Folly (40 page)

“I didn’t take anything.” She met his sharp gaze with a bland one.

“You don’t deny you touched the body.”

“I lifted the shirt to look at the bones.”

“Why?”

“I really don’t know.” She changed her expression to one of puzzlement. “It just seemed necessary. To see his remains, I mean.”

“And you claim you didn’t take anything?”

“What was there to take? Bones and old clothes?”

After a minute he subsided, apparently satisfied.

“You sound like you’re treating this as a suspicious death,” she said.

“We have to.”

“You don’t think he was … murdered?” Rae was rather proud of the little squeak she gave the word.

“Any death is treated as suspicious at the beginning. But if you found a knife sticking out from between his ribs and took it away, I’d like to know.”

“No knife, sorry. Say: If you’re treating it like a crime scene—God, that sounds like something from television—does that mean you’ve got yellow tape all over and I can’t go back to work?”

“Oh, no. Not much point in that.”

“That’s good. I’ve got family coming and lots to do. But look, Jerry: If it is Desmond, and if somebody did kill him, what on earth could you do about it? I know there’s no statute of limitations on murder, but everyone from those days must be dead by now. Other than the satisfaction of figuring out a puzzle, is there anything you could actually do?”

Jerry sat back in his chair to think over her question.

“Only thing that comes to mind, offhand,” he said eventually, “is if there was an inheritance involved. I don’t know about the law back then, but these days, a person’s not allowed to benefit from a crime. Which means if a boy kills his father, say, the father’s estate goes to the other siblings.”

“Desmond didn’t have any children.”

“So there are no survivors around to argue with your ownership of Folly.”

“I guess not.”

“You want to tell me what it is you’re keeping to yourself?”

Rae frowned. There was no apparent reason why she should not tell him about the bullets, but… “There’s nothing much. A few ideas I had, but I need to talk to my lawyer first. I think I should know the whole picture before I burden you with it.”

“Burden me.” The sheriff appeared caught between official disapproval and amusement, but came down on the side of humor. Rae smiled crookedly in agreement.

“I know. But you might feel like you need to do something about Desmond, even if you don’t want to.”

“Did
you
kill Desmond Newborn?” Jerry asked suddenly.

Rae’s head snapped around so quickly she nearly bit her tongue. “Me? Of course not, you saw—”

“Then there’s no reason to worry, is there? About ‘burdening’ me.”

Rae began to protest, and then looked more closely and saw that the man was making a joke. She dutifully chuckled until, still smiling, he added, “Just don’t work yourself into interfering in an investigation.”

“So it is an investigation.”

“Damned if I know. Depends on what the bone woman at the university says, if she can tell what killed him.”

“Fine. Let me know when you hear. Now look, Jerry, you had something to say last night, too.”

The big man sat forward in the creaking chair, and for a moment Rae feared he was about to reach for her hand. He did not, but at his serious expression, the breakfast began to congeal in her stomach.

“I had a call from Sam Escobar. I’m afraid your house has been broken into. On Saturday or Sunday, he’s not sure which.”

“Oh, God. Did they …” she started, then broke off. What was she going to ask? Did they trash it? Did they steal anything? Did she care? That would have been more to the point. Another world, another life.

“It doesn’t sound like there was too much damage. The lock on the back door, a collection of glass things on a shelf.” Rae found herself wincing: She did care. “The insurance man is going to go in and have a look, check your inventory and see what’s missing. Did you have many valuables?”

“Art, mostly. If it’s the glass I think it was, my husband had it insured for something like a quarter of a million.” She glanced up at his stifled oath, and explained. “We didn’t actually buy most of it, maybe three or four pieces out of the two dozen, but we traded, the artists and I, or I was
given pieces, before they became well known. The same way with the paintings, or a lot of them, anyway. Are those all right?”

“Escobar didn’t say anything about paintings. If you phone your house around ten-thirty this morning, he said he’d probably be there by then. He’s going, not one of his deputies—wanted to see the damage for himself.”

Rae wasn’t listening. One of those glass sculptures had been a gift from Alan, bought during a trip down south to see his son, and although Alan had seen instantly that Rae was not as entranced by the frozen glass jellyfish as he was, he had continued to collect art glass for himself, and she for him. She was caught up in the vision of all those luminous, ephemeral glass shapes reduced to shards, and yes: It hurt.

“I’m sorry,” Jerry said, seeing her expression.

“Do all sheriffs tell people that as often as you do?” she inquired with an effort.

“Only when—” He stopped, and it was his turn to look flustered. “Just part of the service, ma’am. Well,” he said, getting to his feet. “Back to work.”

“To protect and to serve,” she remarked, craning her neck to look up at him. “Which reminds me: I hope your people have been keeping out of my things. One invaded house in a week is enough. Even if the other house is a tent.”

“I checked last night, and I’m on my way out there now. Everything’s just like you left it.”

“When will they be finished?”

“The lab people should be through this afternoon. My people will wait there until they’ve gone.”

“Good. I’ll call Ed and ask him if he could take me back.”

“How ’bout if I run you over? I’ll have to make sure they haven’t left anything behind, anyway. Might as well save Ed a trip.”

“You sure? Thanks. What—four o’clock? five?”

“Five’d be better.”

“I’ll pick up something at the market, we can have a third-rate picnic to pay you back for the first-rate dinner last night. Unless you have other plans?”

“A picnic would be great. Five o’clock down at the harbor.”

“See you then.”

He left, and Rae went inside the inn to make her phone calls.

Her lawyer was not in the office. She was, in fact, already on her way
out to Rae’s house to meet the insurance agent. Her secretary told Rae that Pam had received the mysterious package and already arranged to messenger it to the private lab that had been recommended to her, with an ASAP request.

Rae then phoned Tamara, got the machine, and left a message saying that she just happened to be in Friday Harbor for the day and would try to call back before leaving for Folly in the afternoon.

She phoned her own number, which rang twice and then kicked into the mechanical voice of the machine, and she hung up. Try again in an hour.

Then she took a deep breath, eyeing the phone. The letter she’d had yesterday from the owner of the New York gallery was the third Gloriana had sent her in the last two months. Rae owed the woman a call. She picked up the phone and, before she could stop to reconsider, hit the numbers. Gloriana herself answered, and gushed and flustered and was so thrilled, absolutely
thrilled
to hear from her that Rae seriously considered hanging up.

“G.,” she said into the spate. “G., stop, you’re giving me a complex.”

“Darling, never. Seriously, Rae my sweetheart, I am so very glad to hear your voice.”

“You’re not going to be as happy to hear what I have to say.”

“Oh no. Don’t tell me you’re not working.”

“Oh, I’m working all right, just not on anything that would interest you.”

“Tell me anyway.”

So Rae told her, about the island and the process of rebuilding the house, and although Gloriana’s first reaction was predictable—intense disappointment that Rae would be giving the gallery nothing for many, many months into the future—her mood shifted to wistful optimism when she cornered Rae into admitting that perhaps, next year, when the house was less urgent …

Rae liked Gloriana, respected her, and knew that the gush was partly an act but also the way she presented her honest concern for Rae’s well-being. And because she liked the woman, because Gloriana had encouraged and stood by her for so many years, Rae went on to tell her about the driftwood workbench. After a dubious hesitation (“I mean, my dear, kitsch has been in and out so many times I’m quite tired of it”) Gloriana started hearing Rae’s genuine interest in the piece.

When Rae finished, Gloriana was silent. Rae knew she was still on the line, because she could hear her breathing over the gallery’s background music.

“What’s wrong, G.? Has somebody just come in to hold the place up?”

“Would it photograph?”

“Would what photograph?”

“Your driftwood bench. Would it photograph well?”

“I suppose, if I cleared it off.”

“Oh my God. You’re not actually using the thing?”

“G., it’s a workbench.”

“Rae, you are hopeless, you really are. You’d sit in a Wright chair.”

“I do, when all the comfortable chairs are taken.”

“Stop, please. And stop using your workbench until we can get a picture of it.”

“I have a picture of it. Why do you want it? I’m not going to take the bench off and ship it to you—it’d fall apart without the tree.”

“Oh, would it? How glorious. It’s symbolic, too.”

“G., I’m going to hang up if you don’t tell me what’s going on.”

“A book.”

“A book. About my bench?”

“About the whole concept of Folly, my dear, from conception to completion. A great, gorgeous, limited-edition book with some stunning cover, solid wood maybe, and that luscious thick paper, the sort of book only collectors and university art departments can afford. Plus limited-edition photographs in the gallery for sale, of course, and a few small pieces if you feel up to it. With a cheaper version of the book for hoi polloi,” she added, chortling with pleasure.

“G., I’m hanging up now,” Rae warned her.

“But I must come and see your fabulous island, while it’s still pristine. I’ll get a photographer. We’ll be there ASAP. How do we reach you?”

“The island is hardly pristine. There’s a lot of bare soil and a huge ugly blue tarpaulin that dominates the clearing; you have to take a tattooed man’s smelly boat across; and once you’re on Folly there’s a shower made from a bucket hanging from a tree branch and a toilet over a hole I dug myself.”

A long silence followed, during which Rae wished she could have seen Gloriana’s face, and eventually came the answer, coolly polite: “Oh, well, that’s all right then, my dear. You let me know when you get the hot tub in.”

Rae finally extricated herself from the conversation, hung up, and sat
looking at Elaine’s collection of porcelain dogs, thinking about how she felt. Not too bad, she decided. The conversation hadn’t actually been as painful as she had anticipated, considering it was her first overture into the world of her chosen profession since the accident. The longer the wait, the bigger the step. So, the first small step had been ventured, without blood having been shed on either side. Not allowing herself to think about the book proposal just yet, but smiling to herself at the thought of Gloriana’s Italian sandals stepping up to the Folly privy, Rae went upstairs to brush her teeth and push the sandy clothes back into her bag. She paid Elaine for the night’s room and board with crisp bills from the ATM machine, then went back to the phone, dialed the endless string of numbers required to bill her calling card, and heard her own phone ringing again.

This time, it was picked up. Sheriff Escobar answered, asked her politely how she was, then handed the receiver over to the insurance agent, who sounded stricken—more, Rae soon decided, because of the money his company would have to fork over for a heap of useless broken glass than because the damage was so extensive. Rae breathed a sigh of relief that the paintings were intact, and a sigh of dismay at the general bashing and throwing around in her workshop, and a sigh of impatience at the mess waiting for her in the study, where, according to the agent, every file—correspondence, reviews, bills, catalogues, you name it—had been upturned, either in a search or just to make the greatest possible mess.

“Well,” she cut him off, “there’s not much I can do from here. Is my lawyer there yet?”

“Sure, she’s right here.”

There was a muffled conversation and the sounds of the phone changing hands, then a familiar voice said, “Rae?”

“Hello, Pam. I’m really sorry to drag you into this. Is it as bad as the insurance guy says?”

“It’s a mess, but other than the glass there’s not a lot of damage. But I’m canceling all your credit cards—you should have new ones in a week or so. And because your computer looked like it was turned on when they smashed it, you should assume that you have no secrets.”

Rae didn’t know that she had secrets anyway, but promised to think about what other problems might come from having her hard drive ransacked. Pam’s secretary would be given the job of contacting everyone on Rae’s mailing list, to see if some electronic thief was making the rounds. Pam ended by telling Rae bluntly that she’d been damned lucky it wasn’t any worse, then said more immediately that the contractor would
replace the locks and a security team Pam worked with was coming the next day, to look into a better alarm system.

Rae thanked her meekly, then had to ask what was chief on her mind.

“Have you heard anything from Don’s lawyers?”

“Oddly enough, no. I responded to their document, of course. We’ll just have to wait and see if the court wants to take it further. If it does, you might have to come down.”

“So they can see I’m not raving and covered in sores?”

“Rae,” Pam chided.

“Well, that’s what they’re after, isn’t it?”

“Yes, but you don’t have to be so graphic.”

At that Rae could chuckle. She asked Pam to give the insurance agent an address to send his pictures and forms, told the lawyer with false regret that she could not get free just now, and hung up with the feeling that she’d gotten off light.