'What does Arnold Duckworth have to do with Hilda Chisholm?'
'He's Hilda's brother, her baby brother.'
I choked on a tiny sip of coffee. 'Are you kidding?'
'Not at all. What you told me this woman was doing was so far off the charts that there had to be something to it. I did some behind-the-scenes checking. We're not altogether out of the woods on this thing. There'll still be an investigation, of course, but you can be reasonably certain that Hilda Chisholm won't be running the show. I shouldn't have any difficulty convincing Child Protective Services that she has a serious conflict of interest here. You go on down to California and let me worry about it.'
For a minute or so after he finished talking, I just sat there staring at him.
'Is something wrong?' he asked finally.
'Nothing's wrong,' I returned. 'Not a damned thing.'
Epilogue
With Hilda Chisholm off my back, I headed for California. As the plane left Sea-Tac Airport, I was wondering if Sam Arnold and Ron Peters would be able to finish nailing Deanna Compton without either Detective Kramer's and my totally indispensable help. Hard as it is for me to admit it, Seattle P.D. did just fine. Arnold, Ron, and several others eventually uncovered the fact that all the while Wolf had been bringing in the investment money, expecting to end up with part ownership of an important company as his reward, Bill Whitten and Deanna Compton had been gathering the monies into a separate fund.
When Don Wolf figured that out and was preparing to take that information to the D.G.I. board of directors, Whitten and Compton decided to get rid of him and his proof as well. Lizbeth Wolf, sick with pneumonia and sound asleep in her husband's apartment, was an accidental victim-somebody who died for no other reason than being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
In the days after the murders of both Don and Lizbeth Wolf, Whitten and his lady love Deanna had been transferring funds out of the country-to Colombia. Their airplane tickets, had they ever had a chance to use them, would have transferred them there as well. And with Latty Gibson as a likely suspect to take the murder rap, they might have gotten away with it, had it not been for Virginia Marks and Grace Highsmith.
The private detective's investigation had come far too close to the truth, necessitating her death as well. And Grace, by virtue of having access to Virginia's findings, had also been targeted. I had to give Grace Highsmith credit for her single-minded determination to protect Latty from all comers, cops and killers alike.
By the time somebody finally got around to charging Deanna Compton for her part in the three murders; by the time they charged her with the theft of Lizbeth Wolf's engagement ring, which Deanna Compton was still wearing at the time of her arrest; by the time they finally located Don Wolf/Daniel James Wilkes' real family who, even after all those years, still lived in Tulsa, Oklahoma-I had long since stopped thinking about the case. By then, I had been in California for a week and a half and was far too preoccupied with more important things.
Hospitals are for people who are sick and plan to get better. Hospices are for people who are sick and plan to die. You'd expect that the latter would be very depressing places, but for some strange reason, they aren't. Once somebody's sick enough to be in a hospice, most of the masks come off. People are free to be who and what they really are, at least that's how it seemed to work with Karen.
Her room was sunny and warm. It overlooked an immaculately kept expanse of lawn dotted with graceful palm trees. There were brilliantly colored flower beds all around. Patio doors opened out on a vividly vital world where a perpetually filled bird feeder brought a never-ending parade of feathered visitors. Sometimes, when I was sitting there in that dazzlingly bright room during my allotted visiting hours, we would go for thirty minutes at a time without saying a word.
'Birds are fascinating,' I said one day. 'I wonder why I've never noticed them before.'
'Because you never took the time,' Karen said.
My experience with my mother's final illness had been so appallingly awful, that coming into it, I didn't know if I'd be able to handle being around Karen at all. Cancer is a ruthless opponent, no matter what, but I learned that the philosophy of treatment has come a long way since my mother's time. Maybe it doesn't work exactly the same way everywhere, but in the hospice facility in Rancho Cucamonga, Karen got to call the shots. Literally. I think there were times when she chose to decrease her medication dosages, opting for lucidity over pain control. I'm not sure that given the same circumstances, I would have been tough enough to make the same choices myself, but I blessed her for it. It gave us a chance to talk, to say things that had needed saying. For years.
'Time,' she murmured thoughtfully a long time later. 'That's why I divorced you, you know.'
It was simply a statement of fact. There was no anger or accusation, no acrimony, and no self-pity, either. What goes on in hospices leaves no strength or energy to drag around any unnecessary emotional baggage.
'I know,' I said. 'With the job and all there was never enough of that.'
Karen smiled. 'With the job and the booze there was never enough time for me,' she corrected.
But this wasn't a fight. It was a conversation. I didn't bother to say I was sorry, because we both knew I was.
'Did you know I fell off the wagon a couple of days ago?' I asked a few minutes later.
'No, but you got back on, didn't you?'
'Yes.'
'Good.'
More time passed. An hour, maybe. I believe she slept for a while, but when she woke up again, she resumed the conversation, almost in midthought. 'When I found Dave, Beau, I couldn't believe my luck. From the moment we met, he always put me first.'
'He's a good guy,' I acknowledged without rancor. 'A real good guy.'
'But I'm worried about him,' Karen said.
'Worried? Why?'
'Because I'm afraid he'll be lost without me. I'm afraid he'll fall apart.'
'He'll be fine, Karen,' I reassured her. 'He's a smart man, a solid man.'
'But you'll look out for him, won't you?'
'Yes,' I said. 'I'll do my best.'
Dave showed up a little while later. It was his time. We had divided up the days so that one or the other of the kids was there in the mornings, I took the afternoon shift, and Dave did the evenings.
That was the last time I talked to her. By noon the next day, Karen Beaumont Livingston had drifted into a coma. I stayed away after that. From then on, Dave and Kelly and Scott were at her side around the clock, and rightfully so. Three nights later, Dave came home at eleven o'clock-early for him. His eyes were red; his hair was standing on end.
'It's over,' he said. 'Mind if I have a drink?'
'Go ahead,' I said. 'Help yourself.'
'I knew it was coming,' he said a few minutes later. 'I thought I was prepared. But I'm not. I feel so lost. What am I going to do?' Unchecked tears streamed down his face as he turned away from me.
'You'll be all right, Dave,' I told him. 'That's what families are for. And friends.'
