Free Glass Houses by Jane Haddam

you’d rather have it taken care of some other way, we could get him declared incompetent and make you and your sister his guardians. It would at least be a start.”
    â€œDid they tell you that he’d been accused of this before?” Elizabeth asked.
    â€œYes,” Russ said. “Yes, they did. And that makes it even stickier yet.”
    â€œThat was when the murder victim was our maid,” Elizabeth said, “Conchita Estevez. She came from somewhere in South America; I don’t remember where. Isn’t that terrible? When I do things like that I remind myself of Margaret, and then I just get crazy. Anyway, the body was found in the service alleyjust in the back of here. But he wasn’t found standing over it. And he wasn’t found covered in blood. Which is what happened this time.”
    â€œSort of,” Russ said. “The blood part is right, but he’d actually left the alley when somebody saw him with blood all over him and screamed, and that brought the police, and they went into the alley people had seen him come out of, and that was the ball game. But it doesn’t have to be. It really doesn’t. With competent counsel—”
    â€œAre you competent counsel?”
    â€œI’m very competent counsel, Mrs. Woodville. But I’m not personally known to you or to your sister—”
    â€œAre you personally known to Henry?”
    â€œNot before this evening, no.”
    â€œBut he likes you, I take it. He’s willing to talk to you. He cooperates with you.”
    â€œHe’s willing to talk to me. I can’t tell if he’s cooperating or not. He seems to like calling me his lawyer. You know, telling people things like, ‘If you want to know my birth date, you’ll have to ask my lawyer.’ That kind of thing. Personally, I think it was because he couldn’t remember his birth date. He has, uh, gaps in his memory like that.”
    Elizabeth tilted her head back and let it rest for a moment on the wall behind her. The alcove was tiny, tinier than any closet in the house. She thought of Henry being brought home from the hospital and all the fuss and bother that his mother was capable of, dressed in three kinds of lace and carried in a custom-made Moses basket by the butler, right through the front door and upstairs to the nursery. Elizabeth had hated that butler. She’d hated the very idea of butlers. She was ecstatic beyond belief that Margaret could no longer afford to hire one.
    â€œMrs. Woodville?”
    â€œYes, I’m here. It’s just that I was thinking, if Henry likes you, and if he’s willing to cooperate with you, why should he have to change? You’ve probably heard something of the way he feels about us. About Margaret and me, I mean. Would it really help him if we threw you off the case and sent in one of our own attorneys, whom he’s unlikely to like any better than he likes us?”
    â€œThat’s true enough,” Russ said.
    â€œIf it’s a question of the money, we can handle that,” Elizabeth said. “You said you were with Didrickson and Marsh, isn’t that right? You’re not full time on the payroll of the Public Defender’s Office?”
    â€œNo, no I’m not. I just do some pro bono work when I’m asked. I—”
    â€œWell, then,” Elizabeth said, “we can just hire you privately, if it comes to that. We wouldn’t even have to let Henry know, in case he objected to it.Which he probably would. If you tell me how much of a retainer you require in a case like this, I can have a check at your office in the morning.”
    â€œMrs. Woodville”—Russ Donahue sounded breathless—“it’s not the money. If Henry isn’t declared incompetent, your willingness to pay would be beside the point. If he had assets of his own—”
    â€œHe does have, some. Not as much as Margaret and I do, but