Death Qualified Part 16

Lucky nodded.

"What we decided. Then we figured those guys must be detectives, and the lady maybe was playing around a little, and her old man's out to get the goods on her, and so they wanted a bug. That's what we figured."

A few minutes later Barbara, Frank, and Bailey stood on Nell's gravel driveway beside Frank's Buick and watched Lucky Rosner climb the tree. He was very fast, very agile, and although it looked easy the way he did it, Barbara's stomach twisted in reaction as he got higher and higher. He leaned back against his harness, grinning down at them, when he stopped at the first branch, where he reached out and picked up something and held it up; it gleamed in his hand. He tucked it into his s.h.i.+rt pocket and began to come down, even faster than he had gone up.

Bailey whistled when he saw the object.

"That's some fancy piece of equipment," he said in admiration.

Back at the house, Frank made out a check for Lucky Rosner, who never stopped grinning. After he was gone, they took the bug to the terrace, where Bailey opened it.

"Still working?" Frank asked. He looked more trou bled than before, older than before.

"Not anymore," Bailey said.

"d.a.m.n idiots," Frank growled.

"Stupid way to go about it. Who'd do such a thing, and who'd pay for it? Just plain stupid to call attention to themselves like that to hide a bug."

"I'm not so sure," Barbara said slowly.

"You really can't get near either house without being seen. The kids were home from school, Nell in and out, James and Tawna in and out. That must have seemed as good a way as any.

And it's been up there for months without anyone suspecting a thing." She looked at Bailey.

"Can you find out where the receiver is? What the range of that thing is?

Who those men were working for?"

"Was," Bailey said, touching the bug.

"Where the receiver was. Even if they've been hanging around, they sure would be packing it in by now."

"Try," she said.

"What else do you have?"

It was not much. He had the names of the scientists, Her bert Margolis, Walter Schumaker, Ruth Brandy wine. And Emil Frobisher, who had died nearly six years ago. If he had been gay, Bailey added, he had kept it a secret. Nothing on Lucas Kendricks before the Sunday he had turned up in a computer store and bought a computer outfit.

"How much was it? How did he pay?" Barbara asked.

"Thirty-eight hundred, cash. He bought a tape re corder, too. It was in his pack. No tapes."

"Wow! And on a Sunday! Okay, let's think. Do you have someone in Denver you can use? Or go yourself?"

"Denver? Jesus! You think it's hot here, try Denver. To do what?" He looked at Frank.

"You got any beer?"

"Oh, sure. Sorry." Frank ambled off in no particular hurry, and while he was gone Barbara began to fill Bailey in on what they had learned from the sheriff and from Lucas Kendricks's parents.

She was summing it up when Frank came back out with the beer, a pitcher of lemonade, and a bottle of vodka.

"So, someone hired them to find whatever it was that he had, and I don't think it's turned up yet. What is it? And where was his car for all those years? He probably didn't drive it very far to collect a battery and license plate, maybe not at all. Where was it? Where was he for the last seven years? And I want an inventory of his possessions that were on the body, and in the car. And everything he bought in Denver and Sisters. What all was included with the computer? Anything else?" she asked her father.

He shook his head and handed her a frosted gla.s.s filled to the brim. Bailey opened his beer and they drank in silence for several seconds while he thought.

He had looked to her for instructions, she realized, when he turned now to her father.

"This is all going to add up to a bundle, you know."

Frank shrugged.

"Our client can afford it, and she's up for murder." His voice was so neutral, so noncommittal that Barbara looked at him sharply. He seemed withdrawn, deep in his own world of thought now.

"Right. Okay. I'll go, but I'll put on a guy when I get there. And I'll get that inventory before I take off, if they haven't put a tight lid on things. You could do that part," he added to Barbara.

"I want to keep out of sight as long as possible. Let them think Dad sent you, if it comes up."

He made no comment but drank his beer, frowning.

Then he said, "They, whoever they are, spent a mint, looks like. I'll need someone, Hank Littleton, maybe, to go over to see the sheriff, talk to the tracker. You got his name?" Barbara nodded.

"And Hank can start the hunt here for where the listeners holed up. Probably the fis.h.i.+ng camp," he said, nodding toward the cabins below. "Or one of the summer vacation cottages. Okay, can do." He stretched out his legs and regarded the river that ended in haze today. "And I thought this was just a simple case of a mad wife blowing away a jerk of a husband." "Let's keep it that way for now," Barbara said. "Not a word that we're after anything except proof that Lucas was a jerk." He gave her a look of deep hurt. * * * Bailey had been gone only minutes before Clive Belloc arrived at the front door. Clive was more dressed up than Barbara had ever seen him, nicely pressed trousers, a handsome sport s.h.i.+rt, s.h.i.+ned shoes. He looked at her with a sheepish expression.

"Can I come in for a minute? I should have called first, but I thought if I found you home, I'd say something, and if not, then another time, but not like a formal appointment." That sounded as if he had rehea.r.s.ed it word for word.

"Sure," she said.

"We're back on the terrace wondering if it's worth thinking about doing something about dinner.

Come have a drink with us."

He followed her through the house to the terrace and nodded awkwardly at Frank. If he had a hat,

he'd be twisting it, Barbara thought. "I'm having lemonade with vodka, Dad's sticking to straight lemonade, and we have beer and wine." "Lemonade," he said. "Sounds good." "Right back." She went inside for another gla.s.s, not a large one, because he clearly had not come here for a long drink. "A new fire up near Black b.u.t.te," he was saying when she returned and poured the drink for him.

"Could be a bad autumn."

He thanked her for the lemonade and even drank some of it, and then put it on the table.

"I really wanted to see both of you," he said then.

"I.

made a fool of myself over at Doc's the other day. I'm sorry." He said it in a rush, but it didn't sound at all rehea.r.s.ed, and she thought probably the speech he had intended would have been long and involved and not quite as sincere as the little one he actually gave.

"No big deal," she said.

"I talked to Nell, and to a couple of people I know in Eugene, and they tell me you're as good as she's going to find, and she's happy with the arrangement, so I am too.

And if there's anything I can do to help out, let me, please.

Being helpless is maybe the worst part of this for me."

His broad face was a study in pain and frustration.

"But that's one thing I can't get out of my mind. You said you were death qualified. What does that mean?"

She looked at the gla.s.s she was holding; water ran off it crookedly. Her fingers were white-tipped with the chill.

And she thought the chill was somewhere deep within her, and it had nothing to do with the gla.s.s or the miserably hot afternoon.

"It means," she said slowly, "that only an attorney who has done criminal law, who has had a client accused of a crime that could invoke the death sentence, is qualified to represent such a client in the future. The first case must always be as a junior attorney to another attorney who is death qualified, and then the junior is qualified."

He blanched at her words.

"Oh, my G.o.d!"

"Right." Briskly she went on.

"I'll remember what you said, and if anything comes up that you can help with, believe me, you'll hear from us. In fact, something already did. Dad said you found out that Clovis Woods Products was in Salem. Did you follow up with that?"

He shook his head.

"As much as I could. I called up there on Friday, the day after those guys came around, and the secretary swore they never sent anyone out this far. If they had, she would have known about it. Then Lucas was killed, and this h.e.l.l began for Nell, and I didn't give it any more thought. She must have made a mistake with the name on the truck."

"I guess," Barbara said.

"Did she think she could have been mistaken?"

"I didn't bring it up," he said swiftly.

"I'm not a real dope. She sure didn't need anyone asking more questions, casting doubt on what she said, least of all for me to be the one."

Barbara smiled at him with understanding.

"But it must be tough for you, in your job, I mean. Or is that something else you don't bring up with her?"

His deep sunburn seemed to darken a shade, and he looked sheepish again.

"Actually, I haven't done any cruising since the week after Lucas was killed, not for sales, that is. I started applying for a new job, and next week I start work on a new job. Cruising, still, but for different reasons, to settle estates, tax appraisals, things like that, not for timber sales."

"New job?" Frank exclaimed.

"And I haven't heard about it? Now that's strange."

"No one's heard yet, except Nell, not until I actually start," he said.

"I sure haven't mentioned it to Lonnie."

Frank laughed.

"That explains why I haven't heard."

Clive looked at his watch and stood up.

"I'm glad I found you both like this. Thanks for hearing me out. And I mean it, if there's anything I can do. I've got to get along now. I'm taking Nell and the kids to an air-conditioned restaurant. One that doesn't smell like woods on fire."

Frank walked to the car with him, and Barbara leaned back and watched the river move away without end. She found herself thinking of the sheriff playing Bach with those big broad fingers. Bach fugues, she thought, remembering a description she had read: ever-rising fugues, repeating a theme without end, varying it slightly each time, but always the same theme. Always the same river even if it did flow away forever, and was forever changing; it was the same river.

"Well," Prank said on returning.

"Just that. Well."

"Yes, indeed. Poor Clive, what a burden to think that he met her through Lucas, on a job to estimate the value of her beloved trees. I bet he thinks Lucas had that stunt pulled, just as much as Nell thinks it."

"If he does, you'll never hear him say so. He's not likely to furnish any ammunition for the prosecution. And that's a fine motive, added to all the other motives she already had."

"I know. But I bet he thinks so. What's on your mind, Dad? You've been glummer than a constipated judge."

He grinned fleetingly at the words, one of his favorite phrases. Then he said in a slow, thoughtful way, "I don't like how this is all shaping up. I don't like having a troop of operatives ransacking houses and cars, trekking through the woods, placing bugs in trees. Too much money involved Too much we don't know anything about. They could be feds, for all we know. We don't have an idea where Lucas was, what he was involved in. Could be drugs real bad news. I just don't like any of it, and I don't think any of it is relevant to your case."

"Maybe it's too soon to know that," she said, equally mildly, equally thoughtful, even though she was seething inside, because, she had to admit to herself, he was probably right. But if it wasn't relevant, there was no hope for Nell.

"Let me finish," he said, staring ahead at the river.

"What I'm afraid of is that you're going to find out things that will make you want to bring down justice on the heads of half a dozen other people, and I don't give a d.a.m.n about any of them. I want to save Nell as much grief as possible, keep her out of the state penitentiary if we can, or see that she gets the least possible amount of time if it goes that way."

Moving very carefully, Barbara stood up. Again, she thought. Like the fugues, like the river, like everything, it was always the same.

"Before you stalk off, consider what I'm telling you, Bobby. You know as well as I do that Tony will fight to keep anything to do with Lucas and the last seven years all the way out, and probably he'll have a judge go along with that. Because it isn't relevant. What is relevant is that Lucas turned up in an isolated spot, and Nell turned up there, and he ended up shot through the head. That's what's relevant, and not a d.a.m.ned thing beyond that. If anyone bugged that ledge and a tape turns up and proves that he didn't even threaten her, that kills any self-defense plea.

And that's what's relevant."

He didn't say it, he didn't have to; it played through her head without audible words: If Tony had the tape and Nell's story was verified that Lucas had said nothing more than "Watch this," Tony could even go for murder one.

"You think she did it, don't you?"

"I've been to that ledge, and so have you."

She did not want to continue playing this scene, she thought distantly. She had even got up in order to run away from it, but her feet were one with the deck; she could not move, had to let it run itself all the way through even if she dreaded the outcome.

"Why did you call me?" she whispered.