Murder on the Silk Road (3 page)

Charlotte’s head was spinning. Since she had no professional commitments for the next few weeks she’d planned to take care of personal business, and had made appointments with her accountant, her doctor, her car mechanic, and so on. But those could all be rescheduled. She also had an appointment with her agent on the West Coast to talk about projects. But that could be rescheduled too. In fact, there had been few times in her life when she had been as free to take advantage of such an opportunity as she was now. Or as eager. “Yes,” she replied: And then: “Yes, yes!” But then she was beset by doubts. What would she do while Marsha was busy working? Oh, well. She was bound to find something in this exotic country to occupy her time.

“I’m
so
pleased,” said Marsha. “Daddy said he didn’t think you had anything doing at the moment. Somehow I had the feeling that you’d be able to go. There’s a lot we have to take care of,” she added, turning to business. “Will it be possible for you to be back in New York by Monday?”

“Yes,” Charlotte replied. “I was planning to leave here on Monday anyway. A day earlier won’t make any difference.” But it would mean that she would have to start packing right away, she thought.

After making arrangements to meet Marsha, she went into the kitchen and fixed herself a drink. The real estate agent who had sold her the cottage had pointed out that a big kitchen wasn’t a necessity as long as you had a refrigerator for ice and mixers, a sink to rinse out glasses, and enough counter space for a cocktail shaker and a bottle or two. Charlotte had laughed—he was an agent who knew his customers. As she returned to the living room, she was shaking her head.
You are going on a trip to an exotic foreign country with a faithful and trustworthy friend
, Kitty had said. Taking a seat on the sofa, she propped her legs up on the coffee table and took a sip of her drink: a Manhattan, straight up. She needed it. The phone had rung, and her life had changed. That’s how things happened in her business: a phone call or a letter. The changes were always sudden, and they always left her reeling. A trip to China. She didn’t believe in supernatural explanations. Marsha’s call must just have been an eerie coincidence. A very eerie coincidence.

Dismissing the subject of coincidences from her mind, she turned instead to the subject of China. Like so many others, her knowledge of China was sketchy—so sketchy, in fact, that it could be summed up in fifteen hundred words or less. Culture: the Chinese had invented paper, gunpowder, and pasta; geography: the capital was Beijing (being from another generation, she still called it Peking); politics: the People’s Republic was established in 1949 following the Communists’ defeat of the Nationalists. Add a little bit about the Cultural Revolution and the subsequent downfall of the Gang of Four, and that was about it. There was little else
to
know: it was a country that had been cut off from the rest of the world for thirty-five years. It had been only five years ago, in 1979, that full diplomatic relations between the United States and China had been restored, opening the door to tours such as this one.

Setting down her drink, she got up and fetched the big old atlas from one of the bookshelves that flanked the massive fireplace. Like most of the other books, it had come with the house. And like most of the other books, its pages were spotted with mildew from the dampness. After a considerable bit of searching, she finally found Dunhuang: it was a tiny dot on the border of Mongolia. To the south were the peaks of the Himalayan massif; to the north, the vast open spaces of the Gobi Desert.

It was very, very far away. In fact, it was about as far away as you could, get. Setting down the atlas, she picked up the phone and dialed Kitty.

The second call came just an hour later as Charlotte was packing up to leave. It was from Bunny Oglethorpe, a summer resident whom she had met at various local functions. The Oglethorpes were the most prominent family in an area of prominent families. Bridge Harbor was typical of other Eastern summer resorts in that the original summer rusticators had been succeeded by tycoons who built enormous summer “cottages” with dozens of rooms and dozens of servants in which they, spent the few frenzied weeks of “the season” trying to outdo one another with lavish parties. Though the advent of the income-tax and the elimination of the servant class had done away with that lifestyle, Bridge Harbor was still inhabited by descendants of these well-known families who carried on the tradition of spending the season on the coast of Maine. Bunny was the daughter-in-law of the richest of the original tycoons, and the reigning matriarch of Bridge Harbor society.

What on earth did Bunny Oglethorpe want with her? Charlotte wondered. The old rich were one of the few elements of American society that refused to be impressed by movie stars. It was an attitude that Charlotte found refreshing, and another reason she felt comfortable in Bridge Harbor.

“I was just talking with Kitty Saunders,” Bunny said, her strangulated vowels reeking of wealth and privilege. “As you may know, we work together on the Bridge Harbor library committee.”

“Yes,” Charlotte replied. The library was a favorite charity of the summer residents. It was part of the summer ritual that energies otherwise devoted to raising money for the New York Public Library were here turned to a library in a former one-room schoolhouse.

“She tells me that you’re about to set off on a trip to China.”

“Yes, I am.” Word traveled fast around Bridge Harbor, especially if it was the loquacious Kitty who was the messenger. “I’m leaving in two weeks.”

“Was Kitty correct in saying that you’re going to Dunhuang?”

“Yes, that’s right. Do you know it?”

“I’ve never been there, no. But I’m very familiar with it.” She hesitated for a second, as if considering how to phrase the next sentence, and then went on. “I’d like to ask a favor of you. Related to your trip. Have you ever been to visit the Oglethorpe Gardens?”

Charlotte was taken aback by the non sequitur. What could the Oglethorpe Gardens possibly have to do with her trip to China? “Yes,” she replied once again. This time it was her voice that carried the note of hesitation.

Oglethorpe Gardens was one of the most magnificent private gardens in the country, created during the twenties by Bunny’s mother-in-law as a showcase for her collection of Oriental sculpture. It was open to the public on Wednesday afternoons. Charlotte knew it well.

“Good,” Bunny replied. “Then you know the moon gate?”

“Yes,” said Charlotte.

“Can you meet me there at three-thirty this afternoon?”

Charlotte checked her watch. It was two-thirty. “Yes. I think so.”

“I’ll see you then.”

The Oglethorpe Gardens were located on the grounds of the former Oglethorpe estate. The hundred-room summer “cottage” had long ago been razed, but the grounds were still in the hands of the family, and the garden was maintained as it had been for sixty years. It was one of Charlotte’s favorite places. She had visited often, not only on the afternoons that it was open to the public, but at other times as well. It was one of those places you could never have found unless you knew where it was. Charlotte had come upon it quite by accident one day while hiking one of the trails in what she had thought was the state park. From a distance, she had seen the sun glinting off the head of what appeared to be a golden Buddha nestled among the pines on the slope of the mountainside below her. Her curiosity aroused, she had bushwhacked a trail down the hill, and found that it was a golden Buddha indeed. From that moment, her first visit to this secret garden in the woods had taken on the unreal atmosphere of a dream. From the gilded Buddha, she had been drawn to a high wall of rose-washed stucco crowned by glazed Chinese tiles. Following the wall, she had come to a round wooden door with a giant wrought-iron ring for a door pull. This was the moon gate to which Bunny had referred. She hadn’t expected the door to open when she tugged on the door pull, but it had—revealing a spectacular sunken flower garden whose rainbow of colors dazzled the eye. It had been an unforgettable thrill, hot knowing what was behind that door and discovering one of the world’s most beautiful gardens. She now knew that the glazed, “imperial yellow” coping tiles had once capped the wall surrounding the Forbidden City in Beijing. They weren’t reproductions of the tiles, but the actual tiles themselves, shipped over piece by piece from China after the Chinese dismantled the wall. That’s how the robber barons had done things: if you coveted a castle from the Rhineland, the ballroom of a French chateau, or the wall of a medieval city, you simply paid someone to disassemble it and rebuild it for you in Bridge Harbor or Newport. As for the statuary, the gilt-bronze Buddha was one of dozens of exquisite pieces purchased on collecting trips to the Far East, which were scattered throughout the woods surrounding the garden proper, as well as within the garden walls themselves.

Since her discovery on that magical afternoon, Charlotte had figured out her own route to the garden through the woods of the state park (which had originally been Oglethorpe land), and was a frequent visitor. The gardeners never objected to her presence, probably because there were so few people who managed to find their way to the garden on foot. The entrance road was patrolled by a security guard, and visitors were usually transported to the garden from a parking lot on the main road by minibus. Rather than driving to her mysterious rendezvous with Bunny, however, Charlotte chose to walk, and arrived shortly before the appointed hour.

To her surprise, the person awaiting her at the moon gate wasn’t Bunny, but Howard Tracey, the police chief of Bridge Harbor.

“Fancy meeting you here,” she said as she approached.

Tracey smiled, his round cheeks bulging like a chipmunk’s under the brim of the baseball cap that he always wore—the Boston Red Sox, of course. No self-respecting New Englander would have been caught dead wearing the hat of any other baseball team.

“What’s up?” she asked as she joined him at the moon gate.

“I’d better leave it up to Mrs. Oglethorpe to tell you,” he replied, removing his cap in the presence of a lady, an old-fashioned gesture that Charlotte always found charming. “Suffice it to say that she has a problem that might require a bit of detective work.”

“In China?” asked Charlotte.

“Could be,” said Tracey, with the Yankee talent for avoiding a direct answer.

She had first met Howard Tracey two years ago when a neighbor of Stan and Kitty’s was poisoned. At the time, Charlotte had already earned a minor reputation as an amateur sleuth—the result of having solved a case in which her co-star in a Broadway play was murdered on stage. The reporter who had covered the case for a New York magazine later wrote a book chronicling her role in cracking it. A best seller, it was called
Murder at the Morosco
, after the lovely old theatre in which the murder had taken place. When the Saunders’ neighbor became the victim of some malicious mischief, Tracey had asked Charlotte to investigate. When, subsequently, the neighbor was murdered, she had helped solve the case. The bonds forged in that encounter had since been welded into a solid friendship. Though Tracey liked to play the role of the simple country police chief, his unassuming manner concealed a brain that was as sharp as that of the savviest New York homicide detective.

As Charlotte and Tracey chatted about the weather—the perennial topic of conversation in Maine, where it could change dramatically from one moment to the next—Bunny Oglethorpe pulled up in her car, a vintage Oldsmobile. The descendants of Bridge Harbor’s tycoons weren’t pretentious folk. Driving a fancy make of automobile was considered ostentatious, and among the bluebloods of Bridge Harbor being nouveau riche was almost as bad as being … well, poor.

“Hello,” said Bunny as she emerged from the car.

She was a tall, thin, stately woman, whose long, patrician face—which must once have been pretty, but not inordinately so—was framed by a thick fringe of white bangs. The rest of her hair was pulled back into a bun. Today she wore a big hat of pink straw.

“I’m sorry if I’ve kept you waiting,” she said as she joined them at the moon gate.

“You haven’t kept us waiting at all, Mrs. Oglethorpe,” said Tracey, with just the right note of deference toward the matriarch of the family whose generous donations supported not only the library, but the church, the fire department, the summer repertory theatre, the Friends of the State Park, and probably dozens of other worthy causes that Charlotte wasn’t aware of.

Bunny greeted both of them with a handshake, and then said to Charlotte, “I’m so glad you could make it, Charlotte. You must be very busy getting ready for your trip.” She gestured toward the moon gate. “Shall we?” she said.

As Tracey held the heavy wooden door open, Charlotte followed Bunny through the gate. Entering the garden, she found herself pausing to blink. One of the most intriguing things about the garden was its sunny brilliance, which was all the more striking by contrast with the piny darkness of the woods outside.

Turning left, Bunny led them down a gravel path lined with recently set out annuals to the shade garden, which was at the north end of the walled enclosure. “Have you told Miss Graham about our mission?” she asked Tracey as they walked along, the gardeners nodding deferentially as they passed.

“No, I was saving that for you,” Tracey replied.

“Good,” she said approvingly.

The focal point of the shade garden was a three-sided shrine with a roof of imperial yellow tiles that sheltered a sculpture of a Buddhist monk in meditation. The sculpture presided over a smooth green oval lawn surrounded by an informal planting of low, green plants and shrubs. By contrast with the bright sunken flower garden, the mood here was serene and meditative.

But, Charlotte noticed as they drew near, the pedestal on which the sculpture usually rested was empty. The more fragile sculptures in the collection, the Buddhist monk among them, were taken indoors for the winter, and set out again in the spring. But the sculptures were usually returned to the garden in April, and this was already June.