'None at all,' Penny said.
'Jon,' Becker said. 'You interested in a shorter sentence?'
Delroy smiled again to himself, fleetingly. He looked at Penny. She didn't look at him. He returned his gaze to the backs of his folded hands.
'Okay,' Becker said. 'Mr. Spenser, would you open that door and ask Jerry to send those folks in?'
I stopped leaning on the door, and opened it, and stuck my head out, and nodded at the deputy and jerked a thumb toward the interrogation room, and closed the door again.
'You didn't by any chance ask Mr. Delroy to shoot Mr. Spenser, did you, Penny?'
'Dalton, that's offensive,' Penny said. She was sitting straight upright in her chair. Her legs were not crossed anymore. Her knees were together, and her ankles. Her feet were flat on the floor.
'Yep,' Becker said. 'It is. Sorry about that, but it kind of looks to us as if you might have.'
Penny pressed her lips together. The door opened behind me. I stepped to the side and, shepherded by a uniformed deputy, the Clive family circus trooped in silently: Stonie, SueSue, Pud, Cord, Dolly Hartman, Jason Hartman, and, making a special guest appearance, direct from San Francisco, Sherry Lark. Penny stared at her mother, but didn't say anything. The deputy arranged chairs and got everybody seated. He had a big mustache like an old-time western lawman.
'Stand by, Jerry,' Becker said to him, and the deputy went and leaned on the wall I'd recently vacated when I went to lean on the door.
'I want to thank you all for coming,' Becker said. 'Especially you, Ms. Lark. I know it's a long flight.'
'You sent me a ticket,' she said.
Becker nodded.
'We had a little extra in the budget this month,' he said. 'Now, so we're clear, no one is here under duress. No one is under arrest, though it seems likely that Mr. Delroy will be.'
Penny was still looking at her mother. Delroy was still looking at his knuckles. Everyone else tried not to look at anybody, except Pud. Who glanced at me and winked. Becker looked around.
'Everybody all right?' he said. 'Anybody like a Coca-Cola? Coffee? Glass of water?'
Nobody did.
'Okay,' Becker said. 'Mr. Spenser, you been the one raising most of the hell in this case, why don't you hold forth a little bit for us.'
Everyone turned their head and looked at me. I felt like I should open with a shuffle ball change. I decided against it.
'Most of you,' I said, 'will know some of what I'm going to say, but knowing all of it is the trick. This isn't a court of law. I'm telling you what I believe. But I can prove most of it.'
The deputy with the mustache shifted a little as he leaned against the wall. I could hear the creak of his gun belt when he did so.
'About thirty years ago,' I said, 'Walter Clive had an affair with Dolly Hartman. The result of that union was Jason Hartman.'
Stonie and SueSue both turned their gaze simultaneously on Jason. Everyone else kept looking at me.
'No one acknowledged that. Clive as far as I can tell didn't even know it. Dolly felt in the long run it would be in both her and Jason's best interests to lie back in the weeds and wait. Clive later made a will. It provided that his entire estate be equally divided among his children. Stonie and SueSue weren't too interested in the business. But Penny was, and she became more and more a part of it until she was really running things and Walter spent most of his time entertaining clients and traveling with Dolly, who resurfaced once Sherry was gone.'
Everyone was still. Sherry Lark leaned forward a little, her mouth slightly open, frowning slightly to show how attentive she was being. There were probably very few unscripted moments in Sherry's life.
'I don't know what caused Dolly to bring it up when she did, and frankly, it doesn't matter much. But she eventually told Clive that Jason was his son. Clive was not a guy who had just fallen off the feed wagon as it trundled through town. He wanted proof. So they arranged with a doctor named Klein-most of you know him, I think-for a DNA test. Meanwhile Walter, in the eventuality that the test proved out, began talking to his lawyer, Rudy Vallone, about changing his will. The change would have included Jason in the estate, but, and here's the kicker, it would also have given him control of Three Fillies.'
The silence in the room was cavernous. Delroy remained immobile, looking at his knuckles. I thought I could see the lines deepening around Penny's mouth as if she were clamping her jaw tighter. Jason Hartman was quiet and elegant, comfortable in the kind of serene way people have when they are getting their due.
'The DNA testing was a secret. The only people who knew were Dolly, and Walter and the doctor. Even Jason didn't know. He thought he was just getting a routine physical. However, as luck would have it, Dr. Klein and Sherry Lark had a, ah, relationship that transcended their casual medical acquaintance, and even better, so did Rudy Vallone and Sherry Lark. And, free spirit that she is, she used those relationships to find out that Walter was being tested to see if Jason was his son, and that Walter was thinking of changing his will in favor of Jason if the tests proved out.'
I paused and looked at Sherry. On her face was perhaps the first genuine expression I'd ever seen there in our brief acquaintance. She looked scared.
'And she told Penny,' I said.
Somebody, I think it was Dolly, inhaled audibly. No one else did anything.
Becker said, 'You do that, Sherry?'
When Sherry answered, her voice was so constricted it was barely audible.
