by Stuart Woods
The waitress arrived with her sandwich and began setting up the table beside Barbara.
“Who is the gentleman in the pool?” Barbara asked.
“Oh, that’s Mr. Walter Keeler,” the young woman replied. “He was widowed recently and has been with us for the last month or so, resting and toning up.”
It’s working, Barbara said to herself. “What does he do?” she asked.
“I believe he sold his company not long ago-some sort of electronics, I think.”
“Thank you, dear,” Barbara said, signing the check and adding a crisp twenty from her purse.
“Oh, thank you, ma’am,” the young woman said. “May I get you anything else?”
Barbara wanted to say Yes, get me Mr. Walter Keeler, but she restrained herself. “No, thank you, dear.” She busied herself applying suntan lotion, while surreptitiously following Keeler’s progress with his laps. He must have swum fifty, she thought, because she had finished her club sandwich by the time he got out of the pool.
He looked toward her as he passed, smiling and nodding. She rewarded him with a small smile, then went back to her magazine.
He stood, drying himself with a large towel. He toweled his hair dry, then ran his fingers through it. “Beautiful day, isn’t it?” he said.
She turned and looked at him, affecting surprise. “Sorry?”
“The weather, it’s lovely.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Yes, it is.”
“It usually is up here. It’s cooler than in Palm Springs, what with the elevation.”
“Have you been here long?”
“A month tomorrow,” he replied.
“That’s a long stay.”
“You must have just arrived; I haven’t seen you before.”
“Yes, just last night. I just felt like getting away for a few days.”
“Away from where?” he asked.
“I’ve been staying in Los Angeles with friends. I came out from New York last month.”
“Is New York your home?”
“I’ve just sold my apartment there,” Barbara said, “and I haven’t decided where I want to alight.”
“You sound free as a bird.”
“I suppose I am,” she said. “It’s not quite as much fun as I thought it would be. I lost my husband a few months ago, and I thought a change of scenery might help.”
“I’m sorry for your loss,” he said. “I know how you feel, because I lost my wife recently. I suppose I’m footloose, as well; I sold my business after her death, and I haven’t decided yet where I want to live.”
“Where were you living before?”
“In Palo Alto. I had an aircraft electronics business there.”
“A pleasant place?”
“Yes, it is, but I’d like to get away from the Silicon Valley crowd. I’ve been thinking about San Francisco.”
“Such a beautiful city.”
“Yes, it is. Oddly enough, I’ve spent very little time there, even though I’ve been living close by for more than fifteen years.”
“Where else are you considering?”
“Oh, I thought about Seattle, but there’s such a lot of rain there. The cool summers in San Francisco appeal to me.”
“I know what you mean; I’ve never liked the heat much.”
Keeler put down his towel. “May I join you?” he asked, indicating the empty chaise next to her.
“Please.”
He settled onto the chaise. “Lunch?”
“I’ve just eaten, thanks.”
“I hope you don’t mind watching me eat.”
“Not at all.”
He ordered a sandwich and a virgin Mary. “I haven’t gotten used to the no-alcohol rule, though I suppose it hasn’t hurt me. I’ve lost nine or ten pounds since I got here.”
“You look great,” she said, “but a man should have two drinks a day, according to the latest medical studies.”
“Doctor’s orders? I like that.”
She sipped her virgin Mary.
“A friend of mine used to call a virgin Mary a ‘bloody awful.’”
She laughed. “Well said.”
They chatted on into the afternoon, and Barbara invented her background on the fly.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “I haven’t introduced myself. I’m Walter Keeler-Walt.”
“I’m Eleanor Wright,” she said. “Ellie.” And you and I, she thought, are going to get to know each other very well.
6
EAGLE AWOKE AT seven, as usual, and checked Susannah. She was still soundly asleep. He showered, shaved and dressed, then sat down on the bed next to her and stroked her cheek. “You ready for some breakfast?” he asked.
Her eyelids fluttered and she moved a bit. “Good morning.” “Breakfast?”
“Toast and coffee, please.”
“Don’t go back to sleep; we need to get an early start.”
“Why?” she asked sleepily.
“I’ve been out of the office for a week, and things have been piling up.”
She struggled into a sitting position. “Okay, I’m awake.”
Eagle made coffee and toast and poured juice. Susannah’s hair was still wet from the shower when she came to the table.
“How are you feeling?”
“Good,” she said. “I slept very soundly.”
“Did you dream?”
“Probably, but I don’t remember what.”
She seemed to have no thought of what had happened the day before. She had been asleep for a good fifteen hours. He wondered if she had, somehow, blocked the shooting from her mind. “I’ll get packed,” he said, “and you get dressed.”
AN HOUR LATER they took the elevator to the lobby, and Eagle held the door for her while she spoke to the man at the desk.
“Terry, please get the carpet cleaners in and have them do the apartment,” she said, “with special attention to the area by the front door.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the man replied, reaching for the phone.
Susannah returned to the elevator, and Eagle let it continue to the basement garage. Apparently, she hadn’t completely forgotten about yesterday.
THEY TOOK OFF from Santa Monica Airport in Eagle’s airplane less than an hour later, shepherded by air traffic control to the Palmdale VOR, then cleared direct Grand Canyon, direct Santa Fe. Sped along by a strong tailwind, they got a good look at the spectacular hole in the ground and were in Santa Fe in plenty of time for lunch.
“Your place or mine?” he asked her as they drove away from the airport.
“Mine,” she replied. “I’ve got some stuff to do around the house. I’ll pick up some things and come to you by dinnertime.”
“Out or in?”
“Make a reservation somewhere,” she said.
They drove the twenty minutes to her house, and he pulled into the driveway, got her bags out and took them into the house. Before he left, he sat her down in the study.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
“I’m very well, Ed, I told you that.”
“Listen, you’ve been through a traumatic experience, and it’s going to catch up with you sooner or later.” He wrote a name and number on the back of his business card and gave it to her. “This guy is the best psychotherapist in Santa Fe. His name is Daniel Shea, and he lives and works two or three miles from here. I think you should have a talk with him.”
“Ed, please believe me, I’m fine.”
“You have the number. If you start to feel… depressed, please call him.”
“If I start to feel depressed,” she said. “I’ll see you later-six or six thirty, at your house.”
“Okay.” He kissed her and left the house, then drove to his office.
HIS OFFICES WERE only a year old, atop one of the taller buildings around the Plaza, the heart of the city. Eagle strolled through the outer area, waving at his employees. “All right, everybody,” he called to them, “get to work; the boss is back.”
His secretary
followed him into the office. “There’s a stack of phone messages on your desk that weren’t important enough to forward to L.A.”
“Fine, make a reservation for two at Santa Café at seven thirty, please.”
“Will do. There’s some correspondence, too, and a couple of briefs that you dictated before you left. Please review them.”
“Okay, okay.” He began making phone calls, apologizing for his absence. Half the people he spoke to had watched his testimony at Barbara’s trial. One of the messages was from Daniel Shea. He called the number.
“Dan? It’s Ed.”
"Hello, Ed. Congratulations on your performance in L.A.”
“A lot of good it did me; she’s free as a bird.”
“How do you feel about that, Ed?”
“Don’t you ask me those shrink questions, Dan,” Eagle said, chuckling. “I’ll feel just fine as long as Barbara is in another state.”
“Is that where she is?”
“I hope I never know.”
“Ed, we’ve never talked much about this, but you should know that Barbara, like her late sister, Julia, is an obsessive.”
“And what is her obsession?”
“You.”
“Oh, come on, Daniel. She’s out; she’ll want to stay out. She won’t want to mess with me.”
“Are you forgetting that Julia tried to set up her husband for a triple murder and then killed my brother? And damn near got away with it? Are you forgetting that Barbara hired two men to kill you? I’m telling you, it runs in the family. I never knew the third sister, but I’d be willing to bet she shared the family trait.”
"Well, I was careful in L.A. after I learned that she had escaped the courthouse.”
“Now she doesn’t have to be careful, you know. She can move right back to Santa Fe, if she wants to, and live on her divorce settlement from you.”
That settlement still rankled Eagle, but it had been worth it to get rid of her. “Yes, I suppose she could, but why would she want to?”
“Ed, do you know what an obsession is? It’s the opposite of a phobia. A phobia is an irrational fear of something: flying, water, open spaces, almost anything. An obsession is a compulsive fascination with something, either a love or a hatred of the object. You are the object, and she is not going to walk away from you.”
“By the way, Dan, I’ve been seeing a woman named Susannah Wilde, and yesterday, in L.A., she shot and killed her ex-husband, who was threatening her with a gun. She’s off the hook legally, but I’m not sure about psychologically. It’s weird; she behaves as if the shooting never happened, and I’m not sure how long she can keep that up.”
“Tell her to call me; I’ll work her in.”
“I already have. I just wanted you to know who she is when she calls.”
“Maybe you should come and see me, too, Ed.”
“Come on, Dan. You know I have no neuroses. I’m the sanest guy you know.”
“I’ll concede that, but it troubles me that you seem unable to face the Barbara problem.”
“Dan, if the Barbara problem arises again, I’ll deal with it, but I’m not going to spend my days and nights worrying about it.”
“That’s a sane approach, Ed, but a potentially dangerous one.”
“Let’s have dinner soon, okay?”
“Are you free tonight?” Daniel asked.
“Tell you what, meet Susannah and me at Santa Café at seven thirty.”
“I’d love to.”
“She’s going to think I’m setting her up, so don’t bring up her problem.”
“Of course not. See you at seven thirty.”
"We’ll look forward to it.” Eagle hung up and went back to the work on his desk.
7
SUSANNAH ARRIVED AT Eagle’s house and deposited her things in the master bedroom’s second dressing room. Eagle had long ago given Barbara’s clothes to the Salvation Army, and the room had been empty until Susannah had begun to leave a few things there.
They got into Eagle’s car. “A friend is joining us,” he said as he pointed the car down the mountain road.
“Who’s that?”
“His name is Daniel Shea.”
“The shrink you told me about?”
“Yes, but I’m not setting you up. He called this afternoon and suggested dinner, so I asked him to join us.”
“You’re just trying to get my head shrunk, aren’t you?”
“No, I’m not, I swear. Dan’s a good guy, and you’ll like him.”
“Tell me about him.”
“He had a brother, Mark Shea, who was a psychiatrist here; he was murdered by Barbara’s sister.”
“Oh, yeah, your sister-in-law. I remember.”
“She had been dead for a year when Barbara and I married.”
“So, Dan replaced Mark in Santa Fe?”
“Pretty much. Dan was Mark’s heir. They were twins-not identical, fraternal-and Dan inherited Mark’s property in Santa Fe. Dan had had a practice in Denver, but he moved here, wrote a letter to all of Mark’s clients, saying that he was taking over the practice, and he retained most of Mark’s clients. If anything, he has been more successful than Mark was.”
“Are you one of his clients?”
“Me? I’m impervious to analysis; I have no neuroses. Dan knows this, but he keeps kidding me about getting therapy.”
“Okay, I’ll try to talk to him just like a real person, instead of a shrink.”
THEY ARRIVED AT Santa Café, Eagle’s favorite local restaurant, which managed to be at once cool and festive. Daniel Shea was waiting for them at the bar. He stood up and approached, his hand out.
“Hello, Ed. And this must be Susannah.” He shook her hand warmly. He was not as tall as Eagle but broader, a bear of a man.
“Why do I feel so small in this company?” Susannah asked and got a laugh.
They were seated, ordered drinks, consulted menus and ordered food.
“I must tell you,” Shea said, “I’m a fan of your work.”
“Why thank you, Dan,” Susannah said.
“I don’t go to the movies all that much, but I see everything on satellite, and I’ve watched most of your movies more than once.”
“Well, I’m settling into my character period, I think, since I’m pushing forty now. The good news is, I produce most of what I appear in, so I just cast myself in good supporting roles.”
“That’s very smart,” Shea said. “Tell me, how does one learn to produce films? It seems very complicated.”
“Well, first of all, I’ve appeared in a lot of them, and I guess it didn’t hurt to be married to a producer for some years, and I got to watch him work. He’s very good at it.”
There was a silence.
“Oh, that’s right. I should have used the past tense,” Susannah said. “He was very good at it.”
“I won’t pretend I don’t know about that,” Shea said.
“Thank God. Ed promised me he hadn’t set me up for over-dinner therapy.”
“You’re a smart woman, I think,” Shea said. “You’ll call me if you need me. A lot of people wait a lot longer than they should, but I don’t think you’re one of those.”
“That’s a pretty good observation,” Susannah said. “What else have you divined about me during our brief acquaintance?”
“You mean besides beautiful and intelligent? Let’s see: frank to the point of being blunt, disdainful of charade, good judge of character.”
“Then why did I marry the schmuck I married?”
“You’re in the company of millions; love and sex distort judgment.”
“Go on with your observations.”
“I think that’s as far as I’d like to go on short acquaintance; I don’t want to get you mixed up with the characters you’ve played.”
“Well, you’re pretty much on target,” Susannah said, “especially the beautiful and intelligent part.”
Eagle laughed. “I can vouch for your perceptions, Dan.”
/> Susannah sipped her drink. “There’s something wrong with this drink,” she said. “It tastes funny.”
Eagle, who was drinking the same bourbon, tasted his, then tasted hers. “They seem the same to me.”
Susannah held up a hand, as if telling him not to speak, then she picked up her napkin, held it in both hands and vomited into it.
A waiter rushed over and relieved her of the napkin and handed her another.
“Excuse me,” Susannah said, starting to get up. “I’m feeling a little odd.” She got to her feet and fainted into Daniel Shea’s waiting arms.
“I think it’s caught up with her,” Shea said, sweeping her up. “Let’s get her home.”
Eagle followed behind him and helped get her into the car. “Should we take her to the hospital?”
“I don’t think that will be necessary.” He handed Eagle his car keys. “There’s a medical bag in my trunk; get it for me, will you?”
Eagle retrieved the bag. When he returned Shea was sitting in the backseat with Susannah, her head in his lap. He held his fingers to her throat. “Her vitals are fine; she’s just having a bout with post-traumatic stress disorder. My guess is she’ll be fine after a good night’s sleep, though she may want to come and talk to me.”
“I’ll encourage it,” Eagle said.
“Don’t. Let it be her idea.”
“I’ll drive you home when we’ve gotten her in bed.”
“I’d better stay over, to be there if she needs me. You do have a guest room, don’t you?”
“A guesthouse; you’re welcome to it.”
“She may wake up in the night and move around. Try to settle her down. If she becomes agitated, call me, and I’ll give her something to calm her down.”
“I’m almost as surprised at her reaction as I was at her lack of reaction after the shooting,” Eagle said.
“Some people are just stoics,” Shea replied. “It takes them a longer time than most people to externalize what they’re feeling inside. It’s good that she’s finally let it out.”
Eagle drove on, hoping that this was the worst effect she would experience from the shooting.