She told the desk clerk she’d changed her mind. She hadn’t, but it struck her unwise to add her name to any airport computer readout that could be accessed from police headquarters. She’d come too far, gleaned too much, to be careless now. One man had been killed; one dead woman, more or less, wasn’t too much additional ante for the pot of this one particular poker game.
She cashed traveler’s checks in three different banks, none for a sum large enough to cause any interest. In combination, she had enough cash to clear out of town.
She drove to the airport and called the ticket counter from outside. Was the next flight for Rio full? No; would she like to make a reservation? No; she’d be a last-minute passenger, squeezed in just under the wire. If a fully booked plane meant she’d miss out, she’d fly a last-minute to Belem, or to some other spot, on from there to Rio. No international flights, because she didn’t want to show her passport.
All wrong, Carolyne! Everyone would notice a last-minute. The help would be ticked at needing to rush her thorough. People for other flights would be reluctant to let her crowd in, no matter how loud, her, “I have to catch a plane!” and they’d remember her nerve.
She went inside, said she was Maria Lanis, a name picked out of a hat, and bought a ticket to Rio.
She located a nondescript corner and tried to blend into it. She had an hour until flight time.
She wasn’t thinking clearly. She should have waited nearer to departure before buying her ticket; she was vulnerable to anyone flashing her picture.
“Why would they flash your picture?” Her mumble was undecipherable but loud enough to garner a couple of curious glances. So much for fading into the woodwork.
No one knew she was here. No one knew she knew what she knew. How could they? She hadn’t known until that morning. She had her worksheets and reference material with her.
She wasn’t up to cloak and dagger. She was a scientist, better suited to benign plants not malign people.
She couldn’t relax. She went over the facts, and the implication of the facts; she didn’t want Felix’s friend in Rio thinking she was a lunatic. She had to be lucid, intelligent, and well-meaning. There was a story here for him if she only got it across in a way that didn’t have holes or wasn’t shaded by emotion.
She considered too trivial for consideration the mess Melanie and Teddy had made of their lives, with the help of Galin. So, why did all of that intrude into her every thought and mix its banality with the really serious issues?
There were fifteen minutes to flight time, her plane actually scheduled to leave on time, when she surrendered to the nagging, but persistent inconsistencies in the Melanie, Teddy, and Galin ménage-a-trois. It would only take a few minutes to clear them up; then, maybe, she could devote full concentration on things really important.
She dialed the ranch and asked for Melanie or Galin.
She got Galin. “All I needed was the library phone for a few minutes, Carolyne. I didn’t mean to drive you out of the whole house.”
“It’s the first time I’ve been up early in ages.” True. “I decided to take advantage and squeeze in a bit of nonsense shopping.” False; there was nothing nonsense about buying her ticket to Rio.
“Don’t bother to stop by to say hello to Felix while you’re in town. The word going around is that he’s outbound for the States.”
Carolyne at her most innocent: “Oh?”
“Seems his story checked, whatever that story might be. Think you’ll ever tell me about Felix and the mysterious Margaret? Rodrigo let him slip the noose. Felix was spending way too much time at the hotel bar, getting sloshed; hotel guests were complaining. We all know how fast the law acts when tourist groups, with their dollars, start to complain.”
Carolyne wished she could be headed home, too.
“What’s up, Carolyne” Galin fed the pause.
“Did I hear you right: you’d never been in that storage room before? Not alone, not with Melanie, before last night?”
“You called for the latest scoop on my love life?”
“Be a pal, Galin. Indulge me. I know you enjoy the subject.”
“Do you want to preface this with heavy breathing? Mine? Yours?”
“Give it a rest, Galin!”
“I don’t know whether to be flattered or hurt that you chose a phone call instead of the kind of private tête-à-tête you granted everyone else.”
“Galin!”
“Okay. When have you known me not to play your game?”
They announced Carolyne’s flight as ready for boarding.
“Carolyne, you there?” Galin sounded doubtful.
This wasn’t important. It was the voyeuristic curiosity Galin said it was. Which made her what: a dirty old lady, with a raincoat, whose next stop was a theater balcony showing sex flicks?
“First time, Carolyne,” Galin intruded. “Last night, I mean. Although, I would have been there sooner had I known about it.”
Hang up, Carolyne. “What time did you head down to the basement?”
“I had other things in mind besides the time, Carolyne.” Nevertheless, he followed with an estimate that matched hers for him.
“Did you or Melanie come up for air, once you were down there?”
“It was a basement storage room, Carolyne, not the deep, blue sea. You have Melanie and me confused with seals, dolphins, or whales. Walrus?”
“Did either of you leave once you were in place?” The last of the boarding passengers disappeared through the gate. “Did you go for more champagne?”
“Saw the empty bottle, did you?”
She’d seen the full one, hadn’t she? “Did you go for another blanket? Did you want a snack and go get one?”
“We were settled in for what we thought was the duration, Carolyne. Blanket spread; lights out; door shut but unfortunately not locked—definite oversight, but who expected visitors? Shadowy and easily imagined menacing wild animals stacked to the rafters; glasses filled with champagne to be imbibed by flashlight: a fantasy to compete with any x-rated novel. Then, Teddy spoiled the party. Just opened the door and appeared, no by your leave, or here I come.”
She could have caught the plane, but she didn’t. She spent the next hour summarizing on paper all of her facts and suspicions. After which, she called the newspaper in Rio and got the name, Manuel Marlin, of the reporter who’d submitted the published article on Gordon. Carolyne mailed Manuel all the information she had, plus all her extrapolation on it, and she headed back to the ranch.
Intuition told her she was missing something, right in front of her eyes, that could be lost forever if she ran away without personally tracking it down while she had an investigative “edge.” Her sixth sense had done right by her too many times for her to ignore it now.
There was especially something off-kilter about this latest business with Melanie, Galin, and Teddy. If her thought process was operating true to form, her subconscious might already have identified the inconsistency and have the solution; it merely needed coaxing to slip into conscious mode.
She pulled in at the infirmary and passed by the guards at the door with, “I’m here to see the guy with the broken nose.” In pantomime, she pinched the bridge of her nose and shifted it left, then right.
Teddy occupied the bed that Richard had had before the latter’s involvement in a scheme to buy a murder had secured him a room all his own. Teddy’s voice was strange without benefit of amplification through nasal passages now stuffed with cotton. “I know, I know, Carolyne, you want to hear how I could, one minute, tell you I’m tossing off Melanie and, the very next minute, proceed to make a jealous fool of myself.”
“You can certainly try.”
“I just wasn’t in as much control of my emotions as I figured I was. The idea of her and Galin together just…well, need I go into green-eyed monster detail?”
“You followed them into the basement?”
“I had my methods of tracking them down. You’re not the onl
y one able to utilize a bit of detective skills. If they had found it such an ideal spot for what they had in mind, they couldn’t have chosen a better place for me to take on Mr. Rock Star and Miss Rich Bitch without disturbing anybody else’s sensibilities with something that was best settled in private.”
She wished him speedy recovery and headed for the house. She didn’t slow down to talk to Kyle and Rodrigo Barco who turned up in the infirmary as she left it.
She found Melanie by the pool.
Melanie saw her coming. “Oh, Carolyne, give me a break and don’t start with the third-degree. Pleeeease.” She pulled her wide-brimmed straw hat to cover her face.
Carolyne sat on the adjoining chaise longue. She paid no attention to Melanie’s put upon posturing. “When I left you and Galin in the den, you were soon to be headed upstairs.” No need to reveal how she’d spotted them, later, coming back down. “How did you end up in the basement?”
“I remembered the storage room. That’s all. I knew if Galin thought the den kinky, with lights out, he’d love the other.” Her voice was muffled through her hat.
“You went to his room to tell him your great idea?”
“I didn’t have to go to his room, did I, Carolyne?” She pulled her hat abruptly away and stared—I wish you’d mind your own business. “As I suspect you very well know. I was already in his room at the time.”
“Game-playing to make Teddy jealous?”
“Maybe.” She was uncertain. “Maybe not. This time was somehow different from the others, even insofar as I actually thought Teddy didn’t.…” She left it.
“Didn’t what, Melanie?”
“It’s a point made moot by his actions that proved he obviously did care.”
“Do you know he went out of his way to convince me he didn’t care? He said he was tired of you walking all over him, and he planned to drop you like a hot potato and get on with his life.”
“He told you that?” She was incredulous. “Why on earth would he tell you?”
Good question. Carolyne knew what he’d said was the reason: “He thought I would get the word around.”
“Oh.”
Carolyne would have appreciated an argument against the suggested tell a phone, tell a graph, tell Carolyne mentality. “Why don’t you tell me exactly what happened?”
“Why on earth should I?”
“Because I’m a woman, a sympathetic ear, and talking about it will help clear the air, maybe let you get things in perspective, maybe let you sort out if you like Galin, and why; whether you like Teddy, and/or just maneuvered him into a position wherein he could prove, once again, how much he desperately wants and needs you.”
The argument sounded good, but Melanie had to insist, “There’s really not that much to tell. I was with Galin, and I thought of the storage room downstairs. I said, ‘If you thought the den was a turn-on with its lights out…et cetera, et cetera.’ He said, ‘Let’s grab a blanket, some champagne, get flashlights, and do some exploring of the possibilities.’ We did. Teddy showed up. End of story.”
“With the exception of a fairly different twist on the anticipated end.”
“I thought I was in a ninja movie. I never saw anyone act so fast as Galin when Teddy barged in and turned on the lights. He jumped up and automatically executed some kind of twirling that landed his foot in Teddy’s face. Teddy went down and made all sorts of horrible snorting sounds. I ran for Dr. Seln.”
“You’re sure this was the first time you’d mentioned the storage room to Galin?”
“Until I did, I’d completely forgotten that Teddy, you, and I had even seen the room on our grand tour.”
“You had no sense of Teddy following directly in your footsteps down the basement stairs?”
“If he were anywhere so close on our heels, how come he left us in the room for so long before he barged in?”
“Letting the incriminating evidence accumulate?”
“All the other times, the whole purpose was his not letting it go that far. Besides we would have seen or heard him if he’d been directly behind us. The basement was pitch dark. He would have needed a flashlight, unless he could see in the dark, like a bat. If he’d flipped on the hall lights, we would have seen that, too, at least while we were loose in the corridors.”
“You didn’t ever suggest to Teddy that you and he, instead of you and Galin, might take in the storage room for fun and games?”
“Suggest that to Teddy?” Melanie laughed so hard she dropped her hat. “Let me tell you about Teddy, if you want some serious girl-girl talk. I’d put his sexual repertoire on par with that of a missionary. You ever hear of the term ‘missionary position’? I think Teddy invented it. His background, middle-class mores, sees sex as something a little dirty and unseemly even as a means of procreation. I didn’t suggest to him that we might go down into the basement for fun and games. One, he would have bridled at the mere suggestion that I needed any extra stimulant when he was doing his best. Two, I already told you, I hadn’t thought of the room until Galin in the den obviously sparked the dormant memory.”
Carolyne’s next stop was the basement, and that one particular storage room in question.
Slowly, she surveyed what was there, including the empty champagne bottle; two champagne glasses, one broken: so much for a hundred bucks worth of bubbly and another hundred worth of Baccarat crystal; the wrinkled blanket, and the evidence that Galin and Melanie were into safe sex: give them credit for that.
Her once-over completed, she began again, this time slower, more analytical. She was a scientist, used to isolating the forest from the trees, or vice versa, and there was something here to be isolated. Some vague memory told her she’d spotted it before. Her chief disadvantage was in not knowing for what she looked; her chief advantage was her inherent knowledge that she’d know “it” when she saw it.
Macaw. Capybara. Monkey. Sloth. Tapir. Peccary, puma, possum. Jaguar, jararaca. Rattlesnake, sloth, turtle. In duplicate. In triplicate. In quadruplicate. Evidence of species that had known better times and better accommodations.
She didn’t know “it” when she saw it, after all. She knew it when she didn’t see it.
Galin greeted her at the top of the basement stairs. “If our phone-con got you so hot and bothered that you rushed back, you should hear the dirty talk of which I’m really capable.”
“Later, Galin.” That promise should put the fear of God into him. “For the moment, could you spread the word that I’d like to see Kyle and Rodrigo Barco in the library? You’ll find them at the infirmary. Also, I’d like to see Roy at the same time, if you can find him somewhere.”
“Damn, Carolyne, another of your now-famous private sessions?”
“Jean-Michael Teruel wouldn’t be around, would he?”
“The government man? Come on, Carolyne: not even you can expect to bat a hundred.”
No major loss. Jean-Michael, she suspected, would have the specifics within minutes of her saying them.
“For being so good about it, Galin, I’ll let you sit in on this one, if you’ve a mind to do so.” There were advantages to having a witness.
“Well, that’s more like it. Don’t you dare start without me.”
She didn’t. He was there when she faced the other three men in the room.
Be still, beating heart! “Gentlemen, it’s about time you and I had a little discussion about coded messages, greedy sonsofbitches, the intended rape of an ecological system, rampaging natives, a downed bridge, and niobium.” That got their undivided attention. “When we’re through with that, and I’ve registered my complete disgust and disappointment, I’ll tell you about a man-eating jaguar, emeralds, and how we might just entrap Gordon Wentlock’s killer.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
The zoologist and forensics people were noncommittal. After all, photographs weren’t the same as a body. They could only admit to the possibility of what Carolyne suggested. After more examination, and/or more proof, they might well agr
ee with her completely. For the moment, they preferred to make no definite statement, pro or con.
To catch the killer, the decision was taken to pretend less indecision: The photos would be insinuated definitely to show certain anomalies, and the lab boys would be insinuated as hoping to have a firm explanation in only a couple more days.
Rodrigo moved Richard out of the infirmary to police headquarters in Manaus. The ranch hands on guard duty returned to their normal work assignments.
Rodrigo returned to the ranch just after nightfall. His car concealed, he accessed the main house through a backdoor. Later that night, he was joined in the basement by Carolyne, Kyle, and Roy; an attempt was made to dissuade Galin, but he showed up, too.
At one a.m. the following morning, Teddy Rhingold, his nose bandaged and his face black-and-blue, carried a three-paw, stuffed jaguar from a basement storage room and was arrested, and charged with the murder of Gordon Wentlock. The ensuing search of this room turned up a cache of priceless emeralds.
“Well, Carolyne, you did us proud,” Galin said. Melanie, Charles, Carolyne, and he were in the library. Kyle, Roy, and Rodrigo preferred a lower profile until the expedition left on a flight scheduled out of Manaus later that afternoon. Galin would stay on to complete his video; Dillon Crane would fly into Manaus in two days to take over where Richard had been forced to leave off shooting the video because of continuing legal difficulties.
“I just couldn’t make Teddy’s confrontation with Melanie and you in the storage room fit its lead-in,” Carolyne downplayed. “He’d gone out of his way to let me know he was breaking with Melanie and could care less what she was up to with you.”
“Without saying it in so many words, Teddy insinuated the same to me,” said Melanie who’d had trouble with that at the time.
“A fortune in twice-stolen emeralds no longer made Melanie the only pot at the end of the rainbow,” Charles concluded. “He didn’t want us wondering why Melanie was suddenly no longer the prize she once was.”
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