4 Impression of Bones (11 page)

Juliet sighed and returned to her dark room. She began to
sweep, not consciously pursuing any ideas as she cleaned, just letting her
thoughts come as they pleased. Oddly, her brain didn’t choose to directly
explore the two murders that had happened at the castle though they were not
forgotten. That was all right. Juliet knew that it was sometimes better to let
the brain sneak up on an idea than to confront it directly.

She was still puzzling when she heard footsteps on the
stairs and paused in her sweeping when she recognized the gait. Though she
thought best when she was alone, and
Manoogin
was
right that there was nothing smelly or repulsive left in the tower, Juliet was
glad to see Esteban appear, wearing his tool belt and carrying the sheets of
cardboard that held the precut mirrors. Her gloomy dread vanished at once.

“
Bella
,” he said,
leaning the mirrors against the wall.

“Thank you for coming. I owe you a long cold drink.”

“Two. Those stairs are brutal.”

Esteban wasted no time in getting down to work. The tower
was hot and rather stuffy. Esteban did not share her dread of the place but neither
of them wanted to linger.

While Esteban hung the shelf segments, obscuring the
pop-eyed angels protruding from the wall, Juliet got out some mastic and began
adhering
her pieces of mirror into the deep arrow slits.
They were all labeled. The three windows were slightly different in size. They
didn’t speak for a while since Esteban was using a masonry drill and the noise
was deafening, but eventually he finished grinding rock.

“So, talk to me,
bella
. Tell me about your day.”

So Juliet told him about Weston and the tunnel and how Dolph
had lied about sealing it. She then expressed something that had been troubling
her from the beginning of the project.

“There are three types of people in the world.
The creators, the destroyers, and the consumers.”
Esteban
grunted agreement and began bolting the next section of shelf into the wall.
“The creators are the
most rare
. I know that we are
basically loners, but gathering us together is unusual and should have created
some kind of synergy. But it hasn’t. And I think the lack has something to do
with Dolph and his philandering. It’s poisoned the waters and made people
territorial and secretive.”

“He pissed in the creative soup?” Esteban asked.

“I might not have expressed it that way—but yes. Something
about him changed the dynamics of the project. It’s messed up the patterns and
I can’t quite see the whole picture of what has happened.
Yet.”

“But you will.”

“Yes. Eventually I will. I just hope it isn’t too late.”

“Too late for what?”
Esteban asked,
turning to meet her gaze. His tanned face was filmed with perspiration. It was
good that there was only one more section of shelving to go up. Juliet decided
that she would finish the mirrors the next morning when it was cooler. “You are
feeling fey about this place?”

“I guess I am. There’s no proof that anything else is going
on, but I have the feeling the bad things are not over yet.”

“Then it would behoove you to be cautious,
bella
. It might
be best if you did not work here alone. I am free tomorrow.” Esteban looked
sober. “I shall come.”

“But—”

“I have great respect for your hunches. If there is more
trouble coming then I will be here to face it with you. I know that you are
very capable, but one cannot look everywhere at once. A second set of eyes and
hands is best, yes?”

There wasn’t anything to say to that except a sincere thank
you.

They finished their work about twenty minutes later and
Esteban asked to see her tunnel.

“Let’s go out the back way and avoid the workmen. I don’t
want to go through the kitchen though since Manoogin and Weston
are
probably still there, dusting for fingerprints or
something.”

“Some fresh air would be nice. Your tower is an unpleasant
place in the summer.” His eyes flicked to the
sooted
wall. There really was an outline of a body. It was plain once more light had
bounced its way into the chamber.

“I suspect it’s unpleasant all the time,” Juliet muttered,
starting down the stairs.

They went out through the back way, in case the news crews
were still filming. Esteban had not seen the whole castle and was curious about
what the artists had done. He did not seem impressed with the library, though
his eyes lingered on the limestone fireplace which was carved with the faces of
crusaders and quite large enough to roast a large mammal.

He was more approving of the music room done in a
quasi-French Emperor style with its oversized bust of Napoleon and the ninety
thousand dollar pipe organ donated by an anonymous philanthropist. The organ
wasn’t working yet, but it looked impressive enough to grace a cathedral. The
giant rug on the floor was wrong though.

Palm trees and exotic fruits like the banana tree had no
place in that room, though they masked the giant gong which had somehow gotten
classified as a musical instrument and tucked away in a corner.

At last Esteban spoke.

“It is odd that one could spend so much money and effort and
still fail at creating something beautiful, or at least inviting. It is not art,
it’s.…”

“Andy Warhol,” Juliet finished.
“After he
had sniffed a lot of glue.
Dolph kept talking about wanting something
whimsical and quintessentially Californian.”

“And the artists indulged him?”

“Yes. For some reason they did. Only, it doesn’t come off as
whimsical.”

It was a relief to reach the outdoors. The air was still but
it was fresh. They began walking toward the fence at the back of the property.
The air did not remain fresh for long.

“Ugh? What is that?”

“The pond, but
where have all the ducks gone?” Juliet asked out loud, diverting her steps
toward the pond which looked a flat black with advancing sun glancing off of
the thick, algae-rich water.
“And the geese?
They’ve
been hanging out here lately.”

“Perhaps they
have migrated.” Esteban was not interested in wildlife unless it was trying to
kill him.

“Not at this
time of year.”

“Maybe the
noise from the machines has discouraged them. It discourages me.” The cacophony
from the courtyard was somewhat muted by the castle’s walls, but still quite
audible.

Juliet looked
back at the castle. It stared at her with lidless, blind eyes that looked out
of walls scoured by time and weather. It looked dead, deserted except for the
lizards clinging to the rough stone, and she couldn’t imagine who would want to
shut themselves away there. There had to be nicer castles for sale.

“Maybe.”
She sighed as another man hove into
view. “Prepare yourself. You are about to have the pleasure of meeting
Manoogin’s partner.”

Weston,
who had likely seen them from the kitchen, joined Juliet and Esteban out by the
pond.
His posture
suggested that he wasn’t happy to be outside. If the policeman was trying to
like her, he wasn’t having much success at it. And since he was not the kind to
gracefully yield his prejudices, he was about as subtle as an anvil.

“It’s a shame
what a lack of humor and paranoia will do to a man.” Juliet considered the
preemptive measure of shoving him into the dirty water before he could speak
and say something offensive. She could pretend to trip….

“Don’t do it,
bella
,” Esteban
said quietly, but he sounded more amused than alarmed.

“I won’t. Not
if he behaves.”

“Manoogin
wants to see you before you leave,” Weston said abruptly, stopping about ten
feet back. His squint looked a lot like a scowl and his nose was wrinkled. That
could be because of the pond stench.

Juliet decided
to change tactics and see if she could kill him with kindness.

“Detective
Weston, this is Esteban Rodriquez. Esteban makes puppets. He has been kind
enough to help me hang some shelves up in the tower room.”

Weston fought
an internal battle and basic manners won. It probably helped that Esteban
wasn’t female.

“How
do you do?”
He
nodded but didn’t offer his hand.

“If you see
Lieutenant Manoogin before we do, would you tell him that we’ll be in
directly?” Juliet asked.

“Tell him
yourself. I’m leaving.” Apparently nodding had used up his supply of good
manners. Then Juliet saw that he was looking past her. She turned. The
lieutenant was walking up from the fence along the service road at the back of
the property. Though separated by the hurricane fence, the pond was only a
short distance from the hidden tunnel. Judging by the state of his clothing,
Manoogin
had been out exploring the hillside outside the
tunnel and along the fence.

The lieutenant
looked hot and exasperated but spoke pleasantly enough.

“I’m glad that
I caught you,” he said, staring at Weston as the man retreated. “What is eating
him?”

“I don’t think
he cares for the pond,” Esteban said. “It does smell a little like a septic tank.”

“Or he doesn’t
like me.
Though I don’t even smell bad.”

Manoogin shook
his head, clearly dismissing his partner’s moodiness.

“So what’s
up?” Juliet asked.

“It seems
Stephanie Gillard has disappeared. Her significant other has filed a missing
person’s report. She has been gone since the day of the murder. The security
guard said that she got to the castle around ten, but no one else admits to
seeing her after that. We’ve searched the castle but there is no sign of her.”

“You believe
this is related to Dolph’s murder?” Juliet asked.

“I think it is
probably best to assume it. She is friends with Antonia Warren who remodeled
the kitchen and might well have known about the entrance to the wine cellar. By
the way, it turns out the Mrs. Ex-Kingman wasn’t quite a legal ex when Dolph
got engaged to Brittany Saxon, who apparently also has a not quite ex of her
own that her family was unaware of. He is a souvenir of a drunken weekend in
Cabo
.” Manoogin clearly did not approve of such goings on.

“I bet if
Dolph
knew about that he was angry, however bigamous his
own state.” Juliet was talking to herself, but both men were staring.
“Manoogin, do you know what’s happened to the ducks?”

Now they were
both staring hard. Juliet tried not to sigh.

“Is it
relevant?” he asked.

“
Bella
?”
Esteban was more used to how her mind
worked.

Juliet walked
to the edge of the pond and peered into the murky depths. It was slimy, foul.

“I don’t know.
I think that it might be.” She looked around the shoreline, first while trying
to focus on some irregularity in the landscape and then again without any
effort, letting her eyes explore where they willed. Some things, like movement,
were better detected when the gaze was unfocused.

The eyes
finally snagged on something. Juliet turned and began walking toward the fence and
its plants which were slightly wilted to one side. She followed it to the left
corner where it joined up with what was left of the masonry wall. The spiny
privet was uniformly green under its layer of construction dust, but to the
left the leathery shrubs were flaccid. It was only a small patch, about three
feet worth. The other privet a few inches farther on looked healthy.

“It’s been
cut,” she said to Manoogin who reached out and lifted the dead branches away.
The ends were cleanly chopped and not broken. “The fence has been cut too. The
mend is careless, hurried.”

No one asked
why the fence had been cut, though Juliet could think of two good reasons.

“I’ll have it
dusted for prints, but there won’t be any, will there?” Manoogin asked, a bit
wearily.

“No. But I
suppose it is best to go through the motions in case this ever comes to trial.”

That night Juliet dreamed about the murder. Not Dolph’s, but
about the poor woman in the chimney. Her death had been officially neglected,
at least so far, in favor of the current homicide.
Which made
perfect sense, given that there was a killer on the loose who could possibly
harm someone else.
The woman’s killer had already passed beyond doing
any more harm or legal justice.

Facts were still few, but one of the things they did know
about her was that she had departed the world under peculiar and violent
circumstances.

Dreams could be vehicles of the subconscious and her brain
was obviously pondering the dead woman’s fate. Only the dead woman in the
chimney had died from stabbing, not drowning in the duck pond.

“Why would I…?” she asked the cat in a scratchy voice.

After a few moments of thought she reached for her phone and
called Esteban. It was still mostly dark, but he didn’t seem to sleep much.

“You’re up early,
bella
. Why does this alarm me?”

“Look, I could be all wrong but … I think I need to have a
better look at that duck pond. And I would rather not do it alone.”