Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine Presents Fifty Years of Crime and Suspense (61 page)

“You have an aunt named Cooter?”

“Well, her real name is Delma,” Joop said. “And she's not really my aunt. But I've called her that all my life. I think she's really just a woman my …”

“I don't need to know your family history,” I said. Joop has the strangest assortment of relatives, and he's happy to talk about all of them. “I was just curious about her name.”

“Right,” Joop said. “Aunt Cooter, she's got this habit of pulling her head down between her shoulders, just like a cooter. Which is what we call a turtle down in Carolina. The point is that Cooter, she used to have a picture of Jesus on her living room wall. Maybe still does. At least she claimed it was Jesus. I'm not so sure my own self. He sure didn't look very Jewish. This guy had pale white skin and a lot of long, semicurly blond hair and huge brown eyes. What he looked like, he looked like a spaniel who'd been whacked with a newspaper for wetting on the carpet. It wasn't what you'd call awe-inspiring. But it was one of those pictures where the eyes open and shut when you move. I used to stand there in Cooter's living room, shifting back and forth, making Jesus blink. Sarah Hobart has an elephant-headed god with four arms, and all I got was a cheesy painting of a spaniel-looking, blinking Jesus. What did you have?”

At St. Aloysius we have a statue of the Virgin. Some people say it weeps sometimes, though I've never talked to anybody who's actually seen it. I don't go to mass as often as I should—just now and then to please Mary Margaret. But I was raised Catholic, and that's something that can't be escaped. St. Aloysius is an old stone church built in 1829, a solid and imposing building, set in the ground like it grew there. When you walk inside, it puts you in your place; the stained-glass windows cutting the gloom, the dark pews, the altars, the warped wooden floors, the votive candles flickering off to the side. There's a darkness to it, and a sense of mystery. It's a house of worship, and the very building itself reminds you what worship means. I didn't say all that to Joop, of course—just that we had a statue of Mary that wept.

“You and Hobart's daughter, you got all the cool religious stuff,” Joop said.

Sarah Hobart lived in an older part of town, a neighborhood of postwar brick houses, tall maple trees, big yards, and hedges to keep the nosy neighbors away. Not the sort of neighborhood where you'd expect a college student to live.

We arrived to find Sarah hauling a plastic trash bag to the garbage bin near the garage. We were probably lucky to find her at home. Sarah was a graduate student in history at the university, her father had told us, and she spent most of her waking hours on campus. Maybe there was a holiday break, though it was still a couple of weeks until Christmas.

She turned to look at us as we got out of the car. “Are you the insurance guys?” She glanced at her wristwatch, then flashed us a smile that was an orthodontist's dream. “I'm really glad to see you. I didn't expect you so soon.”

“I'm afraid we're not the insurance people,” I said. “My name is Kevin Sweeney, and this is Joop Wheeler. We've just come from talking to your father at the jail.”

Sarah's smile disappeared. “Oh no. Look, I don't want to hear any more Jesus crap.” She tossed the trash in the bin and closed the lid with a bang. “Why don't you go bother somebody else. Go on, now. Take off.”

Joop laughed. “No, no,” he said. “We're not here for that. We're here about the fire. We're private investigators.” He handed her a business card.

She took the card and looked us over. “Well, you don't look like my dad's usual missionaries. He's always sending people here, you know. Telling me I'm going to hell, just because I have a Ganesha in the studio.”

“A Ganesha?” Joop asked.

“Yeah,” Sarah nodded. “You know, the Hindu god? The Lord of Obstacles? The elephant-headed god?”

“Ah,” Joop said, smiling. “
That
Ganesha.”

“You're
sure
you're not one of my dad's Jesus buddies?” Sarah asked. “You're not going to get on your knees and pray for me? Because I hate that.”

“Scout's honor,” Joop said, holding up his hand in the Boy Scout pledge. “The last time I was on my knees I was throwing up. We're just here to ask a few questions and look at the damage. With your permission, of course.”

Sarah's smile gradually found its way back. “You're from the South,” she said.

“Yes, ma'am, I surely am from the South,” he said. “Georgetown County, South Carolina. Which is only just a wink away from heaven.”

Joop was laying it on thick, and I knew we were in. People in New England are saps for a cultured Southern accent. We've worked this routine many times before, Joop and I. He chats and charms and asks questions while I nose around in the background. It works well for us.

“Tell me about this Ganesha,” Joop said. “Can we see it?”

Sarah hesitated for a moment, then shrugged. “Why not?” she said. “It's right over here in the studio.”

The “studio” was the garage. The main garage door had been sealed shut, and the small building had been converted into a single large room.

“The original owner used to have a potter's wheel and a kiln out here,” Sarah said. “I kept my loom out here for a while, but luckily I moved it inside the house a few days before the fire. It's just too cold to weave out here in the winter.”

The fire damage was mainly limited to the west wall, but as with most small fires, the firefighters had done nearly as much damage as the fire itself. The fire had burned some two-by-four studs and joists, but not enough to weaken the wall or ceiling. The floor of the garage was littered with bits of wood, broken glass, and big lumps of sodden pink insulation. The insulation had probably been pulled down by firefighters searching for concealed fire in the roof. Three of the four garage windows were broken. Two of the windows had probably been broken by firefighters to vent the heat and smoke; the third would have been broken by the Molotov cocktail. Everything in the garage was coated with an oily black layer of soot and grime left by the smoke.

On a wooden workbench by the west wall, near one of the broken windows, was the statue that had apparently sparked this whole event. It was about two feet tall, carved out of some dark wood. It was an odd-looking thing—the body of a chubby man with four arms and, just as everybody had said, the head of an elephant. The figure seemed to be swaying as if he were dancing. There was something graceful about the statue, and despite the fire damage it was attractive. Whoever had carved it had managed to make the elephant head look like it was smiling. Aside from a couple of spots at the base of the statue—the parts where the gasoline from the Molotov cocktail had pooled—it wasn't badly damaged at all.

“Cute little bugger, isn't he,” Joop said. “Why do you keep him out here in the gara … in the studio?”

Sarah gave an embarrassed shrug. “Well, he doesn't really go with my decor.”

Joop nodded as though he understood the difficulty of incorporating Hindu gods into the decor. He reached out and touched the statue. “He's only got one tusk. What happened? He get in a fight?”

Sarah smiled. “The legend is that Ganesha broke off his other tusk and threw it at the moon,” she said. “He was angry with the moon, but I don't remember why.”

“Threw it at the moon,” Joop said. “Did he hit it?”

Sarah laughed and said she didn't know.

The wooden workbench on which the statue sat was charred. It was far more damaged from the fire than the statue itself. Bits of bottle glass were scattered across the surface—presumably from the Molotov cocktail. The larger pieces of the broken bottle would have been seized by the fire investigators, who'd test it to find out exactly what sort of fuel was in it.

Joop was still examining the statue. “What's he got in his hands?” he asked.

“That's a radish,” Sarah said, pointing at one of the statue's hands. “And there, that's a bowl of sweets. And over there, a lotus blossom. And down there by his feet? That's his rat.”

“His
rat?
” Joop asked. “Ganesha has his own personal rat?”

“Yeah,” she said, laughing. “He rides it.”

“He rides it?” Joop said. “He rides a rat?”

“It's better than most Indian mass transit,” Sarah said.

I examined the broken window on the wall nearest the statue. There was broken glass on the floor beneath the window, which made sense if a Molotov cocktail had been thrown through it. I went to look at the other windows.

“You called him the Lord of Obstacles,” Joop said. “What does that mean?”

“Hindus believe Ganesha helps them overcome obstacles.” Sarah'd learned that academic tone of voice, the one professors use—disinterested and lofty, but oh so enlightened. “Ganesha is worshiped at the beginning of any new undertaking, especially a risky one. He's also the god of foresight and prosperity.”

Joop nodded. “Sort of an all-purpose god,” he said. “A god for the nineties.

Sarah laughed. “That's right. Works hard, plays hard. Ganesha's also known for his sense of humor and love of dancing.”

“Are you … have you become a Hindu?” Joop asked. Then he smiled shyly. He has a grand shy smile, Joop, and he uses it with great effect. “I hope you don't mind my asking. It's none of my business. I'm just being nosy.”

“I don't mind,” Sarah said, smiling back. “My dad, he thinks I've converted. And maybe I let him believe I did. Just to make him mad, you know? No, I'm not a Hindu. But my dad thinks just having Ganesha around puts my soul at risk. Whatever that means. He's so provincial. When he first saw it, I thought he'd have a stroke. He told me to get rid of it or he'd cut me off. Can you believe it?”

There were fewer shards of glass beneath the other two windows. Probably the firefighters had broken them from the inside, so most of the glass would have fallen outside the window. The glass under each of the three windows was covered with the same oily soot that covered the entire interior of the garage. I rummaged through my jacket pockets until I found an old bank deposit envelope. I picked up a piece of broken glass from under each of the three windows and put them all in the envelope.

“It's a lovely piece of work,” Joop said, touching Ganesha's soot-covered trunk. “Where did you get it?”

“I got it in India,” she said. “I talked my dad into letting me go to India last summer. I'm doing my thesis on the Sepoy Mutiny. While I was doing my research, I found this Ganesha in a market near a town called Cawnpore and just had to buy it. Got it for about sixty-two hundred rupees.”

“What is that in American money?”

“About a hundred and eighty dollars,” she said. “That's a fortune in some parts of India. People are so poor there. They're so poor their priests sometimes have to sell off religious artifacts to buy food.” She nodded toward the Ganesha.

“Your daddy gave you a summer in India?” Joop asked. “Nice guy.”

She shrugged. “He can afford it.”

“And when you said your daddy was threatening to cut you off,” Joop said, “did you mean cut you off financially?”

Sarah made a face. “It's crazy, isn't it? Just because I brought this statue home with me. He's been weird like that ever since Mom died. He was normal up to that point. Well, not
normal
, but more normal than he is now. He used to spend all his time working and we hardly ever saw him, but at least when we did see him he didn't spend all his time talking about Jesus. Then Mom died and Dad found Jesus. And if that weren't bad enough, he went and became a minister. Now he spends all his time doing church stuff. First it was his job, now it's Jesus. It was never Mom, never me.”

“Your daddy, did he help you buy this house?” Joop asked.

Sarah shook her head. “No, that was my mom. She grew up in this neighborhood. Just a couple of blocks from here. She left me some money when she died. Not enough to buy the house outright, but it made the payments reasonable.”

“I'm going to take a look around outside,” I said.

Joop nodded but kept his attention on Sarah—and kept Sarah's attention on him. “Tell me about your thesis,” he said. “What's this Sepoy Mutiny business? What's a sepoy? And what about the mutiny? I love a good mutiny.”

The outside of the garage told the same story as the inside. A little bit of broken glass under the west window indicating it had broken inward and more broken glass under the other two, indicating they'd been broken outward. It seemed pretty clear what had happened. I went to the car, found another envelope, and put a piece of glass from each of the three windows into it.

Joop and Sarah were still talking about her thesis when I returned.

“Let me see if I understand this,” Joop said. “You're saying this whole mutiny business might have been avoided if the British had been more sensitive to their Hindu and Muslim soldiers?”

She nodded. “That's right. There were rumors that the British were using pig and cow fat to grease their rifle cartridges. Those things are forbidden to observant Hindus and Muslims. But rather than try to dispel the rumors—and they
were
only rumors—the British tried to force the soldiers to use the cartridges. It didn't work. The sepoys mutinied instead.”

Joop turned to me. “Sweeney, you got to hear this.” He turned back to Sarah. “Sweeney's Irish; he hates the British.”

“I don't hate Brits,” I said. “Just their army. Maybe you can tell me about this mutiny later. We should be going. Have you asked all your questions?”

Joop turned to Sarah. “Have I asked you enough questions?” And he gave her one of those smiles. He's a terrible flirt, Joop.

She beamed back at him. “Oh, I think so.”