Death Qualified (16 page)

    They were all saying hello and how are you and such and Nell came to Jessie and kissed her cheek, and then put several books on a table near her. Jessie moved binoculars to make room for the books.

    Doc brought Barbara's drink, and wine for Nell. He took Jessie's glass for a refill. Clive and Frank were chatting about low water in the lake for this time of year. The good life, Barbara thought, happy hour among the nice people. Why Doc? To her eyes he was a tired, middle-aged man who could use a tranquilizer. And he was married to a woman who spent her days in a wheelchair. Jessie was fumbling in a large bag attached to her wheelchair.

    She brought out a Polaroid camera and asked Barbara if she minded; she liked to keep a photo album of events, Jessie said.

    Nell kept glancing at her watch, and after no more than five minutes, she finished her wine and stood up.

    "I have to go. I promised the kids dinner would be ready the minute they walked in."

    Clive was already on his feet. She waved him down.

    "You stay and talk. Our dinner will be hot dogs and ham burgers." At the disappointed look on his face, she said, "You would hate it. And the kids will be cranky and worn out. You know how it is when you've been swimming all afternoon. Early dinner, early baths, early bed. Why don't you come over tomorrow night? I'll cook something real."

    "Let me drive you home," he said.

    She shook her head.

    "That would be supremely silly, now, wouldn't it? It's five minutes. And I like the walk."

    She picked up the books she had separated out, waved to them all, and left.

    There was silence until she was out of sight around the end of the deck. As soon as she was gone, Clive looked at Frank.

    "I'd like to talk to you sometime," he said.

    "All right. Nothing wrong with now."

    "Alone."

    Doc sat down in the chair Nell had left and regarded Clive.

    "If it's about what you were telling me earlier, you might as well go ahead. I already told Jessie about it."

    dive's quick glance at Barbara was involuntary, she felt certain, and only a tinge of bitterness damped her amusement when he tried to pretend it had not happened, that he had been adjusting his shoulders or something. She had seen that kind of quick rejection too many times to miss it. What he had said with that reflexive look was that she should find something to do elsewhere and let him and her father get on with it. She settled back more comfortably to watch him with a steadiness that she knew he would find disconcerting.

    "Well," Frank said meditatively, "you can make an appointment and I'll charge regular office-hour fees, or you can unload here and now and keep it on a neighborly basis. Your choice." He finished drinking his wine and looked at Clive over his glasses, his lawyerly look.

    "You should know that anything that concerns the law, I'll probably pass on to Barbara, unless it's too boring to bother her with. After all, she is a partner."

    Barbara did not turn to glare at him over that last comment but continued to watch Clive, who was startled, and that meant, she added to herself, that Nell had not told him much about the long interrogation that afternoon.

    Clive hesitated a moment, then said carefully, "Frank, I think you know how highly we all value you around here.

    We trust you, and we come to you for legal help without reservation. You've done good things for many of us. But I think Nell needs to bring in someone else to defend her." He walked to the table outfitted as a bar and helped himself to bourbon.

    "All right," Frank said.

    "What do you mean? You agree?"

    "No. I mean you stated your opinion, and it's all right for you to have that opinion. Couldn't prevent it in any case."

    dive's face darkened, and abruptly he sat down.

    "Frank, damn it, I'm scared out of my wits for her! She needs someone with great trial experience, someone younger, someone who can stand up to Tony De Angelo I asked around about him. He's a son of a bitch, and he's out to win!"

    Barbara had fused right into the chair. She did not look at Frank because she could not move. She should have known. Maybe she had known from the start and simply had not let herself think about it, had not let herself even breathe the name.

    ".. . no more than most prosecutors .. . faced him before...."

    Her father's mild rejoinder seemed disconnected, words free-floating all around her, and then Clive was saying something else just as disjointed. Gradually she felt that she was separating from the chair, felt that her blood was circulating again, that her skin felt clammy from the breeze coming in from the river, not from any internal system that had gone haywire. She lifted her glass and saw that her hand was not trembling, and although she did not look at him to confirm it, she knew her father was watching her, that she had passed a test of some kind.

    "Barbara is young, and she's faced Tony down, too.

    Several times, in fact."

    "But for something like this, a murder charge...."

    Clive stopped helplessly and turned to Doc, who shrugged.

    Barbara set her glass down and said in a good, crisp voice, her court voice, "Mr. Belloc, when a client hires an attorney, that relationship cannot be put aside by a third person. If Nell decides she wants different counsel, that desire will be sacrosanct, but unless she decides that, no outside influence will be tolerated by our firm. I am fully qualified to defend a client against a charge of murder.

    Actually, Mr. Belloc, the phrase is death qualified. I am fully death qualified. Dad, shall we be on our way now?"

    Jessie protested. They had to stay for dinner, she said, but her insistence was feeble. She had blanched at the phrase death qualified. Doc shook hands with Barbara and studied her face for several seconds before he released her.

    She could tell nothing from his expression. Clive stood up and said nothing at all as she and her father left them.

    Clive, she thought with satisfaction, was mad as hell.

    Tough, she also thought; so was she. Madder maybe.

    As soon as they were out of range, Frank said, "He'll ask around about you now."

    "Let him. Just who does he know to ask, by the way?

    Who'd he want, Clarence Darrow?"

    Frank took her arm, laughing.

    "Let's go out somewhere and eat, somewhere fancy with good wine."

    She nodded. If she asked him why he hadn't brought up Tony's name, she knew he would say something like, why expect anything to change around here? And why indeed?

    In the middle of a dinner that Frank said was excellent and she had hardly tasted, she put down her fork, put her elbows on the table and her chin on her clenched fists, and said, "Okay. On one condition."

    "Which is?"

    "My way, from start to finish. I'm not an assistant; it's my case."

    He put his own fork down and reached across the table.

    "Deal."

    They shook hands, and then she began to eat her lamb brochette, which really was excellent. Before he resumed his meal, Frank said, "Honey, I wouldn't have brought up his name before you were already committed. I want you because I think you can do that girl some good. Understood?"

    She nodded. No vendetta, no revenge, no lingering hatred to cloud her judgment. Like hell, she thought.

    It was after ten when they arrived back at the house.

    She started to pace, but that was too strenuous, her legs reacted with alarm signals of pain, and she had to settle for a chair in the living room. Frank watched her for a short time; when she didn't offer to talk, to ask anything, he yawned and said he was ready to pack it in.

    "Tell me something about Clive first," she said, as if only then remembering him.

    "How long has he been sniffling around Nell like that?"

    Frank laughed.

    "My God, you haven't learned to tone it down a bit, have you? Couple of years, probably. Got divorced about four or five years ago. I filed for him. No big deal, they just decided the grass was greener, that kind of thing. They probably get together over a beer now and then. But it turned him loose, and a few months later, I noticed how the hairs on his arms reacted when Nell came anywhere near him. You also saw that she's not interested, not really. He tells people which trees to cut, you see."

    "He appraised her walnut trees for Lucas. So he knows the value of them."

    "Honey, everyone in this county who knows anything knows that."

    "I guess so. Lucas is the key. Where was he all those years? And where was he from Tuesday until he turned up around here on Saturday? Who are you using for investigations these days?"

    "Bailey Novell, like always."

    "Okay. He's slow, but he can do it. Someone has to find out who ordered that fir tree cut down."

    Frank shook his head.

    "You're jumpier than a flea tonight.

    Why that? Why now?"

    "Because Tony will find out, and if it was Lucas, it's another nail in her coffin. If he can build up a strong enough motive, he may force us to put her on the stand.

    He'd like that."

    Frank remembered that evening on Doc's terrace.

    Slowly he said, "At first she was sure it was Chuck Gilmore." Barbara made an impatient gesture, and he went on.

    "I know. I know. Real stupid, too stupid for him. I think we convinced her of that, and suddenly she jumped up and had to rush home. I think she must have thought at that moment that it might have been Lucas. She just might have had that thought pop into her head."

    "Probably. I sure thought of it. I want Bailey to get on it as soon as he can. And I want the names of everyone connected with whatever that project was that Emil Frobisher was working on. And I want to know if Lucas was gay. What else?" She frowned, staring ahead at nothing, thinking.

    "I want to talk to John Kendricks myself. And the sheriff over in Deschutes County."

    Frank came to her chair and kissed her forehead.

    "And I want to go to bed. Call Bailey in the morning. Your case.

    Give him marching orders."

    "I will. What's the limit. Dad? Do I have to check in for expenses?"

    "No limit. Whatever it takes, and you sure as hell never checked in for expenses in the past. Why start a precedent now?"

    Still staring off at nothing, she didn't really acknowledge his answer, and she didn't hear his "Good night" a second later.

    A bit later, she started, "Do we have a tame.. . ?"

    Belatedly she realized she was alone. The rest of the question had been "renaissance scientist," someone who could understand a project that involved a world-class mathematician, a computer nut, a psychiatrist, and God alone knew who else. She stood up, but instead of going to her room she went out to the terrace and sat down again.

    She watched the lights go off in a few cabins, the rest of them were already dark, and then there were only the dim flickering lights from the parking lot and store. They looked lonesome. The river was invisible; the woods had vanished into solid darkness. And now, alone, almost as if she had waited until the rest of the world was sleeping, she permitted herself to consider Tony De Angelo

    She had not been prepared for a man like Tony intense, passionate, ambitious. His first big case after being hired at the district attorney's office had been her last case, and he had won. She could admit that. He had won. He had left her in bed, left her drowsy, languid with love, and had gone to her client to make a deal. She could admit that now. At the time she had accused her father of initiating the deal, but that had been wrong. It was Tony. And he had used ammunition furnished by her. Now she could even admit that she had been stupid, a blind fool, a romantic who thought that love came wrapped in trust, beribboned with absolute confidence. She had been too stupid not to give trust and confidences, and she had thought she was receiving them in turn.

    She had defeated the state's cases three times out, with Tony prosecuting each one, and she had believed him when he avowed respect and even awe at her skill.

    "You're good," he had said, taking her by the shoulders, gazing intently into her eyes.

    "My God, but you're good!" Soon after that they had become lovers.

    There had been a recklessness about him that she had taken for courage, a ruthless drive that she had taken for strength. Her mother was dying; her father's strength care fully marshaled hour by hour, to be spent daily on his dying wife. Nothing had been left over for her, Barbara, who had felt thrust out, abandoned, and terrified. She had turned her back on them, left them to each other, all either ever needed, and immersed herself in work, in Tony, until much later.

    "What are you talking about?" Tony had yelled at the end.