“No one told me.”
“Never mind. Ballistics will turn up the range and angle and a dozen other things about the bullet.”
“Why would the shooter shoot her there?”
Jury said, “I expect she could have been dumped-well, there’s no use speculating when we don’t have any of the crime scene details. I’d like to know what happened to the person who made the call.”
Melrose sat back and studied the white ceiling. “Well, I’m stumped. Maybe Vernon Rice will illuminate the scene. I’m going to see him”-Melrose looked at his watch-“now.” Melrose got up.
“What about the girl, Nell? What did you find out?”
“Nothing new about her disappearance. I saw pictures of her. There’s something about her. It’s not often you run into a girl in her teens who makes you think you’ve been there before.”
Jury frowned. “Been where?”
“Wherever she’s been. She gives déjà vu a whole new meaning.”
TWENTY
Vernon. Rice had both the sort of charm that could Vernon Rice had both the sort of charm that could sell you time shares in Pompeii and, at the same time, some inbred faith that Pompeii was still a going concern. In other words, he could get you to buy, but it was an honest sell.
He spoke to Melrose as if he’d known him all his life, ushering him in with a wave of his arm and telling him that Arthur-whom Vernon called “Art”-had called to tell him Melrose was coming.
The room that Melrose stepped into was glass and angles, and sloping chairs with graceful legs that looked uncomfortable yet were anything but. The wide gray rug leveling off to white softened the contours of the furniture. The room was a throwback to some earlier period, despite its high-end German designer look. It didn’t surprise Melrose to hear Vernon Rice say he was “shaking up a bunch of Manhattans” in a silver-plated cocktail shaker. Melrose hadn’t seen one of those since his parents’ parties. The Ryders were no strangers to the midday drink, that was sure. He wondered if they were alcoholics. He wondered-more to the point-if he was.
Then he remembered that Vernon Rice was not a blood relation, although his looks suggested otherwise. He could have been Maurice’s father or Dan Ryder’s brother, for he looked as if he inherited the family’s striking good looks.
“Manhattan,” said Melrose. “That’s an old thirties favorite, isn’t it?” Melrose had seated himself in a burnt-orange chair with sloping arms and rounded back.
“Definitely is,” said Vernon. He had the shaker doing a little mamba in his hands, a little added flourish before pouring the drink into two stemmed glasses. The glasses held maraschino cherries speared by plastic swizzle sticks, each topped with a grass-skirted hula dancer. It was the best-tempered drink Melrose had ever had, he thought, a combination of shaker, whiskey, hula-hula girl and Vernon Rice.
“Don’t tell anyone,” said Vernon, “because it sounds macabre, but I’ve always wanted to live in the States in the thirties.”
“But that was the Depression. Did you also want to live in Spain during the Inquisition?”
Vernon laughed. “No. But imagine watching the market collapse like that.”
“Oh, fun. Somehow I don’t think the men poised on windowsills would share your enthusiasm.”
“I don’t mean to sound cold-blooded, and God only knows I’d’ve grabbed a few coattails before they’d flown out the window, but it just makes me wonder if I could have done something.”
“I doubt it, though I think you’d deserve a medal for trying. But the forces at work at that time, they were inexorable. God couldn’t have stopped it.”
Unconvinced, Vernon brought the shaker around. “Don’t be so sure. Is anything really ‘inexorable’?”
Vernon went on to detail causes and cures, cures he might have implemented, spoken of in an argot of finance that Melrose didn’t understand at all. He looked at his glass. Where had this second drink come from? Or third? While Vernon talked on, the detached part of Melrose’s mind marveled. Vernon was not a vain person; he probably didn’t have the time to admire himself and his dazzling notions. For Melrose realized they really were dazzling, even though he couldn’t understand most of what he was saying.
Vernon plunked down his glass. “Let’s have lunch. I know a terrific place.”
“Sniper’s? That’s a restaurant? Strange name.”
“I love the place. It’s all done up in camouflaging. Good time to go, too, because it’s always so bloody crowded during the lunch hour.”
Melrose had been astonished to find it was nearly three when they left the flat. The Depression stopped when Vernon realized he couldn’t make Melrose understand what he meant by short falls and zero floors. But Vernon had managed to chug through this Depression tunnel and come out into clean sunlit air, leaving Melrose to think there was nothing that Vernon Rice wouldn’t try.
They were walking on Thames Street, out in the cold, glassy air, when Melrose asked him, “Is there anything you wouldn’t take a whack at?”
Vernon stopped on the pavement, looking thoughtful.
Melrose laughed. “If you really have to think about it, the answer’s no. Given sufficient challenge, you’d try anything.”
Vernon smiled and they walked on down Thames Street.
Sniper’s would not be easy to find if you didn’t know exactly where it was down a dozen steps in a terraced building that bore no sign, charged with a sort of secrecy that would hardly pay off for a restaurant. Yet it certainly wasn’t hurting for business. The arrangement, if not the actual ambience, made him think of the Nine-One-Nine, the gig of Stan Keeler, Jury’s guitarist friend.
Sniper’s really was a bit like a jungle. Light was murky, the plant life enormous. On either side of the foyer was a big aquarium whose neon-bright and startled fish swam in quick jabs as if searching for a way out.
The hostess, not meant to be part of the decor as she was dressed in simple, businesslike black, smiled at Vernon in a way that suggested he was a welcome addition to the maneuvers. She led them along a path through the black-green equatorial room. The size of the plants and their position between tables gave the illusion of concealment. The webbed netting and vines on the ceiling contributed to this, and recessed lighting was so artfully placed among the plants it diffused light into a mellow glow around them. Yet something kept the decor from a cloying cuteness. It was relaxing despite its metaphorical implications.
“Great place for a murder, isn’t it?”
Melrose dropped back into the real world, delighted that Vernon had brought the matter up. “I seem to have dropped in on your stepfather at just the wrong time.”
“Or the right one.” Vernon smiled.
Melrose fumbled his silver around and wondered if Vernon Rice could read his mind and retreated momentarily behind the menu, filled with exotic-sounding dishes scattered among the ones he’d heard described as “soul food” and “comfort food” and very American: meat loaf and mashed potatoes, hot roast beef sandwiches. There were, of course, filets and fish, such as Dover sole, grilled, broiled, cooked however you wanted it. So why was he homesick for food he had never had at home? Once more forgetting murder-which at the moment struck him as quaintly dull or else an anachronism-he asked this question of Vernon.
“I mean, we never had meat loaf. It’s American food, anyway. Why would I be homesick for American food?”
“Maybe,” said Vernon, eyes still on his menu, “it’s not the food.”
“Well… but what about the place?”
“Maybe it’s not the place.”
Melrose protested. “But if it’s neither, why? I don’t get it.”