"Kate Wilhelm - Sleight of Hand(2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wilhelm Kate)

"Tell you what," Stephanie had said. "I'll make fried chicken and mashed potatoes with gravy. Plus strawberry shortcake with lots and lots of whipped cream. We'll celebrate your homecoming."
"Poor Reggie," Eve said. "There goes her diet again. Unless I eat it all." She smiled weakly, a crooked little smile that came and went fast.
Both Eve and Eric had that crooked smile, just like me, Stephanie thought.
Stephanie pushed her chair back from the desk and regarded her bed on the other side of the room. Her home office was a corner of her bedroom, a desk with her computer, a file cabinet, a waste-basket. The settlement her attorney had wrangled from Jay's attorney had made it possible to buy a small house, this split level, big enough for her and the two children. Now that Eric was gone, Reggie lived with them and used the topmost two bedrooms.
What Eve needed, an early doctor had said, was a stable home where she felt secure. Stephanie had provided it. She eyed the bed, then shook herself. If she took a nap, doubtful that she could sleep, but if she did, then she would be up again most of the night. She could not think of the last night she had had a long restful sleep. Tomorrow night, she told herself. When Eve was home and safely tucked into bed, then she would sleep through the night.
She closed her eyes, and let herself fall into a near reverie state, too tired to think clearly, too fatigued to stir. The doorbell roused her.
Eric was letting himself in when she went down the stairs. He had moved back into his own apartment the previous day.
"Mother, we have to talk," he said at the door. "Is Reggie around?"
"No. She'll be back later. What's wrong?"
"Come over and sit down," he said, motioning toward the sofa. He sat in an upholstered chair near it. "Late this afternoon, Mr. Berman called me at work and asked if I could meet at his office before four."
Stephanie stiffened. She loathed Berman, who had been Jay's attorney and had fought for his client all the way through the divorce proceedings as if protecting Samson from Delilah.
Eric was plunging onward as if unaware of the effect of his words. "Connie's dead. They won't make any announcement until they notify her family. Berman said they needed to know who to release Dad's body to since she's out of the picture, and Berman told them I'm next of kin. I have to make arrangements." He stood up and began to pace. "God, I don't care what they do with him! Berman said he'd take care of things. In a week or two there should be a memorial service or something. And we had to go to the bank to open Dad's safe deposit box with a detective. They were waiting for Connie to show up, butЧ"
"Stop moving around," Stephanie cried. "What about Connie? What do you mean, she's dead? When did she die? How? For God's sake, settle down and tell me!"
He sank down into the chair again and leaned forward. "Sorry. They don't know when or how. Her body was in the ocean and they don't know for how long. It might take a couple of weeks to find out." He jumped up again. "I left some beers here. Be right back." He hurried from the room.
Stephanie leaned back against the couch. Connie! She had met her for the first time in September when Connie had asked permission to meet her stepchildren. In October the monthly checks had started, twelve hundred dollars, to help with Eve, the memo had said. And now she was dead. Stephanie had liked Connie, and Eve had formed an attachment that was rare for her. Slowly, with tentative, hesitant steps, Connie and Eve had drawn together, formed a friendship that had become a strong bond by spring.
Eric returned with a bottle of beer. He drank, then set the bottle down on the end table by his chair. "I guess I'm reeling from too much, too fast," he said. "There's more. We went to the bank with the detective and opened the box. It had Connie's things along with Dad's. The deed to the house, papers, some of her jewelry, Dad's will and a copy of hers. The detective took charge of it all until they straighten out who gets what. Then I went back to Berman's office with him and he told me about the wills. He said she left half of everything to Dad, and the other half to be divided between her family in Virginia and Eve and me. He said it could be over a million dollars!"
He took another drink, longer this time. "Dad's will makes the same kind of distribution, but names somebody in New Hampshire to split half with us."
Stephanie, speechless, stared at him. Finally she said. "Are you sure?" It was a whisper.
"That's what he told me. The detective wanted to know if any of us knew about it before. They probably will ask you, too. I told him I haven't spoken to Dad or seen him in nearly ten years, and Connie never mentioned anything like that to me. I never even knew there was any family in New Hampshire."
"He told me he would leave you and Eve exactly one thousand dollars each, and a distant cousin in New England would get the rest." As far as Stephanie knew Jay had never met his cousin. "But he will carry on the Wilkins name," Jay had said meanly, "which is more than I expect from your fairy kid."
"Right now it's a real mess," Eric said. "A lot depends on who died first. If it was Connie, and they seemed to imply it was, then her half goes to him, and that plus whatever he had could add up to quite a bundle when they start dividing it up." His eyes gleamed. "Berman said not to start spending it yet because it could take months to work out. But I can't help thinking about it. I'll go to graduate school if it's true."
And Stephanie couldn't stop thinking about it, either, after Eric left. She was Eve's legal guardian. It would mean an end to money worries, real security for her daughter, the art lessons she needed, helping her toward the goal she had to achieve ultimately: a self-directed, independent existence, free of the threat of being institutionalized and started on the downward spiral to oblivion. The threat was real, sometimes looming near enough to destroy sleep, sometimes receding, but always there. The day Stephanie could no longer pay for Eve's medication, for her hospital care when necessary, the threat would be realized.
Jay had wanted to place her in an institution at a young age. Stephanie knew that would have been fatal. Two doctors had said what she needed was a stable homelife when she was between her episodes. They always referred to them that way, episodes; lapses into insanity was what they meant. In the beginning, the episodes had been frequent with long periods of hospitalization, six weeks at a time, seven. There were weekly sessions with a therapist between episodes.
Stephanie had homeschooled Eve after two unsuccessful tries in regular classes. Eve could not bear to be with other children rushing about, unpredictable, loud, threatening. She had been a slow reader, and still never read for pleasure.
Eve's mind struggled to keep things within their own boundaries, but if she lost control for a second, everything she saw merged into shapeless swirling colors rushing at her. Out of control. When she was eight, she froze one day when luncheon guests, strangers, rushed toward her to admire the lovely child. That was the day Jay had turned his back on his daughter. Later, from eleven onward, she collapsed into a fetal heap and refused, or was unable, to move or open her eyes. Catatonia. The first time that happened, a neighbor's little black-and-white cocker spaniel, wanting only to play, had run at her in the backyard, and she had fallen to the ground and drawn herself into a ball. That had been her pattern ever since. If she could not control it, she could only try to deny it through complete withdrawal from the world.

Chapter 9

Meg Lederer stood at her office door and surveyed the small room with satisfaction. That morning she had installed the new blinds and the room was ready to use. It held a regular desk and at right angles to it a computer desk set up with her computer and printer, a two-drawer file cabinet, a reading chair with its own lamp, bookshelves on one wall and a closet with deeper shelves for office supplies. Perfect, she thought. Absolutely perfect. Her first office.
A sharp memory surfaced of the card table and secondhand typewriter on which she had written seven children's books. Typewriter on one side of the table, room for her meals on the other, none left over. It had been enough. Twenty-two years old, passionately in love with her husband, who would be imprisoned for five years, she had set out to learn to type, and then to write stories.
She closed her eyes as another sharp memory rose. Huskily Wally had said, "Honey, you're so beautiful, so young. I know guys will be at your heels day and night. If you... I mean if you can't resist or something... You know what I'm trying to say?"
She had been crying. He wiped her cheeks. "Honey, when I get out, just promise me one thing. That's all I'm asking, just one thing. Give me a chance again. Can you do that? Whatever else happens, I mean... No questions or anything. Just give me another chance."
She brushed away the past and walked through the house to the back porch to see what Wally was up to. Pestering the roofing man, probably. The phone rang and she went back to pick up the wireless handset in the kitchen, then took it with her to the porch. She could see Wally looking up at the man on the roof. Barbara was on the line.
Meg listened with near incomprehension, then asked, "What difference will that make to us? We never even met Connie Wilkins."
"I think they'll put everything on hold until they know more about how and when she died. What it means to you is that nothing's likely to happen for a quite a while. So you just sit tight and we'll see what happens. If they start asking you questions again, let me know, and I'll give you a call if I learn anything. Okay?"
Meg said it suited her fine to be left alone forever as far as she was concerned. She broke the connection and regarded Wally at the barn. It was hard to get used to him wearing a John Deere cap, old blue jeans and work boots.
Was he content? Was he likely to remain content out here in the country after the kind of life they had led so long? The question kept recurring.
Casino shows, blackjack, and several times a year a convention here or there, a weekend stay in a convention hotel. Wally picked the conventions with great care. No starving poets' convention or hungry artists'. No firefighters' convention Чhe had his own set of scruples and he refused to take money from a firefighter. The attendees had to be affluent enough to afford him, he had said.
After finding a suitable convention through the Internet he did a little research, then made a reservation at the same hotel, always to arrive a day before the convention was to start, and by the time the conventioneers were in place Wally would have struck up a bantering relationship with the bartender. It was never hard for him to get in on the attendees' bar talk and he always located a floating poker game and was invited to participate. The players for the most part were strangers to one another, and he was just another stranger. There was always a poker game somewhere, he had said in the beginning, and he had been right. He sometimes lost a little at the casino blackjack tables, but he had never lost a cent at the convention games.
Once Meg had protested that it didn't seem fair, and Wally had said earnestly, "Honey, look at it this way. Those guys are going to play, no matter what, and the losers are going to lose. I'm not changing a thing in the grand scheme of the universe. That's what some of them came for, to kick up their heels a little, to see shows their wives won't let them watch at home, to drink too much, maybe play around a little and to gamble. I'm there to work. They get what they came for and so do I."
There was a flaw in his argument. He was a professional taking advantage of amateurs, even if he didn't cheat. But, she had argued with herself, didn't those bankers take advantage of loan applicants with the fine print that they knew would not be read or understood if it was? Didn't too many doctors vacationing on pharmaceutical largesse take advantage of patients by prescribing high-cost medicines that their sponsors wanted to sell when generics or lower cost drugs would be equally beneficial? She had given up the argument and never raised an objection again. It was too difficult to determine, much less navigate, that elusive line that defined ethical behavior. All parties were getting what they wanted when they played poker with Wally, that was enough.
Wally had started to walk toward her and when he drew near he began talking, the way he always did. "I asked Andy what to do about all that moss on the roof. You know what he told me? You'd never guess. He said don't touch it. Leave it alone. It's all that's holding those shakes together. Exactly what I wanted to hear." He grinned and put his arm around her shoulders. "Gave me some advice about the fireplace, too. Let's go have a look and I'll tell you."
In the living room, which they had not yet touched, as he talked about the difference between open fireplaces and inserts, she leaned into him slightly. He stopped talking and looked down at her.
"Feel a little nap coming on?"
She nodded and he laughed and squeezed her shoulder. "Old folks like us need our naps," he said.
Even that, she thought happily. Even that. No matter what lay in the future, coming home had rejuvenated him, and her, too. She had never been happier, in spite of the fear Jay Wilkins had inserted into their lives. They left the living room and headed toward the bedroom, not really running, but not dawdling either.

After talking with Meg, Barbara regarded the slim folder with the Lederer material in it. She started to put it in the tray of "To File" folders, then changed her mind and put it with the active folders on her desk. She had a strong hunch that the Lederer case would not end just yet.
The evening newscast had a brief mention concerning the identification of Connie Wilkins s body and the ongoing investigation, but the following morning's newspapers had a longer account.
Barbara read it carefully while eating breakfast, then stopped at a name she knew: Adele Wykoph. Connie Wilkins had done a lot of volunteer work in the past, and one of the organizations she had helped had been the Women's Support Center. Its director was Adele Wykoph. Barbara had referred many women to the center over the years, and she and Adele were friends, comfortable with each other, trusting each other. She waited until she got to the office, then called Adele.