Amaz'n Murder

by William Maltese

  The basement door opened and shut, having swallowed the two explorers. Carolyne waited overly long to make sure they didn’t have second thoughts.

  She started up the stairs and got quite a surprise when Teddy suddenly appeared around the bend.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Teddy’s reaction: “Carolyne! Whatever are you doing up?”

  Her reaction: a subconscious which had, all along been expecting him to appear. There were shenanigans afoot, but she had nothing about which to be ashamed or guilty. She had a logical explanation for being where she was; Teddy might find it less easy to explain his innocence in being there. “Couldn’t sleep,” she said and tapped the book in hand—thank God for the book! She would have hated the excuse of hot milk with an inability to produce it.

  She viewed his, “Me, too,” as plagiarism, then had second thoughts. He looked surprised, and, yes, even guilty, but didn’t come off as a jealous, green-eyed monster in hot pursuit of a two timing fiancée and her latest paramour. He would have materialized far more quickly had he intended to keep Melanie and Galin in view.

  No accompanying demand of, “Where are they?”

  On his way by Carolyne, he cocked his head to read the title on the spine of her book. “That will certainly put you to sleep. I’m no longer afraid you’ve made off with the only good reading in the house.”

  She thought he’d continue down. They weren’t exactly a mutual-admiration society, and his comment on her reading material wasn’t exactly the beginning of pleasant small-talk.

  Therefore, he surprised her with, “Why don’t you join me for a small nightcap in the library? You weren’t exactly falling off bar stools at the barbecue and can risk it.”

  He wasn’t her ideal by way of someone with whom to share anything. A good time wasn’t to be had in exchanging sarcastic repartee with Melanie’s maybe, maybe-not, significant other. “I don’t think a drink would be a good idea.”

  His shrug wasn’t exactly sorry to hear that; it was more thank god I’m saved. It made her more desirous to leave him where he stood. In fact, they were both on their separate ways, the breach widening between them, when she reconsidered. As much as she viewed separation from the potential mess in the making, she might be a mediating influence should Melanie and Galin suddenly re-appear.

  Maybe, too, a few minutes with her would catapult Teddy back upstairs and out of the way. Despite his recent assurances that he contemplated a dignified withdrawal, Carolyne wasn’t anxious for Melanie and Galin to put him to the test. “Maybe I will have that drink.”

  He didn’t turn back, and Carolyne figured he didn’t hear, or, hearing, didn’t like what he’d heard. Though, by the time she decided to walk the distance to join him, he had her drink poured. His smile might have passed for friendly but only in a pinch. “Curiosity get the best of you?” he baited and handed her a sherry.

  She’d have to watch out for this one. “Curiosity?” She was too old and too world weary to come across convincingly innocent.

  “Yes, curiosity.” He took his drink and sat in one of the chairs that faced her. “As to whether I really propose to toss off Melanie and all she offers, just because she’s flirted once too often with one too many other men.”

  “I never thought you the type who’d consider me your mother-confessor.”

  “I want to tell one person, so the world can know without my having personally to tell everyone.”

  “How obnoxious!” She’d kept a lot of confidences in her time, including the twosome at the bottom of the basement stairs.

  “It could be that I resent that you’re Melanie’s friend.” He seemed neither apologetic nor sincere. “She’s not my favorite person at the moment.”

  “That doesn’t make your insinuation that I’m the local gossip any the less rude.”

  “I’ve decided to give up trying so hard to please other people.”

  “Congratulations, in that you’re succeeding.” She gulped her drink.

  “Can I get you another?”

  Fat chance! Melanie and Galin would have to fend for themselves.

  “Stay,” he coaxed, “and I’ll tell you why I come across as less than your ideal scientist and gentleman?”

  She poured her own drink, thank-you, still not sure she’d stay. She didn’t offer him seconds, although another swallow would drain his glass. “I once knew a bastard, literally, not figuratively,” she said. She wanted this different kind of bastard to know he couldn’t count on her to be sympathetic. “As a baby, he was left on a convent stoop with a note: ‘I don’t know his daddy, but his daddy wouldn’t want him or me.’ What’s more, his bad luck didn’t stop there. He caught scarlet fever, almost died, and had a lifetime recurring heart murmur as a result. He married and had a daughter; wife and daughter were killed in a car crash. He married again; his second wife suffered a debilitating stroke and was bedridden four years before she died. I never knew him to say an unkind word to anybody about anybody.”

  Teddy wasn’t impressed. “You only get one living saint in your life, and that’s yours. The rest of us aren’t nearly as able to cope.”

  Many times, Carolyne had told many people: “That man is a one of a kind, living, breathing, saint.”

  “We’re not talking a victim of love deprivation, mind you.” Teddy drained his glass. “My mother loved me until her aneurysm left all the loving to my father. When my father died, my stepparents loved me enough to mortgage their home, not once, but twice, to help me through school. But, it was so much just the bare necessities, and sometimes not even those, which made me wonder if I’d ever accumulate enough material possessions to erase my insecurities. I know I’m mercenary in looking at Melanie and seeing money, homes, business, social connections, and all the other things that spell ‘security blanket’, but I wake up nights drenched in sweat from dreams of some catastrophe sucking dry my life savings and those of everyone I love.”

  He got up, poured himself a drink and carried it with him in his slow walk along one bookcase. Now and again, he tilted a book from its lineup. “I know you’re fond of Melanie, Carolyne. Look upon her as the daughter you never had?” He glanced over his shoulder. “Maybe not. The half-Cornelius in her might be okay, but you could never accept the half-Margaret in her, could you?”

  “What would you know?” Carolyne was amazed by how many people accessed aspects of her private life.

  “I know a good deal, because you played an important part in Cornelius Ditherson’s life, and I had plans to make his daughter my wife. I’ve since amended those plans.”

  “Have you, Teddy?” Could Galin and Melanie come up those stairs now, and could Teddy dismiss them with, “What the heck?”

  “You take a minute, Carolyne, and think about who’s more honest in my relationship with Melanie. Is it the poor kid, afraid of poverty, who makes no secret that money and background can be the pot of gold awaiting at the end of the rainbow? Is it the little rich girl who exploits by dangling the chances of all dreams come true, then pulls them back periodically for quick indiscretions? I’m frankly tired of being Melanie’s have-not of the week. I’m tired of her assumption that I should look the other way while she tries out whoever is the new man or boy on the block. I deserve better than Melanie Ditherson, and I have the education for which my stepparents paid, and my reputation in the field, to keep me from starving. If I don’t get super rich, or even rich enough to make me feel secure against the world, that won’t make me a failure. Nor is insecurity something to which I, alone, am susceptible. How secure do you view any young woman who has this desperate need to flirt with anything in pants?”

  Maybe he could confront Galin and Melanie with, “C’est la vie!”

  He pulled a book from the shelf, he’d made his selection. He finished his drink and brought his empty glass back to its tray. “Be sure to turn out the lights when you leave, won’t you, Carolyne?”

  She finished her drink and followed him up the stairs.

  In her
room, she laid out the book from the library, her notebook, and a pen. In the bathroom, she splashed her face with cold water. “This fast living getting you down, is it?” Her reflection didn’t answer, except by showing her a few more wrinkles and worry lines.

  She went back to the desk, sat down, and opened her notebook to the number sequence she’d copied from Roy’s field notebook.

  There was an obvious, logical explanation for Roy to carry around his weathered, miniature edition of the Old Testament which he’d loaned Carolyne, momentarily, for her reading of the Twenty-third Psalm at Gordon’s funeral: If there were no atheists in foxholes, the same likely applied to prospectors in the deep jungle. Someone as desirous of traveling light, as was Roy, in order to cover the most area in the shortest period of time, might conceivably see the weight advantage of a two-in-one Bible and codebook.

  * * * *

  It took Carolyne seemingly forever to come up with anything, by way of decipherment, that was even vaguely intelligible. Even then.…

  Assigning Roy’s code numbers, on a first come basis, with an Old Testament book, chapter, verse, then word (albeit, sometimes just a letter in a word) what resulted was:

  “I have found rich and great abundance of—n-i-o-b-i-u-m—and as agreed I will proceed to seal off land on my way out to answer all thy questions.”

  A viable translation? Maybe. Except, of course, for n-i-o-b-i-u-m. Niobium? What in the hell was that? Or, had Carolyne gotten everything wrong?

  The nearest encyclopedia was in the library, but Carolyne in route was blocked by an hysterical Melanie who bewailed: “It was horrible! Galin and Teddy. I thought for sure he’d killed him.”

  “Good God, where?” Carolyne shook the young woman until Melanie’s teeth chattered like castanets; the woman making such a scene desired just such a good shake.

  “Downstairs; basement.” Melanie’s wave of her hand could have directed anywhere. “Dr. Seln is there now.”

  Carolyne headed for the basement. Somebody—take her pick—had turned on the lights. Carolyne still wasn’t sure where to go once she reached the bottom of the stairway: Left? Right? Straight ahead? “Dr. Seln?”

  She continued her hails for direction as she headed, on pure impulse, to the right. However, she’d turned right yet again, then made a left, before she finally got any kind of response.

  “Carolyne?” Not that it was Dr. Seln suddenly appearing through the open doorway only a few feet away. Nor was it Teddy.

  “Galin?” He didn’t look nearly dead to her. When Carolyne got her hands on Melanie, she’d wring the woman’s neck for overacting. “Melanie had me written in as your pallbearer.”

  Galin looked as surprised as she’d been to see him. “Actually, it’s Teddy down and out.”

  “Teddy?” Once more for incredulous emphasis: “Teddy?”

  She looked beyond Galin into a storage room which hadn’t changed much since the last time Melanie, Teddy, and she had seen it on their introductory tour of the house. Kyle had been disgruntled that the servant assigned as their guide had showed them: “It reeks of conspicuous consumption in its accumulation of ‘stuff’ from generations who confronted game populations truly assumed inexhaustible at the time,” Kyle had apologized in reference to the stored collection of trophies and stuffed animals, all rejects from upstairs, all stacked, floor to ceiling, like pieces of cord wood. Except for a covering of dust, the room contents, mainly examples of artful taxidermy skills, were in good condition, except for at least one obvious exception—make that two, what with Teddy laid out on the floor between a horn-damaged toppled water buffalo and a slightly askew capybara.

  Dr. Seln, knelt beside this patient, diagnosed without coaxing: “A broken nose. The assumed death rattle is only air trying unsuccessfully to find its way around crushed cartilage.”

  “What happened?” Carolyne’s obviously flawed chain of events still had her wondering how it was that Teddy ended up a victim.

  Dr. Seln opted for patient-doctor confidentiality. Galin, as usual, proved more candid. “I’d call it a case of flagrante delicto interruptus.” He tried again: “…interrupto? I never was good at Latin.”

  Carolyne didn’t smile: “Do get on with it, Galin. Save your witticisms for a more appreciative audience.” She meant: “Save it for Melanie.”

  “It was dark, for atmosphere, you know? Melanie had predicted I’d find this room a turn-on, and she was right. She was turned on, too, since I guess Teddy isn’t really as experimental at these things as Melanie would like him to be. Any wonder she sometimes goes shopping?”

  Carolyne wanted to know how Teddy ended up on the floor.

  “He came in, and I reacted—spontaneously,” Galin put words to it.

  “Spontaneously, you caved in his nose?” All of this time, her concern had been that Galin would be the one creamed.

  “A guy picks up a bit of self-defense when he hangs around as many professional bodyguards and stalkers as I have on my concert tours.”

  Carolyne didn’t need this asinine distraction. She had an appointment with an encyclopedia.

  “Could you both give me a hand? He’s coming around,” Dr. Seln requested.

  “Doctor, I don’t see that much room in which to maneuver,” Carolyne complained of things as she saw them.

  “Here.” Galin leaned against the horn-damaged water buffalo and shifted it two feet; two capybaras and a three-pawed jaguar were pushed two feet higher up the wall; a stuffed monkey toppled from the pile with a thump. “Plenty of room.”

  “Let’s get it over with!” Not very Florence Nightingale, but it fit Carolyne’s mood. As far as she was concerned, Teddy could move himself. What happened to all his fine talk about letting Melanie go?”

  Teddy groaned his equivalent of, “What the hell happened?”

  “You don’t want to know,” Dr. Seln beat Carolyne to the punch. He stopped Teddy’s exploratory hand en route to the bandaged nose. “You don’t want to go there, either. Can you get up?”

  Somehow, they managed, although Teddy remained wobbly and disoriented. They had more room once in the hall. Galin and Dr. Seln did most of the manhandling to the top of the basement stairs where Kyle, awake to the latest unscheduled event, had a couple of ranch hands take over. There was an exodus from the main house to the infirmary, from which Carolyne disengaged.

  She went to the library card catalog: even encyclopedias melded into the uniform blood colored background. The volume she wanted told her what she wanted to know, and she Xeroxed a copy for the pocket of her robe. She closed the book and put it back. She sat down.

  She had all of the pieces, now; in fact, she had one too many. What did she do with the drunk hired for murder? Accept him with the assumption that all the other culprits already shared enough guilt without murder added?

  Carolyne didn’t know how long she sat there until Galin performed the magic that removed the murder from the drunk’s ball court; it was long enough for him to have reached the infirmary and returned. “Hear the bad news, good news, bad news about Richard? Seems he did hire a certain someone to kill Gordon, but the contract was invalidated by a downed bridge the killer decided was too difficult to go around, especially as he had down payment enough to keep him awash in booze for a very long time. Rodrigo called to tell Kyle that time sequences don’t any more jive to put the guy at the scene of this crime than those others jived to put Susan with the brake fluid of Richard’s car. The consensus is that the guy sabotaged Richard’s car to protect money already paid for services never to be rendered. Not that any of that takes Richard off the hook. There’s apparently no denying the exchange of dollars—Richard’s—for a murder—Gordon’s—even if the murder, by that planned means, never happened. I’m afraid Richard is in so much trouble that I’m here, this minute, to make the call to summon Dillon Crane to salvage film footage already in the can, not to mention a concept too good to blow at this stage. What’s extra bucks to assure a completed and quality music video package
?”

  “You’d like to use the phone?”

  “The house is full of phones; I don’t particularly need this one.”

  “Be my guest.” What she had to do couldn’t be done in the library, patting herself on the back while bemoaning the greed and avarice of certain people. “I was on my way out.”

  She went to her room and got dressed, without a shower. She put Bible, notebook, and Xeroxed reference in a tote bag. She went downstairs and successfully ran the gauntlet of possible encounters. The only exception: the man at the motor pool who had her sign out the Jeep.

  Out on the road, she felt safer but no more content. An unpleasant picture was made more so by the people painted as villains. She’d truly, more than once, almost swallowed some of their lines of bunk. The duplicity of their corruption made her ache. The world was something far less likable because of them. She was bolstered by a need for justice, or she would have wished she’d been less clever: ignorance is bliss.

  She didn’t go to police headquarters. Nor did she plan to look up the government representative, Jean-Michael Teruel. No confrontation with any fox in its own lair. She drove to the Tropical Hotel Manaus and asked the desk clerk to ring Felix who’d checked in permanently once he’d grown tired and disgusted with the company at the ranch. Smart man!

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Tenner checked out earlier this morning. I believe he’s returned to the United States.”

  Was that one bit of information passed on that morning to Kyle, lost in the relay to Carolyne through Galin? No way could Felix have left without Rodrigo’s okay.

  “Could you check to see if his plane has left the airport?” She didn’t need him personally for the name of the newspaperman in Rio. She could call Felix at the airport and get it. Would he answer a page?

  “I’m afraid it left fifteen minutes ago,” the hotel desk clerk informed.

  She thanked him and asked if he’d book her on the next flight to Rio. She didn’t really need Felix at all; it wouldn’t be difficult tracking down the reporter who’d written the piece on, and printed the photo of, the dead Gordon. Mainly, she wanted to clear her conscience and let Felix know she knew him guiltless. His departure from Brazil had merely saved her penance for another day; that was all.