“Matt,” she said in her best thriller-heroine tone, “you’re all right.”
“Of course I’m all right. I was assisting the police with their inquiries, not duking it out with them.”
“I read mystery stories. I know what that ‘assisting the police’ stuff means. It means you’re about to be arrested.”
“Nope,” I said. “Free as a bird.” Unless, I didn’t say, you or I or practically anyone wants to leave the island. I’d save that for later.
Maxwell cleared his throat. Kenni blushed prettily and went back to her chair. Maxwell got me another chair from behind the cartons. We all sat down.
“Have you got anything to eat?” I said. “We were on our way to dinner when this came up, and it will be too late to get anything on the ship when we get back.”
Maxwell may have been a DEA man, but he had enough of the diplomat in him to smile indulgently at my incredibly bad manners. “Heh-heh. Miss Clayton showed up here several hours ago, insisting I help you in any way I could. I have to admit this wasn’t on my list of ways. But I think we can do something.” He picked up the phone and called the kitchen. God knows what anybody was doing in the kitchen at that time of night, but he got a response, and about ten minutes later Kenni and I were noshing down on half a cold roast chicken, homemade bread, and Perrier. “There isn’t a lot of room on the island for cows,” Maxwell said apologetically. “We more or less do without milk. I had to learn to drink my coffee black.”
I told him not to worry about it. “If you can stand to see a man talk with his mouth full, ask anything you want to know.”
What he basically wanted to know was what the hell was going on here, thereby joining a rapidly growing club.
He wanted the whole story. I had already been through the whole thing for Buxton, but I wasn’t bored going through it again. For one thing, Kenni was there to help me out and let me get chicken swallowed at intervals. For another thing, Maxwell was fun to watch.
He was trying to find out what he wanted to find out without letting on he was a DEA man. It was difficult for him, because he was a zealot. He was young, and handsome, and staunch, and ambitious, and he was stuck in a place the drug traffic had passed by. The DEA probably only maintained a presence here because of Gardeno, and the word was he was retired.
So I watched Maxwell dance all around the drug issue, trying to pretend he wouldn’t rather have been in Colombia or Thailand, where you knew everyone you questioned was in the drug racket, instead of just having to hope they might be.
He said stuff like, “Mr. Schaeffer’s behavior seems rather odd. Do you think he might have, you know, been on something?”
Or, “Did this Schaeffer, or the man who was murdered, what was his name?” As if he didn’t have a good summary of everything Buxton knew already in his desk drawer.
“Watson Burkehart,” Kenni supplied.
“Oh, yes. Did he ever mention the name Martin Gardeno?”
Kenni was about to blurt something, like the fact that she had mentioned him, but I got in first. “No,” I said. “He never did. Why do you ask?”
He didn’t want to tell me why he asked, which was fine with me. Then he said he’d have the car drive us to the ship, which was even better. I’d been watching Kenni out of the corner of my eye, and she was full of something besides chicken. She kept giving me significant looks, and looking at the clock and biting her lip.
So after we thanked Maxwell for the chicken, and he undoubtedly used code words while calling for the driver to have a tail put on us, and we were standing under the porte cochere waiting for the car with the flags, I muttered in Kenni’s ear, “Hurry up and tell me what you want to tell me before you bust.”
She leaned close to me and said, breathlessly, “There’s been a message. From Schaeffer.”
16
“Eeny meeny, chili beany. The spirits are about to speak!”
—Bill Scott, “Rocky and His Friends” (syndicated)
“I FOUND IT STUCK in your door jamb,” Billy Palmer said. “I thought it was a note meant for me, so I opened it.”
“Why would I leave you a note?”
“We were supposed to talk about possible Network publicity when we get back to New York.”
He was right, we were. “Jeez, Bill, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it. You’ve had a lot on your mind.”
“Everybody has. I’ve sort of lost touch with the tour. How’s everything going?”
“It’s a mess, but the customers are loving it. Instead of wondering who poisoned the egg, they won’t talk about anything except what could have happened to Schaeffer. Or rather, Ballantine, the character we have him playing. Had him playing.”
“You sound as exhausted as I feel.”
“Worse. I just wish the passengers would stop finding this all so fascinating.”
“Wait till they go ashore later and see the headlines about Burkehart’s murder.”
“Oh, God, is that going to be in the paper?”
“The first hot crime story in nearly thirty years? I think it’s a safe bet it will be in the paper.”
Billy groaned. “I was telling Karen before that the hell of this is that I would probably be eating this up, too, if I didn’t have a hundred paying customers to amuse. I mean, if I were on the ship as a regular passenger and this stuff started happening, I’d probably have my mouth watering to be in on it.”
I held up the note—cream-colored S.S. Caribbean Comet stationery, which had come in a matching envelope. The envelope was blank. The notepaper had a few words of smeary, dot-and-dash handwriting, the kind you get from the pens they put in banks and hotel rooms.
I read the note again. No salutation or date.
“You can play games, but sooner or later you’ll have to talk to me. What’s the matter, afraid I’ll bite?” It was signed “Lee.”
I looked at Billy. “Did this thing make any sense to you?”
He thrust out his moustache and widened his eyes in a look of total bewilderment.
“To me?”
“It sure as hell doesn’t make any to me. If I live a hundred years, I’ll never call him Lee.”
Billy nodded. “Come to think of it, he wanted us to call him Schafe. Mindy was the only one I know of who called him Lee.”
“And she’s not on the cruise. Unless she’s here in disguise, of course.”
Billy laughed. I didn’t. He stopped.
“You’re kidding, right?” he said.
“I don’t know, Bill. I really don’t. “I shook my head. “You’re sure this is his handwriting?”
“He’s signed enough books for me. I mean, I’m not an expert, but I checked this against the inscription he wrote Saturday in my copy of The Rotating Chasm, and it looks the same to me. Karen, Kenni, and what’s her name, the contest winner—”
“Jan Cullen.”
“Yeah. They all think it looks the same.”
“I suppose everybody handled the note.”
“Well, yeah. Once I saw it was for you instead of me, I went looking for you. I found Kenni, who was just on her way back out to go to the U.S. Embassy. She was telling Jan to call the Marines if she didn’t hear from her in an hour. So I asked them where you were and showed them the note. Then we went back to my cabin to compare handwriting.” He shook his head sadly. “Damn,” he said. “Fingerprints never occurred to me.”
I told him not to worry about it, explaining that I had already messed up any prints there might have been in Schaeffer’s cabin, so we’d have nothing to compare them with, anyway.
“I do want to get this to an expert, though. This note and your book.”
“Where are you going to find an expert on St. David’s Island?”
“I’m not even going to look. I’m going to go out to the airport and ship this air express to my people in New York. They’ll find an expert.”
“Well, uh, okay. But tell them to be very careful with the book.”
“If they hurt it, I’ll get you a new one.”
“It’s not that. It’s—I know this sounds callous—but if Schaeffer is really dead...”
I grinned at him. “Your book is worth a lot of money. I understand. You’re not a ghoul, just a collector.”
“Sometimes it’s a curse.”
“I’ll tell them to be extra careful.”
“Thanks. I mean, I still hope he’s okay, if for no other reason than I want to tell him off when we find him.”
“If I find him first, I’ll save him for you.” I turned to go, then thought of something else. “What are you going to do about your other problem? How are you going to decide who wins the prize, if no one sticks to the mystery you came up with?”
He rolled his eyes. “Karen’s working on that. I give up. I think that if anyone can explain what we made up, combined with what’s really been happening, without resorting to space aliens, we should call that the correct solution and give them the prize.”
I was only concerned with what had really happened, but I knew how he felt.
I called Buxton and Maxwell next morning and told them I was shipping something off the island from the airport, and they could examine it if they wanted. Would they mind if I brought it around for them to look at? I didn’t want it to be delayed too long. They both said, oh, no, thanks, but they did it in different ways. Buxton asked, very straightforwardly, if it was something that could possibly help his murder investigation. I told him I didn’t know, which was honest, and I told him what it was. He still had no jurisdiction over Schaeffer, and there was no evidence linking the missing writer to anything, so he let it go, asking me only to let him know if I turned anything up. I was starting to make plans to lure the guy back to New York with me. It’s so nice to be trusted.
“Just one thing, Cobb. You’re shipping this from the airport?”
“That’s right.”
“Don’t get homesick and wander onto a plane.”
“The boat leaves tomorrow, you know. Are you really going to show a hundred American tourists the hospitality of the Royal Constabulary?”
“I have,” he said, “a whole day to decide what to do.” The voice said that this was a man under a lot of pressure. The men behind the development of Island tourism were undoubtedly after him to do one of two things—arrest the killer immediately, as long as it was someone whose guilt would not be embarrassing and scare tourists away; or sweep the whole thing under the rug. They had already called off the meetings they’d been supposed to have with me.
I felt for him, but I was damned if I was going to miss another football game. I told him I’d keep him informed, and hung up.
Maxwell pissed me off. It’s hard to sound phony-sweet with someone hammering in the background, but Maxwell managed it.
“Why, Mr. Cobb,” he chided me. “We’re here to serve American citizens, not ride herd on them. You’re under no suspicion here. There’s no reason to inspect your package.”
“I don’t mind,” I said.
“We wouldn’t dream of it.”
Of course they wouldn’t. It may be presumptuous of me, but it annoys me when people proceed on the assumption that I am an idiot. I knew that package was going to be searched, and he knew that package was going to be searched. I had given him the opportunity to be civilized about it, and he had tried to jerk me around. The only thing I had accomplished was to make sure they’d get the searching done and still get it to my New York people with the minimum of delay. Which, I suppose, was the best I could have hoped for.
I left Kenni in Spot’s care, and vice versa, then left the ship. There was a different customs man on duty, and I managed to get out of the building without having guns pointed at me. I flagged down a taxi and told him to bring me to the airport, and step on it. And he did, too. At times, our speed approached a breathtaking twenty-six miles an hour.
As I expected, we had a tail. The car didn’t have flags on the bumpers, but it might as well have. I had toyed with the idea of checking out one of the rental motorbikes at the stand by the pier and shaking any tail I might have, but I had decided against it, because I didn’t feel like going native to the extent of dying in a motorbike accident. It would also have upset Mr. Maxwell, not a bad idea in itself, but making, no doubt, for a delay in the delivery of the handwriting samples.
I went to the airline desk and made the necessary arrangements. The package would be picked up in New York by Mr. Harris Brophy or Ms. Shirley Arnstein. They would have credentials, and would sign for the package. I handed over the Network credit card.
Then, I took out another card and made it to a phone. I raised two operators and my secretary, but I finally wound up talking to Harris Brophy.
“Hello, Harris,” I said.
“Hello, Matt. How’s the weather?”
“The weather,” I said, “stinks. Hot and humid.”
“Don’t complain. It’s cold and rainy in New York.”
“I prefer cold and rainy. You’re sitting at my desk, aren’t you, Harris?”
“I am acting in your stead, Matt. Boss.”
Harris was amazing. He was small and handsome and charming. He had been with the Network longer than I had, and was far better suited to Special Projects work, since he had no scruples and a vast capacity for amusement at the troubles of others. He had been offered the vice presidency of the department before they tricked me into taking it, and had turned it down, saying he had no desire for command. Nevertheless, Dracula couldn’t make for native soil at daybreak faster than Harris zoomed in on my desk whenever I was out of town.
“Okay,” I told him, “act in my stead on this,” and I gave him a list of chores to do.
“Got it,” he said. I knew he hadn’t written them down. Harris never wrote anything down. The chores would get done.
“Care to tell me what this is all about?”
“Sure,” I said. “As soon as I know.”
Judy Ryerson found me in the ship’s library. “Bleak,” I said. “Unless you’re a historical romance fan. Otherwise it’s bleak.”
“Kenni told me I’d find you here. Though with everything that’s been going on, I don’t know how you expect to find time to read.”
“That’s a hell of a thing for a writer’s wife to say.” She gave me a wan smile in return. “That’s the problem,” I went on. “Too much has been happening. My mind is starting to race. The only thing that accomplishes is that it drives me nuts. A good book would distract me, but this library seems to be stocked exclusively with the kind of books that get left behind in staterooms.”
“I didn’t come here for a book. I came here to see you.”
“Oh? What about?”
“I want you to talk to Mike. I’m afraid for him.”
“What do you mean?”
“Mike has been depressed for a long time, Matt. He didn’t write anything for two years—he had some of the Flagellator books ghosted. He drank too much. We had to put him in the hospital for a while.”
“I didn’t know.”
“We kept it quiet. But he was getting better. He was better. We thought the cruise would be a good way to celebrate, to get back into society.”
“He seems to be doing fine.”
“Mostly he was. Schaeffer got him down, a little. They were really good friends in the old days. Mike doesn’t say so, because he thinks it would sound like sour grapes, but he read and revised Schaeffer’s first book. Practically did a second draft on it. He can’t understand how he could have turned so cold to him.”
“He must understand it,” I said. “He explained it perfectly first night out.”
“Oh, he can explain it,” Judy said. “He just can’t believe it. In his heart. Mike comes on tough and brash, you know, but he is a very sensitive man.”
“Schaeffer hasn’t been around for days.”
“I said Schaeffer got him down a little. Something happened today that really set him off.”
“What?”
> Tears came from Judy’s eyes. All at once, like a conjuring trick. “He won’t tell me! That’s why I’m so worried. It has to be something the policeman said, but I don’t even know that for sure. Things are bad when he starts keeping secrets from me. He just sits in the bar and drinks gin, and when I ask him what’s wrong, he just smiles sadly at me.”
She took a deep breath through her nose, wiped a savage forearm across her eyes. “God damn it!” she said. “I will not cry. I’m not going through it again. I love him, Matt, and I’ll do anything to help him, but I cannot go through it all again.”
She didn’t mean it. Or rather, she meant it, it just wasn’t true. If she had to, she’d go through it again. She’d do it for Mike, because she loved him. I felt a little anger that a man with a wife so devoted could still find something to be depressed about.
“I’ll talk to him,” I said. “Anything you’d like me to say?”
“Just find out what’s bothering him. Oh, try to get him away from the liquor if you can, but that’s not as important.”
“Sometimes, on a thing like this, the more the merrier.”
She smiled through the wreckage the tears had made of her face. It was a grisly sight, but I admired her spirit.
“Phil DeGrave should already be there. He was easier to find than you were.”
“He’s got less on his mind. Listen, Judy, you go find somebody to talk to, too.”
“Oh, Nicola and Mrs. Furst and Jan and Kenni have a regular kaffeeklatsch lined up. Instant support group. I think even Karen is taking some time out to be there, busy as she is.”
“It’s good to have friends.”
“Ones who stick, at least. Unlike Mr. Schaeffer. I almost hope he did go overboard.”
So she didn’t know about the note. Kenni had said that she and Jan and Billy and Karen had decided to keep their mouths shut about it, but I wasn’t expecting a whole lot. I’m a person who feels guilty keeping secrets. I can do it, but it takes a lot of effort. I never expect a secret to stay secret very long, so I’m always pleasantly surprised when it does.
I asked her if she wanted me to walk her to the coffee shop where the other women said they’d meet her, but she said she’d be fine, and shooed me along to see about her husband.
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