'Think of it as an investment in the future.' He held the door open.
'You'd never make a penny,' he said gloomily. 'I haven't that much talent.'
I gave him a quick hug. 'We'll see.' I lowered myself onto the seat. 'But it's not a financial investment, Danny, more a loan of goodwill that you can repay with interest to someone who deserves a similar chance at another time.'
He wouldn't meet my eyes. 'What do you want in return?'
'Nothing,' I said honestly, reaching for the door. 'There are no strings attached. The barn's there if you want to take us up on it. If you don't, no hard feelings.'
He shuffled his feet on the gravel. 'Alan's phoned a few times wanting to know what you've been saying about him,' he said abruptly. 'He's really twitched even though I keep telling him you're only interested in what happened to the black lady.' I didn't answer.
'What did he do to you?' he asked me.
'What makes you think he did anything?'
'Your face goes blank every time his name's mentioned.'
He put his hand on the door to stop me closing it. 'I'd never go against him,' he said painfully. 'He's my brother.'
'I wouldn't expect you to,' I said as I started the engine. 'But the offer of the barn has nothing to do with Alan, Danny. If you're happy to come, we're happy to have you. I hope you'll remember that ... whatever happens...'
My last visit that day was a prearranged one to Sheila Arnold in her office. She and Larry had been away the previous week on a whistlestop visit to the Florida condo-'keeping Larry happy' had been her wry description over the telephone-and this was my first opportunity to show her the photographs of Beth and Alan's house. She had agreed to see me at the end of afternoon surgery and was updating some patients' notes on her computer when I dropped into the chair beside her desk. She gave me a quick smile, then pushed her keyboard away and turned to face me.
'Well?'
I'd had more copies made from the negatives after Drury's fit of pique with my rucksack, and I produced these from my pocket and spread them across her desk.
'My God!' she declared in amazement. 'I thought you were exaggerating when you said you'd found the mother lode.'
I tapped the bangle on her wrist, then pointed to a close-up of Beth Slater's forearm. 'Snap?' I suggested. 'She has four of them, and I think she wears them all the time because she pushes them up her arm every time she goes near the sink. I doubt she has any idea they're valuable or even that they're jade. She probably thinks they're plastic or resin.'
Sheila studied a picture of Beth with her children. 'She has a nice face.'
'Yes,' I agreed.
'You liked her.'
'Very much,' I said with a sigh, 'which makes it difficult to know what to do next. I don't think she has any idea these things were stolen. She told me Alan bought the Quetzalcoatl in a junk shop then started collecting other Mexican pieces because he believes the Aztecs were an alien civilization. Her children were full of it while I was taking the photographs-they think their dad's a genius because he knows more about aliens than anyone else-and it seems rather pointless to make them unhappy just for the sake of proving he was a thief twenty years ago.'
Sheila lifted each picture in turn and studied it closely. 'I remember some of these things,' she said finally, 'but I couldn't swear to all of them. Also, apart from the bangles and the mosaic, there doesn't seem to be much of any value. What happened to the gold and silver pieces, for example?'
'Alan's mother sold them to buy her house,' I said, 'but I've very little proof to back that up.' I showed her the Chiswick jeweler's affidavit. 'The description of the woman fits Maureen-along with half a million others who can manage a Birmingham accent-but it's only five items and accounts for less than L1,000.'
'How much did the house cost her?'
'About L15,000 in total. She claims it all came from a win on the football pools which is why she didn't have to declare it.' I lifted an amused eyebrow. 'The house is now worth upwards of L200,000 and increasing every day as the housing boom takes off.'
'My God!' said Sheila in disgust. 'We didn't get much more than that for our four-bedroom job seven years ago.'
'I know. It's sickening.' I isolated a wide-angled shot of the sitting room. 'Maureen stuffed most of this into the cupboard under her stairs because she didn't think it had any value'-I smiled ironically-'and it was still there when you were trying to persuade Drury Annie had been burgled. In fact, as Alan didn't retrieve it until a good ten years later Drury could have found it if he'd bothered to investigate.'
She looked annoyed. 'And I would have been vindicated?'
I nodded.
'I'll never forgive Peter Stanhope for accusing me of neglecting her, you know. He said I'd only invented her wealth to make myself look better.'
'I know.' It obviously still rankled with her, I thought, and decided to keep to myself that Drury had known about the Quetzalcoatl long before Sheila had reported it stolen. I wanted an objective opinion, not one given in anger. 'The worst of it is,' I said, showing her the picture, 'that poor Beth did all this decorating herself to make a Mexican setting for the artifacts ... and it seems cruel to take them away just to prove a point. No one else is going to appreciate them as much as she and Alan do.'
Sheila propped her chin in her hands and regarded me solemnly. 'Is this a way of asking me to forget that I ever said Annie was robbed?'
'I don't know.' I sighed. 'I keep wondering if it's right to destroy innocent children's lives over a crime that was
