David Rosenfelt - New Tricks

Tonight Vince and Pete are here as well, less for the sacred-tradition aspect than for the free-beer-and-food aspect. Their attendance is also less significant because they happen to be here every night.

I can’t even imagine the joy and relief that Steven must be feeling. My guess is that it would be like jumping out of an airplane after being told there was a decent chance your parachute wasn’t going to open. The chute would decide whether you would live or die, and all you could do is wait for the decision.

Steven raises a glass of champagne and says, “To Andy and Kevin, fantastic lawyers and even better people.”

Other people make toasts as well, and the more we drink the less eloquent they get. I finally stand with my beer bottle raised and say, “I have an announcement to make. Laurie Collins and I may or may not be getting married.” A cheer goes up, but the state of inebriation in the room is such that they would cheer if I announced it was going to be cloudy tomorrow.

Steven comes over to me later in the festivities and says, “You haven’t sent me a bill yet.”

“I will,” I say.

“Do you have a recommendation for a lawyer I should use to deal with my father’s will?”

I know someone who is very good at probate, and I give Steven his name.

“So you thinks Sykes is guilty?” he asks.

“I think he killed your father,” I say.

“But not Diana?”

That something that’s still bothering me. The only reasons I can think of for Sykes blowing up the house would be to kill Diana and destroy Walter’s laboratory, so that no one could get access to his work.

Neither rationale completely holds up to close scrutiny. If he married Diana, they would have walked away with over four hundred million, compared with the eighty million Sykes would get as part of the company. On the other hand, Diana could have been in the process of dumping him, and he might therefore have faced the prospect of getting nothing.

As far as the laboratory goes, Sykes had full access to the house through Diana. He could easily have destroyed the lab without taking the house down with it. Of course, this theory also has an on the other hand attached to it. Sykes could have had Childs use the overkill of a bomb purely as a further way to frame the explosives expert, Steven.

“I’m not sure if he killed Diana,” is how I answer Steven. “But maybe we’ll learn more about that.”

“How?”

I mention that I’ve asked Richard to seek search warrants against Sykes, and how I will be pushing that when I meet with him tomorrow. Steven seems happy to hear it; he naturally wants his father’s killer caught.

Martha Wyndham, Laurie, and Kevin come over and join the conversation. “Why do you guys look so serious?” Laurie asks. “The trial is over. You won.”

“Winning isn’t enough for us,” I say. “We want to dominate.”

“I wish Waggy were here,” Martha says. “He certainly played a key role.”

“I agree completely,” says Steven. “And is it proper for me to ask what you’ve decided about him?”

“If he ever turns up, and I’m very optimistic that he will, I’m going to file a motion with the court awarding him to you-”

Steven interrupts: “That would be great.” He says it with real enthusiasm, which makes me feel like I made the right choice. Tara won’t admit it, but she’s going to miss Waggy as much as I will. Or maybe she won’t.

“-though I would be reluctant to give him up until I felt certain he’s no longer a target.”

“Makes sense.”

“But if you ever go on vacation, Waggy doesn’t get boarded; he comes to stay at our house,” Laurie says. I have to admit, I love the way she says “our house.”

Steven smiles. “You got a deal.”

“And I get visitation rights,” Martha says.

Steven nods. “Whenever you want.”

I can tell the evening is coming to an end, because Vince signals for the waiter to bring me the check. Steven grabs it and pays it, bringing the grand total of times I haven’t gotten stuck with the check at Charlie’s to one.

When we get home, Marcus has brought Waggy up to the living room, and he is playing with him and Tara. I think he’s going to miss the Wagster as much as the rest of us.

“You really think he’s still in danger?” Laurie asks.

“To tell you the truth, I have no idea. There’s just too much I don’t know about this whole case. But for now I don’t want to take a chance with him.”

“When he goes to live with Steven, are you going to get Tara another friend? I think she likes the company.”

I shrug. “Maybe; I’ve been thinking about it. But it would be a dog closer to Tara’s age.”

She nods. “Good idea.”

I’m pretty much ready to go upstairs with Laurie, but Marcus doesn’t seem to be planning to leave. “Marcus, can I get you anything?” I ask.

“Nunh.”

“We’re going to go to sleep, okay?”

“Yuh.”

Laurie whispers to me. “Andy, do you think we should? Is it right to just leave him here?”

I nod. “Yuh and yuh.”

MY MEETING WITH RICHARD WALLACE isn’t even necessary. By the time I get there, he already has gotten the police department to prepare the search warrants on Thomas Sykes, which will be presented to a judge and then hopefully executed. They’re for his home, his car, and his office, and basically they’re hunting for trace evidence and incriminating documents and computer records.

It’s an entirely different situation than would have occurred if Steven had been found guilty. Then there would have been almost no way Richard could have convinced his boss to try to pin the crime on Sykes. Once Steven had been convicted, they would not have had the stomach to do something that might have overturned that conviction.

“I buy that he killed Walter Timmerman,” Richard says, “but not the house. It doesn’t feel right. If he was going to do that, why not do it when both of them were home? He could have killed them both with one bomb, and it would have been even easier to place it on Steven.”

“Because I think Sykes wanted a chance to get a look at that lab, without Walter around.”

“How could he have been sure that Diana would be home when he set the bomb off ? She could have been at the goddamn beauty parlor.”

It’s a good point, and one I hadn’t thought of. “That’ll have to go to the bottom of a long list of things I don’t know,” I say.

“Unless he called and she answered the phone; that would have been the key to detonate the bomb.”

I think back to that day. “No, she was having Martha tell people she wasn’t available. And she gardened a lot; even if she was home, she could have left the house at any time.”

“Maybe we’ll learn something with the warrants,” Richard says.

“Or maybe it’ll raise more questions.”

He looks at me strangely. “You seem awfully downbeat for a winner.”

I smile. “I know; I hate unresolved cases, especially when the fact that they’re unresolved means a murderer may walk.”

Richard promises to keep me informed as best he can about the results of the search warrant, but I’m aware that it will be in the hands of the police, and it will only be brought to him if charges seem justified.

On the home front, Laurie and I are making plans for a trip to Findlay. The doctor isn’t quite ready for her to travel yet, but he said he’ll likely retract that restriction in a couple of weeks.

Laurie figures it will take about three weeks to help in the job transition; she has already notified the city manager of her decision to leave, and fortunately her second in command is a likely successor. She also has to make arrangements to sell her house and transport her things.