The Heaven Stone Page 10

  The short piles were tougher. Like “drugs”—I still had no definite feel for that one. Or for the person Claire Azar had seen emerge from the woods on the night before the murder. Was that why Cassie Samms had described Tran as seeming scared that next day? Had someone come to tell him something? Or threaten him?

  Which brought me to the last pile.

  Suoheang Khoy had given Tran five thousand dollars two years ago. Khoy had dealt in jade and made money and spent it on a good time. Khoy had jumped parole and disappeared from San Jose six months ago, around the time that several other Cambodians had been murdered out there. Maybe Khoy was dead too. Or maybe not. I slid the pile closer to the Azar card and asked myself the obvious questions.

  It was after eleven-thirty, but I took a chance. The desk officer put the call through.

  “St. Onge,” said the weary voice.

  “Still polishing pine?”

  I sensed his one instant of indecision over whether to hang up. Encouraging obscene callers can be a mistake. “I should be out in the streets where the bad guys are,” he said.

  “Not all of them.”

  “That’s cryptic.”

  “I saw the coroner’s report on the Tran shooting.”

  He was quiet a moment, maybe wishing he had hung up. “I wasn’t at liberty to spill much.”

  “Why bother at all?”

  “What, were you going to solve it?” he said with sudden heat. “For crissakes, I told you it looked like a hit. How’d you run this call past the desk anyway?”

  “You’re talking to Louis L’Amour.”

  “Swell. Stick both our necks in the wringer.”

  “Relax, in this town what’s another Frenchman. I’ve got a question for you.”

  “Forget it. I’m hanging up. Go on home. What?”

  “Play with a name for me.”

  “Why should I?”

  “You decide. Suoheang Khoy.”

  “The guy in your report. No bells.”

  “I know you’re a one-man anti-crime force, but could you check a file? One of your worthy colleagues might’ve turned him up around town lately.”

  “Who is he anyway?”

  “A blip that keeps appearing on radar. Maybe no one.”

  “Rasmussen, it’s late.”

  “Then why aren’t you home with your family?”

  He sighed. “He have an address?”

  “Last known was San Jose.”

  “California? Then what the hell you asking me—?”

  “He faded from there six months ago. He could be moving around. He could’ve come here, Ed.” I did not mention that he also could be dead.

  Another sigh; but he did not hang up. I heard footsteps wander off. He was gone so long that I half-imagined he had asked the way to San Jose and gone in person, that his voice would have turned to a croak with the Silicon Valley smog and the passage of time.

  It hadn’t. “Negative,” he said.

  “You checked drug arrests?”

  “I checked overdue library books! The name draws nothing. You done now?”

  This time I sighed. “Yeah.” The fact was, if Khoy had come east, he probably would have changed his name to some other, equally unpronounceable name. Why the hell hadn’t these people stayed where they belonged? I told him about the Houston’s PD’s request, and he agreed to send them his report.

  “We square now?” he asked.

  “Even Steven.”

  “Then I’ll throw in a bonus, no charge. What does this make it for you and the Stewart woman? Three days?”

  “You seem to be keeping track.”

  “It could be you’ve done your duty by her and should collect your fee.”

  “Meaning?”

  “That’s a pretty good piece of change. Take it. She’s not going to want to go on shelling out for nothing. I’ll handle things from here.”

  “I thought you’d been trying all along.”

  “Look at it from another angle. All this grand jury stuff over at city hall has got Droney acting crazy.”

  “That’s new?”

  “It’s no joke. He’s looking for a dog to kick. He hasn’t forgotten the run-in you two had. He finds out you’re nosing around a police case…”

  “You’re saying I should butt out while I can.”

  “And?”

  “Pearls before swine,” I said. “Let me elaborate on that. No. Negative. Nyet. I’m the one who decides when I work and when I don’t. I haven’t got a gold tie-bar and a pension waiting for me at the end, which also means nobody but my client tells me when to pull the plug on a job. All things considered, I like the trade just fine.”

  I hung up the phone. For a moment I sat there with the tremblies. I realized I had been looking for a free midnight snack; instead I had gotten indigestion.

  When you’re losing at solitaire, you can cheat or pack it in. I gathered the slips of paper, clamped them with a paper clip, slid the deck into my coat pocket and locked up. The elevator had been fixed, but it grumbled all the way down like I had wakened it from a sweet dream. The streets were mostly quiet—a distant gunning car, the hoot of a freight train. A patrolman was rattling doorknobs on Merrimack. The facade of the Sun building was splashed with milky light from a chipped cup of a moon. The air had finally cooled. I walked around to the lot in back of my building with an alert eye. I had not forgotten what had happened there earlier.

  A scrap of paper was pinned under one of my wiper blades.

  Alex—I saw your car and stopped by, but you weren’t upstairs. Call me tomorrow? —Ada.

  P.S. Had fun last night.

  It was an unexpectedly nice cap to the day. I took the pack of notes out of my pocket and slipped Ada’s note on the bottom. Maybe for luck.

  16

  EVERYTHING ABOUT THE receptionist at the DSS office was fire-truck red, from the frames of her oversized glasses to the rim of lipstick on her morning cup of coffee—even the fresh-looking sunburn across her cheeks and forehead. In Tailgunner Joe’s day, she would have been a definite question mark. Her smile was white and friendly, though, as she pointed me toward the cubicles at the back of the large bullpen. I made my way past a lot of harried-looking people with phones hooked to their ears. Ada was just hanging hers up when I peered through her open doorway.

  “Knock, knock,” I said.

  “Oh, hi,” she said, surprised. “Come in.”

  She touched her hair, smoothed her skirt as I settled into a wooden folding chair.

  “Thanks for your note last night,” I said. “I didn’t get back until late.”

  “I was in the area. How’s the investigation coming?”

  “TGIF.”

  “No luck?”

  “There’s a little smoke but no fire. You’re not paying me to give you a bunch of questions.”

  “You’ll answer them.”

  “I like your confidence.”

  “It’s not misplaced, is it?”

  “If I thought so I’d collect my security deposit and get a job in a shoe store. I’m just not sure the answers are going to warrant the cost.”

  “Alex”— she glanced past me to the door and back—“have you got a minute?”

  “Loads of them, one right after another.”

  She led me into a passageway between more cubicles toward a rear door. Walt Rittle was in a rat-hole at the end, scanning a computer screen. As we passed he looked up and I waved.

  “Hey, how you doing?” His greeting had its hearty ring.

  Ada indicated the door. Humidity had swollen it, so I had to butt it open with my shoulder. I did not shut it tight behind us, for fear we wouldn’t get back in. In the little paved parking lot sunlight shone off windshields and chrome.

  “If we could bottle Walter’s energy, we’d have something,” Ada said, leading the way over to her little Toyota. Bumper stickers said TAKE BACK THE NIGHT and EXTINCT IS FOREVER. “He’s the only social worker I know who’s lasted in the trenches past forty. He puts
us younger folks to shame.”

  “You do okay,” I said.

  “Just barely.” Ada leaned against her car and tipped her head back, closing her eyes. In the brightness I could see tiny lines at the corners, like delicate Chinese fans. Her hair gleamed the deep burnished brown of teak.

  “The sun is tonic,” she said, her eyes still shut. “Weekends I just sit on the deck at home, reading.”

  “State reports, no doubt.”

  Her faint smile was a confession.

  “Why not take a week and do it right?” I said. “Go to the Cape.”

  “There’s too much work.”

  I clicked my tongue. “The little Dutch kid disease is in its terminal phase.”

  She opened her eyes. “We had this conversation. Anyway, that’s not why I got you out here. In 1859 my great-grandfather went shares in a clipper ship, which meant that he’d get that portion of any profit. Before long he had six ships of his own operating out of Salem. He took cotton cloth to Canton and Shanghai and brought back tea and ceramics and silk tapestries. Eventually he brought back some people, whom he paid to work as servants. To make a long story short, they had children, and one of the little girls married the old man’s grandson, Charles Blaine Stewart the Third. They were my mother and father.”

  “I wondered about that.”

  “They’ve been divorced since I was thirteen. He lives in Europe most of the year, she’s in Palm Beach. My brother and I are the heirs. I live on the salary I make working, but there’s money in trust. A lot of it, Alex.” She hesitated. “Something like four million dollars.”

  She turned away abruptly, as if she had confessed to an unsavory disease. It would have been a nice affliction to have, but it was an affliction all the same. I said, “It’s still a matter of value for your money. I’ve got to be satisfied I’m giving you that.”

  “I understand. I’m telling you this only so you’ll know. No one else around here does. Some people can’t relate to the notion of working if you don’t have to. Do I need to explain it to you?”

  I smiled. “No, though I don’t speak from experience.”

  She gave another grin. The sudden bugling of a horn drew our attention across the street, where a canteen truck drew up in front of an auto repair shop. The driver got out and hoisted the quilted stainless steel back. Workers began to emerge from the gloom of the garage wiping their hands on orange cloths.

  “Want something?” I said. “I’m spending.”

  I went over and got a hot dog and a pair of coffees and brought them back. “For lunch?” Ada said skeptically as I unwrapped the foil on the hot dog.

  “Breakfast,” I said. “You are what you eat.”

  She watched me squeeze on mustard and relish, then said, “So where are we?”

  “Right where we were five minutes ago, I guess. With lots of questions. Here’s another. Does your family know anything about jade?”

  “Seriously?”

  I nodded, chewing.

  “Jade.” She said the word softly. “The stone of heaven. That’s what the Chinese have called it for centuries. They valued it more than gold. My great-grandfather’s collection was one of the finest in America. Why?”

  I shrugged. “Professional curiosity. Is there anyone in your family I could talk to about jade?”

  “Most of the collection was sold or donated to museums long ago. Latter generations of Stewarts have opted for less beautiful but more practical forms of wealth. You really want to know more?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well … the gallery my family used to deal with is still in Andover. Very old and prestigious. Haskell and MacKay, on Main Street. Angus MacKay knew jade better than anyone.”

  I wiped my fingers, got out my notebook and wrote the name.

  “But he died years ago,” Ada said.

  I lined out the name.

  “The people who run the gallery now are snobs, but they’re still among the best art and antique brokers around. They could tell you what you want to know.”

  I put my notepad away. “It’s a place to start.”

  “So you’re still retained?”

  “With all that money to play with?”

  She grinned. “I’ve got to get back. Could I see you tonight? To find out how it’s going?”

  “I’ll drop by here.”

  “Look for you about six-thirty?”

  “Quitting early for a change?”

  “TGIF.” She wrinkled her nose. “Thanks for the coffee.”

  I drove downtown and checked in at my office. People weren’t lined up ten deep for my services. Fred Meecham heard me and came by with the papers for the divorce. I got them signed and sealed and headed across the street to the post office, but when I was halfway there they started to grow heavy. I envisioned the envelope dropping through the slot and causing damage, which would get me a federal rap. I decided to deliver the papers in person before they got so heavy I needed a dump truck.

  * * *

  The house that Lauren and the bank and I still owned jointly was in the Highlands. A landscaping service was at work in the yard of a former neighbor: one shirtless young man with a mower decapitating dandelions as another whacked weeds by the fence encircling a new in-ground pool. Across the street another neighbor was strapping toddlers into safety seats in a Volvo where for years had stood a yellow AMC Hornet with freckles of rust showing through like a banana going bad. The neighborhood had slipped a few notes up the scale without me.

  I parked in front of our pale gray colonial, climbed the steps and rang the bell. Lauren’s green Accord was in the driveway. I could smell the tea roses trained on trellises to either side. The stoop was neatly swept and the welcome mat was new. I squinted up at the gutter and downspouts, at the glazing on the windows, looking for the little signs of neglect that would demand a man’s touch, but there were none that I could see. Someone was getting along just fine.

  My knock brought no hurrying footsteps, nor slow ones either. The mail had already come. It was in the box. I held the fat envelope in my hand a moment, then slipped it through the slot. It hit bottom with a thud—or was that my stomach? As I walked back to the car, I did feel lighter, but it was a hollow lightness, the kind you get at the top of the roller coaster just before the plummet. I drove off wondering whether I would ever come here again.

  If I had known then what I was still several hours away from knowing, I never would have left.

  17

  ANDOVER, TWICE IN as many days: my star was on the rise. I stowed the car in a town lot behind the stores in the center, coined the meter and strolled over to Main Street, where I had to wade through folks in Eddie Bauer garb licking designer ice cream cones, and kids with first names like Kit and Potter and Abigail, with time on their hands between oboe lessons, computer camp, and growing up to inherit the portfolio.

  Haskell and MacKay was tucked at the end of a block of shops with striped awnings and hand-carved wooden signs with gold lettering. Everything matched and was bright as a new penny. When you stepped through the door of the gallery, however, a hush descended on you, and the new Andover ended right there. Inside was the Andover of Phillips Academy and two-hundred-year-old Congregational churches and the DAR. Listening carefully, I thought I could hear money being minted behind folding Oriental screens that decorated one wall.

  When my vision had adjusted to the cool dimness, I saw a woman standing in profile at the far end of a Bokhara carpet the size of a badminton court. She was leaning against a table with a Tiffany lamp on it and a French telephone, the receiver of which was cupped to her ear and into whose mouthpiece she was quietly speaking. She had one long leg knee-locked and taking her weight while the other foot was rolled over on its side, doing a demure striptease with a navy blue pump. Some signal bell must have jingled, because she looked around with fleeting appraisal and held up a finger—one minute—that rooted me to the spot.

  I busied myself checking out some small paintings hanging on a
side wall. Mostly they were as old and dark as a Dutch master, so you had to peer close to see what was going on. I saw cows grazing along a stream bank; two Gordon setters in a meadow; a creel with a brace of brook trout laid beside it. There wasn’t a price tag in sight.

  The painting that held my eye was a gold-framed affair showing a group of men in black robes and white periwigs, standing around looking sober.

  “It’s English,” said the woman, “circa 1835.”

  I hadn’t heard her cradle the phone.

  She started over. Both her shoes were on now and she moved easily on the long legs in a paisley silk dress that had been built to show off the great figure.

  “Barristers and judges,” she went on. “I’ve always liked the formality of the costumes. It makes the law seem very strict and certain, don’t you think?”

  “If the judges over here wore costumes,” I said, “they’d be red suits with big white beards.”

  Her hair was center-parted, just off the shoulder and of the rich brown that would go well with the mahogany mantel of one of the big homes on Main Street, and the rich amber of old brandy, and money that never has to turn green because it is all long certificates of paper in security drawers in Boston banks. She could have sent bone structure in care packages to modeling schools. Her cheeks tapered smoothly to a firm jaw. She had appraising, river-blue eyes, a spray of tiny freckles across her straight nose, and a full-lipped mouth.

  “Do you like it?” she asked.

  “Certainly pleasing to the eye,” I said, my gaze still on her. “Composition looks good.”

  She measured me with that cool stare. She had all the candy and I was a kid holding out my trick-or-treat bag. She said, “It’s terribly expensive, though.”

  “Oh, I can imagine. But I’m just kicking tires. I’m mainly here to ask about jade. Ada Stewart recommended you people.”

  “Ada Stewart,” she said, as if she had come across an artifact in an attic. “Now there’s a name to conjure with. Poor Ada. We were at Miss Hall’s School together.”