Wolf, feeling abashed, had hardly stepped into the warmth again when he saw a blur of blond hair and gold dress, and Monica Collins stood before him trembling with anger.
“Good evening, Monica,” Wolf said uncertainly.
“You bastard,” Monica said, winding up to deliver a blow across his face.
Mark Shea’s hand snaked between them and caught the slap before it could land. In one swift motion, he swung the woman around and swept her from the room. “Now, Monica,” he was saying, “you must behave yourself.”
Wolf stood transfixed, trying to keep an expressionless face. Everyone seemed to have noticed what had happened. He forced himself to move toward Eagle and Jane.
“You all right?” Jane asked, peering closely at him.
Ed Eagle spoke up. “I take it that was Monica Collins.”
“Yes,” Wolf said.
“I don’t think we’ll seek her testimony,” Eagle replied.
“I guess not.” Wolf sighed. “Come on, Jane, I want you to meet some people.”
“Who the hell was
that?
” Jane asked under her breath as they moved into the crowd.
“A friend of Julia’s.”
“Such nice friends.”
On the way home, Jane shook off her shoes and braced her feet against the dashboard. “Whew,” she said. “I never knew you were such a social lion. Was there anybody we didn’t talk to?”
“I hope not,” Wolf replied wearily.
“Who was the tall Indian again?” she asked.
“His name is Ed Eagle.”
“The hotshot lawyer?”
“You’ve heard of him?”
“Yeah, he got that actor, what’s-his-name, off a rape charge in L.A. last year, remember?”
“Right.”
“Is he
your
lawyer?”
“Yes.”
“And he wasn’t very pleased to see me with you tonight, was he?”
“No, but that’s not your fault; it’s mine. I’ve been behaving as if nothing has happened, when one hell of a lot
has
happened. I think it’s just hit me for the first time.”
“Julia’s death?”
“No. I’ve been dealing with that. I’ve just realized that, no matter what happens now, nothing is ever going to be the same again—not my social life, not my work, not the way people look at me or think of me. Nothing.”
“I think maybe you’d better put me on the first plane to L.A. tomorrow morning.”
“You’re right,” he said. “It’s not what I want, but it’s the only thing, under the circumstances.”
“It’s not what I want, either, if that helps.” She put her hand on his.
“It helps,” he said.
E
d Eagle drove north from New York to Poughkeepsie and turned off at the sign for the correctional facility for women. The road was slushy from a snowfall the night before, and light flakes were still coming down. Eagle had visited a lot of such places in his time, and this one was no different from the dozens of other low-security prisons around the country; the only difference was that it held what the courts regarded as hard cases. Apparently the state felt that hard-case women didn’t need high walls, guard towers, and vicious dogs to keep them inside.
He presented his card to the man at the gate, who checked his appointment on a list, then waved him to a parking area. He walked through another gate and to the administrative office.
“I’m here to see Hannah Schlemmer,” he said to a uniformed female clerk.
“Take a seat,” the woman said, then made a phone call.
Eagle sat on a hard chair and waited ten minutes, his overcoat in his lap. Finally another woman in uniform appeared and ushered him to a small, nicely furnished sitting room, with a window overlooking a wooded area at the rear of the prison. The room had obviously been arranged to make visitors feel at ease. A moment later, a strikingly beautiful woman walked into the room. She was tall—five-ten or -eleven, he reckoned—something that had always appealed to him. She was dressed in tight designer jeans and a blue work shirt that had been knotted at the waist, covering ample breasts but revealing a couple of inches of flat belly. Her hair was cut short—dark with highlights of red; her nose was long and straight, her lips full, her eyes large, under lush eyebrows; the lashes were incredibly long. Her skin was perfect, and she wore little makeup.
“Mr. Eagle, I’m Barbara Kennerly,” she said, sticking out a hand. Her grip was firm and frank.
His own hand did not swallow hers, the way it did with most women. “What happened to Hannah Schlemmer?” he asked.
“I’ve just had it changed; the system here hasn’t quite caught up with the courts. Won’t you sit down?” She might have been an elegant housewife entertaining a guest in her home, instead of a convicted felon.
Eagle took a comfortable chair; Barbara took the sofa.
“Would you like a cigarette?” she asked.
“Thank you, I don’t smoke.”
She smiled a little. “I’ve given it up, myself, but cigarettes are legal tender here, so I always keep a pack in my pocket.”
Eagle couldn’t imagine how she could squeeze a nickel into one of her pockets, let alone a pack of cigarettes.
“How can I help you?” she asked.
“I’m a lawyer, Miss…Kennerly, and—”
“I know who you are, Mr. Eagle; I read the papers.”
“I’m representing Mr. Wolf Willett—your sister, Miriam’s, husband. I’m trying to get to the bottom of what happened to her.”
She laughed again, something she seemed to do easily. “You mean Julia. She changed her name long before I did.”
“Yes, Julia.”
“Has Mr. Willett been charged with anything in connection with Julia’s death?”
“No. As I say, I’m just trying to get to the bottom of the murders.”
“You’re not exactly a private detective, Mr. Eagle. If Mr. Willett has hired you, it must be for a defense.”
“There is no charge to answer at the moment.”
“You’re just being prepared, in case there is?”
“I don’t anticipate a charge.” He was not exactly controlling this conversation.
“I’m impressed that you came all this way yourself, when you could have sent somebody,” she said, looking him in the eye. “Frankly, if I’m going to talk with you, I want to know what you’re up to.”
Eagle sighed. “All right, I’ll be frank with you. Wolf Willett had nothing to do with the murders—I feel certain of that—but it’s possible that the New Mexico authorities might, if they can’t solve the case, try to make a victim of him.”
“That’s close enough to the truth, I guess,” Barbara said. “You’re here to protect your client, and you hope I can somehow help you.”
“I’m here to find out the truth, because I believe the truth will vindicate my client,” Eagle said.
“Forgive me if I sound cynical, Mr. Eagle; prison does that to you. You’re always looking for people’s hidden motives, especially lawyers’.” She shrugged. “All right, I’ll tell you whatever I can. The truth can’t harm me.”
“Were you and Julia close?”
“I hadn’t seen her for a couple of years when she was killed.”
“What were the circumstances the last time you saw her?”
“She was in jail, at Riker’s Island. She wanted money for a lawyer.”
“Did you give it to her?”
“I managed to scrape up a couple of thousand. I didn’t want my husband to know.”
“Had you been close before that?”
Barbara Kennerly looked out the window. “I don’t know,” she said. “There were times when I thought we were close, but I learned that you could never tell what Julia was thinking. She was like that from childhood.”
“Was Julia older than you?”
“Yes, by two years.”
“And you grew up in Cleveland?”
“Yes. Daddy had a pawnshop on the wrong side of the tracks. Tough neighborhood. He tried to protect us from it, but Julia didn’t want protecting; she was always fascinated by the slick guys and fast talkers. I was the straight arrow—good grades in school, all that. It’s ironic that I ended up in prison, just like Julia.”
“Did Julia have anything to do with that?”
“No. I was married to a man who had a diamond distribution business on West Forty-seventh Street in New York. I fell in love with another man—
really
in love, head over heels—and he convinced me that the only way we
were ever going to be together was to rob my husband and get out. I got him into Murray’s office—there was quite an elaborate security system—and the minute he got his hands on the diamonds, he shot Murray. I was stunned. He forced me to go with him. They caught up with us in Florida, just as I was about to try to sneak out and turn myself in.”
“What happened then?”
“I turned state’s evidence, pled to involuntary manslaughter. I got five to eight; I’m up for parole next year.”
“And the man?”
“He got life. Broke out of prison last year; they still haven’t caught him. That’s partly why I changed my name; I don’t want him
ever
to find me.”
“After you saw Julia at Riker’s Island, did you ever hear from her again?”
“Yes. She’d write a postcard now and then. When she got married to Wolf Willett, she sent me a phone number, and I called her a couple of times. She was going to help me when I got out.” She laughed. “That’s funny. Julia was always in trouble, always came to me for money. Now the tables were going to be turned. I, the conventional married Jewish lady, stable home and all that, needing the help of my sister with the criminal past.”
“Did you ever get the feeling that Julia was working some sort of con with Willett?”
“No. If anything, she seemed to have changed. Whenever I talked to her, she always seemed happy as a clam. I guess she got the things honestly—more or less—that she had been trying to get dishonestly for all those years.”
“’More or less’?”
“Oh, I think Julia would always have conned people to
get what she wanted. But lots of women do that to marry the right man.”
“Did she love him, do you think?”
Barbara frowned. “That might be stretching things a little far. Julia mostly loved herself, but she seemed to be working at being a wife when I talked to her. I think she was trying to live some sort of normal life.” She laughed again. “Mind you, it was normal life with houses in Bel Air and Santa Fe—hot and cold running Mercedes, that sort of thing. Julia could get used to that—for a while, anyway. Nothing and nobody ever lasted very long with Julia. She always had ants in her pants.”
“Do you think that Julia had any friends in L.A. from her old life?”
Barbara shook her head. “I think she made the break. The last thing she would have wanted was somebody from her past turning up.”
“From what I read in the
New York Times
, she didn’t break from her past right away when she moved to Los Angeles. There was mention of her making a porno movie.”
“She was flat broke. She told me about it.”
“That would open her up to blackmail, wouldn’t it?”
“It never did. She would have told me. She used yet another name, of course.”
“Barbara, something I don’t understand.”
“What’s that?”
“When the
Times
reporter was up here to see you, you told him about Julia’s past. Why would you do that, when it might threaten her new position in life at a time when she was going to help you?”
Barbara sighed. “He’d reported on my case when I was convicted, and he said he wanted to do a book about me,
something that might be made into a movie. He’d made a couple of trips up here, and he was coming again. I heard about Julia on the news the night before, and, well, I thought it couldn’t hurt her for me to tell him, and it might help me by keeping him interested. I certainly didn’t expect it to turn up in the paper the next day. I guess I was naive.”
“Is he going ahead with the book?”
“Well, as I figured, when he heard who Julia was married to, he got all excited. He’s taking it to publishers now, he says. Thing is, I don’t think I want the book anymore, what with my parole coming up. I think I’d rather just fade into the sunset, get a job somewhere.”
“Do you have any skills?”
“I was a secretary before I married, and during the first couple of years I helped Murray with the business. I know how to run an office—word processing, bookkeeping, all that. And I worked in a restaurant when I was single.”
“Is there anything else you can think of that might shed any light on Julia’s murder? Was there anybody who might want to kill her? Some enemy from the old days, maybe?”
Barbara looked thoughtful. “I didn’t know a lot of the details of Julia’s life, but I can’t think anybody would want to kill her. She had a way of making people like her—even when she’d done them wrong. Daddy helped her until the day he died—even left her some money—and God knows, she’d made his life hell since she was twelve.”
Eagle stood up. “Well, I’d better be going.” He produced a card. “If you think of anything else, I’d appreciate a call—collect, of course.” He felt sorry for the woman, and he was attracted to her. “And if I can help, let me know.”
She accepted the card. “Thanks, but I don’t know if I’ll get that far west.”
“I know a few people in the East, too.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
Eagle shook her hand again. “Thank you, Barbara, for your help.”
“Not at all. If I ever need a lawyer, I’ll call you.”
He was at the point of telling her to call him anyway, but he stopped himself. Now that he was middle-aged, he was trying not to follow his cock around quite so much. “Goodbye, then, and good luck.”
“Thanks.” She gave him her large, strong hand again.
Driving back to New York, he tried to forget how she had looked in those jeans, about the full breasts under the work shirt. It wasn’t easy.
He’d asked her every question he could think of, but the answers hadn’t helped much. He wondered for a moment if there was something she hadn’t told him, but he discounted that. He was a damned good reader of people, and he reckoned she had been open with him.