Desperate Measures (21 page)

Shelley read it, then made a squealing sound, and Barbara stood up. “Okay, let's get the hell out of here. I have to call Dr. Minick.” She felt as if she needed to tether Shelley as they walked down the stairs and out.

On the mall she called Dr. Minick and asked him to call back; Shelley bought burritos from a stand, and they sat and ate and talked while they waited for Dr. Minick to get to a pay phone. When the nearby phone rang, Shelley raced to answer it. Then, with Shelley hanging on her elbow, Barbara explained what had happened.

“I'm sort of a special officer of the court, charged with delivering Alex for questioning or any other customary police procedure, and the authorities are charged with not placing him in custody. So if they want him for questioning, you refer them to me. You can call him and tell him that.”

Dr. Minick's relief was as palpable as Shelley's. It came through loud and clear over the phone.

Barbara had a message from Frank waiting for her at the office: Bailey had something and would be around at three or a little after. She was at the house by three.

“Court day?” Frank asked when she arrived home. He knew she had not argued a case that day; he kept track of her days and often wandered in to watch and listen, as he did with Shelley.

“Date with a judge,” Barbara said. “And I can't stand these hose a minute longer. Back in a second.” She hurried to her upstairs bedroom to change.

Watching her, he felt a pang of regret, and even loneliness. More secrets. Or, he added, she could handle it alone now. If she had an interesting case, they usually talked about it or he even got involved one way or another, and he was always good for a cite or two, or a bit of advice—something. Well, he had put Band-aids on her knees at one time, he told himself; things change.

Bailey arrived and in a few minutes they were at the dinette table, where Bailey was laying out stills taken from the video from Hilde Franz's safe-deposit box. They were of the bookcase in the bedroom with the paperback books. Under the first row of pictures he placed several additional eight-by-ten photographs taken of the same shelves after Barbara had examined the books. She could see the ones she had put back on top of the others. She looked from the pictures to Bailey.

“Okay,” he said. “See, I got to wondering what it was about those books that bugged me, and I went back and took some pictures with the digital camera after the guy went in through the window. See the difference, Barbara?”

She shook her head. “The books were jammed in so tight, I had to take out several at a time to look through them, but there wasn't anything to find. And I didn't see any point in trying to get them back the way—” She stopped, and peered closer.

“Now you see it,” Bailey said, so smug that he deserved a swift kick.

“Well, I don't,” Frank growled. “Fill me in.”

“Third row down, these books here. Five putrid green spines, one blue, no books on top of that row. Looks like someone lifted a paperback book, and filled in the space with the one Barbara had left over at the end of the row.”

The top two rows of books were romances, the bottom two rows were mysteries, and three of the shelves of books had one or two laid flat on top of the others. The third shelf was filled, with nothing left over.

Bailey reached into his bag and brought out paperback books and lined them up on the table. “Two by Talbot Grady, one Iris Murdoch, three more Talbot Grady,” he said. “And at the end of the row, the last two are by Iris Murdoch.”

He groped in his bag and brought out one more photograph, an enlargement of the still from the video. “I had my guy enhance it so we would be able to read the titles,” he said, turning the photograph sideways. “The missing one's called
Over My Dead Body
.”

“He went in there for a paperback book?” Frank asked, not quite believing it.

“Don't know,” Bailey said cheerfully. “But it's missing. I never heard of Talbot Grady. I did a quick Internet search for him. Active in the forties, up until the late fifties, then nothing. Published six mysteries, all paperback, all out of print. That one appeared in nineteen fifty-nine.”

Barbara was visualizing that row of paperbacks. She had handled every single one of them, and the shelf had been jammed as full as the other shelves. “There could have been an inscription,” she said. “Or a note written in a margin somewhere. Or someone's stamp of ownership, if it was a borrowed book. Not a loose paper. I would have come across it.”

“Or it could be in the text,” Frank said heavily. He scowled at the pictures as if it were their fault. “What else do you have?”

“Nothing real,” Bailey said. “Two of the guys still on that committee list are out of town. First, Ethan Small, sixty-eight, head of an eye clinic in town. Ophthalmologist, makes a million a year and travels a lot demonstrating a new technique he developed. A real big shot. His wife travels a lot, too, and they rarely travel together. Could be, but not likely. The other one is Isaac Wrigley, forty-one, in the biological sciences department at the university, something of a hotshot. He does research on the side, in the Brighter Future Research Group. Married, two kids, wife pregnant. He makes a bundle, but she has more. Timber money in her family. He travels, too, and raises mucho money for his own research group and for the university, and he's off now to Stanford to give a paper at a conference. Again, possible, not likely.”

“Forty-one!” Frank snorted. “Forget him. Maybe Small is Mr. Wonderful.”

“I don't know, Dad,” Barbara said, thinking of the historical romances. Had Hilde been a romantic, yearning for young love? “One big shot, one hotshot. I'd check them both out.”

Frank made a rude noise, but he nodded at Bailey. “If Mr. Wonderful isn't on that list, we're back to square one, and we have nothing to go on, except the fact that she had planned to be with him this week in San Francisco. You said Small's away. Where?”

“San Francisco,” Bailey said. He shrugged. “He's scheduled to do a couple of operations down there.”

After Bailey left, Frank muttered, “Hilde had too much sense to take up with a man who's only forty-one, with a wife and kids.”

“You always told me not to get attached to my clients,” she said. “Remember? You said it was too easy to be blinded to them if you're emotionally involved.”

He frowned and peered at her over his glasses. “I am not blinded by my emotions,” he said coldly.

“Probably not. But she was a very good looking fifty-three-year-old who might have been flattered by attention from someone that much younger, and might have believed whatever he said. She might have had to work at believing him, but was working at it. It happens.” Or, she thought but did not add, Hilde could have woven her own fantasy romance tale, complete with mad wife in the attic and happy ending.

“What would be in it for him?” he demanded.

“Oh, Dad, come on! He's a man, isn't he? What more do you need?”

“I remember that I also said more than once that if you start generalizing about people, you lose the individual,” he said, even colder.

“Well, since I don't have him, I can't lose him, now can I? Peace, Dad. I'm grasping at straws. I'll check out that book, put in a book search for it. Probably Talbot Grady is long dead, but I'll give him a shot, too, while I'm at it. No doubt it's a waste of time if what our guy wanted was something scribbled on the inside cover.”

The next morning she had just entered the kitchen, sniffing coffee, when the phone rang. She snatched up the kitchen wall phone when she heard Will's voice.

“Barbara, police are at Graham's with a search warrant. They want to question Alex. I'm on my way out.”

“So am I,” she said. “Stall them as much as you can.”

“What the devil?” Frank said as she raced upstairs for her laptop, purse, briefcase, sandals. She raced back down.

“I have to leave,” she said, running past Frank. “See you later.”

The waiting was over.

19

Graham Minick had
awakened very early that morning, before six, before the birdsong had become a full chorus. In no hurry to get up, he had thought about the strange thing that happened when a member of the household left. Like now, the house had an almost eerie stillness. It wasn't that Alex was a noisy sleeper, filling the house with snores and grunts; he never made a sound that escaped his closed door. It was rather as if a vacuum had formed, and it tugged at Minick throughout the day, the way it had done when Sal died so many years before.

He understood the pull of that emptiness, that absence of anything human; he had nearly succumbed to it before, and only after the fact had come to realize its power; only after the fact had he recognized how deep into depression he had sunk. He knew very well that for many the only escape from the void, the deepening depression of despair, was the ultimate escape. Alex had said more than once that Minick had saved his life, but Graham Minick knew that salvation had worked both ways.

For many people work, a busy social life, a full schedule, all served to seal off that black void of emptiness; some people even thrived on a hermitlike existence. But Minick was not a hermit, not a recluse. Years ago, he had filled his days, hour after hour scheduled, more cases than he could properly manage, and then, when he paused, when he became still, he had been aware that just out of sight, waiting, growing ever more powerful, was the void.

Then he was thinking of the many young desperate people he had counseled, how he had come to dread the empty eyes, knowing that the void had claimed those youngsters. Some he had saved, some he had lost.

Yesterday, walking down to the road to collect any new hate posters tacked to his trees, he had heard something off to the side. The sound grew louder, and he realized that it was coming from the Marchand woods. It sounded as if someone was dragging something through the brush.

He worked his way closer, then came to a stop behind a tree. The girl, Rachel Marchand, was dragging a tree branch, grunting and panting with effort. She was dressed in jeans and boots, a T-shirt, with her hair tied up in a ponytail, and not a trace of makeup. She stopped to rest, then began to drag the branch again.

She was on the track where she and her boyfriend had parked, and he realized that she was blocking it off from the road. One branch was already across the track and, with the one she was pulling, it would be impassable. Minick did not move as he watched her close off lover's lane.

When she had the branch in place, she stood up and looked about, and he was struck by the change in her. Before, garishly painted, she had looked like a child who had gotten into her mother's makeup; now she looked like a young adult, thinner than he remembered, pale and drawn, and with empty eyes.

She turned and trudged back toward the Marchand house, and he did not move until she vanished among the trees.

That afternoon he went to a strawberry farm and bought half a flat of berries, then he drove to the Marchand house. Mrs. Dufault opened the door at his knock.

“I brought you some strawberries,” he said. “For you and the youngsters.” She looked flustered, unsure if she should invite him in, and he said, “I'll just get them from the car.”

When he returned, carrying the berries, she opened the door wider and he walked into the kitchen. “They're so beautiful this year, I couldn't resist,” he said, “and I thought maybe you folks would enjoy them, too.” He put the box of berries on the table.

“That's so kind of you,” Mrs. Dufault said. “Thank you.” She hesitated, then said, “Please, sit down. Would you like a cup of coffee?”

“Don't go to any trouble,” he said, but he sat down, and she was already taking cups from the cabinet. “How are the kids getting along?”

“Fine,” she said. “Just fine.” She brought coffee to the table and sat down. “Leona said you were a psychologist and a medical doctor. Is that right?”

“Well, I'm retired, you know. But that's what I was, what I did.”

“She said you worked with troubled youngsters in New York for many years.” She stirred her coffee, keeping her gaze on it. “Actually,” she said then, “I'm a bit concerned for Rachel. Probably it's nothing, and she'll get over it. Kids are so resilient. But she's like a different girl. I don't really know what to do for her. I've tried talking to her about… you know. But she won't say anything.”

“She's been deeply traumatized, Mrs. Dufault. They both have been. And she's at the most difficult age there is. Walking that tightrope between childhood and adulthood is a precarious time. And there's always a feeling of guilt if a child's parents die prematurely. They can't account for it and can't get rid of it without help in many instances, and it gnaws away at them. Have you considered counseling for her?”

“I brought it up, but she just ran up to her room crying.”

“Probably she doesn't understand how it works. She would be the client and whatever she talked about would be held confidential, sacred even. The counselor wouldn't tell you or anyone else a thing, you see. Grief counseling can be a healing process, Mrs. Dufault. The child has been deeply hurt; she needs help to heal.”

“I don't know where to begin,” Mrs. Dufault said in a strained voice.

“Perhaps her family doctor could recommend someone, or a teacher Rachel trusts, or her minister.”

She shook her head. “She won't even talk to the minister. He tried, but she just sat like a lump, and then went to her room.”

“Her doctor then,” Minick said.

“I'll try,” Mrs. Dufault said. “God knows, the child needs something. She just cries and cries. Or else she sits and stares at nothing. It's scary to see her like this.”

Minick nodded. Crying was all right; staring at nothing was not all right. “Ask her doctor for the name of a counselor,” he said. “A counselor will know how to approach her, what to say, how to help.” He stood up. “I'll be on my way now.”