“A little rough around the edges, was he?” That had always been Carolyne’s assumption before getting a counter-glimpse…of Jane and the Leider villa.
Kyle answered indirectly. “Before you can exploit platinum, gold, silver, or emerald finds, you have to do a lot of dirty digging to get to them; John was good at getting down in the dirt. Years in the wilds, with only animals for companions, didn’t match Harvard or Oxford as imparters of social grace.”
Carolyne found it difficult to imagine such a man master of all she’d surveyed at the Leider villa.
Kyle saw where Carolyne’s thoughts wandered. He emphasized the picture he’d painted. “He was the bull in that China shop. Not that he didn’t enjoy the role, because he wanted all the trappings. He liked the Leider name back in prominence. He liked the Fernelli beholden to him. Hadn’t Thomas Fernelli lorded it over everyone, John’s grandfather included, when the bottom dropped out of rubber? The Leider properties had been some of the first Thomas had swallowed up at rock-bottom prices. So many complicated egos, superegos, ids, libidos, and angst; enough Freudian stews to keep a team of psychoanalysts smacking their lips for years: all pretty much unrecognized and ill-understood by one poor simpleton who merely thought, ‘Isn’t Jane Fernelli beautiful, and wouldn’t it be grand to have her as my wife?’”
“You: that one poor simpleton?” She wanted to hear it again to be sure ‘poor and simpleton’ came off as ludicrous from her lips as it had from his; it did.
“Oh, I wasn’t always this suave, cosmopolitan, sophisticate you see before you.” He scratched one armpit, like a monkey.
Her laughter said more than words how Jane had come out on the short end of any bargain that had lost her Kyle. Carolyne didn’t forgive him for allowing Richard Callahan’s burning of jungle acreage for a video, but no one was perfect.
“To Arthur Fernelli, my dad was newly arrived and newly rich and took advantage of Arthur’s rampant cocaine, gambling, and womanizing habits, and his catastrophic business sense, to set up housekeeping on sacrificed Fernelli land; no matter the land had passed into Fernelli hands at the expense of gentry fallen on hard times.”
“Jane, I suppose, had nothing to say about anything?”
“She loves that house. She loves her jewels. She loves the haute couture of Paris. She loves the discos of New York. She loves being rich. She couldn’t survive poor, and even she had to know her father drained family coffers at a dangerous rate. I doubt she put up much of a fuss at the solution. I’m sure it was coincidence her father dropped dead two weeks after the wedding, no chance for him to reap the benefits of John’s hard-won money. There’s nothing clandestine about John’s disappearance, if you ask me; the jungle is a very dangerous place to be, as Gordon Wentlock might bear witness. It’s merely coincidence that John conveniently happened to disappear at a moment in time when Jane no longer needs him to bolster faltering finances.”
“You think she killed her husband, or had it done?”
“It’s so very easy for a man scorned to think only the very worst of the woman who scorned him.”
Carolyne was empathetic. All these years later, she still smarted at how Cornelius had opted for Margaret, that bit of rejection occurring without the additional indignity of Cornelius needing to balance bank accounts.
“Ironically, I can thank Jane for how well-off I am today.” The liqueur was warm in his stomach and provided an enjoyable flush behind the tan of his cheeks. “At the time of her engagement, I was as crushed as much as any of her other rejected swains, but my father was livid—for all the wrong reasons, many of which I’ve criticized in Arthur Fernelli. Dear dad had been hyped on the possibilities of our social upgrading. When I failed him in my failure to storm the palace and make off with the princess, he worked harder to make the Georni name something to be reckoned with. I certainly own more land than Jane, although those little plots of mineral-rich soil John left her are more valuable. If I have contacts in high places, whom I count as personal friends, that doesn’t mean Jane can’t buy the same favors.”
“A debt owed or one repaid: you allowing Richard to burn those acres of your land?” She had a one-track mind when an estimated one plant species bit the dust with every acre of rain forest burned. Kyle had no doubt she’d already advantaged the rumor grapevine; Carolyne confirmed. “Something to do with a problem similar to the one riding on Arthur Fernelli’s back.” There was something, even at her age, about an attractive, intelligent male, that made her want to shine—and simultaneously get his goat. “Cocaine?”
“Suffice it to say that the young man in question, a very silly son of an old family friend, is nonetheless the favorite of his father, the father so feeble as to the point he would most assuredly not have survived the apple of his eye having fallen on desperate times. I suspect the young man will eventually do something of equal foolishness, from which not even Richard Callahan’s connections will be able to extract him, but the old man should be dead, of more natural causes, by then, and I couldn’t be bothered.”
“It’s true, then, that this burn was the exception to your rule?”
“I no more want suffocation in an atmosphere of carbon dioxide than the next guy.”
Carolyne could expound the pros all day. “Not to mention the destruction of unique animals, insects, and plants, any of which could provide major scientific and medical breakthroughs.”
“Yes, not to mention those.”
“The land already cleared is sufficient for your needs?” She was dubious, because land claimed from the jungle wasn’t as fertile as the original lush growth would seem to insinuate. Continued fertility depended upon constant recycling of minerals from the ground, to vegetation, to ground again; that cycle broken by any introduction of livestock into the equation.
“I’ve more than enough money to last me a lifetime. A few less dollars and cattle, down the road, won’t change that.”
Outside, a car crunched gravel that wasn’t as pink as that of the Leider villa, but was definitely just as noisy.
“Company!” announced Kyle and knew, since the auto proceeded directly to the infirmary, that the newly-arrived was probably Rodrigo Barco. He was right.
Rodrigo greeted them with the news that the brake fluid of Richard’s wrecked car had purposely been drained. He asked after Richard’s health as the three proceeded into the infirmary.
An invisible Dr. Seln answered: “Not bad, as far as I can tell. No broken bones, a superficial head cut that bled a lot but isn’t deep. Of course, it’s hard to tell about bumps on the head, and he did receive a nasty one of those, probably when his car hit whatever the immovable object.”
Rodrigo had questions, but Richard was still unconscious.
Galin’s appearance was unexpected only in that Carolyne had expected it earlier. She’d forgotten he was scheduled for an afternoon shoot. He’d only just returned, steamed at Richard’s no-show, to hear of Richard’s accident from Roy. “Is Richard all right?”
Dr. Seln: “He’s momentarily in a coma, but that’s not uncommon in these cases. I won’t underestimate the potential for concern, but the prognosis is good. If he’s not come around by morning, I may amend.”
“Someone drained his car’s brake fluid.” Carolyne hadn’t missed Rodrigo Barco’s announcement, and she knew what it meant.
So did Galin: “Who’d want Richard dead?”
“Is Susan Delaney about five-eleven, auburn hair?” Carolyne’s subconscious had worked overtime. She had a good record of going to bed with a problem and awaking to solutions provided by sleep; this time she’d skipped the sleep.
“So are a lot of women, even in Brazil.” Galin’s rendition of the Richard-Susan altercation might have led Carolyne to such a conclusion, but, as far as he knew, Susan was a few thousand miles away.
Except, Carolyne was privy to information Galin didn’t have: “Richard met such a woman this afternoon, not all that long before his ‘accident’, and he didn’t seem all that happy
to see her.”
If the police inspector had even less facts than Galin, Rodrigo was soon filled in.
Rodrigo called his headquarters and gave someone Susan’s name and her description. He hung up and asked to speak with Carolyne in private.
“You two are sharing a lot of secrets these days.” Galin remembered Carolyne and Rodrigo’s tête-à-tête of that morning.
Rodrigo’s smile was noncommittal. He indicated by pantomime that Carolyne should join him on the porch. He led her down the stairs and invited her to join him on a stroll.
Carolyne was as curious as Galin; though, if Kyle had seemed unsurprised, it was because he was already aware of the subject about to be discussed.
To Carolyne, Rodrigo admitted to having had a talk with Felix, after one of Rodrigo’s men had spotted Felix doing some heavy drinking at the floating bar of the Tropical Hotel. Rodrigo, there, having confronted Felix with Carolyne’s reference to Felix and Margaret Crystin Ditherson having had an affair, during Cornelius Ditherson’s lifetime; Charles had by then confirmed all that Carolyne had told Rodrigo earlier. Rodrigo punctuated with a cough.
Carolyne guessed, right then and there, what had happened. “He denied it?”
Rodrigo admitted that Felix had done just that.
Carolyne had more trouble with Felix’s denial of the facts than she expected. “You believed him?”
Rodrigo assured that he was making every effort to check out the facts of Felix’s denial. At least for the moment, Rodrigo had concluded that Felix did have a logical reason for all of his meetings with Margaret Ditherson: valid above and beyond taking Margaret to bed.
“What reasons?”
But, as a matter of courtesy, Rodrigo had promised Felix to keep them confidential. However, Rodrigo did suggest that Carolyne might, sometime, want to bring up the subject with Felix, if just to put her own mind at ease; although Rodrigo wouldn’t suggest she do it any time soon. Felix was decidedly distraught that Carolyne had passed on her suspicions of adultery, with additional suspicions from Charles.
“May I remind you,” countered Carolyne, “that Charles saw them twice at that seedy hotel?”
Rodrigo admitted that Carolyne’s deductions, based upon the facts she had, were logical. And not until Rodrigo had thoroughly checked out Felix’s story would Rodrigo absolutely be assured that Felix’s explanations were the real ones. However, at the moment, Rodrigo was prepared to give Felix the benefit of the doubt.
“Without allowing me the facts to do the same?” Carolyne was disconcerted.
Rodrigo’s upturned hands gestured his helplessness. He had, after all, to respect Felix’s privacy, just as he had promised Carolyne, during the meeting with Carolyne, that morning, to keep Melanie in the dark.
“I see.” Except, Carolyne didn’t see.
Not that Rodrigo thought her wrong to have relayed the rumor; quite to the contrary.
Rodrigo steered them on an angle that intercepted the main house. He bid her farewell at the front porch and headed back to the infirmary.
Charles, Melanie, Teddy laid in ambush, and Carolyne was roped into telling her story of how she’d rescued Richard. In finale, she pleaded tiredness in a way that invited Charles to accompany her as far as her room.
When she farther isolated the two of them behind a closed door, Charles asked, “What’s up?”
She told him.
“You’re not serious! Felix came up with something Rodrigo actually bought?”
“That was my definite impression.”
“And he didn’t give you a clue as to what?”
“‘Ask Felix, but not any time soon’ was, I believe, how he put it.”
“Felix has probably been working on some logical cover story ever since you confronted him with his adultery. The man is no fool.”
Carolyne checked her watch. “Agreeing with that, I think my day would be improved by my having a short nap.”
Charles took the hint. “Yes, of course.” He did add, before parting, “You do look smashing.”
“You do say the nicest things.” She pecked him on the cheek in a way allowed between friends who went back as far and as long as they did.
When he was gone, it hit her how tired she was. Nonetheless, the nap she craved wasn’t summoned by her lying down. She settled for a leisurely wander along the upstairs outside balcony that was momentarily hers alone to enjoy.
There was a breeze, cool, as if it had managed the miles from eastern seaboard, or western glaciers, without a loss of chill. Carolyne faced it and the rustling leaves of a tree whose sole occupant, a macaw with scarlet plumage, sampled an assortment of green-to-overripe figs. The view through gnarled branches was of ranch buildings and parenthesizing pastureland. The only indication the ranch once sat in a claustrophobic choke of vegetation was an attractive island, here and there, of virgin trees: someone’s effort to control erosion by retention of occasional root matting. Carolyne considered such holdovers as genetic banks from which Mother Nature could someday draw for regeneration if and when some catastrophe erased interfering humans.
The balcony extended around the entire exterior of the second floor: an antebellum-like walkway hung on the same square pillars that supported the roof.
There was a lived-in quality to it all that Carolyne now realized she’d missed in the formal gardens, antique furnishings, and rose-quartz driveway of the Leider villa whose fairy-tale setting was look but don’t touch.
She was brought up short by movement in what had been Gordon’s room on their trip out. Now, Gordon dead, it was assigned to someone else.
Its curtains were pulled across its windows and French doors, but some piece of furniture interfered, or some flaw of the curtain mechanism made the cloth cocoon incomplete. A peephole offered itself through which Carolyne had spotted the movement.
Without forethought, she moved closer and expected a maid. However, it was Roy behind a desk.
Carolyne was embarrassed, her position easily that of a Peeping Tom. When Roy looked up, Carolyne’s wave was an automatic fancy spotting you there; she hoped she came off innocent.
To her surprise, he paid her no mind but returned to what he’d been doing. Obviously unseen, she felt wrapped in a Tarnhelm of permanent invisibility as she determined her view of him was secondhand, a mirror reflection of his section of the room.
There was nothing unusual about Roy’s examination of his notebook, but Carolyne felt uneasy about seeing and not being seen. She sidestepped to the French doors and knocked on a pane.
Roy had trouble with the curtains and the latch; they both finally opened. “Carolyne, how’s Richard?”
“The long-range prognosis is good, although he’s still unconscious.”
“Dr. Seln will have him up and around in no time.”
The jungle was safer with the pyromaniac bedridden, but she didn’t say so.
She was surprised when Roy invited her in; sometimes, she forgot the days were long gone when such an invitation might be misconstrued as something other than harmless.
He asked her something more about Richard; she calculated the angles of desk to mirror to window and asked him to repeat his question.
“He’s not said how it happened?” Roy complied.
“Rodrigo said the brake fluid was drained from Richard’s car.”
“Drained: as in attempted-murder drained?”
“Seems an old girlfriend may be in town from whom he parted on less than pleasant terms.”
“Thank God this one comes with a possibly logical explanation.” He motioned her into an easy chair. “Can I get you a Scotch? I’m afraid it’s the only thing I have on hand.”
Her two glasses of liqueur with Kyle had certainly produced some enlightening conversation. “Maybe a very small one.”
“Great!”
The bottle and tumblers were handy on a nearby dresser.
The segment of window through which she’d spotted him had a tendency to be glared over on the insi
de; her presence on the outside had been additionally disguised by distortions of the mirror’s surface on which he would have had to see her.
He brought her glass. She sipped very good Scotch; he sat across from her.
“I had tea with Jane Leider.” A now familiar refrain.
“The widow is out of mourning and into entertaining, is she?” It didn’t come out complimentary; he hadn’t meant it to.
“Kyle told me that you and he used to court Jane when her name was Fernelli.”
“Boasting, was he?” He sipped.
“Regretting might put it better.”
“Yes, maybe so,” Roy agreed.
“And you?”
He shrugged, settled back in his chair, and took another swallow.
Carolyne decided on another tack. “I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to pry. It’s just that, with Jane a suspect.” She left it at that, hoped for a response, and got it.
“You think Jane killed her husband, or Gordon? As for the latter, it would likely have been vice versa; it was she, after all, who wouldn’t give Gordon a tumble, even when he, like with every other woman within miles, tried.”
That was a bit of news. To mask her surprise, Carolyne swallowed too much Scotch and almost choked. By the time she recovered, flush from her efforts, Roy had wised up.
“You meant the death of her husband.”
“If John Leider is dead.”
“There is that, of course.” Where was the conversation headed, and was it any danger to him? “How is old Jane holding up? Did you know she and I are the same age? Of course, I haven’t had the benefit of a lifetime of creams, yearly injections of blender-reduced sheep glands, not to mention cosmetic surgery.”
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