Charm Stone

by Carl, Lillian Stewart

  Jean could see Stephanie’s frown as she bent over Alasdair, hear her sharp voice shouting orders. She felt Olson’s hands—small, tentative hands—helping her to her feet and into the ambulance. She listened to her own oddly weak voice detailing what Barbara had said, a confession before dying, as though absolution was in Jean’s power.

  As the ambulance pulled away, Stephanie had been standing beside the old black SUV and the wiry form slumped across its front seats, waiting for the crime scene people, the medical examiner’s team, all the official requirements of sudden death, one last expense put down to Barbara Finch’s account.

  “I’m sorry,” Jean told Alasdair. “I’m sorry you took a bullet, any bullet—you tried to get the gun away from her.”

  “I didn’t ken how strong she was. How determined to finish in her own way.”

  “None of us did.” She stared at his features, so familiar and yet so strange, memorizing every finely constructed angle of flesh and bone, each glint of character in the sea-deep of his eyes. “I’m sorry for what I said Saturday night and how I’ve marinated in doubt and how I could have been gathering rosebuds with you and everything.”

  His taut mouth softened and he laughed, then gasped. “Jean, Bonny Jean, don’t set me to laughing, not just now.”

  The paramedic, pretending he hadn’t heard a thing, adjusted the dressings. The ambulance stopped, and emergency room people flocked forward.

  Jean found herself sitting in a plastic chair in a waiting room, clutching her battered mini-backpack. She had no idea where it had come from. Maybe Alasdair had picked it up, maybe one of the policeman had. Slowly, shakily, with only part of her mind—the rest being in the treatment room—she evaluated each object as though she’d never seen it before.

  Even her tiny make-up mirror in its plastic case was unbroken. Her cell phone worked just fine. Lucky. Oh yeah.

  Three messages waited from the usual suspects. Jean tackled Miranda first. “Yes, we’re fine, he’s fine, more or less. They really were calling her the desperado grandma? No, she didn’t make it.”

  “Well then,” said Miranda, and, after a moment of grim silence, “You’ve had your answer from the Folger?”

  “It looks like a misprinted page from Macbeth. I need to compare it with a copy of the play. And there’s the Dingwalls, and the police, and . . .” She ran down. She was tired, hungry, thirsty. She was dirty. “I need to clean up. I think I was crying. I don’t remember crying.”

  “I’ll be back in Williamsburg on the Wednesday, I’ll catch you up then. Have a care, Jean.”

  “Thanks. See you Wednesday.” Jean got up, went into the restroom, splashed water on the fish-belly-white face with the crazed eyes that looked back at her from the mirror, then went back to the waiting room and returned Rebecca’s call.

  Second verse, same as the first. “Yes, we’re okay, sort of.”

  “Michael and I are on our way there. Where’s the hospital?”

  “I don’t know,” Jean said, and, spotting Olson in the doorway just as he spotted her, “We’ll get the cops to take us back to the house and meet you there, okay?”

  “Sure. Anything we can bring? Lunch?”

  Lunch. What a thought. Jean’s stomach flapped pitifully beneath her own ribs. “Great, thanks. Anything would be fine. Oh, and stop at the college bookstore and get a copy of Macbeth, okay? I’ve got the other side of the Charlotte document and need to do a compare and contrast.”

  “You’ve got it,” said Rebecca.

  What Jean had was Alasdair. Here he came, rolled out of the treatment room in a wheelchair, as a matter of policy, the orderly said, not to imply he couldn’t walk. The color in his face was better, Jean saw with relief, roses not exactly blooming in his cheeks but at least promising to bud.

  They all met in the middle of the waiting room. Olson, Jean saw, was carrying a computer. Her computer, judging by the coffee stain and the cat-scratch on the lid. “It was in her car, right?”

  “Right. No, that’s okay, I’ll carry it for you. I’ve got a car outside to take you back to your place.” The faintest tinge of green shaded his jaw, but his set and solemn features acknowledged no qualms. He walked along beside the wheelchair, ticking off points. “We’ve retrieved the box with the replica from the Lodge and Stephanie’s going to turn it over to Rodney Lockhart at the Museum this afternoon, about three, if you feel up to being there. You can work out what to do with it with him.”

  “Very good,” said Alasdair. “I’m hoping someone gave that bellman at the Lodge a large tip.”

  “Not to worry,” Olson replied. “Stephanie’s considering dropping the charges against Dylan Dingwall, since he cooperated. We’re still surveilling all of them, though—they’re not going anywhere yet.”

  Olson led them to the back door of the hospital, well away from the clamor of reporters at the front. Jean was astounded to see the sun shining and hear birds chirping as though all was right with the world. Not that it wasn’t all right. The world was ambiguous as always, demanding compromise.

  “Jessica’s been released,” Olson concluded. “So has Matt. Here’s the car. Mr. Cameron . . .”

  Rejecting any assistance from either the orderly or Olson, Alasdair eased himself into the police car. Jean allowed Olson to install her on the other side of the back seat, and accepted her computer from his hands. “Thank you. Thank you for everything.”

  Olson touched his fingertip to his eyebrow. “Yes, ma’am. Y’all take care of yourselves, now.”

  “Thank you, Sergeant,” said Alasdair, and returned the stylized salute.

  The noon sun beamed down upon the town. Visitors representing every race of mankind and maybe even a Martian or two were out and about the Historic Area, called together because of one moment in American history. Interpreters expounded, children called, horses clopped. Every building, every leaf, sparkled with cinematic intensity beneath a cobalt-blue sky. A sky the color, Jean thought, of Alasdair’s eyes.

  Wincing but not groaning, he climbed out of the police car on his own, and made it up the front walk of their little home away from home.

  Now that the sunshine had returned, so had Bushrod and Bucktrout. The two cats play-pounced along the sidewalk, chasing pebbles, leaves, invisible fairies, for all Jean could tell. Alasdair kicked a bit of gravel toward them and they chased that, too.

  Smiling at the cats and at the sky and the trees, Jean opened the door and stood aside while Alasdair walked into the house, smiling at him, too, as the founding father of all the other smiles.

  The dishes had vanished from the table. The living room smelled of potpourri, the bedroom of fresh linens, the bathroom of cleansers. Leaving Alasdair to clean himself up and dispose of the torn, cut, bloodstained sweater and the shirt beneath, Jean returned Hugh’s phone call.

  Third verse, a blessed refrain. “We’re okay.”

  “That’s good to hear. I’d not want to be losing more of my neighbors,” Hugh said, but she heard the quaver behind the words. “The lads and I are playing on the patio at the Cheese Shop this afternoon at four. Music, drink, good for what’s ailing you.”

  “That sounds wonderful. We’ll try to be there.”

  Jean quickly booted up her computer—no, it was none the worse for its adventures. She wished she could say the same for Alasdair. When she shut the computer down she wondered if Barbara had ever bothered to turn it on. It had been a matter of depriving Jean of a tool, was all. It wasn’t as though she’d known anything Barbara had not.

  Or had the old woman known about the Bellarmine bottle moving around the Dinwiddie Kitchen in the hands of a ghost? Jean turned carefully around from the desk, but felt nothing and saw nothing, not even the bottle itself. It hadn’t returned as mysteriously as it had gone. Thomasina was trying to tell them something . . .

  The knock on the door had to be friends and lunch. Jean admitted Michael and Rebecca’s sympathetic faces, expressions they turned on Alasdair as soon as he emerged clean and t
idy once again. “It was not pretty,” he told them. “But Jean’s all right, as am I. That’s the most important.”

  He settled down onto one end of the couch and leaned his head against the back. Jean stopped herself from dropping down beside him and instead sat delicately on the next cushion. Rebecca and Michael distributed sandwiches, chips, and bottled drinks. “I reckon they gave Alasdair a pain tablet or two at hospital, but he’ll be needing a wee dram as well.” Michael laid out four glasses and opened a bottle of Lagavulin.

  “They gave me tablets, aye, but they’re in my pocket and can stay there.”

  “Why am I not surprised?” Jean asked.

  Rebecca asked Michael, “Is that the glass the toothbrushes were in?”

  “I gave it a good rinse. We’re needing four, aren’t we now?” He poured a generous dollop into each glass, doled them out, and raised his in a salute. “Slainte.”

  “Slainte,” they all chorused, and Jean added, “Live long and prosper.” When she clinked her glass against Alasdair’s, they rang like bells.

  She tipped the essence of golden, sun-warmed, sea-sprayed, smoke-infused grain into her mouth. The aroma wafted up to her sinuses. The liquid teased her stomach. She remembered Banquo’s lines: “If you can look into the seeds of time, And say which grain will grow and which will not . . .”

  The first few bites of her chicken salad caught in her throat, reminding her of Sharon. Then it loosened and she once again enjoyed the pleasures of the flesh. One of them, at least.

  Beside her, Alasdair bit into a thick Virginia ham sandwich with good appetite. For a time the friends discussed the events of the last few days, and the coda playing out this afternoon. Then Rebecca asked, “So where’s the page from the Folger?”

  “Oh, sorry,” Jean said. “In the desk drawer, along with Charlotte’s note and drawing.”

  “Ah, I see,” said Rebecca, retrieving the folder and its contents. Michael leaned over her shoulder with a paperback copy of Macbeth at the ready. “Charlotte didn’t know what she had, did she? The couplet about Francis being banished, the one about breakfast and the mast, and the one about the charming stone, flesh and bone, those aren’t in the, well, what’s come to be called the definitive version.”

  “Jessica knows what she’s got,” Michael said. “But you’ll not be banging her up for theft, will you now?”

  “The document’s never been reported stolen,” Alasdair told him. “We can try appealing to her better nature, if she’s got one.”

  Rebecca took the book from Michael’s hand. “Oh, I like this, just a few lines further down. The witches vanish and Banquo says, ‘The earth hath bubbles, as the water has, And these are of them.’”

  The room fell so silent that the sound of children playing filtered inside . . . Jean looked around, the faintest of tremors lifting the hairs on the back of her neck. Was that a handful of pebbles thrown against the window, or footsteps crunching on gravel outside, or what? No more than a membrane of perception divided this world and another, the next, the last, the long gone.

  “Right.” Alasdair set his glass on the coffee table and picked up the daily schedule. “Michael, Rebecca, I’m seeing here that Benedict Arnold’s appearing at the Capitol, likely asserting that he’s no traitor, the traitors are Washington and his ilk. But the winners write the history.”

  Exchanging wise nods, Michael and Rebecca started for the door. “We’ll come back in good time to be driving you to the Museum,” Michael said.

  And Rebecca leaned close to Jean’s ear. “Michael’s mother told me once that marriage holds you together when everything else falls apart. Think about it. You two deserve each other, and I don’t mean that sarcastically.”

  “Come along, hen, leave them be.” Michael opened the door. “Well now, this wasn’t here a wee while ago.” From the step he picked up the Bellarmine bottle.

  Rebecca took it from his hand. “Oh my. This has a real vibe to it, like a bell still resonating after the sound dies away. It’s one of Banquo’s bubbles, I think. I’ll set it down here, shall I?” Placing the bottle on the desk, between Jean’s computer and the drawer, Rebecca flexed her fingers, used them to wave encouragingly, and stepped out the door.

  Jean looked from the blank face of the door to the somewhat less blank face of the little bottle. The cats had been playing with a pebble on the front walk. What if . . .

  Right now she needed to deal with the ghosts of relationships past, present, future. Sending thanks to Rebecca for breaking the last fragile layer of ice, so that they could take the plunge, Jean lay against Alasdair’s unwounded side. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders and laid his cheek on her head. She rested there, safe, comfortable, listening to his breath, his heart, feeling his subtle resonance.

  At last he said, “I thought you’d gone off me, given it up as a bad job.”

  “You went to bed mad at me. I thought you’d changed your mind.”

  “Your best defense is offense, is it?”

  “My best defense is pretending I don’t want something anyway so I’m not sorry to lose it.”

  “That’s quite the effective one.” With a soft, moist chuckle, his voice restored to velvet richness, he went on, “Jean, I’m mad at you from time to time, aye. But I’m mad for you as well.”

  She could lie against him and listen to his voice forever, especially when it said things like that. Forcing a deep breath to the very bottom of her lungs—soap, whiskey, an elusive hint of beer brewing and bread baking—she said, “I want to be part of your life. I want you to be part of mine. You have your work, I have mine, they’re not mutually exclusive.”

  “Who’s saying they are?”

  “You are. I am.” For a wordsmith, she was suddenly pitifully inept, not sure what she wanted to say, let alone how to say it. “I just want it, this, us, to work. We’ve been married, and our marriages failed, and now . . .”

  “Now what?” he asked softly, without shying away at the m-word. “Jean, there’s nothing wrong with wanting something more.”

  No. Especially where there was more. “How does the song go, freedom’s a way of saying you don’t have anything left to lose? Well, I’m free, you’re free. If we, if the premise is that we love each other . . .”

  He clasped her even more closely. “So we’re getting married now, are we?”

  “Oh.” Every thought tumbling through her head settled into place, pieces in a kaleidoscope at last making a pattern. “Is that a proposal?”

  “You’ll excuse me not kneeling down on the floor.”

  He had fallen to his knees at the back of the SUV, startled eyes seeking her face, as though her face was what he wanted for his last sight on earth.

  She turned to him with something between a laugh and a sob. “Yes, yes, yes. There’ll be times I want to throw something at you, break up that great stone face routine of yours . . .”

  “And there’ll be times I’m wanting to fill up your mouth with a sock, but we’ll not be knowing if we’re never trying.” He was smiling, every line, every crease turned upward and smoothed, and the glint in his eye was either humor or joy or both. She didn’t care.

  She said, in the same moment he said, “I love you.”

  Laughing, they clinked glasses again, and this time the chime was that of wedding bells. But it was the kiss, slow and thorough, that sealed the deal.

  They only broke off when the door resounded to a flat, dull knock.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  “They’re back,” Alasdair said against Jean’s mouth, fully resuscitated.

  “That was quick.” With another caress, a promise for the immediate as well as the distant future, Jean hauled herself to her feet and, wobbling a bit, headed for the door. “General Arnold must have had to run for his life, chased by irate citizens . . . Oh.”

  Jessica stood on the doorstep, hair lank, face drooping and washed-out, bare of cosmetics and pretension both. “May I come in?”

  Jean stepped back.


  “Detective Venegas told me about Barbara. I can’t believe it, except I can. Are you all right?”

  “We’ll do,” said Alasdair.

  “I’m sorry for my role in what happened. Really.” Jessica sank down in the same wingback chair she’d occupied Saturday night. “Is that Lagavulin?”

  Now it was Jean and Alasdair’s turn to exchange a wise mutual nod. She got one of the coffee cups from the pantry, poured a finger of whiskey in it, and handed it to Jessica.

  Jessica tossed the drink down in one gulp. Her face puckered like a drawstring bag and she fell back in the chair. “I guess my tax money’s been going to the local jail, but I’d just as soon have skipped the weekend vacation there.”

  “The Charlotte document,” Alasdair said, not cold, but not warm, either.

  “They had Matt exert his charm—not—on me last night. Still, I’d made up my mind to tell all when Venegas tells me I don’t have to, you’ve figured it out, and by the way, my mother-in-law’s been fingered for Sharon’s murder and just killed herself.” Jessica sagged, then buoyed herself up and went on, “I’ve got to hand it to Sharon, she was one well-read woman. A shame she wasted her knowledge on conspiracy guff. We probably could have compromised, except . . . Well, that’s why we were trying to get together Saturday night. Enough of the catfight, we needed to compromise, figure out some way of my using that document academically and her using it for that movie.”

  “What’s going to happen to their operation now that she’s gone?” Jean asked.

  “Kelly will step in. Tim’s a typical male weakling and the boys, well, I don’t know about the boys. I just wish they’d go away.”

  “I thought Tim was by way of being a brute and a savage,” said Alasdair.

  “Same thing. Compensation for inadequacy, you know.”

  “Right.” Alasdair allowed himself a quick eye-roll, especially since Jessica was now looking at the Bellarmine bottle, not at him. “Was part of your compromise returning the document to Blair?”