Desperate Measures (25 page)

The man who opened the door was younger looking than she had expected, more like a graduate student than the Ph.D. in charge. He was dressed in chinos, a T-shirt, and sandals. His hair was thick and dark, almost black, straight; his eyes dark blue. Slightly built, his face angular with prominent cheekbones and a long nose, he made her think of someone, something…. It slipped away.

“Ms. Holloway? Isaac Wrigley. Come on in.”

“Thanks for seeing me,” she said, entering the reception room.

It was decorated in mauve, violet, and shades of blue, with comfortable-looking plush chairs. Expensive looking. There was a closed blind at the window of the reception desk.

“Well, as I said, I'm stuck here working all day, but weekdays are worse. So… This way to my office.”

They passed two closed doors; he opened the next one and stood aside for her to enter. Almost spartan after the luxurious reception area, this room had only a desk and four chairs. There was a second closed door. The desk was covered with papers and held a framed picture. He indicated one of the chairs and went behind the desk to take his seat. Exactly what she did when she wanted to signal to a client who was boss.

“Now, you said you wanted to talk about Hilde,” he said.

She shook her head. “Actually, I'd like for you to talk about her.”

“I have to admit that I'm puzzled,” he said. “Why? And why me?”

“She was near the scene at the time of Gus Marchand's murder, and it's quite possible she saw or heard something that pertains to that. I represent Alex Feldman, who has been charged with the murder. So, I am interviewing her… friends.”

“I see. But the fact is that I was not one of her friends. An acquaintance, no more than that. As I told you, we were on the same committee, and on several occasions I gave her a ride to and from the meetings. She lived a few blocks from here, and it was convenient for me to pick her up and take her home several different times.”

“You were in her house on those occasions?”

“Yes. Several times. She was interested in some of the work we had done with kids—ADHD kids—attention disorders, autistic, hyper, the whole gamut. I loaned her some books on the subject and carried them in for her, and a couple of months later I went in and picked them up. Maybe another time or two, I can't remember.”

“Did she talk about Gus Marchand, the problems she had had with him?”

“I never even heard of him until I read about his murder. I knew she was a school principal and no more than that about her.”

“Did she ever mention Alex Feldman?”

“I told you,” he said, speaking very clearly, even leaning forward as if to emphasize his words, the way he might speak to a rather slow student, “she didn't talk about her personal life. We talked about the studies here, and about committee matters. That's all.”

“Was she a participant in your diabetes-medicine study?”

“No. Her diabetes was under control; there was no reason for her to risk anything by starting a new regimen.”

For a moment Barbara regarded him, and he stiffened and ran his hand through his hair. “She mentioned that she was a diabetic,” he said, “when I talked about the study at one of the committee meetings.” He pushed his chair back. “I really don't know why you're here. I don't know anything about Gus Marchand or his murder. Hilde didn't confide in me in any way about anything. Now, I have a lot of work to get to.”

“It's interesting that you took time out from your work to talk to me,” she said, rising. “I wasn't even certain that you were back home yet when I called.”

“I honestly don't know why I told you to come,” he said. He stood up and walked around his desk.

“Would you mind telling me where you were on the evening of June ninth?” she said.

“How the hell do I know? Oh! That's the day Marchand was killed?” She nodded. “Jesus! You think I had anything to do with that?” He looked incredulous. “Forget it. I was here explaining to a group of thirty people what we were proposing for a new study of hypertension. I explained what a double-blind experiment is, what a placebo means, possible side effects and possible benefits. The meeting lasted from six until eight.”

“Thank you,” she said. She took a step or two toward the door, then asked, “In your opinion, even as simply an acquaintance of Hilde Franz, do you believe she was capable of murder?”

“What are you talking about? Why?”

“Because Marchand threatened to reveal a secret that she couldn't risk having made public.”

“I don't believe for a second that she had such a secret, in the first place. And I don't believe she could have killed anyone. She was an older woman, probably menopausal, possibly hysterical at times in a clinical sense, but a killer? No. For heaven's sake, leave her alone. Let her rest in peace.”

Barbara nodded and took another step, paused again. “It's curious that your fingerprints were found in every room of her house, Dr. Wrigley.”

He was at her side, but he swung round and dashed back to his desk, where he picked up the framed picture and held it up. “Look at her,” he said. “Rhondi, my wife. My two kids. We're expecting a child in August. What you keep hinting at is insane! Do I look like a man who'd even be interested in an old, menopausal woman? Do I look desperate? Sex-starved?”

Then she had it, whom he had reminded her of. The young, very young and hungry, Frank Sinatra, whose face always seemed hauntingly starved, whose eyes looked out from photographs pleading for something.

“Your wife is very beautiful,” she said. She was. Blond, with short hair, fine bones and eyes, with the beauty of youth. She looked from the photograph to him and said, “I understand that she's in California at the present time.”

His mouth tightened to a hard pale line, and the prominent bones of his face looked even sharper as the skin tightened over them. “Don't go near her, Ms. Holloway. I'm warning you, don't go near her. She's having a difficult pregnancy, and I won't have her disturbed by your filthy insinuations.”

Barbara nodded. “I can let myself out.”

But he walked with her, slightly ahead of her through the hallway, through the reception room, and opened the door without a word.

“I think I'll use the back exit over there,” she said, nodding down the corridor. “It's unlocked, isn't it? Isn't that a fire law, that it be kept unlocked from the inside?”

He closed the door hard and she walked to the end of the corridor, opened the EXIT door, and stepped out into the bright sunshine.

“I don't know, Dad,” she said on his porch later. She was drinking a gin and tonic, just right for a hot afternoon. Summer had come with the start of July. “His office has a back door, easy enough to park in the rear, slip out, and go visiting anytime. He works strange hours and is there alone some of the time anyway. I don't imagine he keeps much staff late at night. He ducked the question of how his prints got in every room of Hilde's house. That's when indignation set in. I think he wanted to try to find out how much digging we've done.”

Frank was watching the cats stalk a butterfly, trying to surround it. He made a grunting noise. “He has a wife, two kids, a third one on the way,” he said. “I don't buy it.”

“I know,” she said. “You were around when Frank Sinatra was starting. Do you remember how he looked? I've just seen film clips and photographs, and in them he looks half starved, but not just for food. Something else. Affection, approval, love maybe. Wrigley has that same look, hungry for something. Yearning.”

“Let's tell Bailey to dig deeper,” he said. “And wait for the toxicology reports. We don't have a blessed thing to go on yet.”

“Right. Well, tomorrow I'm off to meet Dolly and Arnold Feldman. Then I think I'll hike up in the forest behind Dr. Minick's house. I want to see it for myself.”

The cats abandoned the butterfly and began to stalk an ant or something, maybe a shadow. Frank felt as if that was what Bailey was doing in his search for Mr. Wonderful: stalking shadows.

Dolly was exactly what Barbara had been led to expect: tall, elegant, sleek in a designer pantsuit of something black and shiny. And Arnold was very much the chairman of the board, of many boards. Thoughtful, sober, also elegant in a silk summer-weight suit. She wondered if they went to the same manicure salon.

She apologized for the way she was dressed after they were all seated in the living room; she was in jeans, T-shirt, and hiking boots. “I thought it a good opportunity to hike up into the woods, see the back of the Marchand property while I'm out this way,” she said.

From the strained look on Dolly's thin face, and the strained silence that followed her remark, Barbara suspected that they did not want to discuss, or even mention, the fact that Alex had been arrested for murder. Alex had seated himself in a chair positioned in such a way that he presented the good side of his face to the room. He picked up a drawing pad and started to sketch. He was wearing a beret and his sunglasses.

“Isn't his beret striking!” Dolly said then, not looking at her son. “I just don't know how many times we tried to get Alexander to wear a hairpiece. They make beautiful pieces these days, so realistic no one could tell. I don't know how many we ordered and begged him just to try on. They're very expensive, the good ones, I mean; some are even custom-made.”

Alex sketched faster.

“Of course, he should have some suits,” Dolly went on in a rush. “You can order the most fantastic clothes on the Internet, or from catalogs. You get several different sizes and just send back the ones that don't fit or don't look right.”

When Arnold said anything at all, it was a comment about the stock market—he was worried about it; or about oil prices someone should shake the stick at OPEC; or about delays in air travel—he was opposed to regulation, of course, but there had to be a way…. He didn't look at his son, either, but addressed his remarks to Dr. Minick or Barbara.

Dr. Minick spoke once or twice, and Alex never said a word. At precisely four o'clock Barbara stood up. “I'd better be out there climbing before it gets much later,” she said.

“I'll guide you,” Alex said, jumping up. He hurried to his studio with the drawing pad, left it and closed the door, then joined her at the back door of the house.

“I didn't mean to drag you away,” she said on the porch. “They'll want to talk to Graham,” he said. “Do you want to go up, or around the back of Marchand's place?”

“The back of his place.”

“I thought you might.” He started to walk. “I'll lead. They think I lurked there to get a glimpse of Sleeping Beauty, don't they?”

“They seemed to imply something like that.”

Very little area had been mowed here; soon they were in the forest, going uphill. She saw where he had cut firewood from blowdowns. It smelled good in the forest, earthy, pithy; here and there pockets of ferns thrived, but little else grew in the dense shade of the tall fir trees.

“I don't know for certain where his property starts,” Alex said. “Somewhere around here. My usual trail goes on up, but if you want to see the back of his yard, we'll blaze a new trail. Game?”

“Yep. Lead, I follow.” Now, going downhill, the way became rougher, and they clambered over tree trunks and wound around rocky places with treacherous footing. Soon brambles began to appear on her left, and she realized that they had neared the edge of the forest.

The blackberry vines were thick and high, ten feet, twelve feet high, impenetrable. Nothing was visible through the thicket. Alex led the way farther, sometimes back into the forest a bit, then toward the brambles again. Nowhere did she catch a glimpse of whatever lay on the other side of the living, exuberant screen; on this side the brambles were still blooming, white tinged with pink, with a few hard green berries. On the southern side, the sunny side, no doubt they were ripening. They came to a place where the vines had been cut down, and ahead of them stretched the filbert orchard. From here she could see the corner of the Marchand house through landscape shrubbery.

“Well,” she said. “I think Sleeping Beauty is safe from prying eyes.”

“Just as good as a wall of magic fire,” he said. “I'll take you to a resting place and then we can start back down if you're ready.”

She would have Bailey bring out his cameraman, she decided, and get some good professional pictures of that wall of brambles, maybe a video of the fortress barrier.

Alex led her upward, generally back in the direction they had just come, but higher; then he stopped. Here, smooth basalt boulders were scattered like a giant's set of building blocks. She chose a boulder backed up by another one and sat down. It had been a strenuous hike. Alex sat a short distance away, his back to her.

“An hour can be a long time, can't it?” he said. “It can, and was. Is it always that difficult?”

“Well, it's worse right now. They don't know if I'm a killer. Puts a crimp in the conversation.”

“They're probably trying to talk Dr. Minick into getting you a real lawyer.”

“They already did that. They think Johnnie Cochran would be a good choice.”

“Or F. Lee Bailey.”

“Second choice. Graham is very good with them.” He began tossing small rocks at a bigger one. “Graham made me see that they can't help being who they are. You make choices all your life and you become the person you are because of them. Changing is very hard, and impossible until you decide you want to change. If you think you're okay, there's no reason to go looking for a way to change.”

“You're very fortunate to have had such a wise friend,” she said. He made a low, rumbling sound, which she had come to recognize as laughter.

“I am,” he said then. “Fortunate.” He tossed a few more stones, then said, “I really wanted to get you alone, not in the office, to tell you something. Actually, two things. I've seen you studying me, trying to decipher clues, trying to psyche me out. It used to be that when I got too anxious, cornered, afraid, whatever it was, I would pretend to be Xander and go flying away. It worked, up to a point. Not all the time, and not totally, but it was all I had. When I began to draw the comic strip, and the cartoons, it was better. I could detach myself from whatever was bugging me, sort of watch from the outside, and even think something like, I could use that. An escape hatch. It works most of the time. And it makes me a little more inhuman, I suppose. I become an observer instead of someone living a life. But it works most of the time, and that's the important thing. When it doesn't work, I chop wood, or hike, or do something else physically hard. I guess what I'm trying to make clear is that I know what I am and I've found ways of dealing with it. You don't have to be afraid of me, or of what I might do. It's under control”