EQMM, Sep-Oct 2006

by Dell Magazine Authors

  "What do they know of the caller?"

  "He spoke in Spanish, but they think he's a foreigner, possibly an American."

  An old saying of mine: Nature abhors a coincidence. Our symposium arriving just after this alleged crime happened, to research the allegedly purloined bones. You couldn't blame the law for being a tad suspicious. They took our statements with a translator.

  They went through our luggage again and found no missing bones, and no missing documents.

  * * * *

  At the hotel, Darla said, “You have your credentials, don't you, Brick? In case anybody asks."

  Besides my certificate from the Gumshoe Correspondence Institute of Private Detection, I received a snazzy silver badge. It was a five-pointed star like lawmen wore in the old Westerns. Those points caused me no end of grief at airport security and Darla, once in a rare snide mood, had said it looked like it came out of a cereal box.

  "Never leave home without them,” I said. “Why would anybody ask?"

  "Well, it has been suggested that we in the symposium conduct a parallel investigation and that you are eminently qualified. We wish to have our names cleared, individually and as a group. Not everyone was enthusiastic, but nobody raised an objection. In fact, Ed Dobbs, who first proposed the investigation, asked me to ask you if you would take on the job for an honorarium."

  My eyes widened as I rubbed thumb against forefingers. “Is an honorarium like a grant?"

  "Kind of a mini-grant, an amount to be negotiated."

  "And if I find a member of your symposium under a rock?"

  "Let the chips fall where they may."

  I raised my right hand, deputizing myself, threw my left around Darla, kissed her, and said, “Let's start at the scene of the crime. I'm ready for some heavy-duty culturalizing."

  * * * *

  The Christopher Columbus Symposium had grown to thirty and lurched forward on schedule. The plainclothes police were damn near living with us, one casually looking the other way or at his newspaper whenever you turned around, but nobody was taken downtown or otherwise detained.

  I knew zip about this city in advance, except the old Bugs Bunny cartoon where he sang “The Barber of Seville.” This cathedral they have got, though, if you're ever in town, don't miss it. The Seville cathedral is old and gingerbread-ornate and bigger than a domed stadium. You wear off a half-mile of shoe leather walking the perimeter. It's got eighty-one stained-glass windows, seventy domes, and twenty-five chapels. What's up above you is supported by thirty-two columns, some one hundred and eighty feet tall.

  Oh yeah, it sports a three-hundred-foot-high bell tower and an enclosed patio that has an orchard's worth of producing orange trees.

  There's plenty of room for Chris's bones and there they allegedly are, soon after you enter. These four bronze and alabaster guys in frilly outfits that make you wonder a little about them, they're holding up a litter that looks like a breadbox made of dark wood and leather. What made the monument strangely modern was the yellow crime-scene tape and the armed and uniformed cops on guard, up-close and personal.

  "What's the point? The horse is long gone from the corral,” I told Darla.

  "Perhaps,” she said.

  * * * *

  While the gang went off to their Columbus Symposium lectures and panels and workshops, I took the grand tour of the Seville cathedral again. I hung out at Chris's exhibit so long that I was attracting attention, so I just wandered, thinking how hard it'd be to snatch anything in the cathedral, day or night, and sneak it out.

  When the eggheading was done for the day, I cut Darla from the herd and we went to dinner.

  Over the first course, she said, “The cathedral received another call, repeating the ransom demand, warning that he'd turn the bone into ash unless the ransom money was raised immediately."

  I slurped my gazpacho, which is Spanish for vegetable soup they forgot to warm up. “I'll bet that hasn't happened."

  She nodded. “There's a debate in progress as to whether to open the coffin and how to do it without disturbing the remains that may or may not be inside."

  "Looked to me like all anybody's done lately is dust it. You'd need to pay a bunch of people to go temporarily blind."

  "A highly unlikely caper,” Darla agreed.

  "Okay, to do my job, I need a process of elimination."

  "To prove one of us didn't do it or collaborate, if indeed it was done at all?"

  "Yeah. Maybe killing the two birds with one lucky rock. Of course, we have got one prime suspect, Riley Neil. What do you think, Darla?"

  "I'm coming around to your dark thinking pattern. I wouldn't be surprised if Neil planned to withdraw his quote-unquote documentation at the last minute, saying it deserved a bigger and better forum. The alternative of its mysterious disappearance is very convenient. Not to mention the distraction at the cathedral."

  "Who hates Riley Neil more than anybody?"

  "It's a long list, but sure, Chandler Bryce."

  "I'm gonna play a little good cop-bad cop,” I said. “The roast suckling pig we ordered, it'll be heated up, won't it?"

  * * * *

  In the morning, I intercepted Dr. Chandler Bryce on his way to breakfast. I asked him to stroll around the block with me, promising to keep it brief, as he struck me as the type to get grouchy if he missed a meal.

  "What's Dr. Neil's shtick, Dr. Bryce?"

  He chuckled. “Shtick. I find that word mildly offensive, even when applied to that unseemly individual."

  Excuuuuuse me. “You and Dr. Neil teach in the same town at different schools. How'd you get along before the wine drenching? You guys weren't competing for a different job, a big step up, department head at his college or yours, or whatever?"

  "We got along coolly yet cordially. And he was no competition in any regard before his stunt with the illusory document. He has lost any scintilla of credibility."

  "I'm with you, Doc, and between you and me and the gatepost, I think he's behind this missing-bones business, too."

  Bryce chuckled again. “He's ambitious, certainly, but he lacks the audaciousness to be a criminal. Riley tends to play devil's advocate about virtually everything, in the ugliest, most gleeful sense of the phrase. If you can challenge another's scholarship, you need not persevere yourself. Neil is a fraud and a revisionist historian."

  "Pretty tough words, Doc, not that I blame you, from what I've seen of him. Mind telling me what your professional interests are?"

  "I am an historian and an educator."

  "This book deal Neil has, is that out the window now that the alleged documents have been allegedly snatched?"

  "I wouldn't know, Mr. Bates."

  We were stopped at a light. How they drive in Spain, it's best you wait for the green. “Is Neil a pretty good writer? I mean, good enough to write an entire book?"

  Dr. Chandler Bryce snorted. “He couldn't write a grocery list."

  * * * *

  "I'm getting confused signals synapsing in my brain like pinballs,” I told Darla in our room after breakfast as she loaded her briefcase for the day's eggheading.

  "I don't believe ‘synapse’ has a verb form, Brick."

  "It does now."

  "What about your interview with Chandler Bryce bothers you so much?"

  "He's not pissed off enough. He doesn't hate Neil enough."

  "Brick, not everybody resolves disputes and resentments with fists and bloodshed."

  "Maybe we oughta. If you have a fat lip, you're more inclined to listen to reason."

  Darla sighed.

  I said, “The situation doesn't mesh. It's haywire."

  "Brick, stop pacing."

  "I'm a detective, Darla. My brain and feet have a direct link."

  "I don't know what that means, but if you're thinking of interviewing Riley Neil, that's not going to happen. I couldn't tell you earlier, but Ed Dobbs took me aside and said he's refusing to cooperate further with anyone who isn't official."

 
"That may mean he's hiding something or he isn't or he wants us to think he is."

  Darla kissed me and said, “It's going to be a long day and I already have a headache."

  * * * *

  It was gonna be a long day for me, too. I had nary a glimmer of what my next step would be. Seville's a spiffy old town full of churches, museums, and narrow winding streets. I set a course westward for their big river, the mighty Guadalquivir, and eventually made it. I walked along the downtown side and went to a café.

  It was nice and sunny, so I sat outside. I had me a tapas feast, some of the goodies I had in Madrid, and also sampled artichoke hearts and mushrooms sautéed in olive oil. As I washed the tapas down with cold suds, I whipped out our guidebook. I almost fell outta my chair when I came to a page that had a blurb on El Rin-concillo. It was only three blocks from our hotel!

  What's El Rinconcillo, you ask? Only the birthplace of the tapa, is all. El Rinconcillo's said to date to 1670 and while the guidebook's sceptical that the tapa was invented there, hey, like Columbus's bones, either you got faith or you don't. I had faith. I had a carload of faith. I was a true believer.

  I'm pretty good at reading maps, even if I get myself slightly misplaced afterward. This town, the street layout's like a bowl of spaghetti. I began back, to pilgrimage on over to El Rinconcillo, a holy and sacred site. When I saw the river for the third time, I gave up and caught a taxi.

  El Rinconcillo was an ordinary Spanish saloon, not new, but not that medieval-looking, either. The guys behind the bar were friendly and served ice-cold beer on tap. I'd worked up an appetite getting misplaced. The tapas were mostly in the saturated-fat family: Serrano ham, chorizo sausage, cheese. Yum.

  I had my Bryce-Neil itch to scratch and it was getting itchier by the minute. El Rinconcillo was my inspiration. It was the ideal, perfect venue.

  * * * *

  Darla was none too thrilled by my request, but she agreed to slip a note under Riley Neil's door, asking him to meet her at eight-thirty at El Rinconcillo. I did the same with Chandler Bryce. I saw Mary Beth Lambuth in the hall and a plot aspect thickened in my head. I asked her, “Any good news from your agent?"

  "We're hopeful."

  "How'd you like to make a status check with her, among other things, and join us for a party tonight?"

  * * * *

  I arrived at El Rinconcillo fifteen minutes early and positioned myself in a back corner, outfitted with sunglasses and a Real Madrid baseball cap. They're this famous soccer team and my shades were wraparounds. You'd never guess I was on surveillance. Euro tourists of some flavor were guzzling wine at the bar and the joint was filling up with locals. The dinner hour comes late in this country, getting into full swing when at home I'd be rooting around in the fridge for a bedtime snack.

  In bopped Riley Neil. He stood at the end of the bar, head on a swivel, an eager beaver. Not two minutes later, Chandler Bryce appeared. Their eyeballs met. They were flabbergasted, flummoxed, but recovered fast. I could tell by their slippery body language that no fur was gonna fly. That was my case in a nutshell!

  They'd smelled a rat and decided to scram, but I popped up and beat them to the door.

  "Mr. Bates,” Chandler Bryce said.

  I removed my cap and shades. “Don't go away mad or thirsty, gents. I'm buying the drinks."

  "No, thank you,” Bryce said.

  "I saved us a table,” I said.

  "We have no comment,” Riley Neil said.

  "That's the first thing you've said to me lately, Neil,” I said, gesturing to my table. “It's a start and this ain't a request. C'mon!"

  I ordered a fresh brew for me and, knowing their libational preferences, red wine for them. I let them stew till our drinks arrived.

  "What tipped off my subconscious was that stunt on that AVE bullet rocket train,” I said, getting right to the nitty-gritty. “Neil, you just happened to open your luggage and howl like a banshee, and Bryce, like on orchestral cue, you said you hadn't touched his luggage. I doubt if you'd even turned your head around. How'd you know where he kept this phony-baloney document, and why would he keep it out of his sight, with easy access, if it was so valuable?"

  Before they could answer, which they weren't gonna anyhow, I wrote on a napkin: C+C=C.

  "Know what that means?"

  "Faulty algebra,” Neil said, his irritating smirk plastered on his puss like a decal.

  "Conspiracy plus Controversy equals Crime. We devoted a whole lesson to that fact of life in my GCIPD studies."

  "Is that a grad-school program?” Bryce asked. “I'm not familiar with the institution."

  "The University of Hard Knocks, you might say. You boys were just too easy to separate during your altercation, too. And, hats off, the wine-tossing at the party was damn clever. You had me fooled.

  "Professor Doctor Neil, you have got a big-time book deal going. You're unpublished. Professor Bryce, he is, sort of. By the way, Neil, Bryce says you can't write a grocery list, his words. But you go and get a big fat advance from a book publisher. Bryce, that must be a tough pill to swallow. And Neil, who's gonna write this book of yours for you?"

  I paused. I'd provoked these pointy-headed brainiacs five ways to Sunday. They were giving me the stinkeye and looking sidelongingly at each other.

  "Now, let's make something perfectly clear,” I snarled. “If anybody's thinking of wine as a projectile and me as the primary target, he's gonna be staring up at the ceiling, counting the constellations in the Milky Way."

  Riley Neil sipped his wine and squinted his weasel eyes at me. Chandler Bryce was tense, rigid as a statue, playing it not nearly so cool. I concentrated on him. “This bogus documentation of Neil's, it can't help but hype book sales. Some people will always believe in it. It oughta be easy for a veteran fiction writer-teacher to whip out a manuscript. If there're objections to the facts, hey, the proof, Neil's papers, they were ripped off on the train, not his fault."

  "Conjecture,” Bryce said.

  "You're postulating that if a nonexistent document was perceived to be purloined, therefore it exists. How quasi-empirical of you, Mr. Bates."

  "Riley,” Chandler Bryce said.

  Neil raised his hand to Bryce's objection. “Merely enjoying a spot of rhetoric, Chandler."

  I said, “Kinda like if a tree falls in the woods, does it make a sound if nobody hears it?"

  "Precisely,” Neil said.

  "So what you're doing is playing a con game to make a few bucks. No harm, no foul. You could even do point-counterpoint in the book. Did Mussolini or didn't he cut a deal with Franco? Were the bones Chris's in the first place? And what's in the litter in the cathedral? Or did the bones stay back in the Dominican Republic? A triple and quadruple whammy. It'd keep the readers off balance, turning pages."

  Bryce had relaxed enough to smile and wipe the sweat off his forehead.

  Neil raised his glass in toast. “An intriguing series of speculative and cabalistic projections."

  "You boys've stirred up a helluva hornet's nest over the disappeared bones. You've mobilized Spain. Chris Columbus is a national treasure."

  "You're accusing us of telephoning the ransom demands?"

  I shrugged. “Nature abhors a coincidence."

  "I'm fluent in French,” Neil said.

  "That figures,” I said, working up a smirk of my own.

  "And I have a workable knowledge of German,” Bryce said.

  "I don't speak fifty words of Spanish,” Neil said, smirk straightening into a grin.

  "Nor I,” Bryce said. “You can check, Mr. Detective."

  Mary Beth Lambuth and Darla entered El Rinconcillo right on cue. I waved them over, moved two chairs to our table, and said, “Gee, ladies, what a pleasant surprise."

  "How transparent of you, Bates,” Riley Neil said.

  Mary Beth was giving him such an evil eye, he had to avert his.

  "What did you find out?” I asked her.

  "Much. My literary agent made an inquiry
and learned that there are two author signatures on Riley's book proposal. His and Chandler's."

  "A partnership that is none of your concern,” Chandler Bryce said.

  "Say no more, Chandler,” Riley Neil said.

  "Chandler the friendly ghost writer,” I said.

  "There's more,” Darla said.

  "Riley,” Mary Beth said. “You stated on the train that the majority of your documentation was Teletype messages between Spain's and Italy's foreign ministers. Spain's infrastructure was in ruins after their civil war. They didn't have Teletype service in operation in early 1941."

  Without a word of rebutment, Riley Neil marched out, trailed like a big shaggy dog by Chandler Bryce. The gals ordered brewskis too and we toasted our scam.

  "I have a confession,” Mary Beth Lambuth said. “My performance was a half-truth. The call to my agent was not a fabrication. They are collaborators on the book. The Teletype story was merely that."

  "Spain had Teletype service then?"

  Mary Beth shrugged wide silky shoulders. “I haven't the foggiest. It wasn't part of my research, but I imagine they did. The first mechanical Teletype was employed in 1867. It was not a new technology."

  * * * *

  In our room, Darla confirmed that Bryce and Neil were telling the truth about their knowledge of foreign languages. “The academic achievements of the symposium members are on record."

  It was my turn to have a headache. Pacing, I said, “Maybe they took a crash course, you know, those tapes you listen to in the car."

  "Brick."

  "Maybe they hired a bilingual Spanish lowlife to make the calls. Slipped him fifty euros to speak Spanish in a fake American accent."

  "Brick."

  "Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. It's a reach. What frustrates the hell out of me, they're in cahoots on the book, but I can't prove the missing papers are fake. And the extortion phone calls, I don't doubt for a minute they masterminded them. This is a big-time criminal beef that could stop them in their tracks, and I can't prove a damn thing there, neither."

  Darla said, “We can only hope that their book contract will be canceled when word spreads of their deception."