“The Sun in the Morning.”
Benny frowned. “Ponderous. Who thought that up?” He repeated this to Steve. “Well, get back to me, then. But don’t wait too long or the Woodsman’ll get it. He’s been after me for weeks now.” Then, exasperated, Benny searched the cold heavens above him, shaking his head. “And who’s talking Algiers?. . . . Yeah. So that’s where it is, I know that’s where it is, but since when did where it is become where it’s got to be? Jesus, Stevie, you been hitting the books again? You’ve turned literal. You’ve got to have vision in this game. Le vision.”
Malcolm looked at Benny in sheer amazement, mouthed the word vision. Looked a question at Jury, pointed to Betts, again mouthed the word vision. Rolled his eyes, shut them again. “Name me one time you ever had any vision,’ Benny.”
Benny pushed in the aerial, said, “To get Merchant without Ivory.” He flashed a grin. “Or vice-versa.” Then he sat back, drumming his fingers on the table, mouth moving slightly as if he were making phone calls in his mind.
“This film we’re shooting.” Malcolm’s voice changed slightly, into a parody of a lilt. “Your girlfriend’s in it.”
Benny looked at Malcolm as if the man were speaking in an unknown tongue. He continued drumming his fingers.
“She’s right over there.” Here Malcolm turned and looked off in the direction of the three beautiful women, one of whom was rearranging the bouquet by peeling away from it. “Ah! Here she comes!” In a pretense of a whisper, Malcolm said to Jury, “Benny here once had a relationship with her.”
Benny, back on the portable telephone, said, “I don’t have ‘relationships.’ I leave that to the rest of the world. I hate that fucking word. Jock! Man, where you been?”
It was the redhead with the milky skin who was now hovering over their table. A beauty mark near the corner of her mouth, a beauty mark on her breast. She didn’t need either. The beautiful blonde swayed by once again; Benny looked through her, didn’t register her presence. He went back to thumbing his address book.
Looking, looking for something (Jury thought), anything. Jury smiled.
Two more calls through someone’s secretary. Sean wasn’t there; Miranda was. No one would do it without Miranda. Sean insisted, so did Neil. For the sister, right. It was an undone deal without her, better believe it.
Malcolm believed it.
Jury believed it.
Miranda must have believed it.
THIRTY-FOUR
It was almost like Sunny appearing out of nowhere.
When Mary Dark Hope opened the door of the adobe house, Superintendent Jury was sitting there, near the kiva fireplace, accepting a cup of coffee from Rosella, who was fussing about as she always did. And he stood up.
This astonished Mary—that a man would rise when she entered a room. It was as if she were important, certainly as if she were a woman. It was such an elegant gesture. And he was smiling too, as if he was really happy to see her.
“Hello,” she said. It was all that her surprise would permit. She wanted to say more, something casual, something clever, but all she could do with her open mouth was to swallow air, which was painful and caused her to cough. She cleared her throat (perhaps a little too dramatically, in order to cover her speechlessness), and Rosella, always alert to possible illness, like any nervous caretaker, quickly went over to Mary and felt her forehead.
Mary really wanted to swat the hand away from her face, but that wouldn’t have been cool, and she greatly wanted to be cool. Her expression changed to one of long suffering, patiently compliant. And her look suggested that Rosella treated everyone with this nursey propriety, as if everyone were her child—the superintendent too, if he blew his nose or hiccupped.
“I’m all right, Rosella.” The “right” came out as a small wail.
“You sit out there in the February cold with that crazy coyote you call ‘dog’?”
Mary gave the housekeeper the same patient smile one might bestow on a fractious child.
“Don’t look at me that way, miss. A coyote. I know when I see.” Like Mary, she pronounced it as two syllables, “ky-yote.”
Mary sat down, feigning exhaustion both physical and emotional. “Gaa-awd,” she said, stretching the single syllable into two. “Have you ever seen a coyote as tame as Sunny? Of course not.”
Rosella’s tone was scoffing. “You train him up from a pup and he pays attention to you, not me, not no one else.” To Jury, she said, “What she and him do out there in the middle of the desert, I don’t know. Look at him—”
Both Mary and Jury looked. The dog—or ky-yote—in question was lying stretched out peacefully before the fire. It whistled slightly, woofed, made doglike noises.
“—I never see a dog with such bandy legs. Like sticks, like a chicken.”
Mary looked benightedly at Jury. “Rosella thinks Sunny’s heyoka. That he tricks people, or makes them act in a strange way.”
Again, Rosella snorted. “You don’t even know what that means. You never learned legends. You got no respect.”
Feigning kindness, Mary said, “Rosella’s Zuñi. Or a little bit.”
Rosella crushed her hand against her chest. “No little, miss, most, nearly one hundred percent. You don’t know the difference between Navajo and Zuñi, you never learned legends.” Rosella stood, hands on hips, near the kiva, whose flames threw mysterious shadows across her flattish face. She was dressed in colorful and flowing garments. She seemed to favor purple, which didn’t suit her at all, making her olive skin look muddy. Her long, dark braids were sometimes curled like earmuffs, sometimes lying down her back, as they were today.
“Let me tell you, miss, the next time I go back to Zuñi Pueblo, I might stay. You’re so big and can take care of yourself you don’t need anybody, is that it?” Rosella, either forgetful that Jury was a policeman, or not caring, said (as one adult to another), “I came to Santa Fe to teach at the Institute—”
Mary interrupted. “She means the American Indian Art one.”
“I know what I mean,” she snapped. To Jury she said, “I came here to teach and then my hands got so bad I couldn’t work the silver anymore. I taught Angela, and Angela was very, very good, could have been the best if she wasn’t such a dreamy type.” Rosella went over to a small table, pulled out a box that when opened displayed truly lovely and intricate pieces. “You see this—” she pointed to a necklace. “This is needlepoint turquoise, very difficult to do.” There were also a bracelet and brooch of the same design. She lifted another necklace from its felt background, a thick braid of tiny carved animals and birds. “A fetish necklace. My people make very fine ones.” Then from the bottom of the box she pulled out a large brooch with a single turquoise stone and said, “This is no good, it’s chalk that’s treated with plastic. See—it gets that hard surface.” Carefully, she put the felt-lined box away.
“I see you brought out the crystals.” Mary picked up a nugget of rose quartz and studied it. “What’s this one mean?”
“For you, nothing. You only believe what you see and feel in this world. So, nothing.” Rosella slid the remaining half-dozen bits of stone into a leather pouch as if to save them from contamination. “Your sister coulda been killed by bad thoughts, evil thoughts. You know?”
Mary sighed, in the manner of one who’s heard it all before. Heard it and heard it. She slumped down in her chair, closed her eyes. It was fairly clear that she thought she had told Jury everything of importance, certainly more than he’d learn from a bunch of crystals.
Jury had come to the conclusion that the housekeeper’s view of Angela Hope was decidedly myopic. He wondered if the older sister had been quite so full of the milk of human kindness, or if the “saintliness” Rosella ascribed to Angela was any more than a rootless and vague religiosity. He thought she was overestimating the one sister and underestimating the other.
Jury reckoned more on the description of Malcolm Corey and Nils Anders than he did on the one of Dolly Schell and the
Bartholomew woman, the opinion of Dolly, at least, probably fueled by jealousy. Rosella had agreed with Malcolm Corey’s statement that Angela Hope was the sort of person health food-herbalist gurus catered for. Except the housekeeper’s interpretation of Angela’s tendency toward these things was evidence, not of her gullibility, but of her spirituality. As far as the housekeeper was concerned, her addictive smoking was Angela’s only weakness. Jury believed in human weakness, thought of it often as saving grace. Lord knows, he could sympathize with Angela on that score. What a war of nerves. When he felt he couldn’t last even five more minutes without a smoke, he thought of Des, sitting on her high stool in the kiosk in Heathrow. Somehow, he felt he would be letting her down if he had to tell her he’d failed. Still, the picture he was patching together of Angela Hope was of a charming but self-indulgent woman who would turn, like a weathervane, in any wind. His picture of the younger one was exactly the opposite. She would be as steady as a compass pointing true north.
Mary sat there now in her funereal black, looking not so much in mourning as she looked like she needed a six-shooter.
Rosella had reverted to the subject of Sunny’s pedigree. In a scoffing tone that must have been her usual way of talking to Mary, she said, “He’s one lazy coyote, that’s what he is.”
“No lazier than Angela,” said Mary from the depths of the chair she’d dug into.
Jury thought it was more a comment than a criticism, but Rosella turned on Mary the full force of her temper. “You can’t be speaking of your sister in that way! My God! She’s dead!” She fell to weeping.
It was, Jury felt, genuine grief. He moved from his chair and offered her his handkerchief, which she groped for and pressed to her face like a flannel, trying to choke back sobs.
Mary’s pale face was drained even more of color. But he thought Rosella had misread Mary—her way of speaking about her dead sister made him wonder if Mary believed on some deeper level that Angela was not dead. It was possible that on a deeper level of her mind, she simply didn’t believe it.
Jury might have said: “I’m sorry; I shouldn’t be forcing you to talk about her, making you remember.” But he didn’t think so. The more weeping, the better, and the more public, the better. The ones who worried Jury were the ones who held themselves in check. As Mary was doing.
As Rosella helplessly fingered a cigarette box studded roughly with colored stones, her hand trembled. More reminiscent of Angela, perhaps, than a picture would be. “She don’t have to worry now about what smoking does to you.” And she fell to weeping again, rubbing at her eyes with the heel of her palm. “I tried to tell her, you know, to do what that ad says: Just Do It.”
Mary sailed her paper missile or whatever it was toward Sunny. She said, “I’d rather redo it. Let somebody else go first.”
Rosella looked round again. “Bosh, oh bosh, Miss Know-it-all.”
“I don’t know any of it. That’s my point.”
Jury wondered if Mary, seeing her housekeeper’s distress, was being cantankerous simply to offer Rosella a way to change anguish to anger. That would be rather subtle for an ordinary thirteen-year-old. But what made him think that Mary Dark Hope was “ordinary”?
Jury got up. “I’ve got to be going.” He patted Rosella’s shoulder and gestured for her to keep the handkerchief. “I’ll get it from you later. Mary—”
Mary was up and at the door. He said goodbye to Rosella and they walked out and toward his car. She asked him where he was going.
“Dinner with Dr. Anders.” He looked at his watch. “I’m late.” Still he stood there, leaning against the driver’s door of his hired car.
She ran her hand over it. “You got a Le Baron.”
Jury turned and looked at the car as if he’d never seen it before. Probably, he hadn’t, except as a red blur on wheels. “That’s what they gave me.”
“It’s a convertible.” A little disgust, there, as if he weren’t properly appreciative of the world’s goods. “You don’t have the top down.”
“It’s February.”
She shrugged.
He wanted a cigarette. He wanted something. He felt her reluctance to see him go as they stood there in the blue night. He looked up. Why had he never seen stars like that in an English sky? A whole crowd, some touching, or appearing to, as if there weren’t sky enough to hold all of those stars.
Mary Dark Hope was gazing upward, too. “Star rocks is what the Navajo call them.” They both stood gazing out. “Rosella calls me heyoka sometimes, too. That’s someone who acts just the opposite of what normal people do. I consider that a compliment.” She ran her hand across the Le Baron’s hood. “Did you find out what you needed to, what you were looking for?”
Jury shook his head. “No.”
“Maybe you should go on a Vision Quest. I wouldn’t mind.” She sighed.
Jury smiled at her. “If I did, or if you did?”
“Both. We could go maybe together.”
There was a silence. Jury broke it by saying, “I’m going to have to go back to England in the next couple of days. I think I’ve talked to the people your sister knew best.”
“Dolly Schell?”
“Yes, of course. Your cousin.”
Mary was silent for a moment, looking off into the distance. “She didn’t get along with Angie. She didn’t like her.”
“That’s what she said.”
“She said that?”
Jury nodded.
She shrugged deeper into her down jacket. “That was clever of her.”
Then she walked away.
THIRTY-FIVE
“What did she mean by that?” asked Jury.
Nils Anders looked across the top of his bourbon and smiled. “I told you she wasn’t much on details.”
Nils had been holding on to a table for them, by the time Jury arrived at the restaurant. Holding on for dear life it would have to be, judging by the crowd both sitting and standing. It was a favorite spot, a place where you couldn’t get a table without a reservation, but the tourists weren’t aware of that.
“She said it and just—walked away.” Jury sipped his whisky, dying for a cigarette. Thank the Lord Anders was a nonsmoker and they were sitting in the No Smoking section.
“Well, it sounds as if Mary doesn’t much care for Cuz, doesn’t it?”
“How about you?”
Anders looked puzzled. “Do I care for Cousin Dolly?” He shrugged. “She’s all right, I guess.” Nils reached in the breadbasket for a piece of corn-and-chili bread.
“Mary hasn’t said anything to you about Dolly Schell?”
“Anything like what?” Nils shook his head, buttered his bread. “Mary is very close-mouthed.”
“How did Angela feel about Dolly?”
“I’m not sure. I don’t think we ever talked about her. Dolores, I mean. ‘Dolly’ doesn’t seem to suit her.” He smiled slightly, broke off another chunk of bread. “I wish the food would get here.”
“I second that.” Nils Anders (thought Jury) was perhaps not the best person to ask about “feelings.” Too rational. Or too involved with his theorems and axioms about light and space. The waiter arrived with their heavily laden plates. Maybe it was the air out here that made him so hungry. Whatever it was, Jury picked up his fork the moment the coral-colored plate was set before him and dug into the fajita. He noticed that Anders was contemplating his food instead of eating it.
“You don’t take it seriously, then,” he said to Anders.
“Take what seriously?”
Jury shook his head, changed the subject to the Colorado trip. “I’m sure she mourns her sister, but she doesn’t demonstrate it much. She’s a very self-contained girl.”
After a moment of neatening the pile of black beans with his fork, Anders said, “You know, there might have been some trouble there.”
“Trouble? Between Angela and Mary?”
Anders took a few more seconds rearranging the expertly positioned portions on his plate�
��pumpkin flan, tamale, fried spinach. “Ambivalence at best. Jealousy at worst.”
Jury shrugged. “I expect it’s quite natural for a kid to envy her older sister.”
“I’m not talking about Mary. I mean Angela.”
Surprise cut Jury’s laugh short. “You mean Angela was jealous of Mary?”
The answer was oblique. “The thing about Mary is, she’s so down-to-earth, so close-to-the-ground, I think she’s growing out of it sometimes—”
Jury remembered his own feeling about Mary’s rootedness and smiled. “I know what you mean.”
“She loves the Southwest, the desert, the red rocks, the—stuff. But she thinks everything else is a sham. Santa Fe, or what it’s become; this restaurant we’re sitting in—” he motioned with the fork—“the hype, the galleries, the fêtes. There’s something uncannily sophisticated, if that’s the word I want, about Mary. There’s something—” he paused, pushed his corn husk back a micro-measurement—“about the way she burns away all of the extraneous matter. Like this corn husk, if it were surrounding some point, some person . . . Mary would just rip it off. Anyway, she’s not a walking Chamber of Commerce for Santa Fe, as are most of the people you’ll meet—”
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