Amaz'n Murder

by William Maltese

  “Wouldn’t you agree that’s enough?”

  Melanie nodded.

  When they rejoined the men, it wasn’t Melanie’s photographs any longer in question.

  “Unbelievable!” Teddy didn’t look happy. He slapped his hat against his right thigh; no dust resulted, but there was a spray of dampness and perspiration. “I tell you, I heard and saw the animal.”

  “No one denies the animal,” Roy argued. “It’s the time sequence suddenly in question.”

  This perked Melanie’s ears, even before her uncle’s follow-up, “It just pulls Felix’s bonk on the head, and the radio’s destruction, in out of left field.”

  “What does?” Carolyne asked.

  “Roy here.…” Teddy’s hat-holding hand irritatingly swung in the prospector’s direction. “…says we’ve a murder.”

  “Murder?” Melanie and Carolyne harmonized; Melanie, already weak, accepted Carolyne’s offer of momentary physical support.

  “Something about rocks in the head,” Charles added cryptically. He corrected: “Rather, rock on the head.”

  “This rock in particular.” Roy knelt on one knee and turned back the upper edge of the blanket they’d used to cover the body. Most of the dead man’s face remained blessedly concealed.

  “On which Gordon hit his head when the jaguar took him down?” Carolyne interpreted.

  “Wrong sequence of events,” Charles corrected but left Roy to provide specifics.

  “No way would that rock be there for his head to hit, if left to Mother Nature.”

  “I don’t understand,” Melanie confessed.

  Once again, Carolyne was quicker on the uptake. “It’s river rock.”

  “So agrees our visiting geologist,” Charles confirmed.

  “Just over there is the river,” Melanie pointed in that direction.

  “And there the river has been for a very long time, geologically speaking,” Roy explained. “But, dig down to bedrock, anywhere on this side of the river, and you’ll not find another stone like this one, here. It’s water-smooth and round.”

  “Rivers flood,” Teddy reminded. “Stones in those rivers bang together and get smooth.”

  “Indeed,” Roy agreed. “However, indicative geology says this river always floods eastward. It’s a matter of a steep western gradient formed by an intrusion of igneous rock along an ancient fault line.”

  “All you grad students understand?” Charles was delighted by his comprehension. “We’re right back to passion as a motivation for murder.”

  “You’re back to saying I killed him, you silly old fool?” Teddy challenged.

  “Self-defense is an acceptable motive for murder,” Charles reminded. “Maybe, that rock was meant for your head before you wrestled it away from him.”

  “Assisted by a conveniently handy hungry jaguar? Take my word: had I wanted Gordon dead, I would have shot him and dumped his body where no on would ever find it.”

  “Stop, you two!” Carolyne insisted.

  She turned back to Roy who seemed the only man present with his full wits about him. “Let me see if I’ve this geology stuff straight.”

  He obliged by reiterating in layman terms. “The river flows along a fault line with harder rock on this side than on the other. The softer, more easily eroded, soil has always seen the water flood in its direction. No matter the volume, the water wouldn’t naturally have put that river rock, here, where it presently is. To have it here, someone would have had to go to the river and get it.”

  “There’s always the possibility someone, for some other reason than murder, toted that rock here,” Carolyne pointed out. “There was once a substantial Indian population in residence, correct?”

  Melanie confirmed, in that her father’s journals had mentioned as much. “Likewise, prospectors, geologists, anthropologists, zoologists, lepidopterists, botanists, and who knows who else tramp, tramp, tramping through.”

  “The world is full of weirder coincidences than a man attacked by a jaguar and gone down to hit his head on a rock brought in by natives to sharpen spear points.” Carolyne decided that was a more comfortable alternative than murder.

  Teddy turned on Charles. “If you don’t buy that, you old fool, how about you as the killer?”

  “I?” Apparently, Charles found that notion so ludicrous that it bore repeating. “I? Why would I want Gordon dead?”

  “He attacked your niece. You weren’t the one to protect her. That must have played havoc with your manliness.”

  “Absurd!” Charles looked around for additional support.

  “You have an alibi for the time of the murder?” Teddy pressed; Melanie wished he’d quit goading her uncle, and vice versa.

  “You tell me the exact time of the murder,” Charles said, craftily, “and I’ll tell you exactly where I was.”

  “It’s doubtful any of us have alibis.” Carolyne figured it was time to pull them together, their bickering not helping anything. “Gordon died between leaving Charles on the other side of the gully and.…”

  “With him at the last, weren’t you, old man?” Teddy interrupted.

  “Please!” Melanie gave a small tug on Teddy’s muscled arm; he glowered but shut up.

  “Just when did he leave you, Charles?” Carolyne stepped in.

  “Eleven o’clock. I waited until almost noon to cross back over that rotting tree trunk he insisted was a viable bridge.”

  “He told you where he was headed, did he?” Teddy remained prosecutorial; Melanie suspected it was in return for Charles’ romantic fantasies, but she couldn’t enjoy her uncle pitifully on the defensive.

  “He was going to the toilet if you must know.”

  “Mighty long potty break,” Teddy decided to no one’s appreciation but his own.

  “He complained of dysentery. We’ve all had it.”

  Teddy enjoyed the spotlight shifted to Charles; Melanie continued to think her fiancé cruel to bombard her uncle who, despite all his ridiculous conjecture, had always given Teddy the out of self-defense. “I figure Charles followed Gordon, did the dastardly deed, and scurried back to camp before I found what his obliging accomplice, the jaguar, had left of the corpse.”

  “Even I could have gotten here and back without being seen,” Melanie emphasized Carolyne’s earlier comment that any one of them could have committed the deed—if the deed had been done.

  Teddy didn’t like her blood-thicker-than-water attitude. “Melanie had a motive, too, did you, my dear, having been mauled by Gordon even if in a different way than Gordon was mauled by the jaguar?”

  Melanie’s response was sarcastic to cover her hurt. “Thank-you so much for that!” She broke all physical contact with him and moved apart. “How quickly I’ve gone from poor little thing, hardly up to photographing a dead man, to cold-blooded killer responsible for making the man dead in the first place.”

  Teddy looked apologetic but didn’t say as much. This did little to endear him to Melanie who stepped closer to Charles without completely closing the gap; Charles’ accusations remained as ridiculous.

  “Let’s leave the cross-examination to those more qualified, shall we?” Carolyne couldn’t swallow the love sick psychopath, the jealous fiancé in self-defense, the irate uncle, or the Melanie only got kissed, as real motives for murder. Maybe, she was too old to remember intense passion sparked by love, lust, infatuation, or whatever, but this Gordon-Melanie-Teddy-Charles quadrangle seemed too sophomoric as foreplay to murder. Pretty young women, even those with good-looking fiancés, had always flirted with other handsome young men; those same young women, as often as not, having second thoughts when things got too far out of hand. The world over, fiancés defended their bruised honors by fisticuffs, not murder. It was a rite of passage that only occasionally exploded into the seriousness of homicide. Besides, Gordon had simply not seemed all that smitten by Melanie, or all that resentful of his well-deserved comeuppance at the hands of Teddy, to go off the deep end and get himself killed in
the process. As for her even imagining that Charles hit Gordon with a stone carried from the river, her mind’s-eye picture of that would have made her laugh aloud if not for the sobering body laid out less than six feet from her.

  “Do we bury the evidence?” Roy’s question sounded more aptly put to cohorts in a crime than to the present group; belatedly, Carolyne realized he referred to the body. “If so, we’ll have to take him across the river, in that any grave in this insufficient layer of topsoil invites vulnerability.”

  Carolyne didn’t ask, “Vulnerability to what?” what with a hungry jaguar still on the prowl. Claws that had done what they had already done would have little trouble displacing a few feet of newly turned soil. Nor did she need it pointed out that any grave on the other side of the river was vulnerable, in its own right, albeit to subtler despoilers, like heat, moisture, and bacteria. Things were recycled mind-bogglingly fast in surroundings like these. Obviously, the killer, if there was one, had taken advantage by assuring expert analysis of his deed was more than a week away. Whatever forensics had to work with when they arrived, it wouldn’t be nearly as good as if a radio transmission or satellite-transmitted SOS had brought them running sooner.

  “Definitely, I don’t think we should give the jaguar another chance at him,” Charles decided. “Surely, between us, we can get him to a suitable site and buried deep enough.”

  “I say we inter him behind the waterfall.” It was a suggestion made by Carolyne with some trepidation. She hadn’t liked Gordon all that much, and antagonizing his possible killer wasn’t something at the head of her to-do list. On the other hand, she never took kindly to people who played God, let alone to those who tried to put something over on her. If Roy hadn’t pointed out the incongruity of that particular stone, would Carolyne have seen it on her own? Probably not.

  She tried to minimize her present cleverness, in the eyes of any killer who might take umbrage to her efforts to thwart him. “The cave is closer and more convenient than ferrying the body across the river.”

  “Brilliant!” Melanie congratulated. “It’s cooler, too, isn’t it? The body will be better preserved when the authorities finally do arrive on the scene.”

  Silently, Carolyne bemoaned Melanie having brought that to the attention of any killer. In consolation, it was unlikely any killer would have missed the obvious even if Melanie hadn’t spelled out the obvious. Which was no derogatory reflection on Melanie’s intelligence, except so far as Carolyne, never a beauty herself, had an inherent bias that made it difficult to equate prom queen with discoverer of a possible cure for cancer. She sometimes forgot the genes of Cornelius Ditherson were locked somewhere within that attractive package. Charles, not too shabby a scientist in his own right, had arisen from that very same impressive gene pool.

  “Natural refrigeration, so to speak.” It wasn’t a question but Teddy pondering that possibility. “It might work.”

  “It’ll certainly be worth the try,” Roy agreed.

  “There are those natural niches in the cave wall,” Melanie reminded. “We can put Gordon in one of those and block it off with stones.”

  “Stones big enough to thwart any recovery attempts by Mr. Hungry Jaguar,” Charles added his congratulations.

  “Two at a time on the litter,” Roy summated logistics, “the third walking shotgun and trading off duties with the other two.” Felix, back at camp, wasn’t counted. “The ladies can devote full-time to making sure the cat doesn’t appear unexpectedly.”

  The speed and ease with which everyone fell into litter construction and assigned roles denoted universal acceptance. Although, Carolyne hardly expected the killer, if there was one, to draw attention to himself by arguing for a less acceptable—except for him—alternative course of action.

  They were headed out when Melanie was distracted by a faint glitter of green. She stooped to retrieve the cause from the otherwise concealing mat of leafy decay. “Something else I suspect Mother Nature didn’t put here?” she said and held up her discovery for more light.

  “Is that an emerald?” Charles asked in amazement. Walking shotgun, he’d seen Melanie kneel to claim the prize. Now, preferring a professional opinion: “Roy, my niece has a possible emerald, yes?”

  None too ceremoniously, the litter, with Gordon on it, was lowered by Teddy and Roy, the latter’s expertise immediately available.

  “Damn if it isn’t one of mine!” Roy surprised after his initial examination of the stone that wasn’t overly large but definitely a beauty as far as its deeply translucent green was concerned.

  “My niece found it while you were hitched to the litter,” Charles indignantly begged to differ; he snapped the gem from Roy’s hand.

  Roy realized his announcement had sounded like a bully staking claim to some little weakling’s prize marble. “I mean, it was once part of a cache I brought back from the headwaters of the Jurua.”

  “So, what’s it doing here?” Teddy waited for Melanie to take the stone from her uncle and pass it on.

  “Beats me. I sold it to John Leider awhile back.”

  “How can you be so sure it’s the same stone?” Teddy was doubtful. “One emerald looks pretty much like another, yes?”

  Roy had news for him. “Gems of this exceptional green don’t grow on trees. They’re damned hard to come by, and I remember every one I ever had the luck of finding.” He retrieved a small spiral notebook from his shirt pocket, shuffled its pages, and pointed to a pencil drawing. “That’s it; its inclusions form a distinctive ‘J,’ just slightly to the left of center. John’s wife’s name, Jane, starts with a J, too, and he was hot to have it. I jacked up the asking price, because of his obvious anxiousness to have it, and he still bought it.”

  “Inclusions?” Teddy held the emerald elevated between his thumb and forefinger; it converted all refracted light into green sparks.

  “Its flaws.” Roy wasn’t a jeweler explaining stone qualities to a prospective buyer; he was a jeweler begrudgingly indulging questions from some know-nothing bum who’d accosted him on the street. “It’s how you tell the real things from the fakes; it’s the fakes, in the case of emeralds, that are always perfect.”

  “So, does this expand our list of suspects by putting Mr. Leider at the scene of the crime?” Suddenly, Charles was willing to welcome that additional scapegoat.

  “There’d be a lot of people interested to hear it, if it does,” Roy revealed. “Jane Leider included. John was due back in Manaus ages ago, but his wife insists he’s never shown.”

  “Disappeared in order to off Gordon?” Teddy was magnanimously as anxious as Charles to shift the blame outside the immediate group.

  “I can’t imagine John misplacing an emerald, let alone this one,” was the way Roy saw it. “Besides, I’d know if he’d reappeared around these parts.”

  “Maybe, my unexpected appearance on the murder scene didn’t give him time to realize the emerald was gone,” Teddy suggested.

  “Meaning, we should keep our eyes peeled for a two-legged John Leider as well as a four-legged jaguar?” Charles ventured.

  “Cheery thought!” Carolyne’s tone came across anything-but.

  “Congratulations, Melanie, it’s a beautiful stone and will make a nice souvenir.” Roy watched the gem pass back to its latest discoverer’s hands.

  “I get to keep it?” Possession pleased her, despite the tragic circumstances.

  “At least until Mr. Leider comes to collect it,” Teddy said ominously; it wasn’t something Melanie wanted to hear; having heard it, she was sorry Teddy was so killjoy.

  “Finders-keepers, I suspect,” Roy was more optimistic. “Of course, the authorities will want to take a look.”

  “All chocked up as a very interesting interlude, but shouldn’t we get Gordon taken care of before nightfall?” Charles suggested. “I suspect both our jaguar and Mr. Leider have better night vision than we do.”

  The ensuing burial proved anticlimactic, the trip down to the river and behind
the falls entirely without incident. One of several niches was sufficiently large so that Gordon fit without any undignified efforts to stuff him into a better fit. Convenient rocks, fallen from the cave ceiling over the centuries, made only a few additional stones necessary from the river.

  The natural chill of the cave was enhanced by the sounds of the water that curtained the entrance without splashing anything but a leading lip of stone.

  Roy asked Carolyne if she would read something appropriate from his weather-worn miniature Old Testament. She chose the “Twenty-third Psalm.” That walk through the valley of the shadow of death was an old standard that always fit. She’d learned early that anyone who spent time in the wilderness should be prepared for the eventuality of dying there—herself or others.

  Back at the campsite, they apprised Felix of the situation. He surprised Carolyne with his personal interpretations, and thankfully he did so in a private conversation. Had he publicly voiced his opinions, he would have found Carolyne completely unsure how to have handled them.

  “If you ask me, put the blame squarely on you, or on Charles,” said Felix.

  Carolyne was flabbergasted by that insinuation. “On me? On Charles?” The echoing of his words was all she could manage.

  “What has the death of Gordon accomplished, huh? It’s nipped this little expedition right in the bud. It puts us on a beeline out of here, not only because we don’t have a guide to take us farther, but because that guide’s death, possibly by foul play, must be reported.”

  This, as far as Carolyne was concerned, didn’t tie Charles or her to any murder.

  “Neither you nor Charles wanted this trip to succeed.”

  It was a statement, not a question, and it left Carolyne wondering from where he and his lunatic accusations came. “I gave up a chance to teach at Oxford to assure the success of this trip!” She thought him mad!

  “Assure its success, or assure its failure?” He allowed her no more than her what an absurd notion gasp. “The last thing you want is more accolades for Melanie’s father. Cornelius Ditherson had way too many while he was alive, didn’t he? Had way too many after he married Margaret instead of you, yes?” Her look of drop jawed surprise didn’t fool him. “Did you think none of us saw what was going on when you pulled out, claiming an offer you couldn’t resist from JanEx Pharmaceuticals?”