“No, I told you, he was crushed.”
“I mean mentally all right.”
“Oh. Yeah, I guess.”
“Evan says his grandfather has Alzheimer’s and that he’s in a home.”
Eggers was silent.
“Are the pieces falling into place, Bill?”
“What are you suggesting?”
“How did Harry Keating die?”
“I don’t know, exactly. He fell ill and died a couple of days
later. What are you getting at, Stone?”
“Me? Nothing. But Evan says his father killed Harry.”
Eggers was silent again.
“Bill, are you weighing what our ethical obligations are in this matter?”
“I’m weighing everything,” Eggers replied.
75
S t u a r t W o o d s
“I can’t force Evan Keating to sign the documents. You’d better tell Warren that.”
“He’s going to be livid,” Eggers said.
“Then he’ll just have to be livid. By the way, Evan says the police are looking into Harry’s death. You did say that Warren is a chemist, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, yeah, I get it, Stone. But you and I don’t have any grounds for calling the police in. Warren and his son have been estranged for years; we can’t just accept the boy’s theory of Harry’s death. If Evan has suspicions, then he should share them with the local police.”
“I’ll mention that to him, if I see him again.”
“What do you mean, if you see him again?”
“Well, I don’t have any further plans to contact him. He may be contacting me, because a friend of his here got himself murdered, and the local cops want to have a chat with Evan. I don’t think he had anything to do with it.”
“God, what a nest of snakes this is turning into.”
“Bill, why don’t you make a few phone calls and check into Warren Keating’s background. It may be that if he’s trying to screw his son on this deal, you’ll want to resign the account.”
“I’m not in the habit of resigning accounts,” Eggers said.
“If Evan should decide to sue his father over this, the law fi rm could get dragged into it as a defendant. And frankly, I don’t think Evan is going to be bought off easily. Maybe you’d better broach the subject with Warren and get him to divide the sales proceeds equally.”
“This is all very distasteful,” Eggers said.
“You want me to talk to Warren? If he goes nuts, you can always blame it all on me.”
“I’ll talk to the man,” Eggers said.