Yeager froze.
“What’s going on here?” Linda said. She glared at George. “And don’t you dare point that thing at me.”
He ignored her, pointed his gun at Mr. Evans. “You. Are you carrying?”
“Carrying?”
“Do you have a gun?”
“No, I do not,” Mr. Evans replied stiffly.
“Pardon me if I don’t take your word for it.” He waggled the muzzle of the pistol in little circles. Evans turned around and held out his arms. George leaned forward and cautiously patted him down with one hand, keeping a wary eye on the rest of us. Satisfied Evans wasn’t armed, he stepped back.
“Go get your friend,” George said, moving so he could cover Evans as he went into the hall. “Anybody else?” He swung his pistol towards Carl Yeager. “Baldy?”
“No,” Yeager snarled.
George wagged his pistol again. Yeager also turned around, held out his arms, and let George pat him down. When he was done, he backed away and pointed the pistol at Jackie Yeager.
“Red?”
“No,” she said, eyes blazing.
“Show me,” George said. Jackie unzipped her motorcycle Jacket and opened it. Beneath the jacket, she was wearing a skin-tight top with a plunging neckline. Her ample cleavage could have easily held a gun, but it would have shown.
Mr. Evans came back into the living room, supporting Mr. Rogers, who was bleeding profusely from a head wound. They were going to get blood on the carpets after all.
“You carrying?” George said, aiming the pistol at Hastings.
Hastings opened his jacket and turned around. George patted him down too, found nothing.
“Don’tcha just love Canadian gun control?” he said with a broad smile. Gesturing with his pistol toward the sofa and the two easy chairs, he said, “All right, everybody get over there where I can see you and I’ll explain what’s going to happen now.”
“And if we don’t,” Carl Yeager said.
“Well,” George said amiably. “I don’t want to shoot anyone, but I will if I have to. I’ll start with you, how’s that?”
Grumbling, Yeager sat beside his wife on the sofa.
“That’s more like it,” George said. “Make yourselves comfortable. This won’t take long.”
Linda and Hilly huddled together in one of the easy chairs.
“Sorry about the rough stuff, ma’am,” George said to Linda.
“Don’t ‘ma’am’ me, chubby,” Linda said, eyes hot through the lenses of her glasses. “And you know where you can shove your apology.”
George stared at her for a beat, then shrugged. “All right, folks,” he said. “Now that we’re all comfortable, let’s get acquainted. I know Mr. McCall, here. How you doin’, Tom?” He looked at Reeny. “Miss Lindsey, nice to finally meet you face to face. Love your show.” Reeny glared at him as he turned to Chris. “And you must be Chris Hastings? Freddy says hi.”
“Who?” Hastings asked.
“Oh,” George said. “I forgot. You know her as Nicky, don’t you? Freddy’s Con’s daughter. Short for Frederica, I guess.”
“Who the hell is Con?” Hastings said.
“The guy who died at Tom’s party. Conrad Eberhardt. He’s the one that stole the diamonds in the first place. Now, who’re the rest of you? You first, baldy. Who are you and what are you doing here? And don’t forget, I’m the one with the gun, and I’m not afraid to use it, so don’t try anything stupid. I’m waiting.”
Carl Yeager, face beet-red with anger, muttered and cursed under his breath. Jackie said, “We’re just here to collect what’s owed us for a piece of junk sailboat this guy sold us.” She jerked her chin in Hastings’ direction.
“Just can’t trust anybody these days, can you?” George commiserated. “Now you two,” he said, waving his pistol at Evans and Rogers. Mr. Evans’ expression was serene. Mr. Rogers, who had a yellow handkerchief, now mostly red with blood, pressed to the back of his skull, stared sullenly at George. George just smiled benignly. “I can guess who you are. Freddy reckoned it was only a matter of time before you showed up. You working for yourselves or the diamond mining company?” He waved the question away with the pistol. “Never mind, it doesn’t matter.”
He was silent for a moment, then said, “All right, this is how it’s going to work. Y’all are going to help me find the package Con hid somewhere in this house the night he died. Then, well, I’ll be out of your hair.” He chuckled dryly. “Those of you who have hair.”
“Will someone please tell me what the hell is going on here?” Linda demanded. I wondered how she’d managed to stay quiet as long as she had. “Tom? What is this all about? Who are all these people?”
“It’s a little complicated to go into right now,” I said.
But Linda wasn’t listening. She stood up and pulled Hilly to her feet. “We’re leaving,” she announced.
“Lady,” George said, tapping the tube of the silencer with his left index finger, “do you know what this thing is? It’s a silencer. If I shot you right now, it would make about as much noise as a duck fart under water. If I had my druthers, I’d shoot you in the leg or the arm, but if I did that you’d surely scream, which would make a hell of a lot more noise than this gun. So, unless you sit the fuck down, I’m gonna have to shoot you very dead indeed. Maybe I’d have to shoot your kid, too. Then I’d have to shoot old Tom here, because if I didn’t, he’d sure as hell try to kill me.”
I managed to find my voice as Linda sat down, face pale.
“George,” I said. “It won’t be necessary to shoot anyone. If the diamonds are here, you can have them, no argument from me. But I’m guessing it was you or your friend Freddy who searched my house the other day and if you didn’t — ”
“That was Freddy,” George said. “She didn’t find them, though. She’d’ve told me if she had.”
Hastings snorted derisively. “You think?” He laughed. “You poor, pathetic bastard. What did she tell you? That if you played it her way and double-crossed Zim and me, you could have the diamonds, the money, and her?” I could tell from the expression on George’s face that Hastings had hit the mark dead centre. “She made me the same offer,” Hastings went on. “Bonus and all. McCall, too, apparently. She’s good, I’ll give you that, but I’ve known better. I knew from the start she couldn’t be trusted any farther than she could spit, so I played along. I tried to tell Zim, or whatever his name was, what she was up to, but…” He shrugged. “He was as pussy-whipped as you are, I guess, even if she was his daughter.”
“She’d’ve told me, believe me,” he said, brushing aside Hastings’ remarks with a wave of his pistol. The way he casually brandished the thing around was making me very nervous.
“If she didn’t find them,” I said, “and the cops didn’t find them, what makes you think you’re going to find them now?”
“Because you’re gonna tell me where they are.”
“I’ve no idea where they are,” I said. “Search again, if you like. I’ll even open the bilge and the safe in the pantry for you. They aren’t here.”
“Maybe you hid them somewhere else,” George said. He pointed his gun at Linda and Hilly. “What if I said I’d shoot your kid?” My guts turned to ice. Linda held Hilly in her arms, placing herself between her daughter and George’s gun. “Would you tell me then?”
“For god’s sake, Tom,” Linda said. “Tell him what he wants to know.”
“I wish I could,” I said.
Hastings said, “Don’t be stupid, McCall. They aren’t worth anyone getting shot over.”
I couldn’t have agreed more.
Carl Yeager said to George, “If we help you find them, what’s in it for us?”
“How about I don’t shoot you?”
Yeager bristled, despite having very little with which to do so.
“Okay, look,” George said. “I don’t want to shoot anyone if I don’t have to. All I want is what’s mine. Well, actually, what’s yours too, Ha
stings. And Freddy’s. Con had all two thousand carats with him. I know they’re here someplace; he wouldn’t’ve let them out of his sight.”
“Did you kill him?” I asked.
“Me? Hell, no. Poor bastard. He must’ve had a heart attack or a stroke or something. Freddy said he had a problem with his blood pressure.”
“What was he doing here anyway?”
“He was reconnoitring,” he said.
“Reconnoitring?”
“He was supposed to meet me at Maggie’s on Sunday to deliver my share of the diamonds. I guess he was just checking out the lay of the land ahead of time.”
“Maggie doesn’t have anything to do with this, does she?”
“Heck, no,” George said. “I was killing time in a bookstore where she was signing her book. Took a fancy to her and introduced myself. And her place seemed as good a place as any to make the exchange with Con. Imagine my surprise when he turned up at your party.”
“Did you talk to him?” I asked.
“Yeah, I talked to him. He told me he’d spotted these two — ” He indicated Evans and Rogers. “ — so he crashed your party. He wasn’t feeling too good, though, he said, and asked me to get him a glass of water so he could take his medication. Next thing I know, he’s dead in that chair.”
“You searched him?”
“Yeah. I didn’t find the diamonds, though. I guess he’d already hidden them, in case these two grabbed him.”
“Did you take his wallet and ID?”
“Yeah. Figured it’d slow the cops down a bit.”
“You’re sure he had the diamonds on him when he got here?”
“Why wouldn’t he?”
“Because he didn’t trust you?” I suggested. “Hell, it wouldn’t surprise me if the whole thing was a scam. I get emails all the time from places like Nigeria or Sierra Leone.” I looked at Mr. Evans and Mr. Rogers. Their faces revealed nothing. “So far, none of them has involved a fortune in diamonds,” I said, “but maybe I’m just not on the right mailing lists.”
Mr. Evans shook his head. “I can assure you the diamonds are quite real.”
“Besides,” George said, “Con sent me a sample. Looked like a little piece of glass that had been in the surf too long, but I took it to a jeweller and had it evaluated. It was the real deal, an uncut diamond. Only about a half a carat or so, a little smaller than a peppercorn, but still worth a few hundred bucks after polishing.” George was getting impatient. “Enough talk. Where are they?”
“I told you, I don’t know. Shoot my ex-wife if you don’t believe me.”
“Tom!” Linda yelped.
“Hey, lady, relax.” George laughed. “You didn’t really mean it, did you, Tom? Okay, maybe you don’t know where the diamonds are, but they’re here someplace.”
And once again we were back to where we’d started. I was reasonably certain, though, that they weren’t in my house. Then I had a sudden idea where they might be. I laughed out loud.
“What’re you laughing at?” George demanded.
“I think I know where Eberhardt hid them,” I said. Everyone looked at me. “I think they’re on Pendragon.” I looked at Reeny. “When Eberhardt came to the marina to talk to you about Chris, did he come aboard?”
Reeny’s brow furrowed. “Yes,” she replied.
“Did he go below?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Was he ever alone, out of your sight?”
“Um, no, I don’t think — ” She hesitated, then, eyes widening as the light bulb went on, said, “Yes, he was. He used the head.”
“Jesus god,” Chris Hastings said.
The Yeagers looked as if they were going to throw up. George just looked confused.
“What?” he demanded.
Hastings stood. The Yeagers exchanged looks and stood too.
“Hold on,” George said, waving his pistol about.
I said, “I think the diamonds are on Hastings’ sailboat, Pendragon, which these two — ” I pointed at the Yeagers. “ — set fire to.”
“So where’s this boat now?”
“She was probably towed to a salvage yard somewhere,” I said.
Carl Yeager’s jaw worked as he tried to speak, but nothing came out. Jackie Yeager’s voice was weak when she said, “When they were towin’ it away, it broke apart and sank out in the middle of the big harbour.”
“Aw, shit,” George said.
Hastings shook his head, a momentary expression of sadness on his face, but it passed quickly and he said, “Well, children, it’s been fun, but I’m out of here.” He looked at Reeny. “I don’t suppose you’d consider coming with me, would you? Thailand’s beautiful this time of year. I know a little house on a beach the tsunami didn’t touch…”
My heart thudded, but Reeny said, “No, Chris, I don’t think so.”
He shrugged, as if she’d simply turned down his invitation to have a cup of coffee.
“We aren’t done here,” George said, but much of the blustery confidence had gone out of his manner.
“Yeah, we are,” Hastings said. “If McCall’s right, the diamonds are at the bottom of Burrard Inlet. You’re never going to find them.”
“And what if he’s just stringing a line? What if he knows where they are?”
“What if he does? What good does it do me? Even if you do find them, you aren’t planning to share, are you?”
Before George could respond there came another knock at the door. Now who? I wondered. Maybe it was Monica/Nicky/Freddy, coming to join the party.
“Hello,” a man’s voice called. “Anyone home? Miss Lindsey? Reeny, are you there? It’s Chick Roberts.”
It occurred to me then that perhaps the diamonds, if indeed there were any diamonds, had not gone down with Pendragon after all. Perhaps when Monica/Nicky/Freddy had searched my house she had in fact found them in the last place she’d looked and was at that very moment on a plane to Brazil.
“Not a sound,” George said, waving his pistol for emphasis.
“Tom?” Mabel Firth called. “Is everything all right?”
Chris Hastings took a step forward, simultaneously stabbing George in the solar plexus with the knuckles of his right hand and snatching the pistol out of George’s hand with his left. George’s face turned bright red, his eyes bugged out, and his knees sagged. Hastings neatly kicked his feet out from under him and clubbed him in the side of the jaw as he went down. He tossed George’s gun under the sofa.
“The door’s open,” I heard Chick Roberts say.
“Get back,” Mabel commanded. “Hello,” she called. “This is the Vancouver police. Is there anyone in the house? Tom? Hilly? Miss Lindsey?”
Chris Hastings bolted up the stairs, long legs taking the steps three at a time.
“What the hell’s he doing?” Carl Yeager said.
“Maybe he’s going to hide in a closet,” Jackie said.
Neither one of them had spent much time on boats, I guessed. Then something fell past the living room window, punctuated by a mighty splash that threw water against the glass. Through the window I saw Chris Hasting haul himself out of the water into a Zodiac that was tied up to the end of the short length of dock between my house and Maggie’s boat slip. The engine sputtered to life and the Zodiac sped away. The Yeagers exchanged glances, then pounded up the stairs, just as Mabel Firth and her partner darted into the living room with their guns pointed at the ceiling.
Two hours later I was alone in my living room with Linda and Hilly. Reeny had gone back to work. Paramedics had checked out George and Mr. Rogers, and the police had taken them and Mr. Evans away for questioning. The production company safety boat had rescued the Yeagers from the harbour and turned them over to the police. I had told the entire story, to the best of my understanding, to Sergeant Matthias and a strikingly handsome, mahogany-eyed female detective named Isabel Worth. The police then conducted yet another brief search of the house, including the bilge and the safe in the pantry, and turned up no
thing yet again.
“Let’s go, young lady,” Linda said to Hilly. “And you’re coming to Australia with me. No argument. I wouldn’t sleep a wink the whole time knowing that you were living in this madhouse.”
“Mo-om!” Hilly protested. I knew better.
“It is not open for discussion,” Linda said. “You’re coming to Australia and that’s that.”
“What about Beatrix and Harry? If I leave them here for a year, they won’t remember me when I get back.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Hillary, they’re just animals.” She heaved a martyred sigh, which I recognized as a sign that she was willing to compromise but wanted to make sure you understood who was really in control. “Oh, all right. We’ll look into the quarantine regulations. Now, let’s go.”
Hilly hugged me. “Sorry, Daddy.”
I hugged her back. “We’ve still got a week,” I said. “And don’t worry, I’ll remember you when you get back.”
“You’ll come to the airport too?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Bring Reeny,” she said. “She’s cool.”
Linda’s eyes smouldered behind her sexy little glasses. A minute later I was alone in my living room.
Sergeant Matthias dropped by the studio late the next day to bring me up to speed on the situation. George, whose surname was Bickerdyke, had been treated for a minor concussion and a dislocated jaw and then arrested on charges of possession of an illegal firearm and assault with a deadly weapon. There was also an outstanding New York State warrant for his arrest on charges of grand larceny and attempted murder. It was unlikely, Matthias said, that the province would oppose his extradition.
The Yeagers had been questioned and released. However, a few hours later they had been arrested after being pulled over for failing to stop at a red light. Since Pendragon had burned they’d been driving around the city with the back of their rental van full of top-grade B.C. Bud marijuana.
Mr. Evans and Mr. Rogers had also been questioned and released.
There was no sign of Chris Hastings. Or the woman who’d called herself Monica Hollander.
Overexposed Page 26
