Switcheroo (A Gideon Oliver Mystery Book 18)

by Aaron Elkins

  “Now, Georgie,” she said to him, “you go and greet your dear mother and father, just as we showed you.”

  George remained where he was, irresolute and uncertain, holding tightly to Grace’s hand until she tenderly unlocked his fingers from hers and gave him a gentle shove.

  He walked across the intervening few yards and gravely shook hands, first with Bess, and then, more reluctantly, with Willie. But his eyes kept pivoting back to Carlisle and Grace. They could see the whites; he looked like a panicked horse.

  “Oh, Howard,” Grace whispered, “this is all so awful. It has to be done, I know, but still . . .” She took in a little gasp and dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief.

  And now it was Roddy’s turn. Willie knelt down beside him. “All right, then, lad, now you go and do the same. Go to your mum and give her a great hug.”

  Roddy walked confidently up to her and did as he was told. The hug was vigorous enough—rather overdone, in fact—but there was no warmth to it.

  And why would there be? Carlisle thought. Not yet. He doesn’t know us; he doesn’t understand what’s going on. It’s going to take time. Time for us too, he realized. Grace sensed the boy’s discomfort as well and forced herself not to let the embrace go on too long.

  “And shake hands with your da, too,” Willie prompted. “Go on, now.”

  Roddy then turned to Carlisle and held out his hand. “‘Owdja do, sir?” he piped. “Very ’appy t’meetcher.”

  Carlisle burst out laughing. Good Lord, they’d made a proper little Cockney out of him! Well, that would be the first thing to be worked on, starting right now. “Very well, thank you,” he replied in his clearest, crispest King’s English. “And how do you do, young man?”

  From the quay they went to the Carlisles’ town house, where their maid had biscuits made with real sugar waiting for the children and cucumber sandwiches with synthetic honey and ersatz butter for the adults. On the way Willie told them that, unlike most of the evacuees, who had gone to the relatively safe countryside, they had stuck out the entire time in East London with his relatives. “We wasn’t going to give them Jerries the satisfaction of running off, not us. And we all got through it too, with the bombings and them V-2s, and everything coming down all around. Right in the same street sometimes. The house right across from us got it one time. Right across!”

  A look passed between Carlisle and Grace. They were glad they hadn’t known that all along.

  Once at the town house, the boys, who didn’t appear to have taken to one another, were brought to the kitchen by the maid for tea and biscuits, which they unenthusiastically sipped and nibbled in uneasy silence. Meanwhile, the adults sat down to go over any remaining details with Edmond Jouvet, the young solicitor who had overseen the original exchange in 1940.

  There was a moment’s tension when Bess, who had clearly done her computing, pointed out that the bank statement that Carlisle had withdrawn for them from Lloyds the previous day showed Willie’s account standing at £440, less than half of what the promised twenty pounds a month should have brought.

  “Shush, Mother,” Willie said, embarrassed. “Four hundred and forty pounds is a lot of money. They’ve had hard times here, a lot harder’n we’ve had.”

  “Well, I’m only asking what it says on that there paper. That’s what we agreed.” Carlisle’s left eyebrow went up. Mrs. Skinner had grown more assertive during her years in London.

  But it was Grace, usually so reserved, who responded, and with considerable heat. “Bess, you should know that it’s only through Howard’s generosity that you’re getting that,” she said hotly. “The Germans took over the plant the first month, for their military roads and whatnot. And the cows were all gone inside of a year. They paid us, yes, but the same way they paid everyone else—in Occupation marks. Oh, we still have plenty of those in a drawer somewhere, and if you want them, you’re more than welcome to them. It’ll save us the trouble of burning them.”

  “I wouldn’t be in too much of a hurry to burn them,” Edmond said. “I understand that London is going to accept them in exchange for pounds sterling.”

  “Yeah, sure,” Bess said. “And what’s the bloomin’ rate of exchange to be? Ten thousand of them marks to one blinkin’ pound?”

  “It will be at face value, according to this morning’s wireless,” replied Edmond. “I’d say that’s fair enough, wouldn’t you?”

  That surprising news cheered everyone and settled them down, and the meeting proceeded smoothly to its end. The Carlisles, the Skinners, and Jouvet re-signed the document that had been drawn up in 1940, attesting that the agreement had been fulfilled to the satisfaction of all.

  They had their tea and sandwiches then, and soon, all too soon, it was time to make the switch a reality—the time for the Skinners to leave with their George and for Roddy to remain with his birth parents, but everyone was nervous, and they couldn’t seem to bring themselves to close the circle for good. The conversation had grown desultory but still continued.

  “Dad . . . ?” George was tugging at Carlisle’s sleeve again.

  “I’m not your dad,” Carlisle snapped. “Your dad’s sitting right there.” And then, instantly regretting his tone, more gently: “But did you want to ask me something?”

  George nodded. His eyes brimming with unshed tears, he leaned close to Carlisle’s ear. “That other little boy—he’s breaking my Spitfire.”

  And sure enough, in the far corner of the sitting room, which served as the play area, Roddy sprawled on the floor amid a jumble of metal Erector Set girders, wheels, and nuts and bolts, trying, with great determination, to twist the wings off a half-built toy airplane.

  “Say there, son,” Carlisle called, “if you want to take that apart, do it the right way. There are the tools right next to you.”

  Roddy looked sullenly at Carlisle, and then, for guidance, to Skinner.

  “Now you listen to your da,” Willie told him. “Don’t act like you never seen a screwdriver before. You’ll break it if you keep doing it like that.”

  Roddy received this sullenly. “I thought they was my toys now.”

  “Well, yeh, that’s right, they are, but that don’t mean—”

  “Then I can break ’em if I want.”

  “Put that down this instant,” said Grace, breaking her ten-minute silence.

  Roddy made a face and threw the plane to the carpet, not quite hard enough to make it open rebellion, but hard enough to indicate he didn’t give a damn. Then he just sat there with his arms crossed.

  I should say something here, Carlisle thought, but he didn’t know what it should be. And he was very suddenly tired, through and through. He simply gave the other adults an indulgent, mildly exasperated smile, which all but his grim-faced wife returned. Boys will be boys.

  “Say, I was wondering,” Willie said. “Did our Bobbie make it through? Do you still have him? I heard there at the end the Germans was stealing dogs and eating them.”

  “That they were,” Carlisle said.

  “Not only dogs, and not only Germans,” Jouvet put in tartly.

  “It’s true, I’m afraid,” said Carlisle, “but yes, Bobbie has remained uneaten. A fine animal, although a wee bit underfed, like the rest of us. Would you like to take him with you?”

  Willie nodded. “We would. And I thank you for taking care of him all these years.”

  “He’s an easy dog to get along with.” Carlisle stood and went to the stairway. “He’s upstairs with our Nuisance now. They tend to get overexcited when they hear guests, but I expect they’ve settled by now.”

  When he opened the door to the room the dogs were in, he saw that they had gone to sleep, pressed tight against one another, back-to-back. He bent to rub both of their smooth heads. “Bobbie, old boy, the war’s over, you know. Time for you to go back home. Nuisance, you come down too and see him off. Your old friend Roddy’s back too, although I doubt you’ll know him.”

  At thirteen Nuisance was in his dota
ge and slow to awaken, but Bobbie, eight years his junior, jumped up with a start, ran past Carlisle, and dashed excitedly down the stairs, running from Willie to Bess and back again. Everyone else, even George, with whom he’d lived for the last five years, was ignored. Amazing, a dog’s memory.

  Roddy had gone to the bathroom, but now he came out, saw Bobbie, and went to pet him. At which point creaky, old Nuisance amazed Carlisle by shooting out from behind him and flying down the steps. Then, taking no notice of anyone else, he leaped straight up into Roddy’s arms, bowling him over so that Roddy ended up on the seat of his pants, startled into blinking, open-mouthed silence, with Nuisance bounding in riotous circles around him, yawping and woofing like mad, and whimpering with joy.

  The scene made them all laugh, most of all Carlisle. Good old Nuisance, loyal old Nuisance, he didn’t have to check for neck moles to know his old pal.

  CHAPTER 5

  Nineteen years later, June 13, 1964

  Jersey Evening Post

  Missing Man Found Dead

  Foul Play Indicated

  The mystery that has gripped the island for the last two days was partly resolved yesterday morning when the body of George Skinner was found on the Saint Lawrence parish farm on which he resided. States Police have determined that his death was the result of a gunshot wound to the chest.

  Skinner, until recently a high-level employee at both Carlisle Dairies and Carlisle Paving and Construction, had dropped out of sight on Wednesday last, along with Roderick Carlisle, the owner of both companies and the son of the late Senator Howard Carlisle. The two men had been the subjects of a police inquiry stemming from practices at Carlisle Paving and Construction, and it was initially believed that they had fled the islands to escape impending arrests.

  “With the discovery of Mr. Skinner’s body that theory is no longer tenable,” said Detective Sergeant Mark Lavoisier. Making reference to the simultaneous disappearance of another Carlisle employee, assistant bookkeeper Bertrand Peltier, Sergeant Lavoisier said: “Now our main interest is in locating Mr. Carlisle and Mr. Peltier.”

  The investigation is ongoing, and anyone with information on the men’s whereabouts is asked to contact the States Police Major Incident Bureau in Saint Helier.

  Five years later, December 10, 1969

  Jersey Evening Post

  Shocking Findings

  “Tar Pit Man” Identified; Not Prehistoric at All

  New Questions Raised. Mystery Deepens

  Human bones discovered last month in pitch deposits being extracted from the Carlisle Tar Pits, near L’Etacq in Saint Lawrence parish, have yielded appalling results. Thought at first to be the remains of prehistoric man, they are now believed to be the mingled remains of two men who have been sought by the States Police since 1964. One of the men has been identified as Roderick Carlisle, at that time the owner of Carlisle Paving and Road Construction (now Inter-Island Road Construction). The other remains are believed to be those of Bertrand Peltier, an employee of Carlisle’s. Both men were the objects of police searches in connection with the five-year-old murder of business associate George Skinner.

  “The likelihood of foul play is obviously extremely high,” said Detective Sergeant Mark Lavoisier, “but reliable evidence of it has not been found on the remains. You must remember, however, that they are few and fragmentary.”

  The investigation is ongoing, and anyone with information of possible relevance is asked to contact the States Police Major Incident Bureau in Saint Helier.

  CHAPTER 6

  Málaga, Spain, April 15, 2015

  Gideon Oliver was in one of his rare blue funks.

  “It’s not that I want to see any more people murdered,” he mused. “It’s just that, if people are going to get murdered anyhow, wouldn’t you think a few more of them could be left out in the woods for a few months, or get buried in shallow graves that aren’t discovered for a year or two, or tossed in the Sound, so that they don’t wash up for a while? Is that asking so much?”

  As an opening to a luncheon conversation between most married couples, this would be a nonstarter, but for Gideon and Julie Oliver, it was pretty ordinary stuff. Gideon was a professor of anthropology and the chairman of the Anthropology Department at the University of Washington’s Port Angeles campus, at forty-two the youngest chairman on campus. He was also a consultant to law enforcement agencies in cases involving materials requiring the help of an expert in his peculiar and esoteric field of study—in a word, bones. His wife, Julie, a supervising park ranger at the Olympic National Park headquarters, also located in the quintessential, old Pacific Northwest timber town of Port Angeles, where the Olivers lived, had long ago gotten used to talk like this.

  “Murdered so as to give honest employment to forensic anthropologists with time on their hands, you mean?” she said, without looking up from the ham and cheese sandwich from which she was using her fingers to remove a bit of ham rind.

  “Exactly.”

  “In particular, forensic anthropologists who haven’t had an interesting case to get their hands dirty on for going on, oh, say, six months?”

  “Four, but it seems like six. Oh, and it would also be helpful if the remains were completely skeletonized so I don’t have to deal with the icky stuff. Is that another half of a bocadillo that I see in there?”

  “You’re in luck,” she said and handed the paper sack to him. “Half a can of orange Mirinda too.”

  Bocadillos were what the local Spaniards called their ham and cheese sandwiches—bocadillos de jamón serrano y queso Manchego—it was probably all those luscious syllables that made them so lip-smackingly good, that and the crusty Spanish loaves they came in. Orange Mirinda was a soft drink that tasted like every other carbonated, artificially flavored orange drink in the world—not even remotely like an orange but fizzy and refreshing, more than welcome on a warm spring day on the Costa del Sol.

  At the moment, they were sitting on a wrought iron bench beside the Moorish-styled, multi-water-jetted pool in the botanical garden of the University of Málaga. Gideon was there to attend the biannual International Conference on Science and Detection, a three-day affair that was being held in the main auditorium of the Legal Medicine and Anatomy Building. For herself, Julie had arranged meetings with faculty members of the Department of Environmental Sciences to talk about issues of forest ecology. Happily, the spiffy but sterile-looking new buildings housing the two departments were only fifty yards apart, which made these pleasant lunches possible. With plenty of time to spare, Julie was also doing some local touring, and they were planning to stay a few additional days after the three-day conference ended today, so that she could show him the sights and they could perhaps range a little farther afield to Gibraltar or Tangier.

  Once he’d eaten his fill, Gideon sat staring gloomily at the leftover crust in his hand. “Well,” he said with a drawn-out sigh. “One more afternoon to get through. I probably should head on over to the lecture hall.” But he didn’t move.

  “You sound thrilled,” Julie said. “Not as much fun being one of the students instead of the professor, is it?”

  “No, come on, Julie, that isn’t it. You know I’m not like that.”

  She raised an eyebrow.

  “Well, maybe a little,” he allowed, and he supposed he was. He was, after all, very much used to, and very comfortable with, being a professor, and it was as a professor—a presenter—that he’d attended three previous Science and Detection conferences. This time, he was there as a learner, having begun to feel that he was drifting out of touch with the slew of recent developments in his field. Then, when he’d learned that the theme of this year’s conference was “New Directions in the Forensic Sciences,” he’d decided to sign up as a mere attendee.

  “But more than that,” he said, “I’m, well, not very interested, and that worries me. I should be interested in what’s happening at the forefront, but I’m not. I’m just not. I think maybe I’d be happier just forgetting abo
ut it and letting myself turn into one of those carping, hoary old dinosaurs you see wandering around every campus. Or maybe it’s too late and I already am one.”

  “Oh, come on,” Julie said, smiling. “You’re really not a very convincing whiner. And you’re a bit young for dinosaur status. Besides, you’ve only got two more hours to go. It can’t be that bad.”

  “You don’t think so?” He opened his conference folder to the fourth page of the program. “Here, this is what I have to look forward to for the first hour. And the second hour’s almost as bad. Care to join me?” He rotated the page so Julie could read it:

  2:00 p.m. B8 “Multiplex PCR Development of Y-Chromosomal Biallelic Polymorphisms in Determining the Geographic Origin of Human Remains.” S. J. Anjaneyulu, PhD, and Chandrashekhar Jeevarathinam, MA, Panjab University, Chandigarh, India.

  She shook her head. “Cripes. Okay, I see what you mean. And this is in the anthropology section?”

  “Yes, and that’s my problem. I suppose it’s useful, or would be if I understood what it means, but is it anthropology? I don’t think so, not the way I see it. Anthropos—‘man,’ logia—‘study of.’ Well, you don’t study man by studying biallelic polymorphisms. It’s one more example of this increasingly reductionist direction that scientific research has been going in. Konrad Lorenz got it right a long time ago: ‘Scientists are people who know more and more about less and less, until they know everything about nothing.’”

  “That’s not the whole quote. The other half of it is, ‘Philosophers are people who know less and less about more and more, until they know nothing about everything.’”

  “Yeah, he was probably right about that too. But look, I’m not saying that a holistic paradigm is necessarily the only one that should be utilized in the assessment of—”

  Julie had tipped her chin downward and from under her eyebrows was giving him a certain look, which made him stop in the middle of his sentence and laugh, as it always did. “Earth to Gideon,” was what it meant, “you’ve launched into lecture mode.” It was a whispered commentary she’d started using a few years ago to let him know when his natural enthusiasms were overwhelming the people they were with. After a while, the single whispered word “launching” could do the job, and now the mere look that went along with it was enough.