“Are you saying they had something to do with Angela Hope? Is there a connection?”
“It’s possible. What about her friends? Did you know any of them?”
“Not really, no. She was very friendly with someone who works at the Institute—”
“The Santa Fe Institute?”
“You’ve heard of it?”
Jury nodded.
“Scientists. They work on rather elaborate theories, I’m told. She saw a lot of Dr. Anders.”
“Anyone else?”
“There’s Malcolm Corey. Most of us know him; he’s got one of the galleries.”
“Is her sister around?”
“No. At least I haven’t seen her in the last few days. Probably at their house. It’s near Chimayo. No, somewhere around Tesuque. But not in Tesuque.”
“Had Angela Hope no other family?” They were standing near the window, and Jury looked out on the street, at a low roof that served as an awning across the stone patio, where several white tables were set out to gleam in the sunlight, despite the cold.
“None I know of.”
“What will her sister do, now?”
Sukie Bartholomew shrugged. “Go on as she’s been going, I guess. She’s pretty competent, from the little I can gather.”
Nobody is that competent, thought Jury.
She nodded toward the window and across the street. “Malcolm’s right there, if you want to talk to him. He always has his coffee over there around ten.”
Jury looked again at the table and saw a blond-haired man sitting coatless in the cold, slumped down in the white metal chair, face turned sunward. True, the sun was strong and the air gentle, but still it was February.
“Makes me cold just to look at him.”
She snorted. “Malcolm sacrifices comfort to his mise en scène. I don’t know why he left California. Imagines he’s an actor. Imagines he’s a painter. Awful stuff he does, big streaks of this and that. He always sits over there around this time. Having coffee.”
Jury was dying for a cup of coffee or tea. And a cigarette. He bet he hadn’t missed one inhalation, one indrawn breath of that cigar she was smoking. How was he supposed to keep his mind on his job without a cigarette?
He thanked Sukie Bartholomew and made his way across the street.
TWENTY-SIX
Sunburnt blond hair, slicked back and slightly damp, as if he’d just spent his customary hour at some indoor pool; Italian-cut trousers, sneakers, no socks, sunlamp tan. You could just tell.
“Malcolm Corey?”
In the slightly smug smile, there was the look of the freshly anointed, the face turned upward again as if to receive the blessing of the sun. “Why?”
“It’s about Angela Hope.” Jury flipped open his warrant card and smiled as if extending the blessing of Scotland Yard.
The eyes cast themselves down to come into contact with the warrant card and Jury saw the smooth face go a little slacker, then tighten in a frown, deepening lines from nose to mouth. Not so young, after all. Past forty, Jury decided. “Mind if I sit down? I could do with a cup of coffee.”
It was pretty clear that Malcolm Corey minded; still, he removed his sneakered foot from the chair opposite, shoving it a little in Jury’s direction. From the manner in which Corey held his head to one side and arranged his features, one could tell that he was finding a role to play and an audience to play it to.
“I heard about Angela. Pretty awful.”
A waitress with a headful of bobbing blond curls appeared with a cup of frothy cappuccino. She wore an embroidered skirt and many ropes of colored beads. She also wore a less than happy expression, looking at her customer.
“Thanks, m’dear,” said Corey, showing white teeth. “You care for one?”
Jury nodded. She strode away. Everyone in Santa Fe seemed to stride, rather than walk.
“She was a friend of yours, is that correct?”
“Judi?” Malcolm Corey looked at the departing back of the waitress, puzzled. “Judi? You’re interested in my sexual conquests? Oh, sorry, I thought you meant our server. You mean Angela?”
“I mean Angela.”
“I knew her pretty well, yes. We’re all on Canyon Road here.” He nodded in the direction of the Silver Heron. “Angela was a silversmith, I guess would be the word. Or turquoise-smith. That’s what she did, silver and turquoise. Nice stuff.” He had taken but one sip of coffee before turning his tan face sunward again, eyes closed.
“That’s what I understand. What I don’t understand is why a Santa Fe silversmith would wind up dead at Old Sarum. Can you cast any light on that?”
That he could probably cast light wasn’t the question; which kind of light was. Malcolm beamed his face up to the sky. “The Sarum part doesn’t surprise me.” He was looking at Jury now and extracting a vial of pills from his white jacket and inspecting it.
Sukie Bartholomew’s response. Jury sighed. “Why not?”
“Because Angela was nuts about archaeology, digs, things like that. Standing stones, mystical circles.” From the pill bottle he took a yellow tablet that Jury recognized (wouldn’t anybody?) and started to reseal it. Then he arched his eyebrows in a question and extended the vial to Jury. “Valium?”
“No thanks. Had mine.”
He crushed up his tablet with the back of his spoon and sprinkled it, like cinnamon, across the froth. He smiled his toothy smile. “Santa Fe style.”
“Getting back to you and Angela Hope—” He gave the curly-haired waitress a smile that she didn’t appreciate. Her look was fixed on Corey as she set down Jury’s coffee.
“Who linked me with Angela Hope, incidentally? Sukie Bartholomew, I bet. What a bitch.” Now he was popping the top from an aspirin bottle.
“Not really. Sergeant Oñate of the Santa Fe police. You spoke with him, remember?”
He gave a grunt of affirmation and spooned the Valium foam from his cappuccino.
Yummy. Jury looked down at his own delicious-looking brew and wondered why in hell he was feeling so superior to just about everybody else in Santa Fe. “You were her friend, though?”
“Implying a sexual liaison?” Malcolm Corey tossed back a couple of aspirin tablets which he washed down with the small glass of milk at his elbow. “Rough night.”
Jury smiled briefly in sympathy. What we put ourselves through, he thought. Valium. Aspirins. Milk to coat the stomach. Perhaps because of his work, Jury was a comparative stranger to “rough nights.” Drink had never been one of his problems. It was not a strength, though, merely a lack of inclination and time. When he looked at the Valium-aspirin-milk melange, his desire for a cigarette blessedly waned, at least for now.
“Why’s Scotland Yard interested in this?”
“Well, the thing is, you see, she died on British soil.” (Sounded pompous enough, he supposed.) “We’re just working together with the New Mexico police on this.”
“Uh-huh. Scotland Yard, though? Isn’t Old Sarum in the west of England somewhere? You guys go out there, do you?”
“Old Sarum’s outside of Salisbury. Wiltshire.”
“It just sounds goddamned heavy-duty, getting you guys in on it.”
“No. I’m just helping out the county police over there. Angela Hope died in extremely peculiar circumstances. And we still haven’t determined the cause of death.”
That seemed to stump him. “I just assumed—”
“What?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Natural causes, I guess.”
“Certainly, that’s possible. And if she’d collapsed, say, in Salisbury’s High Street, probably she’d have been taken to hospital and that would have been the end of it—” Not if Macalvie were in charge, Jury added to himself, smiling. “—but instead she died rather dramatically at Old Sarum. Papers make a meal of that sort of thing. From all we could determine, she’d gone there around sunset, or just before the place closed.”
Malcolm Corey nodded and gazed at the sky. “Sounds like Angela.
”
“Does it?”
“Spiritual sort of girl. She was always clambering around through pueblos, Canyon de Chelly, Chaco, places like that.” He sighed, as if with relief, and tipped back his chair. The Valium had probably kicked in. Jury wondered if Valium helped nicotine withdrawal. “Angela was intrigued by ancient cultures, especially Indian culture. Hopi, Anasazi. She spent a lot of time driving back and forth to Mesa Verde with Mary.”
“Sorry, but what’s Mesa Verde?”
Malcolm looked at him with the mild contempt he probably reserved for tourists. “Mesa Verde’s famous for its ruins—cliff houses, that sort of thing. Anasazi ruins.”
“Mary Hope was interested in all of this, too?” Somehow, it didn’t sound like the editor of Nancy Drew.
He nodded and rubbed at his temples. “Because Angela was and probably wanted the company. Mary loved Angela. She’s thirteen-going-on-a-hundred. Hard to take.”
“Meaning what?”
“She looks at me as if I were a total eclipse.”
Jury laughed. “Was she jealous? Of your relationship to her sister?”
“You’re back on that again, are you? Got sex on the brain. We didn’t have that kind of ‘relationship.’ ” He leered. “Not that I didn’t try.”
Jury believed him. Malcolm wasn’t the sort to admit to a failure at a sexual conquest. “If she was interested in that sort of thing, what about this New Age movement?”
“Angela wasn’t into that. That’s Sukie Bartholomew’s move. Bitch. Met her? She’s got the shop right next to the Silver Heron. Sells aromatherapy junk. Crystals and so forth.”
“She’d been to Sedona several times, though?”
“Hasn’t everyone been to Sedona?”
“I haven’t. There were an American and a British woman over here who we think might have known Angela Hope.”
“Oh? Is that significant?”
“I think so. They’re both dead.” He produced the photos of Helen Hawes and Frances Hamilton. “Ever see these two women on Canyon Road?”
Malcolm shook his head. “No. This is strange. But it sounds like coincidence to me.”
“Could be. But when you get enough ‘coincidences’ together, well, then it looks more like something else.” Jury looked across the way at the little jewelry establishment. “Mrs. Hamilton took a turquoise block with a silver figure of Kokepelli engraved in the side back to London. To me, it looked a lot like Angela Hope’s work. Does it look familiar?”
“Silver and turquoise is pretty common here.” Malcolm was lining up the arrows on the aspirin bottle top again. “My head’s killing me. And I’m on call, too.” He frowned deeply.
“ ‘On call’?”
“The movie. You must have seen the crews around the plaza. It’s a nothing part, no lines, but—” He shrugged, and then, as if the movement pained him, rubbed his temples.
Suddenly recalling that Wiggins had fitted him out with a supply of Wiggins anodynes, Jury drew out the plastic bag. Inside the one small bag were several even tinier ones. Seven of them. Seven, each with a letter and a color. Jury had promptly tossed the code away. He was surprised he hadn’t tossed out the contents with it. He lined up the seven packets on the table. “There’s something here might help.” Jury frowned over the colored letters and numbers. What the hell was “H”? Could be headache, could be hangover—since Jury didn’t have hangovers, this must be headache. Then he wondered why he was debating the meaning of the “H,” since none of this stuff would do anyone any whacking good. He looked at the three bags with carefully colored-in numbers. The “H” being red meant that any packet with a red dot went along with it.
“Might I ask what all that is, Superintendent?”
“It’s something my chemist made up for me. One in particular for an ailment is good, but two in concert works miracles.” Jury shoved over the one marked “H.” “Headache. And this one with it will take care of whatever goes with it. Nausea, et cetera.”
Malcolm frowned, looking down at the two little plastic bags. “Looks like herbs to me.”
Jury merely grunted in reply. Probably, that’s exactly what the bags contained—herbs. Wiggins and Mrs. Wassermann putting their heads together, no doubt. He still remembered Wiggins with that goddamned rue up his nose, supposed to be good for the sinuses, that was. Rue, rosemary. If the two of them had been around, Ophelia would have been the picture of health.
“I’m not much on herbal remedies,” said Malcolm doubtfully. “Give me my chemicals every time, thank you. Why won’t people face it that Valium and Percodan have kicked Mother Nature’s ass?” He rattled the vial.
Valium and Percodan weren’t a patch on illusion, lies, and Sergeant Wiggins. “I agree, usually. But this stuff, taken in combination, will evaporate that head. Trust me.” Trouble was, Jury couldn’t figure out the combination. Color-marker letters were supposed to be in league with the colored numberings. 2.2/3-5. What in the hell was that supposed to mean? Maybe the 2.2 meant two doses. Why in hell was he trying to figure it out, anyway? He shoved this little bag across to Malcolm. “Now, what you do with this one is take two doses.”
Malcolm frowned. “Two? How much is that?”
“One dose is three milligrams and the other one is five.” Jury looked steadily into his eyes. “But you only take two times three. I know,” Jury said in a tone meant to reassure. “It’s very complex.”
Malcolm scratched his head. “God, your chemist should be up at the Institute with the rest of them. So how do I take this stuff? Just put it on my tongue?”
“Beef tea is best.”
“What’s that?”
“Like bouillon.” The pert-looking waitress was just then setting down two more coffees. Malcolm asked her for some beef bouillon or consommé.
As if pleased to give him any bad news she could, with a shake of her Bo-Peep curls, she said, “If it’s not on the menu, you can’t have it.”
“Why? You’re not on the menu and I’ve had—”
Red circles blossomed on her cheeks as she stared at him in a fury.
She flounced away; Malcolm shrugged.
Jury was beginning to like Malcolm Corey. He wasn’t as stuffy as he’d first seemed. More sardonic than conceited, perhaps. “Tell me more about Angela Hope.”
“Not much that I know. They live outside of town, and I think there’s a housekeeper, some old Indian woman. I’ve never seen her. The parents died years and years ago, so I guess Angela had to have some help when Mary was little, someone to take care of her. Though, frankly, there’s one person I’d stake my life on not needing care.”
“Tough kid, huh? But we all do, some time or other. Need taking care of. I get the impression you and Mary aren’t mates.”
That he took to be very funny. “To say the least. Not just me, however. Mary looks at you as if she’s looking straight through, looking through to the something or somebody stupid enough to set you in her line of vision in the first place.” He laughed, looked behind him as if there might be such a person back there. Probably just restless for his beef bouillon. “But as I say, I’m not the only one. Mary’s gaze must have absolutely evaporated Sukie Bartholomew where she stood.”
“She’s only a little girl,” Jury protested.
“Uh-huh. Well, she was very protective of Angela. I wondered sometimes who took care of who in that twosome. Mary saw Sukie as a threat, I think.”
“Was she jealous of the Bartholomew woman’s friendship with her sister?”
Malcolm made a sound in his throat disdaining such a ridiculous notion. “Jealousy is one of those mundane and mortal emotions Mary doesn’t stoop to.”
“Come on.” Jury laughed. “You make her sound less than human.”
“Or more than.” Malcolm reflected. “I think she talks to trees and coyotes. Actually, she’s got this coyote that she’s trying to convince me is a dog. Some dog.”
“A tame coyote?” Jury laughed.
“Is it? Beats me. That
’s why I give the damned dog a wide berth.”
The waitress was back with the cup of bouillon and set it before Malcolm without comment. She left, rather hurriedly.
“So I stir this stuff up in it?” When Jury nodded, he sprinkled the contents of both packets into the broth. Jury watched as he sipped. “Hmm. Doesn’t taste bad.” He wrinkled his nose. “Get a whiff of marjoram, I think. Maybe sage.”
“Uh-huh.”
“How long’s it supposed to take to work?”
“Ten minutes. Faster than Valium.”
“Sukie sells a lot of crap like this—oh, sorry. I don’t mean this is. Sukie just goes in for old Indian remedies. Roots. Rocks. Tree bark.”
“ ‘Rocks’?”
“Yeah. Pebbles and so forth.” He blew on the bouillon, drank the rest.
Jury would have to take this cure home to Wiggins. “What kinds of pebbles?”
“Who knows?” Malcolm leaned down, stretched out his arm, scooped up a little earth between the flagstones. “Like these.” He picked out a few broken bits of rock. He was leaning back again, face raised skyward, eyes closed.
“Let me ask you something: if Angela Hope was murdered—?”
The eyes snapped open as if a host of flashbulbs had just gone off in his face. “Murdered?”
“It’s possible.”
“Angela murdered? You’re asking me, can I think of anyone who hated her enough to kill her?” He shook his head. “No. And, anyway, if it were someone from around here, that person would have had to hop a plane to Britain.” He frowned. “Only one who’s done that is Dolly Schell, her cousin.”
“To identify the body.”
“So she’d be leaving it a little late, wouldn’t she, for murder?” Malcolm said sarcastically.
“There’s money. Love. Revenge. As motives, I mean. Not just hatred.”
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