Murder on the Eightfold Path (24 page)

“It is, but the money being offered for some of these antiquities is mind-boggling. And the people buying aren’t always what you’d think. More than one museum curator has been nailed in the illegal trade of antiquities. Sure, sales at reputable auction houses are supposed to be carefully monitored. I guess they are for the most part. Details of the provenance of objects are supposed to be provided.”

“Provenance?”

“Documented history of the ownership of an object. They’re supposed to get publication details of similar pieces, and a history of the movement of objects through the market. But the system isn’t foolproof. To say the least.”

A.J. nodded. It was getting late and she was getting tired, although she was doing her best to seem bright and cheerful. The last thing she wanted to do was hurry Jake off. For these few hours she could pretend that everything was still good between them. That they were building toward something that might sustain them through all the years to come. Something more than friendship, although she valued Jake’s friendship, too.

He yawned, glanced at his watch.

“Can Dora Beauford’s alibi be broken?” she asked quickly, at random.

“I doubt it. Only her hairdresser knows for sure.”

“Ouch.”

“You asked.” He was grinning at her and she grinned back, warmly conscious of the ever present tug of liking and attraction between them. No, that hadn’t changed.

Jake seemed to recollect himself. He said more seriously, “I’m double-checking that one. But I wouldn’t pin my hopes on it.” He hesitated. “I guess . . . I ought to get going.”

No you oughtn’t
. A.J. opened her mouth. She closed it again. She wasn’t going to put pressure on him. And she sure wasn’t going to beg. Or even ask politely. In case it was misconstrued. This was something Jake had to work out for himself; he knew—could hardly fail to know—how she felt.

“Okay,” she said, rising. “Thanks for stopping by.”

He stared at her for a funny moment, then rose, too.

They walked out together to the front porch.

He seemed to hesitate. “Night.”

“Night,” she murmured as he kissed her cheek.

She watched him walk across the yard, boot heels scraping the flagstone walk. The door slammed as he got in the SUV. He backed up slowly, flashed the headlights at her, and drove away into the night.

Morag
was making herself right at home. It was not a pretty sight. The contents of Elysia’s purse were scattered across the kitchen counter and in the sink. The trash bin had been turned over, the contents of the silverware drawer were scattered over the floor—along with less benign tokens of the ferret’s presence.

“Yikes,” A.J. said, watching Elysia deal quickly, if grimly, with the mess. The pointy-faced culprit gazed down at them from the recipe books on the shelf above the stove. “Is that—?”

“It is,” Elysia said darkly. “We’re working on potty training.”

“Uh oh.”

“Oh, she’s not so bad,” Elysia said quickly. “A little mischievous, perhaps. In fact I was thinking Monster might like a little sister.” As convincing performances went, she’d given better.

“You’ve got to be joking,” A.J. said. “A little
snack
maybe. A little sister, no. He’s definitely an only child.”

They both studied the ferret peeking out at them.

“She’s very cute,” A.J. said.

“Yes. I suppose she’s missing Maddie.”

“Well then she’ll probably settle down, don’t you think?”

“I think she’s a fiend from Hell in cuddly clothing,” Elysia stated for the record. “On the bright side, I’ve been reading up and they don’t live that long. Usually six to ten years, and I believe Maddie said something about her being seven years old.”

“
Mother
.”

“I’m just being realistic, pumpkin. She’s as adorable as a stuffed toy, yes, and if she
were
stuffed, we’d get along beautifully. As it is, she’s one hell of a nuisance.”

A.J. had to bite her lip to keep a straight face. “Look at that little face. That little pink nose, those little beady eyes.”

Elysia sniffed. Morag sniffed back. Or perhaps she hissed. It was uncertain at that height.

“Maybe next time you’ll think twice before you nab someone’s pet.”

Elysia ignored this and went back to restoring order to her ransacked kitchen. A.J. found a sponge under the sink and scrubbed the granite counter as she filled her mother in on everything Jake had told her the evening before.

“Perhaps we should go see Dora Beauford,” Elysia said thoughtfully, tossing the soiled sponge in the trash bin.

Her kitchen was once more immaculate. However, if the sounds of tinkling glass from the dining room were anything to go by, Hurricane Morag was striking the west wing of the house.

A.J. thought it might be in Morag’s best interests if she were to otherwise occupy Elysia’s attention. “I’m not sure there’s a point. Jake seemed to think Beauford’s alibi was pretty much unshakeable.”

Elysia shook her head in the manner of Holmes lamenting Watson’s general obliviousness to the significance of tropical flowers. “One doesn’t question suspects merely to eliminate or convict them. Suspects often have useful information about
other
suspects. We need to gather as much information as possible to form an accurate picture of what really happened to poor Dicky.”

“Dora might not want to talk to us.”

“We won’t know unless we ask, will we?”

A.J. used her Palm Pre to look up Dora Beauford on the Internet. There were two Dora Beaufords. One was an elderly South Carolina widow who had passed away in 2001 and one was a professor at Warren County Community College.

“Got her!” Elysia’s smile would have given Snow White’s stepmother pause for thought.

“How do you want to approach her? Drop her an e-mail or call the college?”

“Why shouldn’t we call her directly? She’s in the phone directory.” Still smiling that alarming smile, Elysia held the book up.

 

Dora
Beauford lived in a very old brick apartment building in the small, historic borough of Washington. A.J. had been lucky and caught the archeology professor just before she left the college campus for the day: mention of Dicky Massri had apparently convinced Dora to see them. Within a few minutes of walking into the relaxed but stylish clutter of Dora’s apartment it was immediately clear to A.J. why Dora loved to talk. Especially about herself.

“Coffee, tea, mineral water . . . wine?” Dora inquired as they seated themselves on the long zebra-striped sofa. The room’s furnishings were modern and eclectic: tailored, upholstered furniture, oriental tables and chests, lamps of blown glass and bronze, and a quantity of Egyptian-looking statues and objets d’art.

Replicas?

The long, low, carved table in front of the sofa was covered with papers, books, folders. Dora appeared to have been grading papers when they interrupted.

“Tea would be lovely,” Elysia said.

A.J. agreed.

“Well, I’m having a glass of wine,” Dora stated. She disappeared in the apartment cubbyhole of a kitchen.

Elysia nodded at the resin cat statue on a low bookshelf. She raised her eyebrows.

A.J. shrugged. She whispered, “Do you think her voice sounds anything like the voice we heard in Dicky’s apartment when we were searching it?”

Elysia considered. She was still considering as Dora reappeared with a glass of wine and sat down on a blue tailored chair across from them. “The kettle’s on. Chin chin.” She sipped her wine.

A.J. curiously scrutinized their hostess. Dora was a trim brunette in her mid-fifties with dark hair and brown eyes. She was very put together: designer jeans, a shortsleeved silk blouse, and ethnic jewelry.

“So how did you know Dakarai?” Dora inquired, looking from Elysia to A.J. with her bright, dark eyes.

Elysia said, “We were seeing each other shortly before his death.”

Dora gave an unexpectedly harsh laugh. “Oh yes?” She took another sip of her wine. “Well, if you want to know my opinion, the little twerp got exactly what was coming to him.”

It didn’t get much blunter than that. A.J. had to wonder at such frankness to strangers. Once again she considered Dora’s voice. Had it been the voice of the woman in Dicky’s apartment? By now it was difficult to accurately remember those slightly harsh but definitely feminine tones.

“What did he do to you?” Elysia asked the other woman with genuine interest.

Dora said flatly, “He lied to me. He cheated on me. He broke my heart—”

“Did he try to blackmail you?” A.J. questioned.

Dora, mid-tirade, stopped. “Blackmail? No. What could he blackmail me about?”

Now there was a good point. Blackmail was only possible where the victim had something significant to lose by exposure. Dora did not seem like the retiring flower type.

“The papers said something about extortion. Some women are sensitive to—”

“Some women are idiots,” Dora retorted. “If that little weasel had ever suggested blackmail, I’d have . . .” She described in lavish and loving detail what she would do to any man foolish enough to, in Elysia’s vernacular, “put the squeeze on her.”

Two things became immediately clear to A.J. First, Dora had a slight impulse control problem. Secondly, Dora would be a very bad person to try and blackmail. If Dicky had been foolish enough to try, A.J. could believe that Dora might very well have killed him. Unfortunately, there remained the problem of Dora’s alibi.

Could it be broken? It seemed unlikely. If there was one person whom it would be all but impossible to fake out, it would be one’s hairdresser. She—or he—would be bound to notice one disappearing in the midst of the cut or color.

Besides, Jake was thorough about such things. He understood what was at stake.

Elysia was asking, “Where did you meet?”

“Egypt. I was part of an international professor exchange. My field is archeology. I met Dakarai in Cairo. He told me he was wary of involvement, a poor risk for a relationship; that he was getting over a bad marriage to a rich American actress.” She sneered at some memory and took another swallow of wine. “Oh, he did it beautifully, I’ll give him that. I realize now none of it was true.”

“He was briefly married to a friend of mine,” Elysia said. “The actress Medea Sutherland. That was probably what he was referring to.”

Dora the Explorer had no comment on that revelation. “Anyway, we had an affair. The sex was
incredible
. Then it was over. Just like that. He dumped me. No warning. I have no idea to this day what went wrong.”

Dora was a strange lady, but her pain and bewilderment seemed genuine, and A.J. felt sympathy—even if no one had tried to blackmail Dora, her life had still been disrupted. No one had the right to yank other people around like that.

“How long did you see him for?”

“Five weeks. I was in Egypt for one semester. Frankly, I never expected to see Dakarai again, but one day I was coming out of the dry cleaners, and there he was.” Her gaze zeroed on Elysia. “With you.”

Elysia’s eyes widened like a startled cat, but she said nothing.

Dora smiled. “Oh, yes, I recognized you right away. I followed you that day, you see. And it was obvious that I’d been played. Played from start to finish.” She drained her wineglass.

“So you started calling Dakarai,” A.J. guessed aloud.

She wondered if they were about to have a Miss Marple in the Drawing Room moment, but Dora scotched that when she said briskly, “That’s right. I started calling him. And following him. And, in general, harassing him. I didn’t want anyone else to go through what I went through.” To Elysia, she added, “Not that you weren’t old enough to know better.”

Elysia offered an acidic smile.

“In fact I called the DHS to try and get him kicked out of the country. They said they’d look into it, but I don’t think anyone ever did anything.”

“Did you ever try to talk to him directly?”

“I tried, of course. Oh, I admit when I first saw Dakarai I still had feelings for him. Embarrassing but true. They died fast. I realized he was just on the make. And apparently I wasn’t in his target income bracket.”

A.J. thought that was one possibility, but more likely Dora’s hostility and aggressiveness had made her a bad candidate for blackmail, regardless of her financial standing.

“What did he say when you recognized him?”

Dora laughed that edged laugh. “His first instinct, believe it or not, was to pretend I’d made a mistake.”

Not the brightest bloke, Elysia had been right about that. Not even a very developed sense of survival if he’d thought he could possibly get away passing that old line off on Dora. Why hadn’t he just told her his puppy ate his homework and been done with it?

Dora said, “Then he tried to suggest that we should . . . relive old times.” Her eyes were hard as onyx as they rested on Elysia.