Rainbow's End (15 page)

Jury looked at the dog. Where had he seen this dog before? Where?

Mrs. Wassermann reached down, held out the bottle, and the Lab took it between his teeth.

Where
had
he seen this dog with a bottle in his mouth—?

“STONE!”

“You see, I knew Carole-anne wasn't lying.”

“Is Stanley's last name Keeler?”

“See, you do know him. Carole-anne wouldn't lie.”

“Stan Keeler's a professional musician.” Jury remembered Stan's club, the only one he played in—the Nine-One-Nine, that small and
smoky blues cellar where Jury had gone to question him about the case he'd been working on. Stan was an underground musician with a dedicated underground following. A great guitarist. “Stan plays guitar, Mrs. Wassermann.”

“That's what I said.” She waggled her finger at him.

“You said he plays gags.”

She nodded, happy that Jury seemed to be his old pleasant self once more.

“Stan Keeler.” Jury bent down to give Stone's back a good rub. Stan played gags and Stone played piano.

Jenny hadn't been in the house on Ryland Street. He had been worried, decided perhaps he could ask Sam Lasko to keep an eye out. But then he had decided not to mention Jenny; it was absurd suspecting something had happened to her simply because she'd been out so much. She was starting up a business, after all.

Sam Lasko paused and looked away, thought for a moment, shook his head as if he couldn't believe what was in it. “You'd think with all the work on my desk Lincolnshire wouldn't be asking me to keep an eye out.”

Immersed in his own reflections, Jury almost thought he'd voiced them. “What?”

“I
said
I've got too much to do without following somebody around for the cops in bloody Lincoln.”

Jury didn't know what he was talking about, except that Lasko wanted help. Jury's help. “Look, I'm sorry, Sammy, but I just don't have time to—”

Paying no attention to what Jury didn't have time for, Sammy opened a file, turned it so Jury could see it. While he talked, Jury recollected that case eight years ago in Stratford that Sammy had got him to investigate. Americans, too, in that one.

“Are you listening?”

“No.”

Lasko looked so bereft that Jury felt irrationally guilty. “I'm on my way to Wiltshire, Sammy. I only stopped here to see a friend.”

“Lady friend?”

“Someone I've known for years. Anyway, I'm on my way to Wiltshire.”

“Who in hell ever goes to Wiltshire?” Lasko never stepped more than a foot beyond the city limits of Stratford-upon-Avon unless a case demanded it. “You're not talking about that American? The one they found at Old Sarum? You mean the Wiltshire police asked for help? Hard to believe.”

“It's pretty involved, Sam. No, they didn't ask for help from us. And I'm sure they don't want it, either.”

Especially Chief Inspector Gordon Rush, he thought, sliding from Lasko's desk.

“A Roman privy,” said Gordon Rush. “Helluva place to drop dead. Funny.” But he wasn't amused.

Jury was sliding a necklace over his fingers, one found among the dead Angela Hope's effects: a semicircular silver pendant, like an upside-down crescent moon, studded with turquoise and with a turquoise bird inset on a bar. He turned from this to the file and the morgue shots, spread out before him. He pulled one of the photos closer. “You don't think maybe she just slipped? If she was, say, trying to come down this worn grass above the garderobe?”

“No. She would have clawed dirt, grabbed whatever she could to break the slide. She didn't.” Rush held up his own hands, turned the palms.

“Uh-huh. Then what—?”

“Could've been pushed, could've been murdered before and brought there.” Rush shrugged. “A lot of things could've happened.”

“No one saw anything?”

“No one
to
see anything. What tourists there were had already left, and the ticket kiosk is out of visible range; I mean, the National Trust people who were selling tickets were inside.”

“And it was one of them that found her. What in hell was he doing on the site at five a.m.?”

“Said he liked to go there, liked to walk early and see the sunrise. Anyway, she died ten hours prior to that. Probably around sunset, just about when they'd be shutting down. Around six.” Rush was in the act of lighting a cigarette.

Jury picked up the necklace again.

Rush watched him studying it. “She's a silversmith. Was, I mean.”

“Turquoise and silver is fairly common in the American Southwest.”

“You, too?” Rush finally lit a cigarette with the lighter. The Zippo clicked three times like a tiny metal mouth.

Jury raised his eyebrows. “Me, too?”

“There's a divisional commander in Exeter—name's Macalvie—with a flea in his ear. I used to work under him. Mad Dog Macalvie, we called him.”

Jury swallowed laughter. “What's the flea?”

“A connection between my lady and his—”

Lord, but they were possessive as lovers, weren't they? thought Jury.

“—because there's a Santa Fe address in his lady's address book. Something to do with a place or a road called—” still flicking the lighter, Rush thumbed his memory as if it were a Rolodex—“Canyon Road. Angela Hope had a shop there.”

The silver crescent swayed on the chain looped over Jury's finger. He studied it. He said, “But it does seem damned coincidental.”

Rush tossed the lighter on his desk. “ ‘Coincidental' is precisely the word.”

Jury took Lady Cray's turquoise sculpture from his mackintosh pocket. “This was brought back by
my
lady—” he smiled briefly—“from New Mexico. Albuquerque, perhaps. Taos or Santa Fe, perhaps. Any tourist who's found her way to Albuquerque would almost certainly go the extra fifty miles or so to Santa Fe. Or so I'm told.” Those windows in Harrods had been a real treat. Sensational, the Southwest looked. And the big attraction in the Southwest was Santa Fe.

Rush picked up the turquoise block. “Who's the little guy?” His finger tapped the silver flute player.

“Kokepelli,” said Jury. “Some god or other. Indian, I expect. Could we assume, for the sake of argument—?”

Rush put this down in a hurry. “I'm not known to do much for the sake of argument, Superintendent.” The smile was just slightly superior.

Jury ignored him. “Frances Hamilton died in January, couple of weeks ago. The cause appeared to be heart trouble. Like Angela Hope. And she had been in New Mexico this past November. Probably in Santa Fe, although I haven't verified that. The thing is, there was no reason then to question her death.”

“So what's changed?”

A woman named Helen Hawes, Jury wanted to say. But if Rush knew he was here at Macalvie's insistence, the man would clam up completely. Jury hated egos getting in the way of investigation. Macalvie, who was supposed to be consumed by ego, would have been far more interested in the connection between the women than in whether some other police force might be “interfering” in his investigation. “The question's been raised whether she might have been poisoned.”

Rush was turning the Zippo round and round in his hand. “Why's that?”

Was he being deliberately obtuse? “She apparently got quite ill before she died. The symptoms sounded much the same as the American woman's.”

“You're exhuming the body, then?”

“Possibly. Of course, you wouldn't have that problem,” said Jury.

“The symptoms of a coronary mimic those of a number of poisons. Nausea, vomiting. But since no one saw the effect of whatever it was, we can't say what she went through. Were there convulsions? Coma? So it's difficult to say whether the cause was natural or drug- or poison-induced.” Rush looked at him and turned the lighter.

“You said a cousin flew here to identify the body.”

“Dolores Schell. She just left. Two days ago.”

“No closer family? Parents? Siblings?”

“Siblings, yes. Or one. A younger sister. The cousin volunteered because she thought the sister would be too upset. And the kid's so young.”

Jury sat back. “How young?”

Rush flicked his eyes over the papers before him. “Thirteen.” He flicked the top of the Zippo. “Name's Mary.”

Jury picked up the photo of Angela Hope, facedown on the ground. “Mary. What about relations? I mean, who's going to take care of Mary? Her cousin?”

Rush shook his head. “Don't know.” His smile was thin. “We're not Social Services.”

Jury said nothing. He waited for more information.

Rush picked up the silver chain, swung it. “Cousin said she'd made this. As I said, she was a silversmith. Her shop was called the Silver Heron.”

“On Canyon Road.”

Rush nodded. “Mr. Jury, if the only thing you've got connecting one American and one Brit is Santa Fe, vomit, turquoise, and some Indian god, well . . . ” Another shrug.

Jury knew he'd got everything he was going to get, and it was certainly more than he came in with. He smiled. “Would you mind if I had a copy of that photo of Angela Hope?”

Rush shrugged again. “Why should I?”

Jury stood, pocketed the turquoise sculpture. “Thanks for your help.” There was no sarcasm meant; he didn't blame Rush, who handed him a copy of the morgue shot. There were at least six in the file, like a set of graduation pictures. That thought saddened Jury. “Probably a wild goose chase,” said Jury, smiling to dissipate any negative waves that had been circulating between Rush and himself.

“Wild heron chase,” said Rush, offering Jury a gallows smile.

Two hours later, while Jury was looking out of a window over the roofs of Exeter, Macalvie was on the phone to someone in his telecommunications division.

“New Mexico State Police and Santa Fe—” Macalvie thought for a moment—“Violent Crimes Division.”

Jury turned from the window, eyebrows raised. “Violent Crimes, Macalvie?”

Macalvie tossed the address book on the desk and sat there in silence. His arms were tight against his chest, hands warming in his armpits. He was still wearing his topcoat; he usually did, even though the radiators were hissing away. Jury recognized it as one of those peculiar Macalvie silences and turned back to the window to study the rooftops, the sliver of the Exe River that he could see away in the distance. In the silence that followed, he looked at the river and wondered about Jenny. The silence drew out.

Then, with his usual precognition (Macalvie could teach Carole-anne a thing or two), he scooped up the telephone receiver midway in the first
brr.
“Macalvie.” Pause. “Uh-huh, go ahead, I'm writing. . . . Angela Hope, uh-huh, that's her. . . . Silver Heron, Canyon Road, Santa Fe. Home number's what?” Macalvie grunted, wrote. “What about this other five-oh-five number? . . . Area code, yeah . . . Where's Española, then? They don't know her? . . . Nothing? . . . Thanks.” He hung up and sat there frowning, first at the wall, then at Jury, as if Jury had been the one at the dead-end Española number, disclaiming any knowledge whatever of Angela Hope. Now, Macalvie was up and moving towards the door. “Let's go.”

“Go where? I've done my bit, remember?” Jury followed him.

“Saint Peter's.”

“Mind telling me why?”

Macalvie's long-suffering secretary was seated at her desk, head bent over paperwork. As Macalvie passed, she asked, “May I take down the Christmas decorations now? The tinsel's dusty.” To Jury, she added, “It's February, after all.”

“You got better things to do,” answered Macalvie.

Her voice floated to them as they made their exit, “That's not what you said when you wanted them up.”

 • • • 

IN THE PARKING AREA
of the cathedral yard at least a dozen buses were pulled up. More schoolchildren, but these without uniforms, were cavorting about the green, chasing each other, making mischief. Probably they were here for some sort of learning experience or historical expedition to enrich their education. A very fat boy was being chased by three girls in coats or sweaters. Jury doubted they had much interest in the martyrdom of Saint Boniface or the burning of the abbey. Several others were standing staring at an old woman with a bicycle carrying sacks of feed who was tossing it out for a flock of pigeons. She seemed to be holding a discourse, not with the children but with the birds. Close as that lot would ever get to Saint Francis, Jury mused.

 • • • 

MACALVIE WAS
by now on familiar terms with the three ladies all seated at a long table opposite the quire, who were embroidering—cushions for chairs, by the look of it. They all nodded and greeted Macalvie. They might have been sisters, with their varying degrees of plumpness and rosy complexions and graying hair. Macalvie seldom bothered ingratiating himself with witnesses by way of getting information; he was, however, given a warm welcome by these three, who appeared delighted to see him again.

Given that Helen Hawes “had a heart” anyway, her collapse did not come as a complete surprise. Only the circumstances were surprising. Still and all, her dying here in Saint Peter's, and dying while in the act of inspecting the rondels that were in small part the result of her own handiwork, was probably far better than in a hospital bed. Thus, whatever unpleasant elements attached to a sudden death were
mitigated by her having died with her boots on, so to speak. And to all of this was now added the elements of intrigue and mystery (in the persons of Macalvie and Jury). Mystery had now turned from the religious to the secular.

Macalvie had taken the photo out of the file, but before showing it around had explained to them that they certainly didn't have to look at it if they didn't choose to; that it was a shot of a dead woman—although there was nothing at all gruesome in it, just the face, the eyes closed. “A morgue shot, we call it.”