A Wrongful Death (2 page)

"For heaven's sake, Elizabeth! What's going on? Are you in trouble? Who will ask questions?"

"Just go get the car!" Her voice was shrill. She swallowed hard. "I can't stop to talk about it now. Just get the car. Please!

Terry and his mother. They can't find me here!"

Leonora's face hardened, and she nodded. "On my way."

At six-thirty Sarah Kurtz entered her condo where Terry was sprawled on a white sofa with a tall drink in his hand. He raised the glass as a greeting. "How's he doing?"

"He's sedated. They said he'll sleep all night and for me to come on home. The surgery is scheduled for seven in the morning." She looked tired. Every year for the past ten or fifteen, she had put on a few pounds, never much at a time but never lost again either, and the accumulation had become close to obesity. Her hair was as blond as ever, and would continue to be that color no matter how many more years she had to enjoy. Normally her complexion was good, her cheeks a nice pink, but that day her face looked splotched with red patches.

"What are you doing here?" she asked, taking off her jacket.

"Waiting for you. Miss Dad's keys yet?"

"What are you talking about? What keys?"

"To his filing cabinets here and those at the office. I took them today. And you didn't even notice. I'm surprised."

She had been moving toward the bar across the room, but stopped to look at him. "What are you up to?"

"I found the share assignment," he said lazily. "Thought it would save you a little trouble if I did it myself. Elizabeth helped me look. Thought you'd like to know that we can still cooperate if necessary."

"You let that woman look at his files?"

"Not at the office. While she looked here, I found it at the office. See, cooperation."

Sarah Kurtz's face became noticeably more mottled as she stared at her son. Wordlessly she turned and hurried to the home office. Terry got up and followed her. The key was still in the lock. Sarah yanked open the file drawer and riffled through the folders.

"I told you, I found it, down at the office. She didn't find anything."

Abruptly Sarah swung around, and her hand flashed out in a sharp slap across his face. "You bloody, blithering idiot! Go get her and bring her back here! Now!"

"She won't come. I told her I had the assignment. No reason for her to come back." He rubbed his cheek and stepped out of his mother's reach.

"Bring Jason! She'll come! Go get her now!"

Chapter 2

The first time Barbara Holloway entered the office of Dr. Marjorie Sanger, she had been restless and wary, and spent minutes prowling about the office, examining books on shelves, a series of miniature paintings in a frame, a globe. She had not expected to see the doctor. Being given the time because there had been a cancellation had taken her by surprise, but driving from Eugene to San Francisco she had promised herself to make the call, to seek help in untying the tangle of messy knots she had made of her life. Her own attempts to unravel the knots only succeeded in drawing them tighter.

"Are you going to tell me why you're here?" the psychologist had asked after a few minutes.

"I'm trying to decide where to begin," Barbara said. "It's difficult." In her mind she was trying to decide not where to begin, but if she would begin, or say it was all a mistake, excuse herself and leave.

"Yes, it often is. But let me start you. You're a professional woman facing a crisis of some sort. You've never consulted a therapist in the past and you rarely talk about personal difficulties."

Barbara paused her restless wandering and looked hard at her.

"No, I didn't look you up. Hardly time for that, was there? But you're guarding your reputation. You asked my receptionist for the charge in order to bring enough cash. No insurance record or credit card. No paper trail. Outsiders often seize any opportunity to paint us all as unstable, don't they?"

She was a wizened little woman, hardly more than five feet tall, and she couldn't have weighed more than a hundred pounds. Her hair was gray and frizzy, natural, Barbara assumed, since no one would get a perm like that and live with it. Indeterminate age, fifty-five, seventy?

The doctor smiled. "People who are garrulous have no trouble at all in starting to talk. Often about inconsequential matters, but they can no more resist talking than they can stop breathing. Many others seek out a neutral figure, one who knows nothing about them, another form of guarding the self, and quite often they find they don't know if they want to talk at all. And it's a crisis for you, or you wouldn't be here. See? Simple."

She laughed, and Barbara sat down opposite her desk.

On her next visit the doctor had said, "Every professional person faces the crisis of faith, crisis of belief, of personal integrity, something, and each one of us has to decide. No one can do it for us. You understand that you're suddenly on the tipping point of a life, your own or someone else's, that what you decide will determine someone's fate. It isn't just a minor nuisance, but a life-altering fate, and how you tip the scale is irreversible. It's a heavy weight to bear."

The next time Barbara had come, she again moved restlessly about the office, unable to sit still.

"What happened, Barbara?" Dr. Sanger asked. "Something has changed for you, hasn't it?"

Tiredly, Barbara sank into a chair and nodded. "It seemed simple. He would accept that I'm not the right one for him and get on with things, and I would get over it. People do."

"And now?"

"He wants to marry me. I got an e-mail with a proposal." She jerked to her feet and went to the globe, gave it a spin. "I'll end up hurting him. It wouldn't work. Why can't he see that?" She returned to her chair.

"Perhaps he is looking at something you don't see."

"An ideal. He's looking at an ideal, and I'm looking at myself, the person I know I am."

"I asked you what you're afraid of. Have you arrived at an answer?"

Barbara nodded. "I'm afraid I'll hurt him desperately. I'm afraid it would come to that eventually."

Dr. Sanger said gently, "I think you can come up with a better answer than that. But consider this, Barbara. Consider if there are ever two people who are truly equal. Aren't there always daily accommodations that must be made by real people? If they become too unbalanced, tension rises, perhaps an irreconcilable difference, but how can one know in advance if such will be the case? And what may be seen by one as a major hurdle, to the other may appear to be almost insignificant. Again, accommodations are made. Or not."

"You aren't going to give me any advice at all, are you?"

"No, Barbara. Only you can decide your own fate. You won't be coming again, will you?"

Barbara shook her head. "I have to think about my own fate, make a few decisions. Thank you, Dr. Sanger." She stood up and put on her coat, walked to the door, where she was stopped by the psychologist's voice.

"Barbara, if ever I find myself in a terrible situation, accused of criminal activity, I'd want you to defend me."

Barbara turned around and regarded the other woman, then said, "Will you answer a question for me?"

Dr. Sanger nodded.

"Have you ever considered quitting, leaving it all and just quitting?"

For a moment Dr. Sanger didn't move, then she nodded again. "More than once," she said.

"Thank you," Barbara said in a near whisper and walked out.

She walked until city lights came on. Cars rushed by, a fire truck screamed through an intersection in front of her, boys on skateboards zoomed past, other pedestrians clustered at corners and she paid little or no attention to any of it. One hand held her purse strap, the other was in her pocket clutching the e-mail from Darren. She felt stupid for carrying it around, especially since the words had become imbedded in her brain, but she carried it in her pocket where she could feel it.

When her thighs began to burn, she knew it was time to stop walking, to get something to eat and then return to her studio apartment. She would make notes of today's conversation with Dr. Sanger, exactly the way she always did after talking with a client or a witness. After that, she had to start from the beginning of her notes and give some thought to what she had said, what the doctor had said on various visits. But not in the city, she thought then. There was no need to remain in San Francisco. Someplace on the coast where she could watch a storm blow ashore and have peace and quiet enough to think through everything she and Dr. Sanger had discussed. And make a final decision about practicing law, and about Darren Halvord. Especially about Darren.

For weeks Joseph Kurtz had hovered between life and death, in a state neither one nor the other, in a deep coma following a stroke that occurred twenty-four hours after his surgery. That morning he had slipped into death.

Sarah Kurtz and her brother Lawrence Diedricks were in the living room of her condo and she half listened as Lawrence and her personal assistant Lon Clampton discussed arrangements for the next few days. The jet would be ready to leave in the morning, Clampton had said, whenever the family got there. He had arranged for removal of the body to the plane. The funeral would take place on Saturday, with only the family present, and a memorial service on the following Tuesday. Sarah's jaw was clenched with frustration and rage, and to her surprise even grief. They had been married for forty-three years, after all.

The voices droned on until she felt she might scream. Finally she broke in, "Clampton, what about that woman in Austin? Do they know yet?"

"Another false alarm," he said easily. Lon Clampton had been with her for more than twenty years, but he was not in her confidence and had no idea why she was so obsessed with finding Elizabeth Kurtz, only that she was, and that she was spending a fortune on private detectives. He didn't much care about why, not his job, but he was responsible for hiring the detective firm, and she took it out on him every time a false lead ended up at a blank wall.

Lon Clampton was a large man, broad shouldered and heavy without being fat. He worked out regularly and was proud of his well-developed body. He liked his job, even if Sarah Kurtz could be a bitch to work for at times. It was not demanding for the most part, and the pay was good enough to make up for a lot of her bitching. Arrange this party, see to the invitations, have the car ready, the plane ready to go, be on call presumably for twenty-four hours a day, but that was misleading. She rarely called in the evening and almost never on weekends. Now that Elizabeth Kurtz had come up again as a concern, he was ready to do whatever was required. More publicity, he could fix that. More rumors, he knew where to get them started. This time she had ordered absolute silence. Not a word to be leaked, not a hint they were looking for her. But finding her had proven to be a sticking point. Although the detectives really were some of the best, they had failed so far. And she blamed him more than she blamed them.

Sarah heaved herself up from a chair and cast him a venomous look. "If that crew of scumbags can't do the job, get some who can. I'm going to lie down."

At the door of the living room she paused to give her brother an equally scathing look. "Tell Moira that plane will take off at eleven whether she's aboard or not."

"Now, Sarah, don't you worry about Moira. We'll be there. You go on and have a rest."

"Your wife has never been on time in her life," she said. "She'll be late for her own funeral. Eleven."

Lying down, she realized she was grinding her teeth and forced herself to stop. It was too much, she thought, just too damned much. Where could that bitch be holed up?

In the beginning they had reassured her. She can't hide with a little boy, she's an amateur, she doesn't know how to cover her tracks. Now, weeks later they were still chasing shadows. Only three people had known about that file — Sarah, Joe and Sarah's brother, Lawrence. And now that bitch had it. Joe should have burned it, she thought then. She should have let him burn it when he first proposed doing so. But she had known it was priceless and said to lock it up. We'll find a use for it. And they had, and would have found it even more valuable than she had dreamed years earlier. Or it could be a scalpel that could slice her dreams to shreds.

She'll get in touch, she told herself, as she had done repeatedly. We'll meet her demands now, and take care of her later, after the file is secure again. After things are settled.

She had been outraged and mortified when Terry called to say he would bring his bride over to meet the family, the first she had heard about a wedding. She had ordered Clampton to find out about the girl and her family, and the more she learned, the angrier she had become. A filthy Spanish girl, an equally filthy Spanish mother who had seduced another nice American boy. Elizabeth's father had come from a good American family, probably as easy a pickup as Terry would have been. It didn't matter that her mother's family had money; they probably had stolen it. So they were highly regarded in Spain; anyone could buy a favorable press release. Sarah's outrage had only grown when she met Elizabeth. She had known she would be beautiful, of course. Terry always had an eye for a beautiful girl; she was just one of many. But she had snared him. It had mattered less that she was educated, a major in science, for God's sake! She didn't trust women who were driven, competitive. God alone knew what mixture of blood ran in that family, Spanish, Arabs, no doubt, blacks. Who knew?

She had to admit that Elizabeth was smart, showing off her intelligence, questioning Joe in a humiliating way, then dismissing him, probably laughing at him. And making up to Sarah's father, showing off her languages the way she did.

Speaking French on his shortwave radio to some other foreigner who couldn't speak decent English. None of that mattered.

What did matter was that Sarah knew how to bring her down to the level where she belonged, helpless and pleading, abject and penitent. Once she got her hands on Jason, Elizabeth would understand what it meant to cross Sarah Kurtz.

Her head was throbbing painfully with a migraine coming on. Not now, she willed it. Not fucking now!