Desperate Measures (29 page)

When Bailey got up to leave, he said, “Barbara, you know this is going to start adding up to big bucks.”

“I know that, damn it. It'll have to come out of my fee, I guess. But don't worry about it. Just get me something on Wrigley.” And he didn't even have a thing to do with her case, she added to herself, accepting that she had to go after him anyway. Bailey looked doubtful, and she said, “You get me something real, and I'll put in a wet bar here.”

“You're kidding!”

“Nope. Promise. But it has to be real.”

“When isn't it?” he said. He saluted and left.

As soon as the door closed, Shelley said, “Would it help any if you could tell your father about X and
Xander
? I mean, if he understood more about Alex…”

Barbara shook her head. “I don't think so. He might just conclude they have more to defend than he realized. It's his damn sense of loyalty, his propriety. He liked Hilde, that's what it boils down to, and he's unwilling to believe she did anything he thinks is shameful. He can go along with an affair, no problem; it's Wrigley, his age, wife, kids, all that baggage that stops him in his tracks.”

Dinner with Frank was strained that evening. Barbara did the dishes, and then went to the living room, where he was channel hopping. “I think I'd better move back to my own digs,” she said. He didn't argue.

26

The days began
to blur. August came in on a heat wave that made every real Oregonian grumpy.

Frank called to say that the new examination of Hilde Franz had revealed a puncture wound under her tongue. He did not chat after delivering the message. Reports were flowing into Barbara's office, and Shelley reported on her trip to California.

“Rhondi Dumont was kicked out of Bennington, went to New York to make her fortune, and had an affair or two, but no job or any prospect of one; then she met Isaac Wrigley. Poor professor, rich idler. They got together, got married, and eventually seem to have made a deal. He'd get a job on the West Coast somewhere, and she'd put up the money for him to go into the pharmaceutical-testing business. He had done some of it at New York University and knew what was needed.”

Barbara nodded. “Nothing too damaging so far,” she said when Shelley paused to glance at her notes.

“And all hearsay, gossip. Rhondi's parents are a couple of doozies, apparently. He's a chaser, and she has a new man every year or so. The speculation is that Rhondi was reacting to them, after a few years of catting around on her own. Anyway, no kids came along, and they adopted a boy four years ago, then a girl two years ago, and now she's pregnant, sick, and scared. She'll stay home with her mother until the baby's born toward the end of the month.”

“Sick how?”

“Something to do with the pregnancy. She was rushed to the hospital two different times. That part's real enough, I guess.”

“I wonder if they had a prenuptial agreement,” Barbara said after a moment.

“Sure. When there's money on one side, the family insists on it. And in this case, if she fronted his business, there's bound to be a legal agreement.” Very patiently she added, “You see, Barbara, those who have old money know how to manage it and keep it. All kinds of agreements come along, just as a matter of course.”

Barbara thought about it, then said, “Sometimes you do kill to keep an affair secret.”

On the last day of August Barbara received another discovery statement from the district attorney's office. Investigating Hilde Franz's death, they had questioned members of the hospital committee as a matter of routine, and then returned to Isaac Wrigley for a formal statement. She settled back in her chair and read the statement.

Q: Were you inside Hilde Franz's house on different occasions?

A: Yes. She and my wife both liked to read romance novels, and they exchanged them frequently. This past year, since Rhondi, my wife, has been ill, I was their errand boy and made the pickups and deliveries. Rhondi called them her bathtub reading.

Q: When was the last time you were in Hilde Franz's house?

A: A few days before she died. Rhondi went to California to stay with her parents until our baby is born; she left a stack of paperback books to be returned to Hilde, and I kept forgetting. I just picked them up that day and took them around to her.

Q: What did you do in her house?

A: She said since I had the books in my hands, I might as well put them back on the shelf they had come from. I did that. The shelf was in her bedroom. I think I washed my hands, and I know I got a drink of water.

Q: How did Hilde Franz appear to you?

A: Normal at the time, but she called me later, and she was upset.

Q: Can you explain what you mean?

A: She began to talk about the murder out at Opal Creek, and she said she knew who did it, but she was in a quandary about what to do. She said Feldman did it, but he had been goaded beyond endurance, and maybe Gus Marchand had brought it on himself. She felt sorry for Feldman. I told her to go to the police. I assumed she had done so, since Feldman was arrested soon after that.

Q: Did she say why she believed Alexander Feldman killed Gus Marchand?

A: Yes. She said she saw him entering the woods going toward Marchand's property as she was leaving that day. She said there hadn't been time enough for anyone else to have gone over there, according to the newspaper reports.

There was a little more, but only to sharpen the responses; as if they needed sharpening, Barbara thought. He was covering it all, she thought savagely: Hilde had not been his friend, but his wife's. He had explained the fingerprints, his presence in her house, and had tightened the screws on Alex.

And now he was in California; his son had been delivered that morning. He had explained to the investigators that he would be with his family in California through September, and fly to Eugene to attend to business matters for a day or two at a time when necessary. He hoped to get back permanently sometime in October and bring his family, when the baby was six weeks old, possibly.

He told them he could arrange to be in Eugene in time to testify, if it was important. It was not on the transcript, but she assumed that they had assured him that it would be very important.

That afternoon during their regular briefing, Shelley said, “I bet she never read a book in her life.”

“I'd like that confirmed,” Barbara said.

“They're all gone,” Bailey said. “You know, down to Monterey, the family compound with high fences and guards, maybe even dogs with painted-on hair patrolling.”

“I've been thinking of the nanny,” Barbara said. “Lucinda Perez, from Guatemala. You must know someone from Guatemala, someone who can reminisce about old times in the old country with Lucinda.”

He grimaced. “I got you Wrigley and Franz in the same cities on two different occasions, not the same hotels yet, but we're working on it. I got you a runner for Sunday morning. I got you Wrigley's financial records-the boy's done good. Do I see a bar in here yet? I see coffee and Cokes, tea for the fainthearted. No beer. No booze. Not even a glass of wine.”

“Put Franz and Wrigley in the same hotel, and you get the bar,” Barbara said. “Or get me something real from Perez. I'll settle for that.”

She knew that if Wrigley testified under oath, if he stuck to the statement he had given, there was no way she could pull his wife out of California and force her to testify as to the truthfulness of his statements. And his statement was damning.

“Guatemala,” Bailey mumbled. “Jeez, Barbara. You should be a labor organizer or something. And speaking of labor—day, I mean—Hannah and I leave in the morning for Seattle, a flower show she has to see, and I'll be back in harness on Tuesday.” Then a thoughtful look came over his face, and he said, “Guatemala. I'll see what I can do.” He ambled out soon after that.

“Well,” Barbara said. “Another long weekend, another holiday. Dad asked me to dinner tomorrow night, and again on Monday. I mentioned that you were at loose ends, and he said to bring you along if you'd like to come. You up for that?”

Shelley shrugged. “Sure. It beats a cookout by the pool at the apartment.”

She had cut her hair again, shorter this time, and it was more becoming than ever. If she was trying to achieve an androgynous look, it was a total failure. Over the past weeks, she had lost a little weight and with it her little-girl look; her face appeared more angular, more mature, and her prettiness was becoming a different sort of beauty, quieter and more reflective.

Although Barbara ached for her, there was not a thing she could do or say until Shelley brought it up, she told herself repeatedly.

“You did a terrific job putting together that file on Rachel Marchand,” she said. “Of course, the prosecution will say that it doesn't matter; she believed Alex was stalking her, and he feared an investigation. But it's ammunition.”

“And we don't have much ammunition, do we?” Shelley said. “Now, with Wrigley adding to theirs… It's frightening, isn't it?”

“It always is,” Barbara said.

Later, walking by the river, she thought of her own words and knew them to be true. There was always the possibility of losing, of course, and she had lost cases, enough to make her super-cautious. There was always the possibility of an innocent defendant being found guilty.

The air was still and warm, too warm to be comfortable, and humid. But the bike path was well used regardless of weather, and it was busy that evening. She skirted a group of youngsters picking blackberries, eating them as fast as they picked them. Their hands were purple. Then she was visualizing the wall of blackberry brambles behind Marchand's house on the south-facing edge of the mowed area. Those berries must be dead ripe, she thought, and slowed her brisk walk so abruptly that a couple with a toddler bumped into her, laughing their apology. The child was setting their pace. She moved out of the way and watched them continue up the path.

Then she turned and headed for home. She wanted to see the video of Marchand's property again, and the photographs of Hilde's house.

In her apartment she took out her last frozen dinner, pot roast with green beans and potatoes. She would slice a tomato to go with it. Dump some prepared dressing on prewashed greens, and voilà. Then she got out the video and watched.

She had asked Bailey how he managed to get his videographer onto the property without being challenged, and he had said, “They go to church on Sunday. We moved in.” This coming Sunday she, Shelley, and a college track-team member were going to move in again. Now she watched the video as it slowly panned across the rear of the Marchand property. The videographer had stood next to the back porch; then he had moved to the front, near a rose bed, and taped it all again, first from one spot, then another.

Daniel Marchand's statement said he had seen someone at the edge of the brambles when he made his run home the day his father was killed. She got his statement out and reread that part.

Q: Did you see anyone when you were running to the house?

A: Yes, sir. I saw the sun reflecting off of a visor or glasses or something. Then trees were in the way, and I headed for the front of the house and didn't see him again.

Q: Can you identify that person?

A: No, sir. Like I said, it was just a glimpse before trees were in the way.

Q: But you're sure it was a man wearing a visor cap and or sunglasses?

A: Yes, sir.

Barbara rewound the tape, and began to look over the pictures Bailey had taken of Hilde's house. Everything neat and orderly, no clutter, nothing out of place to all appearances, no shoes on the living-room floor, unlike Barbara's apartment, where she had kicked off her shoes upon arriving home. No cup or glass on an end table. Barbara scowled at her own wineglass, then got up to refill it. She saw her dinner thawing on the counter in a little puddle of water, read the directions, put it in the oven, and went back to the photographs.

Bed made, spread in place. In the bathroom a hand mirror, hairbrush and comb lined up… Kitchen, dishes washed and put away… Then she stopped flipping over the prints, gazing at one of the living-room sofa, with a newspaper on it. Had Hilde been reading it when something occurred to her, something she had called Frank about?

She squinted at the newspaper; she could not read a word of it, but she had newspapers. Several big stacks of newspapers waiting to be carried out to the recycle bin. A fire hazard, she thought distantly as she started to sort through them. Some of the newspapers were in grocery sacks; most were simply piled up. She found the newspaper for June sixteenth, the day Hilde Franz had been killed, and took it back to the living room.

Reading, she smelled something burning, and realized her dinner was still in the oven. Her brain had tried to warn her, she thought, when she opened the oven door and a cloud of smoke issued forth­—fire hazard indeed. She turned off the oven, set the burned dinner on top of the stove and turned on the exhaust fan, then returned to the newspaper.

The paper shown on the sofa was opened, folded to an inside page, not the front page, an ad for mattresses on one side… Barbara found that page, page four, and saw one of the many human-interest stories about the deaths of Gus and Leona Marchand. Shelley was compiling a complete file of all mentions of the murder and the family, and Barbara felt certain she had seen this article, but she had paid little attention to it, well aware that a human-interest story, a sob story, would be of small value to her case. Now she read it thoroughly and very soon she was gritting her teeth.

“… happy, carefree children going off to school with no intimation that within twenty-four hours they were to be orphaned…”

The story detailed the last day of school for both children and their mother, the track-team party in the boys' locker room, Rachel and her girlfriend doing each other's hair, Leona overseeing the decorations of the cafeteria, overseeing the preparation of the party food to follow the graduation, hurrying home to make dinner. The writer had not interviewed the Marchand children; they were both in shock, in seclusion, but she had talked to the boys who drove Daniel home that day.