by Stuart Woods
“Not much that my biker buddy hadn’t already told me.”
“Did she give him a name?”
“Jennifer, she said—but she wouldn’t tell him her real name, would she?”
“I suppose not,” Eagle agreed.
“He was going to do it, though,” Spider said. “He was gonna go up to your house tonight, Wolf, after he got drunk enough.”
“Jesus,” Wolf said, massaging his temples.
“I wouldn’t worry about him no more,” Spider said. “One of the screws told me they was after him for an armed robbery last month, so he ain’t going nowhere. Anyway, after our talk, we agreed that he’d be better off shortchanging the lady than making me mad. We’re buddies now.” Spider smiled broadly, revealing a missing tooth.
“So it looks like you’re safe, Wolf,” Eagle said.
Spider spoke up. “I wouldn’t say that,” he said.
“What do you mean, Spider?” Eagle asked.
“Well, there was something the lady said to Chico,” Spider said. “He said she told him that if he couldn’t get Wolf dead, well, she’d just have to do him herself.”
“I think we’ve heard enough,” Eagle said, rising. “Spider, I’ll send somebody from my office down to the courthouse tomorrow morning to represent you at your arraignment.”
“That’s real nice of you, Mr. Eagle,” Spider said, shaking the lawyer’s hand again.
“I’ll stand bail, if necessary,” Wolf said.
“No, you won’t,” Eagle said sharply. “I’ll take care of it; I don’t want you associated with this business any further.”
“Whatever you say, Ed.”
They were driving back to Wolf’s house. “I don’t get it,” Wolf said, shaking his head. “Why would Leah want me dead so much?”
“Well, for one thing, you’ve screwed her out of the three and a half million dollars Julia stole from you,” Eagle replied. “It’s obvious that she and Julia and Grafton were in this together, at least in the beginning, because she had the bank account code. She probably checked with the bank in Mexico City, and when the money didn’t turn up there, she backtracked to the Caymans and found out that all of it had evaporated. That might have made her a little touchy.”
“I see your point,” Wolf said.
“She damn near got away with it,” Eagle said. “If Russell Norris had arrived at the Cayman bank an hour later, the money would have been in Mexico, and you’d never have seen it again.”
“What do you think she’s going to do next?” Wolf asked.
“I would have thought that was obvious,” Eagle said. “And when we get back to your house, I’m going to get onto Martinez again and see if we can get you some police protection.”
“I won’t argue with you this time,” Wolf said.
Eagle was worriedly glancing in the rearview mirror.
“Ed,” Wolf said, “is somebody following us?”
“I’m not sure,” Eagle replied. “When we left the house, did you leave your gun there?”
“Yes,” Wolf replied.
“Shit,” Eagle said. “So did I.”
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51
As they drove up to his house, Wolf saw a strange car parked near the back door, a four-wheeler. He looked at the house; a shadow moved past the kitchen window. “Do you think we may have a problem, Ed?”
Eagle looked at the car, and his brow furrowed. “It’s Barbara’s Cherokee.”
“Julia’s sister?”
“Yes.”
“Why would she be here?” he asked.
Eagle switched off his car. “Frankly, I don’t know,” Eagle said. “I left her at my place, and I thought she’d be in bed by now.” He opened the car door. “We’d better find out.”
Barbara was sitting at the kitchen table when they entered the house. She looked at Wolf. “Hello,” she said.
“Wolf,” Eagle said, “this is Barbara Kennerly.”
Barbara held out her hand. “Hello, Wolf.”
Wolf hesitated, then took it. “How do you do?” he said, rather too formally, but he was nervous. “Let’s go into the study.” He led the way; he had left his pistol in the study, and he wanted to be near it. “Can I get you both a drink?” he asked. “I certainly need one.” He looked around for the weapon; he was almost certain he had left it on the table next to the phone, but it was not there.
“Scotch for me,” Eagle said, sitting down on the sofa.
Wolf poured a large single-malt over ice and handed it to the lawyer. “What can I get you, Barbara?” he asked.
“Vodka on the rocks, please.” She sat down next to Eagle and placed her large handbag on the coffee table.
Wolf eyed the handbag nervously, then reached for the bottle of Smirnoff resting on the butler’s tray with the other liquors.
“Do you have any Stolichnaya?” Barbara asked. “I’m sorry to be picky.”
“I think I have some on ice,” Wolf said. He opened the cupboard that contained the glasses and the small refrigerator, took a bottle of the Russian vodka from the freezer, poured the drink, then fixed himself a bourbon.
“Cheers,” Eagle said, raising his glass.
The three of them drank, and Wolf sat down in a chair. “Well,” he said, “I suppose we would have met sooner or later.”
“I suppose,” Barbara said.
There was an uncomfortable silence. Wolf noticed that Eagle seemed to be looking around for something. His gun, probably.
“Well, here we are,” Eagle said inanely.
“Yes,” Wolf said. He eyed the fireplace tools; the poker would make a nice weapon. Suddenly he wasn’t nervous anymore. In fact, he felt quite happy to be here having a drink with these two nice people. He found himself starting to like Barbara, even if she was Julia’s sister.
For no apparent reason, Eagle let out a laugh.
“What?” Barbara said.
“Nothing,” Eagle replied. He took another pull at his drink.
Wolf remembered that he had wanted to know why Barbara was here, but it didn’t seem to matter anymore.
“I didn’t think you’d come home tonight,” Barbara said to Eagle, as if she had read Wolf’s mind, “so I went back to my place.”
“Swell,” Eagle said, then let out a high-pitched giggle.
Wolf began laughing, too.
“What’s so funny?” Barbara asked.
Eagle giggled again. “I don’t know.”
Nobody seemed to have anything to say for a moment. Eagle finally broke the silence. “We’ve just been to the county jail to visit a biker,” he said, giggling again.
Wolf joined him in laughter.
“What?” Barbara responded.
“I kid you not. Lovely guy, name of Spider. He’d just burned down a bar on Agua Fria.” He burst out laughing.
“That doesn’t sound like your kind of case, Ed,” she said.
“Not normally,” Eagle replied, “but Spider had been on a little mission for Wolf and me when he visited the bar.”
Wolf tried very hard not to laugh at this.
“You’ve lost me,” she said.
“I guess it’s time to tell you about this,” Eagle said, trying to control himself. “Spider and Wolf were cellmates for a night, when Wolf was arrested. He contacted Wolf today and said he’d heard a contract was out on Wolf’s life.” He put a hand over his mouth and tried to stop laughing.
Wolf did the same. He felt both tired and happy, but he couldn’t think of a reason to be happy. After all, at least one of Julia’s sisters wanted to kill him. He wondered which one.
“This business gets curiouser and curiouser,” Barbara said. “Why would somebody want to kill Wolf?”
“I think the most important thing at this point is who would want to kill him,” Eagle replied. He began giggling again.
“All right,” she said, “who? And stop that!”
“From the description we got, it sounds like Leah.”
Barbara stared at
Eagle disbelievingly. “What are you talking about?” she demanded.
“I haven’t quite got it all worked out yet, but I think Leah is a major presence in what has been going on here.”
“But Leah is why I’m here,” Barbara said.
“What are you talking about?” Wolf asked. He found the situation wildly funny.
“Well, when I got home tonight, the phone was ringing. It was somebody named Monica Collins.”
Eagle looked at her. “Monica Collins called you?” He didn’t laugh this time.
“Yes, I—”
“You know Monica Collins?”
“No, I’d never even heard of her.”
“Why did she call you?”
“I’m trying to tell you, if you’d just stop interrupting me.”
“I’m sorry; go ahead.”
“She said Leah is in Santa Fe, and that Leah asked her to call me with a message.”
“And what was the message?”
“Leah wanted me to meet her here.”
Eagle burst out laughing again, and Wolf joined him. “Leah is coming here?” he finally managed to say.
“That was the message,” Barbara replied, looking disgustedly at both of them. “And if you two don’t stop this idiotic laughter, I’m leaving!”
“Look, Babs,” Eagle said, trying to control himself, “I can’t back this up—not yet, anyway—but I’d be willing to bet that one of two people killed Julia, Grafton, and Jack Tinney. Probably Mark Shea, too. One of my candidates is Monica Collins, but my favorite is your little sister, Leah.”
The next voice was a lot like Barbara’s, but it came from behind them. “That’s not a bad guess.”
The three of them turned and looked toward the door. A woman stood there holding what appeared to Wolf to be his pistol.
“Not a terrific guess,” she said, “but not bad.”
Wolf was the first to speak. His voice, when it came out, was cracked and hoarse and weak. “Julia,” he said.
CHAPTER
52
You mean Leah, don’t you?” Eagle said, looking the tall woman up and down. He giggled.
“No,” said Barbara, slumping back in her chair, “it’s Julia.”
“That was going to be my next guess,” Eagle said.
“I don’t know why you think this is funny!” Barbara nearly shouted. “She’s got a gun!”
“I don’t know, either,” Eagle said. “It shouldn’t be funny, but it is.”
Wolf was no longer amused, but simply numb. He sat unmoving in the chair and stared at his wife. “Where the hell have you been?” he asked, as if she’d merely stayed out all night.
Monica Collins stepped into the room. “At my house, mostly,” she said.
Keeping the gun out in front of her, Julia walked to Wolf’s chair, took him by the arm, stood him up, and seated him next to Eagle on the sofa. Then she sat down in the chair. “Now,” she said, looking at her watch, “you should just about be over the giggles. I think maybe Wolf already is.”
“Pardon?” Eagle said. He seemed to be placidly accepting the presence of the gun.
“It’s the effect of Mark’s drug,” she replied.
“What drug?” Wolf asked.
“The name is too long for me to handle,” Julia said, crossing her legs, “but it very quickly instills a euphoria, followed by a kind of malleability. It’s a hypnotic, you see. Mark found out about it in Mexico, and he used it with some of his patients. I don’t think the A.M.A. would have approved, but it helped him hypnotize patients quickly.” She looked at Barbara. “You don’t seem too euphoric, Sis,” she said, looking at Barbara’s glass. “What are you drinking?”
“Vodka,” Barbara replied. “I’m beginning to feel a little funny, too.”
“You damn well should be. I spiked every bottle.”
“So Leah was the one in bed with Grafton and Jack,” Eagle said.
“Right, Mr. Eagle; you really do have a quick mind, don’t you?”
“Not quick enough,” Eagle said. He wasn’t laughing anymore.
“What happened that night?” Wolf asked, not sure he wanted to know the answer. He wanted to run from the house, but he didn’t seem able to marshal the energy.
“You don’t remember any of it?” Julia asked.
“No,” Wolf replied.
“Well, Wolf, you were the life of the party. Mark brought the drug over, and everybody had some, except Mark and me. Mark felt that, as a control, he shouldn’t take it, and I just tossed my dose. Everybody else was flying, though.”
“Please tell me what happened,” Wolf said. His own voice seemed to him to be coming from somewhere else in the room.
“Well, with only a little nudging from me, both Grafton and Jack got interested in Leah, and they adjourned to a bedroom.”
“What were Grafton and Leah doing here?” Barbara asked.
“Oh, Grafton—that little shit—and Leah turned up in L.A. not long after he’d broken jail; he’d looked up Leah in New York and snowed her into coming with him. They rang me up and invited me to lunch; Jimmy had this thing about wanting to write a movie, and he wanted to meet Wolf. I fixed that, and low and behold, Jimmy got his movie contract. But that wasn’t enough for Jimmy Grafton. He started to hit on me and ask a lot of questions about what Wolf was worth.”
“That sounds like Jimmy,” Barbara said. “Nothing was ever enough for him.”
“Right, sweetie,” Julia said. “He was getting to be a real pain in the ass, but I played along with him.”
“Where was Leah supposed to be in all this?” Barbara asked.
“In the lurch, I guess. I figured she deserved it, if she was stupid enough to be taken in by somebody like Jimmy Grafton.”
“I was stupid enough to be taken in by Jimmy Grafton,” Barbara said.
“Poor baby,” Julia replied soothingly. “You sure were, and you had to pay for it. So it was Leah’s turn. I’m sure she would have learned something from the experience.”
“Whose idea was stealing the money?” Eagle asked.
“Mine,” she replied, “but I let Jimmy think it was his. He got us passports, and we were all ready to go, he thought.”
“You used my name,” Barbara said.
“A whimsical touch,” Julia said. Then she frowned. “How did you know about that?”
Barbara said nothing.
“When did you and the others come to Santa Fe?” Wolf asked.
“Right after you did. I chartered a Lear out of Van Nuys. We ran into Jack at the airport—he was just coming back from Puerto Vallarta, drunk, so I got him aboard, too. I couldn’t let him get away after seeing me with Leah and Grafton, even if he was drunk.”
“So what happened that night?” Eagle asked. “You keep changing the subject.” His voice was very quiet now.
“Well, when the initial effects of the drug had passed, Mark left, the Three Mouseketeers hopped into bed, and I hypnotized Wolf. It was easy, just like Mark said it would be. That seemed a good time to finish the evening.”
“Who finished it?” Wolf asked.
“Baby, I tried to get you to do it, but even hypnotized, you couldn’t handle it; you kept dropping that beautiful shotgun. It’s like everything else; you want something done properly, you have to do it yourself. So I went down to the guest bedroom and started shooting. I got Jimmy first—he was the most dangerous—then Leah. Jack just stood up in bed with his back to the wall and stared at me, glassy-eyed, like a stuffed teddy bear, while I reloaded and put one into him. Then I put Wolf to bed, so he’d be there when Maria found the bodies the next morning. I wanted him alive to take the blame.”
“Why, Julia, why?” Wolf asked pathetically.
“Had to be done,” Julia said, “once Jimmy and Leah walked in and screwed everything up. You see, I was still wanted in New York for a little thing I got involved in there, and Leah knew it. That meant Jimmy Grafton knew it, too, so I had to get everybody together and finish it all at once. Then I
was free to fly.”
“So why didn’t you fly?” Eagle asked. “You had the money; everybody was dead but Wolf.”
“Things didn’t go quite the way I’d planned,” Julia said. “First, Wolf wakes up the next morning and, none the wiser, gets in his airplane and takes off for L.A. Then the local law identifies Jimmy and Leah as Wolf and me. That was one thing I hadn’t planned on, but at least it made me dead, and that was wonderful.”
“So then why didn’t you run?” Barbara asked.
“I was worried about Mark,” Julia replied. “He could put me on the scene that night. But Mark turned out to be surprisingly helpful—for a while, at least. When Wolf turned up at Mark’s place—I was there that night—he hypnotized Wolf, and when he heard Wolf’s version of events, he simply erased those thoughts from his memory. Mark was acting out of kindness, I think, but even though Wolf’s story was pretty garbled, once Mark heard what he had to say under hypnosis, Mark became a danger to me. Not at first, but after a while, when he started to figure things out and get attacks of conscience. Then Mark had to go.”
“You’re breathtaking, Julia,” Eagle said.
“Why, thank you, Mr. Eagle,” Julia said, beaming at him.
“So why didn’t you run after you killed Mark?”
“Well, I thought it would be a good idea if I stuck around until Wolf was tried. He’d be convicted, of course, and then I could travel wherever I wanted, secure in the knowledge that the police wouldn’t be looking for anybody else. I moved in with Monica, and poor sweet Monica believed me when I told her that Wolf had killed everybody else and wanted to kill me. She was very helpful indeed.”
“Julia,” Monica said, her voice trembling, “how could you do that to me?”
“Oh, shut up, Monica,” Julia replied. “I’ll get to you in a minute.” Monica was standing behind the sofa now.
“Amazing,” Eagle said.
She looked at Eagle. “But you turned up, counselor,” she said bitterly, “and I began to think that you might get Wolf off.”
“Is that when you tried to hire somebody to kill Wolf?”
“No,” Julia said, “that was dear old Monica’s doing.”