Sleight of Hand (13 page)

She paused, and looked down at her hands. "Connie believed Eve had to get out into the world more often, that she should not be allowed to become too reclusive.

Eve's doctor agreed. I was always afraid to subject her to chance encounters. I thought I was doing the right thing."

Abruptly she stood up. "Ms. Holloway, would you like a cup of coffee? It won't take a minute to make."

Barbara nodded and stood up. "May I come with you? Would you mind if I have a look at Eve's garden. I've heard a lot about it."

Stephanie looked surprised. "Of course. That's how Connie began with Eve, just talk about the garden. And then Sonia. She's a professional landscapes" She motioned for Barbara to come along and led the way to the kitchen. It was small, with eating space at one side, and beyond sliding glass doors was a patio and the garden.

Barbara went through the kitchen and out the door.

Half the patio was covered with latticework and vines. On that side was an exercise bicycle, a table and several lounge chairs. It had a concrete slab floor, and already that morning the uncovered half was sizzling hot in the sun. Two bicycles were leaning against the house. Not a gardener, Barbara had to admit that this one was very nice, if a little too neat. It seemed that every plant had its own space surrounded by dark mulch. Not a weed was visible. Stephanie joined her.

"Eve planned it and the girls planted everything, but Eve does most of the real work, and all decisions are hers."

"You can almost see an overall pattern," Barbara said after a moment.

Stephanie glanced over the garden and nodded. "I'm sure she has a pattern in her head. Anyway, back to Connie. After Jay was killed, a detective came to talk to me.

They implied that someone in town was hiding Connie. I think for a time they believed she killed Jay. I told them that was absolute nonsense. She had no reason.

She could have walked out if she wanted to."

"Do you know why she didn't?" Barbara didn't look at Stephanie as she asked, but kept her gaze on the garden as if still trying to figure out the pattern.

"I have no idea," Stephanie said. "We never talked about him. I don't think either of us ever mentioned his name. But she had been healed as early as Christmas, I think.

She changed a lot then, began to laugh and joke with the girls, and by spring she was thinking about future trips. She wasn't sick, and she didn't have to kill him to get away."

She went inside to get their coffee and they sat on the patio as she continued to talk about Connie. "She was very patient and gentle. I could see the pain in her eyes and on her face sometimes when she looked at my daughter, as if she yearned to hold her close, but she never made a motion toward doing it, as if she knew intuitively how to act. And Eve grew to love her."

"Did she ever mention her will, providing for Eve the way she did?"

Stephanie shook her head. "Not a word. I still don't really believe it, and probably I won't until it actually happens. I don't know how she got Jay to agree to go along with it, but it seems again to demonstrate that she was well and strong."

Taking a chance on ending the conversation prematurely, Barbara said, "You know I'm also representing the man accused of murdering Jay Wilkins. Can you think of anyone who might have had reason enough to want to murder him?"

"No. A lot of people disliked him. He was not a likeable person although he could be charming and amusing when he saw an advantage to it. I suppose at one time I could have qualified, but that was a long time ago. There had been no contact between us from the day I walked out of his house."

"I suppose the police asked if you could account for your time on that Saturday night." She said this as casually as she could keep it and it appeared that Stephanie had not taken offense.

"Of course. I was upstairs working on the store books when it began getting dark and the wind started to blow. I came down to check on Eve. She had been riding the exercise bike. She does that every day unless they go out on their bikes. I found her on the floor. I imagine a gust of wind had blown something into her face and she fell off or slid off." She remained composed, but her voice changed subtly, became lower pitched and the words came more slowly, as if it was painful to utter them.

"Eric told you how it is with her?"

"Yes. Ms. Breaux, I'm so sorry."

She closed her eyes for a moment, then said, "Thank you. It can be difficult. It's more difficult for her."

A short time later when Stephanie looked at her watch, Barbara took it as a cue that the conversation was to end. She stood up and said, "Thank you for giving me this time. Later, if the police persist in trying to make Connie's death a suicide will you give me a formal statement to the effect that in the last months Connie was hopeful and making future plans?"

"Of course. They must not label it a suicide. That's too heavy a burden for her family. And it isn't true."

After seeing Barbara out, Stephanie returned to the patio to pick up the cups, but instead she sank into one of the chairs and closed her eyes as a sharp memory of one of her last meetings with Connie surged into awareness.

Adele had called to say Connie wanted to have Stephanie join her and Adele at lunch. She had resisted. "Why? We have nothing to talk about."

Adele had snorted. "Don't kid yourself. The most important person in your life is Eve, and more and more that's what Eve is becoming to Connie. The most important person in her life. That's what you have in common."

Connie and Adele were already seated when Stephanie entered the Bon Marche restaurant a week later. It had been awkward, with nothing but the weather to talk about for what had seemed a very long time. Then over salads, Connie had said,

"There's something I wanted to bring up, but..." She had not taken a bite, just moved salad greens around on her plate a little. She picked up a roll and started to crumble it, put it down almost guiltily and, gazing out the window at rain, she had said, "There's something I'd like to do, but only if it's okay with you."

What she was proposing came out in a rush then, a studio for Eve, sharing Reggie's studio perhaps, supplies, a worktable, an easel. But most of all a mentor, someone to guide her, to help her realize how very good her art was, to help her develop her own style even more than she had done alone, to teach her how to mount her art, ready it for display, arrange gallery space, a show...

What Stephanie remembered most clearly was Connie's intensity, her passion, what had appeared to be almost a desperate need to be allowed to do this for Eve.

"I'll find someone who understands, who won't try to impose her own will on Eve, who will recognize her talent and encourage her. I used to know artists... If not someone from here, then someone from San Francisco, or New York, anywhere. It has to be exactly the right person."

She had stopped abruptly. "She doesn't have to know I'm doing it," she had said after a moment, picking up the ruined roll again, adding to the scattered crumbs on the table. "I mean... I don't want to seem like I'm trying to take over, take charge, trying to take your place."

But she was, Stephanie had thought then, and she would. Eve, totally dependent on her mother, would gradually transfer that dependency to Connie, her benefactor, with her overwhelming need to mother another woman's child. She studied the younger woman's face and knew that Connie was as aware as she was of the implications, and Connie was as helpless as she was to resist. She could not refuse such an offer, and Connie could not step back.

Stephanie knew without a doubt that she would risk everything, life itself, and worse, even risk losing her daughter if it added to Eve's chances of achieving a decent life, and in that moment she realized that the same thing could be said about Connie.

Chapter 22

"Just more of the same, nowheresville," Barbara told her crew on Monday morning.

"Wally's case hasn't moved an inch, and Hoggarth's been put in charge of the Connie Wilkins business. He's going along with suicide, of course."

"He's a good man," Frank said. "He goes where the evidence takes him."

"Maybe. That hasn't always been my experience with him." She turned toward Bailey who was slouched down in his chair with a coffee cup precariously balanced on the arm of it. "I want a three-hour period when Jay Wilkins couldn't account for his time with credit card purchases, receipts or real estate agents."

"You can't make a case against him simply by wanting to," Frank said.

"Three hours," she repeated. "That's about how long it would take to drive from Florence to the Bandon area and back to Florence. No one can account for every minute of a whole weekend and on into the next week. But he did apparently. It stinks."

"Three hours," Bailey muttered. "Right. Martial arts guy— Howard Steinman —full report or shortcut?"

"Short."

"He's a nut. Fully accounted for that whole weekend."

Shelley nodded. "He lives in his own fantasy world. I imagine he sees himself as a Samurai or Ninja warrior or something. He's very soulful," she said gravely. "Very sensitive. He told me so. And he adored Connie Wilkins, worshipped her. When they went out for coffee on Friday, the last day of the class, she was mournful, almost tearful that this was the end for them. She told him to get on with life, to put her out of mind, forget her. He said it was not just a casual goodbye, it was
The
Long Goodbye
. Lots of emphasis."

Shelley thought a moment, then said, "He has a smattering of Eastern philosophy, talks about wholeness, oneness, finding oneself in the infinite void. And suicide is the ultimate statement of fearless selfhood."

"Good God!" Barbara muttered. "Did he cry on your shoulder, want to hold your hand?"

"Close," Shelley said. "But he's also very brave, he told me that, too. He'll suffer this loss bravely. She would have wanted him to be as brave as she was."

Bailey was gazing at her aghast. He got up to refill his cup. "It's a good thing you're the one who had to talk to the spook."

"You would have loved him to death," Shelley said. She went on with her report.

"Dr. Sugarman has a cabin out near Bandon. She never loaned her key to anyone, and she was at the hospital or on call that whole weekend, so she couldn't have found the time to drive Connie over. She was pretty annoyed with the detectives who kept hinting that she and others had secreted Connie away. They were not friends, but had a patient-doctor relationship, period. She's really sore because they got a search warrant to go through the cabin and she had to take time off to watch.

They didn't find a thing. She gave me a list of Connie's original medications, dosages and such, and her own prescriptions. Dr. Minnick helped me sort them all out."

"Did you get her statement?"

"I taped it. I'll transcribe it and take it back for her to edit. She says exactly what's on her mind, but it wouldn't do for a formal statement, we both agreed." She dimpled saying this, and Barbara could imagine how Joan Sugarman had expressed her annoyance.

"Finally," Shelley said, "I met with Eric Wilkins at the big house and got a look at Jay Wilkins's medications. High blood pressure, high cholesterol, aspirin therapy and sleeping pills. The same doctor treated him and his wife until she switched to Dr.

Sugarman."

"Good work," Barbara said. "Did Dr. Minnick go into the effects of mixing those drugs on Connie's list?"

"Yes. He was surprised, for instance, that she was still on muscle relaxants as well as pretty strong sleeping pills. He said the sleeping medication likely was no longer effective, that after a time the patient develops a tolerance and has to stop or keep increasing the strength, but there it still was. He also said that she must have been numb in the head from all that stuff, unable to read a complete sentence, or think through a complete idea. It's all in there." She pointed to a folder she had placed on the table.

"Great."

"Almost forgot," Bailey said when Shelley leaned back, finished. He reached into his duffel bag to get Wally's videocassettes.

"Bailey, for God's sake, hold that cup or put it on the table," Barbara snapped.

He looked at her, then at the cup in surprise, but he put it on the table, and tossed the cassettes down. "And the two copies," he said, adding them. "We watched them over the weekend. The guy's good, real good. It's all a matter of distraction, just little distractions, enough to divert attention. Like the chair nearly knocked over. While two guys grab and steady it, he's picking a third guy's pocket. Really neat."

"That's it," Barbara said suddenly. "Distraction. That's what the invitation was all about, to give Wally something to distract him from whatever he noticed about Jay Wilkins that night. Give him something bigger to think about, like going to prison."

"What are you talking about?" Shelley asked.

"The reason Jay Wilkins asked Wally and Meg to his house for drinks. The reason he planted the boat on Wally. A distraction."

"Thirty thousand smackeroos," Bailey said. "Not exactly a little distraction."

"Connie Wilkins's estate will come to eight million," Barbara said softly, "and he expected first to get it all, and then at least half of it. And no doubt he fully expected to recover the boat." She noticed with satisfaction that Frank's skeptical expression had changed to a very thoughtful one.

When she was alone again Barbara pulled open the folder with Wally and Meg's minute-by-minute account of their meeting with Jay at the casino. She made notes as she read through it. At nine-thirty or so the rain had stopped and they'd decided to go to the casino. But Jay must have been out in the rain before it stopped, and his pant legs were still damp when Meg met him at about twenty minutes after ten.

The drive from Bandon to Florence would take about an hour and twenty minutes.

Six-thirty on, she thought grimly. He had checked in at his hotel at about six-thirty, changed clothes and left again. Where had he been from then until twenty minutes after ten? She thought of what Frank had said, she couldn't make a case against him simply because she wanted to. "But maybe I can," she told herself. "Maybe I can."

She started to close the folder again, then stopped and jotted: arthritic hand, swollen.

But he had not been on anti-inflammatory medication, or pain killers.

Barbara left the office early that day after telling Maria to take off whenever she wanted to. "I'm going for a long walk," she said. "Too much sitting around spreads the human body in unsightly ways."

Maria laughed and waved goodbye, and Barbara headed to a supermarket for salad greens, then drove to the riverside park. It was a warm day, a touch too warm in the sun, but pleasant in the shade. The river flashed silver and black. Birds skimmed the surface of the water they way they did. There were kayaks, a flotilla of inner tubes with kids, not too many people on the bike path, a few romping dogs that were supposed to be kept on leashes, picnickers, kids at play. Everything was normal, placid, as it should be on a summer day. And her head remained as empty as she walked as it had been when she started.

There was no good place to launch anything like a defense. Testimonials, references by distant people, the videos. And denial. Period. She frowned and sat down on a bench. "That damn boat," she muttered. That goddamned boat. It kept coming back to that pretty little gold barge.

A canoe passed by with three young men and not one of them wearing a life jacket.

Fall in and drown, she thought darkly at them. It happened every year in spite of all warnings. Show how brave and daring you can be, fall out, get swept away, drown.

Help out the gene pool, get rid of the stupids.

She started to walk again, and then thought bitterly that she might solve the mystery of Connie Wilkins's death, but it was the wrong murder.

She reached her car, where the salad greens were wilting in the heat, and she headed for Darren's house, telling herself firmly that she was done with thinking for the day.