I said, “All right, let's drop it. It's not up to us anyway.”
“I hope to God that's the way it stays,” he said.
He walked up to my cabin with me, without either of us saying anything about it. There was nobody out in the woods and nobody lurking around the place; but when Harry was gone, I went inside and locked the door, feeling vaguely foolish about doing it but not foolish enough to change my mind. Then I made myself a cup of coffee and sat down at the table to drink it.
The feeling born in Bascomb's cabin would not let go of my mind, mountains out of sand or not. Maybe it was because too damned much had happened in the past two days-and I had never liked strings of coincidences. If it was all part of a single pattern, or at least most of it was, I could cope with it more easily.
The simplest explanation was still that Bascomb had killed Terzian, panicked, and disappeared with the carpet; the accomplice angle would take care of why his car and his belongings were still here, and he would be back for them later. And yet, the sketch thing kept getting in the way. Assuming Bascomb was somewhere with an accomplice, who had taken the sketch tonight? Or assuming it was the accomplice who had stolen it, where was Bascomb? And the primary question: What significance did the sketch have in the first place?
Harry had returned the torn corner to me, and I took it out again and stared at it. Still vaguely familiar, still unrecognizable. At length I stowed it away in my wallet and brooded into the coffee cup.
If Bascomb hadn't been involved in Terzian's death, or with the stolen Daghestan, things became infinitely more complicated. What, if anything, did his apparent disappearance have to do with the fence's murder? Where did the sketch fit in? Who had I chased into the woods tonight? Who else among those staying here-if my hunch had any basis in fact-was guilty of or a party to homicide and the receiving of stolen Orientals?
Jerrold. On the positive side, he lived in Los Angeles, a place where stolen art objects are bought and sold all the time, a place where Terzian had had some of his previous dealings; he was wealthy enough to afford such a thing as a two-hundred-and-sixty-year-old Daghestan; he was unstable and prone to violent reactions. On the negative side, however, he was not the type to be interested in rugs and carpets-a hard-core business executive-and what was tearing him up inside was also the sole focus of his existence, as far as I could see: ambition, and a wife who was undoubtedly cuckolding him left and right.
Knox. Talesco. Kayabalian had mentioned that another of the places where Terzian had contacts was Fresno, and Fresno was where the two of them were from. A freight line was a pretty good cover and a pretty good means for the transportation of illegal and stolen goods; being a collector did not have anything to do with that kind of operation. There was also the way the two of them had been acting-the rift between them, the odd things Talesco had said to me earlier in the day. But both of them seemed to be plodding, unimaginative, up-front types, the kind that conduct their business in an office or over a drink in the back room-not on a deserted bluff while they were in the middle of a fishing trip; and both of them were strong as bulls, they would each be more likely to use their hands than a tire iron if they wanted to kill somebody.
Cody. Looking at it one way, he had a rich father who spent a lot of time in Europe, where there was a thriving market among collectors of rare art. Looking at it another way, he was forced to live on remittance, to come to places like this camp that he hated, and he seemed to be the kind of pseudo-smart, cocky kid who might get himself involved in illegal enterprise in order to get out from under his father. He lived in Vegas, too, not only a rich town but one full of Mafia types, if you could believe the media-and you probably could. The Mafia had a hand in everything; why not stolen Orientals? And yet Cody was a coward hiding behind a bluff exterior, and I could not quite imagine him working up the kind of reverse courage it takes to kill another man face to face, even in a blind rage.
Maybe yes, maybe no, on all of them. Which put me right back at zero.
Okay then, what about the peacock feather? Did that point to anyone at the camp? But I drew another blank there. I could not make any further connections beyond the house in The Pines, the peacocks, and the feathers inside the fence that anyone using the county road to and from Eden Lake could notice and pick up unobserved.
I thought about the Daghestan itself, making the assumption that it had been in Terzian's van last evening. If Bascomb was the murderer, and took the carpet, it could be anywhere. But everyone else was and had been accounted for at least most of last night and today; not much chance for any of them to transport it out of the area. It was a pretty big carpet, from Kayabalian's description, too big to hide in places like the trunk of a car, too conspicuous to leave inside a cabin where someone might chance seeing it. And you could not conceal it in the woods or somewhere else out in the open because of the risk of damage. So what could you do with an eight-by-ten-foot carpet in these surroundings? Where could you put it so that you'd be reasonably sure it was safe and well hidden and easily accessible when you wanted it again? Here at the camp? In The Pines? Where?