“His explanation of ‘inability to control’ his passions, could have been valid,” Carolyne admitted. “We all act in ways our brains tell us not to. It was his elaboration to include how the ‘privacy of the spot’ made it so ideal to ‘spare our sensibilities’; Melanie had already told me at the river crossing that Teddy preferred public confrontations where there was no mistaking his she’s-mine mentality. If he really wanted privacy, why not Galin’s room where Melanie and Galin were holed up until they headed for the storage room? I wouldn’t question Teddy barging in there, but how logical was the basement, through a maze of dark corridors?”
“He could have spotted them en route.” Charles saw that possibility.
“We would have spotted him, in turn.” Melanie reiterated the reasons why, given Carolyne the day before.
“I was in the doorway of the library and spotted their entrance to the basement,” Carolyne admitted. “No sign of any servants to pass Teddy the word. Granted, Teddy appeared shortly thereafter, but he wasn’t hot on their trail. He came around the bend in the stairway, so there’s no way he saw them. The acoustics are so poor he couldn’t have heard them; Roy and I hardly heard the fisticuffs between Charles and Felix—you all remember that ruckus—until we made a visual around the bend of the stairs.”
“We were quiet,” Melanie assured; Galin nodded.
“Even if he had seen, or heard, he would have had to pinpoint that one room, among so many; no easy task, especially since the spot is so well insulated against outgoing and incoming sounds; I couldn’t hear Galin and Dr. Seln, and they didn’t hear my calls until I was only a few feet away, the door wide open at the time. Nor was it a case that Melanie ever gave Teddy any indication the room had any special appeal to her or to Galin. She’d pretty much forgotten the storage room until Galin became so infatuated with the possibilities of the den with its animal trophies. Galin and she suddenly in the storage room had been too spontaneous for Teddy to have had foreknowledge.”
“So, he was there for some other reason.” Charles wondered if he’d have reached the same conclusion.
“I’d seen the room with Teddy and Melanie on our grand tour,” Carolyne reminded. “My second time there, Teddy unconscious on the floor, was too eventful for me to register the three-paw jaguar, except in my subconscious; despite the haphazard storage arrangement, the other trophies, except for the water buffalo with its horn obviously damaged during the fight, weren’t missing paws, or eyes, or stuffing; nor had the jaguar been so obviously missing its forepaw my first trip through.”
Only in retrospect did Galin follow how, “Teddy decided to kill Gordon and remembered the potential of the stuffed jaguars in the basement room. He took a forepaw, complete with its claws, and used it and them to make it look as if Gordon was the victim of a wild animal attack. The comments of the zoologist about no teeth marks and unique claw striations worried him that someone might figure out it wasn’t a real jaguar after all; the storeroom might occur to someone as a logical source for whatever was needed to make a mauling look cosmetically correct to an untrained eye.”
Charles saw as plain as day that, “He hadn’t bothered to dispose of the full trophy, when he cut off its forepaw, because he’d figured no one would make the connection, Gordon dead and buried; the storage room wasn’t an often visited place, in that Kyle considered it something of an embarrassment.”
“Teddy planned to kill Gordon for emeralds as far back as when we first came through.” Melanie made it a statement. “It was a way for him to end his quest for financial independence without marrying me, or marrying anyone else, to get it.”
“Teddy was on the balcony, outside Gordon’s room, and spotted Gordon and the emeralds through a breach in the curtains,” Carolyne confirmed. “Gordon had a habit of taking the gems out regularly and fondling them for the pure pleasure of it. He continued doing the same in the field, often slipping away just for that purpose, and Teddy saw that as his chance. Hit from behind, Gordon dropped the gems; Teddy missed the ‘J’ emerald in his haste to pick up the others.”
“Emeralds that had already been stolen once by Gordon who murdered John Leider.” Melanie thought she had that pat.
Carolyne: “Everyone knew of John’s fantastic success in the field, and Gordon knew something big was up at Aquaval when John drove away him and the Amaz’n Galin film crew at gunpoint. When Richard stormed off, Gordon ran off with Susan Delaney but only long enough to drop her and head back to Aquaval, kill John, and steal the emeralds John had collected for sale to Prince Mahoud Najheez.”
Galin imagined Susan who left the fat goose Richard for true love Gordon, only to have her one and only wave good-bye before the honeymoon.
Charles asked, “Why didn’t Gordon take the emeralds and run? He didn’t need the money we paid him, as guide, with that fortune in stockpile.”
“Several things kept him in check,” Carolyne explained. “His fetish for emeralds made them hard to part with. Also, he didn’t want to pull up stakes too soon after John was reported missing, because people knew there was bad blood between them; not only the shooting incident that involved the Amaz’n Galin crew, but because Gordon tried, but failed, to put the make on John’s wife. It was best to have things appear business as usual. Finally, those emeralds were very important gemstones, inventoried carefully in the field, and, again, at the villa; that duplication of records was made perfectly clear by the entries, coded and uncoded, in John’s notebook that Gordon stole with the gems. Gordon couldn’t unload such stones locally, or Jane would have gotten wind of it. Even selling them abroad may have gotten back to her. His best bet was to sit on them until John’s disappearance became really old news, then slip away, break the emeralds into smaller, less identifiable, stones, and live happily ever after, no questions asked.”
“Live happily ever after with Talina?” Galin only half-kidded.
“Someone once said, ‘Love isn’t something one plans; it just happens, between the strangest people, at the strangest of times.’” Carolyne admitted. “Those two certainly weren’t a match I would have thought made in heaven, but why couldn’t even a promiscuous sonofabitch like Gordon have one special woman to come home to? It had to mean something that he planned for her well-being by parting with one of his precious stones; a very impressive gem it was, too.”
“Why didn’t he break the gems into smaller stones right away, so Jane wouldn’t trace them?” Charles asked.
“Gordon was hardly known for his prospecting skills,” Carolyne pointed out, “and would only have raised eyebrows if he suddenly had some story about lucking out on some major emerald discovery, or even a smaller one, so close on the heels of John’s disappearance. Why focus any kind of limelight on himself when it wasn’t necessary? Also, he held out hopes that he’d eventually locate someone able to buy the large stones, without word getting out to Jane; there was a considerably larger amount of profit to be had from leaving the stones in their larger form than in breaking them down into smaller, albeit more easily disposal, units; much the same kind of problem that Teddy would have had to deal with eventually, but for which he figured he had plenty of time to come up with lucrative solutions.”
“I’m amazed how you put it all together as the result of one stuffed animal without its forepaw.” Galin raised his glass in toast to Carolyne. The others followed suit.
Carolyne was modest. “Remember, Teddy was the only one to see the ‘killer’ jaguar: ‘Big as a house.’ ‘Heard it growl.’ ‘Fired at it; may even have hit it.’ Once I got over the major obstacle of realizing there might not have been a real jaguar, I naturally had to examine Teddy’s credibility.”
“Why the jaguar at all?” Charles thought there was an easier way. “Why not kill Gordon, get the emeralds, and hide the body?”
Galin answered. “He didn’t want a missing person. Death by jaguar allowed no mystery, plus a body, so no one would be out looking, and, no matter how high the odds against, stumble on the body wh
erever Teddy had stashed it, and start asking questions. This way, it was merely an unfortunate accident until Roy threw in the monkey wrench about the river rock. Teddy planned for the body to be safely buried, because he’d made sure, by taking out your radio, that no one could be called in, and the body couldn’t be hauled out. By the time anybody came back to find otherwise, if they even bothered, the environment would have made sure there were no answers except for those Teddy had already given.”
“Teddy hit Felix on the head, wrecked our radio, and stole our satellite relay device to make sure the body would have plenty of time to decompose,” Charles said, “but what were we supposed to make of the damage and theft of our equipment?”
“He didn’t care what we made of it, as long as we didn’t connect it to Gordon’s death.” Melanie thought herself damned clever to see that. “Only in books are all the strings neatly tied, and the resulting package complete with no tears or tattered corners. Teddy figured—and why shouldn’t he?—that it didn’t matter if we all asked, years later, ‘Who knocked Felix, smashed the radio, stole the satellite gizmo; and why?’”
“It started to fall apart when Roy asked, ‘What’s that river rock, there, doing here when it shouldn’t be?’” Carolyne said and accepted Galin’s offer for a refill of Scotch. “That question tied the destruction of the radio to a conscious effort by a murderer to delay any expert examination of the body. When Melanie photographed the corpse, and I came up with a means of possibly preserving the body until experts could get to it, Teddy knew he was in trouble.”
“Not to mention how the ‘J’ emerald suggested a motive for murder,” Melanie said and held out her glass; Galin did the honors.
Charles: “Why did Teddy risk playing jealous lover the night before he murdered Gordon?” He had one answer: “Because he didn’t figure anyone would doubt the jaguar did the deed?”
Carolyne saw other alternatives. “Teddy couldn’t risk going against character. He’d made a habit of publicly displaying his macho whenever someone moved in on Melanie. Remember, at the time he’d not yet begun to paint himself out of the relationship; if his bid for the emeralds was unsuccessful, he’d still need her. So, he played his usual role and knew any investigation would prove none of the other men he’d fought for her affections had ever ended up dead. Besides, who would have thought him careless enough to give himself even a tentative motive for murder before committing one?”
“You know what brings me up short,” Charles confessed, “is how Teddy disposed of the body and the ‘killer rock’ after we put them in the cave and headed for the ranch. Wasn’t everyone’s time accounted for, except for Roy’s when he headed off on his own to look for Teddy and me when we were kidnapped?”
“Which was why when I decoded Roy’s message and read where he’d discovered a large deposit of niobium and would ‘proceed to seal off the land,’ on his way out to answer questions, I originally figured Roy, Kyle, and their puppets Rodrigo and Jean-Michael, were guilty of Gordon’s murder as part of that ‘sealing process’,” Carolyne conceded. “What better way for them to get us to move out fast than our guide dead, a man-eating jaguar, or a two-legged murderer, to blame? Soon to be supplemented by the possibilities of cannibals on the rampage. That was the way I put it in my summation to Manuel Marlin. Only afterwards did I think ‘sealing off’ might include cannibals never seen or heard, and a bridge suddenly down. If Roy had merely intended to look for Charles and Teddy, instead, heading off to plant skulls on a stake, and whittle green shafts for arrows, and chop the bridge down, he didn’t have enough time to backtrack to the body. He could have figured Kyle’s men would be sent back to the cave to dispose of that evidence and just say it was gone, but we know that didn’t happen from Charles who accompanied the rescue team; no corpse was there when they got there. As Charles boarded the copter at the last-minute, Kyle or Roy couldn’t have planned for that eventuality to send out another copter before it. As no one protested when Charles went along, that indicated clean consciences, especially as Charles came back alive.”
“Where did Roy come up with skulls on a stake and arrowheads, on such short notice?” Galin asked, poured more of the booze, and settled into a comfortable armchair.
“It wasn’t short notice,” Carolyne begged to differ. “He’d planned for just such a major strike for years, and he knew the necessity for a strategy to discourage anyone from nosing around, when the time arrived, until all the preliminary paperwork was in and a work team in place. He had the skulls and arrowheads waiting: souvenirs collected over the years. It was only a case of putting them where they were most effective.”
“You never figured Roy had an accomplice to kidnap Teddy and me, then dispose of Gordon’s body while Roy took care of skulls, arrows, and chopped down the bridge?” Charles didn’t find an accomplice theory a fantastic one. “What about the English guy who called Teddy, ‘Yank’, tied us up, and cut Teddy’s face with a ring?”
“Several things led me to believe Roy had no accomplice,” Carolyne explained. “There was no mention, when we headed out, of anyone but Roy in the area. Why wouldn’t someone have mentioned it at the time; it was prior to Roy’s broadcast of the discovery? Then, there was the coded message. Not once, but twice, ‘I’: ‘I have found.…’ ‘I will proceed.…’ Also: ‘…on my way out.…” Not ‘we,’ not ‘our’. On the receiving end, Kyle would have known Roy had a partner, so why hide it, especially in a message that went out in code?”
“So, when did Teddy dispose of the body?” Charles persisted.
“When he was supposedly kidnapped,” Carolyne was ready with the answer.
“Supposedly?” Charles protested. “Carolyne, I was there!”
“I didn’t say you weren’t kidnapped, Charles. You were. By Teddy.”
Melanie saw it. “You never saw or heard your assailant, did you, Charles? He came at you from behind, knocked you out, tied you up, blindfolded you, gagged you. Teddy did all the seeing and hearing. You didn’t even know Teddy was around until he untied your hands and said, ‘Here we are, survivors!’, then showed you his scratch and rope burns.”
“A scratch and rope burns that could be easily self-inflicted,” Carolyne verified. “The scratch Roy got from a branch on our run through the fire looked as easily made by some brute’s ring.”
Charles was incredulous.
“Teddy knew there was no jaguar to eat you and no dangerous animals sighted in the area; as for the natives, Roy was only then planting the signs of them,” Carolyne continued. “Everything told Teddy you’d survive until he got back to collect you as his alibi. Even if any of us came looking, you couldn’t move or scream to make you anything more than a very small needle in a very big haystack.”
“The bastards!” Charles decided and for not the first time.
“Your case of no faking it dysentery cleared you of any suspicions as the kidnapper of Teddy, out to dispose of evidence,” Carolyne gave his bowl problem her blessing.
“What exactly did Teddy do with the body?” Galin asked Carolyne, decidedly appreciative of her very fine mind. “Finally do with it, I mean.”
“What he probably should have done with it from the start: dropped it in the river. Likewise, the murder weapon to become just another river rock. And the jaguar’s paw eventually to decompose and disappear, after having first used it to press pug marks into some of the loose dirt around the cave to make it look as if the cat had absconded with the corpse.”
“Teddy cut the ropes of the raft and sliced off the flaps of my backpack.” Melanie saw that, too.
“He couldn’t trust the water to oblige, so he swiped the film chip, Melanie’s bogus replacement to Felix’s bogus replacement, before he was last to leave the far shore, then jettisoned the chip while on the guide line,” Carolyne verified. “He cut the raft ropes to make sure all evidence of his hasty rifling of Melanie’s pack was deep-sixed. Even if everything was lost, we were close enough to the ranch to make it back, especially wi
th Roy’s knowledge of the area.”
“Didn’t Roy worry about a killer on the loose who could stumble upon his secret as easily as any of us?” Charles wondered.
“Roy denies knowing from the start that one of us killed Gordon, but he must have suspected,” Carolyne decided. “There was no one but him and us in the area, and he was familiar enough with the region to know that. When Teddy and Charles disappeared, then reappeared with claims of kidnappers, Roy must have seen Teddy behind it. When the raft came undone, that must have cinched it. He probably even had the emeralds figured out as Teddy’s motive. However, he had bigger fish to fry, and everything Teddy did that hurried us out and offered a warning to others to stay away, played into Roy’s hands.”
“What exactly is niobium?” It didn’t any more ring bells with Charles than it had with Carolyne when she’d broken Roy’s code.
“These days, Carolyne was more informed: “A platinum-grey metallic element that alloys with nickel and steel to withstand exceptionally high temperatures. In nuclear reactors, it allows neutrons to penetrate easily; I don’t know what that means, but it’s a definite plus. Best yet, at low temperatures, it’s a superconductor, and the attempt to find a complete disappearance of electrical resistance in metals above absolute zero has become the new darling of research.”
“Money to be made, ecological systems to be destroyed.” Charles got the none too pretty picture. “No way is any country in debt going to pass up the potential for exploiting such mineral wealth for hard cash.”
“Not even Kyle, with his original ecological good intentions to stop slash burnings and allow us in for plant research, was able to pass on the temptation of that much money in profits,” Carolyne said, saddened by that fact. “No one ever has too much money, especially when the money to be had can make the difference between rich and super rich. I somehow believe Kyle still feels he has something to prove to Jane Leider for past rejections, and there’s no denying that Jane can be impressed by cold cash.”
Amaz'n Murder Page 21
