Jerry felt heat rising in his cheeks. Had Zhang dared to put in his own complaint? He said, more hotly than he’d intended, “Inspector, if Captain Zhang suggests we—”
Fairchild stopped him with an upraised hand. “Not at all,” he said. “Captain Zhang went out his hotel room window yesterday afternoon, very near to the time you and Mr. Rickendorf spoke with him.”
Jerry could only stare, open-mouthed. His first reaction was: I did it! I pressed him too hard, I forced him, I should have found a better way, a quieter way…“Oh God. What have I done?” He covered his face with his hands.
He wasn’t really aware of the charged silence in the room until Fairchild broke it by saying, “Mr. Diedrich? What have you done?”
Then Jerry realized what he’d said, what he’d implied, and he lowered his hands, showing his flushed face, and said, “No no no! I mean—we shouldn’t have pressed him so hard, I had no idea he…” Turning, he said, “Luther, you know what I mean!”
Luther said to Fairchild, “Did he leave a note?”
“Hard to say,” Fairchild said.
Luther gave a small smile of disbelief and said, “Inspector, how can it be hard to say if he left a note?”
“On the memo pad beside his bed,” Fairchild explained, “in Chinese, was his wife’s name, and ‘I love you,’ nothing more. If it’s a suicide note, it’s certainly an ambiguous one. The other possibility is that he was just starting a letter to his wife when he was interrupted by his murderer.”
Jerry said, “Oh, my God! You don’t think we—”
Luther, gently but firmly, said, “Stop, Jerry. The inspector doesn’t think we have anything to do with it at all.”
“Well, if it was suicide, you did,” Fairchild said. “In a way. You made it clear to Captain Zhang that the questions would only continue, and only get worse.” He tapped one of the pieces of paper that had been delivered to his desk. “Miss Baldur’s parents have confirmed to the Sydney police your account of their meeting with Captain Zhang. It is clear he did speak English, and it is clear he pretended not to be able to, because he was afraid to be questioned on the subject of Miss Baldur. Now that Miss Baldur is alive, rather than dead, we can understand why he was afraid.”
“He felt guilty,” Jerry said, feeling mixed emotions himself. “He was guilty.”
Fairchild tapped a fingernail on his desk, then said, “You may all consider yourselves lucky that Captain Zhang became as desperate as he did, or that someone else became that desperate, because the captain’s death is, so far, absolutely the only confirmation we have of your story. Whether it’s suicide or murder, it effectively eliminates the weakest link.”
Luther said, “Inspector, you still think it might be murder?”
“We can’t rule that out, not yet. There was no sign of struggle. There was that note, however ambiguous. There was the timing, immediately after you two questioned him about Miss Baldur. We would, however, prefer not to be too hasty in our conclusions. There’s no need to close that issue at once.”
A policeman had brought in another slip of paper while Fairchild was talking, and placed it on his desk. Fairchild looked at it, raised an eyebrow, and looked back up at Kim. “Well, we seem to have another potential corroboration of your story. Looked at a certain way.”
Kim said, “What? What’s happened?”
“This morning,” Fairchild told her, “less than an hour ago, from an undisclosed location, Richard Curtis announced he’d been misinformed about George Manville, that Manville was innocent of the charges brought against him two days ago. All charges have been dropped and Manville is once again employed by Curtis Construction. This was a sort of press conference, a teleconferencing hookup with a number of prominent business newspapers and television outlets, including CNN, which is where we got it. George Manville is no longer charged with any crime.” Fairchild tapped the piece of paper. “It would seem, Miss Baldur,” he said, not without sympathy, “that your friend is Richard Curtis’s friend now.”
15
After lunch, Curtis went riding for an hour with Albert Farrelly. Albert showed him the new swales that had been bulldozed since he’d been here last.
“It’s terrific work, Albert,” Curtis said. “First-rate work.”
They rode on, and Curtis said, “Albert, you know that George Manville is staying here for a week or two.”
“Yes, sir, I do,” Albert said. “We’ll take care of him, make him feel at home.”
“Do that. But the truth is, Albert,” Curtis said, as they rode side by side, quartering westward now, looping toward home, “he’s not actually a guest here so much as a prisoner—though he doesn’t know it. Or I hope he doesn’t know it.”
Surprised, Albert said, “Prisoner? I thought he was a friend of yours. Isn’t he who you were talking about, on the TV?”
“He is. I had to give him that, Albert,” Curtis explained, “because he’s in a position where he could make a lot of trouble for me, over the next few weeks, if he really wanted to. And I think he may want to.”
“Good heavens, Mr. Curtis, why?”
“It’s hard to know why a man turns against you,” Curtis said. “I thought we worked well together. It may be he thought I was taking too much credit, or not paying him well enough, or who knows what. He knows my plans, a big construction job coming up, and he could make a great deal of trouble for me if he decided to. That’s why I want him to stay here. He agreed, all right, but I have to tell you I don’t entirely trust him.”
Solemnly, Albert said, “Mr. Curtis, what do you want me to do?”
“Keep an eye on him. Don’t let him have any of the vehicles, for any reason at all. It would be better not to let him near a phone; remove them all, except in your office and bedroom, and keep those doors locked.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And if you think he’s planning something he shouldn’t,” Curtis went on, “those three fellows that brought him here, that are over in the spare barracks, they’ll take care of things for you. Just talk to Morgan Pallifer. But not unless there’s something you don’t think you can handle by yourself.”
“Those fellas,” Albert said, and he couldn’t entirely keep a tinge of distaste from his voice, “aren’t the sort I’m used to, Mr. Curtis.”
“I feel the same way about them,” Curtis assured him. “But sometimes we have to use the tools at hand. One or more of them may leave for a while early next week, but most of the time they’ll be here, and we’ll make sure Manville knows it. Oh, and if Morgan wants to use the phone, let him use the one in the office.”
“Yes, sir.” Albert managed a shaky laugh. “Even in a paradise like this,” he said, “life can get complex can’t it?”
“It surely can,” Curtis said.
* * *
Leaving the horses with Albert, Curtis walked over to the building they called the spare barracks, a long low adobe shoebox of a structure, with a verandah on one long side. Entering the building, Curtis heard the sound of the TV, followed it, and found the three men sprawled on sofas, watching an old MGM musical, the bright colors looking bruised on the screen. “Morgan,” Curtis said, and gestured, and Pallifer got to his feet, glanced one last time at the girls dancing in white crinoline, and came out of the room with him.
“We’re off in a few minutes,” Curtis told him, as they walked together down the hall. “Now, I’ve got my agreement with Manville, and I think he’s the kind will stick to it, but in case he does try to leave, you’ll stop him.”
As they went out the wide door to the verandah, Pallifer said, “How hard do I stop him?”
They stood under the verandah roof. Curtis squinted across at the adobe main house, dun-colored, disappearing into the landscape despite its two-story height. “You don’t kill him,” he said, “unless you absolutely have to. But if he makes trouble… let me put it this way. I don’t need him to be able to walk, I just need him to be able to think.”
“For two weeks maximum, y
ou say.”
Curtis looked at Pallifer, the leathery face, the cold sharp eyes, the bony brow. What a nasty son of a bitch, Curtis thought. I’m glad I own him, and nobody else. “When I’m finished what I’m doing,” he said, “you and Manville can work out whatever problems you two might have, makes no difference to me.”
Pallifer smiled his mean little smile. Those small white teeth weren’t his own, but they gave him the right carnivore look. He said, “How will I know when you’re finished?”
Curtis laughed. He was so full of his secret that it kept bubbling out of him, he couldn’t help it. “You’ll know,” he promised, and patted Pallifer’s rock-hard shoulder. “Don’t worry, Morgan, you’ll know.”
“If you say so,” Pallifer agreed.
Curtis looked at the main house again. Manville was in there somewhere. Fixed in place? Time would tell. “About the girl,” he said.
“No change, I take it.”
“No change. Monday or Tuesday, you should know where she is. As far as the world’s concerned, she’s already dead, somewhere else, so you shouldn’t leave any bodies lying around, to confuse things.”
“I got that.”
Curtis nodded at the main house. “And he shouldn’t know,” he said. “It could make the agreement come unstuck.”
“I’ll play Manville like a guitar,” Pallifer promised. “The way those old rock stars used to. Play it and play it, and at the end you smash it up.”
* * *
The shower connected to the master bedroom was almost a room in itself, a large square space with two tiled walls and two clear lucite walls. Washing off the trail dust from his ride with Albert, Curtis felt good, better than he’d felt in months, maybe years. Revenge was coming, and profit was coming. When he was finished, he’d be the richest man he knew, one of the richest men in the world. And safe as houses. Even if there were people who suspected he’d had something to do with the disaster, nobody would be able to prove it. The evidence would be gone, destroyed, buried like the Japanese barracks on Kanowit Island. Washed clean away, like the orangey-tan dust of Kennison, swirling away down the shower drain.
Cindy was in the main room, packing her overnight bag when he came out. “Call one of the boys to take our things to the chopper,” he told her, crossing the room to the closets. “I just have to say a word to George, and we’re off.”
He found Manville in the library, reading a history of the early days in Australia, when it was being settled by convicts from Britain. Brisbane, Curtis remembered, was settled exclusively by convicts who’d committed fresh crimes after arriving in Australia; what a beginning.
“We’re off, George.”
Manville closed his book and rose from his low leather chair. “I guess you’ll be phoning me,” he said.
Curtis noticed that, from where Manville had been sitting, he’d had a clear view out a window to the spare barracks and the verandah. Had he watched Curtis and Morgan talk together over there? Did he guess any of what they’d been saying to one another? Curtis said, “If you need anything while you’re here, ask Morgan, he’ll be traveling back and forth.”
“And keeping an eye on me,” Manville said.
Curtis’s smile was easy, relaxed. “I trust you, George,” he said. “You’re a man of your word, and so am I.”
“It does take two,” Manville agreed.
Curtis stuck out his hand. “We’ll talk.”
Why did Manville always seem so surprised, every time Curtis offered to shake hands? I’m accepting you as an equal, you damn fool, Curtis said inside his head, be grateful for it.
Manville did consent to the handshake, grasping Curtis’s hand briefly, then letting go. “Have a good trip,” he said.
* * *
Curtis was almost out of the house, following Cindy, when Helen Farrelly called to him from down the hall. “You go ahead,” he told the girl, “I’ll catch up.”
Helen bustled up to him, but not, as he’d expected, merely to say goodbye. “We’ve had a phone call just a few minutes ago,” she said. “Some sad news.”
“Oh?”
“The captain of your yacht. Captain Zhang?”
What now? Curtis thought, and knew at once that this was fresh trouble. “Yes? Captain Zhang?”
“He’s killed himself, Mr. Curtis,” she said. “And no one knows why.”
16
The flight from Brisbane to Sydney was full, and delayed, so that they sat on the ground for twenty minutes before takeoff. Kim didn’t care. She was too full of everything else that was happening to worry about simple problems like travel delays. She was both eager and apprehensive, eager to see her parents, and apprehensive about George Manville.
Could George really have caved in to Richard Curtis, the way everybody else thought, even that police inspector, Fairchild? She couldn’t believe it, and yet what other explanation was there? Why would Curtis clear George’s name—as casually as he’d smeared it—if George hadn’t agreed to come over to his side, to help him in whatever it was he was scheming?
But how could she have been so wrong about him?
They’d given Kim the window seat, with Jerry in the middle seat to her left, and Luther on the aisle. She sat and looked out at other planes landing and taking off, little trucks scurrying busily this way and that, and her brain scurried like the little trucks around the problem of George Manville, while beside her Luther and Jerry talked. Until something Luther said attracted her attention, and she turned away from the dreary sight of Brisbane International Airport to say, “What was that? Where are you going from Sydney?”
“Singapore,” Jerry repeated.
“But why?”
“Curtis, of course,” Jerry said, surprised at her. “If what he’s up to next is so damn important, if he was actually willing to commit murder just to keep me from finding out what he’s doing—and I must say I didn’t know I was that important in his life, the bastard, and I’m glad I am—well, I have to find out what he’s doing, don’t I?”
“I suppose,” Kim said. She hadn’t been thinking about Richard Curtis at all.
Jerry said, “And his headquarters is in Singapore, and I just happen to have a friend in his offices there, he’ll know what’s going on, or he’ll be able to find out.”
“This is the man,” Kim said, “that told you things before, about what Curtis was doing.”
“Like Kanowit Island, for instance,” Jerry said. “Yes. So we’ll go to Singapore, Luther and I, and we’ll find out what Curtis is up to, and we’ll stop him cold.”
“I’ll come with you,” Kim said, so quickly that the words were out of her mouth almost before the thought was in her head.
Jerry frowned at her. “Why? Kim, haven’t you been kicked around enough?”
“I want to know what George is up to,” she said. “If Richard Curtis is based in Singapore, and if that’s where he’s planning whatever it is he’s going to do, then that’s where George will be.”
Luther, leaning forward to speak past Jerry, said, “Kim, if you’ll take advice from an old campaigner in the wars of love, forget the name George Manville. Go home to Chicago with your mother and father.”
Kim knew that Luther meant well, and that he felt kindly toward her, but every time he tried to say something sympathetic, it came out sounding like an order that you were almost honor-bound to disobey. “Thank you, Luther,” she said. “You may be right, but I just can’t walk away from all this until I know what’s going on. If you and Jerry don’t want me along, I’ll go to Singapore on my own.”
“It’s not that at all,” Jerry said. He put a hand on Luther’s arm.
Luther shook his head. “If you’re that determined to go into the lion’s den, Kim,” he said, “and Jerry’s determined to let you, better you stick with us.”
“Thank you,” she said, and the plane jerked forward, on its way at last.
* * *
Tired, cranky passengers pressed against one another like cattle in
a chute, getting off the plane. Kim just let the movement take her, not really caring anymore, but then she saw her dad’s face back there among the people waiting, and next to him Mom, and she waved her arm high above her head and saw them start when they spotted her, and she began pushing and shoving along with everybody else.
Greetings were breathless, and incoherent at first, until they got away from the deplaning crowds, and then her dad said, “I rented a car, just follow me. Is that all your luggage?”
She held up the new string bag she’d bought this morning in Brisbane. “It’s all I’ve got.”
Dad turned to Jerry and Luther, saying, “We’ll give you a lift to the hotel.”
Kim’s mom put her arm through Kim’s, leaning in to say, “When I thought you were dead, Kim, it was the worst day of my life.” Kim pulled her close. Her chest still ached, but she didn’t care.
She’d tell them about Singapore later. They’d try to argue her out of it, like Luther had, and she’d stand her ground, and maybe there’d be tears or shouting. But that would be later. Right now she just felt so good to have her mom’s hand in hers and to squeeze it tight.
17
By Sunday afternoon, Manville was edgy, tense, frustrated. He was also desperately bored. He knew his best move right now was not to move at all, to stay here at Kennison as though he intended to stick to his bargain with Curtis, but it wasn’t easy. Still, if he did stay put, just for a few days, if he gave the impression he intended to make no trouble, then Curtis should have no reason to go on pursuing Kim, and the clearing of Manville’s name would not be interrupted, and when the time was right he could still do his best to stop Curtis from whatever scheme the man had in mind.
But it was hard, it was very hard. Manville was active by nature, a doer, not a contemplater. There was nothing to do here at Kennison, and beyond that, he was absolutely alone now, since Curtis had clearly said something to the Farrellys; they were cold now, distant, utterly unlike the friendly couple at dinner the first night. Now he ate his meals alone, served by silent staff members in their tan pantsuits.
Forever and a Death Page 17
