Charm Stone

by Carl, Lillian Stewart

  Tim blinked at her. “We were hardly joined at the hip.”

  Well no, Jean thought, if only because of Kelly.

  “Sergeant Olson here will escort you back downstairs,” Stephanie told Tim. “Tomorrow morning you and your family will be giving us formal statements.” And to Olson she said, “Bring Kelly up. And Quentin’s there?”

  “Yes.” Olson stood up.

  So did Tim, hauling himself to his feet with ponderous dignity. His features kneaded themselves and Jean wasn’t sure whether he was going to start crying or deliver a crushing retort. At last he said thickly, “Sharon died standing up for what she believes in! What we believe in!” and blundered, choking, from the room.

  “Standing up for what you believe,” Alasdair said to the doorway, “is only a virtue if what you believe is worth standing up for.”

  Only when the door shut behind Olson did Stephanie release her patented, cool chuckle. “Good one.”

  Alasdair shook his head, rejecting her compliment. “Believing, that’s the issue here. Someone’s believing they were justified in committing murder. And stealing the replica, come to that.”

  Jean slumped over the table, massaging the rubber-band-tight skin of her temples. She didn’t need a mirror to know how she looked—pale, eyes wide, hair standing on end, lips clamped and bracketed with pleats from the effort of keeping them shut. Fortunately the acid fermenting in her stomach wasn’t also on public display.

  “Have you turned Jessica up, then?” asked Alasdair.

  “She never replied to the message I left for her this afternoon. She did show up for the play, but her role’s only in the first part, so she left before it was over—even Rachel didn’t know where she went. However, we tracked her down to the Lodge. There was an academic confab there, and one of the attendees, Louise Dietz—do you know her?”

  “Louise Dietz and a guy named Denny were at the reception last night,” Jean answered, “then sat next to us at Campbell’s. They were dissing Jessica up one side and down the other.”

  “Well, now Louise says Jessica came into the lounge just before eight and ordered a drink. They schmoozed a few minutes, until someone else came in with the news about Sharon. Then she took off. Do you know the word ‘schmooze’?” Stephanie asked Alasdair.

  “Oh aye, Jean’s taught me a wee bit American vocabulary.”

  Jean added, “So tonight Louise and Jessica are having a cozy little schmooze? That figures.”

  Stephanie offered no opinions on the social habits of academics.

  “Have you found Jessica’s husband, Matt, as well?” Alasdair asked.

  “Why should they be looking for him?” Jean’s mouth demanded before she could stop it.

  “Over and beyond him maybe knowing where Jessica’s got herself off to,” replied Alasdair, one eyebrow cocked just so, “Tim’s just contradicted what Matt was telling you about the women working together. Though I reckon it’s Matt who’s closer to the truth. The mobile phone in Sharon’s hand, the last number she rang was Jessica’s. Not half an hour before she died.”

  “Oh.” Jean went back to massaging her temples. Breathe in—the lingering cooking odors weren’t unpleasant—breathe out—neither the room nor Alasdair was quite cool enough to turn her breath into fog.

  “Rachel’s gone to her father’s house,” Stephanie said, which didn’t answer Alasdair’s question. She walked over to the door and peered at the stairs. “Where the heck is Olson?”

  Biting her lip, Jean fixed her aching eyes on Stephanie and tried to be helpful. “Speaking of witnesses, Detect—er, Stephanie. Hugh Munro was on the same flight from Edinburgh as Kelly Dingwall. He said she was walking up and down the aisle handing out promotional material for the Dingwalls’ movie. But Sharon and Tim told me the movie isn’t finished yet.”

  “Is that so?” Stephanie looked around. “They must be under some pressure to get it out, then, especially with Kelly—what did you hear her say on the phone? Something about having a bankroll?”

  “Yes. Makes you wonder just what sort of return she’s expecting to get on her investment,” Jean replied, just as footsteps came racing up the stairs.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Jean expected Olson to lunge into the room reporting that Tim and Kelly had made a break for it. Not that either of them was guilty of murdering Sharon, but Tim, at least, was manifestly feeling more than a little paranoia in regards to law enforcement.

  And why not? You’re not paranoid when someone really is out to get you. Or your spouse. Or your friends, for that matter. Of course, defining who your friends were seemed to be one of the issues here.

  It wasn’t Olson who burst through the doorway. It was either Tim in drag or his sister, all but running over Stephanie, who leaped back against the fireplace with the agility of a gymnast.

  Kelly was tall and beefy, like Tim, but unlike Tim, she sported lipstick, a full head of wavy, brown hair, and a bosom cantilevered like the flight deck of an aircraft carrier. Two flight decks—her soft, white blouse revealed more than a hint of cleavage. Her blue pants suit was less masculine than Stephanie’s black one, and Kelly was wearing jewelry, rings both in her ears and on her fingers, as well as a necklace of Italian millefiori beads. While her features weren’t nearly as heavy as Tim’s, the resemblance was still so strong that Jean suspected Kelly was the older sibling by only a few minutes. Twins did run in families.

  “Now listen here,” Kelly began. Hugh was right, she had a voice like a foghorn.

  Heralded by another scramble of footsteps, Olson catapulted into the room and narrowly prevented himself from crashing into Kelly’s back. “Ma’am, there was no need to shove me aside.”

  “There was no need to insult me,” Kelly retorted.

  “Insult?” asked Stephanie, taking a wary step forward.

  “He said he’d escort me upstairs. What, do I look like I’m not capable of climbing stairs?”

  Alasdair muttered “Glenda” from the side of his mouth, toward Jean.

  Yep, she thought, gender was one more area where people went overboard. Like with conspiracy theories and witch hunts, just without lethal consequences. Usually.

  Olson said, with an admirable lack of sarcasm, “I beg your pardon,” and sat down with his notebook and a roll of his eyes toward Stephanie.

  Who said, her voice not just curdling milk but turning it to cheese, “I’m Detective Venegas. Please sit down, Ms. Dingwall.”

  “According to her driver’s license,” murmured Olson, “her last name is Polito.”

  “Ms. Polito,” Stephanie amended.

  “No, no, no,” said Kelly, fending off the name with raised hands. “It’s Dingwall. I’ve got to get that license fixed.”

  “Divorced?”

  “Yes, I am. Finalized last spring. Biggest mistake of my life, getting married. All he did was get in my way and make trouble for my business. He wanted half my income without doing any of the work, the jerk. I finally had to scrape him off like a barnacle.”

  “And your business is?”

  “Designing and manufacturing clothing for the normal-sized woman. You’ve probably seen the shops, although you’re too thin to have ever been in one. Queen Bee Fashions, they’re called. In malls all over the country. Sex appeal for real women.”

  Jean had never been in one of the shops, either, but Kelly’s eye didn’t assess her size.

  Stephanie said only, “Your sister-in-law was very petite. Wasn’t she a real woman?”

  “I won’t speak ill of the dead,” Kelly said with a sniff, and in response to Stephanie’s gesture toward a chair, “I’m not going to be here long enough to sit down. I just want to tell you . . .”

  “What you’re going to tell me is where you were between six-thirty and seven-thirty tonight.”

  Kelly’s dark gray eyes, not at all bloodshot, swiveled toward Jean and Alasdair. “Who are they?”

  Alasdair, ever the gentleman, stood up. “Alasdair Cameron, Chief of Security at Pr
otect and Survive, Scotland. And this is Jean Fairbairn of Great Scot magazine.”

  Not his partner, companion, significant other, alter ego or thorn in the side. “I interviewed Tim and Sharon . . .” Jean began.

  Dismissing her with a glance, Kelly concentrated on Alasdair. “Protect and Survive. Blair Castle. The replica Witch Box. I see overly officious police forces are no respecters of national boundaries. You’ve gone to a lot of trouble and expense to follow me here, for no reason.”

  Alasdair sat down again, rather abruptly. He’d be wasting his breath to point out he’d reached the U.S. twenty-four hours before Kelly had played the patsy at Blair.

  Jean waited for Stephanie to inform Kelly that it wasn’t all about her. Instead she said only, “Where were you . . .”

  “I was recovering from my difficult journey—you would not believe the people allowed on airplanes these days—in my room. Then my brother and I went to share a meal, as we haven’t been able to speak privately for quite some time. We had barely placed our orders when your sergeant—Oliver, Orson—interrupted us.”

  Stephanie glanced at Olson, not, Jean estimated, to verify his name, but to see if Kelly had indeed almost exactly repeated Tim’s words. With quick flip of his notebook, Olson nodded an infinitesimal affirmative. Alasdair’s nod was less subtle, and was annotated by a humorless smile. Gotcha. Even though comparing notes and straightening their stories before their interview didn’t necessarily indicate anything sinister, Jean told herself, in a half-hearted effort to be fair.

  She had to ask Kelly, too, “Why didn’t Sharon eat with you?”

  Kelly stiffened. “We had a few words earlier, nothing important, a minor disagreement, but she went off in a huff. It’s all about her, of course.”

  Yeah, well, at the moment it was about Sharon.

  Kelly took a step toward the door. “If you’re finished, my poor nephew downstairs needs my attention.”

  “What do you think might have driven Sharon into committing suicide?” Stephanie asked, taking two steps forward.

  “It wasn’t suicide.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Any fool can see that!” Kelly’s voice warned off ships as far away as the Azores. “She was murdered. She was lynched. Someone was trying to shut her up. Probably that Jessica woman, the traitor.”

  “Traitor?”

  “That’s it, that’s all. Tim and I are finding a lawyer.” Kelly turned and strode toward the door, her low heels reverberating on the pine planks of the floor.

  “Fine. Suit yourself,” Stephanie called to her retreating back, and said to Olson, “Quentin.”

  Olson leaped up. His lighter steps trailed Kelly’s down the stairs, to be greeted by Tim’s bellow.

  “Well then,” said Alasdair.

  “Yeah,” Stephanie replied.

  Jean knew what that terse exchange meant. We’re just getting started. Follow-up interviews, timetables, forensics reports—she’d learned a wee bit police vocabulary too. “It’s very rare to see a murder committed by hanging. Alasdair and I were once involved with one where the weapon turned out to be a garrote, but this . . .”

  “. . . is a genuine hanging.” Across the table, Alasdair’s eyes reflected a quick image of the past and blinked it away, but not before Jean caught it. He’d sat across a table in a café in Fort William, respecting her enough to share the facts of the case with her. That’s when she’d noticed him.

  Here she was now, sharing the facts of the case with him and Stephanie.

  “Yes,” Stephanie said, either oblivious to that subliminal exchange or politely ignoring it. “The rope was already there, and had been there so long the branch beneath it was grooved and rubbed smooth. Sometimes the childhood-play interpreters set up a swing. Sometimes the wagon drivers demonstrate loading techniques while they rest their horses.”

  Surreptitiously, Jean inspected her soles. Just because she didn’t smell anything didn’t mean she shouldn’t clean her shoes once she got back the house. If she ever got back to the house.

  Downstairs, Tim was still bellowing, now in duet with Kelly. Stephanie didn’t seem inclined to rush down and rescue Olson.

  Alasdair said, “Sharon could not have weighed more than seven stone.”

  “Stone?”

  “Fourteen pounds,” Jean amended. “Sharon didn’t weigh more than a hundred.”

  “Even so, the dirt and leaves beneath the tree were messed about by two pairs of feet,” Alasdair went on. “She managed a good struggle.”

  “And you saw how her muscles were clenched around her phone. Cadaveric spasm, that’s called. Her free hand seems to have traces of blood and tissue beneath the nails. There might be defensive marks on her assailant, even though almost anyone would have a longer reach.”

  “The villain got her round the throat, preventing her from screaming—and she had a screech like a herring gull on helium, we heard her at the Museum—and overpowering her. Then he looped the rope round her neck. In a right crude knot, by the way.”

  “And he hauled her just far enough off the ground for her to choke to death. No broken neck, not like that. A good thing she was probably almost unconscious by then.”

  Probably, Jean repeated. Almost. But no one dwelled on that point. “It would take some strength to pull her up, wouldn’t it, even with the branch being too smooth to snag the rope?”

  “Some, yes, but mostly it took brains,” said Stephanie.

  “The killer made himself a sort of lever, a primitive winch . . .”

  Jean’s mind skidded, then realized Alasdair didn’t mean wench-with-an-e, like in the title of Jessica’s new book.

  “. . . by wrapping a sturdy stick in the rope just where it’s tied to the trunk of the tree. Brace the end of the stick against the tree, twist it a bit, and the rope shortens by an inch or two.”

  “An inch is all it took,” Jean said. There was something inexpressibly vulnerable, infinitely pitiable, about the shoe lying on its side below Sharon’s foot.

  “And probably just a couple of minutes,” added Stephanie. “The thing is, it’s not just any old stick, it’s one turned on a lathe, maybe a spindle or rung from a chair. Or for a chair—looks like it’s never been used.”

  Tim’s bawl and Kelly’s bleat suddenly stopped. Stephanie looked over her shoulder.

  Alasdair lowered his voice. “The spindle’s likely from the cabinetmaker’s shop. Pity Sam Gould’s got the best possible alibi, that might be a clue.”

  “It still is,” Stephanie said. “We’ll see what forensics says.”

  “If the murder was by means of hanging,” Jean thought aloud, “while a witch trial was playing out nearby, then the murderer’s motive was to make a statement as well as—what? Eliminate a rival? Remove an obstacle? Carrying a big stick to use as a winch, that’s hardly a crime of momentary passion. So who had the opportunity? Who made themselves an opportunity?”

  Footsteps trudged up the stairs before anyone could answer what were now only rhetorical questions, and Quentin plodded into the room.

  Exhaling a breath that she feared was badly in need of mouthwash, toothpaste, or even a mint, Jean settled down in her chair for the next act.

  Alasdair, too, took up his position, leaning back with one arm on the table. But his fingers tapped out a pattern on the battered wood, indicating he was anything but a passive audience.

  “I’m Detective Venegas,” Stephanie began yet again. “Please sit down.”

  Quentin stared at her dully, then at Jean and Alasdair. When Olson came into the room Quentin stared at him, too. The young man’s eyes were a darker gray than his father’s, but were even more bloodshot. He didn’t sit down, less out of belligerence, Jean supposed, than because he didn’t register the invitation.

  Olson sat down with a thump. “Tim and Kelly are accusing us of police brutality because we want to talk to Quentin here. I had to insist.”

  “No problem,” said Quentin, his expression contradicting
his words.

  Stephanie plunged ahead. “Where you were between six-thirty and seven-thirty tonight?”

  “Mom and Dylan and . . .” His voice caught and croaked. With a swallow that made the Adam’s apple jump in his long throat, exposed by the open collar of a polo shirt, he mopped the sleeve of his jacket across his face. Its cuff rode up, revealing a bony wrist, its white flesh scored with bruises. “Mom and Dylan and I left Dad and Aunt Kelly at the hotel. We came over here, like, about six-thirty. I haven’t been here since I was a kid, we were going to look around and then feed our faces.”

  Stephanie waited. The room was so silent the scratch of Olson’s pen seemed as loud as the grumble of voices downstairs and the whimper of the wind outside.

  “I stopped at the ticket office, the one at the end of Palace Green, to see what other shows were on, since it was, like, too late to get tickets to the witchcraft play. Dylan went off to the Courthouse anyway, he was all, ‘I’m going to wait for Rachel, then she can eat with us.’ Rachel Finch. She was playing Mary, you know, the lead role.”

  Which might be why Rachel had trapped Dylan in the pillory last night, thought Jean, as a sort of post-modern commentary on all matters of witchcraft.

  “Mom missed a call while we were on the bus, so she said she’d meet us outside the Courthouse after she returned it.”

  “Who was the call from?” asked Stephanie.

  Quentin managed to raise his rigid shoulders in a slight shrug. “Some business associate, she said. Someone she was supposed to meet later on tonight.”

  Alasdair’s fingers straightened and flexed again, registering the fact that therefore Sharon was supposed to meet Jessica—as strange bedfellows or what? Jean wondered.

  “And then,” Stephanie prompted.

  “There was a good-looking girl in the ticket office, so I hung around talking to her. When I came out, people were milling around, going, whoa, there’s a body hanging from the big tree, a real one, someone’s been murdered. I couldn’t find Dylan, so I walked over there with Rachel, and, and, it was my mom. Someone lynched my mom. She was there, and then she was, was, wasn’t . . .” His voice breaking, his face contorting, Quentin didn’t so much lose the thread of his thought as throw it away.