Читать книгу A Head in Cambodia - Nancy Tingley - Страница 17

8

“I’m sorry to bother you again,” I said to Peggy as she handed me a coffee mug. I took a sip. It was so weak, I wondered if she’d remembered to put coffee in the filter. We stood in her sunny, butter-yellow kitchen rather than her father’s house. Perhaps because of that, she seemed much calmer than when P.P. and I had met her before. “I won’t be long.”

“Did you speak with my brother?” She pulled a face as she took a sip, then gazed into her mug.

“Yes, he was very helpful.” As I spoke, I thought about why I hadn’t gone to see him rather than her. His office was closer to Marin, just over the Golden Gate Bridge, I was tired after a sleepless night, and he seemed better able to cope with the murder than she did. Yet I’d rationalized going to her by thinking that I hadn’t visited the Cantor Museum at Stanford for quite some time or the Anderson Collection, with its marvelous collection of modern art. I knew these were merely rationalizations. I was drawn to her fragility, to her proximity to the murder, to the possibility that she would reveal a clue.

She looked at me expectantly, and I realized my thoughts had been wandering.

“I went to see the book dealer who bought your father’s books. Your brother had remembered his name.”

“Oh, were there some books that you wanted to purchase?”

“Yes, always. It’s an addiction.” I thought of my father. I thought of my brother.

“Did he have what you wanted? That would be nice if you had some of my father’s books. He would have liked a young scholar to have them. He was almost as proud of his library as he was of his art collection. He said he had rare ones.”

She was right. There had been some rare books, old French publications that were now difficult to find and expensive. “He was right to be proud. Though I fear young scholars can’t afford very rare books on their young scholars’ salaries.”

“Oh, that’s too bad. I wish I had met you before I sold the books. We got so little money for them that I would have been happier giving them to someone appreciative.”

“Ah, well. Timing. But I did buy a couple of books that I’ve been wanting, so it was a doubly useful trip.” I didn’t bother to mention that someone had stolen them. That someone being the same person who had cut off her father’s head, no doubt. I didn’t tell her. I hadn’t told anyone. I’d spent the night getting angrier and angrier, more and more determined. Which, of course, was why I was here.

She frowned. “Doubly useful?”

“Yes, I found some of your father’s papers stuck in one of the books.” I took another sip, then masked the dishwater taste of the so-called coffee with a bite of one of the cookies that she’d set on the counter in front of me.

She seemed to suddenly realize that we were still standing, and she picked up the cookies and moved toward the kitchen table. “Important papers?”

“Well, I don’t know about that, but they do seem to be his notes about that sculpture that worried him so. The head.”

“I was so sick of hearing about that hunk of stone.”

Taking a seat, I asked, “He liked to talk about it?”

She thought for a moment. “He didn’t like to, I think. It was just that it made him so angry. He’d get worked up about it and go on and on to anyone who would listen.”

“Ah.” I set down the mug with no intention of picking it up again.

“He was convinced that the dealer had intentionally sold him a fake, a copy of some sculpture that he knew. He really was furious.”

“I imagine that was difficult.”

“Yes. I hated it when he got angry.” She picked at a cookie, edging crumbs onto the table.

“I have those notes here with me.”

She nodded, a little puzzled.

“I’ve been trying to decipher them, without success. I thought you might be better able to understand his note-taking.”

“I’m not so sure. But I can look.”

I pulled the papers out of my purse and spread them before her. “I see here who he bought it from.”

She looked. “Yes, that’s right. I was trying to remember. Grey. That’s right.”

That confirmed that. “And of course the invoice has the date of purchase, what he paid, etc.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Then it seems he didn’t do anything with the head for quite some time, until about a year later—he was very thorough, putting dates for everything.”

“Yes, that was him. He was originally trained as an accountant. He was very methodical.”

“He dated every note—he researched and confirmed what Grey had told him, that the head was in Baphuon style. That’s this paper here. He’s written a little blurb describing the head and comparing it to other sculptures.”

“Yes, that’s what he did, kind of a museum label. That’s how he thought of it.” She took the paper from my hand.

“Right. Then I get the impression that he purchased a book, or made a trip to Cambodia, or visited a museum, some event that made him go back and look more carefully at the head.”

She shrugged. “He went to Southeast Asia at least once a year.”

“And that’s where I find his notes confusing.”

“Why?”

“Because he starts abbreviating things and writing rather obscure comments. That’s what I thought you might be able to decipher, since he’d talked with you about the head. Just here, you see?” I pointed to the third and last page of the notes, where he’d written “Radha,” then “Sr,” then “Cambodian,” “Radha,” and “Krishna!!!” and a few other comments that didn’t seem particularly revealing, but that I assumed held the key to what he’d thought.

She took some time looking at the paper, picking it up, studying it. “No, sorry. Doesn’t make any sense to me either. What do you think ‘Sr’ might mean?”

“Probably Siem Reap. That’s where the museum is that has the original. Assuming his was a copy.”

“Well, it would have to be, wouldn’t it, if they have the original in the museum.”

“Oh, I guess I didn’t say that the head of the sculpture in the museum had been stolen.” I didn’t think I had to explain that the original sculpture included two figures and that only one head was stolen. “We’re trying to figure out if this is the stolen head or a copy of the stolen head—a fake, like your father suspected.”

She shrugged again. “I have to admit that after the first couple of times he ranted about the head, I tuned out what he was saying. I think I told you that he wasn’t easy.”

“Yes, you did.” I lifted my mug, then put it back down before I made the mistake of drinking.

“You know how fathers are. But maybe yours isn’t like that.” She watched me expectantly.

I took a breath, thinking about my parents and how I’d left them last night. Had I endangered them? Had Grey, or whoever it had been, gone back after I lost him on the drive down the hillside? Had he gone back and waited? I shook off the foolish thought. Whoever had broken into my car wasn’t interested in my parents. At least that’s what I wanted to think.

“You look like you’ve had challenges with your father, too.” she said, interpreting my pause.

“My father has a drinking problem. But he doesn’t get angry or violent, so I’ve never had to deal with that. He doesn’t rant. Well, not in the same way your father did. He gets—” I searched for the words. “Morose. Emotional. Not pleasant, but not threatening. I suppose my fear as a child was that he would disappear.”

“Disappear?”

“Yes, leave us—or kill himself.”

“How disturbing. Well, when my father got into his rants, I just wanted to leave, and usually I did.” She poked her finger at the page. “So I have no idea what he intended here.”

“Would your brother know, do you think?”

She laughed. “My brother was worse than me. He stopped listening to him the first time that he started up about the head. Told him if he was going to waste his money on art, he should expect to get burned. Who did he think he was, to be able to invest in something he knew so little about? Russian roulette, my brother said. Sooner or later you’re going to get shot. So my father didn’t bring it up with him anymore. Just with me.”

“Oh, dear. I guess the more he talked with you about it, the more riled up he became.” I understood. I understood her father, possibly too well.

“Yes, I don’t think my brother was so happy he’d said that when my father was murdered.”

“I expect not.”

“At least he wasn’t shot. If he’d been shot, my brother would have felt very guilty.”

I didn’t respond to that. I didn’t want her thinking about the head that had lain at her feet. Though she did seem in better shape than when we’d met at her father’s house. “Well, thank you for looking at the notes. Do you want to keep them?”

“Not really.” She had a faraway look in her eyes. I had the sense that she was seeing that head again.

“I thought that you might want to give them to the police. Just in case the sculpture had anything to do with his murder.”

“The sculpture?” Her voice had become shriller. “I don’t know what that could have to do with his murder. It was just a fluke, a burglar, and my father happened to interrupt him.”

“You’re probably right.” I tried to imagine a burglar carrying a sword or a machete, something sharp enough to cut off someone’s head in a single swipe. Of course, that was an assumption on my part, that it took a single swipe. It wasn’t a question that I could ask her. And it was also an assumption that the killer had brought the murder weapon with him. There was so much I didn’t know.

“If it did have anything to do with it, which I doubt, I would suggest you let it lie.” She sounded like my mother. Looking at me, she gathered the papers up and held them against her chest, as if I might try to wrest them from her. “I’ll keep them.”

“Of course.” To reassure her, I lied, “I’m just trying to figure out whether this sculpture of Radha is the original or a fake, not who murdered your father. How could I possibly do that?”

She didn’t look convinced, and it made me realize that I couldn’t tell anyone about the car that followed me when I left my parents’ house. I could tell about the broken window, the stolen books, but not their connection to the head. If Peggy, who didn’t know me, wasn’t convinced about my intentions, how would my friends react, knowing my impulses as they did?

As we walked toward the door, she was still clinging to her father’s notes. I was glad I’d made a copy before coming to see her. She watched me walk down the rose-lined path and didn’t go in when I climbed into my car and waved. I waited a moment before I turned the key in the ignition, thinking about finding the murderer. He’d invaded my space by breaking into my car, and I’d catch the bastard.