Sleight of Hand by Kate Wilhelm Page A

could only try to deny it through complete withdrawal from the world.

Chapter 9
    Meg Lederer stood at her office door and surveyed the small room with satisfaction.
    That morning she had installed the new blinds and the room was ready to use. It held a regular desk and at right angles to it a computer desk set up with her computer and printer, a two-drawer file cabinet, a reading chair with its own lamp, bookshelves on one wall and a closet with deeper shelves for office supplies. Perfect, she thought.
    Absolutely perfect. Her first office.
    A sharp memory surfaced of the card table and secondhand typewriter on which she had written seven children's books. Typewriter on one side of the table, room for her meals on the other, none left over. It had been enough. Twenty-two years old, passionately in love with her husband, who would be imprisoned for five years, she had set out to learn to type, and then to write stories.
    She closed her eyes as another sharp memory rose. Huskily Wally had said, "Honey, you're so beautiful, so young. I know guys will be at your heels day and night. If you... I mean if you can't resist or something... You know what I'm trying to say?"
    She had been crying. He wiped her cheeks. "Honey, when I get out, just promise me one thing. That's all I'm asking, just one thing. Give me a chance again. Can you do that? Whatever else happens, I mean... No questions or anything. Just give me another chance."
    She brushed away the past and walked through the house to the back porch to see what Wally was up to. Pestering the roofing man, probably. The phone rang and she went back to pick up the wireless handset in the kitchen, then took it with her to the porch. She could see Wally looking up at the man on the roof. Barbara was on the line.
    Meg listened with near incomprehension, then asked, "What difference will that make to us? We never even met Connie Wilkins."
    "I think they'll put everything on hold until they know more about how and when she died. What it means to you is that nothing's likely to happen for a quite a while. So you just sit tight and we'll see what happens. If they start asking you questions again, let me know, and I'll give you a call if I learn anything. Okay?"
    Meg said it suited her fine to be left alone forever as far as she was concerned. She broke the connection and regarded Wally at the barn. It was hard to get used to him wearing a John Deere cap, old blue jeans and work boots.
    Was he content? Was he likely to remain content out here in the country after the kind of life they had led so long? The question kept recurring.
    Casino shows, blackjack, and several times a year a convention here or there, a weekend stay in a convention hotel. Wally picked the conventions with great care.
    No starving poets' convention or hungry artists'. No firefighters' convention —he had his own set of scruples and he refused to take money from a firefighter. The attendees had to be affluent enough to afford him, he had said.
    After finding a suitable convention through the Internet he did a little research, then made a reservation at the same hotel, always to arrive a day before the convention was to start, and by the time the conventioneers were in place Wally would have struck up a bantering relationship with the bartender. It was never hard for him to get in on the attendees' bar talk and he always located a floating poker game and was invited to participate. The players for the most part were strangers to one another, and he was just another stranger. There was always a poker game somewhere, he had said in the beginning, and he had been right. He sometimes lost a little at the casino blackjack tables, but he had never lost a cent at the convention games.
    Once Meg had protested that it didn't seem fair, and Wally had said earnestly,
    "Honey, look at it this way. Those guys are going to play, no matter what, and the losers are going to lose. I'm not changing a thing in the grand scheme of the