Seeing an opening between an SUV and a Honda, I gun the S4 through the narrow gap and race for Broadway, which runs along the river. Eighty feet before I reach it, I pull the Audi between two crape myrtles on the right and drive across the grass to a hidden garage in the backyard of Edelweiss. Peering beneath the massive ginkgo tree that dominates the backyard, I can just see the nose of Quentin’s white Mercedes van sticking out from the corner of the house, parked on Broadway. A cable TV van with a big dish on its roof has set up base camp on the bluff side of the street, so reporters must be lurking nearby.
Using the ginkgo trunk for cover, I move stealthily toward the house. The broad gallery that wraps around the old chalet makes Edelweiss seem to float about ten feet above ground level. A line of green pickets shields the brick-pillared ground floor on all four sides, but there’s a gate in back, and a single stair leading up to the gallery. After unlocking that gate, I run up the stairs and reach the kitchen door without any media hounds sniffing me out.
I knock gently several times, but no one comes to the door. There’s no glass set in the back door, so I can’t see anything. Moving to my left, I look through a window and see Quentin and Doris in the kitchen, Quentin in his wheelchair talking on the phone while Doris peers toward the front of the house. A plate of Ritz crackers lies on the counter, beside it a jar of peanut butter and a can of Corona.
I tap gently on the window.
Quentin and Doris both jump as though someone fired a shot. I point to the door to my right. As Doris moves toward it, Quentin hangs up the phone and angrily shakes his head. Doris walks to the window, leans up to the glass, and says, “I’m sorry, Penn, he doesn’t want to be bothered right now. He needs to stay focused on the case.”
“What case?” I ask, too loudly. “If you don’t let me in, the reporters will hear me and come running.”
Through the glass I hear Quentin cursing behind Doris. “I’m sorry,” she says again. “There’s nothing I can do.”
I’m about to bang on the window when Doris very pointedly looks downward. Following her eyes, I see her hand at her waist, beckoning me inside. At first I think she means to let me in, but then I realize that since she was hiding the gesture from Quentin, that’s unlikely. Then it hits me.
Taking my keys from my pocket, I simply unlock the back door and walk into the kitchen.
“You’re trespassing, goddamn it!” Quentin snaps.
“I own this house.”
“We’ll move to a goddamned hotel, then!”
“We’re not moving anywhere,” Doris says firmly, “unless it’s back home.”
I try to catch her eye, but Doris Avery is far too smooth a customer to let her husband detect conspiracy between us. I’m happy to have this woman as my ally. I met Doris two years ago, but I still don’t know how she wound up married to a man my father’s age.
“What do you want?” Quentin demands. “You ruined my lunch. Have you come to ruin my dinner, too?”
Before I can answer, he says, “The least you could have done is brought a couple of those bodyguards of yours with you. We need the help. The tourists are bad enough, trying to walk in the front door every ten minutes, but now we have the media maggots all over this case.”
“I’ll see about getting a man for your door.”
“Make sure he’ll protect me from you, too.”
“I’m surprised, Quentin. You usually like holding forth to the press.”
He gives me a quick glare, then rolls away and starts eating Ritz crackers from the plate on the marble island. Doris walks into the doorway that leads to the front room, then leans against the casing and waits to see what I’ve come to say.
“Quentin, I’m here because my mother wants to fire you.”
“Is that all?”
“No. Every lawyer in the courtroom thinks you’re suffering from dementia.”
He actually cackles at this. “Yeah, I see all those hacks out there second-guessing me. Armchair quarterbacks. Your fat pal Rusty’s been staring a hole in my back all day. I’ve been worried he might have a stroke.”
“Do you blame him? I’m surprised the judge hasn’t stepped in from being worried about being reversed on appeal.”
“On what grounds?”
“Ineffective assistance of counsel.”
He chuckles with defiant pride. “I’d like to see the judge with the balls to say that of me.”
“Joe Elder’s no pushover.”
Quentin’s eyes glint with emotion I cannot read. “No. But he’s not about to stop this thing. You know why?”
“Why?”
“Because he wants us to lose. He’s enjoying this.”
This takes me aback. “Why do you say that?”
“When you’ve spent as many years in court as I have, you sense things. Hell, he’s practically acting as co-counsel for the prosecution. I just don’t know whether Joe wants to see me lose—you know, the Freudian kill-the-father thing—or whether he has some kind of grudge against your father. But it’s one or the other. You ought to do a little digging and find out which.”
“I will. Is that why you’re not objecting? Because you think Elder will overrule?”
Quentin doesn’t deign to answer. Spreading peanut butter on his Ritz seems to interest him a lot more.
“If that’s it, at least make him overrule you. Then it’ll be preserved for appeal.”
His eyes flick my way for a second. “I’m not worried about the appeals court, man. I’m gonna win this trial.”
I look to Doris for help, but she only shrugs.
“You haven’t said what you think of my strategy,” Quentin says in a teasing voice.
“Strategy? You let Shad make his entire forensic case with no opposition. You haven’t challenged any evidence or objected to patently inadmissible testimony. You didn’t even make an opening statement!”
“Are you finished?”
“Quentin, you only cross-examined two witnesses out of eight.”
“It ain’t the quantity of the questions, Grasshopper. It’s the quality.”
“You let Shad convince at least half the jury that the killer removed both videotapes from Cora’s house. Most of the jury believes Dad took those tapes.”
Quentin waves away my points as though I’m raising trivial issues.
“What the hell are you going to do if Shad walks in tomorrow with digital restorations of those tapes?”
“I’m not worried about those tapes.”
“Why not? Have you spoken to Dad about them?”
“I just did.”
“Do you know what’s on them?”
He smiles like a Jamaican handing out joints on a beach. “No idea, brother.”
I take a deep breath and try to rein in my anger. “Quentin . . . those tapes could destroy you tomorrow. And send Dad to Parchman.”
At last he fixes me with a serious gaze. “Are you that sure your father is guilty?”
“What the hell am I supposed to think at this point?”
“I guess you’ve given up, then.”
Doris’s presence should hold me back, but I can’t keep from demanding one specific answer. “Man . . . why the hell were you probing at the Frank Knox business with Cora?”
“It’s central to the Double Eagle thread of the narrative.”
This direct answer is such a novelty that it brings me up short. “Do you have proof of what you suggested about the Double Eagles threatening to kill Viola?”
Once again he exercises the royal prerogative not to answer.