“Look, Babs,” Eagle said, trying to control himself, “I can’t back this up—not yet, anyway—but I’d be willing to bet that one of two people killed Julia, Grafton, and Jack Tinney. Probably Mark Shea, too. One of my candidates is Monica Collins, but my favorite is your little sister, Leah.”
The next voice was a lot like Barbara’s, but it came from behind them. “That’s not a bad guess.”
The three of them turned and looked toward the door. A woman stood there holding what appeared to Wolf to be his pistol.
“Not a terrific guess,” she said, “but not bad.”
Wolf was the first to speak. His voice, when it came out, was cracked and hoarse and weak. “Julia,” he said.
Y
ou mean Leah, don’t you?” Eagle said, looking the tall woman up and down. He giggled.
“No,” said Barbara, slumping back in her chair, “it’s Julia.”
“That was going to be my next guess,” Eagle said.
“I don’t know why you think this is funny!” Barbara nearly shouted. “She’s got a gun!”
“I don’t know, either,” Eagle said. “It shouldn’t be funny, but it is.”
Wolf was no longer amused, but simply numb. He sat unmoving in the chair and stared at his wife. “Where the hell have you been?” he asked, as if she’d merely stayed out all night.
Monica Collins stepped into the room. “At my house, mostly,” she said.
Keeping the gun out in front of her, Julia walked to Wolf’s chair, took him by the arm, stood him up, and seated him next to Eagle on the sofa. Then she sat down in the
chair. “Now,” she said, looking at her watch, “you should just about be over the giggles. I think maybe Wolf already is.”
“Pardon?” Eagle said. He seemed to be placidly accepting the presence of the gun.
“It’s the effect of Mark’s drug,” she replied.
“What drug?” Wolf asked.
“The name is too long for me to handle,” Julia said, crossing her legs, “but it very quickly instills a euphoria, followed by a kind of malleability. It’s a hypnotic, you see. Mark found out about it in Mexico, and he used it with some of his patients. I don’t think the A.M.A. would have approved, but it helped him hypnotize patients quickly.” She looked at Barbara. “You don’t seem too euphoric, Sis,” she said, looking at Barbara’s glass. “What are you drinking?”
“Vodka,” Barbara replied. “I’m beginning to feel a little funny, too.”
“You damn well should be. I spiked every bottle.”
“So Leah was the one in bed with Grafton and Jack,” Eagle said.
“Right, Mr. Eagle; you really do have a quick mind, don’t you?”
“Not quick enough,” Eagle said. He wasn’t laughing anymore.
“What happened that night?” Wolf asked, not sure he wanted to know the answer. He wanted to run from the house, but he didn’t seem able to marshal the energy.
“You don’t remember any of it?” Julia asked.
“No,” Wolf replied.
“Well, Wolf, you were the life of the party. Mark brought the drug over, and everybody had some, except Mark and me. Mark felt that, as a control, he shouldn’t take it, and I just tossed my dose. Everybody else was flying, though.”
“Please tell me what happened,” Wolf said. His own
voice seemed to him to be coming from somewhere else in the room.
“Well, with only a little nudging from me, both Grafton and Jack got interested in Leah, and they adjourned to a bedroom.”
“What were Grafton and Leah doing here?” Barbara asked.
“Oh, Grafton—that little shit—and Leah turned up in L.A. not long after he’d broken jail; he’d looked up Leah in New York and snowed her into coming with him. They rang me up and invited me to lunch; Jimmy had this thing about wanting to write a movie, and he wanted to meet Wolf. I fixed that, and low and behold, Jimmy got his movie contract. But that wasn’t enough for Jimmy Grafton. He started to hit on me and ask a lot of questions about what Wolf was worth.”
“That sounds like Jimmy,” Barbara said. “Nothing was ever enough for him.”
“Right, sweetie,” Julia said. “He was getting to be a real pain in the ass, but I played along with him.”
“Where was Leah supposed to be in all this?” Barbara asked.
“In the lurch, I guess. I figured she deserved it, if she was stupid enough to be taken in by somebody like Jimmy Grafton.”
“I was stupid enough to be taken in by Jimmy Grafton,” Barbara said.
“Poor baby,” Julia replied soothingly. “You sure were, and you had to pay for it. So it was Leah’s turn. I’m sure she would have learned something from the experience.”
“Whose idea was stealing the money?” Eagle asked.
“Mine,” she replied, “but I let Jimmy think it was his. He got us passports, and we were all ready to go, he thought.”
“You used my name,” Barbara said.
“A whimsical touch,” Julia said. Then she frowned. “How did you know about that?”
Barbara said nothing.
“When did you and the others come to Santa Fe?” Wolf asked.
“Right after you did. I chartered a Lear out of Van Nuys. We ran into Jack at the airport—he was just coming back from Puerto Vallarta, drunk, so I got him aboard, too. I couldn’t let him get away after seeing me with Leah and Grafton, even if he was drunk.”
“So what happened that night?” Eagle asked. “You keep changing the subject.” His voice was very quiet now.
“Well, when the initial effects of the drug had passed, Mark left, the Three Mouseketeers hopped into bed, and I hypnotized Wolf. It was easy, just like Mark said it would be. That seemed a good time to finish the evening.”
“Who finished it?” Wolf asked.
“Baby, I tried to get you to do it, but even hypnotized, you couldn’t handle it; you kept dropping that beautiful shotgun. It’s like everything else; you want something done properly, you have to do it yourself. So I went down to the guest bedroom and started shooting. I got Jimmy first—he was the most dangerous—then Leah. Jack just stood up in bed with his back to the wall and stared at me, glassy-eyed, like a stuffed teddy bear, while I reloaded and put one into him. Then I put Wolf to bed, so he’d be there when Maria found the bodies the next morning. I wanted him alive to take the blame.”
“Why, Julia, why?” Wolf asked pathetically.
“Had to be done,” Julia said, “once Jimmy and Leah walked in and screwed everything up. You see, I was still wanted in New York for a little thing I got involved in there, and Leah knew it. That meant Jimmy Grafton knew it, too, so I had to get everybody together and finish it all at once. Then I was free to fly.”
“So why didn’t you fly?” Eagle asked. “You had the
money; everybody was dead but Wolf.”
“Things didn’t go quite the way I’d planned,” Julia said. “First, Wolf wakes up the next morning and, none the wiser, gets in his airplane and takes off for L.A. Then the local law identifies Jimmy and Leah as Wolf and me.
That
was one thing I hadn’t planned on, but at least it made me dead, and that was wonderful.”
“So
then
why didn’t you run?” Barbara asked.
“I was worried about Mark,” Julia replied. “He could put me on the scene that night. But Mark turned out to be surprisingly helpful—for a while, at least. When Wolf turned up at Mark’s place—I was there that night—he hypnotized Wolf, and when he heard Wolf’s version of events, he simply erased those thoughts from his memory. Mark was acting out of kindness, I think, but even though Wolf’s story was pretty garbled, once Mark heard what he had to say under hypnosis, Mark became a danger to me. Not at first, but after a while, when he started to figure things out and get attacks of conscience. Then Mark had to go.”
“You’re breathtaking, Julia,” Eagle said.
“Why, thank you, Mr. Eagle,” Julia said, beaming at him.
“So why didn’t you run after you killed Mark?”
“Well, I thought it would be a good idea if I stuck around until Wolf was tried. He’d be convicted, of course, and then I could travel wherever I wanted, secure in the knowledge that the police wouldn’t be looking for anybody else. I moved in with Monica, and poor sweet Monica believed me when I told her that Wolf had killed everybody else and wanted to kill me. She was very helpful indeed.”
“Julia,” Monica said, her voice trembling, “how could you do that to me?”
“Oh, shut up, Monica,” Julia replied. “I’ll get to you in a minute.” Monica was standing behind the sofa now.
“Amazing,” Eagle said.
She looked at Eagle. “But you turned up, counselor,” she said bitterly, “and I began to think that you might get Wolf off.”
“Is that when you tried to hire somebody to kill Wolf?”
“No,” Julia said, “that was dear old Monica’s doing.”
“I’m puzzled,” Wolf said. “Does Monica have a flower tattoo like yours and Barbara’s?”
“Yes, she does,” Julia said. “For some months, now; Monica loves me so, but she is incredibly stupid.”
“I’m sorry, Julia,” Monica said. “I was only trying to help.”
Julia turned and looked at the blond. “Monica, I told you to shut up.” Julia raised Wolf’s pistol and casually fired a shot into the woman’s chest. Monica flew backward and disappeared behind the sofa.
Now it became very quiet in the room.
Eagle spoke first. “You’re not planning to leave anybody alive here, are you, Julia?”
“That’s right, Mr. Eagle, except for my little sister; she’s coming with me. But there’s something I want to know first. Where’s the money? It isn’t in the Cayman account, and they wouldn’t tell me where it had gone.”
“It’s back where it belongs, Julia,” Eagle said. “You waited too long to run.”
Julia glared at the lawyer. “I guess you had something to do with that, huh?”
“It was my pleasure,” Eagle said.
She turned to Wolf. “Listen to me, Wolf. You’re very relaxed, and you want to go to sleep now. Very relaxed; just let your head fall. That’s it, just go to sleep.”
Wolf didn’t try to fight it; sleep began to swim up at him. He fell down a deep well.
Eagle tried to move, but couldn’t. Since Julia had shot
Monica Collins, he had been very frightened, but he remained perfectly calm. It must be the effect of the drug, he thought. Still, his mind was clear.
Julia smiled. “Now Eagle goes. Then poor Wolf, terribly upset at what he’s done, puts one in his brain. A neat murder-suicide, don’t you think? And I don’t even have to wait around for him to be tried. I think the authorities will buy it, since Wolf already has an undeserved reputation for blowing people away. I go public, explain to the police that I’ve been hiding because I was afraid Wolf would try to kill me, and suddenly I’m a rich widow. Wherever the money is, it’s mine, and so are this house and the one in Bel Air and all the rights to Wolf’s and Jack’s films. Pretty neat, huh?”
Eagle waited with interest for Barbara’s reply.
“I need a cigarette,” Barbara said, reaching for her handbag. She rummaged around inside.
“After that,” Julia said to Barbara, “it’s you and me, babe. We can go anywhere we like.” She stood up and pointed the pistol at Eagle.
“Julia,” Barbara said.
Julia stopped and looked at her.
“Do you really think that I would sit here and watch you kill everybody, then just follow you off into the sunset? I wouldn’t go to the toilet with you.”
Eagle liked that answer.
“Well, sweetie,” Julia said, swinging the gun around to point at Barbara, “I’m sorry you feel that way, but this is the only alternative.”
“Wrong,” Barbara said, her hand still in the pocketbook. The handbag exploded, and Julia flew backward into the big leather chair, which skidded a few feet, then came to rest against the paneling. The middle of her chest was a mess.
“Close work,” Eagle said admiringly. “That little short-
barreled thing is good for close work. I sure am glad I didn’t take it away from you.”
Barbara removed the smoking revolver from her handbag and placed it on the coffee table, then fell back in her chair, her hands over her face. “Please tell me there was nothing else I could do,” she said.
Eagle still could not make his body move, but he couldn’t take his eyes off Julia, either. Julia still held the pistol, and Eagle watched with rapt attention as she began to raise it again. “Barbara,” he said.
“Ed, please give me a minute,” she replied her face still in her hands. “I’ve just killed my sister.”
“Not quite,” Eagle replied. Julia had the pistol up now and pointed at Barbara. “Please shoot her again,” Eagle said, with all the urgency he could muster.
Barbara took her hands away from her face as Julia fired. The chair next to Barbara’s head exploded, and she jumped a foot.
Julia’s pistol clattered onto the hearth. She looked at Eagle with something like hatred, then her eyes rolled back in her head.
“Never mind,” Eagle said.
Barbara sat trembling in her chair for a moment. “Ed,” she said finally, “you’re stoned out of your mind, aren’t you?”
“I believe I am,” Eagle agreed. “Aren’t you?”
“No.” She sighed. “Julia said she spiked every bottle, but she didn’t get to the Stolichnaya in the refrigerator.”
“Oh,” Eagle said.
Wolf woke up on the sofa in the study, feeling a little fuzzy, but refreshed. There was a murmur of voices in the house. He sat up and looked over the back of the sofa. There was a
lump of some sort on the floor with a sheet over it. He got his feet on the floor, then tried to stand up, but he didn’t make it the first time; he simply wobbled and sat down heavily again.
From the sitting position, he could see another lump in the chair next to him, again with a sheet covering it. There was a puddle of blood on the hearth next to the chair. The night began to come back to him.
“Wolf?” Eagle’s voice came from the doorway.
Wolf turned and looked at him. “What happened?” he asked.
“What’s the last thing you remember?”
Wolf thought. “I remember Julia. And we were laughing a lot. I can’t remember why. I must have dreamed Julia.”
Eagle came and sat down next to him. “It wasn’t a dream,” he said. “More of a nightmare.”
Wolf nodded at the chair. “Is that Julia?”