Free Sleight of Hand by Kate Wilhelm Page A

closed her eyes. "That was the last time I saw her."
    Barbara let the silence stretch out long enough to assume that Adele was not going to break it. Then she said, "Jay said that she was suicidal."
    "Bullshit! He called people who hadn't seen Connie for a couple of years, not since she'd seemed suicidal, and they backed him up."
    "He called you?"
    "Yes. I told him it was bullshit."
    "From all indications, he was frantic."
    "So they say." Her tone had been reflective, melancholic, tinged with regret and unhappiness, now it became hard, even bitter. "Look, Barbara, I knew Jay years ago, when he was married to Stephanie and I haven't had a thing to do with him since.
    For all I know, he changed, became a new man, or some damn thing, but the Jay I knew never cared about anyone except Jay."
    "Tell me something about him," Barbara said. "He accused my client of stealing a valuable gold boat. That's not a trifling matter."
    "God help your client if he took it, and if Jay was in any position to follow through.
    All that Egyptian stuff was collected by his grandfather, passed on to Jay's old man and then to Jay. And anything that was ever his was meant to stay his until hell does its thing."
    "Can a leopard change its spots?" Barbara murmured. "Tell me more about the Jay you knew."
    "Okay. His grandfather built the house, and he set rules that Jay's father had to follow, and Jay saw nothing wrong with those rules and kept them when it was his turn. The kids weren't allowed in the front rooms of the house unless he summoned them to display for guests. His living collection. They were beautiful children. They still are, in fact. Anyway, they weren't allowed to speak at the table unless in response to an adult. Then it was to be 'Yes, ma'am,' or 'No, sir.' Respect authority, and he was the authority. Obedience required at all times. No outdoor shoes inside.
    Take them off at the door. Come and go by way of the back door. Use the back stairs. Keep your toys in your own room or the den. If he found one out of place he threw it away. And he was miserly. He spent lavishly on his selected guests, but the kids had to earn every cent that came their way." She drew in a long breath, then laughed in her peculiar barking mirthless way.
    "You might gather that I had little use for him. Damn right. A tyrant at home. He had a circle of friends that he cultivated the way a pot grower might cultivate a planting, always aware of the usefulness of individual plants, nurturing those of value, culling out the inferior ones. His pals were those he saw a use for immediately, or a possible future use for, directly or as a means to get to someone else. He had a box at Autzen Stadium, and he hosted events there, bigwigs, corporate visitors, people like that.
    Useful people. He had the biggest TV screen in the area, and invited his pals over to watch sports, football games, basketball games, golf tournaments. Drink a lot, good food, make contacts. Locker-room humor. Good old boy stuff. Everyone was a contact. Gung ho for development. More strip malls, more subdivisions, more business. Land-use laws were the work of the Satanic tree huggers, who should be pinned to their beloved trees and used for gun practice. A real sweetheart." She stopped because she had run out of breath.
    Barbara laughed. "In a minute you'll tell me what you personally thought of him. But it's curious that first Stephanie married him, and later Connie did."
    "Stephanie was young and stupid," Adele said promptly. "And Connie was out of her mind. Stephanie got married and a year later there was Eric, and then Eve. She felt trapped by then. You know, for the sake of the children. Everyone could tell at an early age that Eric was gay, years before he realized it, in fact. And Eve.. .she was not quite right from five or six on. We could see that, too. Stephanie was trapped.
    Or thought she was."
    Barbara knew that story well. She had heard it from too many of her own clients.
    "Sometimes they