Genuine Lies

with a background of Mozart or Gershwin. It had taken him less than a week to admit that he detested the distraction. He kept a small refrigerator stocked with soft drinks and beer. When he was on a roll, it might be eighteen hours before he’d open the door and stumble bleary-eyed out of the office, and into reality.
    So it was there he went to think of Julia, and the puzzle of proving her innocence.
    He sat in his chair, tipped back, and cleared his mind by staring at the sky.
    If he were searching for a plot, an ordinary one, she would be the perfect murderer. Calm, collected, and wrapped much too tightly. Reserved. Repressed. Resistant to change. Eve had come along and exploded the tidy, ordered life she had built for herself. The seething temper had ripped its way through that snug outer layer of control, and in a blind moment of rage and despair, she had struck out.
    The prosecution might play it that way, he thought. Tossing in several millions in inheritance for extra incentive. Of course, it would be difficult for them to prove that Julia had known about the will. Yet, it might not be so difficult to convince a jury—if it went to a jury—that Julia had been in Eve’s confidence.
    The aging and ailing movie queen searching for a lost past, the love of a child she’d given up. They could cast Eve as the vulnerable victim, facing her illness bravely and alone and desperately seeking to bond with her daughter.
    Eve would sneer and call it crap.
    Matricide, he mused. A very ugly crime. And he thought the D.A. would settle very happily for murder two.
    He lighted a cigar, closed his eyes, and ran through his mind the reason the scene didn’t work.
    Julia was incapable of murder. That was, of course, his opinion, and hardly an adequate defense. Better to focus on outside forces and basic facts than his own emotions.
    The notes. They were a fact. He had been with Julia when she had received one. There had been no feigning that shock and fear. The prosecution might argue that she was the daughter of an actress, and had once aspired to the stage herself. But he doubted even Eve could have delivered a performance like that cold.
    The plane had been tampered with. Could anyone seriously believe she would have risked her life, risked making her child an orphan, just for effect?
    The tapes. He had listened to the tapes, and they were volatile. Which secret would have been worth Eve’s life?
    There was no doubt in Paul’s mind that she had died to preserve a lie.
    Gloria’s abortion. Kincade’s perversions. Torrent’s ambitions. Priest’s greed.
    Delrickio. With all his heart Paul wanted to believe Delrickio had been responsible. But he couldn’t make the pieces fit. Could a man who so coolly dealt out death lose control and kill so recklessly?
    It had almost certainly been a crime born of the moment. Whoever had done it couldn’t have been sure when Julia would return, or if the gardener might have passed by a window on his way to prune roses.
    That didn’t account for the security. No one but the staff had been inside the gates. And yet, someone had come in.
    Paul asked himself what he would do if he’d wanted to confront Eve, alone, without anyone knowing. It wouldn’t have been difficult to visit openly, then leave, making a quick trip to shut off the power on the alarms. Double back. Face her down. Lose control.
    He liked it. He liked it very much, except for the minor fact that the alarms had been on when the police had checked them.
    So he would talk to Travers again, and Nina, and Lyle. And everyone else, down to the lowliest dust chaser on the estate.
    He had to prove that someone could have gotten inside. Someone frightened enough to send notes. Someone desperate enough to kill.
    On impulse he picked up the phone and dialed. “Nina. It’s Paul.”
    “Oh, Paul. Travers said you’d been by. I’m sorry I missed you.” She glanced around her office, at the cardboard boxes she was meticulously packing. “I’m in the process of putting things in order, moving my own things out. I’m renting a house in the Hills until … well, until I can think what to do next.”
    “You know you can stay as long as you like.”
    “I appreciate that.” She groped in her pocket for a tissue.“I’m worried about Travers, but I can’t bear staying, knowing Miss B. won’t come flying in with some new impossible demand. Oh, God, Paul, why did this have to happen?”
    “That’s something we need to figure