Desperate Measures (14 page)

“And I can't just leave Mother. She's eighty-five years old! This has devastated her.” Geneva looked near tears.

“What I suggest,” Frank said, “is that you both return home and let my office handle the details. Mr. Franz, you are the executor of her estate, so nothing can be done without your approval, but there are things that can be started now. We can take care of them. I will make certain that nothing is removed from her house without a receipt and an accounting. I can be on hand when they go into her safe-deposit box, things of that sort. Where will you want the funeral to take place? I can make whatever arrangements must be made.”

Geneva did weep then. “Back home in Medford,” she said, choking on the words. “Near Father. Mother has a plot there.”

Her brother patted her shoulder awkwardly and nodded to Frank. “We'd be grateful if you just took care of things.”

Frank went out to tell Patsy to draw up an agreement that he was to represent the interests of the family members, but he really wanted to give Geneva a little time to compose herself again. He wanted them to talk about Hilde.

When he returned, he said, “My secretary will draw up an official agreement. I'll need to show it to the investigators, you understand, and while we're waiting, she'll bring in some coffee. You say your mother is eighty-five. Is her health generally good?”

That was all it took. He had told Patsy to give him an hour, and during that hour he learned a great deal about Hilde. “She'd get tickets to the Ashland theater, Shakespeare or something, and gather up all five kids, Ron's and mine, and off they'd go. Now and then she would pack up a box of books, novels, poetry, whatever, and bring them down for Mother and me. She was so good to Mother. Little presents now and then, not just her birthdays or holidays. A silk scarf, or new gloves, thoughtful things like that. She loved her family so much.”

Hilde's marriage had been a good one, Geneva said. Her husband had adored her. But when she was diagnosed with diabetes, she swore she would never have children, risk cursing them with that gene. “For several years that seemed to work, but he really wanted a family, and eventually they separated. She wished him well.”

“The last time I saw her,” Frank said when it appeared that Geneva might break into tears again, “she said she still planned to retire in two years and do some traveling. Did she talk much about where she wanted to go?”

“France,” Geneva said. “Especially Provence. And England, the Oxford area. But over Christmas, when I asked her if she had made any real travel plans yet, she blushed a little and said sometimes plans change. I think she might have met a man she was interested in. She wouldn't say another word.”

Her brother was frowning. “Women,” he said to Frank. “That's all they think of. Getting each other married off. Hilde was perfectly contented with her life.”

Geneva shook her head. “Several years ago, on a Friday night, she showed up. I was really surprised because she hadn't called or anything. She said her house was full of silence and emptiness. I think she was very lonely, until recently anyway.”

It rained overnight. When Frank gazed out the kitchen door Saturday morning, he knew he would not work in the garden that day. He decided to take a run out to Opal Creek. He had thought a lot about what Barbara said and his own speculation that perhaps Hilde had seen something or someone she should not have seen. He wanted to look for himself.

He drove past the Marchand orchard slowly, admiring the care that had been taken with the trees and land. Across the road the Bakken orchard was neat, too, but not as meticulous, and without the ground cover. He slowed even more at the Marchand driveway. Then the piece of forest between the two properties. He came to Minick's driveway, which vanished behind trees very soon. Driving on, he passed the small marker surrounded by flowers, passed the school, and continued to The Station, where he stopped.

There were four men at a table inside; they became silent when he entered.

“Morning,” he said as one of the men rose and walked around a counter.

“Help you?” the man said.

“Hope so. You have red wrigglers?”

“Yep.”

“Good. How much?”

“Twelve for a buck.”

“I was thinking more like half a pound,” Frank said.

“That's a lot of fishing.”

“Worm bin. I'm stocking a worm bin. Half a pound is what it'll take. How much?”

“Worm bin? How about fifteen dollars?”

Frank nodded. “But I don't want a tub full of peat moss, or whatever it is you keep them in.”

The counterman laughed. ‘'I'll screen them out. Take a couple of minutes.”

“Fine. I'll have coffee while I wait.”

The counterman motioned toward a carafe. “Help yourself.” He vanished into the rear of the store.

Frank got a cup of coffee, picked up a local tabloid newspaper, and started to read. After a few seconds, he whistled. “God almighty!” he said, glancing at the three men who had remained silent at their table. “Looks like you got yourself a mite of trouble in these parts.”

The newspaper was full of the story of the three deaths and had a signed article about people's suspicions of their cause.

“A curse,” Frank muttered, scanning the article. He looked up and said, “It's like that movie,
The Blair Witch Project.
You fellows see that?”

Two of the three men appeared to be in their fifties, the youngest about thirty; all of them were dressed in jeans and bootswork clothes. Farmers or orchardists.

One of the middle-aged ones said, “That's exactly what I thought.”

“Crap,” the youngest one said.

“I don't know,” the third one said. “It's funny when you begin to add things up, put them together like Gus did.”

A minute later Frank was seated at the table, listening to them recount the series of things that had gone wrong over the past ten years or so. The counterman returned and joined them. Presently their talk turned to Doc Minick and his sick friend, or patient.

“You ever see him without that cap? Mitch Farentino did, and he said you could see plain as day where they cut the horns off. Bet if you shucked his pants, you'd find a scar like that on his tailbone.”

“Yeah, and where do they go for weeks at a time?” The speaker leaned in closer and said, “I think that's when he gets out of control and Doc has to dope him down hard to keep him in line. Or maybe take him out on the desert somewhere and let him howl.”

“If I ever caught him even glancing at my little sister, I'd kill the son of a bitch.”

“Son of the devil,” one of them said. He chuckled. “That's all Gus ever called him—devil freak, or devil spawn. That means son of the devil.”

“Gus was a good man, honest as they come.”

“Yep,” the counterman said. “If he found a ten-dollar bill on the road, he'd put an ad in the paper for the owner to come claim it.”

“He was born a hundred years too late,” the young man said. “He would have fit right in in my great-grandfather's time.”

“Nothing wrong with living with principles,” the counterman said. “That's what Gus did. He had principles and he lived by them.”

“Gus Marchand was a crazy zealot!” the young man said. “And you're all buying into his line of bullshit.” He stood up and pushed his chair back roughly. “I've gotta go.”

Just then the door to the store opened and a large, tall man entered. Dr. Minick, Frank thought, studying him with interest as the group at the table turned into statues. Minick was about Frank's age, with silver-gray hair and a deeply weathered face. He had a slight stoop, but his eyes were fierce, like a young man's angry eyes.

The counterman started to rise, but Minick said, “Don't bother, Benny. I'm not buying anything. I dropped in to tell you to pass the word: Alex has gone to visit friends. He's not up at the house and won't be for quite a spell.”

“Now, Doc, don't get on your high horse. You know I've not got anything against you or Alex.”

“Just pass the word.” He turned and strode out again.

The young man hurried out after him.

Benny stood up the rest of the way and glanced at Frank. “I wet down your worms. You should keep them pretty damp and out of the sun.”

The men at the table were starting to push their chairs back; the social hour was over. Frank paid for his worms, the coffee, and the newspaper and went out to his car, where he could see the spur to the old road. The young man had caught up with Dr. Minick, and they were walking together.

They had been talking about Alex Feldman, Minick's young companion, he thought as he drove home. The one who would not go into the library. Bit by bit he brought to mind what Hilde had said about him, and it was not much. He had led the kids in the Dungeons & Dragons game that got Gus riled up years ago and he didn't go out in public.

It was only a few minutes' walk from the Minick house to the Marchand house. What if Hilde had seen Alex Feldman entering or leaving the woods that separated the houses that day? Where was he now? And where had he been on Thursday night when Hilde died? He began to drive faster. He wanted to get home and call Bailey.

It was a long afternoon. Bailey had come and gone; he had made a show of checking out the security system, but Frank suspected that he had been loitering while searching for an excuse to bring up the subject of father spying on daughter. Bailey did not approve.

He thought about Will Thaxton, then shrugged. So she had a date with an old friend. He knew Will Thaxton and remembered that Barbara had debated the socks off him when they were both still in high school. He doubted very much that anything would come of their getting together again now after so many years. Thaxton had been married twice, and he was only forty. Not a good record as far as Frank was concerned. Meanwhile, whoever Barbara's client was might be feeling neglected; as far as he could tell, there had been no contact.

Several times he started to call her, then walked away from the phone. Usually on Saturday or Sunday they had dinner together. He enjoyed cooking for her and suspected that it was the only decent meal she ate from one weekend to the next, but it would be too awkward now.

When would it stop being awkward? he asked himself then, thinking of the weeks ahead, the months if she had a client charged with murder.

He cursed and moved away from the back door. The plastic tub of worms was on the back porch, and he decided to go buy a goddamn worm bin.

13

On Monday morning
when Frank entered his firm's office, Patsy was waiting for him. More often than not, that meant bad news, but this time she was smiling, showing every tooth in her head.

“Our book came!” she said.

He grinned. “Let's have a look,” he said, motioning toward his office. She followed him, carrying the mail and a large UPS parcel.

Together at his desk they admired the work. It kept changing, Frank thought, bemused. Scraps of notes, pages and pages of testimony, more notes, then chapters… It was ready for the index and the chapter notes. And those inclusions would change it again.

Patsy said she would photocopy the proofs; since she had the disks with the text and the chapter notes and index references, she could get right on it. “I think that program might even be worth the money,” she said as she walked from the office.

A few minutes later, Frank began to scan the first page, then to read it, and after a few minutes he took the whole stack to the other side of the office, sat in a comfortable chair, and read in earnest. Now and then he chuckled or shook his head in renewed disbelief. He read one of Barbara's cross-examinations and said softly, “Damn, she's good!”

He walked home for lunch, then, restless, returned to the office, thinking he might as well finish reading the page proofs. His editor did not want him to make any further changes, but Frank had come across a section or two that could use a little more explanation.

Late that afternoon Milt Hoggarth called. “My motto,” Milt said, “try the office first on the very slight chance that you'll be there. Okay if I drop in around five or so?”

“You have that autopsy report?”

“Yes. But I can't get away until a little after five. Or it can keep until morning.”

‘'I'll wait for you.”

After he hung up and tried to read some more, he found that he could not concentrate on the words any longer. He stalked around his office, out to the wide corridor lined with doors, most of them closed. He went to the lounge and got a cup of coffee, then stopped at Patsy's closed door and tapped.

“Who is it?” she asked. She sounded cross.

“Just me,” he said, opening the door. She was frowning hard, glaring at her monitor.

“Having a problem?” he asked.

“No,” she snapped. Her fingers were poised over the keyboard. “Well, don't put your eyes out with that stuff. I'll wait for Milt and then take off. Leave anytime you want to.”

“In a minute,” she said. Her eyes kept straying from him back to the monitor, and it seemed that any second her fingers would begin to work without her.

Frank retreated.

At ten minutes past five Milt showed up. “Busy day,” he said, sinking into one of the clients' chairs by the desk. He eyed the stacks of papers and grimaced. “Paperwork. God, if they'd just eliminate the paperwork, I'd be a happy man.” He tossed more papers down on the desk. “Doc Steiner's report. There's nothing in it, Frank. She was on a maintenance drug for her diabetes, and she took a fairly mild sleeping pill, a muscle relaxant. That's all. She stopped breathing and her heart stopped beating. No struggle, no puncture marks, no convulsions, no vomit, no mucus, nothing. Doc says it goes like that sometimes with diabetes. She had the muscle relaxant in her blood. Toxicology reports will tell us how much, or if there was anything else, but Doc says not. He doesn't like it any more than you do, but that's how it is. Nothing for us.” He was watching Frank closely. “Unless you give me a reason not to, I'm closing it out.”