“Aquaval?” he queried; she could tell the name rang a bell. “That’s where Gordon took us for the Amaz’n Galin shoot, and John Leider did all the shooting—with a gun—at us.” He more closely examined the cheesecloth for the gem’s companion stone. When he didn’t find it, he checked the box for anomalies to indicate a hidden compartment.
The unexpected scream of rage scared them. The revived woman’s look of pure hatred would have scared them even more if Galin’s precautions hadn’t assured she could do little more than make her horrendous noise.
“Yours?” Galin had understood that much of her tirade. “I suppose you haven’t heard, ‘Finders keepers, losers weepers’?”
Carolyne had her own line of interrogation. “If it’s yours, you know where it was originally mined, don’t you?” She tapped the notebook. There was always the chance the woman had overheard or previously read the pertinent entry. Then, again.…
The woman’s screamed answer was translated by Carolyne to the effect that Gordon had mined and given the woman the emerald. The woman didn’t have a clue where it had been mined.
“The late-dead Gordon Wentlock,” Galin said, dubious in the extreme, “gave it to her because she was—his lover? his sister? his friend? his wife?”
“Seems she and he were to be married,” Carolyne was soon able to supply. “When Gordon got back, this last time, he was going to take her to Paris and to Rome.”
Unfortunately for this hysterical woman, Carolyne had heard the same story before, albeit from the supposedly distraught Alexandra Mata Jornella Georni.
“I’m afraid, my dear,” Carolyne was now able to console, “that you’re not the first woman to have heard such promises of marriage, of Paris, and of Rome—from the lips of the now-dead Gordon Wentlock.”
The woman’s reply, according to Carolyne, was that: the other women were playthings, toys. Gordon needed them, but only as a thirsty man needs water. Temporarily cured of such mundane thirst, he could and did throw them aside.
Galin marveled at the ego of some women. “This one special?” His voice was thick with sarcasm.
Undoubtedly recognizing a put-down when she heard one, although she didn’t entirely understand its wording, the woman launched into another barrage of Portuguese at which Carolyne could only guess, in the end, came out something about: Did they think Gordon left an emerald for any of his other women?
“How do we know how many emeralds he’s squirreled away, around Brazil, for how many of his bimbo ladies, lady?” Galin answered, and Carolyne relayed.
“She says he left emeralds for none of the others,” Carolyne provided the woman’s answer in English.
“Well, this little booklet suggests otherwise,” Galin said as he reached for the record which Carolyne handed to him. “See!” He flipped the pages for the woman to see, and he immediately pinpointed three diagramed stones with no sales records.
“She says that Gordon had those with him.”
Galin shrugged would you believe? “She does figure herself special,” he said and made it sound as if she were delusional.
“What’s your name?” Carolyne moved interrogation to a more personal level.
The woman’s lips pursed tightly, without any sound.
Galin wanted more blunt persuasion: “Ask if she thinks the people around here aren’t going to identify her when it’s the police doing the asking.”
“She wants to know if we’re the police,” Carolyne came back. Then, she added on her own for Galin’s benefit: “The police will have to be notified.”
More rapid-burst Portuguese from the woman that left Galin unable to catch the gist, and left Carolyne, once again, to make any sense of it.
“She insists that Gordon promised the emerald in the box would be hers.”
“Tell her the police will turn it over to her, after they confirm her story.”
Hearing that idea, though, the woman made protest.
“She says,” said Carolyne, “that the police will keep it.”
“Because they’re crooked, or because they’ll discover it’s not really hers?” Galin wondered aloud.
“She says the emerald is her nest egg, in case anything happened to Gordon.”
“And something did happen to Gordon,” Galin confirmed, “except she wasn’t convinced until I showed her the newspaper photo. So, why do you suppose we caught her prematurely digging?”
When asked, the woman was ready with an answer.
“Seems Gordon has always come back to her before, hasn’t he? She should believe the police when they tell her he’s dead but have no body to show her? No! The police are all liars. Gordon didn’t trust them. She doesn’t trust them, either. She still finds it hard to trust what’s printed on your newspaper. She must think long and hard. As for her emerald—and it is hers, if Gordon is dead—she digs it up regularly just to see and fondle it…to touch its greenness…to taste its coolness against her tongue. Have we never had an emerald?”
“Can’t say as I have,” Galin admitted.
“Same here,” Carolyne echoed. “So, she says we can’t know the way properly to treat one. Gordon taught her to spread out whatever such gems, everyday, and to arrange them to catch the available light. ‘Emeralds are miracles to be enjoyed, things so long buried they savor the light and thrive on it.’ That’s what Gordon told her. That’s what she does—when she’s not interrupted by American thieves—because that’s what Gordon always did.”
Galin rolled his eyes. “She digs up her pet rock to feed and pet it.”
“She says her name is Talina, and that she is definitely Gordon’s number one woman.”
“Well, Talina, Gordon’s number one woman, among god only knows how many other number one women.…” Galin’s words dripped sarcasm. “…we have to turn you and your emerald over the authorities.”
Talina watched warily as Galin returned the emerald to the cheesecloth, and, then, deposited it, along with the notebook, back into the dirt-encrusted lock-box.
CHAPTER TEN
It was more frequent as Carolyne got older: this waking in the morning to the disgruntled realization that not nearly enough sleep had been crowded into the night before. Her daily nap never seemed long enough, either, to provide the freshness a shorter nap had once provided. In either case, the depression lasted only until Carolyne showered and donned fresh clothes.
By the time she opened the door to head down for breakfast, she was glad to be alive and knew she wasn’t on her last legs by a long shot.
Galin exited his room at the same time. He was “in costume”, but not the costume Carolyne expected. He smiled; she liked the way he always managed to come across as delighted to see her, whether that was the case or not.
“Crossover: is that what it’s called when an artist makes the transition from one style to another?” she wondered aloud. “This look is ‘country’?”
He looked good in vest, boots, and faded jeans; shirt open at the collar to show a tied black kerchief and an enticing peek of muscle scalloped cleavage; a gaucho hat hung on his back by a string anchored around the front of his throat.
He launched into a short rendition of Home, Home, on the Range that made the vision complete. It was the first time Carolyne had heard his singing voice, which was low and mellow, with a distinctive, gravelly purr that raised gooseflesh on an old lady who’d heard many a bona-fide western singer extol the delights of deer and antelope at play.
“I’m off to rustle up this evening’s grub.” He struck a pose that put all of his weight on one leg, his other leg slightly bent to give his pelvis a suggestively sexy tilt. He hooked his thumbs in his front pants pockets in a way that would have had his fingers downwardly parenthesizing his crotch if not for what was in his right hand. “There’s to be a barbecue of one whole cow—or is it, one whole cattle? steer? bull? little doggie? A couple of the hands asked if I’d like to help muster up the chow.”
To Carolyne, his apparent slide from one social stratum
to another seemed impressively effortless; he could charm uneducated, macho, Brazilian cowpokes with the same ease he charmed his peers in the country club back home, charmed his groupies, and charmed Carolyne whenever he had a mind to. She envied him the variety of his chameleon life-style; she’d never been nearly that at ease and had an edge that rubbed some people the wrong way. “My only suggestion would be to wear those, and she nodded to the silver spurs in his hand, “on the heels of your boots, not on your fingers.”
“You think they’re serious about these?” He dangled the spurs. “I mean, do you believe these? How do they keep from disemboweling a horse?”
She took one and spun its serrated rowel. Satisfied, she upturned it and ran the wheel along the underside of her arm. “Sufficiently dull to be horseback effective but not cause fatal personal injury if you fall over your own two feet.”
“Only if you say so.” He dropped into one of the chairs that lined the hallway and fastened the spur in his possession to one boot. When finished, he duplicated the maneuver with the spur Carolyne handed over.
He stood, stamped his feet against the hall runner and produced chimes from silver against silver. “Why don’t you postpone whatever you’re up to and join me on roundup?”
“I think not.” She’d ridden more than her share of horses; in younger days, she would have been as game as Galin. However, any horseback riding she wanted now would need be leisurely and not with good natured cowpokes out for good natured fun.
They headed for the stairs amid the pleasant jingle of his every accompanying footstep.
“Have you been downstairs yet this morning?” Carolyne recognized his youth as less susceptible to the demands for sleep, and she suspected his present clothes might well be his second for the day.
“I was stealing a piece of bacon from Melanie’s plate, and checking for signs of jealousy in the watching Teddy, when this.…” His gesture indicated his getup. “…arrived.”
“You shouldn’t provoke Teddy.” Carolyne blamed Melanie for more game-playing. If the young woman cared for one man, why flirt openly with so many others?
“He didn’t seem all that interested.”
She stopped at the head of the stairs and stopped him with her. First things first. “It’s my experience that whether Teddy looks jealous or not, he can be counted upon to be so.”
“You think he sees me as competition?”
“Don’t fish for compliments in these Dead-Sea waters.”
He looked all “Gee Whiz!” What’s more, it still worked, although it wouldn’t in a couple of years when his youthful edges were completely eroded by masculinity. Not that he’d be less effective when that happened; he’d just have to exploit some equally appealing but more macho posturing.
“Any news while I slept away the morning?” That’s what she really wanted to know.
He leaned against the balustrade and folded his arms in a way that invited closeness, rather than the expected opposite. “Well, Jane Leider and a handwriting expert agree that the notebook in a box is John Leider’s. Jane says the ‘cheesecloth emerald’, like the ‘J’ emerald, was in her husband’s possession at the time he disappeared. It seems Miss Talina, Gordon’s number one woman, is still reluctant, but less so in the face of the preponderance of evidence, to believe her main squeeze has gone to the Great Beyond. That’s about it.”
“Developments on Felix’s leak to the press?”
“Well, Felix stayed in town last night and has not showed up this morning. As far as his interrogation, I’ve heard no word. I can tell you that Miss Melanie is in a snit, not only because she was accused of bypassing Rodrigo Barco with those photos, but because more than one person commented upon how clever Felix was—which rather insinuated Melanie had missed the boat on cleverness, somewhere along the line.”
“Who thought Felix clever?”
“Well, there’s Charles, who said, ‘I can’t stand the bastard, but this was a stroke of genius!’ Said Roy: ‘I guess he proved’—to everyone but Miss Talina—‘that we didn’t imagine the body we found.’ Said Teddy: ‘Who would have ever mistaken Felix for clever?’ Said Kyle: ‘The important thing is having the photos, not the runabout way we had to get them.’ Said Rodrigo, and this comes secondhand from Melanie, in that the inspector, like Felix, hasn’t checked in with me this morning: ‘I’ll have you sorry for withholding key information in a murder investigation!’ At the time, the ‘you’ referred to Melanie, who Rodrigo thought had slipped the photos to the press, but, I assume, the same now applies to Felix, the real culprit. Have I left out anyone? Ah, yes! Richard: ‘What’s all of this—expletive deleted—bother over a few photographs of a bloody corpse?’ How’s that for dialogic summations?”
“Pretty good, except the ‘expletive deleted’ came across a bit highfalutin from someone who looks as if he can walk in cow shit.”
He rewarded her with the low rumble laugh she’d hoped for. “I wouldn’t have on my boots what you just had in your mouth.”
“Think you’ll be able to boast as much when you’re back from your roundup?”
Melanie made an appearance around the curve of the stairs. “Ah, there you are!” She elucidated, “And, don’t you look mighty fine in western chic.”
“Howdy, ma’am!” His drawl was pure Texan. “Didn’t hear you coming.”
“A few of your pardners request your immediate presence in the corral. A shoot out with the local sheriff?”
“Evening barbecue,” Carolyne clarified.
“Too bad, since the local sheriff is Rodrigo Barco,” reminded Melanie.
Galin had listened to her bellyaching all morning. “If you pretty ladies will excuse me?”
Melanie called after him: “Don’t trip on those spurs and make mincemeat of those studly legs!” Her facial expression was way too covetous for someone already engaged to Teddy; not that any of that was Carolyne’s business.
It wasn’t about Galin, though, that Melanie asked when the two women drifted downstairs together. “Do you think I was an idiot to turn over to Rodrigo what I thought were the real photos?”
“It’s one of those decisions better judged in retrospect, and there hasn’t been nearly enough time to tell,” Carolyne was gracious. “If Kyle had anything to do with Gordon’s murder, and if Rodrigo is Kyle’s pawn, then, yes, harm could have been done. If Kyle is innocent, and if Rodrigo is just trying to do his job, then how can he be expected to make headway when he’s not been given all the available information? Ask any policeman, anywhere, how difficult it is without the corpus delicti and/or a murder weapon. So what that we saw both? We’re rank amateurs who had Roy’s geology expertise to provide us a bit more insight than the common man on the street. The more important forensics team needs the same material we had to work with, in order to give Rodrigo the facts upon which to make sense of the case. If Rodrigo makes something of the photos now, that he could have made earlier if he’d had the data to work with, then Felix was a certified jerk to bypass him. Of course, there’s always the chance it was Felix exposing the film to the more objective eye of the press that got Rodrigo off his duff.” She didn’t continue, except to add: “It’s six of one, half a dozen of the other. Not black. Not white. Grey in all its myriad shades and variables.”
Melanie had already had breakfast, but Carolyne held her another minute. “Have you heard anything more about us getting back, any time soon, to search for Lygodium cornelius?”
“From what I can determine, we have about as much chance of that happening as a snowball has of surviving in hell. Kyle made a phone call this morning to some bigwig in Brasilia, and to another bigwig in Rio. Neither wants to risk Americans turned loose in an area even the newspapers now extrapolate has killer jaguars, natives with spears, rock throwers, and god only knows how many other potential maniacs.”
“You feel Kyle is doing his best, though?”
“It sounds that way when I’m around, but who does he call, and what does he say, when I’m
not around to listen?”
“I figure: give everyone the benefit of the doubt until proven differently.” It was pontification she’d not lived up to, but it remained Carolyne’s ideal.
She dished up ham, eggs, and hash browns. Orange juice and coffee were served at her table by one of the many servants so seldom seen or heard, at least by her.
She had a croissant for dessert and buttered a second when Charles bustled in, spotted her, and came running.
“You needn’t hurry, Charles. The food won’t be cleared away for hours.”
“I’ve eaten.” He sat down and, without visibly taking a breath, asked: “What’s with the guards on Richard Callahan?”
The buttered croissant stopped halfway to her mouth. “What guards?”
“A couple of the ranch hands at the front door of the infirmary, another two at the back, everyone with instructions that Richard is out of bounds.”
“You were making a social call?”
“I was after a tranquilizer. I haven’t been sleeping all that well. One of the guards misconstrued my intentions and told me, without my asking, that Richard wasn’t available. Dr. Seln pleads ignorance, or loss of memory; it was hard to tell which.”
“Kyle would be more apt to have an answer than I would. They’re his ranch hands,” Carolyne reminded.
“Kyle went into town early this morning, but Teddy says Kyle called in the instructions to isolate Richard.”
“Did Teddy know why?”
“If he did, he didn’t tell me.” Sure Carolyne was a dry source of information, Charles didn’t stick around.
Carolyne ended up at the swimming pool after a conscious effort located Roy who was on a chaise longue, his face to the sun, his eyes shut, his shirt off. He had an exceptionally well-muscled torso, and each scar—there were three to be seen beneath a thick matting of black chest hair—undoubtedly had its own tale to tell. That he wore his pants and boots told Carolyne his presence was spontaneous, not a conscious I think I’ll go to the pool.
She wasn’t too old to identify his partial nakedness as a prime example of male of the species attractiveness, no more than she was too far over the hill to recognize her—if I were only forty years younger—appreciation of Galin’s good looks. However, animal magnetism wasn’t what put her there. Curiosity did. The object of that curiosity was a visible bulge in the right hand pocket of the bush jacket Roy had stripped from his now sweaty body and had draped over the glass tabletop between his chair and hers.
Amaz'n Murder Page 17
