The Leopard's Prey Part 30

He nodded. Jade slipped her Winchester into Sam's own empty rifle bag and pulled the lariat over her head. Sam saw the movement and nodded again, understanding. He kept to Harding's left, giving Jade a free-and-clear throw at the man on her right.

She held most of her rope in her left hand, playing out enough to make a large honda. Then she began to rhythmically swing it overhead, gaining momentum. The disadvantage here was that this time her target was higher than she was. Well, she'd just have to rise a bit and throw a little harder. The horse s.h.i.+ed at something and Sam used the opportunity to pull up closer. Jade gauged the distance, gripped the side of the seat with her legs, and lifted herself up just as she let the rope fly. It hovered for a moment over Harding, then settled near his shoulders.

Jade tugged, not so hard as to choke or snap his neck, but enough to yank him off the rear of the horse. He landed hard and struggled to remove the rope, but by this time Sam had circled him once on the cycle, thereby wrapping the rope around his arms. Sam cut the engine as Jade leaped off, rifle in hand.

"Give it up, Mr. Harding. You're not going anywhere," she called.

His horse, without a rider to urge it on, slowed to a trot and finally stopped. Harding looked up at her from the ground, his jaundiced eyes burning with fear and anger. "That d.a.m.n Stokes was blackmailing me!" he shouted. "I wasn't going to keep Chalmers' stud for good. It wandered onto my land, and I figured I could at least get a colt from it. Tried to disguise the animal, but that d.a.m.n Stokes knew the trick. I tried to explain to him, but Stokes wouldn't listen. He was going to ruin my reputation. My good name!"

Jade kept the rifle trained on Harding while Sam did the honors of binding his wrists behind him. She didn't trust Harding. A man that desperate might try anything. Besides, she noted, she could see murder in his eyes. Just like in the leopard's.

"Let's go back," she said in a calm voice.

They walked silently back to the barn just as Inspector Finch and two officers pulled into the yard and spilled out of a war-vintage Crossley staff car, painted black. Finch, weaponless and wearing the same tired brown suit, strolled over to them as casually as if he was attending a garden party. Jade recognized Constable Miller and the askari named Andrew from the night before. Miller held a revolver in his hand. Andrew, the driver, held a thin club. Something about Andrew nagged at Jade. Where had she seen him before last night?

"Looks as if you did my job for me," said Finch. "We'll take him now." Miller and Andrew put Harding in the backseat, Miller joining him and Andrew standing guard on the other side of the vehicle.

"I got your messages, Miss del Cameron," said Finch. "Very good job. Of course, this last one was probably unnecessary. Once I had his prints from the knife, I was certain we had our man. They matched another set on the coffee drum that we'd just managed to identify early this morning."

"How did you happen to know they were Harding's prints?" asked Sam. "Don't you have to compare them to a known set?"

"Indeed. And I had one. a.s.suming that our man was local, I had a.s.signed several of my askari to act as waiters at the fair's dance. What with their white gloves, they could take a man's gla.s.s from him without adding their own prints. They wrapped each gla.s.s in paper with the drinker's name on it." He chuckled. "No one noticed them. But who ever notices the staff."

"That's why the askari looks so familiar," said Jade. "I saw him at the ball."

Finch nodded. "Yes, Andrew was there. I collected quite a lot of drinking and champagne gla.s.ses. Been up to my ears in fingerprints to a.n.a.lyze since then. But I wouldn't have had the knife or the motive without all your work, Miss del Cameron. I must say, my confidence in you wasn't misplaced. You lived up to your reputation."

Jade stared at him openmouthed before exploding. "What? You son of a . . . You deliberately accused Sam so that I would do your dirty work?"

"Well, I knew that if I asked around myself, the killer would lie low. What I needed was someone like you, a reporter, to do the asking. People love to talk to a writer, it seems. And I needed a way to make you want to ask those questions. Accusing your boyfriend here seemed to provide you with good motivation."

"You low-down, sidewinding, stinking son of a b.u.t.t-faced warthog! You nearly got us both killed!" She clenched her fist and lunged for the inspector, launching a punch right for his jaw. Sam grabbed her from behind just in time and held her back, as she fumed in his grip.

"Easy, Jade. I don't want to see you arrested for striking an officer." She wriggled again and made something akin to a hissing snort. "Settle, settle," cooed Sam. "Temper on safety, as that idiot Harry Has...o...b.. used to say."

Jade relaxed her stance and Sam released his grip, slowly at first, then completely when it seemed she no longer intended to punch Finch. She shook herself free of his embrace and folded her arms across her chest. As soon as she stepped aside, Sam launched his own punch and connected with Finch's left eye.

"Don't ever use Jade like that again!"

CHAPTER 25.

In the end, only two things are really valued by the Maasai: cattle and chil- dren. They greet one another by inquiring after both of these prizes and say goodbye with a hope that Engai will bless the other with more of each.

-The Traveler.

THREE DAYS AFTER Harding's arrest, Sam and Jade sat in wooden chairs on the Dunburys' veranda, a lemonade in Sam's hand and a coffee in Jade's. Biscuit lounged at her feet, his tongue lolling. Jade wore her usual duck trousers and boots and a short-sleeved white cotton s.h.i.+rt, open at the throat. Sam had dusted off his riding breeches and put on a clean pin-striped s.h.i.+rt, newly purchased from Whiteaway and Laidlaw on Sixth Street. The front door creaked open and they watched as Avery a.s.sisted his very pregnant wife to a new rocking chair, purchased just for her.

"Thank you, love," said Bev as she lowered herself onto the seat. Farhani followed with a silver tray and two more lemonades. "And thank you, Farhani," she added. Despite her bulging abdomen, she still looked beautiful in a b.u.t.tercup yellow linen dress with a pleated bodice and white lace at the edge of the short sleeves.

Jade held her now empty coffee cup in her lap and absentmindedly stroked Biscuit's head. Before her spread the Dunburys' beautiful lawn, Bev's roses once again thriving under her direction. Whinnies from the stables indicated the recent arrival of a stallion and two young mares. "How long do you think it will be before Maddy and Neville get here?" Jade asked.

"I should think within the hour," said Avery. "Signing the papers was merely a formality."

"They may have stopped to do some shopping," suggested Beverly. "Clothes, toys, that sort of thing."

"I haven't known them as long as you have," said Sam, "but I've never seen either of them so happy. For the past twenty-four hours since they got the news, Neville's been wandering around completely distracted. And Maddy's sung every lullaby she's ever heard."

Jade chuckled. "Maybe now she'll be too busy to write any more of those books she claims are about me."

"Don't count on it, lovey," said Beverly. "She's already sold Ivory Blood to her publisher, and I've seen part of the ma.n.u.script for your Moroccan adventure. She's calling it The Hand of the Kahina. It's very good, actually. There's one line in particular I love." She closed her eyes and recited from memory. " 'He'd purchased the lovely h.e.l.lcat for ten pieces of gold. Now he leaned in close to claim his due.' "

Jade snorted. "It was two pieces of gold, and Mother owns me, not Sam."

Beverly dismissed the contradiction with a wave of her hand. "While we're waiting for the Thompsons, explain to me just what Harding was doing."

"Remember that Alwyn Chalmers sold one of those Somali ponies to Harding with the idea that they were salted," said Jade.

"Right," said Beverly, "only the animal died of some equine disease anyway, correct?"

"That's correct," said Jade. "So Harding felt that Chalmers owed him an animal. As a man with a reputation for being a square dealer, he expected the same from others, especially a friend and former volunteer. Chalmers didn't give him another. He'd lost one himself, so he counted them both as being swindled by the seller."

"Only Harding didn't agree," said Sam. "So when Chalmers' stud broke loose and wandered onto his farm, he kept it to service one of his mares. That way, he'd have his animal. At least by his reasoning."

"Why didn't he just ask Chalmers to lend him the stud?" asked Avery.

"I suppose that Chalmers wouldn't agree without Harding paying the usual stud fee," said Jade. "Or Harding was too proud or too stubborn to ask. Either way, it didn't end up being an overnight sort of affair. His mare must not have been in heat, so he kept the stallion until she was."

"But he had to disguise it," said Avery, "right?"

"Yes," said Jade. "He used the old trick that they'd used in the Volunteer Mounted Rifles of bootblacking stripes on the white horses and clipping the manes to disguise them as zebra from raiding tribes. It worked from a distance, but anyone coming up close would see through it, so he had to keep people off his farm. He stopped speaking to Chalmers, feigning a feud, and-"

"And he shot the leopard mother before your crew could come looking for it on his land," finished Avery. "By thunder!"

"And that's why he wanted me out of the picture," said Sam. "I flew over and saw a zebra mating with his mare. Thought it was odd and even commented on it to him at the fair. If I spread the word around, Chalmers would have figured out that Harding had the pony."

"He told Finch that he never intended to kill you in a plane crash," said Jade. "Apparently he thought the dirt ball would disintegrate sooner and just make the Jenny crack up on takeoff. Then you couldn't fly back over his land in case you wanted to take a closer look at the zebra."

"But Stokes already knew about the zebra?" asked Avery.

Jade nodded. "It appears he really was in the habit of seeing things and blackmailing people to keep quiet about them. Stokes told Harding to meet him after dark at the rail yards. I don't know that Harding ever actually intended to kill him, but when he hit him hard enough to knock him into the animal dip, he didn't bother to pull him out until it was too late."

"And he lost his pocketknife in the brawl?" asked Beverly. "The one you found?"

"Yes. It must have gotten kicked under the trough where he couldn't find it," explained Jade. "I remembered later that he fumbled in his pocket for the knife to poke a hole in the milk bag. He either hadn't discovered it was gone yet, or possibly just reached out of habit. That's why he wanted to kill me. I asked too many questions, including about the knife. In fact, by then, he was getting desperate. He paid a native to lure me to the warehouse."

"But surely he must have known you'd turn the knife in to the police and they'd find him eventually," said Avery.

"Not necessarily," added Sam. "He couldn't know that they had his fingerprints on file. All he counted on was that it was a common knife. He's a sick man, suffering from liver failure induced by poison. He apparently has too free a hand with a.r.s.enide dips. I think it's affected his mind."

"So did Harding accuse you, Sam, of hitting Stokes when he needed a scapegoat?" asked Beverly.

"No, that was Anderson," said Sam. "Cutter saw me argue with Stokes about my gasoline bill. He told Anderson, who saw it as a way to discredit me in Jade's eyes."

"Well, what threw everyone off," said Avery, "was the fact that Stokes was-how do they say it?-cooking the books. I rather suspected Mr. Berryhill of doing him in."

"It wasn't Stokes that was skimming money from the store," said Jade.

Beverly choked on a swallow of lemonade. "Will you please stop doing that? You have this terribly dreadful habit of spilling important news just when I'm drinking."

"Sorry, Bev," said Jade. "I didn't do it on purpose. Not this time. You see, when I last visited the store, Mr. Berryhill was alone, trying to cope with the accounts. He said his wife was away and she always handled the books. Then he said that Stokes had made such a mess of the bills that problems were still showing up. If the man had any sense of accounting, he'd know that wasn't possible. Someone else must have been doing it."

"Then it was Mrs. Berryhill who was stealing?"

Jade nodded. "I think Mrs. Berryhill always planned to leave her husband. She helped Mrs. Stokes run off and develop a new ident.i.ty for herself, dyeing her hair, adopting her own baby. She was very distraught when she found out that Mrs. Stokes was no longer at that old farmhouse by Longonot, especially when Mr. Chalmers came and bought all those cleaning supplies and curtains and such. And Mr. Berryhill knew nothing about any baby being left with them. Mrs. Berryhill made all that up to help Alice change her ident.i.ty."

"Mrs. Stokes is with Chalmers now?" asked Sam.

"Yes," said Jade. "Married yesterday. He's apparently always loved her. So, I suspect, did Mrs. Berryhill."

"Mrs. Berryhill always loved Mr. Chalmers?" asked Avery.

Jade shook her head. "She always loved Alice Stokes."

Beverly gasped. "What makes you say that?"

"I saw golden yellow hair sticking out of Mrs. Berryhill's locket. Her husband and son are brunets, so I think it was Mrs. Stokes' hair. Growing up back home in New Mexico, I knew two women from Boston who moved to Taos. They were-how do I say this delicately?-very close. People always whispered about them. Anyway, I think Pauline felt that way about Alice and maybe planned to run off with her."

"Only Alice didn't reciprocate," said Sam.

"No," said Jade. "She just needed someone to care for her as she always has. Once her husband was gone for good, she was more than willing to marry Mr. Chalmers. Maybe Mrs. Berryhill will stay with her own husband now."

Avery reached over to an end table and picked up the morning paper. "I think she's already left him. I placed an order for some grain for the horses yesterday, and a new man delivered it this morning in an old, beat-up truck instead of the usual Ford." Avery opened the paper, found an ad, and read aloud: " 'Woman with small capital wishes to meet like-minded woman with intent of starting a farm in the upland territory. Apply box 87, Nakuru.' I would wager that the writer of this ad was none other than our book-cooking friend."

"Oh, dear," said Beverly. "I suppose Finch will have to go after her now."

Jade shrugged. "Not unless Mr. Berryhill presses charges, and if he does, Finch had better not drag me into it." Her keen hearing picked up the sound of a puttering motor. "I think Maddy and Neville are coming," she said as she stood for a better view of the road. Sure enough, their old box-bodied car turned past the gate and chugged up the long lane. Jade ran down the steps to greet them. She could see by their broad smiles that they had good news even before she saw the toddler seated between them.

"Maddy, Neville, congratulations!" Jade said as she helped Maddy out of the car and hugged her. Behind her, she heard Sam approach.

"Allow me to join in on that," he said. "Congratulations." He pumped Neville's hand.

Madeline reached into the car and lifted up the child, a towheaded boy who stared at them with huge blue eyes. He stuck a thumb in his mouth and instinctively laid his head on Maddy's shoulder as the strange grown-ups cl.u.s.tered around him.

"Isn't he beautiful?" asked Madeline. She kissed the boy on the forehead. "He's fifteen months old and his name is Cyril Masters, but of course, we're adopting him so it will soon be Cyril Thompson."

"His family left him at Lady Northey's Children's Home last year while they went up north to start their farm," explained Neville. "Soldier settlers, you know. Planned on fetching the little tyke once they had their home built. Seems he drew a bad plot of swampy land, though. Both of them caught yellow fever and pa.s.sed on two months ago. After applying for relations back in England, the home found that they had no other family."

"So now he's ours," finished Madeline.

Avery had stayed on the veranda to help Beverly to her feet. She stood by the steps, waiting for them. "Maddy, bring the baby here, please. Avery won't let me go down the stairs."

Maddy hurried up with her child. Neville followed and was heartily congratulated by Avery. Jade and Sam stayed below, watching, happy for their friends' joy.

"They'll be wonderful parents," said Sam. "That's one lucky little guy."

Jade nodded. "Just like the Dunburys' baby. Both couldn't ask for better parents or a better place to grow up."

They walked up to join the others. Cyril snuggled into Maddy's lap and dozed.

"Is Inspector Finch going to charge you with a.s.sault, Sam?" asked Neville as he stroked his son's head.

"Not unless he wants Jade to call on the governor and tell how he used her to do his investigation." Sam ma.s.saged his right hand. "I still owe him for nearly getting my plane wrecked." He leaned against a post and folded his arms across his chest.

"And now all the animals are off to their new homes," said Madeline. "I'm glad Percy is gone. I'd worry about Cyril getting too close, but I must admit, I'm going to miss the old fellow. Still, his saving you, Jade, will make a splendid chapter to my next book."

Jade groaned. "I should think motherhood would take all your attention, Maddy."

"Oh, I'll make the time," Madeline said. "The money will be even more important now."

"You didn't still need Percy for your movie, did you, Sam?" asked Beverly.

He shook his head. "That part is finished, and I just shot some footage of the coffee pulping and drying to round out the feel of farm life." He straightened and relaxed his arms. "You know, if you don't mind, I'd really like to include little Cyril in the movie. Having you bring him home to the farm is a great ending. You know: peace, serenity, life moving on."

Maddy s.h.i.+fted and took her husband's hand as they gazed into each other's eyes, communicating silently as married couples do after years together. After a nearly imperceptible movement of Neville's lips, Maddy agreed. "Certainly, Sam," she said. "And it would help us preserve a very special moment in our lives."

"Is that how your film will close then, Sam?" asked Avery. "With the little tyke toddling among the coffee trees?"

"Not exactly," Sam replied. "I think I'd like to film him on the lawn with the farm in the background. Then I want to pan out, show Africa beyond. After that"-he paused and looked at Jade-"with some help, I want to end with an aerial sweep of the farm and Africa." He c.o.c.ked his head and studied Jade for a moment. "What do you say, Jade? Late-afternoon light will be best. Long, interesting shadows. Less haze. Shall we try it today?"

She nodded. "Love to. If it's all right with Maddy and Neville."

"We'll meet you in a little while," said Neville.

Jade and Sam waved goodbye and headed for their respective motorcycles. Biscuit got up to follow, but Jade told him to stay. "I'll be back this evening and bring you a nice chicken," she said. When she looked up, she saw Sam and Avery exchange a meaningful glance. Before she could ask Sam what that was about, he'd started his engine.

THEY BUZZED LOW over the Thompsons' farm, Sam at the stick and Jade up front with the camera. She balanced it over the right side and cranked film while Sam executed a gentle spiral, rising higher and higher with each turn. Then he leveled out and headed southwest, allowing Jade to capture the low sun and the distant herds. Jade did her best to film what she hoped was the essence of Sam's vision, then stopped cranking and turned her head to the side to await his next hand signal. He made a short chopping motion, and she set the camera down carefully on her lap. It had been their prearranged signal that filming was complete.

Sam had made a wooden box to house his precious Akeley camera. Jade reached for it from its place on the floorboard. She slid back the catch and opened it, expecting to find it empty. It wasn't. Inside was another small box, nested in a corner. On the top was penned, Open this! Jade did.

For a second, everything evaporated around her except the glittering, cerulean blue sapphire ring in front of her. The square-cut stone, a full carat in size, was set in a white-gold ring crafted in the geometric lines of the new art deco style. Two larger claw mounts held the stone at the top and base with smaller ones on each corner. The breeze s.h.i.+fted and brushed Jade's cheeks, bringing her back to reality. She noted the soft whoosh of the wind and the purr of the Jenny's motor. Then she saw the note tucked inside the box lid.