Terns of Endearment (Meg Langslow Mysteries)

by Andrews, Donna

  “And Grandfather’s jealous?”

  “A little,” she admitted. “I’m not sure how much it’s because he would have liked to discover it and how much because he hates being reminded that he’s past his days of camping out in a tent for months on end in below-freezing temperatures. But he’d have gotten over that and moved on to basking in the kid’s reflected glory and reminding us at regular intervals that he taught him all he knows except for the name.”

  “Let me guess: He thinks it should be called Blake’s tern.”

  “Bingo!” She rolled her eyes. “Or at least to be acknowledged in the scientific name. Sterna blakeii. But we got word that the kid might be calling it Sterna maturinii.”

  “Naming it after himself, I suppose.” I shrugged. “After all, he was the one who spent the months in the tent.”

  “Oh, no,” Caroline said. “He couldn’t very well name it after himself—that just isn’t done. The scientific equivalent of belching loudly at the table. But you can name it after anyone else you please. Your spouse. Your kid. Your parent. Your mentor—that’s rather what Monty was expecting. Or anyone else you happen to like or admire. Even a fictional character. For example, there are quite a lot of Paleocene and Pliocene animals and modern wasps named after Tolkien characters, thanks to some energetic scientists with a Middle Earth jones. And Star Trek references like Conus tribblei and Ladella spocki. And Harry Potter references, like Ampulex dementor and Star Wars, like Agathidium vaderi and Trigonopterus chewbacca.”

  “I never knew scientists had so much fun,” I said. “So what was it again that grandfather’s former student is naming his terns?”

  “Sterna maturinii,” Caroline said. “After Stephen Maturin, the physician/naturalist from Patrick O’Brian’s nautical novels. Apparently he’s quite the rabid O’Brian fan.”

  “Well, Grandfather does already have a few species named after him,” I pointed out.

  “So does Maturin,” Caroline countered. “A Central American weevil and a Kenyan waterweed. Which wouldn’t annoy Monty quite so much if Maturin were a real naturalist.”

  “How many does Grandfather have?”

  Caroline frowned in concentration for a few moments.

  “Eight, I think. He’d know for sure. But asking him would only set him off again.”

  “Asking me what would set me off again?”

  Oops. Neither of us had noticed Grandfather coming up behind us, with Rose Noire trailing behind him carrying half of the dozen or so thick books he’d brought back.

  Caroline rolled her eyes. I decided to come clean. Well, partially.

  “Caroline was telling me that if this tern had turned out to be a completely new and previously unknown species, it would be considered crass of any of us to name it after ourselves.”

  “That’s true,” Grandfather said. “The discoverer gets to name it, but no self-promotion allowed.”

  “Not exactly fair for people like you who have discovered so many new species,” I said. “You don’t get much credit. But I supposed it would get boring if everything were blakeii.”

  “That’s true.” Grandfather raised his chin and assumed a look of noble self-sacrifice.

  “Still, think how exciting it must be to have a species named after you,” Rose Noire said with great enthusiasm. “After all, how often do scientists discover a completely new and unknown species?”

  “All the time,” Grandfather said. “Mostly invertebrates, of course.”

  “Which is not surprising,” Caroline said. “Since an estimated ninety-seven percent of all animal species are invertebrate.”

  “Invertebrates are also an important part of nature,” Rose Noire said. “And it’s still an honor.”

  “Hmph.” Grandfather shook his head. “Some honor. You’d be surprised at some of the people who have species named after them. Adolf Hitler has a beetle. Anophthalmus hitleri.”

  “How horrible!” Rose Noire exclaimed.

  “It’s a blind cave beetle,” Caroline said. “Found only in half a dozen particularly damp, nasty caves in Slovenia. The jury’s out on whether it was intended to honor Hitler or make fun of him. The thing’s of no interest whatsoever unless you’re either a beetle freak or a collector of Nazi memorabilia, and beetle poaching by the latter could very well drive the species into extinction.”

  “The poor thing.” Rose Noire shuddered. “Can’t they just rename it?”

  “There’s a longstanding scientific tradition of never doing that,” Caroline said. “Once the name is approved, the world is stuck with it. Although some people are arguing that it’s foolish to insist on observing a tradition that endangers an entire species.”

  “So who decides the name?” Rose Noire asked

  “Whoever discovers the species,” Caroline said. “It has to follow a set of rules, of course. And as I said, it’s not always an honor. Some researchers at Cornell recently named three slime-mold beetles after a bunch of politicians. Not sure that was intended as an honor.”

  “David Attenborough has a dozen species named after him.” Grandfather sounded curiously testy. “Including a dragonfly and two spiders.”

  “How many—” I began. I was intending to ask Grandfather how many species were named after him, but suddenly remembered that this was a sensitive issue. “How many things were named after Hitler?” I asked instead.

  “Just the blind cave beetle and a very primitive Paleozoic fly that was already extinct when they named it,” Caroline said.

  “I would rather like a spider,” Grandfather mused. “Quite the most extraordinary people have spiders. Buddy Holly. Johnny Cash. Bono. Angelina Jolie…”

  “Nelson Mandela and Terry Pratchett have spiders,” Caroline pointed out. “And Edward Abbey.”

  “Penn Jillette,” Grandfather continued. “Harrison Ford.”

  “That should have been a snake,” Caroline suggested. “Given how much Indiana Jones hated them.”

  “Alan Alda.” Grandfather went on. “Pancho Villa. Lou Reed. David Bowie. John Lennon. Bob Marley. Neil Young. Orson Welles. Elvis Presley. Pink Floyd. Frank Zappa, for heaven’s sake.”

  “The people who are discovering spiders seem very interested in rock and roll,” I said to Grandfather. “Perhaps you should form a band.”

  “There are even spiders named after fictional characters,” Grandfather said. “Pimoa cthulhu.”

  “John Cleese has a lemur,” Caroline said. “Avahi cleesei.”

  “Hmph.” Clearly in the throes of acute lemur envy, Grandfather snorted and strode off to stand near Wim and Guillermo. Rose Noire set her load of books near him, and he settled down to alternate between looking over his photographers’ shoulders to second-guess them and leafing through one or another of his books.

  Luckily, the tern remained oblivious to the excitement around it. It seemed perfectly content to sit on the railing, gazing out over the glass-smooth ocean. I felt envious. I’d have loved to sit and gaze over the ocean if I didn’t know that before long Dad would appear, demanding that I do something to prove that Desiree had been murdered. Or had murdered Nancy Goreham. And how was I supposed to do either of those things, stuck here with no power, no communications, no—

  “Mom!” Josh and Jamie burst onto the deck. “Dad says—”

  “Ssshhh!”

  The boys were momentarily nonplussed at having so many grown-ups shushing them. Grandfather wasn’t among the shushers, though.

  “Now that’s interesting,” he said.

  “What is?” Caroline asked.

  “The tern didn’t flee when the boys clattered in.” Grandfather pointed his finger at the bird. “Inch a little closer to him.”

  Caroline inched closer. The tern shuffled sideways and finally took to the air to avoid her. But only briefly. One of his wings didn’t open all the way, and instead of taking flight he merely used his wings to make an airborne hop and land a little farther down the rail.

  “He’s been injured,” Grandfather said.
“Appears to be a broken wing that didn’t heal properly. Clearly he can’t fly all that well. That might explain how he ended up here, so far out of his normal range.”

  “You think he hopped aboard the ship when it was in South America and is still here?” Caroline asked.

  “Yes,” Grandfather said. “Might not even be this ship. He could have ridden one ship up from South America to Baltimore, and then jumped ship to join our vessel.”

  “How do you suppose he catches his food?” Caroline asked.

  “Good question. Wim, why don’t you go down to the kitchen and see if you can get any kind of seafood for him. We can toss some of it around where he can get it.”

  Maybe Grandfather had just answered the question of how the tern caught his food. Maybe he hung around the ship until someone, crew or passenger, took pity on him and fed him.

  “Sardines would be nice,” Grandfather called after Wim. “Or any kind of seafood that’s not too far gone. Unlike humans, he’s probably got enough sense not to eat anything that will make him sick,” he added, turning back to me. “I wouldn’t be surprised to find that someone on board’s been feeding him. Or maybe he’s a general ship’s mascot.”

  As if commenting on Grandfather’s surmise, the tern hopped a little closer to him and festooned the railing with a long streak of white poop. The railing, and the cuff of Grandfather’s trousers.

  “Not, perhaps, a universally beloved mascot,” I suggested.

  “It’s all Trevor’s fault.” Grandfather scowled at his cuff.

  “I’m not sure why you’re blaming Trevor for something you could have avoided by standing a little farther off from the poor bird,” Caroline remarked.

  “Not the bird—this!” He flung his arms wide. “Our being here on this wretched boat in the first place.”

  “And in the middle of the dreaded Bermuda Triangle,” Rose Noire murmured.

  “Nonsense,” Caroline shot back. “You’ve been talking about doing shipboard lectures for years—long before Trevor came to work for you. Or are you going to blame him for following your orders and making it happen?”

  “No, but it’s his fault we’re here on Pastime. We could have hooked up with National Geographic or Smithsonian or Cunard or—”

  “Clearly you must be talking about some other person named Trevor.” Caroline was staring at him in disbelief. “Because the Trevor I know did his damnedest to talk you out of Pastime. Or don’t you remember when he came right out and said it was a badly run second-rate wannabe company?”

  “Well, yes,” Grandfather said. “But I thought he was just trying to manage me.”

  “Manage you?”

  “You and Meg do it all the time. You know I’m a very strong-minded and determined person—”

  “Actually, ‘stubborn as a jackass’ is the phrase I generally use,” Caroline said. “But go on.”

  “So you deliberately tell me the opposite of what you want me to do, because you think I’ll dig in my heels and end up doing what you want.”

  Caroline and I exchanged a glance. He was right—we did often use that tactic. News to both of us that he’d figured it out.

  “I thought Trevor was doing the same thing,” he went on.

  “Trevor’s not sneaky like us,” I said. “And he’s very good at research. So if he told you sailing with Pastime was a bad idea, I’m pretty sure it was because he thought sailing with Pastime was a bad idea.”

  “Well, how was I supposed to know that?” Grandfather stomped away to the other end of the sun deck and pretended to be fascinated by the horizon. The horizon, and what Rose Noire was doing. She’d lit a smudge stick and was beginning to make a slow clockwise circle around the outer railing of the deck, all the while casting anxious glances over her shoulder at the sky as if expecting something ghastly to descend at any moment.

  “He can blame Trevor if he wants,” Caroline muttered. “I know better.”

  “Just why did he pick Pastime, anyway?” I asked. “Or was it a case that Pastime was the only one that wanted to hire him?”

  “Oh, no,” she said. “He was in quite serious negotiations with National Geographic. And Smithsonian. And I think he also had some genuine interest from the Audubon Society and Cunard—the lot, in fact. But they all wanted some kind of input into what his lectures would be about. Pastime gave him carte blanche. You know how much he likes having his own way. I expect that’s what did the trick. Ridiculous, blaming this all on Trevor.”

  “Maybe—but in that case, what do you make of this?” I fished The Sharp Claw of Love out of my tote bag and handed it to her.

  “One of those books Delaney loves so much?” she asked, frowning slightly at the rather lurid cover.

  “Check the title page.” I flipped the book open to it and pointed.

  “‘To my adorable Trevor’?” she read aloud. “Is this some kind of practical joke?”

  “You tell me—you’ve seen more of Trevor than I have.”

  “Yes, and ‘adorable’ isn’t the first word I’d use to describe him. Or the hundred and first. Where did you get this?”

  “Tucked into an outside pocket of his suitcase.”

  “Looks well read.”

  “Or maybe just battered.” I shook my head. “Maybe Trevor—or someone—has been carrying it around for quite a while. Like that wretched book I’ve been trying to read for my book club. I’ve been carrying it everywhere for nearly a month now, and it’s beginning to look as if I’ve been playing kickball with it.”

  “Let me see.” She held out her hand, and I gave her The Sharp Claw of Love. She let it fall open, apparently at random, and began reading the resulting page. I waited as patiently as I could manage.

  “My, my.” Her eyebrows rose. “A little … warm for my tastes, but I’d say she was a pretty good writer.”

  “Actually, she wasn’t,” I said. “She just knew how to hire a good ghostwriter.”

  “Either way, this book’s been read.” Caroline was letting the book fall open at random again. “Well read. Yes, here’s another one. Random wear and tear doesn’t make a book fall open at what Monty Python would call the naughty bits. Someone’s been reading this.”

  She handed the book back to me with a flourish.

  “You could be right.” I was testing her methodology and getting the same results. “The question is, who was doing the reading? And when?”

  “It’s Trevor’s book.”

  “It is now.”

  “And the evidence suggests it has been for a while.”

  “All the evidence suggests is that someone has read it,” I countered.

  “More than once. At least in part.” Caroline was grinning.

  “But we don’t know that the reader was Trevor. He could have picked up a used copy and gotten her to sign it when he happened to see her. Or he could have done something nice for Desiree, and she rewarded him with a battered book because it was the only one of her books she had with her.”

  “But why did she have a battered book with her?” Caroline asked. “And not just battered but well read. Do you really think she was reading her own book?”

  “It wasn’t her own book,” I protested. “Not in the sense that she’d written it. Maybe she had to read it to find out what was in it. Maybe she was being interviewed about it. Or maybe she was boning up so she could crack the whip over her new ghostwriter.”

  “It’s possible.” Caroline didn’t sound as if she believed it. “But if you ask me, it’s a lot more probable that Trevor brought along his own well-read copy. And got it signed. Or maybe it was already signed.”

  “So maybe Trevor knew her,” I said.

  “Or knew of her.”

  “And in either case, does it have anything to do with her death? Or with how we ended up marooned in the Bermuda Triangle?”

  “Oh, please don’t mention the Bermuda Triangle to me.” Caroline glanced over her shoulder at where Rose Noire was vigorously wafting smoke over the starboard railing.
“I’ve already spent an hour this morning waving maps at Rose Noire, trying to convince her that we’re not actually in it.”

  “We’re not?” I was surprised. “That’s good to know. Not that I’m all that superstitious, but still…”

  “What gives the Bermuda Triangle its name is that it’s a roughly triangular-shaped area.” Caroline was holding her exasperation in check, but only just. “With Bermuda as the top point of the triangle and Miami and Puerto Rico as the other two points—which means that the whole thing is pretty much south of Bermuda. I don’t know precisely where we are, but draw an imaginary line between Baltimore and Bermuda. We’re somewhere on or near that line, and the whole line is considerably north of the Bermuda Triangle, the way I see it.”

  “But I bet Rose Noire sees it differently.”

  “She seems to think it covers most of the North Atlantic.” Caroline shook her head. “And she seems to believe every tall tale about it that’s ever appeared in the National Enquirer. I may just talk your grandfather into giving a lecture to debunk it all. Might cheer people up.”

  “Good idea,” I said. “But wait until we’re underway again. Better yet, once we’ve docked in Bermuda. I don’t think his lecture would have the intended effect if he gives it while we’re still marooned.”

  “You’re probably right. Here comes one of your writers.” She pointed to where Janet had just emerged from the stairway. “Maybe you should ask her about Trevor’s book.”

  “Hey, Meg!” Janet arrived at our side, puffing a little.

  “Did you run up from deck one?” I asked.

  “Only from deck four. It’s getting old.”

  “Think how fit we’ll be when we finally get to Bermuda.”

  “And how skinny, if the meals get any skimpier. What do you think of this?”

  She held up a small handmade poster that advertised “How to get your book published!” The text promised that four best-selling authors would share the secrets of how to break into the publishing industry, followed by the writers’ names and several book titles apiece, and ended by inviting people to attend at 6:00 P.M. in the main dining room.