Desperate Measures by Kate Wilhelm Read Free Book Online Page A

months, and then she returns home. She also has a heart condition, and no one believes she will live more than a couple of years. He can’t divorce a desperately ill woman. We see each other when we can, and when she dies….” She opened her eyes. She had spoken in a monotone, as if she feared that any emotion that crept into her voice might cause it to fail altogether.
    She picked up her cup, then set it down again.
    â€œI’m going to ask you some pretty blunt questions, Hilde. How discreet have you been? Is there an easy trail? Neighbors? Friends? Telephone calls to trace, that sort of thing?”
    It could be worse, Frank thought, but not a lot worse. They had been careful, but there really was always a trail if one was willing to pay enough to find it. Finally he said, “Okay. You have to call your friend and tell him the situation you’re in. After that one call, no more contact for the next month or two. No phone calls, no meetings. If you have letters, burn them, same for any gifts that could be traced from him to you, get rid of them. Assume that you’re being watched, investigated.”
    She had grown paler with his words. She ducked her head and began to turn her coffee cup around and around on the saucer.
    â€œWhat is it?” Frank asked.
    â€œI was going to be with him in San Francisco, the last week in June.”
    â€œI’m sorry, Hilde. I’m truly sorry, but that’s exactly the kind of thing you can’t afford right now. If an investigator puts in a lot of hours without finding anything current, I suspect he’ll go elsewhere. Don’t load his gun for him, Hilde.”
    After a moment she nodded.
    â€œNow I’ll go get us some fresh coffee, and you can use my phone. Call him from here. I’ll wait for the coffee to drip; it will take a few minutes. Then we’ll talk about opportunity.”
    He did not make the coffee, nor did he carry it back; Patsy would have been mortified. Five minutes later he returned to his office; Patsy brought in fresh coffee and left.
    Pouring, he said, “Okay, next installment. Opportunity.”
    â€œThey came around to ask why I was on Old Opal Creek Road that evening,” she said. “I guess Mike Bakken saw me go by. I delivered books from the library to Graham Minick and Alex Feldman. Alex has a deformity and he won’t go to the library, and usually Cloris Buchanan takes their books out, but she was leaving town to attend her brother’s wedding, and I said I could drop them off. I chatted with Graham for a few minutes, then went on to school. But they acted as if… I don’t know. They were suspicious and didn’t seem to believe that anyone would go out of her way to deliver or pick up library books. Cloris works at the library, and she lives out past Opal Creek; she does it all the time, and I did it that one day.”
    â€œYou left school to deliver the books?” Frank asked. Of course, he was thinking, the cops would find that suspicious.
    â€œNo, not like that,” Hilde said. “The fact is that I have diabetes, and stress is hard on me. I don’t deny that I’ve had a lot of stress recently, and that day, with the graduation ceremony, teachers afraid that Gus would create another scene with a bigger audience, I was pretty strung out. Leona said Gus would eat and then walk over for the graduation ceremony, and some of the girls were painted pretty heavily. There was a rumor that some of the boys would act up, boy-locker-room humor, no doubt. I had to get out of there for a while. I went home, took my medicine, ate, and lay down for an hour, and on the way back I stopped by Dr. Minick’s house.”
    She put her cup down; she had not really wanted anything, coffeed out, she had said, but she needed something to do with her hands. “Frank, don’t look at me like that. It’s not a tragedy. Diabetes could take ten or fifteen years off your