“Papa, you really can’t know,” Rosemary said. “Philip Amadie was a perfect Jekyll-and-Hyde. A gentleman on the outside, an animal once the doors were closed. I couldn’t tolerate it. Thank heavens it didn’t last.”
“Where’s Philip now?” I asked, almost holding my breath for the answer.
“Oh, he’s safe enough,” she said breezily, but I saw her father flinch.
“Rose, you know Philip is dead.”
“Yes, well, I suppose that’s true. He died of gastroenteritis. At least, that’s what they said.”
Suddenly I remembered what Dogbite had said about Crane having a stomach virus. Crane, who’d had a slice of the pecan pie. Why should anyone have suspected poison?
“Did Philip eat one of your pecan pies by any chance?”
“Oh, Philip was a big eater. Indiscriminate. And he loved my cooking. I think I did make him a pie, now that you mention it.”
“Rose …” The old man’s voice was a whimper now.
I took a step toward her. “Rosemary, you know it’s over, don’t you?”
She frowned as if I’d said something foolish and shook her head.
“Perhaps. But, you see, Alan, it’s not a question of whether it’s over but how it ends.”
I saw the little nickel-plated .25 then, pointing at my mid-section.
“Would you just step back, please? I won’t hesitate to shoot. Thank you.”
I stepped back against the wall, and as I watched she came back along the opposite side of the room and slowly closed the door and put her back to it.
“After all, Alan, everyone must die. It’s merely a question of when and how.”
She was reaching down now, and to my horror I saw she was turning on the gas space heater by the wall.
“Rosemary …”
“If I let you leave this room alive, my father’s life will have been for nothing. His memory will be destroyed. All for one small indiscretion.”
“People will come looking for me.”
“They’ll come looking for all of us. But not immediately. I told the sitter to go home. It’s your bad luck, Alan, that I left something and came back to get it. That’s when she said you were here. But she won’t be back until tomorrow and when she comes in, we’ll all be dead.”
“All of us?”
“Look at Papa. Do you think he really wants to live like this? As for me, what would I do without him? No, it’s better we all go together. A match and this will all be over. One glorious explosion. An accident. There’s no reason anyone should ever know about Papa’s little mistake.”
The gas was a steady hiss now and I’d broken into a sweat.
“Mr. Prescott, is this what you want?”
But the old man was oblivious, staring ahead with glassy eyes as if he were already gone.
“Rosemary, you’re not going to keep this quiet. My people know I’m here. Do you really think I’d come here without telling anybody? How do you think I figured out it was you?”
“How did you figure it was me, Alan?”
“Once I figured your father was the man who catalogued the Fabré papers it was easy. I knew he must be old now and probably too sick, so who else could it be but another family member?”
“And that led to me.”
“That and other things. The poison ivy you said you had on your arm after I went to the school that day. You said you got it on a field trip. I didn’t think anything about it consciously. I thought October was kind of a strange time for field trips; when I was in school, we usually did them in late spring. But that was a long time ago. And I was looking for an obvious burn from the fire that almost killed us. But I guess my unconscious started working on it. I had a strange dream: I saw a character dressed in a Boy Scout uniform, and it was the result of something somebody said about our trip to the plantation being like a scout field trip. And I guess from there my mind jumped to your mention of a field trip and the poison ivy.” I shrugged. “And my dog treed a possum.”
“What?”
“Most people don’t think of possums as being fierce, but I remembered how hard they fight to protect their young. And I wondered if our killer was protecting somebody.”
“Clever.”
“And then there was the box itself. My best guess was that the killer hadn’t found it. Why not?”
“And what did you decide?”
“That maybe it was hidden in a place the killer couldn’t go.”
“Such as?”
“A beehive. You’d said something once about being allergic to bee stings.”
“Oh, I am. I loved the outdoors, but a bee sting could give me a terrible reaction.”
“Anyway, it all just sort of floated around in my subconscious and then it congealed.”
Her smile hardened. “Where is the box, Alan?”
I nodded. “The D.A. has it. Also the map.”
Rosemary Amadie stared at me a second longer and I thought she was going to pull the trigger, but instead she turned to look at her father.
“Then there really isn’t any reason to keep on.”
I waited. My eyes were heavy and I felt tired.
“It isn’t fair, Alan. You know that. He deserves the credit, not you. You people had all the money of the U.S. government. All he had was the few dollars Charles Fabré paid him to sort through his collection of old papers. And yet my father found the truth. He made the discovery. But you were going to take it away from him. It’s theft, Alan. You and your people are thieves as surely as if you’d stolen his soul.”
“I didn’t know your father existed,” I said. “What was I supposed to do?”
“You people never think about men like my father. Don’t you think I know how you feel about amateurs?” She smiled. “‘Here comes Rosemary Amadie. She’s such a pest. You know she doesn’t have any credentials.’ I can just see what you’re all thinking. And it was worse for my father. He was a true scholar. But all the university intellectuals can think about is publishing, getting tenure, moving on to the next faculty position.”
“I’m not with the university, Rosemary. I’m in private business.”
“Don’t argue, Alan. It doesn’t matter.” She yawned. “Nothing matters now.”
Maybe, I thought, it doesn’t. Nothing matters except resting …
I let my eyelids close, then forced them back open.
No. It can’t end this way.
I started toward her.
The little gun came slowly back up and wavered.
“Alan, I’ll shoot.”
The spark inside the gas-filled room would send us all sky-high.
“… not a bad person, Alan, a gentleman, not like Philip. He was an animal. I dreamed about you, though. Did you know that?”
I looked around for somewhere to go. A window to dive through. As if I could summon up the strength.
“… another life, maybe it would have been different.”
She was rambling now. She was closer to the heater. Maybe she’d lose consciousness first. She was already slumping down, back against the door.
I didn’t have the strength to pull her out of the way.
“… maybe shoot anyway, one big blaze, nice way to end it.”
Nice?
“Alan?”
Screw you, you crazy bitch. I’m not going to answer. I won’t play your game.
“Alan, are you in there?”
Pepper?
I opened my mouth and forced out a croak. “Pepper.”
The door moved, hit Rosemary’s body, stopped.
“Alan?” Pepper’s voice again.
Rosemary’s head raised.
“What …?” The little pistol came up.
There wouldn’t be another chance.
I willed my legs to move, lurched forward.
“… going to shoot …”
I fell toward her, grabbing the hand with the automatic, forcing it away from my body.
The floor slammed my elbow and numbness lanced
up my arm. The woman under me stirred, protested. I felt her body turning.
Don’t let go with my left hand …
The door came partly open, hit my head.
“Alan?”
“Pepper.” I felt the room spinning and heard myself talking far away: “Get the cipher … the Bible …”
Rosemary was on top of me now, we were two swimmers doing a slow-motion stroke, except that there was something cool washing against my face. Air from the next room, saving air …
Reviving her.
Her gun hand came down and with a last desperate effort I pushed it away, pushed her off me, and struggled to my feet. She rolled backward and I used my last ounce of strength to lurch through the door, away … The pistol fired and there was a crash of thunder as the room exploded. The door buckled toward me and the lights went out.
THIRTY-TWO
I awoke in a hospital room, with Pepper leaning over the bed.
“He’s awake,” she said, and I heard a familiar voice say, “Thank God.”
Esme appeared on the other side of the bed, Shelby Deeds looking over her shoulder.
“You’ve had a nice sleep, young man,” the old historian said. “About time to get up and get back to work.”
The door flew open and Sam MacGregor barged in, trailing a protesting nurse.
“He’s my son. You can’t keep me away. It’s a matter of life and—oh, hello, Shelby. Alan, I was in the Rockies and heard you were dead.”
“Exaggeration.”
“That’s a relief.” Sam reached under his jacket, brought out a bottle of J. W. Dant, unscrewed the cap, and took a long pull.
“Now I feel better.”
“You can’t bring that in here,” the rotund nurse warned, but Sam shushed her. “Go away. You’re interrupting a religious observance.”
“Somebody want to tell me what happened?” I asked.
“There are people in the hallway,” the nurse protested. “There’s a man with long hair sitting cross-legged on the floor and there’s somebody with tattoos and—”
“Call security,” Sam ordered. “The situation sounds desperate.”
“Alan, what’s going on?” David Goldman was in the room now, his sweat-stained T-shirt emitting an aroma that sent all heads in his direction. “I just came up from the Basin. Marilyn said you were dead.”
“I wish,” I groaned.
“Here,” Sam said, handing me the bottle. “This will help.”
I pushed the bottle away.
“The missing page …”
Pepper held up a piece of paper. “Do you believe in divine intervention?”
“What?”
“It’s her way of telling you the damn thing was in the Bible,” Sam said. “Nothing divine about it.”
“When the door to the bedroom opened I saw the Bible lying there,” Pepper said, “and I remembered what you said about getting the Bible, so I picked it up. The paper was inside. This is a photocopy, of course.”
I forced myself upright in the bed. “Let me see.”
She held it in front of me and I looked at the jumble of letters:
“Anybody figured it out yet?” I asked.
Shelby cleared his throat. “We’re working on it.”
“Jefferson’s cipher machine?” I asked.
“Jefferson, yes,” Shelby confirmed. “Cipher machine, no.”
“But it’s the same principle,” Esme said. “We think it has to be what they call a Vigenère cipher. It was invented four hundred years ago by a Frenchman named Blaise de Vigenère. It depends on a special word as the key to enciphering the message. Once the message is enciphered, the security is all but unbreakable.”
“Or used to be,” Sam said. “Nowadays, computers can break them. That’s our next step.”
“It will only work if you have a long enough text,” Pepper said.
Esme put a hand on my shoulder.
“Poor Alan, we’re wearing him out. Don’t worry, we’ll figure it out. You just get some sleep. All you need to know is we’ve found the documents and we know now who the old man was, and that’s enough.”
I slept. I dreamed. It was summer and the sweet smell of growing sugarcane cloyed the air. There was a thin thread of harpsichord music coming from the big house and as the old man toiled in the garden, the music brought back sharp images that startled and discomfited him. Like a kaleidoscope, they tumbled before him, until he fell over onto the ground, his head against the hard gumbo mud. Who were these girls, in their ball gowns? These men in carriages? What house was that, and in what distant place? Were these the shadows of his past or were they merely the intimation of approaching death?
He scrambled up onto his knees and shook his head to clear it.
Block away the hallucinations. Focus on what has to be done. Gather in the corn. The cabbages. The artichokes …
The next time I woke up the room was dark and only Pepper was there.
“They’re gone,” she said, “but it’s nice to have friends.”
“Yeah.” I sighed. “The last thing I remember is trying to get the gun.”
“The room blew up,” Pepper said. “The door protected you, but Rosemary was still inside.”
“Her father?”
“He didn’t make it. I was out of the line of the blast. I managed to get you out. There isn’t anything standing.”
I shut my eyes. The memory was too strong to confront and I tried to block it out by focusing on something else. “How did you know where to find me?” I asked.
“It’s complicated,” she said vaguely. “We’ll talk when you’re better.”
My head swam. I couldn’t keep my train of thought. Then the strange message written by Meriwether Lewis crystallized in my mind and I tried to hold the focus.
“… about the cipher …” I began.
Pepper smiled. “A man in the math department’s working on it.”
“Try artichokes,” I said.
“What?”
“The key word. Try artichokes.”
She shrugged. “Are you serious, or should I call the doctor?”
“Do you remember all the speculation about where the old man buried the box?”
“We thought at first he put it in his garden,” she said.
“Because of his ramblings while he was dying,” I told her.
“Right. He was talking about vegetables.”
“Not just vegetables,” I said. “One kind of vegetable.”
“What?”
“Remember?” I prodded.
“Artichokes.”
She came back hours later.
“It worked,” she said, nodding. “Artichokes was the key.”
I lay back against the pillow. “So simple.”
She reached into her handbag, removed a sheet of paper, and handed it to me. I took it in one trembling hand and read the typed message:
Presdt. Thos. Jefferson
Dear Sir
I could not bring the documents with me for fear of Genl Ws spies. A full account of his acts I have buryd at the base of lrge oak tree 50 paces SE of blacksmiths cabn at Ft Pickrng. For sake of the Repub send Genl Clark for these papers as I may be done to death when you get this.
Wrttn on the 29th inst by Yr dvtd svt and friend, M. Lewis
“Of course,” Pepper said, “I’ve added punctuation, but I’ve left his abbreviations the way he wrote them.”
I reread the message and then let it fall onto my chest.
“So it was Wilkinson after all,” I said.
“He thought so,” Pepper said. “Shelby said Wilkinson was into all sorts of corrupt land deals when he was governor of Upper Louisiana, before Lewis came. He thinks Lewis may have found out some incriminating details. Maybe even had evidence of Wilkinson’s treason, because there was a strong Spanish colony in St. Louis.”
“And the map was Fort Pickering,” I said.
“Right. And now it’s part of Memphis.”
“You mean �
�”
“I called an archaeologist up there,” she said. “The old fort was pretty well demolished by Civil War breastworks and a moat a hundred and thirty-odd years ago. In fact, nobody’s even sure just where it was.”
“He encoded the message while he was at Pickering,” I said. “Right after he buried the evidence. Something happened to make him fear for his life.”
“Major Neelly appeared from nowhere and offered his services,” Pepper said simply. “That’s the only thing that makes sense.”
Neelly, Russell, Grinder, Pernier ….
The names swirled in my mind once more and whatever they’d given me to make me sleep was pressing my eyes shut. I felt her hand in mine and squeezed it to assure myself she was still there, but there was no holding off sleep. And as I slept I dreamed:
As the sun went down the man in the duster leaned back against the outer wall of the cabin, inhaled the smell of the wood fire, and took a sip of the whiskey the woman had provided. It was vile stuff, but it was what he was used to, and he needed it to keep his head level.
He was waiting for one man. He wasn’t sure who it would be, but he knew that man would come.
Last night, at the camp near the mudhole, he hadn’t slept: There was something about the Indian agent, Neelly, a restlessness. He’d fiddled with his gear, given the servants sidelong glances.
Are you the one? Well, you won’t get me here.
Then, in the early hours of morning, the camp had been awakened by a halloa. The major was claiming two of the horses were loose, and in the morning he’d insisted on staying behind to find them. But the horses had been securely hobbled. What was the major trying to do? Was it part of a plan to meet his accomplices?
There was nothing to do but feign innocence, as if he suspected nothing. But the business was coming to a head. And he’d learned long ago, as a soldier, and then again with the Indians, that the only way to deal with a danger was to face it.
If only the danger had a face.
What if it was his man Pernier?
He’d pulled Pernier off the St. Louis docks, taken him into his home, and paid the doctor with his own money when the man was sick. Pernier professed to be grateful. But there was much that was mysterious about John Pernier, things the man said that did not ring true, as if he reinvented his story with every passing day. Worse, now he owed Pernier back wages, because he’d had to scrape together all he could put his hands on to make the Washington trip. Pernier had seemed satisfied. But lately he’d appeared restless, almost shifty. What if …?
The Meriwether Murder Page 25