Twenty blue devils

Chapter 16

Gideon's single-minded intention, when Tari delivered him to the Shangri-La, had been to go to his room and buckle down to work on those symposium notes. But at the meeting of lawn and sand in front of his cottage-in front of each of the cottages along the strand-a net hammock was slung invitingly between two sturdy guava trees. As he passed it his resolution wavered, just a little. It was John's fault, really, for bringing up the idea of a hammock in the first place. But the thing was, it looked so comfortable swaying there in the cool, dappled shade, and it had been such a long time-years?- since he'd been in one, that he climbed in to get the feel of it, pushing off with his foot against a nearby lawn chair to start himself swinging. Overhead, the thick green leaves swayed soothingly back and forth against a cobalt sky.

He woke up an hour later, at a little after four, with his foot still hanging over the side, a warm breeze off the lagoon stirring the hair on his arms. He felt rested and loose. The temperature was about 70 degrees, the air like satin on his skin. Stretching away on either side of him, along the curving fringe of the beach, coconut palms nodded on slender, arching trunks. The air was perfumed with wildflowers and the crisp tang of the sea. He remembered the last weather report he'd heard before leaving home a day earlier: snow showers mixed with sleet and changing to freezing rain, but with a slight possibility of late-afternoon “sunbreaks,” those rare, brief phenomena offered up almost daily throughout the gray winter by the sadistic weather forecasters of the Pacific Northwest.

Like Julie, he preferred coolness to warmth, fir trees to palms, and misty, pearl-gray skies to flat, hot, sunny ones, but, by God, he had to admit that there was something to be said for the tropics, particularly at this time of year. Assuming that the confusion over the exhumation order was some kind of mix-up that could be straightened out, he had three, maybe four, more days of summer ahead, three days to bake the winter hunch out of his shoulders, three days of tropical flowers, and lush fruits, and no sleet-changing-to-freezing-rain weather forecasts.

One long sunbreak.

"Hey, Doc, what is it with you, sleeping sickness? Come on, wake up, it's almost five o'clock."

"John,” Gideon said with his eyes still closed, “I really wish you'd stop doing that. It's extremely annoying."

"What do you want me to do? Every time I need to talk to you, you're flat on your back. It's amazing. We haven't even been here one day and you're already going to seed."

Gideon smiled placidly. “It does seem that way, doesn't it?"

Well, why not? Going to seed was what you were supposed to do in Tahiti. Anyway, what was the hurry? Unless John had accomplished the unexpected with Nick, they still didn't have an exhumation order.

He yawned, stretched enjoyably, and pulled himself to a sitting position in the hammock. “How'd it go with your uncle?"

"Interesting. Come on, let's take a walk on the beach; I'll tell you about it. I mean, if you think you can stand the exertion."

"There's something I don't understand,” Gideon said ten minutes later. “Why is it up to Nick anyway? Why isn't it your cousin Therese who's involved in it? It's her husband's body we're talking about, isn't it?"

"Not exactly. Brian and Therese never got married, you see-"

"They weren't married? I thought-"

"Well, as far as everybody's concerned, they are married- only they're really not. I never heard all the details, but the upshot is that Brian had an ex-wife somewhere, except she isn't exactly ‘ex.’ Didn't want him, but had some way of blocking him from getting a divorce."

"And Nick knew about that? It didn't bother him?"

John shrugged. “This is the South Seas. Just about everybody who washes up here and stays has something back home he'd just as soon not talk about. Anyway, the point I'm getting at is that Therese doesn't have any more say about what happens to Brian's body than anybody else does. And the main thing is, Brian's buried in this little cemetery up in a corner of the coffee plantation; it's private property and guess who it belongs to."

"Nick,” Gideon said.

"Nick,” John confirmed. “And Nick says no dice."

"Because he doesn't want to upset his daughter."

John didn't answer right away. They continued walking northward along the edge of the lagoon, their soles squeaking against the sand. On the landward side of the narrow beach were groves of coconut palms, and beyond them the land rose toward the hypnotically, impossibly green flanks of the jagged mountains that formed the island's core.

"So he says,” John said at last.

Gideon glanced at him. “You don't believe him?"

"No,” John said shortly, and then after another brief hesitation: “I'll tell you what I think. I think he got back here and thought things over, and pulled the plug on us because he's afraid somebody in the family killed Brian."

"Not the Mob?” Gideon stopped walking and stared at John. “Somebody in his own family-in your own family? Who?"

"I don't think he had any idea who, Doc. I think he's just worried that it might turn out that way. He never did think too much of the Mob idea. Neither did I, to tell you the truth."

"Neither did I, to tell you the truth. But what does he think, then? Why would he assume it's one of your relatives?"

"Well, he didn't tell me this, you understand, but there's been some pretty heavy-duty fighting going on between them for a few years now."

This came as a surprise. “So how come you're always telling me how great everybody gets along?"

"They do get along,” John said defensively. “What the hell, we're a family like any other family. We can always find things to argue about."

"Like what?"

John shrugged and started them walking again. “Business,” he said testily, his hands thrust into his pockets. “It gets pretty complicated; I never did get everything straight."

The family coffee business, he explained, was very much that: a family business. Nick was the sole owner, but his management team, consisting of Maggie, Nelson, and Rudy, also held shares in it. So had Brian, although in his case, the shares were actually held, and were still held, by Therese. This had been at Brian's suggestion; he had felt that the plantation had always been a family affair and was better off continuing that way. The suggestion, needless to say, had been willingly taken up by Nick.

What it all amounted to in practical terms was that instead of being paid salaries for their work, they all received a percentage of the profits. Nick's share was fifty percent, with the remaining fifty percent going to the others in ten or fifteen percent portions, depending on their positions in the organization. John wasn't positive what the amounts came to, but he believed that Nick had been getting over $300,000 a year recently, and the others from $70,000 to $100,000.

"A fair amount of money,” Gideon observed.

"Sure, but that isn't what the real hassling's about."

The real hassling had begun about a year earlier, when something called Superstar Resorts International had set its sights on the plantation as the ideal property for its planned South Seas megaresort. They had made Nick a huge offer for the land; in the neighborhood of $5 million, John understood. And that was when the fly had landed in the ointment.

"You see, the way Nick drew up these so-called shares, whatever profit-percentage people have, they're entitled to the same percentage from any sale of the company. You following me?"

Gideon nodded. “So if they'd sold it, even a ten percent share would net half a million dollars. And Nick would come away with two and a half."

"You got it. And Superstar has upped the offer at least twice since then. Nick was right on the verge of selling a couple of times."

"But obviously he didn't"

"Nope. When it came down to it, Brian always talked him out of it."

There was only one boss of the Paradise Coffee plantation, John went on, and that was Nick Druett, founder and president; when big decisions were to be made, Nick made them But he was open-minded, as autocrats went, and he liked to get the advice of his management team and his immediate family before committing to a major course of action. In this case, as John understood it, most of them had been eager to accept the offer and walk away with the money-but not Brian, who had made a strong, emotional appeal to Nick on the grounds that the plantation was the glue that held the family together; once it was sold, they would scatter to the four winds. And in the end it was this that had carried the day with Nick the Patriarch. Twice.

"And you think,” Gideon said, “that Brian might have been killed by one of the others so they'd have a better chance of convincing Nick to sell?"

"Who knows? I think that's what Nick thinks. If you ask me, it's pretty far-fetched, but all I want right now is for you to have a look at Brian and tell me what you think.

"It's funny when you think about it,” he mused after they'd gone a little farther. “I mean, here's Brian, the one guy who's not related to everybody else-he's not even an in-law, officially speaking-and he's the one who's always getting all choked up about family."

They stopped walking, and for a few moments John stared without speaking toward the white, curling ribbon of surf that marked the coral reef half a mile out, dividing the sea into a bright green foreground and a deep blue background. “Well, Brian didn't have any family of his own left, you know, and Nick was like a father to him. It went both ways-Brian was practically like a son to Nick too."

"But if that's so,” Gideon said, “why would he call us off? Wouldn't he want to see the killer caught?"

"Would he? How would he feel if it turned out to be-just say-Therese? Or Celine? Or-"

"Or Maggie."

"Yeah, or-wait, what do you mean, Maggie? What'd you say it like that for?"

"A couple of things, John.” He started them walking again. “Did you know that the day Brian had the accident with the jeep he wouldn't have been in it except for a change of schedule that Maggie arranged? Did you know she'd been in the drying shed for a couple of hours-all by herself-the night before it gave way and nearly killed Brian?"

"So?” John demanded aggressively. “What's that supposed to mean?"

"Probably nothing. But it's also pretty clear she wasn't particularly fond of Brian-"

"Sure, she was. She loved Brian. He was like a, like a-” Brother to her, Gideon said to himself.

"-like a brother to her. Only once in my life did I ever see Maggie break down and bawl, and that was when she heard he was dead.” His arms were flailing now, the way they did when he got stirred up. “Where do you come up with these ideas?"

"From talking to her,” Gideon said, moving off a step or two to get safely out of range. “For someone who loved him she sure found a lot to criticize about him."

"Oh hell, Doc, that's just Maggie. You should hear her take after me sometimes; or poor old Nelson."

"John, relax. I'm sure you're right. I just thought I ought to mention it, that's all."

"Yeah, well, sure, of course.” After a moment he smiled. “Sorry, Doc, I didn't realize I was so touchy. I apologize. Obviously, it's all right for me to say one of my family could be a killer-but not you . That's not right."

"Human nature, John. Don't worry about it."

"Well, but I do worry about it. We're a team, Doc. The last thing I want is for you to hold back what you're thinking because you think it might hurt my feelings."

"Not a chance, you know that."

All the same, if a few vague uncertainties about his maternal cousin could bring him to the arm-waving stage, how was John going to feel if the finger of suspicion were to begin to point toward his own brother, Nelson? Gideon pondered that for a few steps, and then brought himself up short. Suspicion of what? Was he starting to wonder, against his own considered judgment and in the absence of anything close to plausible evidence, whether murder had been done after all?

The end of Nick's private beach was marked by a falling-down Cyclone fence laid out across it, with a sign alongside in three languages. "Propriete Privee," it said. Underneath was “Keep Off, Private Beach, This Means You,” and underneath that, "Tabu." In the lower corner was a picture of a snarling dog.

"Gee, I wonder what they're trying to tell us,” John remarked as they started back.

There was no one snorkeling along the hotel's beach, no one scuba-diving, no one sunning, and only one lumpy body in the long row of hammocks. A mile farther along the shore, in opulent contrast, the grounds of the modernistic Hotel Captain Cook were crammed with sunbathers and snorkelers. If this was a typical day at the Shangri-La, Gideon thought, Dean Parks wasn't doing as well as he claimed in his battle with the big players.

"John, what do you suggest we do now?"

"What do you want to do?"

"Well, you might want to stay on, but I think I ought to pack up and go home,” said Gideon. “Regardless of what did or didn't happen to Brian, there's nothing here for me to do. I don't like living on Nick's money for nothing, and he's made it clear that he doesn't want us poking around after all. Neither do the police, so that would seem to be that. There's nothing we can do about it."

John stared at him, open-mouthed. “You just want to go home and forget anybody's been murdered?"

Gideon sighed. “John…the thing is, I don't really think anybody has been murdered. I've felt that way from the beginning, you know that.” Well, more or less.

"You honestly think all those things were accidents?"

He hesitated. “Let's just say I think Therese's alternative hypothesis makes as much sense as anything else."

John frowned at him. “What's Therese's alternative hypothesis?"

"Pele's Revenge,” Gideon said.

"Ah, you're probably right,” John said with a smile, “but I just can't let go of it. Look, would you at least take a look at the death report? There are pictures."

"Brian's death report? Sure, I'd love to see it, but I don't think there's much chance of that."

John looked highly pleased with himself. “I've got it in my cottage."

"You-how did you manage that?"

"Easy. I stopped in at Bertaud's office on my way back and got on his case again."

"I bet he loved that."

"That's his problem. Anyway, I bugged him until he finally broke down and let me see it. I made copies of it all."

"He let you make copies? I'm amazed."

"He didn't exactly let me make them, he just left me in the records room with the folder, and there was this copier right there…” John spread his palms. “…and he didn't say I couldn't-"

Gideon held up his hand. “Don't tell me any more, John. I don't want to know these things. I'm a law-abiding man."

"Oh, I get it. But as long as I'm the one who does the dirty work and sticks his neck out, you don't mind looking at what I come up with, right? You just don't want to hear about it."

Gideon laughed. “I'd say that about sums it up. Let's see what you have. If there's anything there, I'll go back to Bertaud and wave it under his nose myself, how's that?"

"Spoken like a true skeleton detective."

The clasp-envelope that John brought from his cottage contained two typed sheets and six eight-by-ten-inch, black-and-white photographs of a body on a morgue slab. There were full-length shots from various angles and distances and two gruesome close-ups of the head, all a bit blurry, probably as a result of the photocopying. The corpse was in a relatively late stage of decomposition, beyond what forensic specialists referred to-with good reason-as the “bloated” stage, but not yet to the final or “dry” stage. In other words, while the process of decay was clearly and disagreeably under way, it wasn't far enough along to allow a useful examination of the bones. Add to that the blurriness and it was quickly clear that the pictures weren't going to be of much use.

John watched him expectantly as he leafed through the pictures, but Gideon shook his head. “I'm not going to be able to make anything out of these, John."

"Sure, you will, Doc,” John said with simple confidence. “You always do.” And then after a moment's reflection: “Almost always."

"Thanks, I think.” Gideon dropped into one of the lawn chairs beside the hammock and turned to the printed material.

John wandered restlessly back and forth for a while, his hands in his pockets. “I'm gonna go over to the bar and bring back a beer,” he said. “If it's open. God, this place is dead. You want one too?"

"Just something cold. Some juice, maybe."

John nodded. “Be back in a minute.” But he paused before leaving. “Doc? Try and stay out of that hammock for a change, will you?"