The Grave Maurice

with this? Is it because it’s a kidnapping? Which I’m innocent of, incidentally. I’d like a cigarette, if you have some.”

He did. Although he’d stopped smoking-oh, baleful day!-he’d stopped in a newsagent’s and got a pack of Silk Cuts. He put the pack on the table. “You can have the lot.” She inched one from the pack and he lit a match. As she inhaled and exhaled with closed eyes, he knew full well the rush one of those could give after you’d been deprived for any time at all.

She said it again: “I didn’t abduct the girl.” Her voice hit the scale at some point between raspy and sexy. For a woman who’d refused to talk, Valerie Hobbs was doing a pretty fair job of it.

“But you know who did.”

She smoked in great long draws on her cigarette. “No, I don’t.”

“But someone had to bring her to your place. You say you didn’t, then-?” With a questioning but good-natured frown, he dipped his head to see her face, which was turned down.

“I wasn’t there.”

This was such a weak rejoinder he wondered how she could offer it. Jury let that rest for a moment and said, “You came to know the girl, Nell, quite well.”

“Not so very.”

“She was at your farm for nearly two years.”

“With someone like that, it could’ve been twenty and you still wouldn’t know her.” Her expression was one of self-satisfaction. It pleased her to frustrate his line of questioning.

But Jury wasn’t bothered by the answer; he was only a little surprised she could have assessed Nell in this way. “Someone like that? How was she different?”

Valerie actually thought for a moment, as if it were important to get it right. “Determined, kind of aimed, I guess you’d say.”

Jury sat back. That was interesting. “ ‘Aimed’? I’m not sure what you mean.”

She took another long draw on the cigarette, slowly exhaled. “Like an arrow. Her attention would be on only one thing, say.” She shrugged.

Jury waited a beat. “Why do you think she didn’t try to run away long before she did? Apparently, she had a fair amount of freedom.”

Valerie inspected a finger with chipped nail polish. “Those horses, I expect. I admit I did threaten to kill her own horse if she tried anything. Well, look at the bargain she drove after they brought me in: if I’d release the mares, then she’d testify on my behalf. I’ll say this for her, she doesn’t hold a grudge.”

Jury could hardly keep from laughing at that way of putting it. Twenty months of captivity turned simply to a grudge. “No, I can see she doesn’t. Either that or her forced imprisonment didn’t mean all that much to her.”

“That’s kind of funny, right? She’d been abducted and didn’t care? Oh, she did at first, hammering on her door and yelling to be let out. But then she just stopped, as if she knew it wasn’t smart. That girl was very smart. I could appreciate that, I’ll tell you.”

Jury’s look was intense. “I’m surprised she was allowed to live, frankly. She was a constant threat to you, and as it happened, you were charged with conspiracy.” He leaned closer to her across the table. “Valerie, you know what’s going to happen to you if you don’t cut a deal with the prosecution.”

“No, I don’t. She’s not testifying against me. She said she wouldn’t and I know that girl. You can’t flip her.”

In fresh astonishment, Jury sat back. That Nell Ryder had convinced this woman who’d held her captive for twenty months that she, Nell, would defend Valerie Hobbs was a feat of persuasion that even Vernon Rice would marvel at. It was all the more marvelous in that Valerie Hobbs read Nell correctly.

“Her testimony will probably reduce the sentence, but you’re still looking at prison, Valerie.”

She had fingered another cigarette from the pack and Jury cupped a match to light it. This time, as she leaned toward the flame, she touched his fingers, then looked at him through the smoke.

“The jury isn’t going to look kindly on the treatment of those horses. The animal-rights people will have a field day. You won’t be popular, to say the least.”

She kept shaking her head as he was saying this. “That won’t come into it; my solicitor says it’d bias the jury against me and it’s nothing to do with the abduction. Anyway, there’s nothing illegal about keeping those mares and even if that did come into it, we can just flood the court-room with photographs of these huge horse farms in Manitoba that make mine look like nothing at all. Compared to what goes on in some of them, mine would be a stay at the Dorchester. Anyway, it’s not down to me; I’m just paid to take care of them.”

“Who is it down to, then?”

She looked away. “I’m not saying anything else without my solicitor being present.”

Fine time to think of that, thought Jury, reaching into his coat pocket for the snapshots.

Jury sat back, looking her up and down, making a point of doing so. “You’re about-what-five two?”

Surprised, she sat back. “What in God’s name has that got to do with anything?”

“I think you’re an extremely attractive woman.”

This earned him a false smile and a cloying tone. “I wouldn’t suit you; I’m only five three.” She looked him over, as he had done her, at least as much as she could with a table cutting them in two. “You’re way over six feet.”

“Four inches over, yes.”

“You’re not half bad yourself.”

“Thanks.” Jury was fascinated. Valerie Hobbs could and probably would-despite Nell’s testimony-go down for this crime all on her own, yet here she sat, confident enough to put moves on him. So what was it? How could she have been sold such a bill of goods? Assurance that she’d be all right, probably escape a prison term for this frightful crime? Someone with plenty of influence over her must have convinced her it would be a stroll in the park.

Jury took one of the snapshots he’d carried away from Sara’s collection and said: “Here’s another extremely attractive woman, also petite, like you. Ever seen her?” He pushed the picture across the table.

“No. Who is she?” She pushed it back toward him. “Should I know her?”

Jury sat looking at her.

She flicked ash from her cigarette onto the floor. She laughed briefly. “Are you trying to intimidate me?”

“No, not really. I think it would be difficult to do that. You really have nerves of steel, Valerie.” Jury was leaning toward her again, his hands folded on the table, managing to make steely nerves sound erotic. “I wouldn’t be surprised,” he went on in the softest voice he could muster, “if you were a match for just about any man, even one who might be a match for any woman.”

She looked uncertain, gave a half laugh and said, “You speaking of yourself, then?”

Jury laughed and sat back again. “Good Lord, no. Me? I’m quite easily taken in.”