sister and seemed to love her without reservation. That's.. .so much more than my father ever did."

He told about the past Christmas, when Connie had brought Eve a thick book about fashions through the ages, how Reggie, Connie and Eve had sat thumbing through it, and breaking up in schoolgirl giddiness over the bustles.

"I wondered how long it had been since Connie had laughed like that," he said softly. "I think a long time." He laughed. "I didn't want to meet her. Mother sort of coerced me. I was all set to dislike her. After all, she had married my father, what could there be to like? But I did like her a lot. She was great. Eve is going to miss her."

In the pause that followed, a distant clocked chimed four and, apparently startled, Eric checked his watch. "I have to go," he said. For a moment he looked awkward and boyish. "I didn't realize I wanted to talk like that. Thanks for listening."

Barbara shook her head. "I'm grateful to you. I needed a better picture of your father and you've been helpful."

The picture she was forming, she thought as she drove back to the office, was of a complex man who had been terribly afraid of mental illness and homosexuality, who valued possessions over persons, who had a compulsive need to be in control, and if he lost control, wanted the unmanageable object or person put away.

Something Eric had said about Eve came to mind: she had to fight to keep control of all visual input, to maintain the world she saw as made of distinct and separate objects. Things rushing at her, like a beach ball at one time, a cluster of leaves caught in a gust of wind, anything rushing at her made the control slip and she fled in the only way she could, mentally. Both of them with the same need, expressed in very different ways, but basically they had shared the same need to maintain control.

A question followed swiftly. Had Jay Wilkins recognized that he was losing control of Connie?

She was very thoughtful when she reentered her office. What all that other business had to do with Wally or with Jay's murder she couldn't have said, but there was a connection, she was sure.

On Saturday Darren called. "Can you drop in for some dinner this evening? Todd's at his mother's this weekend."

"I can't," she said. "Too much to do, I'm afraid."

"Barbara, you have to eat. We can do it together. I'll make something quick and easy. I have something to show you."

"For just a short time," she said. But she felt awkward when she rang his doorbell that evening. She knew Darren had reservations about making love to her if Todd was home, and she would have refused anyway, but she had not expected to feel anything of the same reserve knowing his son was in Springfield. She had not asked him into her apartment again. They had not even been together since then.

"Hi," he said, opening the door. "Come in." He took her hand and walked into the living room with her. "This is it," he said, handing her a beautiful little sapphire-blue glass box.

Her first reaction was to refuse it, but the box was rectangular, not a ring box. She opened it. There was a single key on a white satin lining.

"What's it for?"

"The apartment over the garage. I'm giving it to you. Yours to use whenever you want, however you want, for as long as you want. Come on up. Have a look."

He took her hand and they went through the house, out the back door, crossed the patio, and up the stairs to the apartment. He held the screen door open and she entered.

It was a small apartment, with a living room and a galley-sized kitchen separated by a folding screen. The screen was partly open. A little table had been set with a white cloth, dishes for two, flowers and candles. Not saying a word, she turned and looked at the living room with a sofa, comfortable chair and lamps. The end table held a larger bowl of flowers.

It was only a few steps to the bedroom. More flowers on the bedside table, and across the foot of the bed a white summer-weight robe had been laid out. It gleamed like silk.

"I thought you might want to have a few of your own things up here," Darren said.

His voice was husky.

"It's too much," she whispered.

"Excuse me a second." He left, and returned almost instantly. "Turned off the oven.

Casserole. Salad and wine chilling. I knew it would all keep okay."

"It will keep," she said, reaching for his hand.

Chapter 17

Barbara walked through Frank's house that Sunday, dropped her purse onto a kitchen chair and continued out to the back porch, where she stopped moving.

"What in God's name is that? And what are you doing with it?"

Frank looked at her crossly. "It's a fire ring, and that's a paella pan, and I'm trying to get this blasted thing to work." The contraption had two rings, a couple of inches apart. He lit a match and held it close to the lower ring. Yellow and blue flames shot up several inches high. He jerked back, muttering under his breath, then reached to the side of the device and did something out of sight. The flames died.

Thing One and Thing Two were crouched on the other side of the porch, in a ready-to-bolt position, their ears laid back, eyes slitted, as if they knew they might have cause to flee. She gave Frank a closer look; his eyebrows did not look singed.

The fire ring was on a metal stand, connected to a propane tank. Frank made an adjustment to a knob, then struck another match. Again he had to back off and turn a dial. He made another adjustment. The next time he tried to light it, there was a slight hissing sound, followed by a pretty blue flame that raced around the ring to complete a circle. He stood over it a minute, grunted, then turned to her with a grin.

"And that's how it's supposed to work."

"Where did it come from?" she asked.

"I borrowed it from Martin. I asked if he happened to know who might have one, and it seems he thought he might, and here it is." He had set the burner close to the table they often used for summer meals. It held a platter of finely cut onions, carrots, garlic, mushrooms, and a mammoth iron woklike pan. He picked it up and carefully positioned it over the top ring, which held it above the flame.

"Good," he said in satisfaction and added oil to the pan, watched it for a moment, then scraped in the onions and garlic. After stirring them a minute or so, he added the other ingredients. "We're having paella for dinner."

She nodded gravely. "I didn't think it was going to be turkey. Shelley and her crew will be here in about half an hour. Are you going to be busy cooking while we have our talk?"

"No. I'll get all this started, add the rice and broth and let it simmer until five. Turn it off, and it won't take more than fifteen minutes to finish. Everything else is done."

How was it that the men in her life could do that and she couldn't, she wondered, but she didn't spend a great deal of time worrying about it. Just a fact of life.

"Wally's coming in tomorrow. There are several things in his minute-by-minute playback of the two times he saw Jay Wilkins that I want to go over with him. Free in the afternoon? Want to sit in on it?"

"Indeed I do. Nothing in sight yet?"

She shook her head. "I've scanned most of the discovery, not close reading, understand, but the general sense of it. A few people they questioned might warrant a second look, but that's a stretch." She frowned. "The one I really want is the person who parked a black van or big black car in that driveway. Whoever that was can clear Wally and as of now I don't see anything else, or even a hint there could be anything else."

"And that guy could put a noose around his own neck," Frank commented.

"Always a catch, isn't there?"

"You could set the table," Frank said, stirring the pan as he added saffron dissolved in water. "Not the plates. Stack them on the kitchen table. I'll serve the first go-round and folks can come get their own second helpings. That pan isn't going to be moved again until it's empty."

By five the table had been set, rice and broth added to the paella pan, and Shelley, Alex and Dr. Minnick had arrived. Frank's timing had been exactly right. He turned off the fire ring, covered the pan and went in to wash his hands.

Alex had a deeper suntan even than Shelley, and he seemed idiotically happy. Dr.

Minnick was beaming as only a proud parent could, and it didn't matter a bit that he was father to neither Shelley nor Alex.

Frank offered drinks and after they had all been served, Alex said, "What I'm going to do is settle down with this beer on your back porch and draw the cats. I never had a cat to study and draw. I have a sketchbook full of dogs and I want to add to my menagerie."

"I told him we'd be having a conference and he was not invited," Shelley said, smiling at Alex. He smiled back at her.

"I thought we might go to the study to talk," Frank said. He picked up his iced tea and led the way.

Seated in a comfortable chair, wine at hand, Dr. Minnick said to Barbara, "You know I can't give a diagnosis of anyone I haven't seen and examined. So presumably all you want is an educated guess, and that's all I can provide."

"That's what I'm after," she said. "Let me describe her, tell you what others have told me, and then ask a question or two. Okay?"

"Fair enough."

She told him everything she had heard about Eve Wilkins. When she finished, Barbara said, "Remember, I haven't talked to her doctor and doubt that he would tell me anything in any event. I know this is too scant for a real medical evaluation, but if you could give me a general opinion based on so little, I would appreciate it."

Dr. Minnick nodded. "That was a good summary. I have a pretty good idea what's involved here. What is your question?"

"First. According to her brother, the doctor seems to think that Eve is making good progress. Yet, there is this break. Would you agree that two years between incidents indicates progress, or was that simple encouragement."

"It's progress," he said. "There will not be a cure, but the medications are improving constantly, and the most that can be hoped for is an ever-closer approach to a normal life. She will need a companion for the rest of her life, someone to ensure that she is protected when and if these incidents recur, and they could. She is receiving the optimal care, the best home care, the finest medical care there is, and I agree that there is hope that she can become self-sufficient and fairly independent if she has the ability to monitor her medication, be unfailing in regular evaluations and lab tests, and so on."

"She's smart," Barbara said. "She reads only for information, not for pleasure.

Fiction disturbs her, but she kept up with Eric's math and science throughout his schooling. And she's something of an expert with horticulture. She draws and paints.

She's had little social development, excessively shy, unwilling to meet new people.

Just not socially well adapted, I guess."

He nodded. "It's part of the pattern, and it isn't likely to change much. She evidently doesn't cope with unpredictability, and human encounters are all unpredictable.

Numbers are stable, she can grasp them, manipulate them, and they do what she expects them to. Self-expression through art is also predictable, even the attempts to communicate the chaos she experiences. She is trying to understand them through art."

"Is there a possibility that her behavior might vary when she's having one of her psychotic periods? Could she become violent? Aggressive?"

"Those are two different concepts, not to be confused. Let's take aggression first. I can't say absolutely not," Dr. Minnick said. "We never use absolutes where human behavior is concerned. But the chances are so slight, so close to nil that for practical purposes you can treat it as a negative. Her coping mechanism is to retreat into infantilism. She tried simple passivity, but when the blessed hormones came alive at puberty, it was the tipping point. Passive resistance was not working so she had to withdraw further. Infantilism, catatonia, mutism, loss of body functions, total helplessness. A retreat to the womb, if you will. In such a state there is no aggression."

"But she struggles if anyone tries to pick her up, or in any way handles her roughly,"

Barbara said.

"That isn't aggression by any means. It's an attempt to preserve the safety that has been interfered with. There's no directed violence, no intent to do harm, but communication of another sort that is crying out to be left alone." He paused for a moment, then said, "A screaming infant will not subside if it is slapped or shaken, but if it hears a soft voice, a mother's lullaby perhaps, feels gentle hands, frequently its struggles and cries cease. It doesn't understand the words, just the tone, the tactile gentleness, and it responds with docility. As does the young woman we are discussing. She does know the words, and her hearing is not affected. She responds docilely, albeit passively, as long as she does not feel forced to return to reality, her safety is not being threatened."

He paused again, regarding Barbara with a somber expression. "However, I must also add that since we are not talking about an infant, but rather a young woman who has achieved her full growth by now, depending on her physique, her physical strength, her struggles could result in doing harm to anyone trying to manage her or to herself. Not in directed aggression, but by striking out blindly, kicking violently, trying to maintain the safety of an egoless withdrawal. The one trying to handle her might label it violent aggression and, depending on who that person might be, could adopt even harsher methods. And that could force her into retreating further, beyond where she could hear and comprehend the words, and respond violently only to the tactile sensations she experiences. Or she could fail to respond to any outside stimulation. It could reach a point where she might be seen as irrecoverably, violently insane when not heavily tranquilized or deeply sedated. She could become totally catatonic, vegetative. Electroshock or a lobotomy might be seen as the only options in that event. That's a dangerous road to start down."

"You treated patients like that?" Barbara said softly.

The pain in his expression was answer enough. "I did. Sometimes we could save them, sometimes we couldn't." He drank the remaining wine in his glass. "Was there any other question?"

She shook her head. "Thank you, Dr. Minnick. This has been extremely helpful."

"In that case, I'll go out and help Alex study the feline form." He left swiftly, as if fleeing the memories that had been awakened.

"Barbara, are you really thinking that Eve...?" Shelley asked in a low voice.

Almost absently Barbara said, "I'm exploring avenues, just exploring." She shook herself and really looked at Shelley then. "I learned at the knees of a master," Barbara said, nodding toward Frank, "to look first at the ones with most to gain. Wally certainly, if he thought it meant keeping out of prison. And the ex-wife and her family. Eric may be out of it. Eve certainly had a big stake whether or not she was aware of it."

"But if she was helpless, lashing out more or less blindly... I just can't see it working," Shelley said. "Besides, they didn't know about the wills."

"We don't know that," Barbara said. "We know they make that claim, but we don't know for certain how much Connie told any of them. I'm inclined at this point to agree with you about Eve. A fetal position on the floor, maybe kicking out or something, or else fully responsible, backed up to the bar and reaching for a weapon. Can't have it both ways."

"And that leaves her mother," Frank said bluntly. "She's devoted her life to her daughter's care and she's in her fifties. The girl is twenty-three. Who's going to take care of her in ten years, twenty years?"

Barbara nodded. "That leaves Stephanie Breaux."