THREE

Cade stopped in the alcove to stare at Lydia Cantwell. No one spoke. Cade’s head inclined in the attitude of patience, as if waiting for her to awaken. Slowly, perceptibly, the stiffness went from his back.

“Mr. Cade.” It was Rayfield, standing next to me.

Cade turned, ashen, gazing for a moment with vague, frightened blankness as though jarred from sleep by a sudden noise. Then his black hawk-eyes settled on Rayfield until they seemed to glare at him from a face all surfaces and angles, like those of some great arrogant bird. Rayfield’s pen clicked, once.

“We’re in here,” he said.

For several seconds Cade watched Rayfield, refusing to move. Finally, he limped toward us. World War II had left a pin in his hip and he moved with torso canted slightly forward, to ease a pain which seemed etched in the squint of his eyelids and the grooves running like scars from his nostrils to the corners of his mouth and then to the square of his jaw. But his hair was still chestnut and his stomach flat: looking down at Rayfield, he seemed younger than fifty-six.

Rayfield held out the will. “You know about this.”

Cade gave him a look of repugnance. “All I know is that an old friend lies horribly murdered in the next room.”

“You did draft this will, though.”

“Yesterday. I said that when you called.”

“Then maybe you could tell me how that happened.”

Cade shot me a hasty glance. “I’ll need to speak with Mr. Shaw.”

Rayfield tugged his ear in a distracted, impatient gesture, looking from Cade to me and back again. Then he nodded toward the door. “You can do that outside.”

We left through the alcove. A white-coated man stood over the body. Lydia Cantwell’s thin legs splayed crazily from behind him like the bottom end of a department store mannequin that had toppled backward. Her toenails were bright red. There was the faint odor of chemicals. I turned away.

We passed the old patrolman at the door and then walked through the roses, a line of police cars, and an ambulance, stopping by the magnolias at the far side of the drive. The blossoms gave a thin, sweet smell. Next to us sun burnt a shimmering patch of asphalt. The white glare of car windows cut into my eyes.

“You found her like that?” Cade was asking.

I nodded.

“Sweet Jesus,” he said softly. A crow cawed. Cade’s voice turned harsh. “What’s he want?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then why in hell did you give them the will?”

“Because Henry’s missing.”

“You don’t think Henry—”

“Not me. This man Rayfield. It wasn’t a break-in, Roland. She let him in.”

“Who? Jason?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. You said once that Jason is a sick man.”

Cade’s voice was rough. “He’s scum—for all I care they can electrocute him. But you’re stripping the Cantwells in public. You know what the papers will run? That will, and the Cantwells’ troubles with it.”

“The will is evidence,” I shot back. “And there are fewer Cantwells than there used to be.”

Cade flushed. “What makes you suppose—whatever we might think—that Henry Cantwell wants us pointing at the boy?”

“What makes you suppose,” I said tightly, “that Henry Cantwell’s still alive?”

Cade’s mouth opened in an odd, surprised expression. “Look,” I told him, “I found Lydia murdered and Henry missing. Jason’s supposed to hate them both. The will may be his motive. I had to turn it over. If Henry’s in danger—if anything’s happened—the police should be hunting for Jason. They’d better do that even if Henry’s just gone fishing: Rayfield thinks whoever killed her may do this again. And if I hadn’t given him the will, then Henry’s his suspect, and by noon every hick sheriff will be looking to bring him back in handcuffs for the six o’clock news—”

“Quiet.” Cade’s eyes fixed on some point over my shoulder. I realized my fists were clenched. I relaxed them and turned. Two uniformed police bore a stretcher covered by a white blanket between the roses. Only her outline showed. They carried the stretcher to the back of the ambulance and slid it inside. The door slammed. Someone started the motor. Then the ambulance backed slowly down the long drive and was gone. We listened as the motor sound faded and died, and for a long time after.

Cade slumped with his hands in his pockets. “Why quarrel?” he said softly. “It’s done.”

We stared at the ground.

“I can’t believe this,” I murmured.

He shook his head. “I’ve known her so long. And Kris Ann—it will be hard on her, too. I hardly know how to tell her.”

The last was spoken almost to himself. I looked up at him sharply. “I’ll tell Krissy.”

Cade turned to me, arms folded, his face set as if fighting to hold silent. Abruptly, he broke away and called to the man at the door for Rayfield.

A moment later Rayfield appeared amidst the roses, striding toward us deliberately and without hurry. “You ready?” he demanded.

Cade reddened. “You’ll want to know how that will came to be drafted.”

Rayfield took out his notebook. “Go ahead.”

Cade paused, breathing deeply, composing himself into a lawyer. “Mrs. Cantwell called me yesterday,” he began, “to insist on seeing me. I said of course, and she came, around three. Our receptionist can confirm the time, if that’s important. In any event, she sat in my office and asked me to change her will.” Cade’s voice seemed muted by a kind of buried sadness. “Her prior will favored her husband and son in equal measure. Now she wanted to leave everything to Mr. Cantwell.”

Rayfield’s pen skittered across the note pad, face tight with expectation as he watched Cade. Cade continued. “Jason Cantwell’s a deeply troubled boy. He’s had psychiatric counseling and fooled with radical politics. There are other things—I’m frank to admit I don’t care for him. But Mrs. Cantwell refused to give reasons. I did see that she was quite agitated, to the point that her hands shook when normally she was calm and precise.

“It wasn’t a long interview. I asked her if she’d talked with Henry and, when she said no, advised her to. I thought that was best—it was her money, all right, but Jason isn’t just her son. She said she might, but that she wanted the will revised that day. It wasn’t much trouble—just changing some paragraphs—so when she left, I had Miss Millar, my secretary, type it up. I decided to send it to Lydia at home and give her time to consider. If I’d had her come back for it, we could have witnessed the document and the thing would have been done. This way she’d have the weekend and perhaps talk with Henry. So I called her about five and said I’d send it out this morning.” Cade stopped, exhaled, and said, “You know the rest.”

It had been some moments since anyone else had spoken. Cade’s voice had journeyed through calm and sadness in a near-hypnotic rhythm. Rayfield watched him.

“You should be looking for Henry Cantwell,” I said to Rayfield.

He looked over at me strangely. “Any particular reason why you’re this worried?”

“Look, dammit—”

Cade cut in hastily. “We’re his lawyers, Lieutenant. That’s all it is.”

I spun on Cade, angry. He was watching Rayfield intently, hand half-raised between them. Rayfield stared back as if choosing his next words. He was interrupted by the whir of a motor. We turned, and then a black Mercedes loomed amidst the dogwood and drove into our silence.

The car stopped and a slight, gray-haired man got out, blinking as if he had stumbled from a darkroom. I hesitated, frozen by pity and relief. But Cade went quickly to him. “It’s Lydia,” he said.

Henry Cantwell’s face turned tight and queer. Cade braced his shoulders. “She’s been murdered, Henry.”

Henry’s features crumbled, slowly and completely, like ruined putty. He sagged in Cade’s hands. “Henry,” Cade urged.

His tone mixed sympathy and command. Henry stiffened upright as Cade backed him against the hood. He stared emptily ahead. Then he curled and his face dropped into his hands. His shoulders trembled, and then hurt-animal sounds came from between his fingers. I wanted to go to him. But he didn’t need my face to remember when he thought of breaking down. So I watched him: a banker in a three-piece suit, sobbing against the hood of his black Mercedes. Rayfield watched next to me, unnaturally still.

After a time Henry cried himself out. Haltingly, Cade walked him to the house, one arm draping Henry’s shoulders as he limped beside him. Rayfield followed.

Two cops called to each other as they paced the rear grounds, finding nothing. I leaned against a magnolia tree, smoked one cigarette to the nub, and walked back to the house.

Rayfield was alone in the sitting room, staring at the closed door to Henry’s library.

“Where are they?” I asked.

He butted his head toward the library. “In there.”

“What happened?”

“I asked where he’d been. Cade pulled him into the library.”

“What did you expect?”

Rayfield gave me a long cobalt look. Then he began watching the door again.

It slid open minutes later. Cade came first, and then Henry, following with a glazed expression.

“I’d like to be alone,” he said to no one. Without waiting, he began to shuffle toward the stairway with the steps of an old man. Rayfield reached out toward him, mouth open as if to speak, and then his hand fell to his side and he watched Henry move away.

Henry stopped when he reached me. Without speaking he put his hand on my shoulder and looked toward the dining room. For a moment I felt his weight and Rayfield’s silent look. Then Henry dropped his arm and started up the stairs.

I watched him climb as the shape of his future came to me. The quiet he had cherished here would build until it screamed. Gawkers would nose their cars up the drive, and people who didn’t would claim to know him—or Lydia or Jason—and to remember some telling incident. And if the killer weren’t found, someone, to liven up a party, would mention Henry: “He was always so quiet, so much to himself.…” He reached the top of the stairs, and disappeared.

“You can have him at four,” Cade was saying. “Assuming it won’t be a media event.”

Rayfield’s lips were an angry line. “We’ll do what’s proper.”

“Good.” Cade was once again crisp. “I take it you’re through here.”

The almost insulting slowness of Rayfield’s look at Cade lent the lingering sense of some deeper, more obscure conflict than that between police and lawyer. “We’re through,” he finally answered. Leaving, he snapped, “Check the neighbors,” to someone at the door, and slammed it behind him.

Cade and I stood alone. “Henry’s in no shape to be questioned,” I said.

He gave me a gelid stare. “Do you think I like this? But it won’t help him to wait and suffer. This way the police will grant us some consideration.”

“Not Rayfield. There’s something wrong about him.”

“Yes. He’s a policeman.”

I ignored that. “A couple of times I wondered if he knew Henry somehow, or you.”

“Why would he?” Cade said disdainfully. “Henry’s not a criminal, and I’m not a criminal lawyer.”

“That’s a second thing that bothers me. We should bring in the Danelaw firm, someone who does this kind of work.”

“Henry wants us, not some knit-suited showoff.” I sensed Cade trying to regain initiative lost in the matter of the will. “You needn’t participate if you think that’s such a mistake. I haven’t asked you to.”

We faced each other. Unspoken were the last four years of tacit avoidance, the finding of work with other projects and partners, other clients than Cade’s. “Henry’s my friend, Roland.”

Cade shrugged dismissingly. “Meet me, then. Just don’t upset Kris Ann.”

There was nothing more—no instructions, confidences, or requests for help. Cade began pacing the sitting room. I said goodbye, got in the car, and drove, past the black Mercedes and away from Cade, the pines, the silent house, the chemical smell of death.