Desperate Measures by Kate Wilhelm

milkmaid, and big blue eyes. She looked like almost anything other than the crackerjack attorney she was fast becoming.
    Barbara mouthed at her, “Drop in before you leave.” She returned to her own office and picked up the briefcase Dr. Minick had left with her.
    She was grinning over a political cartoon when Shelley joined her a few minutes later.
    â€œYou real busy these days?” Barbara asked.
    Shelley sprawled on the sofa. “Not terribly. It’s still petty stuff they’re bringing me. As you know very well,” she added. “What’s up?”
    â€œWe may be heading for a murder case, the Marchand murder. I have three pending cases: one will go to trial this week, one’s a plea bargain, and I hope to get the other one dismissed. So, all in all, I’ll be pretty busy; I may have to ask you to sub for me at Martin’s.”
    â€œSure,” Shelley said. “What about the murder case?”
    Barbara told her a short version. “I’ll go meet the client in the morning, and after that either we’re in or not. If yes, there’s something I’d like you to do for me in the next day or so. It’s right up your alley—land-use laws.”
    Shelley groaned, and Barbara said sympathetically, “I know. But I want to know if Marchand’s threat was real. If there’s no way he could have gotten zoned for a housing tract, his threat was empty and there’s no motive.”
    â€œThere’s no motive anyway,” Shelley said. “So they might have to move. Big deal.”
    â€œApparently for them, for Alex, it would be a big deal. Anyway, Dr. Minick left me a stack of stuff, political cartoons, a comic strip, and a medical record that’s three inches thick. I’ll pretend to believe I’m in, and start on it all tonight.” She motioned toward the folders.
    Shelley opened the one closest to her, then opened a scrapbook it contained, and gasped. “It’s Xander! He draws Xander? ”
    Barbara knew that she had not mentioned Alex’s secret name.
    â€œWhat about Xander?” she asked.
    â€œThe comic strip. It’s a great strip! Don’t you read it?”
    Barbara moved to sit on the sofa next to Shelley, where she could look over the strip. She had seen it before, she realized, but had not followed it. “A teenage boy full of angst,” she commented.
    â€œNo! Well, yes. See, his name’s Timothy, and his mother calls him Timmy Dear; his father calls him My Boy. Look, let me find his mother.” She leafed through the pages, then stopped to point at the mother, tall, stick-thin, with pale hair flipped up at the end. And hanging from her forehead on a rod was a rectangular object. A mirror! “When she turns sideways,” Shelley said, riffling through the pages again, “she sort of disappears altogether. Here.” The mother had become a simple stick with a head, feet in stilt shoes, hands, and the mirror. “Sometimes you get to see what she sees—a gorgeous woman. And the father. Here.” He was a corpulent figure with a great mop of curly hair; he was dressed in a suit and tie.
    â€œLook closely,” Shelley said.
    Barbara peered at the drawing, then drew back. The mop of curls was made up of dollar signs, and the suit, which had appeared to be tweed or herringbone, was patterned with dollar signs.
    â€œHis underwear, neckties, everything—it’s all dollar signs,” Shelley said. “At first the strip seems to be simply about a boy coping with hypocrisy, but then you begin to get the real story. Timothy is a secret superhero. He can fly away and do good deeds, save damsels in distress, thwart bank robbers, outsmart terrorists, make things right. The catch is that his powers are unreliable. He’s trying all the time to find the secret that turns on his powers. One strip had him eating spinach, nothing else for a month or longer, thinking it worked