"Let's get one thing straight, Mr. Carlisle," she said. "I'm the one calling the shots here. If you want to do this project, we're going to do it my way. Basic ground rule number one is that we don't talk about that night. Not now, not ever!"
"But that's pretty much the whole point, isn't it?" Carlisle said, smiling his ruined smile. "Everything that happened before led up to it, and everything afterward led away from it."
"That night isn't my point," Diana returned. "And I'm the one writing the book. If you don't like it, hire yourself another writer."
"Hire?" Carlisle croaked. "What do you mean, hire? I already told you I can't afford to pay you anything."
"I'm being paid, all right," Diana answered. "My agent has pitched the idea to my editor in New York. The book I'm writing will be written, and I will be paid. The only question is whether or not any of your point of view actually appears in print. That depends on how well you behave, on whether or not you agree to do things my way."
Diana suspected that Andrew Carlisle was a vain man who was prepared to go to any length in order to be immortalized in print. He must have realized that Diana Ladd Walker was his best chance for getting there. In this case, Diana's instincts were good. Her threat of cutting his perspective out of the project immediately delivered the required result.
"All right," he agreed grudgingly. "I won't mention it again. So where do we start?"
"From the beginning," Diana said. "With your family and your childhood. Where you were born and where you grew up. I'd also like to interview any living relatives."
"Like my mother, you mean?" he asked.
Diana remembered being told that Andrew Carlisle's mother had been there in the yard at Gates Pass the night of her son's attack. Myrna Louise Spaulding had ridden down to Tucson from her home in Tempe with a homicide detective named G. T. Farrell. At the time Diana had been too preoccupied with everything else to notice. Later on, during the trial, Myrna Louise had been conspicuous in her absence. Diana had mistakenly assumed the woman was dead.
"You mean your mother's still alive?" Diana asked.
"More or less. She lives in one of those marginal retirement homes in Chandler. From the sound of it, I'd say it's a pretty awful place, but I doubt she can afford any better."
"Does she come here to see you?"
"Not anymore. She used to. The first time I was here. Still, once a year, on my birthday, she sends me a box of chocolates. See's Assorted. I've never bothered to tell her I hate the damn things. She's my mother, after all, so you'd think she'd remember that I never liked chocolate, not even when I was little."
"If you don't like the chocolates she sends you, what do you do with them, then?" Diana asked. "Give them away?"
Carlisle grinned. "Are you kidding? The guy in the cell next to me would kill for one of 'em, so I flush them down the toilet. One at a time. It drives him crazy."
Another shiver of chills flashed through Diana's body.
"Getting back to establishing ground rules," Andrew Carlisle continued. "How do you want to do this? We could probably sit here chatting this way, or else I could let you review some of the material I've already put together. Some of it is taped, some is on disk. I could print it out for you. That way, you could take it with you, go over it at your leisure, and then you could come back later so we could discuss it."
"How did you get it on disk?" Diana asked.
He gestured with his damaged arm. "I've learned to be a one-handed touch typist," he said. "Fortunately, this is one of those full-service prisons. Inmates are allowed to have access to computers in the library so they can prepare their own writs. I do that, by the way. Compose writs for those less fortunate than myself-the poor bastards who mostly can't read or write. Someone else has to do the editing and run the spell-checker. In a pinch, you could probably do that."
"I suppose we can try it that way." Diana did her best to sound reluctant, although in truth she was delighted at the prospect of any option that might spare her spending unlimited periods of time, shut up in this awful room, sitting face-to-face with this equally awful man.
"When can you have the first segment done?" she asked.
"A week or so," he said. "Sorting out the details of my childhood shouldn't take too long. It wasn't particularly happy or memorable. I doubt there'll be very much to reminisce about."
Diana raised her hand and beckoned to the guard. "I think we're through here," she said.
The guard glanced at his watch. "There's still plenty of time," he said. "Would you like to see your stepson, then?"
"Yes, please," Diana said.
Ten minutes after Andrew Carlisle was led from the room, the guard returned with Quentin Walker in tow.
"Oh," he said, his face registering disappointment as soon as he saw her. "It's you. I was hoping it was my mother. What do you want?"
A year and a half in prison had done nothing to diminish Quentin Walker's perpetual swagger.
"I came to see someone else, but I thought I'd stop by and check on you to see if there's anything you need."
"What exactly do you have in mind?" Quentin returned. "An overnight pass would be great. Better yet, how about commuting my sentence to time served? That would be very nice. And you might bring along a girl next time. Since I'm not married, I don't qualify for conjugal visits, but I'll bet my dear old dad could pull a string or two and help me keep my manhood intact."
"I don't think so," Diana replied. "Your father's not involved in this in any way. I was thinking more in terms of books or writing materials."
The superior smile on Quentin Walker's face shifted into a chilly sneer. "Writing and reading materials?" he asked. "Are we suddenly focused on educating poor lost Quent? Trying to make up for the difference between what you guys did for precious little Davy and that baby squaw you dragged home and what you two did for Tommy and me? I don't think it's going to work. Let's say it's too little, too late."
If sibling rivalry was bad, Diana realized, stepsibling rivalry was infinitely worse.
"This has nothing to do with David and Lani," she said evenly. "And I didn't come here to argue." She stood up. "Why don't we just forget I asked."
"Good idea," Quentin returned. "We'll do that. I don't need anything from you, not now and not ever."
"Good," Diana said. "At least that makes our relationship clear."
"So that's how you did it then?" Monty Lazarus asked. For a moment Diana wasn't sure what he was asking. "He gave you access to the material he had written?"
"Yes."
"But there's not really any acknowledgment of that in your book, is there? Shouldn't there have been?"
The question was a sly one, and Monty Lazarus kept his eyes focused on her face as he asked it. Realizing she was about to fall victim to a case of ambush journalism, Diana tried to play dumb.
"I'm not sure I understand what you're saying."
"If you used Andrew Carlisle's written material, shouldn't you have said that instead of passing it off as your own work?"
It took real effort to hold off a reflexive tightening of the muscles across her jaw. "It is my own work," she said coldly. "All of it. I did my own research, conducted my own interviews."
"Sorry," Monty Lazarus said. "I didn't mean any offense."
The hell you didn't, you bastard!Diana thought. She took a careful sip of her iced tea before she trusted herself enough to speak. "Of course not," she said.
Her reaction was so blatant that it was all Mitch Johnson could do to keep from bursting out laughing. And if she was prickly when it came to questions concerning her literary integrity, he wondered what would happen when they veered off into more personal topics.
"What kinds of interviews?" he asked.