Rainbow's End (35 page)

Jury did not ask her to amplify as to the “we.” “I'll drive,” he said dryly, opening the door. “Do you think I'll need the telephone books?”

She ignored this, looked at his Dodge Dynasty. “What about your car? Is it just going to sit?”

“It's a rental; maybe the park police will help out getting it back to Cortez. If I explain,” he added, ominously.

“I'll drive, then,” she said, starting to get into her car.

“Out,” said Jury, stacking the telephone books on the floor.

She opened the passenger door and ushered her dog into the front seat.

“No,” said Jury, “the dog goes in back.”

She shrugged her indifference at this arbitrary law, but got out and opened the rear door. “Have it your way, but you'll be sorry.” She slammed Sunny's door, got back in front, slammed her own. “Sunny's an awful backseat driver.”

Not nearly so bad as Mary Dark Hope, he discovered ten miles along the curving mountain road, as the fading red glow of the sun reflected on high-built clouds and turned the cloud bank deep pink, spread across mesa and sagebrush. Jury thought it was magnificent.

“Painter's sun,” she said, and went back to negotiating every turn for him, announced every lay-by and every precipitous drop well in advance, every advancing car and every car following, and generally criticized every single move Jury made.

All Sunny did was punch Jury's shoulder occasionally with his forepaw.

Mary Dark Hope wondered aloud how in heaven's sakes Jury had ever made it all the way here by himself.

Jury wondered how he was going to make it all the way back.

 • • • 

THEY STOPPED
in Durango for coffee.

All three of them.

Durango, Colorado, sat in a bowllike declivity, shaped by the surrounding mountains. The air was so clear and pure it was like breathing at an impossible altitude. Jury took great gulps of it as they walked through the door of Mary Dark Hope's favorite coffee house (no wonder, since it permitted animals).

Mary was still talking about Jury's driving, saying that it was probably because he was English, and that they drove on the wrong side of the road, on lanelike roads, and in toy cars.

“
Look
, will you cut it out about my driving?”

She was peering at the pastry display, moving along the counter and looking at the pedestaled plates. “I was only giving reasons for it, that's all. I'll have two jelly doughnuts and a cheese danish. And a chocolate éclair.” Raising her eyebrows at him, as if he might try to refuse this repast, she explained, “The other doughnut's for Sunny.”

“Do you want something to drink? Hot chocolate? A soft drink?”

“No, I want cappuccino.” Her tone was slightly condescending. They were, after all, in an espresso bar.

He refused to get three of them, however. “The dog can drink water,” he said. “It might have to drive.”

That
little witticism was about to misfire, her expression told him.

“Don't say it.” Jury carried the two cups and she followed with a plate of pastries. The doughnut went under the table where Sunny had been lying, peacefully watching the proceedings.

They sipped, they munched. His driving momentarily forgotten—or set aside—she told him about Durango. “It's a real old-fashioned cowboy town, you can tell. It's got wide streets and a lot of saloons.”

Jury looked around the espresso-cappuccino-coffee bar at the beautifully booted women, the soft leather clothing and silk scarves, the tiny cups and tiers of croissants and tried to imagine it packed with cowboys. Underneath the table, Sunny gnawed at the doughnut as if it were as tough as a steak bone.

Mary sat, calmly eating her pastry. He watched her blow on her cappuccino, making designs in the froth with her breath. Her eyes were cast down, lashes long and thick. A knockout, thought Jury. That's what she's going to be—a knockout. And he was disturbed by this thought; she was, after all, only thirteen. Yet, there was about her a distressingly ambiguous sexuality, as if the woman were laying claim to the little girl. He had at first mistaken her for a young woman, and realized now that it was not wholly owing to the heavy makeup. He wondered how men reacted to her, what feelings she aroused in them.

There had been no further reference to Angela's death since the implied one:
I guess you want to talk to me
. And Mary certainly didn't seem inclined to bring it up. So Jury simply took a direct approach. “I'd like to talk to you about your sister.”

Mary stopped spooning up the froth of milk, but she did not look up.

“I know you and your sister liked to visit Mesa Verde,” Jury went on. “Was that one of your particular spots?”

She nodded and spooned up the rest of the froth. Then she said, “There might be spirits there.”

“Spirits?”

“Well, Angie believes in spirits. So does Rosella. Maybe that's why Angie did, because Rosella talks about things like that so much.”

“Rosella is the woman who takes care of you?”

“Uh-huh.” She was cutting the rest of her pastry into small pieces.

“Is she by way of being, well, a legal guardian?” Jury wondered what fate lay in store for Mary Dark Hope.

Her dark hair swung when she shook her head. “A couple of ladies from the Social Services came around day before yesterday.” The memory caused her to look over at Jury with her icewater eyes.

He was glad he was not “a couple of ladies from Social Services.” He smiled. “Rosella's been with you long enough that I imagine she'd be considered a suitable guardian, despite the lack of blood relationship.”

If Mary was relieved, she didn't show it. She just went on looking.

He could understand how adults might contemplate her with awe or anger; she was that inexplicable and self-contained.

“You were playing the flute for the spirits, then?”

“No. For the memories.”

He looked at her, her face now turned toward the plate, empty of food but for one small square of pastry and the éclair. Her hands, lacking employment now, could do nothing but turn the plate slowly round. Jury felt a little ashamed; his question had been condescending.
For the memories.
“I'm truly sorry, Mary, about Angela.”

“You haven't told me anything, though.”

Jury told her how they had found her sister.

All the while, she contemplated her chocolate éclair without eating it. “Look at this, will you?” From his inside coat pocket Jury drew the photocopied paper and smoothed it out on the table. “It's a page from an address book.”

For a moment, she regarded it with a slight frown. “It says ‘Coyote Village.' What are the numbers?”

“Telephone numbers, presumably.”

“Is it Angie's telephone book?”

“Does it look like her writing?”

“No.”

“Did anyone else you know of like to visit this particular site?”

“No. Tourists mainly like to go to the big ones—Balcony House, Spruce Tree House—like that. One of the reasons Angie—” Her head dipped; he could not read her expression. When the face came up again, it was as remote as the moon. “
Angie
liked it because nobody much turned up there and she—
we
—could have it to ourselves. Angie liked to think.” She picked up her éclair, bit the end off.

Jury refolded the paper, creases weakened by much use, and returned it to his pocket. “My impression of your sister is that she was by way of being more interested in the spirit than in material things.”

“That's why we don't have a dishwasher.” Having summed up the spiritual life, Mary licked a bit of custard oozing from her éclair.

“Did she tell you about Old Sarum?”

She looked left to right as if to search out the source of this queer question: “What's to tell? It's some ancient excavation or something that goes all the way back to—” She consulted her fund of Sarum knowledge, found it wanting, ended with “—many years ago.” The tongue came out to catch another custard drip. “It's a famous historical site. You should know; it's yours.” Having handed over Sarum to Jury's personal estate, she slid down again to give Sunny a bite of her éclair.

Jury played his fingers tattoo-wise on the rim of his cup, decided not to throw it, and waited for her head to reappear. When it did, he asked, “Did Sarum have some special meaning for your sister?
Special
, is what I'm wondering.”

“Not exactly, but look: if you loved rocks and ruins, and Angie did, wouldn't you want to see it? And Stonehenge? That's there too. Nearby.” She glanced at him as if his knowledge of England needed shoring up.

“I'd want to see it, yes.”

She shrugged, drank her coffee, went on. “She never went to England before and she liked the idea of seeing all of this stuff.”

They drank their coffee in silence for a few moments. Then she said: “People cause their own death.”

“I beg your pardon?” He was mystified.

“If you were a Zuñi, you'd understand.”

“Zuñi?”

“You know, the tribe. Rosella's a Zuñi.” She paused, reflecting. “She has to go back to Zuñi Pueblo several times a year.”

“Oh. Why?”

“The women have to stick close to the pueblo. Zuñi women hardly ever leave because they make so much money with their silver and turquoise. But mostly it's because Zuñi women are expected to be good wives and cook up feasts for the Kachina actors and be admiring onlookers at the dances. Even after a woman dies she has to go to Kachina Village and do the same things all over again. I'd say that
sucks, wouldn't you?” She didn't wait for an answer. “Zuñi believe you can cause your own death.”

“Do you mean as in suicide?”

Vigorously, she shook her head. “Not like that. You can
mean
your own death and not even know it; you can
intend
it. Like—” She was casting about for a way to say it. “Like, you could have what you think is an accident, you could cause yourself the accident. Or else, you could cause your death by mourning for someone for too long, by keeping on being miserable.” Here she paused and studied her black clothes and was silent, raising her eyes to some far-off horizon out there in the cappuccino crowd, the roomful of espresso drinkers. “Like heartbreak,” she added.

He was stunned by this and did not know what to say. He took the photos from his pocket and placed them before Mary. “Do either of these women look familiar to you? I think they might have visited your sister's shop last November. Or, at least, this one.” He tapped the picture of Fanny Hamilton.

She paid them serious attention, picked up each little picture, studied it, set it down. “Why do you think that?”

“Because Mrs. Hamilton—that's the name of this one—took back a turquoise sculpture, turquoise with a silver band round the center. Angela's silver work was distinctive.”

“That's because Rosella taught her, that's why Angie was so good at it. It's the kind of work the women do in the pueblo.”

“I saw several blocks of turquoise like that in Angela's shop.”

“Aren't you supposed to have a search warrant to go into people's houses?”

“I have one. You want to see it?”

“Never mind.”

“One thing I was looking for but didn't find was a mailing list, or an accounting book that lists addresses of customers.”

“There's a Rolodex.”

“I saw that. But it appeared to be more of a personal listing than a business one.”

“I don't think Angie kept very good records; she had an accountant or a tax person to take care of stuff like that. Angie wasn't organized. I kept on telling her she should expand. She could have done much more business than she did, but she just said money didn't mean all of that much to her, and she'd rather spend her time in places like
Sedona. It was better for her spirit.” Mary shrugged. “Well, money means a lot to
me
and I can't stand Sedona. She knows some flaky people there. They all go out and hang around the vortexes.” Mary shrugged again.

“Mary, what did you think when you heard about the way Angela had died? I'm sorry to ask this, but you knew her better than anyone. And this all must have seemed incredible to you.” She didn't answer for such a very long time that Jury was ashamed of himself for asking such a speculative question. Yet the girl seemed to be such a direct and self-controlled person he had nearly forgotten this was her own sister who had died. “I'm sorry. Let's just drop it.”

But she must still have been turning the problem over. “I wondered how they did it,” she said.

“How who did what?” Jury was puzzled.

“Killed her.”

“You think someone murdered Angela?”

It was her turn to look at him. “Well, sure. Of course. So do you or you wouldn't be here.”

“Why would someone kill Angela?”

“Rosella says it was witchcraft. You know—killing someone long distance.” She shrugged. She turned her eyes back to the pictures. “You think maybe they were customers? Or what?”

“I think so.”

“Well, but . . . who are they?”

“This one was from Exeter, that's about a hundred miles from Salisbury and Stonehenge. This one, although she's actually American—” he picked up Fanny's snapshot—“was living in London—had been for years.”

“ ‘Was' living in?”

“They're both dead.” He pocketed the pictures.

At last he'd said something interesting. And as if the announcement had surprised even Sunny, Jury felt the dog shift, roll over on his foot.

In a nervous gesture, Mary licked her lips. “You think it's got something to do with Angie.”

Jury nodded. “Yes.”