Rainbow's End

by Martha Grimes

  Melrose put a five-pound note in his hand, accepted his change, said “You’re welcome” to Mr. Perkins’s “Ta very much,” and left the shop, wondering as he looked down the street at the peeling front doors, the bald front yards, the curbside refuse, the rusted-out tricycles and chains—how the neighborhood could go very far down.

  As he drew near the Cripps house, he saw the kiddies were engaged in playing some sort of game that would no doubt end with one or more fatalities. If they played it right. Melrose paused on the pavement to observe three of them, the older boy and two of the younger girls, busily tying Piddlin’ Pete to a starved tree. It was so wispy that it bent backwards from the weight of the body. Piddlin’ Pete was (naturally) heaving with sobs, since no game could be called officially a Cripps game unless there was plenty of weeping and wailing. Screaming, preferably. Two other children, one boy and one girl who might have been Crippses—it was hard to say—were gathering up bits of debris. The taller girl shoved a bundle of laundry or a blanket at Pete, insisting that he take it. Laundry? Melrose grew anxious. Or was that the infant being pressed into service? The boy was moving toward the mingy tree and appeared to be scattering the sticks and paper at its base. Melrose decided this was in danger of being lit, and since no one inside the house was paying attention to the screams and yells, the task fell to him.

  “I say!”

  They all turned toward him, mouths open, eyelashless eyes wide. Seeing who it was, they gave up their game (even Piddlin’ Pete stopped yelling) and rushed Melrose, who was busily searching his pockets for coins and swatting their dirty, sticky fingers away. He held on to the coins and grabbed the baby away from Piddlin’ Pete who looked about to drop it in the excitement. Then he told them to release Petey before they saw a single coin.

  Petey, ecstatic with freedom, yanked down his short trousers and celebrated his release in the only way he knew how.

  Melrose passed out the coins, pounds and fifty-pence pieces, and they all raced toward the front door, shouting in their various voices: “Elroy’s here! Mam, Elroy’s back!” so that White Ellie could barely shout her greeting to Melrose through this melee. “Shut yer mouths! ’is name ain’t Elroy, it’s Melrose, ye stupid gits,” she yelled, giving the ones she could collar as they raced past her a sound smack on the bottom, after which she greeted Melrose like a prodigal son. “ ’E’s a duke or earl, one a them, anyways, and you don’t call ’im by ’is given name, anyways! ’E’s Mr. Plant!”

  Melrose started to hand over the infant in its swaddling clothes, but White Ellie told him to hang on a bit whilst she straightened the carriage. “Ta very much,” she said, as if it were an oversight like a pint of milk she’d forgotten to pull in from the front stoop. When she reached into the carriage to pull the blankets about, a ginger cat sprang out with a baby’s bonnet swinging from its mangy neck. “Gloria! You been at this cat again?” she yelled.

  Neither Gloria nor the others paid any attention to this query, but merely broke the circle in order to collapse in front of the telly, which Bea Slocum was watching flanked by a short, chunky man on one side and a younger man on the other, whom Melrose presumed to be Gabe Merchant. He was sitting—or lying—on his spine and had the disoriented look of a drug user. He would have to compete with the telly again. There must have been a commercial break, for Melrose caught a glimpse of a huge can of cola. The audience was no longer watching.

  White Ellie yelled to Gloria again, who yelled back “Uh-huh” and the rest all giggled and formed another circle, skipping around to the beat of “Uh-huh uh-huh uh-huh uh-huh.”

  “You come give this ’ere carriage a wash!” called their mother, who moved more quickly than Melrose would have imagined possible and smacked one girl (presumably Gloria) on the bottom. “I’ll uh-huh all your little arses, see if I don’t!”

  But, of course, they took it as one more Crippsian game, this running from Ellie’s stinging hand, doubled over with giggles.

  The chunky fellow, Ash Cripps, introduced the fellow sitting on one side of Bea as “Gabriel,” and the chunky man as “me business partner, Edgar Debens.”

  Mr. Debens rose and came smartly over to pump Melrose’s hand and to push a card toward him reading, DEBENS USED AUTOS, “NOT AS OLD AS YOU THINK.”

  Freeing one arm from the baby bundle on which he had deposited the bacon, Melrose shook Eddie’s hand and gave his gift of bacon to Ellie. She was ecstatic, announcing to one and all they’d have bacon for their tea.

  This brought on another chorus of hallelujah as the kiddies bounced back up, formed their goblin ring, and skipped in a circle, chanting “Streakybacon, streakybacon, streakybacon!” Melrose found it almost laudable that the kiddies could work up piles of enthusiasm for whatever was available (be it Elroy, streaky bacon, or whatever); they took their entertainment where they found it, and would applaud if their house were burning down around their ears. Ash Cripps thanked Melrose profusely, took the white package, and said he was going to the kitchen to start a fry-up.

  White Ellie made no move to relieve Melrose of his burden, for she had been and still was engaged in some sort of argument with Eddie Debens. In her high, nasal voice, she began in the middle of whatever anecdote she was relating. “So I tells ’im, he wants ’is little bit a stray, ’e can bleedin’ well pack up. Up t’pub ’e was, with ’er round the corner—”

  Melrose had no idea what she was talking about. Nor did she make a further move to accommodate the infant that Melrose continued bouncing lightly in his arms. She continued her argument with Eddie. Argument, Melrose knew, was merely the form of discourse amongst the parent Crippses, just as bringing that lamp over there down on the head of Piddlin’ Pete was the form of discourse amongst the Cripps kiddies.

  Their father commanded the older boy to stop and they all fell down on the floor again, laughing.

  “Idjits,” said White Ellie.

  Finally, Melrose sat down with the baby in a broken springed chair, covered with an ancient quilt, to talk—if possible—to Beatrice and Gabe. When he mentioned Frances Hamilton (who he had to identify for Gabe as the lady in Tate), Gabe frowned and said, “Why you asking questions? You ain’t police.”

  “Brilliant,” said Bea, sending Melrose an empathetic little smile as she rested her head on Gabe’s shoulder.

  “You’re quite right, I’m not. I’m an anomaly, of no particular creed or purpose.”

  That was too steep for Gabe. He narrowed his eyes and asked, “You mean, a private detective, like?”

  “Brilliant.” Bea said it again.

  A smell of frying bacon wafted into the room and the kiddies all jumped up and filed out.

  “A friend of the police superintendent you spoke to. Jury. You and Bea are the only people we know of who noticed Mrs. Hamilton. Did you recall anything at all about her?”

  “Yeah, well I told him what I know. Which was nuffin’. Hey, Elephant, ain’t you got nuffin’ to drink except tea?” He yelled across the room to White Ellie, and started to get up.

  Bea pulled him down. “Only answer the bloody question, will ya?”

  “I told ya.” Grudgingly, he resat himself.

  Melrose jigged the baby a few times and said, “You told Beatrice that you saw this Mrs. Hamilton in the Tate’s portrait exhibit that day.”

  “So she was lookin’ at the bleedin’ pictures, wasn’t she? It’s a bleedin’ picture gallery.”

  Behind Melrose, one or other of the kiddies was wreaking havoc on another of them, and Bea yelled at them: “Be quiet, you lot!”

  The movement of the baby in Melrose’s arms was no more substantial than that of a moth. The odor of frying bacon began to penetrate into the parlor here; Melrose asked Bea if there was a fish-and-chips place anywhere in the vicinity.

  “Up on the Circular Road, yeah,” she said.

  He shifted in the rocking chair, settling Robespierre securely in the crook of one arm and pulling out his money clip with the other hand. He called the kiddies over, ma
de them line up smartly, and dispensed five-pound notes. They gave Melrose about the same astonished look they might have given Father Christmas. Even Robespierre’s blue eyes widened.

  Said Melrose, “All right, be sure you buy fish and chips for everyone, that’s six of us as well as you six. Understand?”

  Ecstatic over the anticipated double treat of streaky bacon and fish and chips, they all chorused “Uh-huh uh-huh,” which was going to be the only response elicited, since they’d discovered how funny it was.

  “Get going, you lot!” said Gabe.

  They got going. Led by Gloria, they threw their arms in the air like high divers on a springboard, but the footwork was reminiscent of a Hitler Youth rally. They filed in a line out the front door, chanting,

  Uh-huh

  El-roy

  Uh-huh

  El-roy

  with Piddlin’ Pete bringing up the rear. Just as his bald bottom disappeared through the front door, Ellie came in from the kitchen, grabbed his pants, and yelled “Yer strides, Petey, yer strides!”

  Robespierre opened his eyes, fixed them on Melrose, and thrust his fist in his mouth.

  To thwart sudden sickness (Melrose wondered); to hold back a scream? No, apparently the fist merely did duty as something to chew on. The eyes riveted on Melrose (if such a vacant blue stare can “rivet”), and then closed again.

  “About this Mrs. Hamilton, Gabe. Why is it that you remember her?”

  Gabe’s brow furrowed. “Why? I dunno, do I. Anyway, what’s all this in aid of? Why’s everybody so interested in this lady?”

  “Because there were two more deaths in similar circumstances.” Not literally true, but he had to get Gabe to fix his attention somehow. “These three people, all women, seemed to have known one another. All three of them might have been murdered.”

  Gabe looked at him, surprised, and Robespierre opened his eyes to fix Melrose with another scarifying blue look.

  Melrose rocked and asked again. “So is there anything at all, even something that didn’t seem significant, you can remember?”

  Gabe chewed his thumb, seemed to be honestly trying to recollect.

  Beatrice raised her head and said to him, “You told me she looked chalky, white like you might get if you’re gonna be sick.”

  “Yeah. Yeah, I guess I did. She was just standin’ there lookin’ sick-white and pickin’ at something.”

  Melrose stared at him. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, like a bit a stickin’ plaster.” He held up one hand so that Melrose could inspect the bandage around his finger. Gauze and sticking plaster.

  “On her hand?”

  “Nah. On her arm, like.”

  Melrose thought of his talk with Lady Cray. “Mrs. Hamilton had a heart condition. She treated it with nitroglycerin patches. But that she would have worn on her chest.”

  “How would I know, I never seen one of them things. Wasn’t lookin’ down her bosom.” He leered.

  Beatrice had sat up. “Well, my God, you think she got too much of the stuff and it made her really sick or something?”

  “It’s possible. Unlikely, though, I should think.” Some Harley Street specialist, Andrew’s fiancée had said about Frances Hamilton’s doctor. Jury should have a talk with the physician; he wouldn’t be likely to give information to Melrose. He sat there in the rocking chair, creaking back and forth, back and forth, noisily. But it didn’t disturb his thoughts; he was lost in them. He was thinking about “J.M.W.,” recalling what Diane had told him about Turner’s black dog. “The dog was just an afterthought.” Melrose frowned. An afterthought, an accident, an addition completely unplanned.

  What if the death of one of them—only one of them—had been planned and the other deaths were accidental? Part of the whole picture, yes, but not part of the original plan. Not coincidence, but accident, an unlucky confluence of events. Frances Hamilton and Helen Hawes meeting accidentally in Santa Fe; both of them coming across Angela Hope, another accidental meeting. One of them had been meant to die and he chose Angela Hope as the target; Nell Hawes and Fanny Hamilton had died (metaphorically speaking) from the terrorist’s stray bullet. The deaths of Nell and Fanny were only afterthoughts.

  “Make a good mum, you would.” Gabe grinned for the first time that afternoon.

  THIRTY-NINE

  Rosella believed that Mary came out here to the middle of this desert in order to commune with nature or to meditate. That was a laugh. The last thing nature wanted was to commune with the world of men, especially during the tourist season. Mary could think better out here where the flat land stretched away as far as the eye could see.

  She sat on a smooth rock by a clump of rice grass, looking out over the arroyo. Sunny lay beside her with his head on his paws, his eyes darting between the massed rocks and the piñon bushes, tracking mice or ground squirrels. She let people think that Sunny was part silver-gray German shepherd and part something else. She was vague about the something else, hoping that would explain Sunny’s extremely long legs. Sunny was a coyote. She had found him when he was a pup and could hardly believe her eyes when he squirmed out from a den in the hillside. What had happened to his family? Coyotes never abandoned their children. Unlike humans, who would do it in a heartbeat. Many knew that coyotes couldn’t be tamed altogether, that deep down was the raw spirit that could exert itself. “Attani” was what Rosella called it: danger.

  She remembered passing a sheep ranch once where there must have been a hundred coyote hides looped all along the fence. An old Navajo had told her once that if you skin a coyote, you release a powerful spirit. And she believed it. There was something about Sunny that was magical. The way he could disappear and then as suddenly reappear. He’d be there, then he wouldn’t. Always he came back to her but she couldn’t for the life of her explain how he managed this trick. Rosella said “that coyote” was a magician in his past life. Ghost dog, Angela had called him. Rosella called him Trickster. What would become of Sunny if she had to go and live with foster parents?

  That social worker. How could anyone take anyone seriously with a name like “Bibbi”? What sort of grown-up would allow herself to be hampered by a childhood nickname like that? Babyhood nickname, even. But the social worker (whose name was really Barbara) seemed to think it was cute. Now it appeared that Mary Dark Hope’s own future depended on somebody who called herself Bibbi and asked questions like “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

  Alive. That’s what she wanted to be; that’s what she’d told the social worker. As far as Mary was concerned, she’d been born grownup. She was the one who had to call up the electric company when the lights went out. Rosella would go around wringing her hands and praying; Angie would just get out candles and sit in the dark meditating.

  She wouldn’t do it, that’s all. She wouldn’t go live with total strangers.

  Mary Dark Hope put her head in her hands.

  Now she came here more often and stayed longer since Angela’s death. When the news had first been told her, she must have gone into a sort of fugue state, a state of nonfeeling.

  Sometimes she saw her, saw Angela; she saw Angela walking toward her. Sometimes she would be called from sleep, and Angela would appear as if a distance away. And then would walk toward her, coming closer and closer, but never within touching distance. Angela was always wearing the same loose bluish-greenish dress that tie-dyeing had made look watery and always there would be that ankle bracelet she wore giving off the faint tinkle of bells. At other times Mary would see her out here, walking toward her from a distance, shimmering through the electric heat.

  Mary had never told anyone this, first because no one would believe it, except Rosella, and she’d believe it in the wrong way. Rosella was still crying—sad that Angela’s body was lying on a slab in another country, when she should have been buried the day after she died. Also, Angela’s “wind spirit,” her pinane, was to inhabit her home for four days following her death. Rosella felt wretched and Mary
(who didn’t believe a word of it) had tried to cheer her up by saying that her sister’s pinane could easily make the flight from England to the U.S. in a lot shorter time than a 747. Rosella was not comforted by this remark. Second because she didn’t believe it herself—which was another reason for not telling Rosella. It was a making of her own imagination, she knew. A wish. A trick. But Rosella would start with her herbs and roots and sacred incense, would start brewing and burning and go down on her knees before her own private little chapel.

  No, Mary didn’t want to give Rosella any visions to chew over.

  The arroyo was flanked by a grove of low pines which Sunny was now cautiously penetrating. For what, she didn’t know; she had seen no movement over there. Imagine what it would be like to have the attention span of a dog or a cat. Especially a cat. Cats could hold perfectly still for eons and focus on something a person had no awareness of.

  And then she thought: they were like that, the scientists at the Santa Fe Institute. They could focus on a concept for hours at a time, like cats. Mary loved the idea of a place that existed purely, and only, for thought, for people to think. Smart people went there to think. This amazed her because so much of the world was simply thoughtless. Imagine getting your living by sitting around all day thinking, like Dr. Anders.

  Mary cupped her chin in her hands and thought about Dr. Anders. And Angela. She supposed he must be—must have been—in love with Angela, the way he hung around in the shop. Angie had certainly been in love with him. Mary could see that. That didn’t surprise her. But his returning the feeling did, because Angela was never much of a thinker. She appeared to be, what with all of her meditating and reading and Sedona trips. All of this Earth’s-center stuff was about as meaningful as walking around with a dowsing rod looking for water. Though dowsers, she had to admit, served some practical purpose, since they sometimes found what they were looking for. Angie was not even that practical, though. Angie was not really very self-reliant; she waited for things to come her way, rather than going in search of them.