Rainbow's End (54 page)

The number. Mary squinched her eyes shut to reason this out. For she was still sure it had to do with a prescription. Yet, it wasn't here. So she had to go back to thinking it couldn't be a prescription number. Or else . . . Dolly hadn't
wanted
to write it into the record book.

Mary sat in the pharmacist's cubicle and looked out over the counter into a darkness in which ghostly shapes of shelving were just visible. She knew all of those shelves; she'd certainly had to mess with
them often enough. Dolly Schell was obsessed with neatness: that worn-out adage of “everything in its place” was something Dolly carried to ludicrous extremes. How many times had Mary been told to review the shelves and rearrange shampoos and hair-color kits, face creams and makeup products? “You know what people do; they just pick something up, carry it somewhere else, put it down.” So Mary had to walk up and down the aisles or pluck articles from glass-topped counters and transport them back to their hair-product or makeup families. Clairol. Neutrogena. White Rain. Mary could recite this litany as if she were a worshiper telling her beads. She could find them in the dark, she'd become so familiar with the products.

It might be silly and sentimental, but Mary thought of them as “families.” The Revlon family of products; the Clairol family; the Prell family—very small was the Prell family. When she returned something like the economy-sized bottle of Almay shampoo to the other bottles around it, she could imagine the family applauding: Glad to see you back.

Okay, it was really silly and sentimental, but at least it was some sort of pleasant game that took the annoyance out of the chore of neatening up these shelves. And took a little of the sting out of Dolly Schell's shrill voice.
Cousin
Dolly Schell, Mary now reminded herself with a shudder.

The family Hope. The family Hope was down to one, herself. She refused to include Dolly in this diminished circle.

Right now, had it not been for her determination to find this prescription, Mary thought she'd fly to pieces. Perhaps she would. She put her head down on her crossed arms and then suddenly sat up. Sunny had disappeared again.

And now the noise she heard was definitely the door sucking open or shut, and she bet on open. Sunny wouldn't shove himself out the door, that was for certain. She squinted her eyes, looked toward the front (for it was from up there that she'd heard the sound), looked into heaped shadows. The room was abysmally dark. And even though she couldn't make out the face, Mary would recognize the taut figure of her cousin anywhere.

Mary was scared. She could not stay in this cubicle, behind this sliding glass like a fish in a fishbowl. Bending down a little, she made her silent way over to and out of the low-beamed door, and now was behind the counter where the cash register sat and in front of which
were shelves of aspirin, bromides, headache powders, cold pills and capsules. Back here she'd be an easy target too.

When she heard the first explosion, followed by a tracery of light, it was clear to her that Dolly hadn't just stopped to check on things. The bullet had torn the air just over her head and shattered the plate glass of the cubicle behind her. First she was frozen in her crouch, but then she moved under the hinged door of the countertop and to one of the shelves and wedged herself carefully in between the end of the shelf and the kachina display. She was around the corner from the hair-care products. It wasn't much of a hiding place; of course, she could be seen with the lights on, but it gave her a little more security than being out in the open. And if there was anything to Rosella's philosophy, she was protected by all of the gods represented in the kachina dolls. Mary didn't want to bet on them, though.

Suddenly, there was a thunderous crash and glass breaking. The gun fired again towards the rear counter. What had caused the crash? Didn't Dolly know her own pharmacy well enough to avoid bumping into the displays?

Another crash, another display over. Or this one might have been the rack of paperbacks, for there was the metallic
thump
, but no sound of breakage. And another shot aimed towards the front of the store.

Sunny
! That had to be Sunny, deliberately upsetting whatever he could get near, drawing the bullets to the front of the store. Was Dolly Schell firing a revolver, or an automatic?

How many shots did she get with it? How many shots in a barrel or a clip? Six in a barrel, Mary thought. But an automatic? God. Now she wished she'd paid more attention to that dumb Nancy Drew.

Quickly, she spun around, took one step, and grabbed one of the Neutrogena family's plastic economy-sized bottles of liquid soap, then as quickly spun back. Three shots, she had heard. But Dolly could easily have brought another clip with her, though that was doubtful; surely, she would have thought one shot would do, maybe two.

One was enough, thought Mary, unscrewing the cap of the plastic bottle. And Dolly was crazy, but she wasn't stupid. She must have figured out by this time that she was shooting blind and that the noises were only distract—

No, she hadn't. In the two or three seconds allowed by the fourth shot, Mary wheeled back to the aisle and emptied the bottle on the
floor for two or three feet, in a quick, zigzag pattern. At the same time, she grabbed another canister from the second shelf up—hair products—and wheeled back to her original position behind the kachina display.

Sunny. Sunny. Mary Dark Hope held the canister ready and prayed. This was going to have to be—what was the word?—orchestrated. She felt her hearing to be supercharged, ears that in this heightened state of nerves would be able, literally, to hear a pin drop. She heard the muffled sounds of someone approaching. Up the aisle.

Sunny.
Mary felt as taut as a bowstring. The temptation was strong just to stand here behind these teetering dolls and hope she wouldn't be seen, and they wouldn't fall. That was stupid; of course, she'd be seen. Now there was the heaviest silence she could imagine. Like being in a cavern. But she could
feel
the person coming closer.

Then a long cry and the shelves swaying with the weight of someone trying to use them for support. Swayed too much to one side and finally fell with a thunderous crash, but fell away from Dolly, not on her. Mary darted out once again, took aim and pushed the nozzle of the canister of hair mousse, and shot it right into Dolly's face, the huge whipped egg of it messing up her eyes enough to keep her from taking aim. At the same time, Sunny lunged, knocked the half-kneeling figure of Dolly back down on the soapy tile, kept her down with his paws on her chest. His tail straight out, ears up, Sunny snapped his teeth; his gaping mouth was a hairsbreadth from her face. It was one of the scariest sights and sounds Mary had ever witnessed coming from either dog or coyote. Dolly still had the gun in her thrown-back hand, but to raise it and fire would have taken one second longer than it would have taken Sunny's teeth to rip her neck open.

Through the windows beginning to lighten, Mary could see it all. She looked all around the room. Gray light filtered through the plate glass windows, and a band of dull gold stretched beyond them over the low roofs of the houses and lit the yellow leaves of the cottonwoods. Now she could see clearly, bathed in pale light, the wreckage, the killer, the Coyote.

“Land of Enchantment,” said Mary Dark Hope.

“I don't think she put much faith in the rescue mission,” Nils Anders was saying.

Jury had just finished talking to the Santa Fe police. Jack Oñate had told him what had happened.

“I don't think she puts much faith in anything,” said Jury, the telephone cradled between his shoulder and jaw. His hands were busy trying to wrench free a bit of silk material caught in Carole-anne's zipper. Wasn't she old enough to dress herself?

Carole-anne looked over her shoulder, down at Jury who was sitting in his easy chair. “ ‘She' who?”

“Hold still,” said Jury.

From his end of the line, in Santa Fe, Nils Anders said, “What?”

“Not you.” Jury laughed. “I'm helping a neighbor dress. Why do women wear dresses with zippers down the damned back?”

Carole-anne said, “To give butterfingers like you a way to be useful.”

Nice back, though, Jury had to admit. No sign of a bra strap. He guessed what was holding Carole-anne up was pure faith in her own ascendancy.

Nils Anders continued his account of what had happened that morning. “They took Dolly Schell into custody, pretty much ranting and raving.”

“Did she rant about Angela Hope?”

“Oh, yes, but not by way of confessing to anything. Not that it makes any difference; trying to kill Mary—” he cleared his throat—“that's enough to hang her.”

“You still lynch people out there in the West?”

“You know what I mean.”

Finally, the zipper came unstuck and he pulled it up Carole-anne's back. He was almost sorry to see the back move away from him over to the sofa where she was now rooting through a sponge bag.

Nils continued to talk. Jury leaned back to listen. He knew everything Nils was telling him, but he also knew Nils needed to tell it. He watched Carole-anne dabbing bright polish on her nails, her forehead puckered in concentration.

“I can't remember ever encouraging her to think that . . . ” Nils Anders paused, searching for some self-effacing way of putting the fact Dolly Schell had been obsessively in love with him. “. . . to believe I thought of her—I never encouraged her to think I felt anything other than friendship.” He paused again. “I can't believe I was the cause of this.”

“You weren't.” Jury hoped his tone wasn't too harsh. “Her plan was too elaborate to attribute it to frustrated love, Nils. You weren't the cause; you were the catalyst. Jealousy of Angela Hope had been building up over half of Dolly Schell's life.”

Another silence as Nils thought this over.

“But Mary's okay, isn't she?”

Nils laughed. “More okay than I, that's for sure. When I walked in there and saw the mess—Sunny had blood on his paws—I was terrified. I'm still terrified. I should stick to my axioms and theories, shouldn't I?”

“No. You're the one person Mary Dark Hope respects. The only one, as far as I know. You're obligated to her for that.” Jury didn't know why he'd said this. The notion of “obligation” had come out of nowhere. It was something like the sense of responsibility the savior feels for the person he's saved.

There was a long silence and Jury waited. Nils Anders probably treated a phone call much as he would an in-the-flesh visit: something to be punctuated by silences. Jury could visualize him in his swivel chair staring out at the rope of lights framing the window across Canyon Road. Then he watched Carole-anne raise her hands, fingers splayed, to scrutinize her painted nails.

“Not the only one she respects,” Nils finally answered. “There's you. Mary said she wished you hadn't left. Mary never expresses feelings like that.”

“Tell her I'll call her.”

“I will, but you better do it.”

Jury smiled at Anders's tone. It was rigorous, instructive. “I will.”

As they wound up the conversation, Jury saw that Carole-anne had flopped on the couch, apparently having appeased the gods of beauty. Dress zipped and nails polished, she was now released from beauty's demands, as if beauty were a chore, like washing up, that she was done with for a time and could return to being just Carole-anne, high heels flicked off, stretched out, a magazine held above her face.

He got up, stretched, walked to the window, and watched the rain streak the glass. Despite the depressing little lecture Dr. Sloane gave Macalvie, he was still dying for a cigarette. Where in hell was Plant? Should he try Ruthven again? Lasko? He'd rung each of them a half-dozen times already. He turned and started pacing. God, but a cigarette would help. Then he thought of Des, surrounded by them, yet, she hadn't fallen prey to them. And did anyone appreciate he'd given the damned things up? No. He stopped and said, “Notice anything different about me?” His tone was full of challenge.

Carole-anne tilted her head back to look at him upside down, her red-gold hair cascading to the carpet. “About you? No.” That closed the matter and she lifted her head back to the cushioned arm of the sofa and kept on with her magazine. Jury was not permitted to change.

It made him smile a bit, but then he grew irritated again. He was not to be congratulated nor sympathized with. What's more, Carole-anne was one of those smokers who could actually take it or leave it. How dare she be able to smoke one day and then not for days, not for weeks even? “So where are
you
going?”

“The Nine-One-Nine. Me and Stone's going.”

The Nine-One-Nine was Stan Keeler's gig. It was always jammed; it was the only club, the only place, where a person could see Stan Keeler. Jury glared at Carole-anne—not that she noticed. He wasn't sure he approved of this whole business. Approved? Who was he to approve or disapprove of Carole-anne's male friends? He was about to say something when there was a knock on the door. More of a thump, really.

Her eyes still glued to the fashion mag, Carole-anne said, “That's Stone.”

Jury looked from the door to the recumbent Carole-anne, who was making no quick moves to get up.

Flicking back a page of the magazine, she said, “Well, you going to let him in?”

“
I'm
to let him in? Is this how I end up? Doorman to a dog?”

She said only, “He's early.”

Jury rolled his eyes and yanked open his door. Stone sat there. “You're early,” said Jury. Stone was not above giving Jury a few friendly tail swishes. “Come in anyway.”

Stone entered, stopped, sniffed at some odor that eluded Jury, and then sat down and gazed at Carole-anne.