Left Turn at Paradise

by Thomas Shawver

  * * *

  Alone again in my hotel room, questions and possible answers materialized in my beer-addled brain, then just as quickly faded. None of them seemed particularly heartening from my standpoint.

  My first thought was that Hart had confronted Bartow in the garage off Molesworth Street as he had claimed, obtained the journals, and, for whatever reason, assumed Bartow’s identity at the library. But why the masquerade, particularly after Hart had already recovered our journals from Bartow?

  Maybe it was an effort by Hart to protect the dishonest, but relatively harmless, bibliophile, allowing him a few days to clear out of the country. After all, even if Hart was willing to forgive Bartow, the police, Clive Sexton, and the folks at Holt House (not to mention yours truly) might not be.

  And yet.

  Pillow had been drawn back to New Zealand, a place that clearly held only unpleasant memories for her, because Hart had gone looking for Bartow and the stolen journals.

  Did Hart trick Pillow into coming, “letting” her accidentally find the email stating Bartow had been seen there?

  But why would Hart do that?

  I could think of only one reason. Hart had already discovered that Ivo Mackin had the third journal. And Pillow was the ticket to reaching her otherwise inaccessible father. Hart knew his partner well enough to know that she would stay at the Wellesley Club when in Wellington. What he hadn’t figured on, however, was that Pillow would ask me to join her in New Zealand. That made me an inconvenient fly in the Englishman’s ointment, should he wish to take advantage of her.

  So where was Bartow if not in New Zealand? And how, when, and where did Hart come across the two stolen journals? I had no doubt Bartow had stolen them in San Francisco. The police told us that security cameras showed him entering the Marines’ Memorial Club and getting on the elevator.

  More questions, more fanciful answers.

  I had given Hart my room number at the club. Hart was the only one who knew—until he told Bartow. Then it was just a matter of the little book thief sneaking into my room while I was sampling whiskeys in a snug corner bar at Ninth and Dash.

  Okay so far. That left the question of what happened to Bartow after he’d delivered my journal to Hart.

  I’m cursed by an active imagination. It sets up camp in my head and comes back whether I want it to or not, opening the door to ten more spirits, each more troubling than the next. Whether I liked it or not, the mind gremlins led to a conclusion that I dreaded.

  Bartow had never left the United States. He was dead. Murdered by the man who had conspired with him to steal my journal—Adrian Hart. And those guys that tried to knife me in the side street? Was that a random mugging? Or had Hart paid them to get rid of me on the off-chance I’d be able to foil his plans?

  Total conjecture, of course. Far-out speculation. All I had was a pretty librarian telling me that she thought Hart had signed in as Bartow and off I go on these wild theories.

  Certainly not enough to notify the San Francisco police, let alone the Kiwi gendarmes.

  I texted Josie Majansik instead.

  * * *

  She called me shortly before we left Wellington and after she had contacted an old FBI colleague based in San Francisco.

  “There’s been no sighting of Bartow, dead or alive, but Customs doesn’t show him having ever left the country.”

  “What about bodies discovered in the Bay Area over the past eighteen months?”

  “At last count, eighty-four,” Josie said. “Half of them jumpers off the Golden Gate Bridge. Others were indigents who no one claimed. All but half a dozen have been identified. Of those, two were Hispanic males and another, a Cambodian woman, was found buried upside down in the Berkeley Hills. I’m waiting for the agent to send me a more detailed report of the three others. They were Caucasian, extremely decomposed. One of them, a male who washed up at Point Reyes last year, had been a meal for sharks. No head, arms, or legs. Only a trunk.”

  “Thanks for trying, Josie. In case your pal comes up with anything else, I’ll have to get it by early tomorrow New Zealand time. There are no cell towers where we’re going.”

  “I got it. But just so you know, Agent Henderson’s going way out of bounds digging into working files outside his department.”

  “I understand. Are we still open for business?”

  “The shop’s hanging in there. How’s the situation with Mrs. Wilkes?”

  “Fair to partly cloudy.”

  “Do you trust her?”

  “Not enough to share my suspicions with.”

  “Mike.”

  “Yeah, babe?”

  “Based on what you’ve told me, Hart is a liar, a thief, and most likely a murderer. You don’t trust the woman who coaxed you there. You located her scumbag partner and got your journal back. Mission accomplished on all counts. Time to come home.”

  “Wasn’t it you who said something about stick-to-itiveness?”

  “Yes, love. And you’ve found what you went looking for.”

  “Not really.”

  “But…”

  “I made a promise to Pillow that I’d help her.”

  “Oh, pleeeze. You don’t know whether she’s a damsel in distress or the second head of the dragon. Get your ass back here!”

  “I’m going to see this all the way through, Josie. Access to Gibson’s final journal could save Riverrun.”

  “What about us?”

  “It’s all about us, sweetheart. How better to prove to you that I’m not one to jump first onto any damn lifeboat?”

  After a few seconds of long-distance sniffling, Josie said, “Me and my friggin’ metaphors! They’re going to get both of us in trouble one of these days.”

  “I’ll be okay.”

  “Sure you will, Mike. I only wish I was there to watch your back.”

  “How’s Feklar?”

  “Miserable. He hasn’t brought a dead mouse to our bed since you left.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  I always intend to check out the great landmarks, majestic cathedrals, and fabulous museums wherever my travels take me. But I usually don’t.

  There’s always something else that grabs my attention, like a chance encounter with John Cleese in a Grasmere pub that nixed a visit to Wordsworth’s Dove Cottage, or missing a tour of Evita’s Pink Palace to watch an impromptu tango contest in the La Boca section of Buenos Aires.

  I’m also not one to gush while gazing at Niagara Falls or the Grand Canyon.

  Don’t get me wrong. I love the outdoors. My soul lifts whenever I’m near a pristine body of water, forested hill, or open prairie. It’s just that when I see those beauties, I figure that’s how everything should be, then wonder why we tart up the areas we choose to live in.

  But of all the countries I’ve seen in this world, there is one place where human beings have mostly managed to reside in harmony with their natural surroundings: the alpine lake districts of New Zealand’s South Island.

  Queenstown, the gateway to this beautiful land, lies atop an inlet at the southern end of a fifty-mile serpentine body of water. It’s a neatly groomed community of flowered parks and handsome cottages surrounded by snowcapped peaks and verdant pine forests.

  Think of the Scottish Highlands, except the mountains are bigger, the cascading waterfalls higher, the valleys greener, and the sun shinier. The citizens are a hardy bunch who regard weekends spent bungee jumping, parasailing, and extreme skiing preferable to playing golf. They’re uncommonly friendly as well, and more than happy to share their good tidings with strangers, as long as they don’t linger too long.

  Middleditch had secured one night’s lodging for us at a bed-and-breakfast aptly named Bellissima. The century-old house was a converted water mill filled with aboriginal art, rustic furniture, and a well-stocked wine cellar. The owners were Australians named John and Melinda Pritchard who gave up the bright lights of Sydney to settle in this sun-splashed Eden where even the air, infused with the fragrance
of ripening fruit from the surrounding apple and peach orchards, was intoxicating.

  That evening after dinner we sat in Adirondack chairs next to a gurgling stream, gazing at the Southern Cross and drinking wine.

  Despite the ambience of the setting, Pillow seemed somewhat subdued. Adrian Hart, on the other hand, was downright giddy, regaling our hosts with examples of the ignorance of American book collectors as compared to their British counterparts.

  “Cynthia Clampton, supposedly the doyenne of the New England antiquarian market, tried to pawn off on me a 1903 edition of Betty Grey as a true first even though the letter P didn’t precede the author’s name. Can you believe it?”

  That sort of thing.

  I could only imagine—there’s that beastly word again—the reason for Hart’s high spirits: He was near his goal of dispatching me, and maybe Pillow, in order to snatch the third journal for himself.

  “So,” John Pritchard asked Pillow, after Hart had stopped yapping long enough for him to change the subject, “Cattley tells me you’re going up to Ivo Mackin’s camp for wayward Maoris. Any particular reason?”

  “You know that Ivo is my father, don’t you?” She seemed offended.

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Forgive my husband,” Melinda interjected, as she laid a tray of cheese and crackers on a bench in front of us. “He’s a former journalist and bad habits die hard.”

  “I’d just like to see him,” Pillow said, softening. “It’s been many years.”

  The couple briefly made eye contact with each other.

  A few seconds of uncomfortable silence followed before John said, “Quite understandable. It’s wise to take your friends with you, however. The terrain can be quite difficult, particularly if the weather closes in. A group of Chinese engineers were lost for three days recently before being found half frozen on the Bonar Glacier. I take it you’ve secured a guide?”

  “Indeed, I have,” Hart said. “A chap named Daigleish Kildare. He’d already planned to take goods up there before I contacted him.”

  Now it was Pillow and I who exchanged looks. This was news to us.

  “Interesting,” John said, obviously unimpressed. “Who, may I ask, recommended him?”

  Hart impersonated a blank wall.

  “Enough with the interrogatories,” Melinda scolded, tugging at her husband’s arm. “Let them finish the wine and cheese so they can get their rest before heading into those lovely mountains.”

  * * *

  The next morning John drove us forty kilometers along a smooth asphalt road to the village of Glenorchy, which sits at the top of Lake Wakatipu.

  “What’s with this area and the Maoris?” I asked John on the way. “We haven’t seen many brown faces since arriving in Queenstown.”

  “Their Polynesian ancestors first settled on the coastal regions of the North Island where food was plentiful. The mountainous interior down here was considered too cold for people used to temperate Pacific islands. As time passed, however, the hardier members of the Ngāti Māmoe and Ngāi Tahu tribes migrated south seeking the highly valued jade called pounamu.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “During the gold rush of the last century they worked for pakeha-owned mining companies at near slave wages. When the mines tapped out, most of them, like Ivo’s grandfather, left for jobs in Christchurch or cities in the north.”

  “That helps to explain his desire to reclaim the land,” I said.

  “Yes,” Pillow said. “But I doubt that’s the only reason.”

  * * *

  Except for the scenery surrounding it, Glenorchy wasn’t much to speak of. Past the Mobil gas station, twenty or thirty prefab houses were clustered around a three-room schoolhouse. Main Street consisted of a general store, a weather-beaten pub, and a dingy post office. The only structure that looked built to last was a limestone library set in front of a tiny municipal park. There might have been a church and a cemetery somewhere in the vicinity, but I didn’t see them.

  At the edge of a marsh at the edge of the lake was a ramshackle trailer park where John said the transient population of backpack guides, jet boat drivers, and road construction crews lived. Kayaks and life jackets littered their weedy front yards, and wash lines groaned under a colorful assortment of bras, panties, socks, and men’s heavy woolen shirts.

  Robust guys and gals glided among the trailers, stopping to share the latest news, laughing, touching, and kissing before heading into town or to the boat dock. One or two women might have been pregnant, but there seemed a noticeable absence of children and older folk.

  From the standpoint of its natural setting, Aspen and the ski villages of the Haute-Savoie had nothing on this jewel at the top end of the crystal blue, glacier-fed lake. What the area did not have, however, was reasonable proximity to major cities.

  “Every decade or so,” John told us, “a developer shows up offering to build a ski resort. It never gets past the city council. Adding traffic and froufrou resorts doesn’t square with the locals, especially the sheep and cattle ranchers around Paradise Flat.”

  He turned to Pillow, adding, “Your mother’s one of the more vocal ones on that subject.”

  She flinched as if he had mentioned a hanging. No more was said on the subject. For the rest of the way she sat motionless, staring stonily ahead, until John pulled the car up to a steel Quonset hut. A wooden sign with carved letters declared it to be the regional office for the Department of Conservation.

  “Get your maps and permits here,” he said. “I made arrangements for the jet boat to pick you up in half an hour.”

  As we got out of the car, John tugged on Pillow’s sleeve.

  “Go on,” she said to Hart and me. “I’ll catch up.”

  I followed Hart into the hut. A sturdy red-haired woman in a khaki uniform stepped from behind a curtain that separated the kitchen from the office. She held a steaming pot of tea in her right hand.

  “Hello, gents,” she said cheerfully. “Care for a spot of Glenorchy mud?”

  “If it’s Earl Grey,” Hart said in a plummy accent that was exaggerated even for him, “that would be spiffing.”

  His attempt at humor, if that is what it was, didn’t appear to cut it with the middle-aged guardian of the National Trust.

  “Right, then, Lord Windersphere,” she said, as she pulled cups from under the counter and poured tea into them.

  “Sugar?” Hart asked.

  “Afraid not,” she replied. “No cream, neither. Now, what can I do for you?”

  “We’re heading northwest through Mount Aspiring National Park.”

  “You’ll need a permit for that.”

  “And that, madam, is why we are bloody well here.”

  She put down her cup and with it her smile. The color in her cheeks began to match her hair.

  “I’ll not have that language in this office,” she said. “Climbing permits are fifty dollars. That’s if,” she added ominously, “I feel like issuing them to foreigners. It’s a World Heritage Site beyond the Dart. We have to be selective on who goes there. Don’t want disreputables messing with our scenery.”

  “Actually,” I said, in a tone meant to smooth troubled waters, “we intend to take a chopper to Pearl Flat, then trek over the Matukituki Saddle to the Maori compound.”

  “That’s not a good idea,” she said.

  “Why on earth not?” Hart asked.

  “Private property, for one thing.”

  “Since when does the New Zealand government pay you to be Mr. Mackin’s private gatekeeper?”

  She leveled her gray-green eyes at Hart, but his underlying threat cut through her intransigence.

  “I can’t stop you from going, but once you get past Pearl you’re on your own. We can’t always be sending out rescue parties.”

  “Indeed, madam. I have procured a guide, a Mr. Kildare. Where might we find him?”

  She looked at Hart quizzically. Her lack of enthusiasm for Kildare matched Joh
n Pritchard’s.

  “You’ll find the possum trader next door.”

  “He sells roadkill?” I asked, completely baffled.

  “Oh, they’re not like your American possums,” she said. “More’s the pity. Their fur is quite soft and beautiful, a bit like mink, but they’re an ecological nightmare. Since being brought here from Australia, they’ve practically destroyed all the birdlife in our forests. They have no natural enemies other than the trappers.”

  After paying 150 NZ dollars for three permits and dropping another twenty for topographical maps, we met Pillow outside and walked over to a log cabin. The sign on the door read DKGY—for “Daigleish Kildare, Glenorchy.” I’d like to think it was a parody of Donna Karan’s iconic New York fashion brand, but having met the proprietor, I doubt it.

  The interior of the building was filled with furs in varying shades of brown, black, and gray. They were pinned to the walls, draped on tables, and laid as rugs on the floor.

  A lean, scraggly-bearded man scanned Pillow up and down from behind the counter with an undisguised leer. He filled the gap where his left incisor should be with the tip of his tongue.

  “Daig Kildare,” he said, by way of introduction.

  When he took his eyes off Pillow to look at Hart, he seemed to give him a dip of the eyebrow and something akin to a smirk.

  “Mr. Hart, I presume?” he said, extending a hand that was ignored.

  “Are you ready to go?” Hart asked him.

  “You don’t see any customers hankerin’ for possum skin, do you?”

  “All right, then.”

  “Uh, Mr. Hart, there’s the matter of my fee.”

  “I’ve already sent you a check for two hundred dollars.”

  “Down payment.”

  “Five hundred more now,” Hart said, without bothering to consult Pillow or me, “and five when you get us safely to the compound.”

  “In that case, I’m on.”

  The lout held up a board with novelty items that included penis gloves for the men and nipple covers for the ladies, all made of possum fur.

  “It’ll be mighty cold on the way up,” he said, leering again at Pillow. “You’ll want ’em to protect your privates.”