Cheating at Solitaire(40)

“The lawyers?” Gregor said.

Clara Walsh shrugged. “It’s every prosecutor’s nightmare, another O. J. Simpson case. This young woman is not bright, but the people around her are bright, and she’s got the money to hire the best legal representation out there. And she will. She’s in the process of doing it as we speak. We need somebody who can think the way those lawyers think. I know a number of people who say that somebody is you.”

The boat lurched underneath them. Clara Walsh and Stewart Gordon didn’t seem to notice. Gregor sat down abruptly sideways on the nearest chair.

“So,” Stewart said. “Don’t listen to her. I’ve told you why I think Arrow Normand couldn’t possibly have done it. And that’s the way to go about it, isn’t it, if you want to help the prosecution? Do your damnedest to prove the case wrong, and then if you can’t, you know they’re on solid ground.”

Gregor sighed. “Stewart said you’d managed to keep Arrow Normand in jail. Have you still?”

“Yes,” Clara Walsh said. The boat was lurching some more. “For the moment, we’ve been able to get away with a judge who doesn’t want to grant bail. And he really doesn’t. He doesn’t trust those people, and I don’t blame him. But we’re at the lawyers again. Once her criminal team gets here, that won’t last too long. They’ll have her out sooner rather than later. You have no idea how I miss the days when we could just say that we don’t grant bail in murder cases and let it go at that.”

“Can you keep her on the island?” Gregor asked.

“Probably not,” Clara said, “although we had thought of that, and we’re going to try. For our purposes, though, it’s not enough just to keep her on the island. This is a complicated case in some ways, if not in others. For one thing, we’ve got no idea at all why she’d want to kill this man. We’ve gone through all the usual explanations. There’s no sign she was paying him blackmail, and whatever would he blackmail her about? All her dirty laundry is public anyway. She practically throws it onto the world stage to be photographed. There’s no indication from anybody who knew them that he was about to leave her, and why would he? She was the one with the money and the fame and the things a partner wants to hang on to, and they hadn’t been seeing each other long enough to make a Grand Passion credible. Sex and money, lust and lucre. All the usual explanations fall flat.”

“So why be so sure she committed the murder?” Gregor asked.

“Well,” Clara said, “let’s see. First, she had his blood in her hair. A lot of it. Her hair was soaked with it. Then, he died in the truck—it was a purple pickup truck, did Mr. Gordon tell you that?—and her fingerprints were all over it, and so were his.”

“Everybody’s fingerprints were all over it,” Stewart said. “So were mine. We’d all been in that truck.”

“Her fingerprints were in the blood in the truck,” Clara said. “Which is somewhat more incriminating. Then there’s the way she’s been behaving since, which has been, let’s say, less than cooperative.”

“Has she offered an explanation for any of it?” Gregor asked.

“No,” Clara Walsh said. “It seems that no matter how stupid she is, she’s seen enough true-crime documentaries to know she doesn’t have to talk to the police without a lawyer present, and as soon as the lawyer showed up, she refused to say anything at all. And this wasn’t a good lawyer. It was one of the entertainment lawyers the movie people have on tap for things like disputes over permits. When we try to ask her questions, all Arrow Normand says is ‘I don’t have to talk to you,’ and then she completely shuts up. She’s very good at shutting up.”

Gregor thought about this. “What about the rest of them?” he asked finally. “You must have talked to other people, even other people who are part of this movie. Would they talk to you? At all?”

Clara Walsh shrugged. “Marcey Mandret ran off at the mouth for a bit, but none of it made any sense. I’ve seen the tapes. I think she was high as a kite at the time. We talked to Kendra Rhode. She didn’t say much of anything and looked bored. We talked to Mr. Gordon here, and to Dr. Falmer, because Arrow Normand went to her house. We talked to some people on the set, including the guy who does public relations for the movie. He’s the one I feel sorry for. Anyway, nobody has said much of anything. And it was the day of the storm. Nobody was doing much of anything. It was hard to get around.”