Defense for the Devil (12 page)

They walked out with his arm around his wife’s shoulders.

When she returned to Frank’s house, she told him about the Arnos’ visit. “They’re good people, fine people. You’d like them. Oh, shit!” She went upstairs.

Dinner for three, he thought, watching her out of sight. She was too troubled to give food a thought. He’d go round up John himself, if that’s what it would take. Barbara’s efforts toward domesticity had both amused and alarmed him. His alarm button had gone off only when he saw how important Barbara considered it, how she equated failure in the kitchen with something a hell of a lot more meaningful than that.

A little later he lifted the phone to call a fish market and was startled to hear Barbara saying, “That’s right, Sally Bronson. My Visa number…” She rattled off a string of numbers and gave the expiration date, then said, “May I have a confirmation number?” The other person gave her a different string of numbers, and Frank hung up. What the hell…?

When he tried the phone half an hour later, she was on it, again reciting a Visa card number. He started up the stairs to see what the hell, but he resisted the impulse; she would tell him when she had something to tell. Then he called up to her, “I’m going dinner shopping.” He had to say it once more before she came to the top of the stairs.

“I’m sorry? What did you say?”

He said it a third time. “Won’t be long. Everything’s locked up down here.”

“Oh,” she said vaguely. “All right.”

After shopping, he dropped in at the Patterson Street apartment. John opened the door, looked past him, then at him, not hiding his anxiety at all.

“Is something wrong?”

“Nope. I was in the neighborhood, came by to invite you to dinner. Bobby’s at the house, working, not a thought in the world about the next meal.”

John’s face tightened. “Thanks, but not tonight.”

“Well, it will be there, a plate out for you. Six-thirty, if you change your mind.”

“Thanks again,” John said stiffly. “You should have called, saved yourself the trip.”

“Couldn’t,” Frank said. “I think she’s into telemarketing or something. Kept the phone tied up all afternoon. Sometimes, watching her when she’s hot after something, I wonder how the hell my wife put up with me for more than thirty years. Never thought to ask her, never guessed she had anything to put up with.”

John grinned slightly. “She’s like you were?”

“Yep. Not saying it’s admirable, just that it’s how she is. I recognize myself over and over. It’s a little uncanny. Well, I’ve got to hustle some nice fat tiger prawns home and do interesting things to them.”

Barbara came down the stairs as he was washing snap beans. “Wine for a dying-of-thirst voyager,” she said piteously. He pointed toward the refrigerator, and she helped herself. He then pointed to a small glass dome covering an assortment of cheeses, and she helped herself to a bit of cheese, too.

“I’ve run up a terrible phone bill,” she said then. “When it comes in, let me know how much. See, I got to thinking about the cashier’s check, but of course Wygood never had one, not for forty-two thousand. The car was part of the payoff. But why would she want to be paid off? She was filthy rich already. Then I got to worrying about all those telephone numbers, the other numbers.” She was wandering in and out of the kitchen. When she paused, she sipped wine or nibbled cheese.

“Okay,” she said. “What if that long string was a hotel confirmation number? So I began calling every hotel number in her notebook—Zurich, Paris, San Francisco—and I made reservations each time and got a confirmation number each time. They’ll check the credit card and know it’s a fake, but meanwhile, I have what I was going after. It’s a confirmation number, all right, for the Hilton at Miami International. Then I called United and said I was trying to clear up a credit card misunderstanding, and an obliging man told me that Thelma Wygood had had a reservation for the flight to San Francisco on July twenty-third, that she was a no-show, but unfortunately they had not received a cancellation, and the charge would have to be paid. I said I understood.”

Frank studied her; she showed not a trace of embarrassment or guilt. She caught his searching gaze and grinned, lifted her wine glass and drained it.

“Then I started to wonder about the other phone numbers—bookstores, and a deli in Seattle. Why? A long way to order a pastrami on rye, don’t you think?” She poured more wine. “I called the Seattle numbers to find out where they’re located, a bookstore and a deli, within half a block from the Major Works headquarters. Useful, if you happen to be working in Seattle, but from Zurich?”

She was pacing again, her voice rising and falling as she moved close to the sink, then farther away. Frank turned off the water and dried his hands.

“I began to do some heavy thinking about Thelma Wygood,” she said. “Looked up things about her on the Internet, and found out a lot. She and Major were equals in every way; her name came first as often as his did when they released a new program. She wasn’t shy about taking credit for her work, either. She knew damn well what she had done and what it meant. I’m getting ahead of myself,” she said apologetically, returning to the kitchen.

“I tried to put myself in her place. I’m in Zurich, and leave carrying nothing but the briefcase with the program and my purse, maybe with a toothbrush and a nightgown in it. I have a reservation for the Miami airport motel, and a flight out early the following morning. What do I plan to do with the car and the money? I can’t get through airport security with a metal suitcase full of money, and I sure as hell wouldn’t check it through. So what? Why the stopover in Miami? Why not a connecting flight on to San Francisco if that’s where I wanted to be?”

She paused. “Putting myself in her head made me realize that in many ways Maggie Folsum is like her. She had her party to show her family, her parents and brothers, that, by God, she had done it and done it alone. Rub their noses in it a little. Women like that are fed up with achieving a lot and having the credit go somewhere else.”

Her voice had become a bit hard-edged.

“If I argued a case and won it before the Supreme Court, do you imagine for a second that I’d go all demure and shy and say, ‘Daddy told me what to say’?”

Frank burst out laughing, and she grinned again, broader. “Anyway, you can see where my thoughts were taking me. I just don’t believe Thelma Wygood would have let someone take her program and claim it as his own. And if that wasn’t the case, then she and Major might have done something extremely foolish. And, as it turned out, fatally dangerous.”

Frank’s eyes narrowed, and now he poured wine for himself. “Let’s have a seat,” he said, motioning toward the dinette. He carried the bottle in with him.

“Okay,” Barbara said. “I can imagine how bookstores would be useful if you’re conspiring. A simple message left with a secretary: The book Mr. Major ordered will arrive on the third, something like that. But it would be limited, don’t you think? But a deli that’s open until two in the morning, all day, that offers more possibilities, especially if you own the building, the deli, all of it. I haven’t checked it out, but I’d put down money that Major owns that whole block.”

“You’re suggesting that she might have planned to turn over the car and the money in Miami to private investigators, FBI, something like that?” Frank said. “Then fly to the West Coast. Another trip to the island next? Maybe.” He drank his wine, deep in thought, then said, “It’s a stretch, Bobby. You’re speculating a lot, and assuming a lot, too.”

“Yes,” she admitted. “It just makes sense this way. Nothing else does. Would they have had a fight in public that everyone seems to know about? Then the elaborate separation, all the way to Europe for her. And for him to have sported Barbie dolls in public? I bet they scared him to death. None of that’s in character with anything I’ve been able to find out about them.”

“But what’s that program she was selling, then?” Frank asked after a moment.

“I don’t know. I want to ask Major.”

“If Major’s in seclusion, occupied with having a nervous breakdown, that step might be in the range of hard to impossible.”

“I know. I’m going to try something. First I wanted to air it all, and have a bit of wine.” She drew the notebook from her pocket. “Dave’s Deli, my next move.”

She went to the kitchen phone; Frank followed, then stood nearby as she dialed. When a man said, “Dave’s Deli,” she said, “I have an urgent message for Mr. Major.”

The man on the other end said, “Hold on.” Then he yelled, “Dave, you want to take this?” There was a lot of background noise; apparently the deli was busy.

“This is Dave,” a different man said after a moment.

“I have a message for Mr. Major. It’s urgent. Tell him it’s about Thelma and Penelope.” She gave Frank’s number, and Dave hung up without another word.

“Now we wait,” she said, then let out a long breath.

11

When Frank mentioned
that he had invited John to dinner, Barbara momentarily looked startled, then she shrugged. “I’m not telling him any of the new developments,” she said. “I think it’s best not to involve him further.”

“Okay,” he said, but he had mixed feelings. One day he would be the one kept in the dark, and he knew very well how that would sit; on the other hand, John was curiously innocent about a lot of things. Also, the fewer people who knew about this matter, the better. Still, there would be injured pride. None of your business, he reminded himself, and turned the shrimp in the marinade of garlic and oil.

Barbara went to the door when the bell rang at six-thirty. John was holding a bottle of wine. She had a flashing memory of the first time he had come here to dinner, and had brought flowers and a bottle of Grand Marnier. The flowers were for her father, he had said gravely when she reached for them.

“Hi,” he said, his gaze sweeping over her—up, down, then fixing on her face. “No flowers, no coals to Newcastle.”

Her voice was husky when she said, “Come on in.”

Inside, he set the bottle down on the side table in the hall and took her in his arms. “I missed you.”

She nodded. “Me, too.”

Frank stopped at the other end of the hall when he saw them, and backed up again, returned to his food preparation. It might just be a temporary truce, but truces were good. They led to negotiations, which sometimes led to compromises and even agreements.

The truce lasted through dinner, although neither Barbara nor John had much to say. They listened to Frank’s stories and laughed at the right places. Twice the phone rang and Barbara jumped up from the table with a hasty “Excuse me.” Each time she returned and did not say a word about the caller.

After dinner, John washed the pots and pans the way he always did at Frank’s house; Barbara dried them and put them away. Then there was an awkward moment.

“You’re waiting for a phone call?” John asked. She nodded.

“Any idea when to expect it? How long you’ll wait?”

“No. It might not even happen.”

He regarded her without any expression for a time, then said, “I better get on my way. It’s a long walk.”

“You walked over?” She realized that he had expected them to drive back in her car.

“Give you a lift,” Frank said.

John thanked him and said no. “I need the exercise.”

Barbara walked to the door with him. “You could hang out for a while. The call might come any minute, and we’d both leave.”

“And it might not. See you later.”

He didn’t ask if she’d be home early.

She paced while Frank read, then she played with the cats, then she paced again. She sat down and stood up many times. She should see
a counselor, she thought; no, John should
see
one. They should both see
one. But he wouldn’t. She realized she was chasing her own tail and stopped, then went over her reasoning about Thelma Wygood again.

At eleven she said, “Dad, go on to bed. I’ll just read for a little while. He isn’t going to call this late.”

Wordlessly, Frank left the living room; he returned with a sheet, which he draped over the back of the couch. He knew she would go nowhere until that call came, or morning came, but maybe she would stretch out and get some rest.

At fifteen minutes before twelve the phone rang. She ran to pick it up before the machine took it. “Hello.”

A hoarse voice demanded, “Who are you? Did you leave a message for me? I’m Russ Major.”

“I called,” she said, and sank down into a chair. “My name is Barbara Holloway. I’m an attorney in Eugene, Oregon. I think I have something that belongs to you.”

“How much do you want?”

“Just to talk.”

“How do you know anything about Penelope? What do you know about Thelma?”

“Not on the phone, Mr. Major. I have to talk to you in person.”

“Get up here to Seattle. I’ll have you met.” To someone else he said, even more hoarsely, “Shut up. I’m handling this.”

“I can’t do that,” Barbara said. “Mr. Major, there’s an attorney in town who works for the Palmer Company. I don’t want them to know I’m in touch with you, and if I leave, they might follow me. You’ll have to come here.”

At the mention of Palmer, there was a strangled sound, then a different voice said coldly, “I don’t know who you are, or what game you’re playing. We’ll get back to you. In the morning. Nine o’clock. Be at this number.” He hung up.

When Barbara got home half an hour later, John was asleep in the living room, sprawled out in a chair. He would be stiff and sore, she thought in dismay. He roused, rubbed his eyes, and peered at her.

“Can we go to bed now?”

She held out her hands to pull him upright.

12

Frank was in
his robe and slippers when he let her in the next morning. He picked up the newspaper, led the way to the dinette, where he tossed the paper on the table, and walked out.

“We have to come up with a good place to put Major where we can talk to him,” she said to his back. He vanished into the hall to his bedroom and closed the door hard.

The doorbell rang and she went to admit Bailey, who looked as out of sorts as her father. “Eight o’clock!” he grumbled. “Jeez, Barbara.”