Rainbow's End (49 page)

Dolly Schell was now her only relative. Would Bibbi try and hand her over to Dolly Schell just because she was the only “family” that Mary had? Good Lord. And why had Dolly even offered to go to England? It was really she herself who should have gone. To be told by
the police a person is too young to identify a dead sister seemed the ultimate insult. She had managed to sit on her rage when Dolly told her she, Dolly, was going. Heathrow Airport and from there to Salisbury. Mary was good at hiding her feelings. And she had to admit Dolly had offered to let her come along. Knowing she'd refuse.

Angrily, she swung herself up and put her cool hands on her hot face. In a minute, she felt better and whistled for Sunny, a whistle that she knew would have no effect unless he was agreeable to doing whatever it meant. She looked around again. Ghost dog.

Thinking about the Scotland Yard detective made her feel much better. Like Dr. Anders, he treated her as if she had some intelligence; he took her seriously. Angie dead was awful enough. But Angie
murdered
?

Mary watched the sun go down. Such glorious sunsets were one thing she loved about this part of the country. On the far horizon, the sky glowed, flamed in orangeish red, dyed the horizon in shades of pink and lavender.

And in another part of the world, the sun was coming up. Did the people who'd built places such as Stonehenge think the sun was God? A God who again and again abandoned them, and for Whom, to make Him reappear, they performed a ritual sacrifice, and because they did, God reappeared? So it would go on and on, in a sort of circle, no one ever really understanding.

Such a place of myth and mystery would appeal to her sister: Angie seemed to want to think that's what life was—mystery and sacrifice. If you can afford such beliefs, Mary thought, shaking her head, her mouth tightening grimly in an old-maidish way. She would have liked to be worshipful, but it was too hard. As far as she was concerned, life was really handing in your English essays on time and delivering prescriptions on your bike for hardly any pay. Just request God to help with
that
stuff and you'd hear one huge abiding silence.

She was ashamed again; such hard thoughts seemed a betrayal of her sister. Mary pulled up her legs and rested her chin on her knees. The thing that she really couldn't explain, and wanted to, to somebody, was her lack of feeling; it was numbness, mostly. She had felt numb when the police sergeant had told her about Angie and gone on feeling numb for the last week. She was not using her “grief time” from school properly. It was like when her parents died, except she'd been only five then, and that was different. And although she'd never said
this to anyone, she was happy for them. Imagine a husband and wife dying together like that, going down in the flames of their own jet plane, never having to grow old and watching the other one die, leaving you alone. Their deaths had been like them. Dramatic and dazzling. Sylvestra. Often she wished she'd been named Sylvestra; it was a name a goddess could own.

Mary Dark Hope wheeled backwards on the rock as she had done before, placing her palms on the earth, letting the tears run backwards. Out of nowhere, Sunny reappeared, magically before her. Mary raised one hand and rubbed his muzzle and wished she hadn't grown up so hard-hearted about things.

It was as if, on the way to somewhere, she had ignored a warning, and looked back and turned to stone.

When Jury walked through the door of Rancho del Reposo with a dusting of snow on his coat, the same two clerks sorting through what looked like the same registration cards looked up and smiled; the drinks room was warmed, just as it had been before, by a fire huge as hell throwing shadowy beckoning fingers across the tile floor.

He looked for Malcolm Corey as he stood in the doorway of the atrium-like coffee lounge where the sun, reflecting off the glass walls, threw confetti-like light across the faces of the customers. He could have sworn these were the same people he'd seen two days previously. He didn't see Malcolm Corey, but over there beneath the assortment of kachinas was Benny Betts playing tag with two telephones. No, three, Jury saw as he squeezed past tables and between chairs. One of the hotel phones had been delivered to Benny's table.

Chatter buzzed around Jury, with the occasional sting of a high-pitched laugh. Benny Betts motioned him to sit as he pointed a finger at the phone and winked and smiled as if Jury were in on the deal, too. Benny also waved the receiver that was not at his ear towards a silver coffee pot and a straw basket of bread and muffins, inviting Jury to eat and drink.

Jury sat down, pulled over a clean cup, poured, as he watched Benny Betts's animated face. He was the very emblem of West Coast cool. Blue eyes, teeth white as a collar of roiling surf, well-tanned. A California dream.

Which was just what Benny Betts trafficked in and was selling (did he ever buy?) over his portable phone. At any rate, he was at the end of it, for he was saying a Betts goodbye (ending on a question or a promise).

“Yo! Richard Jury, Superintendent Flatfoot!” Benny shot out his hand.

Jury smiled. “I'm surprised you're still here, but I'm also glad. You knew Angela Hope.”

Benny Betts cocked an eyebrow, looked at Jury out of innocent eyes. “Who?”

“Come on, Mr. Betts, you know who.”

“Benny, please. Why so formal?” Benny flashed a whitecap smile.

“Because I expect it's safer. Otherwise, I'd find myself with an agent and a walk-on part in a remake of
The Bill.
” Jury split a muffin. Why was he always eating these days? “Where's Malcolm Corey today?”

Betts pointed toward the outside, out toward the white distance where the road and the miniature figures were becoming blanketed in snow. “He's down there. I got him a couple lines in the picture. He's delirious.”

“I can imagine. You must be a marketing genius.”

“Pretty much. How come you're surprised I'm still here?”

“Because you strike me as a person who doesn't light for very long.”

Benny shrugged, poured some more coffee. “Makes no difference where I am. Here, there, everywhere. It's all the same.”

Jury ate his muffin. Carrot. He thought of Betty Ball's bakery. “Coming from you that sounds rather fatalistic. As if things were pretty much out of our control.”

Benny smiled, clasped his hands behind his head, in the way (Jury thought) he must have looked in his mahogany-paneled office in his executive swivel chair.

“They are.”

Jury looked up over his muffin. “This from the man who wants to remake
The Wizard of Oz
? I'm astonished.”

“Dorothy got a crummy deal. And the ending was a total cheat.”

“ ‘Crummy deal'? Meaning?”

“Well, she went through hell to find this wizard, so when she does, she discovers he's a fake.” Benny brushed some crumbs from his designer jacket. “But it's the greatest kidjep picture of all time. Classic.”

Jury frowned. “Kid
what
?”

“Kidjep, kidjep. You know, ‘kid-in-jeopardy.' You got a kidjep situation, you got prime box office. Guaranteed.” Benny drew a huge dollar sign in air.

“Does that make To to a dogjep?”

“Yak yak.” Benny eyed the phones, willing them to ring. Then he turned back to Jury. “You don't mind me saying, you look kind of down.”

Jury smiled. “I don't mind you saying. I am.”

“How come?”

Jury poured himself coffee, said, “I'm leaving tomorrow and I don't seem to have found any answers. Angela Hope—”

Benny Betts interrupted, frowning. “Answers? You been living in a fool's paradise, Richard Jury?”

Jury laughed. “Unfortunately, I do the kind of work that more or less calls for answers.”

“You mean you're looking for a
real
one?”

“Well, I'm sure as hell not looking for an
unreal
one.” Jury sipped his coffee.

Benny shoved his own cup aside to make room for his arms, which he folded on the table. He leaned towards Jury. “Did you learn about life at a fairy's knee?”

“Probably.”

“Because, if you don't mind my saying it, you are just too much into rationality.”

“Well, in my line of country, you deal in facts. In reality.”

Benny's laugh caused a number of tables to turn and smile in return. “That's rich, Rich.” He became suddenly sober. “All you can expect is virtual reality. You want a so-called solution? Hell, I can give you one. Or a dozen. The most you can do in this life is put a package together. Makes no difference what it is, take X from here, Y from here, Z from there—” his fingers flew up and out, pull, pull, pull—“and then you mush ‘em together. Makes no difference whatever what the three things are. It's the package that's box office.”

“X, Y, Z have to be related.”

Benny looked like he was going to spit. “It don't make a fuck whether they're related or not. If somebody said ‘kidjep-wizard-emerald' to you, would you think they were related?”

Jury frowned over this failure of logic. “Wait a minute. You can't use that because it's
a priori
, it's already a
fait accompli.
”

“Christ, he knows French, too,” Benny said to his audience of empty chairs.

“I'm talking about facts, Benny—”

“Facts?”

“To you, a dirty word; I'm a policeman, for God's sake—”

Benny shook his head at the chairs, as if the chairs empathized. “The worst kind, guys.”

“It's not a
fantasy
that three women are dead—”

Benny nodded his head.

“It's not a
fantasy
that they may have been murdered—”

Nod. Nod. Nod.

“And it's not a
fantasy
that Angela Hope's body was found in Wiltshire at Sarum—”

Nod. Nod. Nod. A quick little snap of Benny's fingers, then a banner drawn in air and “By God, I can see it. Can't you see it? Sarum. Sunrise, maybe sunset. The colors, oranges bleeding into reds. Get it? Like blood, maybe paints dripping through the credits? I see. Michelle—no—I see Melanie . . . hate that little shit, but she'd look great dead . . . the body on a stone slab in the middle. . . . ” He grabbed Jury's arm. “We scroll back maybe a few dozen centuries—what year was it built anyway?” Benny's hand stopped scrolling and reached—

Was he
really
going for that phone? Jury put his hand on the wrist. He wasn't going to be drawn into a Bettsian fantasy. “NO—” Jury looked round, ashamed he'd raised his voice. He whispered “No” again. Benny smiled with the most irritating benignity that Jury had ever seen. “Facts may be elusive, but they're still facts. Evidence. Hard evidence. If that's the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.”

Benny gave him a sad little head shake, checked his Rolex, and started bundling the portable telephones into their holders like babies in bassinets. “Well, you ain't gonna find no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, Rich. Trust me.”

Jury smiled. “So what
is
at the end of a rainbow?” He expected an answer of grating cynicism as Benny shouldered the leather straps.

But all he said was, “What makes you think it's got an end?”

It wasn't until he was brushing his teeth the next morning that Jury realized he'd probably been conned by Benny Betts. His head over the sink, Jury laughed so hard he nearly choked on Tom's of Maine Natural Toothpaste. Benny never did answer the question about his relationship with Angela Hope.

Chump
, he said to his reflection. Then he scrubbed his face dry with a towel, went out for a walk.

Something had woken him at dawn and he had risen and dressed. Now, he walked through the sleeping hotel to the elevators and took one to the roof. He wanted to see the sunrise. It came up out of the Sangre de Cristos first as light, then as color, pale and shimmering like beaten gold, then rose, blue—so beautiful it really did look as if a film choreographer were doing magic with his camera. No wonder the film folk loved Santa Fe. Snow on the mountains, in the crevices of the foothills, clear across the desert floor. It was not, certainly, a London dawn.

What makes you think it has an end
? He remembered these words of Benny Betts and somehow took comfort in them.

He walked around the plaza, nothing open yet, and drank in the light. The light had a clarity that was almost brittle. If only the mind were lit by such a light. Perhaps for someone like Nils Anders, it was. He was disappointed, returning to Exeter emptyhanded. But he had faxed a report to Macalvie every day, setting down who he saw, what was said, in as much detail as Jury could possibly remember. Unedited, no opinions given. Opinions could wait. So let Macalvie theorize. He'd even stayed an extra day when he was itching to be back in Stratford-upon-Avon. And that blasted fax from Plant:
She is Found
! Found where?

Ill humor made him feel slightly less impotent. (Blaming one's problems on others usually did.) And he shouldn't be angry with Melrose Plant, who had found her when not even the Stratford police seemed able to do it.

Jury whistled and crossed the Paseo de Peralta, admitting to himself that he must be, simply, jealous.

She is Found
! But not by him.

AROUND THE
small shopping center, the sodium vapor lights were extinguished and the interior lights of Schell's Pharmacy were just being switched on. On the glass door, the Closed sign had not yet been turned to Open. Jury waited. But Dolly Schell didn't see him before she was turning the big bunch of keys and the sign, and when she did, she opened her mouth, stepped back, eyes wide.

“Sorry. I didn't mean to scare you,” said Jury, opening the door.