Read Online Sleight of Hand by Kate Wilhelm - Free Book Online Page A

signaled to the waiter. Now she would have a glass of wine. This was, finally, what she had been waiting for. She pointed to Adele's glass and ordered antipasto for two. "We'll order dinner after that comes," she said and picked up her menu.
    "Whatever you're having," Adele said indifferently without glancing at the menu.
    Several egrets were skimming the river, inches away from the flashing ripples. She appeared to be hypnotized by them.
    After the platter of antipasto, wine and another gin and tonic were in place and the dinner order given, knowing they would be left alone for a time, Barbara said, "What about Jay?"
    Adele looked at her new drink, then moved it aside. She picked up a piece of salami.
    "Connie's brother asked me about him. Jay had known Connie and David for years.
    They moved in the same circles or something. Anyway, he had dropped in on her a few times. I don't know how this came about, but apparently Jay said he'd help Connie sell the sailboat and the place on the coast, and eventually, when she was ready, help sell her house. He offered to look after her, and her brother was relieved.
    He just wanted to know if Jay was okay, not a child molester or something." She smiled bitterly.
    "God knows she needed someone to look out for her. Most of her friends had given up. If they don't want to be helped, there isn't much you can do. You must find that in your practice as often as I do at the center."
    Barbara nodded. "Unreachable, untouchable, unteachable."
    "That's it. I never dreamed that a man like Jay would get through to her," Adele said.
    "You knew him?"
    "I grew up with his first wife, kindergarten through high school, all the way. She's a good friend. I knew Jay."
    Pay dirt, Barbara thought, prepared to ask some questions. But before she could voice even one, Adele was off on another ramble.
    Five months after Connie's brother left, satisfied that she was being looked out for by a respectable businessman, Connie and Jay were married. Everyone who knew her was stunned by the news, no one more so than Adele.
    "I waited for several weeks, hoping Connie would give me a call. She didn't."
    Adele had gone to Jay's house to see Connie, but he had met her at the door and said that Connie was resting. She tried again a week later and was turned away. Then Jay had arrived at her office at the center to talk to her.
    "He said he had talked to her doctor and they both agreed that she was making good progress, but every time someone from her past life appeared, it sent her back to her previous state of despair and depression. He asked me to leave her alone until she was really well."
    Now when she lapsed into her silences, it was to pick up another tidbit from the platter and attack it almost savagely.
    She had been a fool to believe Jay, but she had wanted to believe him. And the weeks passed, with her growing more uneasy until she decided she had to see for herself how Connie was faring.
    She picked a time when Jay would be at the dealership and she had been aghast at Connie's condition.
    "I've been running the center a long time," Adele said, "and I know an addict when I see one. She was addicted to something. Tranquilizers? Sedatives? I went to her medicine cabinet and had a look. My God, it was a pharmacy! I tossed everything in a bag and called Joan Sugarman. I told her I was bringing in an emergency case and I stiff-armed Connie out of the house and to her office."
    Barbara knew Joan Sugarman, the volunteer doctor on call for the center. She was available for emergencies at all times.
    Joan had wanted to sign Connie into a detox center immediately, but Connie had refused. Jay was taking care of her. They were taking care of each other. In the end, Joan simply rewrote the prescriptions, reducing the dosage. It would have been too dangerous to stop abruptly. Adele had taken Connie home, and replaced the old medications with the newly filled prescriptions. She told Connie not to mention the matter to Jay, but she