Death Qualified Part 18

"You going to tell me who this Dinesen is? Old school buddy, something like that?"

"Never met him. He's a mathematician. How's the book coming?"

He gave her a cold look and pushed his cup back.

"I.

never thought the day would come that you wouldn't trust me."

"Neither did I," she snapped.

He glared at her.

"You're acting just like your mother when she got in one of her ice-cold rages!"

"No, I'm not! I'm acting just like you, before you traded in your conscience. Mother always yielded and you never gave an inch. Not a G.o.dd.a.m.n inch!"

He stood up and stalked from the room.

At dinner with Nell and Clive that night she said, "We'll talk about anything and everything you both want except the case. Agreed?" She already had extracted a promise from Clive that he would not reveal what they had been up to that day. Although they agreed to her terms for dinner, it soon became obvious that Nell had nothing to say.

Finally Barbara turned to Clive.

"Tell me about your job, the one you left, the one you have now, how you trained for it, everything. Okay?"

He looked unhappy and at a loss until she prodded him, and then he began. Nell was polite, excessively polite, and very distant. She began to glance at her watch within the first hour, and all in all the dinner was not a happy affair.

Dinner at Doc's house was not a happy affair, either.

Lonnie had made a ca.s.serole with instructions about how to finish it in the oven, and Doc made a salad and grilled salmon steaks that Lonnie had left in a marinade. Jessie ate with better appet.i.te than Doc. They ate most of the meal in silence until she had her decaf coffee.

"Someone from the district attorney's office was out talking to Chuck," she said then.

"Don't see what for. He doesn't know anything about what happened."

"Oh, you never know. Lonnie said they spent nearly an hour together. They must have found something to talk about." She finished the coffee and nodded when he held up the pot. He poured more for her.

"They called me, you know. They want to come talk to me next week."

"What on earth for? Tell them you can't do it, your health won't allow such nonsense."

"But I should do my duty, don't you think?" She stirred her coffee, but when she started to put the spoon down, it slipped from her fingers and clattered against the saucer.

She s.n.a.t.c.hed her hand away, put it in her lap out of sight.

"I'm surprised that they haven't got hold of you yet," she said.

"They've had my statement for months," he said.

"You know that. I told you I went down there and signed a statement. I have nothing to add to it. And I don't know what you can possibly say."

"There's always something," she said, and her chair began to roll back away from the table.

"Lonnie says that Clive is over at Nell's three, four times a week these days.

That's nice, isn't it? Poor Clive. He's waited a long time."

She was halfway across the room; she turned to look at him over her shoulder.

"Good night, dear," she said, and smiled slightly.

"Jessie, hold on a minute," Doc said then. He pushed his chair back roughly and strode toward her. "What are you up to? What do you have to tell the DA's man?"

"How can I know until I hear what questions he has?"

she murmured.

"But what could I possibly know, stuck here in the house all day every day?" She started to roll again.

"Will you come help me undress in half an hour, dear?"

He watched her roll down the broad hall toward her room at the far end. Then he returned to the table and started to stack the dishes. He left them abruptly, went to the kitchen and poured himself a tumbler half full of bourbon. After the first large swallow, he added a touch of water, and then sat down at the kitchen table to finish it off before he helped her undress and get into bed where she would watch television for hours. He planned his evening. Another drink, maybe two, as many as it took. Then sleeping pills. They would not talk again that evening.

SIXTEEN.

summer was back, more summery than it had been in high season. Barbara carried her jacket as she walked through a small park in downtown Eugene, past the large fountain that never erupted but oozed water silently in a never-ending flow over a concrete lip, down to a catch basin, back up a center pipe to start all over again, forever.

Every bench was taken by people eating sandwiches, eating yogurt, drinking juice. She had forgotten all this. She used to come out here ^ too, for lunch.

The Park Bar and Grill was new. She couldn't remember what used to be in the s.p.a.ce, another restaurant, the name gone, replaced; the new one had been decorated to look old, older than the one it had shouldered out of the way.

There were booths with high backs, dark tables with softly polished wood, nothing flashy, nothing to suggest newness.

Small lamps with Tiffany-type shades, a long bar with bra.s.s and leather stools, a dimness that was inviting, all new, but very familiar, as if the decorator had copied the same pictures that Barbara had seen off and on for most of her life.

Bailey Novell waved from a booth. Few people were in the restaurant; it was half an hour before the real luncheon crowd would gather. She had suggested the early time. She wanted to be seated, to have their orders in before Tony showed up, if he showed up. There were no familiar faces among the half dozen other patrons, but, she thought, that might change as soon as the regulars arrived.

"Hi. How's it going?" Bailey asked; it was the same sort of question as "Hot enough for you?" No answer was required.

"Hi, Bailey; let's trade places," she said. Bailey was in the seat facing the door.

Without comment he got up and they switched. She motioned to a waiter, who came over instantly to take their orders. Bailey was watching her with more interest than he had shown a minute ago.

"Stage setting," he said when the waiter left.

She gave him a quick grin and leaned forward to speak in a low voice.

"Working lunch," she said.

"On our bill?"

He nodded and she went on.

"Sooner or later, today, two weeks from now, some time. Tony will find a way to get you alone and ask a few questions. He'll probably do it himself. I'm betting on it. First, say it sure was easier working for the father than for the daughter. Words to that effect, however you want to put it, whatever reasons you want to add, if any." She paused to wait for him to stop laughing.

"All right already," she said.

"Don't overdo it.

He's too smart for that. The next thing is harder. Somehow you get in the fact that I sent you chasing off to Denver and then told you to forget the whole thing. Something like it can't do Lucas any harm now to let it out that he was crazy. Again, your words, that meaning."

Bailey's eyes narrowed.

"According to that b.i.t.c.h doctor he was crazy. You think Tony doesn't already know that?"

"I don't know what he knows. I just know what I want you to get across to him, and then clam up.

Good, here's our food."

When they were alone again, Bailey said, "You know, honey chile, you're making the first part of this a cinch.

It was easier to work for the old man than the kid." He drank some of his beer and then said, "That spy gizmo covered an area of half a mile, straight line. I need a topo map to see if it could pick up what happened on the ledge.

Nothing yet on the organization. They hide good."

"And how many pointers do you leave lying around when you're out working?"

"d.a.m.n few." He looked thoughtful, then added, "You know, I could do my reputation a lot of harm, letting things slip to the enemy in a careless sort of way." Although he seemed genuinely concerned, he soon shrugged and began to eat his sandwich.

Barbara had eaten only a few bites of her salad when Tony and two other men entered the restaurant. He looked exactly as he had the last time she saw him. She didn't know why that surprised her so much. He was still as lean and hungry-looking as a shark. Was there such a thing as a fat, complacent shark? She did not let her gaze linger on him even a second but looked straight at Bailey, across from her, his mouth full.

"And I'm telling you, it's my way right down the line.

Just send me your bill and get lost. Okay? You understand what I'm saying?"

Her voice was not loud, but she knew it carried. In her peripheral vision she could see the half turn that brought Tony around to face her directly. She could not see the expression on his face, but she thought there was an electric jolt effect, a swift full-body ripple, followed by an unnatural stillness. She did not look at him to check the impression.

"Jeez," Bailey said, and took a quick drink of his beer.

"Jeez, Barbara, just calm down, will you? I said I'm sorry.

A mistake, that's all."

She began to gather her things, her jacket, her purse; she checked inside it for keys, and then a shadow fell across her. She glanced up, and blinked rapidly to refocus her eyes.

"h.e.l.lo, Barbara. You look wonderful. How are you?"

"h.e.l.lo, Tony." Her voice was hollow-sounding, as if it had to travel a very long way.

"I heard you were in town," he said.

"I've been meaning to call. Are you staying at your dad's place? Buy you a drink?"

"Another time. Tony. I'm in a hurry, an appointment."

She clutched her purse and jacket and stood up; she side-stepped him and nearly ran from the restaurant. She did not look at Bailey again.

She hurried to her car in a parking structure a block away, no longer pretending nervousness, confusion, if ever she had been. Her mind had become detached, as if she could watch from afar as her hands fumbled with the car keys and shook when she tried to put the right key in the ignition. Show's over, she told her trembling fingers, the audience is gone, curtain down. The fingers paid no attention.

Whoever said a liar could not look you straight in the eyes? she wondered then. Tony's deep-set eyes could look straight at her, had always been able to look straight at her, through her eyes to whatever lay behind them, and never waver, never blink. She wanted to find the books where the lie was written and correct it. Margin notes, end notes, footnotes. Red pencil.

Gradually that detached part of her was drifting back into place, reporting in, she thought; her performance had been good, convincing, maybe too real. How much act, how much reality? And what difference did it make? Her fingers responded to that calm and somewhat sardonic other part and turned the key with a steadiness that seemed unreal after the violence of the tremor only moments earlier.

She had returned her library books, checked out three new ones and a magazine, and was now on the steps of the library, undecided what to do next. It was fifteen minutes before two, too early to expect Mike Dinesen, but if she moved her car she probably would not be able to find another parking s.p.a.ce and get back here on time. Although registration had not even begun yet, the campus was filled with students who looked like children to her, many of them with parents. Indoctrination week, she realized, remembering it from her past as a freshman on this same campus. She had not taken into account that the campus would be overflowing with children, parking lots jammed full, and no place for her car except a tow-away zone posted for twenty minutes. She had been here twenty-five minutes already.

She moved aside as a young man led a group of freshmen up the stairs to the library, with several parents trailing along.

The students didn't look old enough to go away to college.

From the unhappy look on some of the parents' faces, it was clear that they thought the same thing.

Then she heard someone say, "Barbara Holloway?"

He was younger than she had thought from his telephone voice, low thirties probably. He was dressed in sky-blue running pants, sweats.h.i.+rt, running shoes. Give him a tennis racket and plop him down into a Fitzgerald novel, she thought with misgivings; she had wanted a staid, responsible mathematician. His hair was medium brown, straight, his eyes light blue; he was deeply tanned, and muscled like a jock.

"Hi," she said.

"Mike Dinesen?"

They shook hands.

"You're disappointed," he said.

"Don't be ridiculous": You're just not what I expected."

"Exactly what my mother said, they tell me."

She laughed.

"I have to move my car before they tow it away. Is there someplace close by where we can talk for a few minutes?"

"Sure. You're running early, I'm running late. Let's compromise. You drive me home, five blocks, and we'll talk there after I shower and change. Or, we can meet somewhere in half an hour."