“He’ll get over it. Anyway, I needed you more than they did. When I learned that Sergei was still alive I had to put something together quickly. He’s not as young as he looks, you know. I always thought that he knew something about the whereabouts of that diamond and I just knew that if a long-lost relative of Russell Pearce was asking questions, he’d assume that you knew more than he did and move things along for me.”
“Let’s see then,” he said, “you get me fired from the only job I ever had, toss me in the path of a known murderer….”
“I wasn’t certain he had killed Russ,” Edna said.
“But you were pretty sure. You let me get led halfway around the world on the hope that something would pop up.”
“Now that’s not fair. Yes, I did send you to Morocco and yes, I knew Sergei would be involved and, yes, I did encourage you to go to Cairo since that’s where I thought it would be, but I didn’t have anything to do with all those things that happened to you. Next thing I know, you’re in Singapore. That came as a surprise.”
“You were kind of loaded when I called,” he reminded her.
“Well it was quite a surprise the next afternoon, I can tell you. In any case, you proved that Charley didn’t kill Russ. That makes it all worth it, it’s all I ever really wanted. I knew that Charley was innocent all along.”
“Of course you did, Charley,” Doug said. He took another sip of his wine. “This is good. Cabernet, right?”
Edna sat quietly for a minute. Her index finger tapped the rim of her glass as she looked across at Doug, a smile slowly forming on her face. “Was that a guess or did you know?”
“A guess,” Doug said. “But now I know. You were there in Cairo, I saw your picture, but the notes you sent me made it sound as if you learned about it all second-hand. That got me thinking. That and the pronoun.”
“The pronoun?”
“Lack of, actually. It was always ‘Charley this’ and ‘Charley that.’ You never said ‘he.’ After a while it sounded funny.”
“I stopped being Charley Hodge that week in Singapore. I assumed that if I told you I was the chief suspect in your uncle’s murder, you would have never gone.”
“So all those comments about Charley’s wild encounters with beautiful women were just to throw me off the track?”
“No, those were real. There are some parts of my life I’m not afraid to admit. That doesn’t mean I want to discuss them with you.”
“And that’s fine with me.” He remembered Nasser Ashkanani’s photograph with Uncle Russ and a young Edna Bowers, and he remembered the old man saying how the woman was too wild for Cairo. And he remembered how the old man said she was the mastermind behind it all.
“When I first heard Russ had been killed I felt so horribly guilty. We had had a little argument in Egypt over a young lady. We patched things up before he sailed but I was still angry. I was so young at the time,” Edna said, shaking her head, still a beautiful woman. “I got drunk one night and told Sergei that Russ was taking the diamond to Singapore.”
“Sergei is a resourceful man,” Doug said. “He would have found him without your help.”
“When I think it through, I know I’m not responsible for Russ’ death. Years would go by and I wouldn’t think about it.” She closed her eyes for a moment and Doug could just make out a soft sigh. “Recently, however, I’ve been looking back a lot. The guilt, as irrational as it is, was getting to me. I needed to know what happened.” She looked across to Doug. “Thank you.”
“Anything for a friend of the family,” Doug said as he checked his watch. “Geeze, I got to get moving. I’m meeting a friend at the Toronto airport. It’s her first international flight. She’s arriving from Singapore.”
“That’s wonderful. You going to show her Pottsville?”
“No, we’re gonna swing down to New York City for a few days. And I want to stop in Cooperstown, see if I can pick up a ball to replace this one.” He held up the gutted remains of the old Reach. “After that? We’ll see what happens.”
Edna nodded her head and smiled. Doug had seen that smile before. His dad smiled like that when he came to watch Doug play ball. His mom smiled like that no matter what he did. And he’d seen that same smile on Sergei’s face when Doug told him how he had solved the murder.
“I saw in The New Yorker that Sergei accepted a position with the museum in Brussels,” Edna said. “And there’s a flattering if somewhat risqué profile on Miss Al-Kady in the European edition of Vogue. And as for me, well, you know I’ll always be grateful. But it seems, Douglas, that everyone got what they wanted but you.”
“Actually I found what I was looking for,” Doug said and smiled, “inside a pyramid.”
More from this Author
For other books, upcoming author events, or more information please go to:
www.poisonedpenpress.com/charles-benoit
Contact Us
To receive a free catalog of Poisoned Pen Press titles, please contact us in one of the following ways:
Phone: 1-800-421-3976
Facsimile: 1-480-949-1707
Email: [email protected]
Website: www.poisonedpenpress.com
Poisoned Pen Press
6962 E. First Ave. Ste. 103
Scottsdale, AZ 85251
Relative Danger Page 26