Distant Thunder

51

Everybody stood, frozen, saying nothing. Finally, Dino spoke. “Okay, Stone,” he said, “you’re not crazy. I’m crazy.”

“Me, too,” Viv said.

And then the apparition spoke. “Nobody’s crazy. I’m not dead.”

“Prove it,” Dino said.

“What do you want me to do? Bleed for you?”

“Don’t bother,” Stone said. “You’ve convinced me. Please sit down so I don’t have to look up at you.”

Vanessa sat down and crossed her legs. “Well?”

“Explain yourself,” Stone said. “And don’t leave anything out.”

“Dino made a mistake,” she said. “He found the wrong corpse.”

“You think I never examined a corpse?” Dino asked, his voice rising.

“I didn’t say that,” Vanessa replied. “I said you examined the wrong corpse. It was understandable, being covered in blood and all that. I found it about thirty seconds before you did. When you and Stone went out to the vestibule with guns drawn, I grabbed my little bag, then ran through the kitchen and out to the service elevator. I rode it to the basement, then ran into the alley and up to the street, where I got a cab.”

“Why didn’t you say something to somebody?” Stone asked.

“Because I didn’t want to be surrounded by cops and, maybe, arrested for murder. I knew where you were heading, since I was meant to go with you. I went to LaGuardia and got a nonstop to Key West. I remembered that you lived next to a strip joint called Bare Assets, so I went there and looked up the street beside it. I found your name on the mailbox. I went in, and a housekeeper said you had just called and were taking a cruise instead.”

“Sane, so far,” Stone admitted.

“Then Lance walked in. I surprised him, too. After he calmed down, we had a conversation about where you had gone, and he made some phone calls and said you wouldn’t get where you were going until the next day. So yesterday we took the little seaplane out here, where we were met by the Coast Guard cutter, and we were aboard that until you arrived.”

“How’d you get aboard without being seen?”

“Did you see Lance come aboard?”

“Well, no.”

“He’s sneaky that way. He put me in an empty cabin up forward, told me to wait until some things were settled, and eventually, I came up here.”

“Who was the dead woman in your bathroom?” Dino asked.

“I don’t know.”

“I can guess,” Stone said.

“So, guess,” Dino replied.

“Remember the lovely Anna?”

“She was never caught. She could have been anywhere. Why would she go after Vanessa?” Dino said.

“To keep her from ratting out Majorov.”

“Oh, shit. Well, at least we don’t have to worry about her anymore.”

“There was somebody else in my apartment that I didn’t know about,” Vanessa said. “I think he killed her, then got out the same way I did, but earlier.” She recrossed her legs. “I think that about covers it,” she said.

“And it was you who put the amyl nitrate in my lime?”

“It was not,” she replied firmly. “Who else was here?”

“Lance,” Stone said. “But why would he want to do that?”

“Beats me, but I saw him do it. Maybe he just wanted to confuse you.”

“Well, that worked,” Stone replied. “I thought I had had a stroke.”

“No,” Viv said. “The amyl nitrate covers all your symptoms — at least, one squirt would. Two squirts of lime juice, and you’d have just passed out for a while.”

“Where’s the plastique bomb?” Stone asked.

“I flushed it down the toilet at the bottom of the stairs.”

“That didn’t clog it?”

“Nope, it went straight down and out to wherever things go.”

“No,” Stone said. “We can’t flush into these waters. It went into the holding tank. Has anybody pooped since we got aboard?”

All heads were shaken.

Stone picked up a phone and asked Todd to inspect the tank and to bring in any unusual object he found there.

“Why do you want the thing?” Dino asked.

“Because I don’t want it to accidentally go off in the holding tank. I don’t know how I would explain it to my partners in the yacht. I don’t think our insurance covers that.”

“Better safe than sorry,” Vanessa said.

“You should have thought of that before you flushed,” Stone replied.