Death Qualified (52 page)

    After a while Frank murmured, "Too hard to decide what to keep, what to file away."

    "What are you talking about?" She did not open her eyes

    "Your cross-examinations. Some of them have to go in the book, of course, but which ones is giving me a problem.

    I want them all."

    "You won't when you think of the transcription costs."

    "Ah, won't be a big problem. Taped just about everything, you know." '" "You what?" Now she sat up straight and stared at him.

    "You didn't! Lundgren will have your head if he finds out."

    "I reckon I don't aim to tell him," he said cheerfully.

    "Can't say I noticed a budding relationship forming between you and old ice face either. Did I ever tell you about August Tremaine and the time he had his secretary take down everything in shorthand?" He chuckled and launched the story without waiting for an answer.

    "So anyway," he said presently, "there they were with hundreds and hundreds of pages of shorthand notes, and she started to type them up for him. But funny thing was, she didn't know shorthand, you see. For four years he'd been dictating letters, you know, party of the first part, all that, and she'd been typing up beautiful letters, literate as hell. Old Gus couldn't have dictated those letters if his life depended on it, and he was giving himself pats that could have broken his arm, but he couldn't admit that the letters weren't his. Not old Gus. So when the girl began to transcribe her notes, she was filled with creative energy Shakespeare would have envied. The people began to talk in rhymes, in iambic pentameter, in Faulknerian sentences, and it was lovely. Oh, it was lovely."

    "Did any of it touch upon the trial at all?" Barbara asked, laughing.

    "Absolutely not. She sort of lost sight of what the trial was all about early on. Now, old Gus was a lazy son of a bitch, and his memory was pretty much shot, so when he started his cross-examination using her transcriptions, everyone in court thought they had slipped sideways in time and space to fall into a loony bin."

    That evening at dinner, once more at the kitchen table, Frank scowled at her plate.

    "Getting just a little bit pissed," he said, "at people messing up perfectly good food."

    She looked down guiltily; she had made little mounds of food: a hill of peas and carrots, an island of chicken breasts with mushrooms, a cliff of scalloped potatoes.. ..

    "Honey," he said, "he could have a perfectly good reason, you know. Sometimes people get a wild idea and they have to go wherever it takes them. Not as if they really have much choice, sometimes."

    She smiled briefly.

    "It's okay. Dad. I'm a big girl now.

    It's just that .. . that--" Nothing else came. Sometimes they have to go wherever it takes them, she thought then, and abruptly she pushed her plate back.

    "I'm going back to town, to Mike's house. If he isn't back by morning, I'll go to Denver and get him."

    Frank blinked in surprise.

    "That's not exactly what I was getting at," he said mildly.

    "Goddamn it to hell!" she muttered then. She had forgotten that her car was still in the shop.

    "Look, either I take the Buick and leave you stranded, or you have to drive me in. Want to toss a coin?"

    "Bobby, you don't even know where he is."

    "Oh, yes, I do. I don't know the address, but I can find it. Walter Schumaker's place in Denver. I'll find it, and him."

    "Damn it, Bobby, slow down. Mike's a grown man, after all. He might not take kindly to being rescued, especially if there's nothing to rescue him from."

    "He's as naive as a child," she said softly.

    "You know he is. Smart, intelligent, and dumb. As dumb as Lucas was. Those people are dangerous, and he doesn't know that. He thinks his brain is enough, and it isn't."

    "You think you're a match for them?"

    "You betcha." She stood up.

    "I'll toss a few things in a bag. Ten minutes. You can decide if you want to be without a car or be chauffeur again."

    He grumbled for the first few minutes of the drive back to town, but when she did not respond, he subsided. There had been a flight in from Denver at seven that evening, and Mike could have been on it; there would be another flight at eleven-thirty, and another in the morning at six forty-five. And no doubt Mike either was home already or he would be on one of the other flights. She did not respond to that, either.

    By the time they reached Franklin Boulevard and the university area, a misty rain was falling. It was just enough to smear the windshield. He cursed under his breath.

    "Don't eat or drink anything they offer," he growled.

    "No way," she said at that.

    "Brandy wine can't fix my headache, or backache, or anything else, either. Don't worry, Dad. I've read a book or two about hypnosis. I'll be careful." She added rather grimly, "I'll tell them I promised to report in frequently."

    He drove through the university district where many young people did not seem to realize that it was raining;

    they were out on foot, on bikes, milling about generally.

    On Mike's block he had to drive nearly to the corner before he could park.

    "I'll go to the door with you. Damn silly business. I'm warning you, he won't like you to come charging after him. Not a bit."

    "Dad," she said softly, "what if it happened to you and Mother? Would you go charging off after her?"

    "That's different."

    "I know. Come on, let's see if the wandering boy's home yet."

    When they approached the house, she stopped, her hand hard on her father's arm. At the front door one of the orange cats was clawing to get in; the other one was pacing back and forth.

    "Saber Dance and Ditto," she whispered.

    The cats would be asleep in the flower boxes if Mike was not home.

    "Didn't you turn off the light last night?"

    He nodded. Although the drapes were drawn, they could see light in the living room.

    "I told you he'd be here," he said gruffly.

    "But something's wrong," she said in the same whisper.

    "I don't see Mike's car anywhere."

    "That's wrong, too." She relaxed her grip on his arm.

    "Let's go see. We'll have to play it by ear." She had her key out already, but when they went up to the door, she knocked, and then again. The cats stropped her legs and whined. She knocked one more time, and then used the key and opened the door. Both cats streaked inside past her.

    A big white-haired man was at the computer; he had blanked the screen and was facing them. He looked alarmed and somewhat angry. Mike was sprawled on one of the sofas, his eyes closed.

    "Hey!" Barbara cried, "What's going on? You guys deaf or something? Mike? What's wrong with him?"

    She ran to the sofa and took Mike's hand. He opened his eyes part way, sighed, and closed them again.

    "He's just passed out," the man at the computer said.

    "Drunk. Who are you?"

    "Dad, I think we might need an ambulance, or the police, or something," Barbara cried.

    "What's going on here? Who are you? What's wrong with Mike? I'm his fiancee, and this is my father."

    Another man appeared in the doorway from the hall then.

    "Please," he said, "don't be frightened. There's nothing much wrong with your friend. He simply drank too much at dinner, I'm afraid."

    His head was large and appeared even larger because of his thick, long hair, which had started to turn gray but was still brown with light streaks. Walter Schumaker, Barbara realized, remembering his face from the covers of several magazines over the years.

    Frank had stayed by the front door. Now he pulled it open, and called out, "Bailey, call the police. Quick!"

    "Shit!" the man at the computer said.

    "Who's out there?"

    "Bailey Novell, a private detective. We were going to let him get some names and numbers to start tracing Mike's whereabouts," Frank said. He glanced outside, waved, and pulled the door closed again.

    The two men exchanged glances. The one at the computer stood up.

    "That's it. Let's get out of here."

    "He's lying," the other one said, studying Frank closely.

    "Let's finish what we started."

    "You finish. I'm leaving." He grabbed a raincoat from a chair and pulled it on as he stalked to the door. After a moment the second man followed him. He picked up a coat on his way through the room. They went out together.

    Frank locked the door after them and hurried over to Barbara at the sofa. He knelt by Mike and looked at his eyes, felt his pulse, and then said, "I think he's okay.

    Doped, maybe. Not drunk."

    "Who's a doctor nearby? Someone who will come over here. I don't want to put him in the hospital if we don't have to. Too many questions." She smiled fleetingly.

    "And we don't know any of the answers yet." You never ask a question that you don't already know the answer to, she thought distantly.

    Frank nodded and looked around for a telephone.

    The doctor had come and gone again. He had looked at Frank with a sour expression.

    "I thought you retired," he muttered. And he said that Mike had a lump on his head and was sleeping off a sedative. Without urinalysis and/or blood tests, that was as much as he could say about that.

    "Let him sleep. See someone tomorrow if the head gives him any trouble, could be a concussion."

    "Not here! He can't sleep it off here," Barbara said as soon as the doctor was gone. She had fed the cats and looked through the house, but nothing seemed to have been touched except the computers. She could not tell anything about either of them, the one turned on in the living room, or the other one in the bedroom. Both had been in use.

    "Right," Frank said heavily and sat on the second sofa, regarding Mike.

    "On the other hand, we don't know what those guys were looking for, if they found it, or if they'll be back."

    "Let's call Bailey and have him send someone to spend the rest of the night here. By tomorrow Mike should be able to take charge again." The question was if he had put the disks in a safe-deposit box. She bit her lip as she glanced over the many boxes of disks on his computer desk.

    Frank called Bailey and talked soothingly, denied that it was very late, and arranged for someone to come by and guard the house overnight. It was after twelve when he started the drive home again, a young associate of Bailey's in the house, Mike asleep in the back of the car with Barbara holding him.

    "What the hell did Frobisher find?" he murmured as he drove.

    "What the hell is on those disks, and where the hell are they now?"

    Barbara's sleep was troubled by dreams that left her feeling fearful, but with no memory of the contents, just a vague unease. She told herself to remember one of them, even as she drifted away again. She came wide awake twice thinking each time that she heard Mike's voice; when she roused herself enough to get up to investigate, it was to find him sleeping quietly in the guest room. The third time it happened, she turned over, pulled her blanket higher, and went back to sleep. Pale light was seeping in around her drapes by then.

    When she went downstairs, it was nine-thirty. There was a note propped against the coffee carafe. Gone to get Mike's car. Back soon. 7:15. The last time, she thought bleakly, she really had heard voices the last time.

    She had coffee and read the note again, and now she realized that they wouldn't have gone off for the car at that hour; it could wait until later in the day, wherever it was. Not the car. The disks? She sipped the coffee and nodded. It had to be the disks. And Mike must be okay, she added, or her father would not have gone off with him.

    The unease her dreams had brought made her too restless to sit still, or to consider breakfast.

    She started to clear off the dining room table, stacking the maps, the drawings, all the material she had gathered.

    For what purpose, she pondered glumly. Her father had been afraid he couldn't get Nell off, and she hadn't been able to get her off the hook, either. And the next time it would be even harder. She went to the outside door then and looked at the deck, and the river beyond, gray and still today, as if it had no movement of its own. Deceptive river, as fickle as a teenage lover.

    Nell called and asked if she could come over, and Barbara was relieved to have something to do while she waited. She had no illusions about what she was doing:

    puttering, waiting.

    Nell was very pink from the cold air; she had walked, she said. Not by way of Doc's property, but all the way around. Something she had been missing, just getting out and walking.