This, Ngaio thought, could be read any number of ways: any of which would be a distraction at the moment.
“Can’t go to the hospital, ’cause of crooked doctors,” said Ngaio.
“Or the police,” Jimmy summarized, “because some are in on the game and might want her out of the way.”
“I go him,” said Suzie, reaching down and poking Chatham Island. “He help.”
Jimmy was dubious. “I don’t see how a piano-player’s gonna be much use. He must be fairly well-off, though. Maybe he could hire you a lawyer.”
“Why should he?” said Mikaere.
“Because he save me,” said Suzie. “He must care me.”
Mikaere cocked his head. “I’m not sure that’s the way it works.”
“Yes!” Suzie explained emphatically. “He not save me, I died. Right?”
“Right.”
“So I died, nobody need care me, right?”
“Right,” said Jimmy, unsure where this was leading.
“I no problem then.”
“Mm-hm.”
“So, he save me. He must care me,” she reasoned confidently. “I his problem. Of course.”
Jimmy let this perspective contort his logic for a second or two, then launched his assault. “And just how do you propose to get there? Chatham’s hundreds of miles away.”
Mikaere nudged his wife. “What about your cousin out there, Nye? Florrie, isn’t it? Give her a call. Find out if this piano player’s still on the island; there’s no guarantee he hasn’t gone back where he come from, you know. If he is? Well, one step at a time.”
“Haven’t seen her since we was kids,” said Ngaio. “Wouldn’t hurt to give her a ring.” She laughed. “Mad as a box of bees, was ol’ Florrie. You remember she rigged that scarecrow to drive Piripi Tanga’s old tractor?”
Her husband added his laughter to her own. “Cleared about six acres of kumara, did that scarecrow, before the tractor ran out of petrol! Did the work of five Maoris, Ol’ Tankga said!’
The old Maori and his wife laughed some more then, as the laughter subsided, fell to poking the embers and watching the sparks drift toward the stars. “Be good to talk to her again.”
“Well, then,” said Mikaere, patting her knee. “Best be about it.”
Ngaio rose slowly and, brushing the dust from her skirt, toddled down the dirt road, into the gathering night, to ask their nearest neighbor—a mile or so away—to use the phone. The walk gave her time to think, and the thought that rose foremost to her consciousness was that, to keep her out of the public eye, it would be best to move Suzie about as little as possible. “Maybe Florrie can get him to come here,” she decided. “Can’t hurt to ask.”
Chapter Seventeen
Albert was sitting at the piano in the great room of the Chatham Island Inn. His fingers were brushing the keys, but not hard enough to strike a note. Only he could hear the music they weren’t playing. The inquest was over, and the ponderous machinery of officialdom had managed to arrive at the obvious: Woolie-Woolie had been murdered by a person or persons unknown, most likely off-islanders aboard the ship that had been seen off Pitt Island. Perhapse, by some miracle, the Venice Regent. The case would be referred to the proper channels.
As he sat there, not playing the piano, a number of thoughts wrestled one another for his attention. Of interest among them was the relationship that seemed to be developing between Angela, the outspoken atheist, and James Simon, the unapologetic Anglican priest. With his head bent toward the piano, Albert looked at them from time-to-time through the cover of his eyebrows. They laughed a lot. Sometimes Angela would lean toward Simon and touch his right knee. Once Simon touched her left elbow. They were enjoying one another’s company.
Albert smiled at the notion that these two people would not have been sitting there, talking, and laughing, and enjoying each other if not for him. He felt like Cupid.
The same could be said of Jeremy Ash and Wendell—engaged in a game of War that threatened to outlast the War of the Roses—as well as Dr. Chan, Sergeant Jeffreys, Frenchie, Snake—clustered in earnest conversation about the small round table that held their drinks between sips—which were frequent—and, as often as her duties allowed, Milly. That is, some of them would have known each other, but not all of them would have known everyone.
For reasons he didn’t think to interrogate, Albert found this observation satisfying. He had often heard the term “heart-warming,” and that was the phrase that bubbled to mind as he considered the feeling he was feeling.
There was a knock at the door.
Had Albert the slightest concept of the number of people, of all nations and races, who had been brought together by his music, the friendships engendered, the marriages and their resulting children precipitated, the conviviality and awe it had inspired, the borders it had breached, the walls it had pulverized, the sorrows it had swept aside, the spirits it had elevated, he'd have had an aneurysm. Such a concept never had, nor ever would smudge even the most distant horizon of his consciousness. To him, the sum of his impact upon humanity was that he had brought together these few people who had drifted within the gravitational pull of his personal awareness.
“Someone to see you,” said Milly, who seemed to have materialized at his shoulder. Albert started from his contemplations. “Who?”
The question was no sooner formed than, to an extent, answered. A tattooed mass of female flesh was hurtling toward him across the room, and he was too transfixed to leap out of the way. Fortunately, the woman’s muscles were equal to the task of braking her superstructure not eight and a half inches from Albert. She beamed into his face. “You the piano player?” she demanded.
Albert, whose atoms were attempting to reassemble themselves in some semblance of order as the wave of adrenaline withdrew—much as they had when he’d experienced the traditional Maori greeting at the airport—was trying to remember whether or not he played piano.
“Yes,” he ventured tentatively.
“Right!” said the woman. Albert wondered if other questions would be forthcoming and, if so, whether they would be as easy to answer, and what might be the consequence if they weren’t. “Florrie,” she said, holding out her hand, which Albert considered dubiously. Those fingers, if primed by the same enthusiasm that animated in the woman’s eyes, would crush his beyond recognition. But a gentleman did not withhold his hand from a woman. And he had been raised to be a gentleman. “Ergo,” he whispered. He grit his teeth, and thrust his hand into the digital machinery.
Surprisingly, the woman seemed to have taken into account that the man before her was only a piano player. Her handshake, though not by any means indifferent, was surprisingly gentle. “Pleased,” she said. With her free hand, she grabbed a nearby chair, swung it into service. “I’ve got a message for you, from the mainland.” She lowered herself into the chair, which, Albert thought, groaned or gasped perceptibly.
“America?” said Albert.
Florrie tilted her head at him, reminding him of the Tiki carvings with which New Zealand abounded. “No. The mainland.” She jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “North Island.”
Albert would have wondered if it was an island, how could it be the mainland, but more pressing was his need to retrieve his hand from hers in a way that wouldn’t cause offense. “I need this,” he said, tugging gently.
“Eh? Oh! Oh, too right you do!” She loosed him and, with both hands, tinkled an imaginary piano in the air.
“You have a message for me?”
“Yes,” said Florrie. She skewered Milly with a sharp glance. “Too bad you’re too busy to stand there and eavesdrop, Mil.” She lifted a hand from the imaginary keyboard where it had been resting and shooed Milly with a significant twiddle.
Milly’s face responded with several expressions in quick succession but, as none answered the moment, she scraped them together for use at a future date, turned and left.
Florrie, after a quick survey of the room, leaned towa
rd Albert. “I got a call from my cousin, Ngaio—that’s my Uncle Rangai’s middle girl. Haven’t spoken to her in dingo’s years.” She looked at Albert as if this information should be significant.
“That’s a long time?” he hazarded.
“Too right it is! I’ve been married three times and had six kids since I saw her last! Might be dead and buried, for all she knew. Anyway, she had the operator run me down at the shop—I’ve got a shop.”
“A shop,” said Albert, to prove he was listening. “Yes.”
“So when I hear Ngaio’s voice, well, you could’ve struck me dead with a feather!”
Albert was trying to ignore the tattoo on Florrie’s chin, a maze of purple whirls, whorls, and spirals that danced in perfect syncopation with the movement of her lower lip. “A feather,” he echoed, unable to keep from imagining the size of the bird it would take to create a feather big enough to strike dead a woman of Florrie’s . . . substance.
“She gave you a message for me?”
“She did!” said Florrie, slapping his knee. She lowered her voice and pressed her face so close to his that he wondered if the ink would rub off. “The girl is with her,” she whispered.
“Girl?”
“The one from the hospital. The one you found on the beach.”
Albert had had no clue what to expect Florrie’s news might be, but of all the news he hadn’t expected—especially from a person of whose existence he had, only seconds earlier, been unaware via a person whose existence it was impossible to ignore—this was at the top of the list. “The girl from the beach?” he said, because that’s all his mouth could come up with without the participation of his brain, which was currently occupied by being overwhelmed.
“Says her name’s Suzie. She wants to see you.”
“Suzie?”
“So she says.”
“She wants to see me?”
“No one else.”
“What about . . .” the list of entities that might have been inserted at this point was almost endless, and his name was last on the mental list, “police, or the hospital, or . . .” He was about to add “Boy Scouts or Sunshine Girls,” when Florrie forestalled him with a wave of her hand.
“You or no one.” At this point, she leaned so close that Albert could almost feel the transfer of the tattoo from her face to his, and wondered what it would look like there, in reverse.
His mother wouldn’t approve.
Which reminded him that she was dead.
“Where is she?”
“Young fellow named Jimmy will pick you up at the airport.”
“In Auckland?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Craig flies the post out first thing in the morning,” said Florrie. “7:15.”
“Craig?”
“Craig Emeny,” said Florrie. “Our pilot.”
Why did so many things happen so early in the morning? Albert wondered. He was not an early morning person. “Why does she want to see me?”
“Far as I can make out, she found out it was you who found her.”
This didn’t answer the question to Albert’s satisfaction, and his face said as much.
“What’s up, A?” said Jeremy Ash, who, with Wendell attached, had just wheeled within earshot of the whispered conversation. “Who’s this?”
Albert had forgotten her name. “This is Jeremy Ash,” he said.
“Florrie,” said the woman, mangling his hand. “Pleased to meet you.”
“Florrie,” said Albert. “This is Florrie. She’s telling me about a phone call.”
Florrie cleared her throat. “Uh, I’m not sure . . .” She jerked her head at Jeremy Ash.
“He’s okay,” said Albert, inferring, correctly for a change, that she was hesitant to talk in front of the public at large. He gestured widely, with his eyebrows. “They all are. They know.”
“Oh, well then, that’s a relief,” said Florrie. “All this whisperin’, I was startin’ to feel like a steam radiator.” She needed no further prompting to tell her tale, which she did.
“Suzie,” said Jeremy Ash. “Now she’s got a name.”
“And she’s safe,” said Angela.
Dr. Chan wanted to know what Albert was going to do.
Albert didn’t know. He looked at Jeremy Ash Who said, “I think youneed to go see her. Get her story.”
Albert never thought of himself as a story-getter. Considering the possibility, he decided he wouldn’t be very good at it. And he was sure that, even if he should prove gifted at story-getting, he’d be useless at story-remembering or story-retelling. He had difficulty with details.
And nouns, verbs, and adjectives.
Maybe if she could hum what she had to say.
“I’ll go with you,” said James Simon.
“Me, too,” said Angela, then she blushed. She hadn’t meant to say that . . . so eagerly.
“We can all go,” said Jeremy Ash. “We’re done here.”
Albert retrieved the handles of the wheelchair from Wendell and wheeled its occupant to a convenient corner beyond the hearing of anyone else. A minute or so later, they came back. “He’s going to stay here,” said Albert, “with you.” He looked at Wendell.
Wendell nodded. “Sure. Okay. Why?”
“I need a rest,” said Jeremy Ash, “which I wouldn’t get if I had to wheel myself around, would I?”
Wendell’s responding smile dug dimples in his cheeks deep enough for a flea to get lost in. “Okay. Someone better tell Mr. S.”
“I’ll take care of that,” Angela volunteered; then, as an afterthought, said to Albert, “Is that where we’re going, back to Parliament Row?”
“No,” said Albert. “We’re going somewhere in a potato chip truck.”
If Albert entertained any apprehension about their ability to spot a potato crisp truck amidst the phalanx of vehicles in the airport parking lot, it would have been quickly allayed. First of all, it stuck out like a large predominantly yellow abscess in a monochromatic epidermis of lesser vehicles. Secondly, the letters forming the words Mr. Pookie’s Crisps and Pretzels were painted in garish colors that practically leapt from the background, seized the eyeballs with both hands, and dared them look away.
“Which truck do you suppose we’re looking for?” said Angela, facetiously. James Simon grinned. The Reverend was falling in love so, to him, her most off-hand observation was hilarious: a melancholy shading of her downy embrasure, tragic beyond expression.
On the plane they had tucked themselves in the narrow seats behind his and Dr. Chan’s and, though he couldn’t make out more than a scattering of words here and there, discerned from their tone the melody of mutual interest.
Now they were walking ahead of him, Dr. Chan, and Sergeant Jeffreys, and Albert noticed that, now and again, the hands that swung noncommittally at their sides, brushed one another.
Jimmy was standing beside the vehicle, cleaning his fingernails with a pocket knife, which he tucked quickly away when the shadows of the approaching quintet fell upon him. “Oh,” he said. “Right. I wasn’t expecting . . .” he was about to say “a crowd”, but amended it on the fly to “so many.” He was wondering where he could find room for three passengers amidst the still-undelivered boxes in the back. His attention drifted to Albert because he was the only one in the throng who looked like a piano player.
“Well, you sit in front with me, then,” said Jimmy, a little unsure of the protocol when an unexpected female accompanied the principal character. “Unless you’d rather the lady . . .”
“Oh, no!” said Angela. “Just shove me in back somewhere. I’m no stranger to cramped spaces.”
Albert wondered if she was thinking of the cell she and another woman had shared for three years, back in England, or perhaps the tiny triangle of stage she had carved for herself in the Tube station in London, from which she delivered impromptu violin concerts, or the cramped corner of carpet behind Judge Antrim’s chair, in Tryon, North Caro
lina, where his murderer had stood. Or some other confinement of which he knew nothing, but the look in her eyes sometimes hinted at. Those thoughts were quickly dispelled by her willingness to climb in back with James Simon.
“The sergeant has gone to call for a car,” said Dr. Chan. “He’ll give me a ride to the hospital, and I’ll start looking into this business of Dr. Almadu and company.” He leaned toward Albert and Simon. “And see if I can’t get a whisper as to where Dr. Marcos’ nurse, Patricia Hogan, might have got to.”
“Right, then,” said Jimmy—happy that the throng had been reduced to manageable levels. He started the truck. “We’re off.”
Because of their relative similarity in ages, Albert prepared for his young driver to be as talkative as Jeremy Ash. That was not the case. As the first couple of miles slipped by—though he tossed out a comment now and then, usually to draw attention to a point of interest or make a meteorological observation, neither of which required a response on Albert’s part—Jimmy appeared content to keep his thoughts to himself. It was Albert, oddly enough, who hazarded the first comment in what might, with careful nurture, become a conversation.
“Where are we going?”
“Helensville,” said Jimmy. “Yonder another forty kilometers. Thereabouts.”
Albert, though he’d heard the term a lot during his international travels, had never had much interest in learning how far a kilometer was in real distance. Not that it would have helped. Miles were no less a mystery.
“Helensville,” said Albert. “That’s where the girl is?”
“Well, I lie,” said the boy. “Not Helensville, exactly. That’s just where we turn off to go up the peninsula to Shelly Beach. She’s there, with my aunt and uncle.”
Albert nodded. “How did you find her?”
“Find her? That’s not on,” said Jimmy with a snort. “She found me.”
Thus uncorked, the boy became more and more Jeremy Ash-like as New Zealand unfolded beneath them, relating in detail his brief and startling association with the girl who called herself Suzie. “I don’t think that’s her real name,” he said. “Doesn’t fit her.”
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