Free Sleight of Hand by Kate Wilhelm Page B

break loose," she said. "Sometimes they find the courage and take off."
    "Stephanie would have stuck it out longer for Eve's sake," Adele said after a moment. "She knew what was in store for the kid —doctors, hospitals, home care or institution. Jay was bitterly disappointed in his children, and then disappointed in Stephanie. They were her fault, of course. His mother had always deferred to his father, he expected as much from his own wife, but she got involved in the shop, and she sided with the kids, and he could see that he was losing control. When he couldn't deny Eric's homosexuality, he booted him." She nodded, as if to herself.
    "That was the key to Jay —control. A place for everything, and everything kept there. Control of his family, his home, his business. He had to be in charge. First Eric. He couldn't control his homosexuality, so out. He couldn't control Eve's mental illness. Out. Then Stephanie. He forced her out, too. He knew that if he made Eric leave, she would go, too. In his own way, he was still in control."
    The light had changed again. The gold was gone, the river black now, with shimmering ever-shifting reflections of the path's lights dancing on it. Abruptly Adele stood up. "We'd better go. It's getting cold."
    They started back the way they had come. "Was Connie breaking away from him?"
    Barbara asked when they reached the steps heading up.
    Adele stopped and said slowly. "I don't know. A few weeks ago she said she was grateful that I made her come back from the dead because Eve needed her, what she could do for her. That was the key to Connie. She had an overwhelming need to be needed, not just donations to worthy causes, but personally needed. And she had lost the only ones she felt had truly needed her. Now there was Eve. I don't know if she still felt that about Jay. But if she wasn't breaking away yet, it was coming, and sooner rather than later."
    Back in her apartment Barbara put on coffee, then made copious notes, most of them seemed unrelated to the case she was dealing with. But they were connected, she told herself. Everything is eventually.
    When done, she stood holding her coffee in the darkened room and watched the reflection of lights on the swimming pool in her apartment complex. They had cleaned and opened it during the past week. The lights moved slowly up and down, an undulating motion under a slight breeze, and she considered what Adele had told her about Jay.
    Meg had been dead-on, she thought then, to be afraid for Wally If Jay hadn't been killed, he would have pressed charges. No doubt, Jay would have brought in a number of witnesses to testify to his good humor, generosity, benevolence, his civic-mindedness, but losing a valuable art object, a family treasure, could not be tolerated.
    She trusted Adele s assessment of Connie's mental state. She said Connie had not been suicidal and Barbara believed her. And that meant a double murder as the most likely alternative. Someone in a black van took Connie to the coast and killed her, and a week later drove the same black van to Jay Wilkins's house and killed him.
    That would make the boat matter irrelevant, since it was found at the house. Wally would be out of it. Forgotten.
    But if the investigators wrote Connie's death off as a suicide, and had only one murder to solve, Wally's name would be high on their list of suspects. Trying to avoid a prison sentence was a damn good motive for murder.

Chapter 11
    On Friday, Bailey called. His contact had checked in. Connie Wilkins's death occurred between Saturday, the nineteenth, and Monday, the twenty-first. Death by drowning. Most likely a suicide. The nineteenth was the Saturday that Jay took her to the airport in Portland.
    When Barbara left the courtroom the following Tuesday, she paused in the corridor to check her cell phone, and found a message from Maria. She called back.
    "Mr. Lederer phoned to say the police were there with a search warrant," Maria said.
    "I knew I couldn't