A Wrongful Death (33 page)

Dr. Minnick won the next game.

They watched the ball fall, and drank a toast to the New Year, and soon afterward Barbara was in a small guest room standing at the window watching rain streak down the windowpane.

Where was Darren this night? Alone in his house? Out with friends? Hosting a party for Todd and his pals? She hugged her arms hard about her and tried to shake the thoughts away, but they persisted and were accompanied by a sharp pang of desire.

The woods were dripping and, with shafts of intermittent sunshine illuminating them, vividly green with brilliant moss. The fragrance of fir hung in the air. The trail was spongy, covered by a thick carpet of fir needles, muddy in spots, and the air was fresh and sharply clean smelling. Mammoth ferns waved in the breeze, dark green and tough, and very beautiful in their unchoreographed graceful dance.

Alex led the way up into the woods, stopping now and again to point out mushrooms, a downed tree serving as nurse to a number of seedling trees, or a rock encrusted with pink lichen. Elizabeth appeared entranced.

Barbara heard the surprise Shelley had promised before it came into sight. Water splashing. As they rounded a curve in the trail, it appeared, a flashing, tumbling, noisy waterfall, sending diamond-like sprays of droplets high into the air. It had a plunge of no more than ten or twelve feet, but the recent snow, now melting, and the heavy rains of the past days had turned a tiny freshet into a white-water stream of furious energy. No one spoke as they drew nearer.

When they finally turned to start back down, Alex said, "Last summer that was barely a trickle, hardly enough to keep the rocks wet."

"You have a piece of Eden here," Elizabeth said. "It's all so perfect."

Not Eden with the implications of evil to come, but rather an enchanted forest, Barbara thought, as she finally forced herself away from the newly created waterfall.

They stopped once more, and Barbara had a sharp memory of stopping at the same place a year before with Darren. It had been raining. The scene below, the rambling house, a small stream off to the side, mist rising. He had said, "You're a creature of the woods." And they had said, almost in unison, the scene was like a Japanese painting. She closed her eyes willing the memory away. Not now, she told herself. Not now.

When they reached the house they found Frank in the kitchen talking to Dr. Minnick, comparing different ways to prepare a smoked Virginia ham. "I soak it a couple of days in water, change it every few hours, then a day in apple cider," Dr. Minnick was saying.

"My mother used to add a little vinegar to the first soak waters," Frank said. "It seems to draw out the salt just fine."

Barbara shook her head. A retired psychiatrist, and a semi-retired criminal defense attorney coming on like two housewives.

She went up to change her wet clothes. They got wet whether or not it rained, she knew, and she had come prepared. Her phone rang as she was pulling on dry pants.

"Ms. Holloway, Gary Swarthmore here. Look, we know this is highly irregular, since tomorrow is a holiday, but Dr. Diedricks is determined to have a meeting tomorrow, and he specifically wants you to attend if at all possible."

She sat down on the side of her bed for what proved to be a long conversation.

When she returned to the living room Shelley was speaking earnestly to Elizabeth. "I have anything you'd need, but if you really wanted to go to your place first, we could do that."

"It's just such an imposition. I feel like the man who came to dinner."

"I'm talking her into staying over until Tuesday, and let me deliver her to the DA's office," Shelley said to Barbara. "Tell her it's a good idea."

"It's a good idea," Barbara said obediently. It was a great idea, she was thinking. She hadn't looked forward to telling Elizabeth that she would be on her own the coming day, alone in her apartment, worrying about the session with the district attorney, no doubt. "You've relaxed so much out here, another day is a really good idea."

"See? So it's settled. The boss said so," Shelley said.

Barbara had already decided not to mention her conversation with Gary Swarthmore, not to bring the reality of murder and corporate fraud into what was turning out to be a good break for all of them. Later, she told herself. Later, back in Frank's house, she would tell him, but not here, not now.

"It isn't as if I don't have enough clothes to share," Shelley was continuing to Elizabeth, "and just about everything I have fits you to a T."

"Okay. You win." Elizabeth looked at Barbara, and added, "She could open her own boutique."

Alex joined them. "They kicked me out," he said. "They told me to get lost, that the pros would take care of dinner. And it's to be served at six, because Mr. Holloway doesn't want to be on our good country roads late at night with fog rolling in."

"Me, too," Barbara said. Even that was working out, she thought, exactly what she wanted, an early night, time to talk things over with her father.

At ten minutes after nine she pulled into the driveway behind Frank, and ten minutes later they were in his study. When she said impatiently that there was no point in messing with a fire, he had raised his eyebrows the way he often did instead of coming right out and asking what she had on her mind.

"I had an interesting phone call from Gary Swarthmore," she said, seated in a leather-covered wing chair. He was in the old brown chair that he prized and she thought was ready for the junk heap. Each of them had a cat.

"Diedricks heard every word. Nothing wrong with his hearing, apparently. He wanted to join us, but Gary talked him out of it. And he began to ask pointed questions about what he had heard. Of course, Gary doesn't know all the answers, but he told him what he could, and Diedricks had him call Jefferson Knowlton. I left that number for him, just in case. They had a long talk and, Dad, yesterday Diedricks had Gary take him out for a drive. He does that now and then and apparently no one thought a thing of it. But he met Knowlton and they talked again. Gary said he never heard two old men use language like that."

She drew in her breath, then continued in the same abbreviated way telling the rest of it. "Anyway, believing their father was not going to make it, Sarah and her brother told Diedricks years ago that Knowlton had absconded with the work and had taken it to a competitor on the east coast. Diedricks had no idea they were screening his calls and his mail, no idea Knowlton had tried repeatedly to get in touch with him and no idea about that original lawsuit. He tried twice to call Knowlton, and both times Sarah dialed a number and he heard the message that the phone was no longer in service. He had to accept what they said. He said he never signed anything that said he didn't remember Knowlton or the work they did together. And Gary knew nothing about any of that. He was there for just a few hours each day, and he started eight years ago, not back when all that was happening. He didn't know what was going on. So they straightened that out. And Diedricks and Knowlton are working on some kind of deal. I don't know what it is, but maybe tomorrow I'll find out." She stroked the cat she was holding. Its purr sounded like a motor. "If Diedricks backs Knowlton now, that means that Elizabeth's home free, as far as that bunch is concerned."

Frank nodded. "I'm glad that Alan's up there. It may well be that the danger zone has shifted somewhat." He was thinking of an old blind man in a wheelchair.

"I told Gary not to lie to Diedricks about Alan ," she said slowly. "No more lies. He knows who Alan is and why he's there. I'd like to know what's going on in Diedricks's head now. Did he connect the dots? Can he really accept that his daughter is most likely a murderer? That she could represent a threat to him?"

Frank rubbed his eyes, trying to put himself in that position. It was impossible. "I imagine that back when he was beginning to recover, he had no reason to believe his daughter and son would lie to him. There's something to that old canard, Blood's thicker than water. Until proven wrong, we tend to trust our family. And all too often the proof of betrayal isn't accepted. The clan instinct prevails even then."

Barbara tried to imagine the way life must have been for Diedricks for a decade, after he had recovered enough to know what he had lost. First the long slow painful recovery, hearing and believing that his one ally, his creative equal had abandoned him, no longer able to draw his visions, to see his visions realized first on paper, then in the necessary metals and plastic, no longer able to sketch his ideas for others to complete. No one to discuss ideas with, no one who really understood the way Jefferson Knowlton had understood. What had sustained him for so many years?

"I think Henry Diedricks must be a very strong man, no matter what shape his body's in," she said. "I'm looking forward to meeting him."

"Let's talk about that," Frank said. "Has Diedricks told the family what he knows?"

Gary said he hasn't. Apparently he plays his cards in close, and always has. A born loner. Maybe that's what the meeting's to be about."

"I want to go with you."

She shook her head. "It's Diedricks's show and you're not invited. He's calling the shots right now."

"If not me, we'll call Milt and let him know it's going on."

She shook her head again. "Dad, Alan will be there. And Gary Swarthmore said he'll be there. No one's going to do anything out in the open, in public, so to speak, or at least not before witnesses. And I'll come straight home afterward. I think I can move faster than Sarah." She smiled faintly. "In fact, I'd like to take her on and beat the shit out of her. But I'll restrain myself."

"It isn't your self-restraint that concerns me," Frank said soberly.

Chapter 31

Terry Kurtz opened the door promptly at three that afternoon. He nodded to Barbara, and took her coat. "They're waiting for you in the office," he said.

He looked like an escapee from Shangri-La, she thought as they walked down the hall. He had aged again in the past few days, and the haunted look was more pronounced than it had been before. He escorted her to the office, then said, "I'll tell Grandfather you're here."

There was a group of people in the office. Jefferson Knowlton stood with a small wiry-looking man with a shock of gray, unruly hair, the kind of hair that could be tamed only by letting it grow long and capturing it in a pony tail, or else cutting it in a burr. He had done neither. It looked like a winter bush. He came forward with his hand extended. "Kevin Lorenz," he said in a surprisingly deep baritone. "I'm very happy to meet you."

Jefferson Knowlton had lost the ten years that Terry had gained, she thought, as he greeted her with a smile. Not a wide smile or expansive in any way, but she assumed that his thin face had forgotten how to express pleasure in a more visible manner.

"This is Robert Crais," Lorenz said, as a third man came to meet her. In his sixties, thin, harried and flustered in his appearance, in a crumpled suit, he looked like a man who seldom glanced in a mirror. His briefcase was like an ID badge — another attorney.

Neither Sarah Kurtz nor her brother Lawrence acknowledged Barbara beyond glancing up to see who had entered. They were all still standing when the door opened again, and this time Terry held it open for his grandfather in his wheelchair, being pushed by a muscular man she guessed was Gary Swarthmore. He grinned at her and said his name, confirming her guess.

"Dr. Diedricks "he said," this is Barbara Holloway."

The old man held out his left hand for her. It was covered with age spots, wrinkled skin, with prominent blue veins; nevertheless, he still had long and shapely fingers, like Sarah's. His grip was surprisingly firm. He was wearing sunglasses and looked shrunken, with a deeply lined face and very little white hair, a lap robe over what appeared to be sweatpants. Of course, she thought. No zippers for a man with the use of one hand only. His paralyzed hand was under the lap robe.

"How do you do," he said in a wheezy voice. "I'm greatly indebted to you, and I wanted you to witness the fruits of your efforts. Please sit here at my left."

Sarah had been walking toward that chair, and veered to take the middle chair across from the windows.

"Everyone, sit down, please," Dr. Diedricks said. "Robert, on my right, if you will. Jeff, at the other end of the table."

They all seated themselves, with Sarah and her brother side by side across from Barbara, and Terry in the middle between her and Kevin Lorenz. Gary Swarthmore pulled a chair close to Dr. Diedricks and sat down.

"The purpose of this meeting," Dr. Diedricks said when the sound of chairs scraping and rustling ceased, "is to announce the results of our conference of many hours. Robert, please."

Sarah looked bored, and examined her fingernails, and Lawrence Diedricks had a strained expression, his mouth tight, his eyes blinking rapidly, darting a glance here, there, nowhere.

Robert Crais cleared his throat, opened his briefcase and brought out a legal pad and a sheaf of papers. "Yes," he said, "of course. Dr. Diedricks and Dr. Knowlton have come to an agreement about certain arrangements, and a press statement has been prepared for immediate release. Before I read it to you, a few other matters have been settled to the satisfaction of Dr. Diedricks. First, there is the matter of corporate profits. Dr. Diedricks is setting up a nonprofit foundation to insure the continuation of research into prosthetic devices into the future, and to assist the rehabilitation of indigent patients who lack the necessary funds to seek proper medical care for their own recovery from serious accidents and the wounds of war. Dr. Diedricks's share of the corporate profits, that is, fifty-two and one half percent, will establish the foundation in an irrevocable trust, to be established with all due speed. Accordingly, he has also changed his will to reflect this trust fund. A draft codicil has been written and witnessed by a number of people, signed and duly notarized by my secretary.

"In a mutually acceptable agreement, Dr. Knowlton has been appointed vice president of the Diedricks Corporation in charge of the research and development department. He will assume his duties immediately. His compensation package takes into account the many years he has been deprived of his livelihood, plus a salary commensurate with his duties, and also a two-and-one-half percent share of the company."