Twenty Blue Devils

by Aaron Elkins

  "What was the job, Therese?"

  "I forget, exactly. In Michigan. It was a computer company CompuLine, I think..."

  "No, Therese."

  She blinked. “No? What do you mean, no? I don't..."

  "There is no CompuLine in Michigan."

  "Well, I told you, maybe I—"

  "There's a Compuworld, but they never had a Brian Scott."

  "Well, maybe—"

  "And there was no teaching assistant named Brian Scott at Bennington the years you were there."

  "Well, technically maybe he was a, a research assistant, or a—"

  "And no research assistant, no temporary lecturer, no graduate student, no nothing. No Brian Scott."

  Her mouth opened. For a second or two she couldn't speak. She seemed—it was hard for Gideon to come up with a word for her expression—startled, frightened, wary. “No, you're wrong, John—"

  "Therese, I checked. I made some calls from the gendarmerie just a few hours ago."

  "You did?” Her face was rigid with apprehension.

  You did? Gideon almost echoed. No wonder John had seemed so preoccupied at lunch, a late bite at a roadside pizza restaurant in Punaauia on the way from Papeete. But then Gideon had been preoccupied too, mulling over the obscure functions of m. soleus, and he hadn't contributed much to the conversation either.

  "But I did meet him there!” Therese cried, jumping up, “and he said he was a teaching assistant, and he was always around the business department, and...and...” She was crying again, not just a few becoming tears this time, but with her eyes and nose streaming, her face bunched and reddened, and her body shaking. “Why are you doing this? Don't you believe me? I swear I'm telling the truth!"

  The girls had run to their mother and clasped her about the legs, weeping along with her. “Bad man,” murmured one of them to John.

  John was plainly distressed. He put his hands tenderly on Therese's quaking shoulders. “Shh, Therese, don't cry. Everything's going to work out. Of course we believe you. We're just trying to put everything together. Come on now, shh. Of course we believe you."

  * * * *

  "She's lying,” he said to Gideon as they returned to the car.

  "From the word go,” said Gideon.

  * * * *

  Julie picked up the telephone on the first ring. “Hello?"

  "Well, hi,” Gideon said. As always, his voice softened, mellowed, upon hearing hers. He was sprawled on a rattan chair in his cottage, his feet up on the table, comfortably relaxed and feeling virtuous besides; after dinner with John at a good French restaurant he had actually put in a couple of hours on his symposium notes.

  "Well, hi,” she said quietly, her voice a little husky as well. Husky and sleepy.

  It was 9 P.M. in Tahiti, 11 P.M. in Port Angeles. He imagined her in one of the living room armchairs, black-haired, dark-eyed, pretty, her face scrubbed, her sturdy, bare feet curled under her, wearing the thick terry-cloth robe and flannel pajamas that she got out of the closet when he was away. She was probably sipping a glass of sherry, or perhaps a cup of hot chocolate, and reading before going to bed.

  Virgil, probably. Julie, who was somewhat given to sudden efforts at self-improvement, had decided some months before that her classical education was lacking, that she was tired of pretending to be familiar with classics she'd never read, and that it was time to do something about it. Gideon, an old hand at pretending to be familiar with classics he'd never read, had advised against expending the required effort, but Julie had stuck unflinchingly to her guns, slogging through dense, scholarly translations of Homer, Plato, Sophocles, and Aristotle, and recently moving on to the Romans. When he had left she was a third of the way through the Aeneid and giving every indication of enjoying it.

  Indeed, he heard the thump of a book being closed, the clink of glass.

  "You sound wonderful,” he said.

  "You do too."

  "God, I can't believe it's only been—what, three days?” he blurted. “Ah, Julie, you have no idea how much I miss you. Without you around, I'm just not whole. I can't wait to get back...hold you...kiss you...tell you how much I love you... ."

  "My goodness.” There was a pause while she took this in. “Say, who is this?"

  "This is your husband,” he said tolerantly.

  "Husband, eh? How do I know you're who you say you are? You could be anybody."

  Sometimes she was like this, kittenish and coy. In anyone else it would have made his toes curl, but in Julie it charmed him utterly. As did just about everything else about her.

  "I love the way your pyramidalis nasi wrinkles your nose when you laugh,” he said. “I never get enough of your incredibly sexy popliteal fossae. Your subtrochanteric—"

  "It is you!” she cried. “I knew it, I was just testing."

  "How's everything there?” Gideon asked. “How's Virgil? How're the elk?"

  "The elk are fine, they send you their best. Tell me what's been happening there."

  "Well, to start with, John damn near got us both arrested."

  "What? Start at the beginning.” He heard her settle herself more comfortably, and then the plumping of a pillow. She had been reading in bed, not in a chair.

  He started at the beginning. He told her about Nick's sudden change of mind when they arrived, about the contretemps with Bertaud, about the adventure in the graveyard and the giant gendarme with his climactic Arretez-vous, s'il vous plait. By that time she was laughing, and her pretty laughter had him thinking that maybe it had been funny after all, even if it had seemed anything but at the time.

  Julie had always been a good listener, and Gideon went on from there to tell her about Nick, and Maggie, and Therese, and the rest of the clan, about the family dinner the evening before, about his tour of the farm with Tari. And about Brian's skeleton.

  The end of the narrative was greeted by five cheerful little pips. She had taken the cordless telephone and gone to the kitchen to heat some more hot chocolate in the microwave. “So he was murdered,” she said.

  "Yup. Care to offer any ideas on the perp?” He asked the question offhandedly but he knew from long experience that Julie had a way of sorting the data that he gave her and coming up with things that had gotten by him, of making out forests where he saw nothing but trees, or not even trees but only twigs and branches.

  "A few,” she said meditatively. “What about you?"

  "Well, I keep coming back to Maggie. Not in any serious way, but there is that business with the shed and then with the jeep. I don't know, it probably doesn't amount to anything, and besides I can't think of a reason for Maggie in particular to want to get rid of Brian—I mean, any more than anyone else did."

  "Oh, I can help you there."

  She tossed it out so carelessly that it made him laugh. “Can you, now."

  "Jealousy,” she said. “And resentment."

  Maggie was Nick's eldest daughter, she went on; homely, hardworking, ambitious—

  "I don't know how ambitious she is,” Gideon said. “She seems to like it pretty well where she is."

  Be that as it may, Julie told him, certainly she was possessive enough as a daughter to be hugely resentful when the son Nick had always wanted walked in in the form of youthful, handsome Brian Scott and proceeded not only to appropriate her only sister but to pretty much take over the place piece by piece, including a substantial chunk of Nick's fatherly affections. Wasn't that enough of a basis on which to suppose that Maggie might fervently wish him gone? Possibly even enough to kill him herself?

  "You know,” Gideon said slowly, “that's a point."

  "Are you honestly going to tell me it never occurred to you?"

  "Um...no, it didn't."

  He heard her chuckle. “Gideon, you're amazing. You are probably the most intelligent man I know, and yet sometimes—"

  "Well, I guess I wasn't thinking along those lines,” he said, laughing. “Hey, what do you mean, ‘probably'?"

  She ignored the
question. “I wasn't really thinking along those lines either, as a matter of fact. You know who I was thinking about—"

  "Let me guess. Therese."

  "Why Therese?"

  "Because I made the mistake of saying she was gorgeous, and as a woman you're naturally inclined—"

  "Oh, baloney. You happen to be right, it's Therese —"

  "Ho."

  "But it's got nothing to do with how sexy she is. It has to do with the more pertinent fact that Therese happens to be the person who made Nick call the exhumation off."

  "That did not escape my notice,” Gideon said, “but she also happens to be the person who wrote a pitiful letter to Pele, goddess of fire, a few weeks ago, begging for protection for Brian."

  "In order to make herself look innocent after the fact, maybe?"

  "Impossible. She had no idea John's sister would ever see it."

  "And how do you know that, exactly? Because she batted those big, beautiful eyes and said so?"

  He paused. “Well, I grant you, that's a point too. It could have been a ploy."

  "Besides, you and John think she's holding things back too. You said so."

  "Well, yes, but...yes."

  But Julie hadn't met Therese, he had. As John had once put it, there were some people in the world who did unto others and other people who got done unto. And Therese was definitely a done-unto. A clinging vine, a model of low self-esteem, a mother's (or rather father's) darling—but not a murderer, never a murderer. Still, he'd been wrong about that kind of thing before...

  "Gideon,” Julie said in a softer voice, “when will you be back? I miss you too, you know."

  "As soon as I can, Julie. Now that Bertaud is taking this seriously I feel as if I ought to stick around a few more days in case I'm needed. Tomorrow morning he wants John and me at Nick's office at eleven. He wants to have a few things out with Nick, and I think we're supposed to be there to keep him honest."

  "About what?"

  "About the on-again, off-again business with the exhumation, I suppose, but I'm just guessing."

  "You are having some fun too, I hope? Relaxing a little?"

  "Sure, I even took a nap in a hammock the other day. And the whole thing is fun in a way. You know me."

  "Do I ever.” They were winding down. “Are you getting all the Paradise coffee you want?"

  "Plenty."

  "Good, then maybe we won't have to buy any at home for a while."

  Gideon laughed. Julie, as much of a coffee drinker as he was, generally went for Starbucks or Seattle's Best; all of Nick's coffees, she felt, were overpriced for their quality. It was one of the few differences in their food preferences.

  "Well,” he said reluctantly, “I guess I'll get back to my notes."

  "And I'll get to bed. I was staying up, hoping you'd call."

  "I'll call again tomorrow. Any more words of wisdom before I hang up? Anybody else we should be casting a suspicious eye on?"

  "Nick,” she said without hesitation.

  "Because of the way he waffled on the exhumation?"

  "That, and because of how hard he was trying to keep everybody from talking about the Superstar thing in front of you and John. He's hiding something too."

  "But I told you, he was just being a good host. He's a courtly kind of guy in his own way, and he simply felt it wasn't good taste to talk business in front of dinner guests. That's all."

  "And how do you know that?"

  "I guess I don't, really,” he said with a smile. “Okay, Julie, I'll admit, you've given me a few things to think about. I'll talk to John about them in the morning."

  "You know what I keep wondering?” she said.

  "No, what do you keep wondering?"

  "I keep wondering, what the heck would you guys do without me?"

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Chapter 24

  * * * *

  The offices of the Paradise Coffee Company were in a large Quonset but of indeterminate age and origin that had been set up near the drying shed. This musty fossil had originally been found abandoned in a jungly section of the land that Dean Parks had purchased to build the Shangri-La. Nick had bought it from him forty-five years earlier for $100, moved it to his plantation, and set it up as headquarters for his short-lived copra empire. When that had fizzled and he'd switched to coffee he had seen no reason for new office space. Nelson's never-ending arguments that a more civilized habitat was good business practice had finally convinced him to lease a handsome suite of offices overlooking the loading docks in downtown Papeete, but Nelson himself was the only one who used it regularly, along with his staff of four. The Hut, as everyone referred to it, remained the locus of most of the hurly-burly of Paradise Coffee's day-to-day management.

  But when John and Gideon arrived the next morning at a quarter to eleven, there was no hurly-burly in evidence. The clerk who generally sat in the anteroom was out sick, Nelson was at the Papeete office, Maggie was conducting a training session, and Rudy was off somewhere. As a result, they found themselves looking through a string of empty cubicles at Nick Druett, sitting alone in his Spartan office at the far end. Even through four partitions of cheap glass, they could see the scowl on his face.

  "Nelson was right, how does that grab you?” was his muttered greeting when they rapped on the glass wall of his cubicle.

  "About what?” John asked.

  "About Tari.” He slammed shut the account book he'd had opened on his desk. “The guy has screwed up everything he's gotten his paws on.” He banged the book with the flat of his hand. “The only difference I have with Nelson is that I don't believe it's a bunch of innocent mistakes; I think the big bastard's been ripping us off from here to Patagonia.” He puffed his cheeks and let out a long, exasperated breath through his mouth. “Or who knows, maybe I'm wrong, maybe the guy's just dumb. Rudy's in there with him right now, trying to get it all sorted out. Hey, sit down, sit down."

  Without asking he poured them coffee from a jug on a side table. Blue Devil, Gideon thought appreciatively at his first sip.

  "Listen, Gideon, I've already said this to John, but I want to apologize to you too.” He was wearing an honest-to-God shirt, with buttons and sleeves (short) and a collar, apparently in honor of Bertaud's impending visit. “For the runaround."

  "That's not necessary, Nick."

  "Yeah, it is. I'm sorry I gave you such a hard time. You were right—you were both right—and I was wrong. If you hadn't stuck to your guns we still wouldn't know what really happened to Brian. So thanks for...well, thanks."

  "I'm sorry it's been so tough on your daughter,” Gideon said awkwardly.

  Nick smiled vaguely, joylessly. “Yeah, me too. But believe me, she's happier going through this than if she knew she was letting somebody get away with Brian's murder,” He sipped mechanically from his mug. “John, who killed him?” he asked softly.

  "Who knew where he was camping?” John replied.

  "Are you kidding? Everybody knew. He used the same spot year in, year out. I've got thirty acres on Raiatea. That's where he set up camp—on the plateau.” He shook his big head slowly back and forth. “I'll never build them now, that's for sure."

  Gideon's mind had been running along a side track of its own. “Nick, just how was Tari ripping you off?"

  "Well, he was—” Nick looked at him sharply. “You think there's a connection? To Brian?"

  Gideon shrugged. “Could be.” When a lot of funny things are going on together, Abe Goldstein had pointed out more than once, they got a funny way of turning out to be related. The Law of Interconnected Monkey Business, his old professor had called it.

  "Well, he was skimming,” Nick said. “Not hard to do in a business like this, where there are a million different prices and they change every day. Say we're buying five thousand pounds of green beans from a farm in Java to go into the Weekend Blend or one of the other low-end products—” Gideon winced. “—and they're charging us a buck-eighty a pound. Well, Tari just
adds a little zero, records the price as ten-eighty a pound instead of one-eighty, and keeps the difference. The people in Java get their money so they don't complain, and the books balance, and we don't know any better. So Tari just walks away with nine times five thousand."

  "Fifty thousand bucks,” John said.

  "Forty-five thousand,” said Nick bitterly. “Let's be fair to the guy. And that's only one example. I can give you at least two more and I guarantee there'll be more to come when we really dig into things."

  "But how could he get away with it?” asked Gideon. “That's a big difference, one-eighty to ten-eighty. Surely you, or Rudy, or Nelson, or somebody would know what's what, would know what the price was supposed to be."

  Nick shook his head. “It's not the way we do business. At Paradise when we give somebody responsibility we trust him,” he said righteously, then laughed at himself. “Or did until now. Look. For the past two weeks Tari has been spending half his time at the Papeete office, half here. He's had complete access to everything—the books, the accounts—and complete authority to do anything Brian could do. If he needed help, he asked for it, that's all. We trusted him. Thanks to Maggie,” he couldn't resist adding in a grumpy aside.

  "So how did you find out?” Gideon asked.

  "We found out because Nelson never trusted the big, ugly bugger and he was keeping an eye on him, and when he finally got together with Rudy and compared the figures they didn't match."

  John suddenly held up his hand. “That was a shot.” He had his head tilted to one side, listening. Gideon hadn't heard anything.

  "Nah,” Nick said, “it's just one of the vans; got a problem with backfiring."

  John listened a moment longer, then settled down again. “Probably so."

  "Nick,” Gideon said, “how do you know it's Tari who's doing it and not somebody else?"

  "I know because it never happened before Tari got a chance to get his fat fingers in the pie, that's how I know. The skimming started when he started, not a day before. It's real obvious, Gideon, there can't be any doubt about it.” He glanced up over their shoulders. “We're back here, Leopold!"