Charm Stone

by Carl, Lillian Stewart

  “Yeah.” The sun faded again, and the water dulled. “Even if Tim didn’t kill Sharon himself—even if Kelly didn’t kill her, eliminating an annoyance—they’ve lucked out that someone did. They’ve got ‘proof’ that somebody took their theories seriously enough to try and shut them up. And Tim’s got the insurance money. I bet he sees Sharon as the sacrifice bunt for the good of the team.”

  “Eh?” Alasdair asked.

  “Baseball analogy. Never mind. What are you looking at?” Jean walked with the occasional squish to where Alasdair was standing.

  The broad stump was surrounded by bits and pieces of wood, some of them splintered and covered with bark, some weathered, others fresh and smooth. A sprinkle of wood shavings and sawdust atop the stump, along with grooves cut across its rings, indicated it had been used as a cutting surface and makeshift worktable. “This is what I was after seeing for myself,” Alasdair said. “Most of the photos are focusing on the body. Hagedorn died where he was found, half in, half out of the water. That’s clear enough.”

  “This must be the place where he liked to sit and work on small projects, then. Like Hugh and his friends will play music just for fun, because it calls to them. The shavings are wet from the rain but they’re still pretty fresh, considering.”

  “The photo of this is none too clear. I’m seeing now just what it is.” Alasdair picked up the flat piece of wood and held it out to her.

  Rudimentary carvings of leaves, tendrils, and the small leering faces of green men were roughed into its pale, mud-flecked surface. The initials were not “F” or “B”, but “J” and “E”. “The designs from the Witch Box,” Jean said. “You’d think that was on Wes’s mind, wouldn’t you?”

  “Oh aye.” Alasdair’s forefinger touched an empty, three-sided slot. “Here’s a place for a stone.”

  Jean went on, “This Box looks smaller than the actual Witch Box. Maybe he intended it to be a jewelry box, a peace offering for Jessica. Maybe he was just playing, and she was on his mind, too.”

  Alasdair crouched again, drawing Jean down beside him. “See the footprints? Big shoes, the tread worn down. Wesley’s, I’m guessing. They’ve shifted back and forth as he moved about the stump, as he sat down on it and stood up again.”

  “And what about those?” Jean waved her hand over another set of prints, small shoes, smooth soles edged with a rim of stitching. They skewed first to one side and then the other, and beside them . . . “Oh my. You do have evidence against Sharon. You do have a sample for comparison.”

  “The prints of those shoes?”

  “She was wearing mules, clogs—shoes without heels, Miranda would know the right name for them. Sharon had them on Friday night at the reception. And last night—one of them fell off her foot when she, ah, went up into the tree. Those rounded, cup-shaped marks beside the prints of the shoes are where her heels came out of them. Mud is slippery, and so is leather when it’s wet. She was having trouble keeping her balance.”

  Alasdair nodded, not so much following every word as developing the scenario simultaneously.

  “I bet it was a spur-of-the-moment killing. She was horribly frustrated—no charm stone, someone she needed as an ally making gifts for the enemy, her annoying sister-in-law pushing events too fast. Maybe she went into a tirade and Wes argued with her. Was it Jessica who said when it came to his work Wesley could show some temper?”

  “Something of the sort, aye.”

  “As for how Sharon got him to the edge of the pond, she could have confessed to breaking into his apartment and pointed out where they threw his valuables. He left the chisel lying on the stump when he went to look and she picked it up. Maybe she even told him one of his agates or something was lying just at the water’s edge, to get him to squat down. And she stepped out of her shoes, planted her feet, braced both hands on the chisel and . . .”

  Jean seemed to hear the sound of the blows echoing across the surface of the pond, and a gasp or two, and the squelch of mud and bubble of water, until all was still except a woman’s heavy breath. With a sigh she concluded, “He wouldn’t have seen her as a physical threat even if she’d been larger.”

  “As Stephanie was saying, jabbing a chisel into someone’s neck eliminates the size issue, particularly since Hagedorn was not such a big bruiser to begin.” Standing up, Alasdair offered Jean his hand. It was chill, hard. He pulled her to her feet, released her, and looked over at the crime scene. “I’m thinking some of the same prints are showing up there.”

  “Her feet got muddy. So did her socks. There’d be mud inside her shoes as well as outside, even if she tried to clean them off.”

  “Likely her socks are in her room. The M.E.’s got her shoes.” Alasdair held out his hand.

  Like a surgeon’s assistant, Jean dug out her cell phone and placed it in his palm. She strolled a few steps away, toward the ruined wall, listening to Alasdair make his report—the carvings, the sawdust, the shoes. The scenario.

  But why, murmured that logic-circuit in Jean’s mind, why would Sharon kill Wes, when the Dingwalls needed him . . .

  They didn’t need him, not any more. Kelly and Quentin had provided another Witch Box. If the irritatingly not-with-the-program Wes was gone, he couldn’t tell any nosy authorities that he’d made only one replica and the one in the movie was the one stolen from Blair. In fact, with the craftsman who made the replica dying a mysterious death, Tim and Sharon would have yet another marketing ploy, proof that enemies were after them.

  And yet—and yet, they still had no charm stone. What? Had Sharon returned to Tim, admitting what she’d done? That would explain why her cheeks had been red and her eyes glittering at the reception that night, and why Tim had been so insufferably smug. Bold action had been taken. A problem had been solved.

  And then Kelly had pushed them even further into a corner already crowded by the charm stone and Francis Bacon.

  “Very good then,” Alasdair said into the phone, switched it off, and handed it back.

  “So now we’re pretty sure we have two murderers,” Jean told him. “Fine, but if Sharon killed Wesley, who killed her? Back to Tim and Kelly, not just eliminating an annoying gadfly but disposing of a loose cannon. Although having Sharon up on a murder charge would have gotten them lots of sensational publicity.”

  “Or was someone who felt guilty about putting Wes into his predicament after getting herself a bit of revenge?”

  “Jessica. Though you could make a case for Matt being the killer. Or go out on a limb and say it was . . . No, not Rachel, she was at the play, not Barbara, she was at the church concert, not Louise Dietz, she was in a meeting, not Sam Gould, he was in jail, not Rodney Lockhart he was, well, maybe he was disguised as that custodian who almost saw the murder. Maybe the custodian was the murderer.” Crawling back along that metaphorical limb, Jean reminded herself that motivation was as important as opportunity.

  Alasdair turned his gaze from the stump to her, a slip of a smile playing at the corners of his mouth.

  “Yeah, I know, there’s steam coming out of my ears. In another minute I’ll be suggesting one of the twins found out about the insurance policy so did the deed to stave off unemployment. But no, Quentin was chatting up a girl in the ticket office. I’m sure Olson’s checked on that.”

  “Just now we’re analyzing data, not reaching conclusions.”

  “Not yet. But soon. I hope.” Jean looked down at the derelict panel of wood and its initials “J” and “E”, and said silently, once again, I’m sorry, Matt.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Alasdair guided the car onto Francis Street, heading back to their historic house in the Historic Area as Jean finished expounding her theory of motivation: Wesley became a liability to be eradicated rather than an asset to be wooed or intimidated, depending.

  “I reckon you’ve got the truth of the matter,” he replied. “As much as anyone has, that is.”

  Nothing tarnished as easily as truth, she thought. And there was livi
ng proof. In front of Williamsburg’s Masonic Lodge stood Tim and Kelly Dingwall, haranguing a dozen people armed with cameras and notebooks, while Quentin lurked half a block away intently studying fallen leaves.

  Tim stood with his hand thrust into his coat, looking less like Napoleon than Hermann Goering with an ulcer. Beside him Kelly gestured expansively. All she needed was a laser pointer, casting red dots like those of a rifle scope onto the facade of the handsome little Georgian building.

  It had been constructed in 1773 for the local branch of the loyal and ancient society of free Masons. By that time the Dinwiddie Kitchen—the car turned the corner beneath Jean and Alasdair’s own bedroom window—had been occupying its plot of ground on the next block for over twenty years.

  Did Washington or Peyton Randolph or James Monroe, the old boys’ club, celebrate the Lodge’s grand opening with a keglet of Thomasina’s beer? Jean could buy that image a lot more readily than concepts of cloaked figures in smoke-filled rooms plotting the destiny of the world on charts and chessboards, with or without suitably secret handshakes and passwords.

  Alasdair parked the car, locked its doors, and, flipping the keys into the air and catching them, offered them to Jean.

  “You might as well keep them,” she said.

  “Very good then.” He tucked them into his pocket.

  The sun’s appearances were lasting longer and longer, and the clouds were looking less like used laundry detergent than fresh whipped cream. The brick sidewalk had warmed up enough that the two black-and-white catmometers were sprawled across it. Bucktrout—or was it Bushrod?—looked up as the humans skirted around them, then lay back down again.

  “We should take relaxation lessons,” said Jean as she opened the door.

  “Oh aye,” Alasdair said, but tension still whetted his voice. “When’s the concert, then?”

  “Seven.”

  He looked at the clock on the mantel, several artifacts down from the Bellarmine bottle. “It’s just gone two.”

  “I guess I’ll transcribe my notes, see if any patterns occur to me.”

  Alasdair stood facing the fireplace, jingling the keys in his pocket. The back of his head revealed nothing.

  He’d still be there to deal with later, afterwards, whichever came last. Jean sat down at the desk.

  As soon as she touched the nylon case of her computer she realized it was empty. Ripping open the zipper and peering foolishly inside was only a formality. She bounded back to her feet with a heartfelt, “Oh, crap.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “My computer’s been stolen.”

  Instantly at her side, Alasdair seized the case and shook it out as though the computer had shrunk to a matchbox and was still inside. “You were working with it when I came away this morning. Was it here when you came in at noon?”

  “I have no idea. The case was sitting on the desk is all.” With a snort of exasperation, she plopped down on the desk chair. “Someone’s taken my computer for the same reason Kelly stole the replica Witch Box instead of the real one. My notes were easier to get at than anything from the police department. Like anything I’d have wouldn’t be small beer compared to theirs.”

  “What notes have you got?”

  “My interview with the Dingwalls, what Jessica told us, what Matt and Hugh and Louise said today. And . . .” She vented a hollow laugh. “. . . not one word of it’s transcribed on my computer!”

  Alasdair brightened. “Well then.” And darkened again. “Still, someone’s thinking you’ve got more information, more power, than you do. Matt?”

  “I must have spent a good forty-five minutes in the theater after I left his office. And I had to wait in line to buy the sandwich. If he came straight here, he—had to get in. Oh! The beds were made and the dishes taken away. What if he got here while the housekeeper was in the bathroom or vacuuming the bedroom? The running water, the vacuum cleaner, would cover any other noise.”

  “A moment in the door and out again. Matt. The . . .” Leaving the epithet unexpressed, Alasdair reached for the telephone on the desk and punched in a number, one, Jean noted, that he’d memorized. “Stephanie,” he said, “Jean’s computer’s been stolen. I doubt it has something doing with the case. No, it does have something doing with the case.”

  In spite of herself, Jean smiled. That Scotspeak “I doubt,” meaning “I suspect,” had fooled her more than once.

  “Very good then.” He batted at the cradle, saying to Jean, “She’s sending Olson to take a report.” He punched another number. “I’d appreciate your asking Eric, the lad with the food trays, to stop in. Aye, that’s all right—when he’s free.”

  He hung up and stalked off across the room, to stop, brooding, at the front window. Jean made a quick reconnaissance of the bedroom and bathroom. No, nothing else had disappeared, go figure.

  Back in the living room, Alasdair hadn’t moved. “Everything’s accounted for save the laptop?”

  “Yep.” She might as well keep on keeping on, she told herself, and reached for the Dingwall’s press release.

  It didn’t tell her anything she didn’t already know, but the glossy photos of the Witch Box, each carved leaf cut with shadow, the gap for the charm stone brightly illuminated, made great illustrations of grand delusion. Of the subjectivity of perception.

  The Dingwalls must have bought one of Blair Castle’s studio photos—this wasn’t the same photo that was in the Dunmore exhibit catalog lying open on Matt’s desk. Poor Matt, like the Dingwalls perceiving himself as powerless. Even more than the Dingwalls—at least they were fighting back, if in their own eccentric fashion.

  Alasdair’s shadow fell on the page. “Have they got any facts at all in their omnium-gatherum?”

  “Oh yes, they’ve got a fact or two by the tail. And like the farmer’s wife, they cut them off with a carving knife.” She angled one of the chronologies toward him. “Conspiracy theory is the natural, even scientific cause for events—there’s proof of everything.”

  “Proof?”

  “Sure. Evidence against the theory is evidence for it, because the absence of evidence means someone is trying to suppress what really happened and what's behind it.”

  “And contrary evidence is manipulated by the conspirators, meaning to mislead.”

  “Like astrology, if you accept the premise, everything follows.”

  “But what premise are you accepting?” His words were sharp and cold.

  Even as she told herself not to take his tone personally, Jean raised her hands and said, “Don’t blame me for these people’s choices, even if I do write about them. I enjoy the free range speculation. I enjoy the synthesis of history and legend—I do that, too.”

  “Oh aye, that you do.” This time his voice rasped across something deeper than doubt.

  Was it regret? What did that mean? She looked up at him, wondering whether his mood was heading toward global warming or another Ice Age, but read nothing in his sober face.

  A series of raps rattled the front door. Alasdair plunged toward it—saved by the knock. Jean pitched the press release onto the desk. “Olson? That was fast.”

  Alasdair opened the door to reveal not Olson’s blond, boyish figure but an even more boyish redhead. Too much to hope it was Dylan—it had to be Quentin.

  With a glance over his shoulder, a fox hearing the hounds behind him, the young man pushed into the house. “My dad and my aunt are showing people around the churchyard. I said I was going back to the hotel. But I saw you guys come in here, and . . .”

  Alasdair shut the door and stood in front of it, arms crossed. “And?”

  Quentin’s famished expression whetted itself into cunning. “Mr., uh, Scottish guy. Is there a reward for the Witch Box replica?”

  “My name is Alasdair Cameron,” he said, going very still. “Have you got the replica?”

  “Well, not really, I sort of know where it is.” Quentin looked over at Jean. “Hi.”

  “Hi.” Jean stepped bac
k, away from any ricochets and closer to the desk, where she picked up a hotel-logo pen and paper and put them to work.

  “You and your aunt stole the replica, did you then?” Alasdair demanded.

  “Well, maybe. About that reward.”

  “We’ve got you on the CCTV tapes,” said Alasdair. “When you were saying you were not at Blair, you were lying. Not being banged up, lad, that’s your reward.”

  Quentin ducked and covered.

  “Not being thrown in jail is your reward,” Jean translated, while Alasdair vented an irritated sigh.

  Was Quentin really trying to use his family’s—more than capers, crimes—to make a few bucks? Or was he growing more and more disgusted by them, and preparing to bail out? Either way would work.

  He looked down at the rug, the guile leaching from his face. “Oh. Oh, okay, yeah, Aunt Kelly worked it all out on the way to Blair, she’d trip an alarm, I’d grab the Box. It all went just fine, you know, except for trying to get the thing up under my coat. Sharp edges, and I was, like, in a hurry.” He held out his arms, not for the handcuffs but to show the bruises on his wrists.

  “Where’s the replica now?” Alasdair demanded, looming while Quentin shrunk.

  “Aunt Kelly took it after we got back to Edinburgh. I think she mailed it somewhere. She was complaining about—it wasn’t FedEx, it was somebody else—about their prices.”

  Aha, Jean thought at Alasdair’s stony face. We got that right.

  If he picked up her message, he didn’t show it. “Have you heard from your brother?”

  “No.” Quentin tore at his hair, leaving the red ends standing on end like a cartoon character registering fear. “I dunno where he is. I dunno what the, the heck is going on here. Me, I was glad to get rid of that Box. It was ugly as sin, gave me the creeps, I don’t care it was just a copy. But my mom and dad, they were freaking out about it.”

  “Freaking out?” Alasdair repeated.