Marigolds, Chapter 42

42

            Jalena Orasac, aka Helen Moore had flown to Belfast where her brother Berislav aka Chris Moore, lives.  Dennis confirmed that a Helen Moore had rented a car at Belfast from one of the big companies. He booked me one from the same place.

            Her circuitous route and the mid-journey identity swap each gave credence to the idea that Jalena wished to avoid detection. If I could track her as easily as I did whoever was behind the other killings could too. It made me squirm in my coach seat somewhere over the deep dark North Atlantic that even if I found her I might be too late.  Or, worse, I surmised: perhaps the reason she is running incognito is not she was a potential victim, but because she is something else. I could not ignore the possibility that Jalena Orasac had blood on her hands.  There was certainly enough to go around.

            What the hell was I doing?

            With whom the hell was I doing it?

            “Excuse me, might I read that if you’re done?”

            A woman with lucent skin, freshly painted nails and silken legs crossed in my direction was smiling wide-eyed and pointing at the Time Magazine open over my thigh.  Her hair was snared tight in a long thick braid she had pulled forward over the right shoulder of her silk blouse. The knot at its end rose and fell gently over her breast. She did not look or smell as if she belonged in coach.

            “Sure.” I closed the magazine and handed it to her. “Come here often?”

            Her laugh had a startled edge to it as she took the magazine from me. I wondered if I looked as goofy as I felt.

            “All the time,” she said. “Much more often than I would prefer.”

            Although her brow was still furrowed, her smile was unthreatened and unthreatening.

            “You?” she asked.

            I pointed down through the window. “I’ve been on it and in it thousands of times, but this is my first time over it.”  Yeow, a good response, that.

            “I see.” She opened the magazine. “There’s an article in this issue about the truth and reconciliation commission in the Balkans.”

            “I read it waiting to board. Sad stuff.”

            “It is… but hopeful. I have friends from the UN who are involved.”

            “From the UN? Really? How?”

            “They were part of the team doing the forensic work that supports how we know who did what to whom, and how.”

“And knowing those two things usually answers the why questions, too,” I said.

“To be truthful, we mostly already know why when we start.”

 “Right. How do you know those UN people?”

“Colleagues. That’s what I do, too. I was working in Rwanda or I’d have been there with them.”

“No shortage of work for people in your field is there these days?” I had read General Romeo Dellaire’s book on Rwanda.

“Nope. No shortage.”

“May I ask you a question?”

There was a moment of silence. “Oh, you want me to answer that? Most times people don’t, you know? They just go ahead and… sure, go ahead. Ask.”

“How does someone who does what you do come down from it?”

“Do you mean the satisfaction when the puzzle pieces begin to go together or do you mean the nature of…the constant presence of the dead?”

“I guess I was thinking the former, but the latter is likely a better question.”

“Well, in this case for both I go to Ireland. There’s a dig in County Armagh run by a former professor of mine. I am dropping in on them.”

“Sounds like fun…”

“Oh, it will be.  It’s Ireland after all.”

Yeah, well, if the ancient Irish dead from…when?”

She moved her braid to her left shoulder so she could face me. “Appears to be seventh century.”

“Seventh century…if the dead are as chatty as the living you should learn a lot.”

“Right.” Her smile was unaffected. “Are you on vacation?”

I told Cynthia Washington, she had handed me her card while she was speaking, why I was en route.  It took about ten minutes to outline the tale. She wrote down the Croatian names spelling them all correctly.

“All that in Boston and New York? Wow.”

“And Portland, Maine. Why did you write down those names?”

“I’ll ask my colleagues who were there among the Croats and the Serbs if any of these names mean anything to them.  You said that there was a connection to someone in the diplomatic corps, didn’t you?”

“I did.” I gave her my card. “Would you contact me if it seems there is?”

“As repayment for the loan of your magazine?”

“As good a reason as any.”