Death Qualified (44 page)

    "More broth," he said cheerfully.

    "She's almost up to normal again. She asked if you'd go up for a minute," he said to Barbara.

    "If you want to talk to her, do it now, because in a while I'm going to give her a sedative, after she's warmed up. She's exhausted." He went on to the kitchen.

    To Barbara's eyes Nell still looked frozen; her skin was pallid, her lips pale.

    "What happened?" she asked, going to the bed. She sat in the chair Doc had been using.

    "I told you Grampa was trying to tell me something," Nell whispered.

    "It was the tapes. I found the tapes Lucas hid up there." She looked at the doorway nervously, with drew her hand from under the covers, and reached for Barbara's arm. Her hand was cold.

    "I'm afraid those people will find out I have them. They might still be listening

    "Nell, what are you saying? You found tapes where?"

    "On the ledge. In a secret cave. Lucas put them there that day." Her hand clutched Barbara's arm, and her gaze kept going to the door, then the window, back to Barbara.

    "Okay. Do you want me to take care of them for you?"

    Nell nodded.

    "For now. Until we decide what to do with them. Do you have a safe?"

    "Dad has a safe. We'll take care of them. You get some rest now." She patted Nell's hand and stood up.

    "You went to the ledge in the storm?"

    "It was snowing up there. Grampa and Lucas helped me get home. They were up there talking, I told you."

    Barbara regarded her broodingly for another few seconds then said, "Well, don't worry about the tapes to night. I'll take care of them. We'll talk about them tomorrow."

    Doc came into the room with a bowl of steaming broth.

    "Well, look at you, better and better."

    He was a different person, Barbara thought in surprise.

    He was calm and competent, and yet her father had said earlier that Doc looked like hell, that he had a hangover, and Jessie had refused to see anyone at all. Domestic brawling, her father had said. This man feeding Nell soup was the idealized doctor from some golden past, making house calls, caring for the patient personally. Barbara left them.

    She went to Tawna in the living room.

    "Nell said she has some tapes she wants me to put away for her. You know anything about tapes?"

    "She brought them in with her," Tawna said, nodding. "In a plastic bag that she managed to rip open. Tapes went out everywhere. I put them here." She pointed to two stacks of audiotapes on an end table.

    Barbara stared at them, and slowly looked back to Tawna.

    "What did she say when she came in? What did she do?"

    "She was incoherent," Tawna said.

    "Really out of it.

    She didn't even see me, but she was seeing something, or some things. She said something like "You can't have it."

    And then she said, "Finders keepers." When she tore the bag and the tapes came spilling she began to cry, saying, "I'm sorry." Then she passed out, sort of."

    "Could she have taken something? You know, a drug or something? Alcohol?"

    Tawna looked scornful.

    "Nell? Forget it. Besides, she was as cold as a two-day-old corpse." She went to the kitchen.

    "I'll see if there's a bag around to put the tapes in."

    "This is what you call being up the creek without a paddle," Frank said a little later. They were at the table where the tapes were fanned out neatly. Sixteen in all.

    There was not a tape player in the house.

    Barbara regarded the tapes with bafflement and frustration.

    She had reasoned that Lucas had taken something that Brandywine and crew had wanted desperately to find again; she had gambled and said disks to lure Brandywine to Oregon. She had not for a second thought of tapes, regular music tapes that someone had recorded over. Only moments ago she and Mike had sat in his car with the rain beating on the roof and, using his tape deck, had confirmed the fact that a man's voice had been recorded over regular audio music tapes. The sound quality was poor, the rain and wind had made it nearly impossible to hear the words, but there seemed no doubt that Nell had found what Brandywine's detectives had been searching for. Sixteen tapes!

    "I'll go buy a Walkman," Mike said.

    "I'll probably have to go in to Springfield. Take a couple of hours."

    "Buy two," Barbara said.

    "Make it three," her father said.

    "You think I could stand knowing you were both hearing what he had to say while I couldn't?" he demanded when Barbara looked surprised.

    He shook his head.

    "You know it's going to take as long to listen to them as it took to record them. Thirty hours? Thirty-two? Good God!"

    "Mike, are you sure you don't mind? That rain's still pelting down like crazy. I'd go, but I really have to try out the summation."

    "No big deal," he said. He touched one of the tapes.

    "Who could sleep tonight without knowing something about what's on them?"

    "We'll eat when you get back," Frank said.

    "We'll plug in and eat. The American way."

    After Mike had gone, Barbara stood at the table and regarded the tapes.

    "Goddamn it!" she said finally.

    "That sums it up pretty cogently," her father said.

    "I

    suppose this explains why Lucas made that detour to the ledge. Nell finally remembered, or figured it out, or something."

    "And she picked a blizzard and monsoon to wade through to get to them again," Barbara muttered.

    "Smart." Nell must have seen him just after he hid the tapes; when she closed her eyes, he moved out of her line of sight. Probably he had not wanted any connection made between his arrival and the hiding place. She scowled and cursed under her breath. Nell had remembered everything else about that day; why not this? Why not until now?

    Frank turned his back on the tapes with a show of irritation.

    "You ready to try out your summation? Let's go to the living room."

    When they got to the cheerful room with its welcoming fire, he seated himself in one of the overstuffed chairs, a legal pad on his lap.

    "What we used to do," he said with a faraway look on his face, "was have her sit and make notes if she thought of anything to question, and I just sort of moved around, peeking at my crib sheet from time to time. How's that sound?"

    Barbara nodded, her throat too tight to say anything at the moment. She cleared her throat, placed her printout on an end table, and started. After ten minutes, she stopped.

    "It's awful, isn't it?"

    "Well .. . you seem a bit distracted, not concentrating exactly, I'd say."

    "I'm out of my depth, Dad, and that's the truth. I don't know where I stand, where Nell stands. I don't know if she intends to testify. I can't stop her, you know. I'd like to get a continuance, but I doubt Lundgren would agree, not unless Nell is in the hospital, at least. I couldn't talk to her when I went over there; she was babbling like a loony. I don't even know if she intends to put on a psycho act from here on out. Tonight was a good start, if that's what's on her mind. I can't mention those tapes to a soul, not until we know exactly what's on them, and even then, so what? I just don't know what I'm doing anymore."

    "I guess that's what comes of trying to do too many jobs at once," he said thoughtfully.

    "Yep, try to do it all and you don't do anything."

    "Meaning?"

    "Well, it seems to me you've taken on a hell of a lot of hats. Judge, jury, prosecutor, investigator, defense attorney. Any one of them is a full-time job, in my experience."

    She contemplated the fire. After several seconds she muttered, "You left out a few. Social reformer, theologian, philosopher, probably a couple of others that will pop into my head any minute now."

    "All the above," he agreed.

    "And what you need for the rest of this trial is the actor's hat. You've done the defense attorney to the hilt. I'm very proud of you, Bobby.

    More than I can say. Assuming Nell will come to her senses, there's nothing you can add to your case. Not a thing. Lundgren won't grant a continuance unless you show cause that you simply don't have. So now you go into your dramatic act. The final scene, then curtain down, and the waiting starts."

    Abruptly she got to her feet.

    "One more prop," she said, and hurried from the living room. She went to the kitchen and ran the water a few seconds while she thought.

    She knew how Tony would come on in court with his summation, filled with righteous indignation, demanding justice and so on. She had seen Tony work too many times not to know how his inflections would be, how his voice would rise and fall, the points he would make about law and the finality of death. All right, she told herself. All right. She knew more than Tony about this case, and she did not know if Nell had killed Lucas or not. That was the point, the only point, she said under her breath. No one knew except the killer, who was just possibly Nell, and Barbara could no longer trust anything Nell said. But she didn't know. Tony had proven nothing. She filled a tall glass and returned with it. Her father had not moved.

    "I'll save the histrionics for tomorrow. Now, where was I?"

    She sipped water, put the glass down, and began to move about the room, summing up the case for her client.

    She went through the many steps thoroughly; now and then she caught a look of surprise on his face, now and then he made a note. Only once did she waver, when a memory surged through her mind. Not in this house, be fore they had this house. She had gone downstairs as a child and had heard his voice raised angrily, and, frightened she had crept to the study door where she saw her mother in a chair with her feet drawn up under her, a legal pad on her lap. Her father had been pacing with great energy, shouting almost, his voice thick with anger. The memory ended there. She didn't know what happened next, what she had done, if she had interrupted, if she had continued to listen. Her mother had been beautiful. Her voice faltered, and she sipped the water, then went on speaking.

    The memory had lasted only a second in real time, but in memory time it had been many minutes; the images it had brought were sharp and clear. Especially her mother's face, so intent on Frank's words, a little frown of concentration creasing her forehead, the tip of a pencil against her lip, pressing in on it.

    When she finished, Frank grunted softly.

    "Okay," he said, and then he looked at the notes he had jotted, and they began to discuss the points he felt needed something.

    She listened carefully to his reasoning, and he listened just as carefully to hers. They were still at it when Mike returned.

    "I bought two Walkmans and a tape player that will make copies," he said, lugging a large box to the living room.

    "And a lot of tapes. I thought it would be a good idea to copy everything and stash the originals in a safe-deposit box, something like that. I mean, if Brandywine's crew thought they had something important enough to hire those detectives and all, well, maybe we shouldn't take chances, either."

    Barbara gave him 'a. grateful look, and Frank patted his shoulder on his way out to put the finishing touches on their dinner and get it on the table. It was almost nine-thirty; they all seemed to realize at the same moment that they were starving.

    "I was thinking," Mike said to Barbara, "we could divide the tapes among us and listen to enough of each one to see if the whole thing needs listening to right now.

    And if anyone finds something particularly interesting, we can play it on the machine so we can all hear it. Okay?"

    "Good. Eventually we might have to hear everything, but that's a good way to start. I 'm glad you were thinking of things like that. I certainly wasn't."

    "Yeah, that's what I thought." Suddenly a distant look came over his face and he said, "Something I have to tell Frank. Be right back." He trotted from the room.

    Barbara began to examine the many tapes. None of them was in a case; none was labeled. Maybe Lucas had removed the cases to save room, she decided, and wished he had thought to put numbers or dates or something on the tapes themselves. Then Frank whooped with laughter in the kitchen, and Mike returned, grinning. He looked like a little boy who knew very well that he had done something marvelous and precocious. A dirty limerick, she thought with resignation. Determinedly, she did not ask.

    Frank had made a casserole that might have been some what overdone and baked potatoes that very definitely were overdone. No one cared. They did not listen to the tapes during dinner, but immediately afterward they began.

    Barbara listened to a disembodied voice that turned out to be deeper than she had expected. She had had no reason to expect anything, but when the deep voice identified himself as Lucas, she started, surprised. He was talking about some time in the past, and she had no way of knowing when the tape had been recorded, or how distant from that time the events he described had happened. Later, she told herself; she rewound that tape and inserted a new one.