Death Qualified Part 9

"Biochemistry," she said after a moment and was surprised to hear a huskiness in her voice that was strange to her ears.

"Psychology, just in case the effect is psycho somatic, not physical."

He looked thoughtful, then nodded slowly.

"Never even thought of that. You suppose it could all be in my head?"

"No, Dad, I don't. Tell me what you like for breakfast these days. I'm pretty good with anything to do with eggs."

She made their breakfast, and as they ate they watched small boats leaving the dock area at Turner's Point, watched two teenage boys return with a string of fish, laughing. This morning the river was clear, light blue. "What I usually do after breakfast is walk down to the point and pick up newspapers, chat a bit, walk home.

Want to take a walk?"

"How far?"

"Mile each way, or thereabouts."

She thought of the long drive she was starting that day, thought of a motel at the end of the day's drive, the heat as soon as she left the mountains again. And, she thought, she had no schedule, no appointments, no one expecting her, no reason to be anywhere at any particular time.

"Sure. Let's shove this stun" in the sink. I'll deal with it later."

They walked on the gravel road that was private, maintained by the half dozen property owners who fronted it.

He pointed out the houses they pa.s.sed, although from the road not a single one of them was visible.

"Chuck Gilmore," he said at the one next to his.

"Owns most of the point, I guess. Soon as this property came on the market, he snapped it up and built the most handsome staircase you're likely to find anywhere, from the cabin area down there, up to the road here. Then the d.a.m.n fool tried to cut a trail through Nell's property and she ran him off." He chuckled.

"He thought if he got it in place, got some underbrush cleared, a few people using it, he could claim squatter's rights, I guess. Wrong."

"Stupid thing to attempt. Why did he do it?"

"For access to the beach down at Nell's place. Only beach around here, and it's a nice little protected sandy strip. Shallow water, good wading, good place for the kids to play while the fathers are out fis.h.i.+ng."

"But she doesn't buy that?"

"She's seen the dump trucks full of junk they have to haul out of the point week after week."

Barbara nodded. The next house was Stan and Lucille Bowman's place. They came out for weekends when they could manage the time. And then the Terry house.. ..

The woods pressed so close to the narrow road and were so thick that with just a few steps a person would vanish, she was thinking. There was a fringe of wild flowers and bushes, berries, and ferns, all growing in what looked like piles and heaps of greenery, with flowers poking up here and there, a branch waving now and again, as if to celebrate its escape, its freedom.

The gravel road ended at a dirt road; they turned left.

This section was fairiy smooth, but the right turn had led to a gutted, rock-strewn road that looked undriveable. Old Halleck Hill Road, she remembered from the newspaper articles she had read the night before. Fifty miles down that road, apparently, Lucas Kendricks had killed a girl and thrown her mutilated body into a creek that had brought her to the river. Resolutely she put that out of mind and listened to yet another of her father's stories, this time about a neighbor whose name she already had forgotten.

The walk was closer to a mile and a half, she decided when they entered Chuck Gilmore's store. But it had been a pleasant mile and a half, and she did not object. Her father introduced her to Chuck, a big, very muscular man with a tremendous chest and iron-gray hair. Two boys were trying to pick a comic book, and Chuck was keeping his eye on them. A car stopped, spilling out a family with two small children, one whining, "Is this where we're going?"

Barbara and her father went out back to the rail overlooking the cabins, and from here she looked up to spot his house. It was very handsome up on the ridge, and the next one beyond it was even more handsome, expensive-looking. That was Doc's house, she remembered from her last visit. The houses on the ridge were so close that only now did she understand why Chuck Gilmore wanted access to the beach. His staircase was clearly visible, wide, st.u.r.dy, also expensive-looking. A short walk from here, through his property, along the gravel road a bit, then through Nell's property. She didn't blame him for wanting it, and she didn't blame Nell for refusing. Down at the docks there were cans lying around, bits of paper. Trash, she thought. Just the normal human trash.

"Want to stroll through town?" her father asked.

"I.

admit there's not much to see, but while we're here...."

A pickup truck pulled into the parking lot; a small woman and two children got out. The boy was exactly the same height as the woman, and both had curly brown hair.

Barbara steeled herself. That was Nell Kendricks, she knew. She looked hardly old enough to be a mother, much less the mother of the boy at her side. The other child was a small girl with long, straight blond hair and a serious expression.

"I didn't plan this," her father said in a low voice.

"But you've got to meet them, now that it's happened. Come on."

Nell had spotted him and hesitated, then came in their direction, the two children with her.

"Good morning, Frank," she said, and the boy said good morning. Carol smiled.

"Honey, this is Nell Kendricks, Travis, and Carol. My daughter Barbara."

Nell was obviously surprised when Barbara held out her hand. Belatedly she reached out and they shook hands.

Barbara had been instructed to shake hands at law school at the insistence of a professor who had said professional people always shake hands when they meet. Remember that. Travis extended his hand, and she took it. Then Carol started to put her hand out, drew it back, and put it out again. Gravely Barbara shook hands with her also.

"Showing Barbara some of the local attractions," Frank said.

"View from Turner's Point. Next, the Grange Hall."

Nell grinned.

"I thought I'd find you here, since I missed you on the road. We're having a cookout, Tawna, James, us. And you're invited. You too," she added quickly to Barbara. "Love to come," Frank said.

"When? And who's cooking "Tawna is, and six-thirty is when. We're off for shop ping. School clothes. Travis can't wear a single thing from last year."

Travis rolled his eyes and made a face. Carol was looking serious again, staring fixedly at Barbara.

"Don't let us keep you," Frank said.

"It sounds as if you've got yourself a real day lined up. What can I bring?"

"Not a thing. I'm stopping at the Metropole for bread.

I'm getting some for Jessie, too. You want some?"

"Yep. One of everything they've got."

"Okay. Nice meeting you, Ms. Holloway. That sounds rather silly, doesn't it, since we'll be seeing you again in just a few hours. Come on, Travis, Carol, let's go."

Frank and Barbara watched her fasten seat belts, climb up into the driver's seat, start the engine, and drive off with a final wave. Carol waved, too.

Barbara started to walk out of the parking lot, back to the road where she turned in the direction from which they had come. After a moment's hesitation, Frank followed her.

"What happened to her parents?" Barbara asked.

"Nell's? Rumor is all I know. Stories, gossip. Her mother was from here, married a man from San Fran cisco. He couldn't stand it in the woods, I guess. They were back and forth a lot, anyway. He was a performer, musician, comic, something of the sort, and not very good, they say. Broke most of the time, like that. Anyway, he died, overdose, when Nell was just a little kid, about Carol age, and her mother came back home with her. Then two years later, she died, pneumonia, and the grandfather raised Nell."

"The papers said she's a crack shot, sharpshooter de luxe cla.s.s, something like that. Is she?"

"So they say. I've never seen her shoot, so I don't know.

Did you read about the tree cutters and the beer can?"

"Yes. And that story didn't make any more sense than Chuck Gilmore's trying to cut a trail through her property "That's what I thought. I saw her the day it happened, though, and I guess she shot the can, all right." He told her about the day people had seen the body in the river, and Nell had found two men preparing to cut down her tree.

Barbara listened, concentrating on his words, comparing his account with what she had read. It made a little more sense the way he told it, but not much, not enough.

She breathed deeply when he stopped talking, and began to examine the woods again.

"Anything?" Frank asked after several seconds.

"No. Just curious about why a woman like her is a crack shot."

"Her grandfather taught her, according to the gossip mill. They said he boasted that she was a natural, the best shot in the county."

Barbara nodded absently.

"But that doesn't answer the question about why he taught her in the first place, how he found out that she had a talent for it. I suspect he realized early on that she was not going to be very big, that she was vulnerable in many ways, and shooting was a way to give her self-confidence. I mean, she was a child who had just lost both parents, she probably was diminutive, like Carol, and probably nervous as h.e.l.l. He sounds like a pretty wise old man to me. You never taught me to shoot."

Prank snorted.

"Never saw any sign that you needed a boost in self-confidence, either."

There was a touch of bitterness in her laugh.

"The key words are you never saw any sign. But, back to Nell. It worked. She's self-a.s.sured, self- confident, evidently doing a d.a.m.n good job with those two kids. And under it all, she's scared to death."

Frank put his arm around her shoulders and squeezed slightly, then released her.

"Glad you saw that, too. She's good and scared. And has a right to be."

Watching her expensive running shoes get scuff after scuff in the gravel of the road, she asked, "Why did you say you can't handle this case?" "Because I don't think I can get her off."

"Can anyone?"

There was a long silence during which the only sounds were the clicking of gravel, the soft swish of his jeans as he walked, and one leg brushed the other rhythmically.

"The situation," he said finally, "as accepted around here is that she was married to a son of a b.i.t.c.h who deserted her and the children, who didn't even know he had a daughter, and who tortured and killed a nineteen-year-old girl on his way home. When he showed up, he must have threatened Nell, threatened the children, and she plugged him. Justifiable*. Everyone agrees that he deserved exactly what he got, that she should have done it years ago, the last time he was around. Manslaughter, or even self-defense."

"But?"

"But she says she didn't do it."

"You said Lucas didn't know he had a daughter. How did anyone find that out? She didn't have a chance to talk to him, according to the papers."

"His parents did." He told her what little he knew about Lucas and his movements from the time he arrived at his parents' house south of Bend until he vanished around noon on Tuesday, with the girl who was murdered sometime the afternoon of the same day.

"You'll have to have an investigator do some digging," Barbara said after a lengthy pause.

"Where was Lucas all those years? Why didn't he know about his daughter if both Nell and his parents wrote to him, tried to call, and so on? Was he in an inst.i.tution? Jail? Overseas? Down dope lane? Where? Doing what? Did the autopsy show drugs?"

"Nothing."

"Have the police turned up anything about his recent past?"

"I really doubt they've looked much. Doesn't seem to matter. He's tied to the dead girl, and he's dead. Nell's rifle was out and had been fired recently. Doesn't seem to be any doubt that it was the gun that killed him. She was the only one around. Her father-in-law could have tipped her off that he was coming that day, and, in fact, he even picked up the kids and took them away for an extended visit the day before the murder, clearing the field of action.

The police don't seem to feel they need much more than that."

"Well, you sure as h.e.l.l will need a lot more than that.

But I've told you where I'd start asking questions."

"About Lucas and his past?"

She looked at him sharply and said with irritation.

"Of course not. About her. Why didn't she divorce him? And who is she sleeping with?"

The walk home seemed shorter than it had in the other direction, but even so, by the time they reached the house her legs were aching, and her thighs felt on fire. How long since she had done any real walking, she asked herself, and had to think back to the previous winter. No one walked in Phoenix when the weather got hot, as it did by April, or even March. Now she found that she just wanted to sprawl, have more coffee, read the newspapers her father had picked up.

"What's next on your schedule usually?" she asked as they entered the house. It was very cool inside.

"Generally I work a couple of hours on the book, then lunch and read the papers, and then nap. More work in the late afternoon some days. Sometimes I take a little walk. Sometimes a little fis.h.i.+ng after nap time. Some days along about five or so, mosey on around to visit with Doc and Jessie, cadge a drink or two. Busy days, as you can see."

She nodded.

"If I were your doctor, I'd probably tell you to slow down. Well, leave the papers, please. After I do the dishes I'll have a go at them. Get on about your business."

He grinned and handed over the newspapers, one an Oregonian, one a local weekly, and the New York Times.

She suspected that he paid a fortune to have that brought in daily, and she could not imagine his doing without it.

After Barbara tidied up in the kitchen, she made a fresh pot of coffee, not quite as strong as her father made it; when she went out to the terrace to read the papers, she found that she had no interest in them at all. She sipped the coffee, gazing out at the river, now a deep forest green, and suddenly she was visualizing Nell on the river, on a bobbing ice floe that she leaped from just as it upended.

The next was no less dangerous. And that was where little Nell was, she thought then, in the middle of the river with out a chance of reaching either sh.o.r.e. If she agreed to plea bargain, admit to a manslaughter charge, with self-defense, she would serve time, four to six. If she refused and was found guilty of murder one, she would serve even more time, ten to twenty, or even life, depending on the state's case. All this was a.s.suming that they didn't have cause to go for aggravated murder, with a death sentence. That was reason enough for the look of terror that had lurked behind her pleasant expression, that had clouded her pretty brown eyes.