The Hanged Man (16 page)

“Seven years ago.”

“From where?”

“San Francisco. Where did you put the shallots?”

“There in the bag. Next to the sugar. He had to know he couldn't pick up the card for fifty thousand. Or even seventy thousand.”

She nodded. “Presumably.” She plucked a shallot from the bag, examined it.

“So he was lying to his wife?”

“Or she was lying to you.” Delicately, she cut the root end from the shallot.

“She was pretty ragged when she told me—she'd just learned that her husband was dead.”

She pulled the two cloves of shallot apart. She nodded. “You believe her.”

“Yeah.”

She began to slice the shallot. “Then you'll have to determine why he lied to her. Are you done with the salt pork?”

“This is an art, Rita. Art can't be rushed.”

“No, of course not. In the meantime, I'll do the chicken.”

She stood, walked around the table, lifted the plate that held the chicken, and walked with it back to her seat. She sat down, glanced up at me. “What are you grinning at?”

“You. When are we going to walk from here down to the Plaza?”

While she'd been paralyzed, Rita had refused to leave the house. She would leave it, she'd told me, when she could walk down to the Plaza. She was leaving it now, nearly every day, but we still hadn't done the walk to the Plaza. I wanted to do it, as a kind of ritual, a formal end to a difficult period.

“Soon,” she said.

“Sunday.”

She smiled. “Maybe.”

“Maybe.” I cut some more cubes of salt pork. “The computer tell you anything about Bennett Hadley?”

“He wasn't in the army and he wasn't in Vietnam.”

“Oh yeah? He told Brad Freefall that he was.”

“So you said.”

“Any kind of police record?”

“No.”

“You have his medical record?”

“Not yet.”

“What about Brad Freefall?”

“A marijuana bust in Venice, California, in 1965. Charges were dropped.”

“Peter Jones?”

“Nothing.”

“I wish he'd been a bit more forthcoming. I would've liked to know what he thought about the rest of them.”

“Why?”

“He seems to be almost normal.”

She smiled. “A spiritual alchemist who slept with the murder victim's wife?”

“Normal by comparison. I liked him.”

“Maybe the two of you can take in a ballgame someday. Beer and peanuts, nudging each other as the bimbettes walk by.”

I smiled. “I don't think he's very fond of me. The computer have anything on the others?”

“Nothing very helpful.”

“Anything on the ones I haven't talked to? Veronica Chang?”

“Not really. Chang and her brother were in San Francisco at the same time Leonard Quarry was, but I can't find any connection between them.”

“They were both members of the occult community,” I said.

“San Francisco has a large occult community. It's possible they never met.”

“This is done. The salt pork.”

“So's the chicken. You're talking to Veronica Chang tomorrow?”

“Yeah.”

“Watch out for the brother. He was arrested for assault. Twice. Where'd you put the wine?”

There were no squat naked Indians skulking across the sunny lawn. There were no brightly colored jungle birds eyeing me from the bare branches of the big oak tree beside the driveway. There was no exotic flute music trilling from the windows of the low, stately brick building, no throbbing jungle drums. It was an old one-story house on East Marcy, a house that had probably been sitting here for a hundred years, quietly watching the seasons and the people come and go. It was a house that could have been owned by a doctor or a dentist or a successful real estate broker, or by any other professional who could afford to drop something like half a million dollars on a place to bunk. There was nothing about the building, or about the neatly landscaped grounds, both of them hidden from the street by a tall and carefully pruned hedge of evergreens, which suggested that the occupant was a master of an ancient Brazilian healing technique, genuine or otherwise.

The man who opened the front door was Asian, slender, about six feet tall, with shiny slicked-back black hair and a dark impassive handsome face that revealed nothing at all, including his age, which might have been anywhere from thirty to forty-five. He wore a loose pale blue silk shirt, pleated gray slacks of tropical weight wool, gray silk socks and gleaming black leather slip-on shoes that looked as sleek as ballet slippers. Hanging from a gold link chain around his taut neck was a small gold charm that resembled a stylized bird in flight. Maybe it was an ancient Brazilian healing symbol. Maybe it wasn't. This was the brother, presumably.

I introduced myself and, without a word or any change of expression, he gestured for me to enter. I entered. He shut the door and gestured for me to follow. I followed. He moved well. Lightly, hips forward, shoulders back, as relaxed within his body as a panther.

We padded across a carpeted living room that held expensive but probably uncomfortable furniture, shiny chrome and nubby beige upholstery. On the wall were two or three framed examples of what some people like to think of as Southwest Art—rugged landscapes through which weary Navajos plodded, looking to the left, looking to the right. Every pitcher tells a story, ladies and gennlemen.

I followed him into a kind of enclosed porch off the living room: vigas and latillas overhead, red Mexican tile underfoot, at the opposite wall a set of French windows leading out onto a patio and the rear lawn. The furniture in here was Taos stuff, oversized and boxy, plump colorful cushions in heavy dark-wood frames. A single Navajo rug, an extremely good one, lay on the floor. Nice things, all of them, but there was nothing here that in Santa Fe would seem remotely exotic. Except, of course, for the woman sitting across the room. Veronica Chang.

She sat at the far corner of the long sofa. Because she was so tiny, about the same height as Sally Durrell, she should have disappeared against the sofa's bulk. She didn't. She wasn't beautiful in the way that movie stars and multi-million-dollar models are beautiful. For me, that kind of beauty, the perfect features assembled in perfect symmetry around a perfectly shaped face, has always seemed vacant and brittle, like a porcelain mask. Veronica Chang's black, almond-shaped eyes were a shade too large to be classically beautiful. Her red mouth was a shade too broad, a shade too lush. Her cheekbones were a shade too feline. Her breasts, beneath a bright purple long-sleeved leotard top, outlined by the two straight lengths of glossy black hair, were perhaps a shade too voluptuous for her slender frame.

Not classically beautiful, maybe. But I remembered what Brad Freefall had said. He had been right. She was drop-dead gorgeous. I wondered how she had lived in Santa Fe for five years without my ever having seen her. I knew that if I had seen her, I would have remembered her.

She was smiling at me. “Mr. Croft,” she said. “Please. Come and have some tea.” She patted the cushion beside her.

Okay by me.

I turned to thank the brother and saw that he was gone.

He moved very well.

I crossed the room and circled the coffee table, where an ornate silver tray held a bone china tea service—a graceful pot, a small pitcher, a sugar bowl, a pair of delicate cups and saucers. I unzipped my leather jacket, sat down.

Up close, I saw that her olive skin was flawless, not a wrinkle or a pore visible anywhere. Except for the lipstick, she wore no makeup. Her perfume was something floral, as subtle and as fresh as the scent of a crushed petal. Sitting beside her, on this side of the coffee table, I learned that what she wore below the top of the leotard was merely the bottom of the leotard. And, above it and beneath it, nothing else. A pair of East Indian sandals sat together on the floor beneath the table, patiently waiting to embrace her tiny feet.

She poured tea into one of the cups. “Milk? Sugar?” Her language was unaccented and her voice was soft. I hadn't spoken since I'd entered the house. I wondered now if I would stutter. Or spill drool down the front of my shirt. “Sugar,” I said.

She smiled. “Normally, it would be very bad for you. One teaspoon or two?”

“Two. Normally?”

Delicately, she spooned the sugar into my cup. Like her brother, she moved well. She handed me the cup and saucer and she smiled again. “I've treated this sugar to remove the toxins. It's quite safe now.”

“Treated it how?”

“Saku.” She poured herself some tea. “The healing tradition in which I work.”

“Ah.”

She put two spoonfuls into her own cup, raised cup and saucer, sat back against the wooden arm of the sofa, and smiled at me. “Cheers,” she said, and lifted the cup from the saucer. She was left-handed.

“Cheers,” I said. I sipped at the tea. “How do you go about removing the toxins from sugar?”

“Meditation.” She lowered the cup and saucer to her lap. “Saku meditation. It can remove the toxins from any substance.”

“I see,” I said. From Jack Daniel's? From Drano?

“But you came to talk about the death of Quentin Bouvier,” she said.

“And the death of Leonard Quarry. You know that he was killed yesterday?”

She nodded, her face solemn. “Yes. Sierra called me yesterday evening. She mentioned your name.”

“I was there when it happened.”

“She told me. How painful that must have been for you.”

Not as painful as it had been for Leonard Quarry. “How's Mrs. Quarry doing?”

“She is grief-stricken, of course. But Sierra has an inner strength surprising in one who seems so fragile. She will be fine, I believe.”

“Good.” I sipped at my tea. “Miss Chang, you were at that get-together last Saturday night, at Brad Freefall's and Sylvia Morningstar's house in La Cienega. I've read all the statements made by the people who were there, and most of them agree that at dinner, you asked Leonard Quarry how he felt about not being able to obtain that Tarot card. The card that Quentin Bouvier had just purchased from Eliza Remington.”

She nodded calmly. “Yes.” Her large black eyes looked directly into mine, and her gaze seemed to penetrate through cornea and pupil and plunge directly into the center of my mind.

It's a trick. A stage magician once explained it to me. You look toward someone's eyes, but you focus your own eyes a few inches beyond theirs. It can be impressive, even when you know how it's done. Up until now, despite what Peter Jones had told me about Saku, despite her talk of removing toxins, I'd been giving Veronica Chang the benefit of the doubt. Her being spectacularly beautiful and only a few feet away in a skintight purple leotard had nothing to do with my tolerance, of course. But from this point on, I was fairly well persuaded that she was a fraud.

“How did you know that Quarry wanted the card?” I asked her.

“Quentin told me.”

“When?”

“The week before, I believe. While the two of them were still negotiating with Eliza.”

“And why would Quentin tell you?”

She smiled. “Quentin and I were close friends. He often discussed things with me.”

“What did he say about the card?”

She shrugged her small shoulders. “Merely that both of them wanted it, he and Leonard. And that he had managed to outbid Leonard for it.”

“Did he say why he wanted it?”

“He planned to use it in his rituals.”

“What kind of rituals?”

She shrugged. “I couldn't say. The magical side of Quentin's life didn't interest me.”

“Why not?”

“I have no interest in magic.”

“Did Quentin say how much Leonard had bid?”

She took a sip of tea. “One hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars.”

“Quarry didn't have one hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars.”

“He was merely a middleman, Quentin told me. He was bidding for someone else.”

“His wife says that Quarry wanted the card for himself.”

“He may well have. But, as you say, he couldn't have afforded it. Obviously he was bidding for a third party.”

“Do you know who that might be?”

“No. Will you be talking to Eliza Remington?”

“This afternoon.”

“She might know.”

“Assuming he was bidding for someone else, why would he tell his wife differently?”

She smiled again. “I have no idea. Leonard and I seldom spoke with each other.”

“Why not?”

“I found him rather an unpleasant man. A mercenary man.”

“How so?”

“His only real concern was making money.”

I glanced around the expensively furnished room. It wasn't as swank as Justine Bouvier's reproduction of ancient Luxor, but it was hardly a hovel. I didn't have to say what went through my mind: she anticipated me. She was smiling when I looked back at her. She said, “Yes, I make money, Mr. Croft. But this is America, is it not? And here, the making of money is neither a crime nor a sin. And I make money from my work, by providing a method of healing and by teaching others how to provide it. I spent many years in training to learn how to do so. And many years before that, seeking the spiritual path that was right for me.”