Aaron Elkins - Gideon Oliver 14 - Little Tiny Teeth

by Little Tiny Teeth

  “What motive?” asked Marti. “Didn’t they get along? I thought he was helping her out, getting her a job down in Peru.”

  “He was,” Gideon said, “but she wanted to stay in Iowa City.”

  “Why, in God’s name?” Marti muttered.

  “Iowa City’s nice,” Gideon said, laughing. “But the thing is, with Arden Scofield in the running, her chances of getting the one remaining ethnobotany position were zip. But with Arden out of the picture, everything changes. It’s already June, way too late for the department to try to recruit somebody from the outside, so the job would almost certainly fall to her. And with the Great Man no longer overshadowing everything she did, her future there — so she must have thought — was going to be a lot brighter. Her whole life would be different.”

  “So she came on the trip planning to kill him,” Julie murmured.

  “I doubt it,” Gideon said. “If she had killing him in mind, I don’t think she’d have been so free in telling us about the Iowa situation — practically handing us a motive. No, I think the opportunity simply presented itself, and she took it.”

  “Carpe diem,” observed Marti, expertly using chopsticks to insert a bit of vegetarian sushi — rice, tofu, and shaved ginger rolled in seaweed — between her lips. “Well, you two certainly had an exciting time of it.”

  “What about you?” Gideon asked. “How was Cabo?”

  “Great. We slept in the morning, we did a lot of swimming and snorkeling, we ate like horses, we got a few massages. Or at least I did.”

  “But mostly,” Julie said, “we just relaxed, and read junky novels, and sat on the beach, and baked the Northwest chill out of our bones. That felt good. It must sound pretty boring compared to your trip, though,” she added wistfully. “What an adventure the two of you had!”

  “Yeah, it was,” said John, pushing back from his now-empty pizza tray and clasping his hands on his belly, a man well contented, happy to be back in a world where pizza could be had for the asking. “To tell you the truth, though, next time something like this comes around… no offense to you, Doc… but I think I’ll opt for the crushed turnip wrap.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I owe particular thanks to two scientific papers: a case report by Abdulrezzak Shakir, Steven A. Koehler, and Cyril H. Wecht that appeared in the Journal of Forensic Sciences, vol. 48, no. 2, March 2003; and a monograph by M. S. Olin, H. A. Young, D. Seligson, and H. H. Schmidek that appeared in Spine, vol. 7, no. 5, 1982.

  Without these two excellent monographs (I can’t put in the titles without giving away too much), Gideon Oliver wouldn’t have been half so smart down there in the Amazon.

  My friend, retired FBI Special Agent David Hill, kindly dug up some hard-to-get data on the South American cocaine industry.

  Another knowledgeable friend, Carlos Cordero, helpfully straightened me out on my shaky Spanish.

  The title, Little Tiny Teeth, came from the imagination of Mary O’Rourke.

  I should probably mention that the Chayacuro and Arimagua tribes are fictional. All other Amazonian groups that are mentioned do exist.

  And there really is such a thing as a Goliath spider.

  Other Titles by Aaron Elkins

  Gideon Oliver Novels

  LITTLE TINY TEETH

  UNNATURAL SELECTION

  WHERE THERE’S A WILL

  GOOD BLOOD

  SKELETON DANCE

  TWENTY BLUE DEVILS

  DEAD MEN’S HEARTS

  MAKE NO BONES

  ICY CLUTCHES

  CURSES!

  OLD BONES

  MURDER IN THE QUEEN’S ARMES

  THE DARK PLACE

  FELLOWSHIP OF FEAR

  Chris Norgren Novels

  OLD SCORES

  A GLANCING LIGHT

  DECEPTIVE CLARITY

  Lee Ofsted Novels (with Charlotte Elkins)

  ON THE FRINGE

  WHERE HAVE ALL THE BIRDIES GONE?

  NASTY BREAKS

  ROTTEN LIES

  A WICKED SLICE

  Thrillers

  TURNCOAT

  LOOT