Rainbow's End (32 page)

“Never start in the middle. Never.”

“How do I look at a circle, then?”

Like everything else about him, Anders's laughter was engaging. “Okay, dammit, you've got me.”

“I wish I did. I wish I could understand this sort of abstract thinking.”

He snorted. “Surely, you're not going to tell me your thinking is all evidential?”

“Yes, I expect it is.”

Nils Anders started ticking points off on his fingers: “You don't know Angela Hope, you don't know why she died, you don't know if you'll learn anything in Santa Fe. Yet here you are, five thousand miles from home, sitting in that chair.”

“No, you're wrong. There
is
evidence to indicate I
should
be here, sitting in this chair.” Jury smiled, told him about the connection between the three women, the notebook, the whole strange chain of events.

“That's not evidence; that's inference. Abstraction. Because there's a shadow, there must be a man. Plato's cave, though that wasn't Plato's point.”

Jury shook his head, smiled. He relaxed even more. He was up for a game. “Actually, I expect the reason I'm here is a friend of mine,
another cop, looked at the deaths of Angela Hope, Helen Hawes, and Frances Hamilton and made a wild surmise.”

“Yes!” The other man's fists shot into the air, like some kid who'd just hit the jackpot on the fruit machine or won the pools. “ ‘Wild surmises' are precisely what I mean. Life is a wild surmise as far as I'm concerned. Trouble is, most of us refuse to entertain that idea; it's too frightening. We refuse to see that a so-called totally irrational hypothesis is more dependable than a conclusion drawn from demonstrable premises—”

Jury interrupted him before Anders could get too caught up in his theories. “The reasons for murder are not so philosophical. They're more straightforward.”

Nils Anders's eyebrows seemed to orbit. “Oh? Are we talking about murder?”

“I think so.”

Then, with a slightly self-satisfied air, he folded his arms, said, “Okay, I'll bite.”

Jury laughed. “I'm not sure I want to be bitten by you.”

“I want to hear the straightforward reasons.” He had reached behind him and pulled down a copy of his book, plucked a pen from his pocket, and scribbled something on the flyleaf. That task finished, he picked up a sheet of paper and started folding the corners neatly.

“Money, revenge, unrequited love, greed—well, money again—rage. And so forth.” Jury felt slightly uncomfortable.

Anders stared at him. “That's
your
idea of ‘not philosophical'? Hey,
hey
—” his hand shot out for the telephone—“let's call Plato, let's call Kant.” He dropped the receiver back on the hook. “Mr. Jury, your terminology is not exactly slam-dunk, not precisely the ball thunking through the hoop. Leaving aside your odd understanding of the term ‘philosophical,' where did you ever get the idea that the other term, ‘straightforward,' was its antithesis?”

“Look, Dr. Anders.” Jury felt his own tone and smile were a trifle condescending. “I mean ‘clear.' You know what I mean.”

Dangerously condescending, he decided when the other man's fist came down and made the papers on his desk jump. “Like hell I do!” Anders leaned forward and fixed Jury with blue eyes so intense they might have nailed him to the wall. “People are always saying ‘you know what I mean.' How can I, when
you
don't know what you
mean.” Then he sat back and smiled. The three-second fit having dissipated completely.

Jury shook his head. “This cop—divisional commander, he is—would love you.”

“The wild surmiser?”

Jury nodded. “He's been driving me nuts talking about concepts like ‘deep time.' The thing is, I've always regarded him as the paradigmatically rational policeman. Yet, myself, I've always thought of as operating more on emotion and instinct. Seems I'm wrong. I seem to be the more rational one and the more superficial in my thinking.”

Nils Anders sighed as if the student were being a deliberate dullard. “Mr. Jury, ‘rational' has nothing to do with depths and surfaces. And it's not the
opposite
of ‘emotional,' either. Why do people persist in that belief?” Anders's face took on an expression of genuine puzzlement, as if the stubbornness of humankind was totally beyond his ken. “What we're given to call ‘emotional' can have its own underlying ‘rationale.' Look at human behavior. Completely Janus-faced.” He finished creasing his paper airplane. “I've decided there are four kinds. Two are benign—let's say the ‘I love you' that means ‘I love you,' and the ‘I hate you' that means just that. Two are malignant—the ‘I love you' that means ‘I hate you,' and so forth. And all of these have their own rationale.” He smiled at Jury. “And superficial, you are
not
. I know.”

“How?”

“Because you've been sitting here—” Anders sailed his paper airplane over Jury's head—“for over a quarter of an hour, talking to me. Most people cut and run after five. We here at the Santa Fe Institute are definitely not the first choice of hostesses to fill in at dinner parties.”

“Too bad. You might make the damned things more bearable.” Jury tried to recall the last time he'd ever been to a dinner party. In Bradford, in Yorkshire—hadn't that been it?

“Thanks.” His expression sobered, his tone became somber. “You think Angie was murdered?”

“It's possible. Accident's more likely, I expect.” Jury shook his head. “Did she strike you as suicidal?”

Anders gave a disbelieving little laugh. “If you thought that, you wouldn't be here.” He picked up a sheet of paper and started folding it as he had the other one, making a paper airplane. To his working fingers he said, “I would think Scotland Yard would do a lot of demystifying.”
The plane sailed from his fingers, was borne by a current of wind around in a circle, and finally landed by a filing cabinet. He regarded its fall and sighed. Then handed the book he'd written in to Jury.

“Well—thank you.” Jury opened it, read the inscription. He smiled. Then he said, “The pathology report suggests Angela's health was delicate. Did you know if she had a heart condition?”

Anders shook his head. “I know she caught every virus that came down Canyon Road. Also had migraines.”

“Oh? In that case she might have had a lot of medication at her disposal.”

“Forget it,” said Anders, laughing. “Not unless you can OD on ginseng or slippery elm or goldenseal. Angela didn't take the stuff. An overdose of Tylenol 3? Nope. The only time she'd ever take medicine, she said, was ‘in extremis.' Dolly's worst customer.”

Jury was momentarily confused. “Whose worst customer?”

“Dolly. The one who didn't wait to be introduced. The one who was in here when you came. She's a pharmacist. Dolly Schell.”

Jury was surprised. “You mean
Dolores
Schell?”

Anders nodded. “I forgot. The police had her over there to identify the remains. That's right. That must've been hard.”

“I rang her last night; she wasn't in. I want to talk with her.”

“Try the pharmacy. It's on Old Pecos Trail. ‘Worst customer' because Angie hated doctors, so she didn't have prescriptions to get filled. I think maybe she blamed the medical profession for her mother's condition. Breast cancer, a too-late diagnosis.”

“The parents died in a plane crash, the Santa Fe police told me.”

“Yes, but her mother was close to death as it was. The late diagnosis—maybe that was her mother's own fault. Angela was very bitter about doctors, I can tell you.” He shrugged. “But that was probably just an excuse to keep from going to one. Most people think up excuses for fear, don't they?” He seemed to be concentrating on the paper plane, disappointed in its performance. “You haven't talked to Mary, have you?”

There was a change—a change of tone, a change of atmosphere. It was charged with something Jury couldn't put his finger on. He looked at Nils Anders, but the man had his eyes down.

“Not yet. I don't know where she is.”

“School.”

“It's Saturday.”

“No kidding? Well, Mary's got her own agenda. Angela spent a lot of time looking for her.” Anders laughed. “She found her once out in the middle of a stretch of desert about a mile from their house, out there with her dog, sitting on a rock. She asked her what she was doing. Mary said ‘Nothing.' Angie said, well, she had to believe her. She's got this dog whose name is Suma—”

“Mr. Corey told me about it. He thinks it's a coyote, not a dog.” Jury smiled.

Nils Anders smiled. “I bet it is. Mary claims it's mostly German shepherd because people don't look too kindly on coyotes at their heels. Anyway, it goes everywhere with her. Its
nickname
is Sunny. I love that.” He started laughing. “I can't get over that, you know. The dog has a nickname.”

“You like her, then?”

Anders looked surprised. “Mary? Hell, yes, of course I do. Who wouldn't?”

“I can name two people.” Jury did.

His tone was scoffing, his hand waving that double-opinion away. “Sukie Bartholomew is a bit of a bitch.” There was no rancor in the tone, though. He might have been stating a natural law.

Jury laughed. “Well, there you share the opinion of Malcolm Corey.”

“Him. Mary isn't your stereotypical thirteen-year-old. I suppose if a kid loses two parents, both together . . . ” He paused. “They had money, the parents, I mean. She inherited, he made it. The Darks—the mother was Sylvestra Dark—had a bit of money. Martin Hope had more. But you don't see any evidence of it in Angela or Mary. They live pretty simply.”

“Angela was about twenty years older than Mary?”

“About. Angie was—thirty-one, I think. Thirty-two, perhaps. Very close, they were.” He was quiet for a moment, turning again to look out of the window. “This is really tough for her. Did you try the house?”

“I rang the number this morning. No answer.”

Anders frowned and chewed his lip. “Rosella—the housekeeper—is nearly always there.” He was running his thumb back and forth across his forehead, abstracted. “Mary's probably just out . . . doing whatever Mary does. Mary's quiet—no, that's not right. ‘Silent' is a better way of putting it.” Then he smiled. “I could be trying to get
something out of her—just by way of ordinary conversation, and she can stand right there like a monument to the monosyllable. ‘Yes,' ‘no,' ‘yes,' grunt. But on the other hand she's highly imaginative. Or impressionable. Or both. Stuff spews out of her like volcanic rock.” Anders turned his clear gaze on Jury and said: “She thinks Angie was murdered.”

Jury was surprised. “What motive does she attribute to whoever—?”

“I told you. Mary's not big on details.” Nils Anders turned his gaze to the window.

Jury felt it again. The suddenly charged atmosphere.

It was almost nostalgic in its way; it reminded Jury of any number of chemist's shops he'd been in when he was a kid—the narrow aisles, the crowded shelves, the flannels and plastic shower caps hanging from pins at the corner of one shelf. Except, of course, they didn't have soda fountains in chemist's shops in Britain. Too bad, he thought, looking at the marble counter-top, the chrome shakers, the wooden stools that any kid would have loved to twirl on. There were a couple of kids there now, older ones, a boy and girl slurping up soft drinks. Behind the counter, a tall, skinny boy was reading a magazine called
Flex.
Muscular reading for one with no biceps, Jury thought.

Dolores Schell was in the rear, bent over a workspace, reading what he saw to be prescription blanks when he came up to her. “Miss Schell?”

Surprised, she raised her head. She was wearing horn-rimmed glasses, and not very fashionable ones. She was rather small, and thin and (what Jury thought of as) “nervy.” Her movements were abrupt, almost jittery. The most that could be said for Dolly Schell was that she was pleasant-looking. When he approached the counter she was filling an amber-colored vial with tiny white pills. At the sound of his voice, a few of the pills spilled onto the counter. Nervy, yes. Probably why she was thin.

“My name's Richard Jury. We met—or nearly did—about an hour ago. I'm with Scotland Yard CID. I'd like to talk with you for a moment?”

“Is it about Angela?” He nodded. “Go ahead.” She was unscrewing a big jar of tablets, started funneling a portion into a smaller jar in front of her.

He smiled. “I was thinking we might sit down.”

She smiled too, again briefly. “Sorry, but I can't stop right now—your name was—?”

“Jury. Superintendent, CID.” He flipped out the ID again. Somehow, he didn't really think she needed to be reminded.

“I'm backed up with prescriptions and some of these people will be in for them.” Here she held up a small sheaf of white squares and waved them, in case he didn't know what a prescription was.

“Okay. Do you mind talking while you work, then?”

“Not at all. Excuse me, though.”

Here she disappeared into the shelves of medicines, and through them he made her out hidden in part by the rows of bottles and jars, so that what he got was a view of bits and pieces—a square of white coat, a patch of brown hair, fingers with unpainted nails. The metal shelves ran horizontally, the bottles and jars stood vertically, so that what he saw was an oddly tense arrangement of squares and oblongs when he looked through them. His eye was caught by a row of cobalt blue, amber, and amethyst apothecary bottles of the sort one sometimes sees adorning a chemist's window. Silently, he read off the names—tonic pills, castor oil, Ague Cure—as he watched Dolly Schell through the open spaces between them. She worked, unruffled by his presence, calmly and competently. Either Dolly Schell, he thought, was extremely good at hiding her feelings, or else the subject of her cousin Angela didn't give rise to them.