Death Qualified by Kate Wilhelm Page A

kitchen when he was cooking.
     
        "So there she was, fifty-five, broke, in debt, no experience at anything but selling hardware now and again, and taking care of her mother first, until she died, and then her father." He went to the refrigerator and brought out a bottle of white wine.
     
        "Thought I was forgetting something." He brought it and glasses to the table and poured for them both.
     
        "That's better. So Lonnie started to work for different people around here. Over at Doc's " He peered at her again, and she nodded. She remembered Doc and his crippled wife.
     
        "Over there most days, over here once a week, here and there. But what she's really planning is murder."
     
        Barbara sputtered on her wine.
     
        "Come on! What do you mean?"
     
        "Well, way she figures it, no matter how much she works from now on, the day's coming when she won't be able to anymore, and she'll be a pauper, out in the street more than likely. A little bit of Social Security, if she holds out for enough work quarters. Some of us managed to save her house for her, not much of a house, sixty years old, sort of decrepit, but still it was home. But she won't even be able to manage the taxes, way she figures. So, if she kills someone, the right someone, she'll get sent up and live out her life comfortably."
     
        "Loony bins aren't all that comfortable," Barbara said gravely.
     
        "Nope. Told her that. But she doesn't intend to be taken as a loony. A political statement. Get rid of someone who deserves to be off the face of the map anyway, do the world a favor, get the maximum sentence and relax. She wouldn't even think of parole, would do whatever it might take to avoid it. Start a riot or something, I guess."
     
        Barbara laughed then.
     
        "You're her attorney, advising her, I suppose."
     
        "I am not colluding with her, not in a conspiracy of any sort, not advising her in methods of murder. Certainly not an accessory before the fact. Even tried to talk her out of it, but she's got her head set. Every once in a while she'll ask me what I think of so and so. A senator, or justice maybe, head of state. Once it was a talk show host.
     
        Now, let's see, hot black bean sauce, garlic...."
     
        She sipped her wine, watching him prepare their dinner.
     
        She wondered, as she had so often, how aware he was of his own machinations. At one time, as a teenager, she had been certain everything he did, everything he said, was planned, calculated for effect, but she had discarded that assessment eventually. For a longer time she had under stood that he worked on an intuitive level that even he was unaware of, but she had come to question that, too. He was aware, but not that calculating. His intuition seldom led him astray; he had come to trust it to the point where he could now charm her, be the amusing father she loved, lull her into passivity, and then he would press a new at tack more vigorously than before. She recognized his maneuver the way he had switched from his murder client to this other woman, letting the other matter hang unattended until he was ready to return to it, and not a second before he was ready. She sipped the wine, waiting, amused now, but waiting.
     
        "This Lonnie Rowan, does she have a game plan?
     
        Money to travel to wherever her victim might be? A way to get through whatever security there might be?"
     
        He nodded.
     
        "Better than that. She knows if she sits tight, he'll come to her. But she's getting frustrated. Seems every time she chooses someone, he gets the axe before she can gather her forces and actually do anything. She had a televangelist picked out, and he got the can, in prison now. And a governor kicked the bucket as soon as she began to research him. Somebody else got cancer. It's been frustrating for her, I tell you. She's starting to think she's putting the jinx