Yes, Carolyne admitted that was once the case, but not anymore, as far as she was concerned, especially if, “You’re responsible for this, aren’t you?” She produced the folded newspaper that, until then, had been scrunched down in the seat beside her.
He didn’t have to see it to know what it was. “You think so?”
“You knew someone was after the film, and you didn’t trust Melanie to hold it. You stole her film chip of the corpse the very night she accused you of doing just that on your watch.”
“Fears that proved right, didn’t they? Firstly, when I thought she’d lost my unused substitute chip in the river. More so, when she turned it over to Rodrigo Barco with her aren’t I clever attitude. Clever? She doesn’t have half the smarts of her mother or father. Do you have any inkling why what she did was so stupid?”
“Because Rodrigo Barco can’t be considered objective. He’s too closely aligned with Kyle Georni who may have his own agenda that doesn’t include jungle for Lygodium cornelius. Were Kyle involved, the photos would have been lost the minute Rodrigo got hold of them.”
“Were Kyle Georni involved,” he echoed. “You don’t think it odd that this investigation plods along, Rodrigo and the government’s Jean-Michael Teruel in conference with Kyle at every turn?”
“Story and picture here, however,” she stabbed the paper, “possibly turn more objective eyes in this direction from the outside.”
“I was in Rio a couple of years back. A newsman I met complained the conference he attended was deadly dull. We kept in touch.”
“I’m delighted.”
“At least you sound sincere.”
“Believe!” She gathered up her paper and stood. In the meantime, be prepared for an angry Rodrigo. For the moment, he thinks Melanie pulled a fast one, but he won’t be fooled forever.”
Felix’s exhausted smile didn’t portray the I’m ready for anything enthusiasm Carolyne would have preferred. Still, her estimation of him had shot up by light-years.
Galin waited, not with liquor but with a map on the coffee table in front of him. “Ah, Carolyne. Was your latest private session eventful?”
“Actually, it was. What are you up to?”
“I thought a bit of sight-seeing to finish off the morning; I promise you lunch if you don’t put up too much of a fuss.”
On the way to the car, she told him Felix was responsible for the article and picture in the Rio paper.
“Doesn’t sound like someone trying to cover up his part in a conspiracy,” Galin decided.
“I don’t think he had anything to do with Gordon’s death.” She waited for his, “And?” but he didn’t do anything so predictable. “Just what are we sight-seeing, Galin?”
“Indulge me.” He eased the car into traffic and headed it northwest toward Ayrao. “I promise a site picked with you in mind.”
Carolyne lifted her old Australian bush hat off the backseat and squashed it down on her head; she tucked in the last of her recalcitrant curls. “Tell me more about Galin Balstrom, why don’t you?” She’d make the best of her voluntary captivity.
His hair was windblown and looked good that way. His smile was broad enough to splatter incoming bugs.
She coaxed: “I’m considering doing an in-depth piece for Rolling Rock Magazine.”
His laugh was a throaty rumble. “Stone, my dear, Carolyne. Rolling Stone magazine.”
“Whatever,” she confessed her stab in the dark.
“The magazine, by the way, already did a piece on me earlier this year.”
“I missed it, and I continue to be curious as to what takes anyone from Yale to rock and roll.”
“The sheer adventure of it. Something different from boarding school, prep school, ivy-league university, cotillion, white bread and mayonnaise. Which even you have to agree can be boring.”
“Your parents?”
“Junior League, DAR, SAR, stocks and bonds; charity balls, business luncheons; cocktail parties, dinner dances; country club, boardroom. Boredom!”
“Never once kept their rebellious son in check?”
“Ever know parents, worth their salt, who didn’t make the effort?”
She regretted a biological clock rundown before children she could make toe the line. Randolph, Jr., hadn’t counted, in more ways than one. “Do you know I’m old enough to be your mother?” It was one of those statements meant only for herself but inadvertently broadcast to the world.
“Not my ‘grandmother’?”
Her don’t tempt your luck look was diffused by his only kidding grin.
“I’ve always been attracted to older women.” It was BS, he knew it; she knew it; they enjoyed the saying and the hearing, anyway.
“So, what exactly did your mother and father say when you donned leather and spangles, not Brooks Brother and Cartier?”
“Besides, “my God!’?”
“‘My God!’ was assumed.”
“‘Please don’t bring home one of those spike haired, safety pin in nose bimbos,’ said my mother. ‘Remember, I’m here when it comes time to invest all of those rock and roll millions,’ said my father.”
They’d left the city behind. A glance back: vegetation, pasture, roadway. Ahead: more of the same.
“Galin, where are you taking me?”
“Not much farther.”
Carolyne took off her hat, ran her fingers through her hair, and returned the hat to her head. “Your parents finally accepted your career decision?”
“Did I mention they met in India, on a mountaintop, at the feet of the guru Marsheshi Boyour?”
“I’m sure I would have remembered.”
“It gave me a whip to keep them in line. Whenever they bemoaned leather and platform shoes, I’d retort, ‘At least, it’s not persimmon robes, sandals, and begging bowls.’ In the end, I guess they figured I’d end up where they are, where they want me, my road as diverse as theirs to get there.”
“Will you, do you think?”
“With costly castle in River Oaks; clothes by Burberry, Chupp, Stadler & Stadler, and J. Press; membership in The Eagle Lake ‘barn’; pew at the local Episcopal church; a son at St. Paul’s; a daughter at The Masters? Well, Carolyne, even I know the Rolling Stones—the group, not the magazine—look dumb as hell prancing the stage at their age. An eventual slide into a board of directorship slot at my father’s company even now sounds better than my strutting in Spandex, mascara, eyeliner, and lipstick, when I’m fifty-five.”
“You have a sister at The Masters?”
“Alas, you see before you an only child. My reference was purely rhetorical.”
“I’ve a goddaughter there in second term.”
“Can it be? Two blue bloods find each other, sans civilization?”
“I’m middle-class, through and through.” She didn’t boast or apologize. “I met Marilyn’s grandmother at U.C.L.A. She married well; her daughter married even better; we keep in touch.”
“No static from your parents when you wanted to gird your loins and trek the hellholes of the world?”
“Both my parents were teachers at a progressive coed school in Northern California. Plant hunting in hellholes sounded a fine option to them. It seemed even more so when I started making quite a success of it.” Was she bragging to impress him?
Galin stopped the Jeep. His right arm automatically extended sideways to stop her forward motion, even though she’d not forgotten to buckle in. “Do you see anything that looks like a road on our right?”
“You’re looking for one?”
He pulled a map from between his bare chest and jacket; it was where he’d returned the folded newspaper. “It says here: road.” The line was broken and squiggly.
“It’s a quarter mile back.” She’d spent a lifetime isolating all kinds of things from all kinds of landscapes. It’s dirt, between two trees.”
He U-turned; the centrifugal force took Carolyne’s balance away. “Slow a bit.” The exit was now easier to spot. They boun
ced along it for ten minutes.
His, “Not far” was another ten minutes to a house that had seen better times. Putting it in historical context was difficult because it had so many additions.
“Galin, what is this?”
He looked amused, not sinister. “The Wentlock Estate.”
“The what?”
“Cross my heart and hope to die.” He did the former and omitted the latter. “From here, granddad and dad Wentlock headed out to convert the noble savage, while grandmother and mother probably waited. From here, Gordon marched off on his career of guide, part-time prospector, and full-time Casanova.”
Carolyne hadn’t imagined Gordon lived anywhere this close. When the expedition had officially launched from the Georni Ranch, Gordon had been in residence within the room Roy and she had so recently shared over conversation and Scotch.
“How do you know this is the Wentlock place?”
“Money and a Galin Balstrom autograph will buy me all sorts of information.”
She spotted the Brazilian equivalent of POLICE LINE/DON’T CROSS. The ribbon hadn’t fared well in the heat and humidity. Once strung between two trees, one tree to either side of the roadway, it had broken off-center and fluttered each side, like a fraternity prankster’s colored toilet paper on sorority shrubs. “Maybe we should check on the jail sentence imposed for trespassing in these parts?”
“Carolyne, where is your sense of adventure?” He was beyond the downed ribbon. Peeping in the window invited him more than a try of the door.
A young woman appeared suddenly from around one side of the house. She spoke rapid-fire Portuguese, and Galin’s resulting, “What?” indicated he was at a complete loss.
“She wants to know who we are,” Carolyne translated.
“Americans,” Galin identified, but it required Carolyne to put the English into Portuguese.
The result: “She wants to know just what it is we Americans want.”
The woman’s black hair was long and pulled back; it dangled unruly strands that stuck to the perspiration on her forehead. Her once white blouse was soiled; her black shirt was dusty. Her feet were dirty within decidedly filthy rubber thongs.
Carolyne couldn’t imagine where any of this was headed.
The woman spouted more Portuguese.
“She says,” and Carolyne couldn’t believe the woman thought that they didn’t know Gordon dead, what with police DO NOT PASS ribbons still fluttering from the trees, “that if we leave a message, she’ll see that Gordon gets it.”
“Perhaps you can explain this, Miss,” Galin said and stepped in closer to the woman, removed the newspaper secured within his shirt, and pointed to the grisly photograph of Gordon’s corpse which had been folded into prominence.
Everything about the woman’s reactions said that the revelation, supplied her by Galin’s index finger banging at the newspaper photo, was the result of genuine surprise. Her eyes went wide. She bit her lower lip so hard that it actually started to bleed. Her punctuating faint had none of the artistic, theatrical grace of the one performed by Alexandra Mata Jornella Georni, upon the latter’s learning Gordon was definitely dead. This faint simply pitched the woman forward, face first; she hit the ground with a resounding thud.
“Galin, for heaven’s sake!” Carolyne was furious by his lack of tact, not to mention his inability (more likely his non-attempt) to have broken the woman’s fall.
Galin remained unfazed. “Who do you suppose she is, and what do you suppose she’s doing here?” Rather than provide better late than never succor, he headed around the house in the direction from which the woman had come.
Carolyne couldn’t do much without smelling salts and/or cold water, except to turn the woman over so she wouldn’t suffocate. Carolyne slapped her gently, with no success. “Galin, do give me a hand!”
“Maybe, you’d better give me a hand?” he offered in alternative, as he appeared with a dirt-encrusted metal box. “Seems we interrupted our little squirrel, here, digging up, or digging down.”
“Put that back before she wakes up!” Carolyne didn’t mean it; she knew she didn’t; he knew she didn’t.
“I think not.” His grin was mischievous. “Retrieved from a hole dug at the side of the Wentlock house. Hers, do you suppose? Gordon’s?”
Carolyne couldn’t decide whether she wanted the woman awake, to protect against the rifling of private property, or unconscious, to allow Carolyne and Galin carte blanche in satisfying their curiosity.
Carolyne thought Galin had a change of mind when he put down the box and came on over without it. No doubt about her disappointment. “What are you doing?” she asked.
“Taking off my belt. I’ll need yours, too.”
“Why are we taking off our belts?”
“Nothing more ominous than obtaining ties for the lady’s hands and feet, Carolyne. What did you think?”
Carolyne hadn’t known what to think. This was new to her; she had no term of reference.
“Well, are you going to give me yours, or not?” He was down and had gathered the woman’s wrists. “Mine won’t suffice for her feet as well.”
“Why tie her?” It was something for Carolyne to say as she peeled her belt from its loops and handed it over. She knew, as well as he did; he told her anyway.
“We wouldn’t want her to wake up from her faint, see us rifling the box, and think we were up to anything we shouldn’t be. She’d get upset, and somebody might get hurt.”
“Maybe we should take her and the box to Rodrigo Barco.”
“Maybe.” It wasn’t confirmation. “And, maybe, that would assure we’d never be privy to what this box contains. Do you think Felix would pass it on, before he knew what was inside, were he in our shoes?”
Felix’s level of confidence in Rodrigo had been emphasized by putting the film chip in the hands of a newspaperman in Rio. Still, there was something about what they were doing, well rationalized or not, that wasn’t particularly on the up and up. “Where are you going?” she asked, as he headed for the Jeep, not for the box that looked far more inviting.
“To find something to pry open the lid. The odds aren’t in favor of us divining the right combination. My expertise as a locksmith, or safecracker, isn’t the best. If yours is better, be my guest.”
By the time he produced the lug wrench, Carolyne had the box unlocked: no skill involved beyond the memory of a combination lock on a briefcase given her by her first husband—back when they were civil enough with each other to still exchange gifts. She never had followed the instructions to change the combination from its original 0000. Apparently, whoever owned this box—Gordon? the woman? someone still out of the picture?—had been just as lazy.
“You’re marvelous!” He threw the wrench back into the Jeep with a “Clunk!” and walked to where Carolyne, considerate accomplice that she was, waited with the lid opened only far enough to tell its latches were released. He squatted, both of his feet flat on the ground, his ass almost brushing the ground; it was a position Carolyne had never mastered: her feet had a disconcerting tendency to lift up on her toes and throw her off balance. “Carolyne, do us the honors, if you would, please.”
She’d gone too far to stop. Divine permission had been granted when she’d so easily cracked the combination code. She lifted the lid and let it hang open on its hinges.
“Nothing immediately exciting to catch the eye,” was Galin’s initial, disappointed judgment.
Carolyne’s heartbeat agreed and shifted into a lower gear. She picked up the weather-beaten notebook and identified it immediately as another example of something she’d seen more than once before. “A field book of record. Finds. Purchases. Sales. Trades.” At first, she thought it was Roy’s; Jane Leider’s collection had been larger and hardbound. It wasn’t Roy’s, but Carolyne, who had seen only one emerald in the rough, recognized at least two of the drawn reproductions as duplicates of diagrams in Jane Leider’s possession. One of those had, also, been included in
Roy’s record book. “The ‘J’ emerald.” She left the page open so Galin could see the diagram and the notes indicating the peculiarities of the gem’s inclusions.
“The one Melanie picked up, you mean?” He pointed to the gibberish written directly above or below notations of carat, color, inclusions, and crystal structure. “What’s that?”
“Code, I expect.” She flipped the pages and found what she wanted up front: a standard alphabet down one side of the page, offset by a haphazard jumble of the other letters in a parallel line directly across. “Code!” she confirmed. “And, conveniently, its key. When a gem is found, or a transaction occurs, the specifics are recorded here. If the information is, then, transferred, other than directly, the code is used to confuse anyone who intercepts but shouldn’t. Who can ever know who’s listening?”
“Well, you have been busy soaking up pertinent local arcana.” Galin reached for the box’s other content, a crumpled ball of cheesecloth.
Carolyne hadn’t told him her most important deduction: she figured the notebook belonged not to the woman, not to Gordon Wentlock, but to the missing John Leider. The “J” emerald entries recorded its purchase date from Roy Lendum, but no sale or trade. The other diagram she’d recognized from this field notebook, and from the hardbound version at the villa, had a discovery date and location, again no record of sale or trade.
“Well, what do we have here?” If Galin’s tone wasn’t enough, the sudden flash of sunlight off green gemstone rolled from the cheesecloth caught Carolyne’s attention and made her gasp.
It was definitely a large piece of emerald: part of a larger, albeit missing, piece of hexagonal crystal. The distinctive fracture of one edge zeroed Carolyne immediately to its diagram in the notebook. “It and a companion piece were discovered at a place called Aquaval.” She’d bet money the same diagram, with the same coordinates, and the same accompanying information coded and deciphered, was in a book at the Leider villa.
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