A Wrongful Death (10 page)

"I'll be sure to tell her," Frank said. Hoggarth rose then and unless he was very mistaken, Frank thought, the lieutenant was suppressing a grin. Well, they went back a few years and little that Barbara did would surprise him, but more, no doubt he was sore that the state investigators were intruding on what he thought of as his turf. As little as he wanted one more case, he wanted state investigators to take over even less.

Frank saw the two lieutenants to the door and out, then waited as a delivery man with a large floral arrangement approached.

"If they come back, don't let them in unless they have a warrant," Barbara said, coming from the kitchen. She stopped when she saw the flowers.

"For you," Frank said, handing her a small envelope with a card.

She removed the card and read it silently. "If there's anything I can do, I'm here."

That was all. No name, no salutation. Without a word, she turned and went back through the hall, then up the stairs, taking the card with her.

A few minutes later, when she came down again, she was wearing her jacket, carrying her laptop and her keys were in her hand. "I've imposed long enough," she said at the door to the kitchen where Frank was considering dinner.

"Barbara—" he started, but she cut him off. He didn't offer to give her the flowers, or even to mention them. And she did not refer to them.

"I'm going home. With the fuzz popping in every hour or so, I think it's safe enough," she said brusquely.

He didn't argue with her. There were times when it was a mistake to argue, he knew, and this was one. He nodded. "Sunday night as usual?"

"Sure," she said.

After she was gone, he cursed softly. If he was a kicking-the-cat sort of man, he knew both cats would be behind the moon by then. Darren had sent the flowers, he knew without a doubt, and there had not been a call, not a word about or from him until now. And he would never know what had happened between them. He cursed again. She had become almost rigid as she read the card, an attitude of inflexible rejection, or else withdrawing as far as possible in order to hide whatever she was feeling. And he didn't know which was the right interpretation.

He had a great deal of sympathy for Darren, and a growing frustration with his stubborn daughter. Not just frustration, he realized with surprise. Anger. The more sympathetic he felt toward Darren, the greater his anger at her grew. Darren's son Todd was going on fifteen. In a few years he would be off to school, then gone, and Darren would be kicking around alone in his nice house. She would be alone in her barren apartment. "Damn fools!" he muttered. "Goddamn fools!"

On Monday morning Bailey was as morose as always, swathed in his hideous yak coat and equally hideous woolen cap. "It's going to snow," he said gloomily, shedding the coat. "They're saying it will miss us, a sure cue that we're in for it."

Frank, already seated with coffee in his hand, nodded agreement. It was snowing in Portland, and as far south as Salem. In Eugene it was a freezing rain, with the temperature not quite cold enough for it to start coating everything in a glaze. Just right for snow. Barbara had said earlier that Shelley called to report it was snowing out at their place in the foothills of the coast range. She wouldn't make it in that day.

Bailey helped himself to the coffee and pulled his old duffle bag closer to his chair.

"Okay, so that's the weather report for the day. What do you have?" Barbara asked impatiently.

"Lot of stuff," he said. "One, Elizabeth Kurtz's mother Beatriz Cortezar flew in from Spain on Saturday and identified and claimed the body yesterday." He shrugged. "She ordered cremation, and she'll take the remains home to Spain for a burial in her family plot."

Barbara knew Bailey had a contact at the police department, one who served up reliable information from time to time. She had no idea what the payoff was, although it was one of the charges included under miscellaneous when Bailey presented his bill. She never questioned it. Neither would Frank now, and it was his party, she reminded herself. He had a client, she didn't.

"Cortezar insisted on removing Leonora from the place they were keeping her and putting her in an apartment, one they'll share until she returns home. I have the address." He motioned toward the duffel bag. "Leonora calls her Mother, and is treated exactly like a daughter. And get this, Cortezar is loaded. Her family's had an olive plantation for generations, and she married this guy named Fernando Cortezar, and his family had an even bigger olive plantation, and now they have an olive empire or something." He drank his coffee and said, "King of the olives. I guess the kid is an olive branch."

Barbara gave him a murderous look, and he shrugged. "Okay. Knowlton. Might be something there. When Diedricks cracked up in his plane, he wasn't expected to make it, and probably shouldn't have. Really banged up, needed a lot of surgeries, like that. Seems he and Jefferson Knowlton had worked together on some stuff they got patents on. Then when it was clear that Diedricks would never work again, Knowlton claimed the company stole his ideas. It was kept pretty quiet by a pack of attorneys, but it made the business section of the newspapers. Knowlton didn't have a leg to stand on. No paperwork, no notes, nothing but his word, and no one believed him. Diedricks didn't back him up. Knowlton kept at it for a couple of years, then dropped out of sight. Left Portland, had a breakdown or something, and moved to Eugene with his wife and kids, dead broke. That was his son, Br ice, and daughter, Rita, that you met."

"Other employees must have seen them working together," Barbara said.

"They went to that cabin, or worked in Diedricks's house. There's a big spread in the hills southwest of Portland, sixty or seventy acres. The family said Knowlton was a draftsman, not a co-inventor. Then Joseph Kurtz finished a couple of the ideas Diedricks had been working on, and his name is on the patents along with Diedricks's. Knowlton was all the way out of it."

He pulled a notebook from his pocket and consulted it. "They're scouring the neighborhood around that Eighteenth Street apartment for a gun. A Luger. And they have a crew going up and down I-5 trying to find out where Kurtz bought gas, where she and the kid ate. Paying a lot of attention to the Astoria area. And, finally, Leonora Carnero made arrangements for a car rental at the same time she made plane reservations, a package deal. All she had to do here was sign papers, five minutes."

And that would put her in the apartment even earlier, Barbara thought, before Elizabeth called about an appointment possibly. If they found a gun, that would be it. How the gun got there — Elizabeth's or smuggled on board the plane by Leonora — would be irrelevant.

"Along about now you should be glad she isn't your client," Bailey said, closing his notebook, returning it to his pocket.

She nodded. She was glad. "There is still that green van and the guys who took off the minute they got the address," she said.

He shook his head. "I doubt it. Guys who do surveillance don't usually fill in for hit men on the side." He drained his cup, then opened his duffle bag to get his full reports. "Anything else?"

"Not for me. His show." Barbara jerked her thumb toward Frank.

"Let us know if they find a gun, or if they track down the child," Frank said. "Then we wait for developments."

Bailey left to hole up at home, he said, and wait for the snow to fall and then to melt.

As Frank put on his overcoat Barbara said, "I wish I knew what Elizabeth told Leonora. This thing will wind down and I'll never know a thing about what was going on."

"None of your business," Frank commented. "Leave it at that."

"It's the little boy," she said. "Where is he? If she didn't have pals here, didn't know anyone, here just once in her life, what could she have done with the boy? They're making a case that I'm the only one she could have talked to about him, and everything else apparently."

He nodded. It wasn't the child she should be concerned about at the moment, he thought. He fully expected Janowsky to demand a formal sworn statement from her, possibly even a deposition, and how well she would handle it could be a problem. He knew without a second thought that she would be a terrible witness for herself.

After Frank left, Barbara stood at the office window watching for snow, but it was still rain or sleet, no matter what her weather expert said. She remembered that as a child she had called sleet silver rain. Exactly right, she thought at the window. Shopping, she said under her breath. There wasn't a thing to do in the office that needed doing today, but there was shopping to be done. Decisively she stuffed Bailey's reports into her briefcase, then paused momentarily wondering why she had them and not Frank. No matter. She told Maria to take off.

"Go bake Christmas cookies or something. I'm closing shop for the rest of the day."

It felt like snow, she thought outside, and it smelled like snow, but not yet. She got into her car and headed for the university bookstore where she usually found books the chains didn't stock.

For the next two hours, she chose gifts. A book of dolls from around the world down through the ages was perfect for Shelley. The Russian doll within a doll within a doll, Japanese geishas, straw and wood fetish dolls from the Yanomamo tribes of Brazil, porcelain dolls from China — she started to read the text, and forced herself to stop. But she would read it before she wrapped it, she decided. For Dr. Minnick, Darwin's exploration, notes and drawings from the Galapagos. The world's most fabulist natural places for Todd — waterfalls, mountain lakes, an underwater grotto. The two-volume set by Jared Diamond, /Guns, Germs and Steel, and Collapse/ for Alex. Suddenly she stopped scanning the shelves. A book for Todd? She bit her lip but did not remove the book from her basket. She moved on to a complete Sherlock Holmes collection for Maria. An audio book for Maria's mother, who could not sit still to read, but would listen as she did mending, ironing, cooking, knitting or something else useful. For Maria's daughters? She didn't even know if they were readers. Busy teenagers, did either of them actually sit down and read? Ask Maria, she decided and moved on.

Then she stopped again. Halfway down the next aisle Brice Knowlton stood, regarding her with a cool appraising look that, while not overtly hostile, was not friendly, either.

She took another step forward, then said, "Mr. Knowlton, can we talk a few minutes?"

"Why? What's to say? Elizabeth Kurtz is dead and out of reach. I don't have any other business with you."

"She's dead, and everyone keeps trying to involve me whether or not I belong in the picture. I'd like to learn the truth about your father and the Diedricks Corporation if you're willing to tell me about it."

"Again, why? If you're not involved, what's it to you?" They both moved aside as several other customers came down the aisle. She waited until they were past.

"I don't know. I assume you read the newspaper and know that they keep pulling me in in spite of what I say. I'd just like a little more information than I have." Three students, talking, turned down the aisle.

After they had passed, he nodded. "Sure. Quid pro quo. Isn't that the term?"

"It is."

"Where are you parked?"

She told him behind the store, and he said, "You can't stay there or they'll ticket you. Let's go to the Excelsior for coffee. You can drive and then bring me back to get my car. It's just a few blocks."

She checked out her purchases and they both pulled up hoods against the steady silver rain and hurried to her car. He directed her the few blocks to the alley behind the restaurant where there were half a dozen parking spaces, all but one empty now. The lunch crowd had left and it was too early for happy hour or dinner arrivals.

Inside the restaurant, with coffee at hand and the carafe on the table, he said, "You first."

She told him what she had told everyone else. "That was the extent of our meeting. She called to ask me to meet at her apartment at five or a little after, but when I got there, she was dead."

"At her apartment," he said. "Strange, or was it?"

"It was. At first she asked if she could come to the office immediately and I told her that various people had been asking about her — Sarah Kurtz, Terry Kurtz, you and your sister. She was afraid someone might be watching the office and that's why she asked me to come to the apartment. She told me to make certain no one was following me. She was running away from someone, Mr. Knowlton, but it wasn't me."

His expression changed subtly as she spoke. He looked more thoughtful and slightly more believing perhaps. "Your turn," she said, refilling her cup.

"Okay. We lived in California near Caltech where I was enrolled and Dad worked with a group on robots. They had been at it for years. Diedricks got in touch with him and wanted to have a meeting, and Dad agreed and flew up to Portland. Next thing, he was working with Diedricks on a prosthetic knee or something. For the next five years they worked together. My mother moved to Portland to be with him, and Rita and I stayed behind to finish school. She was still in high school and I was going after my Ph.D. I sort of took charge of her and we both accepted that. Then, thirteen years ago Diedricks crashed his plane and it was touch and go for him for a couple of years. It left him blind and partially paralyzed."

He turned to gaze out the window. "I don't know what they were thinking of during those years they worked together. No contract, no written agreement, nothing except two driven men doing the work they both loved. After the crash Dad tried to see Diedricks and couldn't. Intensive care, no visitors allowed. Dad wasn't allowed in the house where they had done a lot of their work, and at the plant, where the main R&D is still done, his workspace had been cleared out over one weekend. He had nothing to show for the previous five years. He finally saw an attorney, and that started two years of hell for him."

He looked directly at her and said slowly, "They robbed him, Ms. Holloway, and he couldn't prove a thing. He could replicate some of the work they had done together, but the attorneys said so could anyone else familiar with the field. It wasn't enough. He made some sketches of ongoing work, and they were called pie-in-the-sky fantasies, science fiction stuff. They ridiculed him at the hearings, said he should go back to playing with his robots, try to get work in the movies making science fiction horror films. And so on. Then a new patent was granted and it had Joe Kurtz's name as well as Diedricks's name, and that probably was the tipping point for Dad. He always said Joe Kurtz was not a scientist, he was a hack, a second-rate thinker, laughed at behind his back by the real developers and researchers. They all revered Diedricks and understood that Kurtz was vice president of R&D only because he had married the boss's daughter. They pretty much ignored him. Anyway, Dad lost the first trial and wanted to start an appeals process. His attorneys tried to talk him out of it and told him how much it was likely to cost and he fired them and started over with a new bunch. Six months later he was broke, and he had a nervous breakdown."