Wall of Glass by Walter Satterthwait Page A

cool off, perhaps, and get himself a better price. And possibly he wasn’t the one who was trying to get rid of it right now. Possibly Biddle was acting without Killebrew’s approval.”
    I nodded. “You think Killebrew killed Biddle.”
    â€œI’m convinced of it,” he said.

FIVE

    I CALLED R ITA from the public library and told her what I’d learned. Then I called Peter Ricard’s house. Still no answer. So I left the library, climbed into the Subaru, and went looking for him. Santa Fa is a small town, and there aren’t that many places to hide.
    Particularly on a Sunday. Except for the bars in the hotels, which few of the locals frequent anyway, most places shut down from Saturday night to Monday morning. One of those that didn’t was Vanessie’s, a big piano bar on the west side, and it was here, at seven o’clock that evening, that I found Peter.
    He was standing up against the far corner of the large rectangular bar as I walked in, staring down into a brandy snifter as though it were a crystal ball. There were no other customers, and Gordon, the bartender, was using the light above the cash register to do The New York Times crossword puzzle in ballpoint. This is a display of arrogance I’ve always found irritating. Rita does it too.
    I walked around the bar and said hello to Peter.
    He looked up and nodded glumly. “Joshua. How goes it?” He was wearing a leather windbreaker, jeans, cowboy boots.
    â€œFine,” I told him.
    Gordon abandoned the Times long enough to take my order, a Jack Daniel’s on the rocks for me, another Amaretto for Peter.
    â€œSo,” I said, “you’re looking a little down in the mouth this evening.”
    Every year, some group here in town puts out a list of Santa Fe’s most eligible bachelors. Peter Ricard has made the list every year. Not hard to understand why. He was tall, a little over six feet, with boyish good looks that were becoming more interesting as they began to blur at the edges—Dennis the Menace gone slightly to seed. I knew him because he usually swam at the municipal pool about the same time I did, and occasionally we played racquetball. He was bright, articulate, and he was also one of the richest men in Santa Fe. The third richest or the fourth, depending on whom you talked to. Unless you talked to Peter. He would tell you he was broke.
    He nodded. “I violated one of my own cardinal rules last night.”
    â€œWhich one was that?” I asked. Gordon put the drinks in front of us and I paid for them.
    â€œNever sit down next to an ugly woman when you plan to do some serious drinking. By the time last call rolls around, she’s lost forty pounds and gained a face lift.”
    â€œBad night, was it?”
    He shook his head in disgust.
    I smiled. “I thought you’d already slept with all the available women in Santa Fe.”
    â€œNow I’m down to the ones who are really available.” He tossed back what was left in the first brandy snifter, slid it away from him toward the edge of the bar, moved the full snifter into its place. “We’re talking your basic disaster here.”
    â€œLook on the bright side,” I told him. “Tourist season starts pretty soon.”
    The thought didn’t cheer him. “School teachers from Cincinnati. Secretaries from Dubuque.”
    â€œYou bring a little excitement into their lives, Peter. Glamour. Romance.”
    â€œI’ve been seriously thinking about entering a monastery.”
    â€œThe pay’s not all that great, I hear.”
    â€œYeah, but the hours are terrific.”
    I tasted the Jack Daniel’s. “I’ve got a question for you. What do you know about the Leightons?”
    He looked at me. “Felice and Derek?”
    I nodded.
    â€œYou working on something?”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œFor them, or against them?”
    â€œFor them,