Bermuda Schwartz

by Bob Morris

  “Came out about a dozen years ago,” she says. “Got mediocre reviews. Even the best of them said it was little more than a rehashing of other works on the subject and did little in the way of breaking new ground. It stung Peach, stung him bad. He became obsessed with setting the record straight about the Lost Cross once and for all, and he spent the next six years, right up until the time of his death …”

  “Wait, wait, wait,” I interrupt. “How do you know all this stuff? About the Fratres Crucis? About Richard Peach? How do you know he was obsessed? You’d never even heard of him until after he and Boyd were killed, right?”

  My words come out more strident than I intended. They cause Janeen a moment’s pause.

  “Yes, you’re right. And sorry, I can get carried away on this subject. But after covering the story of their murders for the Gazette, I became rather obsessed myself,” she says. “I interviewed Peach’s wife when she came here to claim his remains. She’s the one who told me what Boyd and her husband were doing in Bermuda and how they came to believe that the Santa Helena wrecked here.”

  Janeen plops tea bags into mugs, fills them with hot water, hands one to Fiona and then me. We sit down around the table.

  “Margaret Peach and I kept in touch after she returned home to England, and I did my best to keep her updated on the progress of the investigation, such as it was. We grew to be friends. Margaret was a dear, dear lady. She could never quite bear to return here to Bermuda, but I visited her in England on three or four occasions.

  “Shortly before her death, this was just last year, she asked me to come and help catalog her husband’s papers. It had gotten to be too much for her, and she wanted the papers to be in some sort of order before she donated them to the University of Leeds, where Peach began his teaching career. Let’s just say it turned out to be a more extensive project than I had envisioned. I wound up taking a three-month leave of absence from the Gazette so I could see it through to the finish.”

  The black cat leaps onto the table. It sniffs Fiona’s mug, then jerks its head away.

  “Come here, you.” Janeen picks up the cat and cradles it, stroking it as she looks at Fiona. “I must ask you to promise me something.”

  “What’s that?” Fiona says.

  “That you will give me the exclusive rights to your brother’s story.”

  “My brother’s story?”

  Fiona and I look at each other. Neither one of us says anything.

  “I don’t want to come off as paranoid or anything,” says Janeen, “but I have to look out for my own best interests here.” She lets go of the cat and it leaps off her lap. “You should know that I resigned from the Gazette because I want to give my full attention to this. I want to get to the bottom of it. I’m planning on writing a book.”

  “A book?” Fiona says.

  “Yes, Margaret Peach was adamant that her husband’s work not just get stuffed away in some dusty old library. She wanted his death to count for something. And she gave me the publication rights to her husband’s research. It was one of the last things she did before she died.”

  Janeen grips her mug with both hands, takes a sip of tea.

  “The only strings Margaret attached were that, should a book get published, I share credit with her husband, list him as the coauthor. I had no problem with that. He had already done so much of the research. It’s solid stuff. And the story of how the reliquary may have wound up in Bermuda is fascinating. Had Peach and Boyd actually succeeded in finding it, there’s no doubt the book would have been an international bestseller, maybe even a movie. Even as it is, based just on Peach’s research and some other information I’ve cobbled together, well, let’s just say I’ve got high hopes for the book I intend to write. But I want to keep all that under wraps, OK? I don’t want someone coming along, stealing this story away from me, and coming out with a book of their own.”

  Fiona sips tea, considers Janeen across the top of her mug.

  “So how far along are you on this of book yours, anyway?” she asks. There’s a distinct edge to her voice. But Janeen doesn’t seem to notice as she lights another cigarette.

  “Well, having the rights to Peach’s work helped me get an agent. A good one in New York. Still, nothing has really happened as far as landing a publisher. I mean, it has been a long time since Peach and Boyd were killed. Plus, as my agent keeps telling me, the story is unresolved. The murderer has never been caught. The cross has never been found.” She takes a drag on her cigarette, blows smoke out the side of her mouth. “But when I called him the other day and told him about your brother’s murder, he got really excited and …”

  She stops.

  “I’m sorry, Fiona. I don’t want to make it sound as if I’m exploiting Ned’s death to my own advantage.”

  Fiona bristles.

  “But that’s exactly what you’re doing, isn’t it?”

  Janeen looks away, doesn’t say anything. Fiona sets down her mug, sloshing tea onto the table.

  “I am so glad your agent was excited by my brother’s murder. Hope it lands you a giant book deal. Good luck with the goddamn movie rights, too.”

  “Fiona, please, I didn’t mean for it to come out like that.” Janeen turns to her, pleading. “Just hear me out on this. There’s more, so much more.”

  Fiona ignores her. She gets up from the table, looks at me.

  “I’m done here,” she says.

  She marches across the living room and out the door. To her credit, she does not slam it.

  Janeen slumps into a chair at the table. She takes a final drag on her cigarette, then snubs it out in a seashell ashtray.

  “Guess I really blew that, huh?”

  “Not what I’d call a diplomatic coup.”

  “I didn’t mean for it to come out sounding like that, really I didn’t.”

  I get up from the table, look down at her.

  “Cut to the chase, Janeen. Do you know who committed these murders?”

  She doesn’t say anything.

  “You better tell me what you know and you better tell it to me now.”

  “There are still some pieces missing,” Janeen says. “I still can’t say for sure.”

  “But you’ve shared what you know with the police?”

  She looks away.

  “No,” she says. “I haven’t.”

  “Why not?”

  She doesn’t say anything.

  “Let me guess why not, Janeen. You’re saving it all for this book of yours, aren’t you?”

  She doesn’t say anything.

  “Because it’s in your best interest if the police don’t catch the killer. It gives you a little more juice. You can reap the glory, watch your book climb the best-seller list. Pretty goddamn selfish, if you ask me.”

  Janeen looks up at me. Her eyes are hard.

  “I’ve worked my ass off for this,” she says. “I deserve something out of it.”

  “The three dead guys deserve something, too. It’s called justice. Go to the police, Janeen.”

  I head for the door.

  “Zack, please,” she calls out. “There’s so much you don’t know.”

  “Story of my life,” I say.

  35

  Fiona is waiting for me in the alley behind Janeen’s apartment. “Sorry for storming out like that,” she says as we walk back to the car.

  “Don’t blame you,” I say. “Don’t blame you at all.”

  “But the idea that she would try to capitalize off Ned’s death … I just lost it. Was I wrong?”

  “No, you weren’t wrong.”

  She looks at me.

  “You think I should have just bit my tongue?”

  “No.”

  “No, but …?”

  “But, yeah, I do think Janeen knows some things. Maybe more than the cops know, even. Or certainly more than what they’ve been willing to share with you so far. I don’t think it could hurt matters to hear her out.”

  Fiona stops.

 
; “OK, then. Let’s go back up there. I’ve cooled off. Let’s listen to what she has to say.”

  “Not just yet. She deserves to wallow in a little guilt for handling that the way she did. Besides, we might wind up learning more from her if we give her time to stew.”

  We get back to the car and drive to the funeral home recommended by Dr. Patterson. The funeral director says he can arrange Ned McHugh’s burial at sea for the day after tomorrow.

  We’ll need a boat. So I make a call to Aunt Trula, who calls Teddy Schwartz, and, just like that, we’ve got Miss Peg.

  “I’m done in,” says Fiona as we leave the funeral home.

  “Still working off the jet lag?”

  “Yes, that, plus I never could have imagined that I’d be arranging Neddie’s funeral. And this whole thing with crosses and reliquaries and secret societies, it’s just so … so …”

  She stops. She looks exhausted.

  “I need to call my folks and let them know where everything stands,” she says. “Do you mind if we head back now?”

  “Fine by me.”

  “And one other thing, Zack.”

  “What’s that?”

  She takes my arm, gives it a quick squeeze.

  “Thanks,” she says.

  “For what?”

  “For insisting that you help me out.”

  “Aw shucks, ma’am. It weren’t nothing. Besides, I was just looking for an excuse to tool around in my cool blue car.”

  I drive us to Cutfoot Estate, and when we get there I make a call of my own—to Daniel Denton, the attorney.

  “I was rather hoping you might have changed your mind about going through with this,” he says.

  “Nope. Did you do everything I asked you to?”

  “Yes, but I can’t say that I like it any more than when we first spoke.”

  “You don’t have to like it, Denton. When can we do this?”

  He sighs.

  “I’m available after three P.M.”

  I tell him where to meet me.

  36

  As soon as I hang up the phone with Denton, I round up Boggy. Together, we figure out how to lower the top on the Morris Minor and set out down the coast.

  The morning’s rainstorm is long gone. It’s a lovely afternoon. The air is warm but not too warm, the sky a flawless blue.

  As we drive along, I bring Boggy up to speed on everything, from Fiona’s meeting with the coroner to our encounter with Janeen Hill.

  “This book the man Peach wrote, and the one the woman Janeen is writing,” says Boggy. “They are books I would like very much to read.”

  “Oh, really. And why is that?”

  “Is like some Taino stories. This search for the cross, it reminds me of how we Taino always hope to find Yaya’s gourd.”

  “Yaya’s gourd?”

  Boggy nods.

  “Yes, for Taino, it is our creation story. Yaya, the father of the world, had a son, Yayael. And Yayael, jealous of his father’s power, plotted to kill him. But Yaya caught him at this and he killed his son instead.”

  “Jeez,” I say. “Why is it that so many religions get started by families from Dysfunction Junction? The whole Cain and Abel thing. God cuckolding Joseph and then sending Jesus on a suicide mission. This guy Yayael trying to kill his old man.”

  “You want to hear how the story ends, Zachary?”

  “Is it a happy ending?” I say. “I could really use a happy ending for a change.”

  Boggy ignores me.

  “So after Yaya killed his son, he put the bones into a gourd and hung the gourd in his house.”

  “Sick bastard,” I say.

  Boggy cuts his eyes my way, keeps talking.

  “Then one day, wanting to see his son again, Yaya asked his wife to fetch the gourd and pour out the bones. She did this. Only, it was not bones that came out, but water and fish. Enough water and fish to cover the world.”

  I look at Boggy.

  “That the end of the story?”

  Boggy nods.

  “It is a happy ending, Zachary, no?”

  “What’s so happy about it?”

  “Yaya and his wife, they get to eat the fish.”

  “Gee, nothing at all whacked-out about that, seeing as how those fish were once their son’s bones.”

  “Yes, but death creates life, Zachary. That is the story of all religion. And just as there are people who would want to find this Lost Cross, so, among the Taino, we have always dreamed of finding Yaya’s gourd. Is out there. Is real. He who finds the gourd finds everlasting life.” He looks at me. “Why is it that you are smiling, Zachary?”

  “Oh, nothing.”

  “No, Zachary. It is something. What is it?”

  “I was just thinking that maybe the Taino religion is the most honest of them all. It admits that it’s based on someone being out of their gourd.”

  Boggy looks at me.

  “I do not understand this,” he says. “Please explain.”

  “Never mind. You believe what you believe. And I believe what I believe.”

  “Very well then, Zachary. And what do you believe?”

  “I believe we are getting close to the place I want to see.”

  We’re outside of Tucker’s Town, near a bluff overlooking the ocean. There’s a small sign just ahead. Back in Florida, where billboards grow wild, it would be a giant sign with Day-Glo lettering and a stop-traffic headline. But this one is fairly tasteful as such things go.

  FUTURE SITE OF GOVERNOR’S POINTE, it reads. EXCLUSIVE RESIDENCES. PRECONSTRUCTIONS PRICES.

  I pull onto the side of the road.

  Below us sits a tiny cove. The green-blue water is so clear that you can make out the outline of sea fans waving atop coral heads twenty feet below the surface. Pelicans dive-bomb schools of fish. The beach is a glistening strand of pinkish sand.

  “Only one thing could improve a view like this.”

  “What is that, Zachary?”

  “A bunch of condos stuck on the side of the hill.”

  Boggy smiles.

  “And maybe a golf course, too,” he says.

  “With a clubhouse and a spa.”

  “It’s the way of man,” Boggy says.

  “What? To improve something that doesn’t need improving?”

  “Yes, that. And to think that he can own the land. Man cannot own the land, Zachary.”

  I look at him.

  “OK,” I say. “I’m waiting for the next part.”

  “Next part?”

  “Yeah, you know, something like: Man cannot own the land because the land will wind up owning him.”

  “Yes, that is true.”

  “Also, man cannot own the land because, long after man is gone, the land endures.”

  “Wise words, Zachary,” says Boggy. “It is the way of the Taino.”

  “Well, don’t go thinking you’ve got a convert. Because I’m looking at that land right there in front of us and I’m thinking that someone has taken a big chunk of my money so that he can own a tiny part of it. And I don’t get any comfort out of knowing it will endure long after I’m gone. I’d like my money now.”

  “You are very attached to your money, Zachary.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  Boggy doesn’t say anything. I start the car.

  “It’s not that I’m greedy,” I say.

  “You only wish to have that which is yours. Eh, Guamikeni?” “Right,” I say. “And maybe just a little something extra to go along with it.”

  37

  Brewster Trimmingham is sitting up in bed, doing much better than the day before.

  “Umph-emmph,” he says.

  With his jaw wired shut, it’s hard to make out exactly what he’s saying, but I’m pretty sure he’s cussing me.

  “Easy there, Brew,” I say. “I’m doing you a big favor.”

  “Oddy-astad,” Trimmingham says.

  “I am not a sorry bastard. I’m the guy who rescued you after you got your hea
d cracked. And I’m the guy who is going to relieve you of your financial responsibilities to whomever did the cracking. Plus, I intend to make sure it doesn’t happen again. You should be thanking me.”

  I turn to Daniel Denton. He’s sixtyish, a tall man with a patrician’s bearing. He wears a good suit and an expression that says he would rather be anywhere else but here.

  “You’re up,” I tell him.

  Denton edges to Trimmingham’s bed and presents him with a thick stack of papers.

  “Now, please listen very carefully, Mr. Trimmingham, as I explain in more detail the proposition that Mr. Chasteen has just laid out,” says Denton.

  Denton launches into a protracted lawyerly lecture that boils down to this: For the token amount of one dollar per unit, I will become the proud owner of six condominium residences at Governor’s Pointe. I will assume the mortgages with the National Bank of Bermuda. And I will further assume, as Denton has so craftily phrased it, “any prior debts to parties mentioned or unmentioned herein that are directly or indirectly related to the purchase of said units.”

  There’s also a lot of legal rigmarole that I interpret to mean that neither Daniel Denton nor his firm can be held liable in the event that this whole deal blows up in our faces. It’s all so guardedly worded that I’m surprised Denton isn’t wearing gloves out of fear his fingerprints might be traced back to these documents.

  Denton hands Trimmingham a pen.

  “Now, sir, if you would just sign your name at those places which I have highlighted.”

  Trimmingham slings the pen across the room. It almost hits Boggy, who is standing by a window.

  I tap Denton on the shoulder.

  “If you don’t mind,” I say, “I’d like a few moments alone with Mr. Trimmingham.”

  Denton steps away from the bed. On his way to the door, he leans close to me and speaks low.

  “I will not be a party to coercion,” he says.

  “Coercion sounds so harsh, don’t you think? I prefer to think of it as playtime.”

  The moment Denton leaves the room, Trimmingham launches into a tirade. I can’t make out a word he says.

  When he’s done, I pick up the pen from the floor and grab a notepad from the bedside table. I hand them to Trimmingham.