Trouble in Tahiti

by Hayford Peirce

  “Exactly. When did you actually see her?”

  “That’s hard to say. About three weeks ago, I’d say. About a week before she…went missing. It was late one afternoon, and I was having a drink across the street. Naturally I assumed that she was visiting you.”

  “Naturally,” Yves-Louis said sardonically. “She didn’t act suspiciously?”

  “She wasn’t making off with a chest-load of the family silver, if that’s what you mean. As I said, she seemed perfectly at her ease.”

  “Bizarre,” said Jérôme. “Let me see those photos again.”

  The three of them huddled around the photographs, murmuring softly. Yves-Louis looked up. “Mrs. Payton is a striking woman, but we have been thinking of her only in terms of the boat. Now that we’ve considered it more carefully, it’s quite possible that we have seen her—but under other circumstances.”

  “In the nightclubs,” said Yves-Louis.

  “The Manana, the 106, the Roll’s, one of those,” elaborated Jean-Paul. “We would have taken her for just another American tourist.”

  “I might even have danced with her one time,” said Jérôme. “As you say, she has great wheels.”

  Jean-Paul gestured with his hands. “Who knows? In a moment of enthusiasm one of us might have asked her to drop by for a drink.”

  “So one day she came by on the spur of a moment, found nobody aboard, and went off,” finished up Yves-Louis, rather lamely to my mind. I eyed them dubiously.

  They returned my gaze blandly. It was impossible to tell whether they were speaking the truth, or, if they were lying, what their motives would be. And actually, if you analyzed it, they were admitting to nothing at all.

  “A boat is such…a handy means…of getting away from it all,” I said obliquely, certain I didn’t have to spell things out for these three. I was right.

  “There is some question then about how Mrs. Payton…departed?” asked Jérôme. I nodded. He considered. “Since you pointedly mentioned the police, I assume that the usual domestic motives are ruled out. This leaves us with,” he began to enumerate the possibilities on his fingers, “accident; amnesia; sudden death, whether natural or otherwise; abduction; precipitous flight to avoid some humiliating inconvenience such as conviction and incarceration; and…dare we say…? defection to Communist China?” He smiled ironically.

  I snorted. “I think we can leave that last one out.” But I was impressed by the speed with which his mind worked. Unless of course he had a guilty conscience and already had the answers worked out beforehand. “I can’t give you any details at the moment,” I said. “If you should think of anything, though, you might call me or Mrs. Payton’s daughter, Tamara.” I gave them the Punaauia number and got to my feet.

  I turned back from the gangplank. “One last thing, just to satisfy my curiosity. You gentlemen appear to be dubious about Bob West being the owner of the Hotel Taaone.”

  “For a simple reason,” said Yves-Louis. “We are the owners of the Hotel Taaone. And have been for six or seven years now. In fact, we are at present in Tahiti checking up on our investment.”

  “That’s not quite the way I heard it,” I said doggedly.

  “No, probably not,” said Jean-Paul. “Your compatriot, Monsieur West, however, is far from being the owner. Although I suppose it could be possible for you to misunderstand his actual position, without any actual misrepresentation being involved.”

  I frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “Monsieur West merely has the gérance libre of the hotel. He has been renting it from us for a number of years now.”

  “Renting it?”

  “Of course. They don’t do that in Chicago?” he added silkenly. “But perhaps not. It’s really quite simple. Monsieur West has a contract with us—or with our company, I should say. For five years he can run the hotel and make whatever money he can from it. In return he pays us—our company—a certain amount of money every month. Anything above that is his to keep.”

  Jérôme smiled coldly. “It is, of course, none of your business, Monsieur LaRoche, but the fact is that for the past year Monsieur West has not been doing at all well with his management. He is in arrears in his rent to us, and he has been seriously neglecting the hotel’s maintenance and upkeep.”

  “In short,” said Jean-Paul, “he is in violation of his lease on a number of counts, and we are about to repossess our hotel.”

  “Before any further deterioration takes place,” concluded Yves-Louis.

  I fingered the end of my chin. It was scratchy: I hadn’t shaved this morning. “Very interesting,” I said. “But as you said, it’s none of my business.” I stepped down to the sidewalk. “In any case, I’ve pretty well decided that I won’t be buying any hotels in French Polynesia.”

  CHAPTER 16

  The contingent of gendarmes had left by the time I returned to the Payton house. Tamara looked pale and in a state of semi-shock. “I don’t imagine they found anything useful?” I asked. She shook her head. “Same here,” I said. “The Frenchmen on that boat say they never met your mother, except maybe in a nightclub.”

  “Then what was she doing on that boat?” she said desperately. “Do you believe them?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “They obviously pretty well off, and rich people normally don’t kidnap other rich people. On the other hand, these are the kind of characters who could have gotten rich by kidnapping people. I’m afraid I’m not being very helpful to you.”

  She didn’t contradict me. “Will you tell the police about them?”

  “What is there to tell?”

  She looked at me bleakly, then lowered her eyes. “I talked to my father again. I had to yell and scream at him, but he finally admitted that he got a ransom note about a week ago. He threw it away.”

  “Jesus,” I said. “Did he tell you anything about it, like how did he get it, what language was it in, what did it say about the ransom, was there a picture of your mother?”

  She sighed despairingly. “It all seems so hopeless. I don’t think I’ll ever see my mother again. How—”

  “Easy,” I said softly. “What did your father say about the note?”

  “I don’t…well, I think he said it was mailed in Los Angeles—”

  “Los Angeles?”

  “I don’t think that means much. A lot of people here go out to the airport and ask people to mail things for them in L.A. Or they give it to the airline crew to carry up.”

  “Hrmph. What else?”

  “Well, he said there was a picture of…he called it ‘some silly picture of your bitch of mother making faces at me.…’”

  “He’s all heart, your old man. Anything else?”

  “Nothing. Except he knows it’s a hoax and he’s going to ignore it. He…he got very worked up and began to scream about my mother. He…called her crazy and a bitch and.…” She buried her face in her arms. I sat down beside her on the couch and slipped an arm around her shoulders. She let herself collapse against me and we sat there silently. I had a lot of things to say, but none of them were of any use. I stared up at the neat rows of pandanus roofing and thought dark thoughts.

  After a while the phone rang, startling us both. I handed the receiver to Tamara. She listened to what was being said, nodding or shaking her head occasionally, but saying nothing. She hung up abruptly.

  I lifted my eyebrows.

  “That was…Claude somebody-or-other. He’s a newspaper guy I know vaguely. He says the paper just got a call saying my mother had been kidnapped. He wants to know if it’s true.”

  “Who made the call?”

  “I don’t know. I…just hung up without asking.”

  “Hrmph. Let’s—”

  The phone rang again and this time I answered, expecting the police or the gendarmes. They’d have recorded the conversation on their tap in town. But it wasn’t. It was an American who identified himself as the local stringer for the Associated Press. He’d received information about a kidna
pping.

  “From where?” I said.

  “Sorry, that’s confidential.”

  “So is any information about…what did you say it was?”

  “A kid—Oh. You want to trade.”

  “Maybe. You first. Where’s your information from?”

  “I dunno. A phone call a couple of minutes ago, some guy speaking French with a real thick Tahitian accent. A real dolt.”

  “Just an anonymous call, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well,” I said mock-sympathetically, “you must know what those are worth. I’ll tell the Paytons about it, they’ll get a real laugh.” I hung up and dialed Commissaire Tama’s office. He cursed colorfully in three languages when I told him about Tamara’s conversation with her father and the two calls from the journalists.

  “If it’s really the kidnappers,” he growled at last, “this could be their way of putting pressure on Payton to pay. Once the public knows about it, no politician running for office could continue to ignore it.”

  “That’s true,” I said. “Unless it’s a leak from your—”

  “I know, I know,” he said wearily. “I’ll question those newspapermen myself. And tell them to kill the story.”

  “Then they’ll know there’s been a kidnapping.”

  The Commissaire snorted impatiently. “If they have a line into the police, then they know it already. Or if it really was the kidnappers calling to get publicity, they’ll keep at it until the whole world knows. I can’t see that it makes much difference either way.”

  “My brain’s gone to sleep,” I apologized.

  * * * *

  There was nothing to do except wait. Tamara called her father again, this time with the news that the story was about to go public. Maybe Tama could stifle a local paper but not the AP telex machine. The word had probably already reached the States. “Tell him the publicity will be worth 50,000 votes, easy,” I said. I wondered what Charles Wentworth Payton, Republican candidate for the United States Senate from the great and sovereign state of New Mexico, would do now. Maintain that it was a hoax till the time his wife’s chopped-off fingers began landing on the desk of the editor of The New York Times?

  For want of anything better to do, I began to search the house. Maybe Colonel Schneider and his boys had overlooked a Clue. But the only thing of interest I found in the first hour was a voice-activated tape-recorder and high-power transmitter hooked up to the telephone in Danielle Payton’s bedroom. That much the gendarmes had accomplished.

  There was a bookcase against one wall of the bedroom, with perhaps a hundred books in it, mainly American paperbacks, romances and mysteries of the Mary Stewart variety. I doubted if French cops would have spent much time with it, so I began to go through it book by book, riffling through the pages of each and holding it up by the spine for a brisk shake. The only things that fell out were parts of dead cockroaches. But halfway through the middle shelf, nestled between a Victoria Holt and a Helen MacInnes, was an imitation leather notebook. I opened it, and it was all that I could have hoped for.

  It was Danielle Payton’s diary. The entries were handwritten in an almost unintelligible scrawl, using various kinds of felt-tip and ballpoint pens. The trouble was, it didn’t contain very much. The first two months of the year were blank. On March 3rd was the first entry: Arrived from States. House filthy.

  The next one wasn’t until March 22nd. Met J-F, had dinner. Spent the night. OK, not v. imaginative.

  It jumped to April 4th. Two days with H. What a brute!

  The rest of it was the same, perhaps one entry a week, and then generally relating to what seemed to be her love affairs. The comments were short and pithy, but never explicit, and no names were mentioned, just initials. It didn’t seem to be the breakthrough I’d hoped for, but I continued to flip the pages doggedly.

  For most of June and July there was nothing, and I assumed that she had returned to the States. It resumed in early August with: New roof on main house. 4 nights in hotel.

  On August 9th she spent some time with H., and on August 17th she mentioned an evening with H. at M-F’s. J. en plein forme. So J. had been in fine fettle, had he? I assumed this referred to a soirée with her Tahitian pal Hiro at the home of Jackie the swinging doctor and his wife Marie-France, the apprentice witch.

  But it was the entry for August 29th that made the hair prickle on the backs of my arms. Manana Club with R. Met 3 v. sexy Frenchmen. V. virile looking. Went home with R., who was jealous. Maybe arrange party with all three? Bring can of 3-in-1 oil?

  Sept. 5: Tried one of the paras. V. good. But says they don’t do it together. Too bad. Maybe can change minds.

  Sept. 9: Tried another. Indefatigable but too hairy. Ugh.

  Sept. 14: Thought we were set for 4-way, but tiresome people wanted to talk money. Left early.

  Sept. 23: Saw Y-L. He apologized. Asked me to come by boat.

  Sept. 27: Went by yesterday afternoon. No one there.

  Sept. 29: More apologies. Then same tiresome conversation as before. J-P very insistent. V. angry and left. Told them not to bother me again.

  The rest of the diary was blank. I drummed the cover with my fingers for a moment, then got up from where I’d been sitting on the floor and went over to the desk in the far corner. There were several envelopes of canceled checks. To a non-expert eye the handwriting on the checks appeared identical to that in the diary.

  I found Tamara stretched out on her bed, staring at the ceiling. She leafed slowly through the diary, her lips compressing from time to time.

  “I better show this to Tama.” She nodded, and rushed for the bathroom. The door slammed behind her.

  “Did you inform Colonel Schneider about this?” asked the Commissaire after I’d given him the diary and told him what I knew about the three Frenchmen.

  “Should I have?” I asked innocently. “These guys are on a yacht, the yacht’s in town, the Police Judiciaire handles the town. I figured you could call him if you needed him.”

  He stared at me with perfect understanding. “Exactly,” he rumbled from somewhere deep inside his three or four hundred pounds of bodyworks. “I think you may safely leave these three robust ex-paras to me. If by some chance I should subsequently need a roadblock erected on the other side of the island or a house searched on the island of Huahine, I shall certainly ask the worthy Colonel to do the honors.”

  We exchanged thin smiles.

  Divide and conquer.

  CHAPTER 17

  Early the next morning I drove from the hotel to Punaauia and had breakfast with Tamara. There had been more phone calls from the local newspapers, but nothing from the kidnappers. At 8:30 we got into our separate cars and drove back to town, where I accompanied Tamara into the post office. There was just one envelope in her box, I saw, a small airmail envelope with a scene of Tahiti printed on one end. I took it by its edges and we carried it unopened to Tama’s office at the Commissariat.

  “There are fingerprint facilities in France?” I gibed. He snorted sardonically, and we slit open the envelope using tweezers and a letter-opener. Inside there was nothing except a single Polaroid photograph. It showed a haggard Danielle Payton in the same pose as in the previous one. The newspaper in her hands, however, was yesterday’s Dépêche, that of October 13th. Her eye sockets were darker, her cheekbones a little more prominent. Tamara closed her eyes and leaned against my shoulder, while Tama cursed softly under his breath. He pushed the envelope and photograph between sheets of glassine and sealed them in an envelope.

  “These will be in the laboratory in Paris by tomorrow morning,” he said. “If necessary, I will then personally bring in the equipment and fingerprint every man, woman, and child on this wretched island.” His face was grim. “Now, then. Monsieur LaRoche.” He activated a cassette recorder. “Try to recall your two conversations with our friends the paratroopers: that at the Vaima Café two weeks or so ago, and that of yesterday afternoon on their ship. Word by word, if possible.
” He punched the intercom. “Absolutely no calls.”

  Seventy minutes later Tamara had begun to fidget and I had been over both meetings twice. “So,” said Tama pensively. “At first they denied any knowledge whatsoever of Mrs. Payton. Then, when it appeared that this might lead them into deep waters, they changed their approach and intimated somewhat unconvincingly that they might have encountered her, without actually conceding that they had. Correct?”

  “That’s my impression. As if they were waiting to see which way the cat would jump.”

  “Hrmph.” Tama snorted and turned off the recorder. “Well, the cat has jumped. Yesterday afternoon I personally supervised the search of their ship, their rent house, and their automobiles. They were not pleased. Very much the high-powered businessmen on vacation.” He paused and stared at us somberly.

  Tamara leaned forward. “Well?”

  “We found this,” he said softly, and reached into a desk drawer. I felt my breath catch in my throat while he brought his hand out. On the desk he laid a small, flat, black purse. Tamara reached for it.

  “Oh God,” she cried, “that looks just like Mama’s!”

  Tama nodded. “We found it under a mattress in one of the forward staterooms on the Aventurier.” I heard Tamara draw in her breath with a hiss. “There was no other sign of her, anywhere.” He opened the purse and dumped its contents on the desk.

  There was lipstick, a mirror, a cigarette lighter, coins, hairpins, a comb, and three unopened envelopes. The were all addressed to Danielle Payton. Two had been mailed in the United States, and the other was a bill from the local electrical company. Tama scrutinized the postmarks. “This one from Boston is dated September 17th, and the one from Hartford September 21st. This local one is September 30th.” He turned to his calendar. “September 30th was a Thursday. So Mrs. Payton would have received it on Friday, October 1st, put it in her purse with these two other letters from the United States which arrived at the same time, intending to open them later, and then…what?”

  We stared down at them in horrid fascination, our imaginations conjuring up macabre and disquieting images from the ordinary spectacle of three unopened letters lying on a desk. There was an aura of finality about them somehow akin to an open grave.