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
