“Paperwork, mostly. Bills, mortgage information, insurance policies. I’ll read those in a moment. There’s a folder here on the museum Nate mentioned. I haven’t gone through it yet.”
She went back to work. Most of the cupboards were empty. Some contained computer gadgets, speakers, printer cables, and the like. There were no photo albums, no congratulatory cards on retirement, no evidence of the business Drayton had run. Midway through, though, she found what she was looking for. The central bookcase was anchored to the wall because its cabinet contained a safe. Not a high-tech safe but the standard kind available at Walmart, weighing in at several hundred pounds with a digital lock. To open it, they’d need to call in a team member or unearth the combination among Drayton’s papers.
“This is where he should have kept the gun.”
Khattak joined her at the safe, hunching down.
“Perhaps he needed the safe for something more important than the gun.”
“Like what? A will? A fortune in black-market diamonds? The guns that go with that ammo?”
“We need that combination if we’re to find out.”
“It might be in his papers. It’s probably not anything as obvious as his birth date.”
Khattak was studying the digital display.
“It’s five digits.”
“I’ll keep looking.”
There was a filing cabinet beside the printer. It was jammed tight, but most of it was old tax returns on a business Drayton had run. A profitable parking lot he had owned downtown. No evidence of drugs or guns or anything else out of the ordinary. Nothing that would necessitate the deadly black weapon on the floor. She yanked the lower drawer forward. It was caught on a file that had slid in over the others. When she pulled it out, the papers inside spilled through her fingers.
“Sir.”
The pages were identical to one she had found in Drayton’s wallet. The tops and bottoms torn away, a few chopped-off sentences in the center of each page.
She read through them slowly.
This is a cat-and-mouse game. Now it’s your turn to play it.
What was it you told me? You survive or you disappear. Somehow you managed both.
As you took everything from me, you asked if I was afraid.
How could I not be afraid?
Do you hear as we did the starved wolves howling in the night?
Do you feel as if you’d never been alive?
Can you right all the wrongs of the past? Because I tell you that the sky is too high and the ground is too hard.
Something about the words frightened Rachel. Alone each sentence meant nothing. Together they ran like a kind of damaged poetry.
She looked up to find Khattak’s face had changed, his weariness shed for animation. The randomness of the words meant something to him.
“This doesn’t read like a suicide note, sir. Maybe a confession. And what’s missing here? Why are the pages torn?”
He already knew, she could tell.
“He didn’t write these himself,” she went on. “Someone was sending them to him. That’s what’s missing from each page. The salutation and the signature. Someone was threatening him.”
“I don’t think these are threats.”
“Then what?”
“Reminders. If someone did send these pages to Drayton, it’s because they wanted to remind him of something.”
“And you already know what that something is,” she concluded, exasperated. “I’m not much help to you like this, sir. Wouldn’t it be easier on both of us if you just told me what you know?”
Khattak set the pages down on the desk, sizing her up.
“There’s nothing concrete for me to tell you. I’m relying on your clearheadedness. You have a knack for digging things up that most people would leave alone.”
Rachel rubbed a hand over her lank, dark hair. How many times did she have to remind herself not to wear a ponytail at night? It did nothing for glamour and it gave her a headache.
“Right now the only knack I have is for some fresh air and my bed. Call it a night, sir?”
He handed her the pages.
“Take these with you. Something might come to you.”
“What about you?”
“I’m going to see if I can find the combination to that safe. And if not, we’ll call someone in.”
* * *
He didn’t want any of this to be true. He didn’t want the words on the pages to have the meaning that Tom Paley’s phone call suggested to him.
The sky too high, the ground too hard.
He ran the name Tom had given him over his tongue, hating the way it sounded, hating the rise and fall of its syllables.
Would the past not serve them better left in the past? Its muted face buried, its gravestones a world away? Things he wished he hadn’t seen, people who rose like ghosts in his mind. And always that music—its trenchant melody, insistent, unrelenting: there was something here once. We were something.
He heard his wife’s voice raised in reproach.
We owe the living the truth. It’s the only coin of justice left to offer.
Samina had always been braver than he, able to see things as they were, able to shoulder her way forward to difficult truths.
This truth wasn’t difficult.
It was devastating.
That was what he hadn’t been able to bring himself to tell Rachel Getty, despite the trust in her dark eyes.
He knew, of course, why he had gone to see Nate. Throughout his life, every one of his sins had been confessed to Nate. The only letters he had written, the only stories he had told, had been to Nate. If he’d said to Nate, “I think Christopher Drayton was murdered and here’s why,” Nate would have understood him instantly. There would have been no need for further explanation.
Esa and Nate. Clare and Khattak. Seaton’s diabolical duo.
He’d seen the pleasure in Nate’s eyes at the door, the hope. The hope that Esa had finally let go of the anger and judgment that had characterized the last two years of their friendship. The banner should have made it easy, the absence of Laine’s portrait even more so.
He told himself he was a compassionate man, not one to judge lest he be judged. As Nate had once judged him, staring across the divide as if he’d never seen him before.
So he’d wanted to tell Nate about Drayton, wanted to seek his help, except that one moment was always with him. Nate turning away when nothing could have hurt Khattak worse than Nate’s defection.
His wife’s death was still the emptiest part of him. His deep-rooted faith and the seven years that had passed since had made it bearable—but if he was honest with himself, it was the presence of Nate, always beside him, that had enabled him to see the way forward again. It had given him a means of putting his tragedy into perspective: he wasn’t alone to suffer. Others had suffered and would suffer far more than he ever had. With hardship would come ease. Lo, with hardship comes ease.
Lately, there had only been hardship.
He knew what he sought from Nate, as much as he knew why Rachel had become a friend. A friend he would protect and shield in any situation even as he kept a part of himself from her. But who besides Tom Paley could he discuss Drayton with? Tom, who wanted the knowledge less than Esa did.
That Drayton was a man risen from hell.
4.
Father, take care of my children, look after my children.
“I’ve learned a little more about the museum,” Khattak said.
“How long were you at Drayton’s house last night?”
“Enough to discover two important things. One, the will’s not at hand, but there are two insurance policies that name Melanie Blessant as the beneficiary. And two, Drayton was preparing to a make a major donation to a local arts project called the Andalusia Museum.”
“How major?”
“At least a hundred thousand dollars worth, maybe more.”
Today Rachel was in Khattak’s car, cautioned to leave her breakfast sandw
ich in her handbag until she could remove herself from its immaculate environs. Her stomach rumbled but they both ignored it. Khattak had gotten used to her habit of eating on the fly.
“Pickup game this morning?”
It was Rachel’s most common excuse for missing breakfast. She was a forward on a women’s hockey team and her schedule was erratic.
“We lost four to one. Looks like I’m not getting in enough practice.” She smirked at him. “Who’s David Newhall and why are we meeting him?”
“One of the neighbors from the list Nate gave us. Someone who might shed some light on Drayton and the museum. He’s listed as a director on the project. He works at the university up here. Have you been here before?”
“No, thank God. I was at the downtown campus. I heard they used this place as a stand-in for a nuclear bomb shelter on War of the Worlds.”
As they pulled up the long drive to the Scarborough campus, Rachel could see why. The new signage wasn’t fooling anybody. It was still just a series of concrete blocks.
“I think they call this brutalism,” Khattak offered.
“It’s brutal, all right.”
They made their way to the administrative offices where significant reconstruction was under way. From the outside dark and dour, inside it was all glass walls and newly minted light. The corridors were thronged by students lining up to arrange for their photo ID. A pert Asian receptionist waved them through the line to a small inner office.
“Mr. Newhall’s expecting you.”
So that was one phone call Khattak was prepared to make.
Inside, they were greeted by a man of middle height with a wedge-shaped face, cropped black hair, and close-set eyes behind square frames. His speech was clipped and he spoke with pronounced impatience.
“How may I help you, Inspector?”
Rachel, he ignored. She sat back in the chair he had offered, fascinated by the thick, dark eyebrows that bristled when he spoke, an outlet for the nervous energy he exuded.
“As I mentioned on the phone, we were hoping for some background on Christopher Drayton. I understand he was a friend.”
Newhall didn’t answer right away. On the desk before him was a plentiful amount of paperwork, cordoned off into separate piles. He ran nail-bitten fingers along the edges of these, his gaze moving between Rachel and Khattak. She was struck by an impression of guardedness.
“I knew him in passing. We live in the same general area but I doubt I knew him better than any other of my neighbors.”
“Nathan Clare told us you were working together on a museum project.”
Newhall stopped drumming his fingers on his desk. “I’m afraid Nathan is mistaken. Chris Drayton had nothing to do with it.”
“He was planning to make a sizable donation. We found a list of museum directors among his papers with your name on it.”
Newhall adjusted his glasses. His scowl took in Rachel as well. “I thought Chris fell from the Bluffs. A simple accident.”
“As far as we know, that’s correct. We’re merely following up. As a director, you must have some idea why Chris would be interested in supporting your project.”
He laid a slight stress on Drayton’s name. Newhall dismissed it.
“He was a latecomer to the museum. He wanted something to stamp his name on. He had a passing interest in Spanish history, he must have decided it would do.”
“A hundred thousand dollars suggests more than a passing interest to me. In his papers, the museum is called the Christopher Drayton Andalusia Museum.”
For some reason, this information rendered Newhall motionless, his nervous energy concentrated. When he spoke, his tone was thoughtful. “He had a certain grandiosity about him,” he admitted, “but nothing about the museum is for sale. Mink would never allow it.”
Rachel straightened in her seat with interest, brushing an imaginary crumb from her rust-colored jacket. She’d been out of uniform for a while now but hadn’t done much to supplement the track suits that made up most of her wardrobe. The jacket was an exception. She wanted to reflect well on Khattak, who was never at a loss in this department.
“Who’s Mink?” she asked.
“I’m sorry, I meant Mink Norman. She’s the director of the project, the sole reason it exists. I’m surprised her name wasn’t on your list.”
Rachel couldn’t decide if Newhall was pointing them to someone else because he had something to hide or because he was genuinely attempting to be helpful.
“I’m not sure I understand what the museum has to do with Chris’s death,” Newhall added.
“At the moment, we’re simply getting a sense of the people Drayton knew. Nathan Clare mentioned he’d invited you both to the same dinner.”
“Did he also happen to mention that as far as social events go, it was a disaster? The great man pontificating about his largesse to anyone who would listen? He used his wallet to shunt aside people who’d put in two years’ work on the house. He even had that ghastly Melanie Blessant work her dubious magic on a few of the directors. We heard him out, but that was as far as it went.”
“I’m sorry, what house is this? I thought we were talking about a museum.”
Before he could answer Rachel’s question, the receptionist knocked at his door. “Your first appointment is here,” she mouthed through the glass.
Newhall jumped to his feet like a spring unbound. Khattak and Rachel followed suit, Rachel trying to place his flattened manner of speech.
“One moment, Mr. Newhall. What about the house? And what is it you do at the university?”
He patted the files on his desk, a look of quiet pride on his face. “I’m an administrator. I work with the student body on bursaries and scholarship applications. As for the house, if you’ve been to see Clare you must have seen it—it’s on the same circle. The museum is the house. Its name is Ringsong, which I might point out is the only name we ever considered for it.”
“May we have your home address, sir?” They had it already from Nathan Clare’s list, she just wanted to see if he would give it to them.
Newhall raised his eyebrows but didn’t demur. He lived on Lyme Regis.
Rachel was familiar with it. It cut across both Scarborough Heights and Cathedral Bluffs. It was also within walking distance of Drayton’s house.
“We may stop by sometime,” she told him.
Again there was that fractional pause that made Rachel think of a fox warily skirting a trap. She knew death brought out hitherto unsuspected depths in people, but this was something else.
“Come by any time you like. I’m glad to help on any matter related to Chris. I didn’t appreciate his attempts to railroad us, but for all that, he was a kind man.”
There was no sorrow on his face as he spoke, nor as he ushered them from his office.
“Works with people, does he?” she muttered under her breath.
“We’ll talk in the car,” Khattak said easily, as if he’d gotten everything he wanted from Newhall. And maybe he had. He had a head full of information as to why they were meandering after Drayton in the first place. They hadn’t seen his body. Their search of his home had been cursory. No background information had been pulled beyond the commonplace. And there’d been nothing the least bit interesting about the man except the fact that he’d had money to burn and, apparently, an inexplicable desire to turn patron of the arts in the golden years of his life. And he gardened. If something about this was making Khattak anxious, she’d have loved to know what it was.
She hoped the trust they’d established during their case in Waverley wasn’t a chimera. She valued it. She wanted it again, because it had been a long time since anyone had trusted her and she’d felt the same in return. She was looking for the equalizer.
Rachel lowered her window. It was a crisp fall day outside, with a coruscation of wind that arranged the air in rippling phrases. The broken spindles of leaves were assembled in piles along the sidewalks as they drove.
“What n
ow?” she asked Khattak.
He made a show of consulting his wristwatch, one of the few men she knew who still wore one in the days of the iPhone.
“We should visit Melanie Blessant, if only to rule her out. She seems to have loomed large in Drayton’s life. And if possible, I’d like to view this museum.”
Rule her out of what? Rachel wondered. A fall from the cliff? But she knew the cherished maxim of “follow the woman, follow the money” as well as Khattak did.
They had an accidental death, they had a woman who benefited from it, and they had a great deal of money in play. Or at least, they would, once a will turned up.
“What about the safe? We could get Paul or Dec on it. Paul, most likely.”
Paul Gaffney was the tech expert on their team, a viable choice. Khattak’s agenda didn’t seem to suggest any hurry to unlock the safe, however.
As if in answer to her thoughts, he said, “Let’s give it a day or so before we start using up resources. We may find there’s nothing here after all. A man fell to his death, that’s it.”
From the tone of his voice, that was what he was hoping for. A short, simple solution that was anything except what was rattling around in his thoughts.
His face was paler than usual today, the line of his mouth tightly held, his movements edgy. Something was weighing on him like an anvil. And it was either Drayton or Nathan Clare.
“What did you think of Newhall?”
She waited for him to brake at the crosswalk ahead, which he did at the last minute. An elderly woman in a pair of green flannel pants glared at them over her shoulder as she sped through the crosswalk.
“He seemed cagey, I thought,” she went on, without waiting for his answer. “Also a bit intense. A little quick to take offense.”
“He didn’t like Drayton, but if he’s comfortable with us coming by his house, he must have some notion of public duty.”
Rachel pondered this. She hadn’t found Newhall remotely attractive, yet there was something compelling about his lean-limbed energy.
“He did a fair bit of finger-pointing. Gave us two other names to go for.”
Khattak looked at her briefly. “There may be no fingers to point. It could be he thinks there’s nothing to hide.”
The Unquiet Dead Page 3
