“No, I don’t think that would work; I don’t think we should even ask the judge.”
“All right, whatever you say.”
“One good thing about this, Wolf, though it may not be equal to four million dollars.”
“What’s that?”
“It’ll be the final nail in Julia’s coffin, where her character is concerned. It’ll make a jury more sympathetic.”
“You’re right,” Wolf said. “It isn’t equal to four million dollars.”
E
d Eagle rang Barbara Kennerly’s bell at eight-thirty on New Year’s Eve. She greeted him wearing a dress that he could only think of as sensational; it was tight, black, and showed an entertaining amount of cleavage and her tattoo. A diamond choker encircled her neck.
“You are beautiful,” he said.
“So are you,” she replied, kissing him. “I love a man in a tuxedo. Would you like a drink here before we go?”
“We should probably move on,” Eagle said. “I think our hosts plan to sit down for dinner at nine.”
Barbara produced a full-length mink coat, and Eagle helped her into it. “Something else left over from the marriage?” he asked.
“I told you,” she said, “my husband was a generous man—and he had a brother in the fur business.”
He opened the door for her.
“Just pull it shut and it’ll lock itself,” Barbara said.
She stepped out the door, and as she started down the stairs, Eagle found the night-latch button and switched it off. He closed the door firmly and followed Barbara down the stairs.
“Tell me about these people,” Barbara said as he started the car.
“Tom and Susan Taylor,” Eagle said. “He’s a trial lawyer, too, but on the civil side; he sends me a lot of work. Susan’s a sculptor; she does quite well at it, I think. I’m not sure who they’ve invited, but there’ll be quite a mob. They do this every New Year’s.”
“Will I like them?”
“I like them; we’ll see if you do.”
He drove out Camino del Monte Sol and turned into the courtyard of a large adobe house. They were greeted at the door by the Taylors, and Eagle made the introductions.
“You were right,” Barbara said, “there’s a mob. Oh, my God, it’s that movie star—what’s his name?”
“That’s him,” Eagle said. “Would you like to meet him?”
“Absolutely.”
Eagle introduced her to the man and relieved a passing waiter of two glasses of champagne.
After a sumptuous buffet dinner, there was dancing to a small band, and Eagle was relieved when the movie star asked to dance with Barbara.
“Good timing,” he said to the man. “I’ve got to go to the john, anyway.”
“Take your time,” the movie star said, and Barbara laughed.
Eagle headed out of the living room, then left the house by a side door; he got into his car and drove as quickly as he dared, considering the cops were out in force on New
Year’s Eve. He parked at Barbara’s place and let himself into her apartment. She had left a light on, and he pulled down the shades of the living room windows.
Eagle wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but he immediately found something interesting; when going through the chest of drawers in her bedroom, he came across a gun, a snub-nosed Smith & Wesson .38-caliber revolver, meant for close work. He checked the cylinder; it was loaded. He wiped it and replaced the pistol exactly as he had found it.
There was a hell of a lot of jewelry in a box on her dresser; he’d expected jewelry, but not so much of it, and it was beautiful stuff. The woman should have a safety deposit box. He worked his way around the apartment, checking every drawer and cupboard, even going through the kitchen thoroughly. Apart from the pistol and the unusually large amount of jewelry, there was nothing he might not expect to find in a single woman’s apartment. There was a diaphragm in the bathroom medicine cabinet, but he had known about that.
The books in the bookcase were mostly popular novels and art books, some of them obviously acquired locally, such as
Santa Fe Style
, the bible of southwestern design that seemed to be on every coffee table in the city, if not the country. One other book caught his eye, because it seemed so out of place. It was called
Beautiful Girlhood
, and the style of the cover placed it in another era. He opened it and checked the chapter titles: it seemed to be a guide to maintaining virginity. Written on the title page was the name Leah Schlemmer. It must have be-longed to her mother, he thought.
As he was about to replace the book, his fingers came into contact with something protruding from the pages. He
opened the book again to a page where two pieces of an old photograph had been inserted. It had apparently been torn in half, but when he tried to put the two pieces together they did not fit. Each of the two pieces contained a snapshot of a girl, and, judging from a disembodied hand resting on the shoulder of one of them, there had once been another girl between the two. The hairdos and clothes seemed to place the photograph around the late sixties. The two girls might have been twins; he could not tell which one was Barbara. Eagle replaced the photograph in the book and returned it to the bookcase.
He stood in the middle of the living room and looked for some other item in the little apartment that might give him further information about Barbara, but there was nothing. There was a lack of pictures on the walls, as Barbara had mentioned, and the furniture seemed out of the landlord’s attic.
He raised the shades in the living room, opened the door, flipped on the night latch, and closed the door behind him. He drove quickly back to the Taylors’ house, let himself in through the side door, locked it, and returned to the party.
“There you are,” Barbara said as he took a seat beside her on a cushion before the fireplace.
“Here I am,” Eagle said. “I got into a discussion in the kitchen.”
The movie star’s wife had materialized and seemed to be relieved to see Eagle.
“I hear you’re representing Wolf Willett,” the actor said. “I know him slightly; I did a walk-on in one of Jack’s early films. Are you going to get him off?”
“I don’t expect to have to,” Eagle said confidently. “He shouldn’t have to go to trial; Wolf is an innocent man, and
if the police were willing to do their work, they would have probably already found the real murderer.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” the man said. “I always liked Wolf.” He turned to Barbara. “You look a lot like Julia,” he said.
Her eyebrows went up. “Do I?”
“You could be sisters.”
Eagle stepped in. “That’s high praise,” he said to Barbara. “Julia was a knockout, by all accounts.”
“Thank you, kind sir,” Barbara said to the movie star.
The music stopped and there was a drum roll.
“Ladies and gentlemen, dear friends,” the host said, “Happy New Year!”
Everybody sang “Auld Lang Syne” and kissed. Eagle was a little jealous of Barbara’s bussing of the other man, but what the hell, he
was
a movie star.
Barbara kissed Eagle even more avidly, then raised her glass and looked him in the eye. “To the New Year,” she said, “and to new beginnings.”
Eagle raised his glass. “New beginnings,” he said. He had the feeling that her new beginning might be cut short, and he hoped he was wrong. She’d had a lot to drink; he’d ask her some questions later.
A
bout halfway through New Year’s Eve, Wolf started to hate Julia. He hadn’t hated her until now, not even when he’d learned about her past life; he’d had a certain amount of sympathy for her wanting a fresh start, even if she had lied to him.
Now it was different; he had trusted her completely, and she had stolen as much from him as she possibly could. It had taken him twenty-five years to amass his small fortune, and she had stolen it from him in the blink of an eye.
He ate half the steak he’d cooked for himself and opened a second bottle of wine.
What she’d stolen was enough for a girl to start over somewhere else with a new name. Only Julia had run into a shotgun before she could bolt. Maybe there was some justice, after all.
He drank the wine and tried to figure out what this was going to mean. He couldn’t direct the new picture, that was for sure. If he tried to, Centurion would beat him
down on his price, make him practically pay them to let him direct. He couldn’t afford that now, not unless he sold the Bel Air house; and if he did that, if word got around that he needed money, there would be blood in the water, and the sharks would tear him apart.
He laughed aloud. He was thinking too far ahead. How could he make the picture when he might be spending the next few years in a New Mexico prison? He might even be spending them on death row while the appeals sucked up every dime he had left. The best he could hope for would be parole in seven years. Then he’d be free again and penniless; nobody in the film business would ever take his phone calls again.
It might almost be worth it, if he could only know what had happened the night Julia, Jack, and Grafton were murdered; the knowledge might kill him, but at least he’d know. Mark Shea had been the only man who might have helped him find out, and now he was gone.
Wolf took the second bottle of wine into the study and switched on the television, flipping through the satellite channels. Suddenly a movie of his and Jack’s was on the screen, and Julia was there, playing her hooker—a role she knew so well. He and Jack were seated at a table at a sidewalk café—it had been a joke, a Hitchcockian walk-on—and they gaped at her as she walked by. Tears welled up. They had all been so happy on that shoot. He switched off the TV and swiveled his chair to face the lights of Santa Fe.
People were down there toasting the new year, whooping it up, having a good time. Tomorrow they’d have hangovers, but they wouldn’t be facing financial ruin and prison; they weren’t murderers who couldn’t remember their crimes; they weren’t suckers with whores for wives, who’d had everything they’d earned stolen.
He remembered the pistol. It lay on the coffee table before the fireplace, ready for self-defense. Or self-destruction. He resisted the urge to pick it up. On the other hand, why shouldn’t he? Why shouldn’t he save everybody the trouble of dealing with him? It would be easier for Hal Berger to simply wind up his estate instead of trying to help him hold the company together while the criminal justice system dangled him from a slender thread. Dead, maybe he could face Julia and hear from her what had happened, what her plans had been, how she had lost her life.
Was there some part of his life worth saving? Something worth staying alive for? He thought about that, and he came up with Jane Deering. Jane was worth it, and so was Sara, but what would he do to them by going on living? Sara was ignorant of his troubles now, but soon she’d see his picture in the papers, being led to trial. Suppose he was acquitted? Ed Eagle had said that a lot of people Wolf knew—his friends—would still think he had done it, and God knew, he might very well have done so. How would Jane and, most of all, Sara handle that? The wounds he could hand out by staying alive might be worse than those inflicted by his death.
The idea of death had always horrified him; he’d feared it, driven by the Baptist upbringing his mother had given him. Hell was out there waiting, just as heaven was. They had both always been real places to him. Who knew which he would find himself in? Julia was in hell, certainly; he might join her there. She might have the last laugh, after all. He hated the idea of Julia laughing.
The phone rang. He didn’t pick it up. No last-minute reprieves for him; that was for the movies. It rang three times more, then the answering machine picked up.
“This is Wolf Willett. Please leave your name and number, and I’ll get back to you.” Beep.
“Wolf? I know you’re there; pick up the phone.”
It was Jane; he picked up the phone. “You’re right, I’m here.”
She was at a party. He knew that; she had told him she was going. He could hear people singing in the background.
“I knew you’d be there alone, and I wanted you to know something,” she said. “I love you, Wolf, and you and I are going to face whatever happens together, do you hear me?”
He couldn’t speak, so he nodded.
“Wolf, goddammit, say something!”
“Yes,” he managed to say. “I love you, too. I’m awfully glad you called.”
“Happy New Year!” she said. “It’s going to be; trust me.”
“I trust you. Happy New Year to you. I love you, Jane, I really do.”
“Sara loves you, too. She told me so. She’s never said that about anybody else but me.”
“I love Sara, too; tell her for me.”
“I’ll tell her. Now, I want you to put down your drink and go straight to bed. I’ll call you again in the morning and make your hangover worse.”
“I’d love that,” he said, putting down his wineglass. “I’ll do it, if you promise to make my hangover worse.”
“I promise.”
“I love you, Jane.”
“I love you, Wolf. Goodnight.”
“Goodnight.”
Wolf hung up the phone and went straight to bed.
O
n the morning of January second, Wolf left the house and went shopping. He drove downtown and parked near the plaza, then combed through the shops, looking for bargains on sale. He couldn’t afford it anymore, but he bought a new leather coat and a good piece of pottery, and he was looking at a picture in a gallery when a young woman ran into the gallery and grabbed him by the elbow.
“Oh, Mr. Willett, I’m so glad I found you,” she said. “I’m from Ed Eagle’s office.”
“What’s wrong?” Wolf asked.
“You have to call Mr. Eagle right away, that’s all,” she panted.
“Why did he send you looking for me? Why didn’t he just leave a message on my answering machine?”