Had she pickpocket dexterity, she might have unbuttoned the pocket, lifted its contents, examined the field notebook, and returned it, Roy none the wiser. Even bumbling, she might succeed if Roy were really sleeping. However, why take the dangerous route when sight-seeing might be accomplished via a far safer route?
She fished her pockets for her notebook and pen. She flipped to a blank page and dated the paper. She wrote, “Dear Marilyn,” although personal correspondence was the farthest thing from her mind. “Roy? Roy?”
“Mmmmm?” His head turned in her direction, and he squinted to see her. “Carolyne?” He shielded his eyes with one hand.
“I’m sorry to disturb you, Roy, but I wondered if I might borrow your field notebook for a moment.” An approach didn’t get any more direct than that.
“My field notebook?”
She knew a man caught off guard when she saw one. “I’m writing a letter to my goddaughter, and I want to tell her about Melanie’s emerald. I thought I could copy down the specifics.”
“Sure.” He twisted for his jacket, which put his chest muscles and washboard abdominals into an attractive torque. Sweat pooled his “innie” belly button and overflowed it. He dug out the battered notebook and handed it over. He rolled back toward the sun with a helpful, “It’s one of the dog-eared pages.”
And so it was. She made quick notations and, then, with a glance to make sure he wasn’t suspicious, she located what she really wanted, or, at least part of it, helped by a convenient date notated at the top of one page.
She flipped the pages a final time to confirm there were no handy conversion alphabets, like the key in the notebook that accompanied the cheesecloth emerald; Roy’s willingness to surrender his notebook had already warned her not to expect any easily accessed key to his code.
“Thank-you so much, Roy.”
He repeated the torque movement in retrieval, and Carolyne stayed on to write a letter she could probably later salvage as a real thing. She accepted an offer of ice lemonade from a servant who regularly patrolled the area for thirsty owner or guests.
Roy left, and Carolyne was gathering up her possessions when Galin’s appearance in only a swimsuit, and not much of that, told her how long she’d performed her poolside masquerade.
The blond rock star entered the water on the opposite side of the pool and did so in a sharp as a knife dive that insinuated his body was as inwardly well coordinated as it outwardly appeared. With the grace of a gilded dolphin, he remained underwater the width of the pool and breached on her side with a lift to his waistline before he sunk back to his neck. The splash washed as far as Carolyne’s feet. The water he shook from his hair reached her as he propped his arms on the flagstone and grinned his hello.
Carolyne contemplated whether a comment on the skimpiness of his bikini would make her sound like a dirty old lady on the make, but he took control of the conversation.
“Guess what juicy tidbit I came across while rounding up your evening beef steak?” he asked.
“The reason behind Richard’s sudden incarceration?”
“Would telling you what I know only duplicate what you’ve already heard?”
“My other source isn’t nearly as reliable as you’ve always been.”
“Seems a drunk in a Manaus bar bragged that Richard paid him five-thousand U.S. dollars to bump off Gordon Wentlock. Seems the very same drunk came complete with enough U.S. cash on hand for him to raise certain suspicions that he just might be telling the truth.”
He leaned back and pushed off. On his back, he coasted to mid-pool and rolled over as he veered sharply to the right. He began an Australian crawl, the first of several swim strokes which took him the length of the sculptured container of water.
Carolyne was so taken by his grace, not to mention by her thoughts of Richard’s house arrest, she didn’t know she’d been joined until, “Do you find him as attractive as Melanie does?”
“Teddy!” She tried to parry his question with, “I didn’t know you were there.”
He hadn’t expected a direct answer. “Melanie,” he said, “thinks him more handsome than Gordon Wentlock. Do you know Galin’s parents are rolling in inherited dough? He’d be wealthy from trusts funds without once having had to get on a stage to bray and prance like a jackass.”
Carolyne sought to diffuse a possible bomb. “Melanie has flirted before, hasn’t she?”
“Confided that to you, did she?” His eyes were on Galin who performed a swimmer’s turn on the deep end of the pool. “More likely, just obvious!”
“Some women are natural flirts.” Carolyne did her best. “It’s just the way they are. It doesn’t mean anything. Melanie is still with you, isn’t she? That says more than her frequently batted eyelashes at others.”
“It says she thinks I want her enough to put up with a whole lot more than should be expected from someone she’s supposed to love.”
Carolyne would give him no argument on that score.
“It says, she thinks she has me under her thumb and that she’s going to keep me there. I say, it may be time for her to think again.”
“Don’t do anything foolish, Teddy, will you?”
“Do you think it foolish for me to tell her that I’ve had enough, that her name, her money, and her social connections cost too much by way of my pride and dignity?”
There was no denying that Carolyne saw poetic justice in his pulling up stakes on a mouth opened in surprise Melanie.
“What do you know about my family background, Carolyne?”
“Not much, Teddy.” She had the few specifics gleaned from Melanie, but she didn’t feel it to anyone’s benefit to pass them along to him, now, let alone mention where she’d heard them.
“Funny, but it’s been my understanding—misunderstanding?—that you’d made it a point to know just about everything about everybody.” It wasn’t a compliment; Carolyne was still trying to come up with an answer when he turned and left her.
She spent the next half an hour verifying certain facts that had come her way. For one, there were ranch hands on guard at the infirmary. For two, they did volunteer that Richard wasn’t allowed visitors.
“I’ve come to see Dr. Seln about a rash.” She rolled up a sleeve and showed them the pink swath, aggravated, as she knew it would be, by her prolonged stay by the pool.”
Dr. Seln had a name for it; the same name that her doctor in the States had for it; Carolyne couldn’t remember it more than two minutes, no matter how many times she heard it. Again, something she already knew: “It’s nothing serious.” The doctor gave her some salve; she already had some.
She wanted the doctor to tell or give her something more. “Why can’t Richard have visitors?”
“All I can tell you is that Kyle called in those instructions earlier this morning. You’ll have to ask him.”
The opportunity for her to do so occurred when Kyle drove in as Carolyne left the infirmary.
“Some drunk shot off his mouth in a Manaus bar,” Kyle confirmed. “Something about how Richard gave him money to kill Gordon. Rodrigo wants to make sure Richard doesn’t go any place until the guy’s story is checked.” He changed the subject and asked if she’d notice any activity for the barbecue he should have been supervising hours ago.
She assured him that things, in that regard, seemed to be progressing nicely, in that Galin’s wrangled beef was already basting over a pit whose wood had burned down to hot coals. When the wind blew just right, the roasting meat, complete with its honey-based barbecue sauce, could be smelled where she stood.
She went to her room and took a cool shower. She put on some of the salve from Dr. Seln, rather than dig out the tube she’d brought to Brazil with her.
She sat at the desk and opened her notebook to the information gleaned from Roy’s field notes: not the data on the “J” emerald but the coded message he’d read into the expedition’s radio when, that very first time, he’d appeared out of the jungle to request use of thei
r radio. That had been before Carolyne realized a jungle prospector was likely to broadcast in code; she’d expected words, and he’d delivered a long sequence of numbers. That the leading “7,2…,” were the day and month of her birth was purely coincidence. Just what they really meant needed a key to unlock, like the one provided in the transposed alphabets of the notebook found in the box at Gordon’s house. Roy’s key, though, wasn’t as simple, obviously something kept separate so his private notations could be kept private. The chance of Carolyne inadvertently stumbling across the key was nigh on impossible. This wasn’t a combination lock left at 0000; Roy hadn’t been too lazy to take extra precautions.
Staring did no good. The numbers remained unchanged, without any clue to their hidden meaning. She finally gave up, not even sure why intuition told her it might be important when everything could so easily be resolved by a drunk’s admission he’d been hired by Richard to murder Gordon.
She spent the rest of the day in a sociable drift among swelling and waning speculation as to Richard’s guilt or innocence in his purchase of an assassin.
The barbecue was in full swing when Kyle was called to the telephone. The relative silence and inquisitive stares that greeted his return persuaded him to share what Rodrigo had told him.
“The drunk’s story is still being checked. As for the photographs taken by Melanie, the original chip has finally arrived, forwarded by the newspaperman in Rio; Rodrigo has brought in several experts to give the photos a thorough going over, including a zoologist who knows jaguars. It’s still too early to have any in-depth feedback, except from the zoologist who tentatively seems to find it of some interest that his cursory examination shows no apparent evidence of teeth marks on the victim and a unique pattern to the claw striations.”
“God!” Melanie shivered. None of this, in conjunction with the memories it conjured, was appetizing; Kyle knew that, but it was better to give them what they wanted, rather than let their imaginations have free reign.
“There won’t be anything else this evening; even policemen, forensics experts, and zoologists, need to eat and sleep. I assure you that we’ll be kept abreast of all progress, or lack thereof,” Kyle concluded.
“What’s it mean? ‘Unique pattern to the claw striations’?” Teddy was puzzled.
“All I know is what the gentleman said. ‘Specifics to follow’.”
Carolyne decided on a drink of hard liquor. Since her Curacao with Kyle, and Scotch with Roy, she’d gone a temperance routine of fruit juices, bottled water, tea, and coffee. In retrospect, either extreme was foolish. She ordered a caipirinha and watched a dark complexioned young man, behind the patio bar, expertly mix the concoction of homemade whiskey, sugar, and lime. She sipped the sweet and sour results.
“Guess where Melanie is?”
Carolyne didn’t have to turn to know who asked the question. Her answer was an immediate check of the area; not for Melanie but for Galin.
“Now, ask me if I care?” Teddy supplemented.
This time, Carolyne obliged. “Do you care?”
“Not a whit.” Words were cheap, and he knew it. “Trust me. I’ve commenced the cure.”
He wandered off, and Carolyne let him.
She finished her caipirinha and said a dutiful good-night to her host.
She headed for the stairs and for her room and bed at the top. She was distracted from that objective by the lights suddenly going off in the den. After which, she paused and waited for sounds to confirm her suspicions; even with the door open, she couldn’t hear anything until she moved in closer and finally detected Melanie’s all too recognizable giggle. Good sense argued that this was none of Carolyne’s business. If Teddy were resolved to the situation, who was she not to be?
What disturbed her was an ignored call for discretion and diplomacy. Even Teddy deserved better, although he’d not likely thank Carolyne for reminding Melanie and Galin of that.
She took the two steps remaining to stand her in the open door they should have had the common sense to shut and lock for the privacy they had to know that would have provided. Just the shutting would have saved them from her. The stupidity of passions so detrimental to common logic! “Hello, anyone there?”
What the resulting light provided was less compromising that Carolyne expected.
“Carolyne, join us!” Galin operated a light switch across the room. “I’d appreciate some additional feedback.”
Melanie stood apart, near the center of the room. All Carolyne got from her was another silly giggle; she’d hoped for more.
“What do you think?” Galin clicked the lights off again. “Does standing here in the dark, those stuffed and mounted animals casting shadows within shadows, portray any of the mood of a night in the jungle with a man eating jaguar and head hunting cannibals?”
There was no way Carolyne could have guessed, from Melanie’s schoolgirl titter, that the young woman was respected in not one but two fields of science.
“I told him faking it would never be the same as being there,” Melanie barely managed.
“Galin, be serious!” Carolyne didn’t enjoy her role of chaperone. People this age shouldn’t need one; they weren’t kids, no matter how childish they acted.
The lights came on. “You don’t recognize the vaguest similarity?” he asked.
For once, Carolyne refused to be won over by his boyish charm. It might have succeeded, but only sans Melanie. “No comparison whatsoever.”
“Well, of course, you two were there,” he conceded. I’ve only the hold-over thrill of once having been hopelessly lost in the San Diego Zoo.”
“Whatever turns you on.” They could take that however they wanted.
Melanie infuriated Carolyne with another inane giggle; Galin chose to ignore Carolyne’s fuddy-duddies—in having caught the kids at play—attitude.
Carolyne had enough. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m headed for bed.”
“So are we.” No doubt, he meant it just as suggestively as it sounded.
Afraid of yet another nerve grating giggle from Melanie, Carolyne performed an about-face and headed for the stairs. The lights clicked off and on at least twice more before she rounded the upward curve of the stairs that cut off her view.
“Children!” She included every man, woman, and teen whose runaway hormonal glands induced runaway imbecility. She’d never been a slave to such inconvenience, and she refused to believe she’d missed anything.
She went to bed: no surprise. Big surprise: she went to sleep. Big deception: she thought she slept far longer than the two a.m. registered on the clock by her bed when she woke up. She had the aftertaste of an unremembered dream she felt somehow important. She tried to recall any fantasies of Melanie and Galin making love in some jungle clearing, wild animals and wild natives all around, while Carolyne chided with a shaking finger. No! Nothing to do with Galin. With Melanie?
She settled back, closed her eyes, and pretended she spun with arms outstretched: a technique taught to reclaim a dream interrupted; little used by Carolyne because she seldom preferred make-believe to reality. It didn’t work, probably because she’d woke up, sat up, turned on the light, checked the time, then made the attempt to reconnect.
She went to the bathroom. While there, no arms out, no spinning, she remembered the standout feature of her dream—of Gordon’s makeshift funeral.
As a result, she scrounged her robe and slippers. She told herself she mustn’t get too excited, because what she now planned would likely provide nothing more for her than inspirational reading for an old lady who was guilty of not doing nearly as much of that as she probably should do to prepare herself for the hereafter.
She didn’t need a flashlight. First- and second-floor corridors had lights left on dim throughout the night. In case of a generator failure, conveniently located closets and/or storage spaces provided stockpiles of battery operated emergency lighting. Each darkened room had a convenient light switch just inside its door, one of which Carolyn
e activated once she was in the downstairs library.
She pulled the door shut and surveyed the shelves. She hoped what she wanted would leap out at her, via destiny, rather than require her mundane match of a card-catalog Dewy decimal classification with gold-leafed numbers on a book spine.
The books, though, were too uniform in their custom bindings of oxblood-dyed Moroccan leather to allow easy sorting without prior knowledge of the arrangement system. The book she chose, compliments of the card catalog, was five by seven and in such pristine condition she had to check the copyright, 1979, to make sure it wasn’t a rare volume. It’s aroma of tooled leather, unaired paper, and undisturbed printer’s ink, was downright pleasant.
She opened the door and switched off the light. Then, reflexively, she stepped back, not likely to be spotted against the backdrop of darkened room.
Melanie, with a quilt folded in her arms, and Galin, with a champagne bottle and two glasses, weren’t nearly as well blended into the woodwork, in their creep around the bend of the stairs, as was Carolyne, where she stood.
Juveniles! Carolyne watched the two in their beeline for the basement door under the stairway. She was of half a mind to jump out, yell, “Surprise!” and ask them where in the hell they were headed, just to savor the results, but she had better things to do. Anyway, too clever for his own good Galin would likely have some spontaneous rationale logical enough to stand up in any court of law.
She waited, none too patiently; quiet as a mouse. They selected two flashlights from a storage compartment to the right of the basement door, in lieu or activating the main basement lights which weren’t left on after nightfall.
How much of a turn-on, Carolyne wondered: This Theseus lost in some dark, basement labyrinth with a giggling, no help Ariadne?
Amaz'n Murder Page 18
