The Mountains Bow Down

by Sibella Giorello

Moving to the side, I took hold of the knob, turning it slowly. I threw the door open.

  Nothing moved.

  I waited several seconds, then came around the front and almost jumped out of my skin.

  My phone was vibrating on my hip. Glancing into the closet, seeing no feet, no hands, I tore the phone off the clip, thinking, If this is DeMott, I’m going to—

  But it was McLeod.

  “Yes, sir?” My voice was pinched with fear.

  “Larsen got it.”

  “The bracelet?”

  “Yep. It’ll be in the evidence vault when you get to Seattle.”

  “But I need it now.”

  “Now?”

  “Yes, sir. We’ve got less than two days left on this cruise.”

  “You’re serious.”

  I stared into the closet, searching for the jewelry box—on the floor, on the shelves—all the while knowing it wasn’t here. All that remained was that draping wardrobe, those long and elegant palazzo pants, ready for a party. “Sir, when I know who wants that bracelet, I’ll know who killed her.”

  “Wait, this guy Ramadan—”

  Ramazan.

  “I thought he killed her. For the bracelet.”

  “I wish it were that simple. Her body showed almost no signs of struggle. Her death was extremely well planned. I doubt Ramazan even knows the full value of that bracelet. I’m a geologist and I didn’t realize how unusual those blue stones were until . . .”

  “Until what?”

  I felt nauseous. What could I say? I didn’t realize it until I stole some rocks from her jewelry box?

  “They’re very rare, whatever they are,” I continued. “And somebody on this ship knows it. Ramazan was hired to break into the safe.”

  “So why let him keep it, why let him run off with it?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he was supposed to hold it. Or maybe he got greedy and took off. Did Larsen find out anything from him?”

  “No. The guy found some crackpot attorney in Seattle who wants to sue for religious persecution. They’re demanding a prayer rug for the interrogation room.” McLeod paused. “And what’s going on with Milo Carpenter?”

  “He’s at the top of my list, and one reason why I want the bracelet here. He refused to claim it.” I glanced around the bedroom, then at my watch. “We’re in Skagway tomorrow, ask Larsen to put the bracelet on a plane.”

  “Harmon, you’re talking paperwork, insurance, an escort—”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Who do you think I am? Moses coming down from Mount Cyanide?”

  I was in the living room, looking around, hoping to see the jewelry box. I didn’t. In the front closet, I checked the shelves, then picked up the cheap black shoes.

  “All right, all right,” McLeod said, mistaking my silence. “I’ll talk to Larsen. But I’m not making any promises. You might have to wait.”

  “I understand, sir,” I told him. “Really, I do.”

  The black shoes protested every bend of Jack’s feet as he limped down the promenade, wincing with pain.

  I walked behind him. “Jack,” I whispered.

  “What?”

  “The box is gone.”

  He stopped cold and turned around. His face showed a series of rapid thoughts. First shock. Then horror. Finally anger.

  His blue-green eyes burned into mine. “You’re kidding. Right?”

  I shook my head.

  He hobbled toward a chair near the window. Setting himself down gingerly, he extended his legs. The inflexible soles were propped up like water skis. “Harmon, you realize what this means?”

  I nodded. “How long was I gone?”

  “Which time?”

  “The first time, when I went to check out the stones.”

  “Too long,” he said. “Thirty minutes. I was on the set for fifteen of that.”

  He began staring down the promenade, and when I turned around, Vinnie was glowering at the passengers pausing outside the Tiki Bar.

  “Did anybody leave?” I asked. “Anybody, say, like the Forehead?”

  “I wasn’t watching him.” Jack leaned forward and pried the shoes off, wiggling his toes. “The director did call for a break.”

  “And?”

  He thought a moment. “And it was right after I got there. Webb was frustrated with Milo. He said he needed to get some air, or he was going to kill Milo.”

  “He said that?”

  Jack nodded. “Sparks told him to rub some rock your aunt gave him. That’s when Milo walked over and asked for the key. Harmon, if you never touched that stupid box—”

  “How long was the director gone?” I asked. There was nothing he could say that would make me feel worse. Or better.

  His eyes seemed to brush over my face. “He was gone just about the same amount of time that it took you to run upstairs and bring me these evil shoes.”

  I checked Webb’s balcony first.

  Leaning over the railing, I could taste the sea spray cast up by the wind and our steady progress down the Inside Passage. Milo’s cabin was two decks up, four balconies forward, and one steel ladder ran vertically to the waterline, welded to the ship. But I doubted Webb could get there from here, especially within the short time he was gone from the set.

  But what about Monday night, when Judy died?

  I stepped back inside the cabin where Geert waited. His chin was raised so high that the white mustache looked like an elaborate letter M. He wasn’t exactly thrilled about my request to search Webb’s cabin, but the director did himself no favors with his performance in Juneau. Now, Ninjas stood around him like stockade fencing.

  “I’ll sue this cruise line,” Webb said.

  “It will cost you buckets of money.” Geert walked over to the room’s small refrigerator and pulled out a thermos, sniffing the contents. He set it on top of the fridge.

  “Raleigh?” Jack’s hands were wedged under Webb’s mattress, pushing it against the cabin wall.

  Geert leaned menacingly over Webb. “Hail to the queen.”

  On the platform that supported the mattress were three plastic bags containing a white powder. I picked them up and Jack dropped the mattress. We squeezed the bags, searching for solid objects within, then tossed them to Geert.

  I walked over to the closet. While narcotics were definitely important, we already knew Webb was a cokehead. What I wanted to know was whether he was a thief, or a murderer, and if he took that jewelry box. Standing on tiptoes, I scanned the closet’s upper shelves. I found more copies of the movie script and some DVDs. I flipped through the discs. They were foreign films. Indie productions.

  “You wouldn’t understand,” Webb said, watching me. “They have subtitles. They’re art.”

  Suppressing a response in French, I moved to the hangers. For such a weasel of a guy, his wardrobe was oddly thuggish. Black clothes, mostly. White T-shirts with strategically torn sleeves. A leather motorcycle jacket with chrome spikes.

  “Cocaine,” Geert was saying to Jack.

  I looked over. Jack was still kneading the baggies, pressing the white powder in case he missed something. I felt a twinge of gratitude. He had every right to berate me. But instead of pouring salt in my wound, he offered to help.

  “If you touch my clothes,” Webb said, “you’re paying to have everything dry-cleaned.”

  I patted down his clothes with both hands. I found receipts for drinks. And a woman’s name and phone number. I moved to the other side of the closet, where other jackets hung with the biker getup.

  “Don’t touch the jackets!”

  Maybe the only thing more ridiculous than the condescending remark about “art”—from a guy directing a Milo Carpenter movie— was this black leather jacket with the chrome spikes. Making sure my hands touched every surface, I felt a lump inside the left shoulder and almost let it go, mistaking it for one of the silver studs. But when I ran my hand over it again, I realized the lump was something else, covered by a two-inch patch. An embroi
dered logo of a green chopper. “Bikers for Earth Day,” it said. Almost more ridiculous than the jacket. I pulled out my pocketknife.

  “You can’t—” Webb cried. “That jacket was a gift!”

  The green threads snapped under my knife, but it took work. I finally got my fingers under the patch, but there was only black leather. The bump was still there. I turned the jacket inside out and poised the blade along the sleeve. Webb leaped. The Ninjas yanked him back as I sliced along the seam and ran my fingers through the polyester fill, shredding it like confetti.

  “You can’t tear up my clothes.” Webb’s skin shone as if he were secreting tallow. “Somebody paid a lot of money for that jacket—on Melrose Avenue. Are you listening?”

  My fingers were now directly under the area protected by the patch. I felt the object, pinching it to pull it out of the fill.

  Its mirrored surfaces had clouded, perhaps from leather tannins, but when I lifted the black prism to the light, I saw fingerprints. Smudged, unfortunately.

  I dug my fingers back into the lining. Such clever concealment, expertly done. I stared at Webb. His long jaw was working up and down like a broken puppet. When I moved to the next jacket, he whimpered.

  This one was brown suede with fringed sleeves, something hippie-ish out of the 1970s. But what interested me most were the retro patches on each shoulder. I went straight to the lining, slicing until I found the small blue stone, hidden directly under the peace-sign patch. On the other shoulder, the vintage patch proclaimed “Venice, California, the Center of the Universe.” And the stone beneath it was even more remarkable.

  Unlike the other blue stones, this one was milky. And it formed a perfect six-sided star. A Star of David.

  “You—” Webb cursed, on the verge of tears. “Marlon Brando wore both those coats on the set of The Wild One. You just destroyed cinema history.”

  “I’m more concerned with who destroyed Judy Carpenter.”

  “I want my lawyer. Do you people hear me?” He was yelling, at the ninjas, at Geert. “Get my lawyer.”

  I fingered the stones. They were just small enough to go unnoticed, tucked into the shoulder padding, covered by patches. When I looked over at Jack, lifting the Star of David, he gave a dazzling white smile.

  “Way to go, Harmon,” he said. “Way to go.”

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Webb was locked in his cabin, guarded by Ninjas, as I hurried down to Deck Five, carrying the stones in my pocket. Jack insisted on coming with me.

  “You trust that crazy Dutchman?” he asked.

  Although Geert confiscated Webb’s cell phone and laptop, he wouldn’t let us search them. Personal electronic devices, he said, were more complicated than the cabin. The room belonged to the ship.

  “I don’t know.”

  Keying open my cabin door, I felt the oppressive absence. My mother wasn’t here—couldn’t be here. Quickly, I closed the door between my aunt’s cabin and mine, twisting the lock. Just to be safe, I wedged the straight-backed desk chair under the knob.

  “Expecting an attack?” Jack asked.

  “Yes.”

  I set all three stones on a clean white towel, then took out the titanium briefcase, removing my supplies. I handed the sunglasses to Jack, then walked over to the window, closing the curtains. The room went dark.

  “Harmon, I’ve dreamed about this moment.”

  “Me too. But it was a different dream.”

  I picked up my mother’s sunglasses from the bureau, slipping them over my eyes with a pang in my heart. I plugged in the ultraviolet lamp.

  “What the—?” Jack said.

  As I suspected, the small clear blue stone burned like a gas flame. The black prism went invisible. But the Star of David was merely six faint points, a mild fluorescence.

  Jack pointed to the blue flame. “What is that?”

  The cabin was pared down like a photographic negative. The shortwave light illuminated the whites and deepened the blacks. But the world seemed mostly gray as I pointed the digital camera at the stones, holding my breath to steady the open shutter. In the air Jack’s scent lingered. Limes, I decided. Limes and something as clean as spring rain. The taste of his white shirt when I cried into it.

  Flicking on the lights, I unplugged the lamp and took pictures of the black prism.

  “You’re going to make me ask again?” Jack pulled off the sunglasses.

  “I’m sorry.” My face flushed. I had been thinking about his scent. “This is called fluorescence. It happens when specific minerals are exposed to ultraviolet light.”

  “But the sun’s ultraviolet light,” he said. “Why pull the blinds?”

  Excellent question.

  “Sunlight does give off ultraviolet light, but there’s too much white light with it—what’s called visible light.” I picked up the UV lamp. “This filters out the white light, leaving just shortwave ultraviolet.”

  I took the evidence log sheets from my kit, grateful that I could finally answer where found. As I filled in the blanks, Jack went through my rock kit. Picking up the hammer, he tapped the claw against his palm.

  “That crazy Dutchman let you keep this?”

  “For collecting rocks.” I scribbled down the date. Friday. Two days left. No, one and a half. Too many questions, not enough answers.

  “The stones in her jewelry box, what were they like?” Jack asked.

  “A blue gem and a black prism, like these only much larger. I’ve never seen this Star of David.”

  “It’s not some religious symbol, is it?”

  “It does look manufactured, doesn’t it? But I think it’s a natural occurrence. We have something in Virginia called staurolite. When it rains, the mineral can bond with the water and spontaneously form perfect white crosses. The folktales claim the rocks are the tears of angels, crying over the crucifixion.” I picked up the evidence bag, taking a closer look at the star, once again wishing for an onboard mineralogy lab.

  “So what is it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How can you not know? You’re a geologist.”

  “Thousands of minerals, maybe tens of thousands, cover the earth. New ones get discovered all the time.” I picked up the blue gem. It wasn’t sapphire and it was also too soft to be a blue diamond. “Without lab equipment, all I can say is these seem exceedingly rare and valuable.”

  And Webb refused to talk without an attorney.

  “When he left the set,” I asked Jack, “where do you think Webb went?”

  “To snort cocaine.” Jack replaced the sunglasses in the rock kit. “That’s how he gets through all those takes with Milo.”

  There was a knock on my cabin door. Jack’s right hand instinctively moved toward his belt. Then his fingers twitched emptily. I walked over, leaning into the door but not opening it.

  “Yes?”

  “It is I,” Geert said, sounding like some Viking invader with good grammar.

  “One moment.” I snapped a cap on the Sharpie, put the evidence inside the rock kit, and lowered the titanium lid. Then Jack opened the door.

  Geert strode into the cabin. “I do your one favor. Now you do one favor for me.”

  “Favor?” Jack closed the door. “Maybe in the Netherlands it’s called a favor. But in America, you did what was right. Finally.”

  Geert lifted his face, insulted. He turned to me. “Agent Harmon?”

  I slipped into the role of good cop. “I greatly appreciate your help. What do you need?”

  “The movie producer claims that without a director, they cannot make the movie.”

  “They don’t really have an actor,” Jack pointed out, “but that hasn’t stopped them.”

  Geert lifted his face, higher. “These people do interviews. Movie people. Television sends their words around the world. My sisters in Zeeland know of this actor and already his wife’s suicide—”

  “Murder,” I said.

  “—is being talked about. If the movie is shut down
because of us, it will cost my company millions in bad news.”

  “You want to release the director,” Jack said.

  “The man is swine. He belongs with the pornographers. But famous people talking bad gives me a very big problem.”

  “Your men could guard him, on the set?” I asked.

  “I would insist.”

  “Hold on, Harmon.” Jack narrowed his eyes, evaluating the Dutchman. “What’s in it for us?”

  “You just told me.” Geert gave the ruthless smile. “Americans do what is right.”

  “And fair,” Jack added. “This helps you, but we lose any leverage for getting that guy to talk.”

  I held up my hand, signaling a truce. “Would you let us tell the producer it was our idea to release the director?”

  Geert considered it for a moment. “Because you are feeling responsible for shutting down his movie? For costing him money?”

  “Right.”

  “Yah.” Geert looked over at Jack. “Half to half.”

  “You mean half-and-half?” Jack asked.

  The smile played under the white handlebars. “It’s what you Americans call ‘going Dutch.’”

  We carried the evidence to the purser’s safe, adding it to our holdings, which now included the two gems from Judy Carpenter’s jewelry box because no way was I risking loss or theft—of my own theft. As an extra precaution, I wrapped the large gems in layers of paper towels and labeled the plastic evidence bag Body Fluids.

  From the purser’s office, Jack and I climbed the stairs in silence to Deck Fourteen. Somewhere around Deck Nine, I felt a companionable silence, similar to what I’d had with DeMott before we got engaged. Once the ring was on my finger, he suddenly felt a need to know my thoughts. Every single thought. It was exhausting, and annoying, and I suddenly remembered that I hadn’t called him back.

  Worse: I didn’t want to.

  Jack knocked twice on the penthouse door. When Larrah Sparks finally opened it, she wore a fluffy white robe and a sour expression.

  “You better have good news for him,” she said.

  In the hot tub on the patio, Sandy Sparks looked even less happy to see us.

  “What do you want?” he growled.