Charm Stone

by Carl, Lillian Stewart

  “A diversion.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  “Fingerprint evidence?”

  “Inconclusive.”

  “Thing is,” said Alasdair, “whilst Hagedorn was not married, he was seeing someone, but his colleagues don’t know who. And his colleagues are thinking there was a break-up, a bad one, not so long since. Look for the woman, eh?”

  Jean took another step forward. “He was seeing Matt Finch’s soon-to-be ex-wife, Jessica Evesdottir.”

  Blue eyes and black turned toward her. Alasdair acknowledged Jean’s arrival, not to mention her information, with a quirk of his eyebrow and a crimp of his lip. After a quick but comprehensive glance, as though flipping through a database, Venegas ID’d her and demanded, “How do you know that?”

  “Miranda,” Alasdair said.

  “Yep,” Jean told him, and explained, “My partner at Great Scot. A server at the Inn named Eric took a meal up to Wes and Jessica’s room several weeks ago.”

  “Eric, at the Williamsburg Inn.” The name inscribed itself in Venegas’s mental notebook.

  “The last few weeks,” Alasdair went on, “Hagedorn was a changed man. Worried, the other craftsmen are saying. Nervy. Looking over his shoulder. The third man, not Gould, he’s saying it seemed Hagedorn was under a spell. Or a curse.”

  “Yeah, right.” Venegas’s pink lips curled upward, but not in a smile. Her voice would have curdled milk.

  There are various ways of being right, thought Jean.

  Alasdair inhaled, perhaps to say the same thing, but Venegas cut him off. “Okay, I’ll buy that you’re investigating the theft of the replica. But by digging around here, you interfered with a murder investigation.”

  “You’ve had the post-mortem, then?” he asked, not wasting time refuting her charge.

  “Wesley Hagedorn was struck twice at the base of the skull by a sharp-edged instrument about an inch wide. A wood-carving chisel, maybe, one used for roughing out designs. Wesley had a favorite, steel blade, wooden knob, about a foot long. He kept it sharp. He accused Sam Gould of losing it. Or stealing it. That’s when they argued. It’s still missing, you know.”

  “I know. The lads inside, they told me.”

  She glanced back at the shop, where Lockhart was placing a Closed sign on the door with one hand and holding his cell phone to his ear with the other. “Then he fell or was pushed into the water. His assailant held him down, probably by kneeling on his shoulders and pressing his face into the mud and water until he drowned. Gould’s big enough to do that, easily.”

  “Were the lads in the shop not showing you Hagedorn’s coat hanging behind the door? He was no bigger than—you.”

  Alasdair could edit his words, Jean told herself, but Venegas had no doubt noticed his modest physical stature. And his mental acuity.

  “I’ve got the M.E.’s measurements, thank you. And yes, before you say it, I realize that once you jab a sharp instrument into someone’s neck, size stops being an issue. The assault laid him out, and he was drowned in Dunwich Pond--a few hundred yards behind his apartment complex.”

  Dunwich? Jean repeated silently. That, too, rang a bell. By now there was a veritable handbell choir clanging away in her memory. One of these days she might find a minute or two to listen to it.

  “He wouldn’t have walked there with a stranger,” Venegas was saying, “not when he was so nervous. And it was Gould who offered to give him a ride to the reception. Which he hadn’t yet dressed for, by the way, although his suit and tie were laid out on his bed and his invitation was sitting on his dresser. He died a couple of hours before he was found, probably, about four p.m.”

  “Were there—?” Alasdair began.

  She rode right over him. “No one saw Hagedorn leave his apartment. No one saw him walk down to the pond, with or without a companion. The area’s surrounded by trees and underbrush. Site of a seventeenth-century farmyard, the locals say. We found some empty beer cans, but it’s not a high-crime spot, no drug deals or that kind of thing. That we know of.”

  “Just a murder,” said Jean, and when the two sets of eyes turned toward her again, asked, “If Gould didn’t walk down to the pond with Wesley, how did he know to look for him there?”

  “Exactly,” Venegas said to Alasdair, not Jean.

  He acknowledged that point with a nod. “You’ve not found the weapon, then, if you’re guessing it was Hagedorn’s own chisel. Are you dredging the pond for it? Were there footprints in the mud or water plants trodden upon? What about—?”

  “Okay, that’s it.” She made a slashing gesture—three strikes, you’re out. “Let me remind you, Cameron, that you don’t have one lick of jurisdiction here. You’re not even a cop.”

  Yeah, Jean thought, slip that one, both of them, between his ribs, why don’t you?

  His eyes narrowed and his lips thinned. In a voice as dry and cold as sleet pellets against a frosty window, he said, “I am a cop. I was. I’ve only just retired from the Northern Constabulary CID with the rank of Detective Chief Inspector.”

  “Is that so?” Venegas shifted her weight backwards.

  “I apologize for upsetting your plans by asking questions at the shop. But you were saying yourself, my brief is investigating the theft of the replica Witch Box. I didn’t know you’d staked out the man Gould, did I?”

  “The theft happened in the U.K.,” Venegas protested, but her voice was no longer as sour.

  So they’d come back around to that. Time to step on the merry-go-round. “I’ve got some new information about that,” Jean said, not bothering with the ingratiating smile.

  “Eh?” asked Alasdair.

  “Huh?” Venegas inquired.

  Several harried-looking adults herded a group of children dressed in Halloween costumes up the street. Several of the superheroes and more than one Disney princess were carrying plastic muskets almost as tall as they were, “firing” merrily away at squirrels, birds, and imaginary British troops, all with the appropriate sound effects. Alasdair glanced at them, shuddered, then looked back at the two women, pretending he hadn’t seen a thing.

  “I just came from interviewing Tim and Sharon Dingwall,” Jean said. “They . . .”

  “Who?” asked Venegas.

  Now that she was the undistracted target of those obsidian eyes, Jean had to stop herself from taking a couple of steps back. She drew herself up to her full height, such as it was, stood her ground the way Alasdair had, and responded first with the abstract. “They’re conspiracy theorists, who, among a lot of other theories, believe the charm stone that was once attached to the Witch Box is somehow the key to finding Francis Bacon’s mythical papers.”

  “More Francis Bacon nutcases? Jesus Christ!” Venegas half turned away.

  “Oh aye,” said Alasdair. “I caught them digging in the churchyard last night.”

  “Taking a core sample, they say,” Jean added.

  “I sent them away with fleas in their ears, or so I’m hoping. No worries, I reported them.”

  “Ah,” said Venegas, turning a quarter back again.

  Jean plunged on into the specifics. Jessica and Sharon working together and then falling out. The photos in the envelopes. Tim saying the copy wasn’t a good one. Kelly’s phone calls and her lie to the Perthshire police, along with her comment about “playing the patsy.” “It can mean that Kelly deliberately took the blame,” she translated for Alasdair.

  “It means ‘fall guy’” By now Venegas was turned fully back around and leaning forward, eagerly rather than aggressively, almost close enough to close the third side of a triangle of personal space.

  “Well, then, Kelly was involved after all.” Alasdair’s eyes lit with satisfaction. “Who was by way of being her confederate?”

  “I bet it was Quentin Dingwall,” Jean said. “Dylan’s brother. He’s working for The Sunburn in London. Can you get Ian to see if he was at Blair at the time of the theft?”

  “Perthshire Constabulary is saying the CCTV rec
ords from Blair don’t show the actual theft, but might be showing if Quentin was there at all. If we had a photo—”

  “He and Dylan are twins. So if Dylan has that bright red hair—”

  “Then so might Quentin have. I’ll phone Ian—”

  “Time out!” said Venegas. And, lowering her voice, “You mean these Dingwalls might be connected to Wesley Hagedorn’s death?”

  “So might the theft of the replica,” Alasdair told her, with the merest trace of a smile. “I’ve got my second in Edinburgh collecting data, I’ll be letting you know—”

  Jean scrounged in her bag and produced her cell phone. “No time like the present. Use my phone already.” She pressed it into his hand.

  “Right.” Alasdair turned away, his fingertips playing the keypad. “Eh, Ian. Alasdair here. There’s been a wee bit of a turn-up . . .”

  Jean looked up the street, Venegas down. A helicopter clattered far overhead, this one military. A chill gust of wind rustled the leaves of the nearby trees and flapped Jean’s jacket. The gray clouds were no longer a hint on the horizon, but flocked up the dome of the sky like dirty sheep.

  “She did, did she?” Alasdair darted a look at Venegas. She pretended she didn’t notice, although tightening her arms across her chest, like a protective cuirass, gave her away.

  Jean eyed the detective’s sleek black hair, cut high over her ears. Her lobes were pierced, but she wasn’t wearing earrings. She wasn’t wearing any jewelry at all, not even a wedding ring. If Venegas was Williamsburg’s finest, Jean asked herself, then what was she? America’s exile?

  Two strong-minded women. And yet Alasdair wasn’t cornered. He could always find a bolt hole.

  “Right.” He switched off the phone and thrust it toward Jean without looking at her. She almost fumbled the hand-off and for a moment thought she was going to bat her phone across the street. “Detective Venegas, Ian’s saying you rang him asking if I was who I was claiming to be, asking if Protect and Survive was actually here.”

  “What?” demanded Jean, jamming her phone back into her bag. Alasdair made a subtle down girl gesture. Okay, she got the message—Venegas was a good cop, cut her some slack.

  “I needed to make sure I knew who was throwing a monkey wrench into my investigation, and whether the two cases really are connected.” Venegas wasn’t looking at Jean, either. Jean could almost hear the sizzle, water droplets on hot iron, as blue gaze and black clashed.

  “Throwing a monkey wrench?” Alasdair asked.

  “A spanner,” murmured Jean. “The one in the works.”

  Alasdair went on, smooth as ice. “Our cases are connected, right enough. Ian’s confirmed that Wesley Hagedorn spent almost a week at Blair Castle, studying the Witch Box. And he was not on his own. An American woman named Jessica—fits the description a treat—arrived with him, then went traveling off to the east coast and to London, she was telling the folk at Blair, doing research.”

  Jean heard bells clanging. The east coast of Scotland, where Sharon’s indentured maidservant had supposedly been born. The one who maybe stole the charm stone. No way did Jessica believe all the implications of that story. But she was sure onto something.

  Smoke and mirrors. That’s what the academics at the tavern last night had called Jessica’s new original source. The one that was supposed to increase her stature in the jungles of Academe. Rats, Jean thought, she should have pursued that issue with Matt. What if Jessica’s source . . . ?

  “Thank you,” Venegas was saying. “I see we’ll be talking to Ms.—what was her name again?”

  “Evesdottir,” said Jean, slamming a padded door on the clangor of the bell choir. “She changed it as a feminist statement.”

  “You’re not kidding, are you?”

  “Neither is she.” Jean acknowledged Venegas’s incredulous, almost offended, expression with a slight shrug. A shame she couldn’t eavesdrop on Venegas’s interview with Jessica. Who would be better able to comment on gender roles than a female police detective?

  “I’ve got Ian onto both Perthshire Constabulary and The Sunburn, following up on Quentin. I’ll be keeping you informed, eh? I promise not to go teaching your grandmother to suck eggs,” Alasdair added, smiling, if thinly as the blade of his sgian dubh.

  “Say what?”

  “I’ll not go telling you your own business.”

  The black eyes flashed. Then Venegas actually laughed, a cool chuckle that softened her mouth just enough to reveal a row of white teeth like ivory beads on a string. “Can the two of you come down to the station? I want to hear about these Dingwalls, Ms. Fairbairn.”

  “You remember my name?” Jean asked.

  “She was asking Ian about you as well,” said Alasdair.

  Unrepentant, Venegas pulled a couple of business cards from her pocket and handed them over. “Here’s where we are. You have a car, right? See you in a few minutes.” Without waiting for an answer, she turned like a soldier on parade and strode toward the waiting police car. Another chill wind, perhaps the one blowing no one any good, made dried leaves dance down the street.

  Alasdair considered the card, then his new colleague making her exit. They were on the same page now, but Jean wasn’t going to accept any kudos as facilitator. Alasdair was simply the Brit who was in the right place at the right time. “So the game is afoot. You think she has the wrong man, don’t you?”

  “My gut’s telling me she does.” He pocketed the card, and marched away in the direction of Market Square and the path back to their house. Or to the parking lot, rather. So much for the leisurely lunch, comparison of notes, and confirmation of the evening’s activities. “Jessica needs checking out, no doubt about that, and the Dingwalls, and Matt Finch as well,” he said, without looking around to make sure Jean was behind him.

  She was wearing flats now. She was beside him. “Matt?” she repeated. And with a gaseous wobble of her by now empty stomach, she thought, The ties that bind and strangle. Matt and Wesley had known each other. Wesley had an affair, however brief, with Jessica. Many a murder had been committed because of jealousy.

  Not Matt, her own gut said. He was a decent guy, if a troubled one. Not that she really knew him.

  Once upon a time she’d pegged Alasdair as a decent if troubled guy, but she really hadn’t known him, either. And now look where they were. “Yeah,” she said to his patient smile, wider than a blade but just as sharp. “Yeah. You have to check out Matt.”

  “Jessica’s choosing men she can dominate, isn’t she now? Mind what she was telling Rachel, about love not conquering all, about the woman being conquered? His mates were saying Hagedorn was soft-spoken, aiming to please, save when it came to his work, his designs, his tools, and the like. And then there’s Matt.”

  “An academic like me. An easy conquest.” Her words came out more sourly, not to mention surly, than she’d intended.

  She felt rather than saw Alasdair’s edged glance. “No one’s conquering here, lass,” was all he replied.

  They crossed the grass between the white clapboard of Chownings Tavern and the worn red brick of the Courthouse, skirted the pillory where Rachel had playfully trapped Dylan, then hurried across Duke of Gloucester Street toward the Magazine.

  Surrendering to the inevitable, Jean groped in her bag with her free hand and found her car keys. But her stomach still wobbled with a hint of motion sickness, a touch of indigestion, a lingering sense of unease, all settling down into her abdomen like the upper plank of the pillory settling onto her wrists.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Jean used her fork to sweep a few remaining cornbread crumbs around the rimmed pewter plate, mopping up the last of her Brunswick stew. Delicious.

  “Tastier than stuff out of the vending machine at the police station, right?” asked Rebecca from across the table.

  “No kidding. A package of crackers, a bag of cookies, and a can of diet soda hardly count as food. I thought I was trying to digest musket balls.”

  “And her
e’s me asking for a cup of tea. Looked like warm piss and probably tasted like it as well. This, though . . .” Alasdair drained his glass of dark ale and smiled the smile of a man who’d had a productive day. Law enforcement was hungry work. Butting heads with Venegas was, too. He’d consumed his plate of pulled-pork barbecue with excellent appetite.

  Michael grinned, not at Alasdair but at the two women. “Americans have not been brewing proper cups of tea since they threw the lot off a ship in Boston Harbor.”

  “No argument there,” Rebecca told him.

  Jean leaned back against the wooden bench, the settle, her half of the booth set against the side wall of Chowning’s Tavern. Now, after nightfall, Chowning’s was as dim as Campbell’s had been the night before, lit only by the subtle gleam of candlelight on glass, brass, and pewter. The darkness concealed any slips between plate and lip as well as replicating the feel of a genuine colonial tavern, although a genuine tavern in the colonial era would have smelled of things a lot less pleasant than food duly inspected and passed by various health agencies.

  Tonight the next table was occupied not by a couple of waspish academics but by a family, a little girl in a mobcap and two older boys in tricorn hats, their parents trying to keep them at least quiet if not exactly seated. Jean had once been that little girl, imitating her brothers and trying to differentiate herself from them at the same time. She lifted her glass to the child, wishing her well, and drank.

  The mild but fragrant lager filled her mouth, warmed her throat, and committed delightful indiscretions with the food in her stomach. Everything was okay, she told herself. Thanks to her notebook, she’d re-created her interview with the Dingwalls, from the soup of Francis Stewart through the main course of Francis Bacon, down to—well, Tim and Sharon were the nuts themselves, more or less. Venegas had interjected tart remarks and tarter disclaimers, and then had ejected Jean herself to the lobby, the vending machines, and Miranda on the other end of the cell phone, while she and Alasdair questioned Sam Gould.

  There had been a murder, yes, but the investigation was well in hand. In Detective Venegas’s hands, with Alasdair doing only the light lifting. Jean told herself that her earlier unease had meant as little as the elusive ghostly presence at their house, a simple—okay, a complex—emotional resonance from the past. And yet . . . “The past hasn’t died. It’s not even critically ill. Williamsburg being a case in point.” And us. In the gloom beneath the table, Jean pressed her knee against Alasdair’s. With a sideways glint so quick she couldn’t tell whether he was amused or bemused, he pressed back.