The Heaven Stone Page 11

  I could have said most anything. “How nice for Miss Hall,” is what came out.

  She didn’t lose her place at the head of the line. “Ada needed to feel engagée. Always the little rebel in those days, trying to politicize everyone, writing essays in the school paper, marching. She had ‘Chan’ legally put in her name. Her parents didn’t do that.”

  “It was a family name on her mother’s side,” I said.

  She wasn’t going to argue against old family names. “Isn’t Ada working in a ghetto now or something? Instead of assuming the duties of the Blaine Stewart fortune? We used to play in that huge family place when we were small. Ada was always climbing the beech trees like a little monkey, and one of the Oriental servants was forever trying to coax her down.” She shook her head and gave a tiny smile. “Ah, well. Jade, you said. Do you know anything about jade?”

  “It’s green.”

  One corner of her mouth curled. “When it isn’t white or lavender or black or some other color. Come over to the desk.”

  I got settled in a chair that might have been Chippendale or Sheraton; hell, maybe it was Danish Modern. She excused herself and went through an open doorway into the back. I took a business card from a little bone china basket and learned the proprietors were Dayle Haskell and Syd Keyes. Those damn cute names that drove you to that hoary old greeting on business letters: “Dear Sir or Madame.” The woman returned with two books and set them before me and leaned over my shoulder to give me a glimpse of the jewels. I drew my attention back to the books. She opened the first one, and I saw color photographs set behind clear plastic.

  “For over fifty centuries jade was the traditional heart of Chinese civilization. It was prized more than gold even, or other gemstones. And it’s harder than steel, so it was used for tools and weapons.” She slowly turned pages as she spoke. “But it was also prominent in art and religion. Among members of the imperial court, a finely carved piece of jade could be worth more than life itself.”

  She turned to a photograph of a carving in the shape of a large insect. It was the color of paraffin wax. “In fact,” she said, “jade was considered a bridge to immortality.”

  “That’s jade?” I asked.

  “Yes. It’s a cicada. At death, one of these would be put in the mouth of the deceased, as a totem of reincarnation.”

  I remembered Ada had called jade the stone of heaven.

  The woman opened the second volume. “These depict pieces that were in the Blaine Stewart collection.”

  Between the plastic pages were photographs of small jade disks with holes cut in the center, which she said were called pi, used in burial rites. There were also carved animals and human figurines, necklaces, amulets.

  “This mask was worn by a Chinese warlord centuries ago. It’s currently owned by Duncan MacGregor, of the meat packing fortune.”

  I marveled at the variety and delicate beauty of the work. Ada’s forebears had been into something mesmerizing. But everything the woman showed me was old, and I said so.

  “Oh, jade is popular still,” she said, “though much of what passes for it is imitation. There is some fine new carving being done in a few scattered places, but most of the truly classic work, the old stuff, has long since been secured by private collections and museums.”

  “Is white more valuable than green?”

  “That color is called ‘mutton fat.’ Depends. Black is probably the most costly jade, gram for gram, because it’s the most rare. But color is only one consideration. What we call jade really refers to two stones—jadeite and nephrite.” She gave me her half-inch smile. “Is this getting too technical?”

  “I’ll say when.”

  “The bright green you’re likely to see on the market is typically jadeite. Mostly it comes raw from the old Burma, and some gets sold on the market there, but under the Communists the prices are fixed, so a lot gets smuggled out through Thailand into China and Hong Kong and Taiwan. Among connoisseurs, the old Chinese nephrite is the most prized.”

  “Is it collected in Southeast Asia?”

  “When the French were there, absolutely. The colonial economy encouraged collecting of all kinds among the well-to-do Indo-Chinese. These days I doubt it. In that part of the world everyone’s just poor now, aren’t they?” She closed the book.

  I thanked her for her help and held up the business card and used my superior deductive skills. “Dayle?”

  “Sydney Keyes.”

  “That’s what I meant.”

  She was studying me again, as if I was going on the auction block soon. “Coincidentally,” she said, “one of our customers recently purchased some Yunung-kash.”

  “What’s Yunung-kash?” I said.

  “It’s very valuable old nephrite jade. The original boulders it was carved from were brought by caravan from the Yunung-kash, which is a river in a remote oasis in the Takla Makan Desert in China.”

  “Oh, that Yunung-kash,” I said. “When did you sell it?”

  “We didn’t. It was acquired in a private sale. But that’s what made me think of it. I believe the seller was Indo-Chinese.”

  “Do you have a name?”

  “No. But we did an appraisal for the individual who bought the jade. Seven pieces dating from the late Ming and early Qing periods. You are familiar with the dynasties?”

  “They’re both on my all-time list,” I said. “You mind if I ask the buyer’s name?”

  “Ordinarily, yes, I would mind. However, since mention of the purchase has already appeared in the newspaper, it’s a well-leaked secret. It was Joel Castle.”

  “Of the Castle Cleen fortune?”

  She gave me the tiny smile, which I understood now meant amusement. “Are you planning to become a collector, Mr. Rasmussen?”

  “Who’s got the time? My other collections keep me tapped out.”

  A delicate skepticism arched her brows. “Really?”

  “For years now. Come out to the car, I’ll show you my parking tickets.” I thanked her again for her help.

  “I’m here Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and evenings by appointment,” she said. “If you have other questions, do call. Maybe I can show you my collection.”

  I grinned and pocketed the card. I turned once at the door. She was leaning against the desk, her arms crossed. She gave me the half-inch smile, which I carried with me most of the way back to the car. If she had given me an inch, I’d probably have taken a mile.

  18

  I STOPPED AT a gas station and used a pay phone while the man filled the tank. I dialed Castle’s office, but he was not in. When the receptionist asked if I wanted to leave a message, I said not to bother, that I would catch Joel later. If he mistook the reason I was looking for him, I could expect to find Oscar the Grouch and B.C. camped in my waiting room later, eating their last kill. I got Castle’s home number from the directory and dialed.

  The answering service was live, which is fine if you want to give only a name and number: but I needed to leave a more detailed message. They are always so eager to get you off the line and get to someone else. Volume is how they make their money. No message, I told her.

  It was ten of six. I decided I would try Castle again in awhile, and if the vibes were okay, I could stop by his house on the way back to the city. I went into a posh little cafe with a brass-potted palm and a slate with the evening’s menu scrawled on it flanking the door. The dining side was deserted, so I sat at the bar. In Lowell at this hour the house would be packed with workers, joined for a Bud and a shot of V.O., the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers. Mine was a city of barrooms, Catholic churches and funeral parlors. There was an equation in that somewhere, but I had never worked it out. Here in Andover the churches tended to tall white spires, and this bar was quiet. If you didn’t count the Ms. behind it. She just made the twenty-one age limit and wore teased yellow hair and a micro-skirt in the pattern of a Union Jack that in a few hours would have all the troops saluting.

  “You go
nna eat?” she asked me. Her accent was about as British as a cheeseburger. “Our special tonight we got jumbo shrimp.”

  “Nothing like a little oxymoron to start the evening,” I said.

  She shoved a menu my way. “Just the special and what’s on there.”

  I ordered a Mill City ale and a turkey breast sandwich, which arrived as thick as my fist, and I sat there like one of the idle rich, gnawing at the sandwich and at one little question: was the person who had sold Castle the jade Suoheang Khoy?

  At six-thirty I tried Castle at home again but hung up when the service answered. It was not until I was heading home and saw the sign for the Sheraton coming up on my right that I decided to give him the pleasure of an unexpected visit. I slowed and turned into the hidden country lane.

  The meadow had a churchyard peacefulness in the shafts of dusty sunlight angling through the pine woods beyond it. The house was more striking than it had been at night, more costly. Walls of glass and redwood came together at architect’s angles, and the wide fieldstone chimney jutted above the shake roof grandly. Lawn sprinklers made rainbows on grass the cool green color of numbers on a stock monitor. Castle’s blue Rolls sat before the garage at the head of the long driveway. There was no sign of the Town Car or the hired help, which didn’t sadden me. I used the doorbell and, when nobody appeared, the brass knocker.

  I heard a sound like a door banging shut inside the house, maybe in the back. I waited. Knocked again.

  It’s the Lifestyles of Poor and Obscure Syndrome. Most people are curious about what goes on behind the high walls and the smoked glass of limousines. Who’s doing what to whom? Most people are content to get the dirt on TV or in the tabloids. Most people don’t earn their living by their curiosity.

  I walked up the driveway past beds of flowers which had the luxuriant offhandedness of an English garden, but I knew as much care had gone into them as into the choice of furnishings inside. I peered at the Rolls. On the driver’s door there was some message, presumably Castle’s initials, displayed in tiny nautical flags. Inside one of the garage bays was another car, wrapped in a body bag, a Jag maybe, or one of those low-slung Italian jobs that get about two girls to a gallon. There seemed to be a lot of expensive horsepower sitting around unused.

  Behind the house, through the seams in a stockade fence, I glimpsed the pool that Castle had crawled out of last night to greet me. A Styrofoam float chair with an empty Corona beer bottle propped in the armrest drifted in the middle. I would find Castle asleep on a chaise longue, Iacocca’s latest thriller tented open on his chest. Maybe Lauren would be there too, sweet with oil, trim in a new swimsuit. With a twinge I edged closer and peered through the closed gate. No one was by the pool.

  The gate had a security latch which could be opened only from the inside. I poked a ballpoint pen through and lifted it. As I went through, the gate started to swing shut on its springs and would have made a crash if I had not caught it and eased it shut. I thought about the sound I had heard.

  There were half a dozen chaises on the Italian-tile apron around the pool, and a big acrylic-topped table with a folded umbrella. In an open cabana in a corner was an Exercycle and a stainless steel barbell set. The water in the pool lay as flat and blue as heaven’s eye. The chair floating in it was a mote. I listened to a silence deeper than I’d heard in a long while. A jay called out once from the woods and flitted to a higher branch.

  The glass slider on the doorway leading into the house was open an inch. For a full minute I contemplated that fact.

  Probably I should have let it be. I edged the slider open six inches. Probably I ought to have closed it. I waited, listening, then opened the door wider. Probably I should have been moving out of there with the vigor of an autumn duck on a late start south. I stepped into the house.

  The room I found myself in was the den I had seen the night before, with its recycled drive-in theater screen and fieldstone hearth. Except for the faint sigh of the central AC, the silence was as thick as the carpets. I still did not know what I was doing there or what I was looking for; I only hoped I would when I found it.

  Adjoining the den was a formal dining room. Move the table aside and the Celtics could go half-court in it—or the beautiful people dance the night away. The fireplace in the den was backed by an even larger model in here. Above the mantel was a portrait of Himself. It was the “our founder” pose, Castle standing in a dark suit and rich red tie behind a massive leather chair, like a lord of the realm. Citizen Cleen. As I gazed at the swirl of oils, the portrait became like the optical illusion of the transparent cube—the one where, as you stare at it, it keeps flipping back and forth. There was Mr. Joel Castle, whom Lauren and the woman at the antique gallery obviously knew—and then I’d be seeing Joey Costello grinning shrewdly out at me, and I could swear the portrait was Day-Glo colors on black velvet.

  I looked away, out the dining room door into the front entry with the big windows, knowing the Lincoln was coming up the drive. But the road lay empty in the declining angle of sunlight. The sprinklers had shut themselves off and the rainbows were gone. No pots of gold anywhere.

  I opened a third door off the foyer. Shadowed as the room was by drawn vertical blinds, I nevertheless saw in there the leather chair from the portrait, with its back to me, a plush ox-blood brown. Beyond was a large desk. I saw the shell of a computer monitor and oak file cabinets. I had an idea Castle Cleen was run from corporate suites in one of the office parks on the outskirts of the city, but this would be the private home office which Joel Castle would need. He was a man who would want ready access to his fiefdom any time the spirit moved him, the way Uncle Scrooge liked to go into the counting house and paddle around in his cash. I had taken a few paces forward before the back of my neck prickled in that primitive reaction that we haven’t lost.

  Sitting in the chair, one hand in his lap, the other hanging off the padded arm, was Castle.

  I gobbled breath and spread my feet, getting balance. It did not matter how many times you had been there, you were always a virgin.

  His head was slumped forward a little. His face had a lumpy pallor, spotted slightly, like the bark of winter birch trees. I probed his throat for a pulse that I knew would not be there. My fingers came back sticky.

  The bullet had gone in at close range, a single shot, I judged, behind the left ear. I looked around for the weapon that had fired it, but it wasn’t there. Nor were any brochures from the Hemlock Society.

  The round had exited through the Adam’s apple, just above where a gold pin cinched Castle’s shirt collar around the knot of a silk tie that had been some color other than maroon. Blood had run down the front of his blue shirt, and I saw where a congealed drop of it hung from his French cuff like a ruby pendant. Despite the impact of the gunshot, the eyes were open, though dull with that fused-out murk that eyes have when the life has gone from them. Although I knew it was illusion created by the dimness of the room, even that burnished brass hair seemed to have faded.

  I drew another breath and felt a pang of regret. Who did this to you, Joey? Why did you let them?

  The room had been searched. Here and there a book had been pulled off a shelf, a file drawer and a few desk drawers weren’t quite closed. The Daniel Mink watch was gone. Pens and pencils had been poured like pick-up sticks out of a vase on the blotter. Under them lay several spreadsheets containing lists of numbers. I didn’t have to guess that the numbers were dollar amounts: long skinny columns, like rope ladders down the sides of a foundering ship. But the life rafts at the ends had not been enough. No amount of dough ever is in the end, when the bottom line for every one of us comes out zero.

  Somehow I didn’t think the figures had much to do with Castle’s early retirement. The room had been tossed by somebody looking for a more tangible asset than paper, and I had an idea of what.

  A new thought pressed me. Had the sound I had heard earlier been made by the killer exiting through the pool gate?

  There wer
e two telephones on a corner of the desk: a quaint black model with a rotary dial, and a pearl-gray unit with the handset on the side and more buttons than a sailor’s pants. There were settings already coded for the Andover police and fire department I saw, but I used my handkerchief on the receiver of the black phone and dialed the number for the Lowell police. I told the woman who answered who I was and who I wanted. Ed St. Onge came on with a snarl. I told him why I was calling. There was an oasis of silence about ten seconds wide, then: “What brought you there? Social call on a friend?”

  “It’ll take too long to explain. Just tip the locals, will you? Get them out here.”

  “Trying to save a dime?” he said tartly.

  “Maybe a lot more than that.” As I put the phone to bed, my eye fell on a paperweight that looked like a chunk of petrified wood. Actually it was what was underneath that grabbed me. A newspaper clipping. Picking it up I saw it was a blab column from the Lawrence Eagle-Tribune.

  Joel Castle has shown his exquisite taste once again. The Andover entrepreneur recently purchased a collection of stunning antique jade, including a large Buddha, masks, flowers, and a ring. Speaking of which, Castle hinted he might be giving a ring to a “special friend” when he makes an announcement at his annual open house later this month. Do we get three guesses, Joel? Are the rest of us jaded ladies going to be green with envy?

  I did not need even one guess. A gust of fear blew cold across my heart.

  19

  LEAVING CASTLE TO face his imminent guests alone, I took 93 north to 495 south, keeping the needle at seventy, but not thinking about numbers, thinking that I ought to have called St. Onge right back and had him send a car ahead, that I should have worried more about the fingerprints I’d probably left. But that was just mind-noise now. I didn’t know if the killer had seen the clipping or not, but I had to figure that Lauren was the special friend and maybe everyone else knew too.

  I hooked onto the Connector and got off at Industrial Avenue. The Wang towers were lit up in the twilight, but traffic was sparse. I was easy pickings for a speed trap, which would mean delay and a fine and a penalty on my record for the next three years—which was about a year longer than you’d pull for homicide these days—but I risked it. In the last stretch I got behind an old party who was moving almost as slow as a cabbie with a fare. I honked and got by him and soon made my turn on squealing tires.