Twenty blue devils

Chapter 23

"I don't know what you mean,” Therese said, her upper lip beginning to tremble.

"I mean,” John said gently, “we have to clear up these things. Brian was murdered, Therese. Don't you want us to find out who did it?"

Her lovely eyes brimmed instantly. “I don't see how you can say…how you can know that he was…from just a few little b…a few little b…” Tears flowed down silken cheeks. She bowed her head.

John, in obvious discomfort, appealed to Gideon. “It's the truth, isn't it, Doc?"

"It's true, Therese,” Gideon said, not very comfortable himself. The interview with John's cousin had been painful from the start. Since Brian's death she had been living at her parents’ house in Papara, and they had found her there, down at the beach, in a yellow sundress, sitting in a thatch-roofed pergola with a simple word-puzzle book open in front of her. The twins, happily unencumbered by frocks, or by any clothing at all other than little straw hats, played companionably in the sun a few yards away. She had received the two men warmly-there was no mistaking the affection between her and John-but every question about Brian had been met with lowered eyes, hesitant mumbles, shrugs, and sentence fragments.

Did she know how Brian had suffered the injury to his face? “His…I didn't…I don't…” Shrug. Mumble.

Could she account for the extreme development of his leg muscles? “I don't…I didn't…Do you…” Shrug. Mumble.

What were the details of Brian's breakup with his wife in the United States? “Well, his wife was never…she lived in…they didn't really…” Shrug. Mumble. Blush.

John had been remarkably patient, considering that he was John, but Gideon could sense the exasperation quietly building up. “Therese, listen. I want to ask you something else, and I want you to answer me honestly. How did you and Brian meet?"

"Well…Claudine, don't do that, honey,” she called over his shoulder. “You wouldn't like it if Claudette put sand in your ear. Oh, I'm sorry, John, what did you say?"

"How did you and Brian meet?"

"But you already know that. He was a teaching assistant at Bennington when I was there. And then a few years later, when he was here on vacation from his job, he remembered me and gave me a call, and we…we got together.” Shrug. Mumble. But at least she'd managed a string of complete sentences.

"And what was the job he was on vacation from?"

She frowned uneasily at him. “John, why do you sound so…so…"

"What was the job, Therese?"

"I forget, exactly. In Michigan. It was a computer company CompuLine, I think…"

"No, Therese."

She blinked. “No? What do you mean, no? I don't…"

"There is no CompuLine in Michigan."

"Well, I told you, maybe I-"

"There's a Compuworld, but they never had a Brian Scott."

"Well, maybe-"

"And there was no teaching assistant named Brian Scott at Bennington the years you were there."

"Well, technically maybe he was a, a research assistant, or a-"

"And no research assistant, no temporary lecturer, no graduate student, no nothing. No Brian Scott."

Her mouth opened. For a second or two she couldn't speak. She seemed-it was hard for Gideon to come up with a word for her expression-startled, frightened, wary. “No, you're wrong, John-"

"Therese, I checked. I made some calls from the gendarmerie just a few hours ago."

"You did?” Her face was rigid with apprehension.

You did? Gideon almost echoed. No wonder John had seemed so preoccupied at lunch, a late bite at a roadside pizza restaurant in Punaauia on the way from Papeete. But then Gideon had been preoccupied too, mulling over the obscure functions of m. soleus, and he hadn't contributed much to the conversation either.

"But I did meet him there!” Therese cried, jumping up, “and he said he was a teaching assistant, and he was always around the business department, and…and…” She was crying again, not just a few becoming tears this time, but with her eyes and nose streaming, her face bunched and reddened, and her body shaking. “Why are you doing this? Don't you believe me? I swear I'm telling the truth!"

The girls had run to their mother and clasped her about the legs, weeping along with her. “Bad man,” murmured one of them to John.

John was plainly distressed. He put his hands tenderly on Therese's quaking shoulders. “Shh, Therese, don't cry. Everything's going to work out. Of course we believe you. We're just trying to put everything together. Come on now, shh. Of course we believe you."

"She's lying,” he said to Gideon as they returned to the car.

"From the word go,” said Gideon.

Julie picked up the telephone on the first ring. “Hello?"

"Well, hi,” Gideon said. As always, his voice softened, mellowed, upon hearing hers. He was sprawled on a rattan chair in his cottage, his feet up on the table, comfortably relaxed and feeling virtuous besides; after dinner with John at a good French restaurant he had actually put in a couple of hours on his symposium notes.

"Well, hi,” she said quietly, her voice a little husky as well. Husky and sleepy.

It was 9 P.M. in Tahiti, 11 P.M. in Port Angeles. He imagined her in one of the living room armchairs, black-haired, dark-eyed, pretty, her face scrubbed, her sturdy, bare feet curled under her, wearing the thick terry-cloth robe and flannel pajamas that she got out of the closet when he was away. She was probably sipping a glass of sherry, or perhaps a cup of hot chocolate, and reading before going to bed.

Virgil, probably. Julie, who was somewhat given to sudden efforts at self-improvement, had decided some months before that her classical education was lacking, that she was tired of pretending to be familiar with classics she'd never read, and that it was time to do something about it. Gideon, an old hand at pretending to be familiar with classics he'd never read, had advised against expending the required effort, but Julie had stuck unflinchingly to her guns, slogging through dense, scholarly translations of Homer, Plato, Sophocles, and Aristotle, and recently moving on to the Romans. When he had left she was a third of the way through the Aeneid and giving every indication of enjoying it.

Indeed, he heard the thump of a book being closed, the clink of glass.

"You sound wonderful,” he said.

"You do too."

"God, I can't believe it's only been-what, three days?” he blurted. “Ah, Julie, you have no idea how much I miss you. Without you around, I'm just not whole. I can't wait to get back…hold you…kiss you…tell you how much I love you…"

"My goodness.” There was a pause while she took this in. “Say, who is this?"

"This is your husband,” he said tolerantly.

"Husband, eh? How do I know you're who you say you are? You could be anybody."

Sometimes she was like this, kittenish and coy. In anyone else it would have made his toes curl, but in Julie it charmed him utterly. As did just about everything else about her.

"I love the way your pyramidalis nasi wrinkles your nose when you laugh,” he said. “I never get enough of your incredibly sexy popliteal fossae. Your subtrochanteric-"

"It is you!” she cried. “I knew it, I was just testing."

"How's everything there?” Gideon asked. “How's Virgil? How're the elk?"

"The elk are fine, they send you their best. Tell me what's been happening there."

"Well, to start with, John damn near got us both arrested."

" What? Start at the beginning.” He heard her settle herself more comfortably, and then the plumping of a pillow. She had been reading in bed, not in a chair.

He started at the beginning. He told her about Nick's sudden change of mind when they arrived, about the contretemps with Bertaud, about the adventure in the graveyard and the giant gendarme with his climactic Arretez-vous, s'il vous plait. By that time she was laughing, and her pretty laughter had him thinking that maybe it had been funny after all, even if it had seemed anything but at the time.

Julie had always been a good listener, and Gideon went on from there to tell her about Nick, and Maggie, and Therese, and the rest of the clan, about the family dinner the evening before, about his tour of the farm with Tari. And about Brian's skeleton.

The end of the narrative was greeted by five cheerful little pips . She had taken the cordless telephone and gone to the kitchen to heat some more hot chocolate in the microwave. “So he was murdered,” she said.

"Yup. Care to offer any ideas on the perp?” He asked the question offhandedly but he knew from long experience that Julie had a way of sorting the data that he gave her and coming up with things that had gotten by him, of making out forests where he saw nothing but trees, or not even trees but only twigs and branches.

"A few,” she said meditatively. “What about you?"

"Well, I keep coming back to Maggie. Not in any serious way, but there is that business with the shed and then with the jeep. I don't know, it probably doesn't amount to anything, and besides I can't think of a reason for Maggie in particular to want to get rid of Brian-I mean, any more than anyone else did."

"Oh, I can help you there."

She tossed it out so carelessly that it made him laugh. “Can you, now."

"Jealousy,” she said. “And resentment."

Maggie was Nick's eldest daughter, she went on; homely, hardworking, ambitious-

"I don't know how ambitious she is,” Gideon said. “She seems to like it pretty well where she is."

Be that as it may, Julie told him, certainly she was possessive enough as a daughter to be hugely resentful when the son Nick had always wanted walked in in the form of youthful, handsome Brian Scott and proceeded not only to appropriate her only sister but to pretty much take over the place piece by piece, including a substantial chunk of Nick's fatherly affections. Wasn't that enough of a basis on which to suppose that Maggie might fervently wish him gone? Possibly even enough to kill him herself?

"You know,” Gideon said slowly, “that's a point."

"Are you honestly going to tell me it never occurred to you?"

"Um…no, it didn't."

He heard her chuckle. “Gideon, you're amazing. You are probably the most intelligent man I know, and yet sometimes-"

"Well, I guess I wasn't thinking along those lines,” he said, laughing. “Hey, what do you mean, ‘probably'?"

She ignored the question. “I wasn't really thinking along those lines either, as a matter of fact. You know who I was thinking about-"

"Let me guess. Therese."

"Why Therese?"

"Because I made the mistake of saying she was gorgeous, and as a woman you're naturally inclined-"

"Oh, baloney. You happen to be right, it's Therese -"

"Ho."

"But it's got nothing to do with how sexy she is. It has to do with the more pertinent fact that Therese happens to be the person who made Nick call the exhumation off."

" That did not escape my notice,” Gideon said, “but she also happens to be the person who wrote a pitiful letter to Pele, goddess of fire, a few weeks ago, begging for protection for Brian."

"In order to make herself look innocent after the fact, maybe?"

"Impossible. She had no idea John's sister would ever see it."

"And how do you know that, exactly? Because she batted those big, beautiful eyes and said so?"

He paused. “Well, I grant you, that's a point too. It could have been a ploy."

"Besides, you and John think she's holding things back too. You said so."

"Well, yes, but…yes."

But Julie hadn't met Therese, he had. As John had once put it, there were some people in the world who did unto others and other people who got done unto. And Therese was definitely a done-unto. A clinging vine, a model of low self-esteem, a mother's (or rather father's) darling-but not a murderer, never a murderer. Still, he'd been wrong about that kind of thing before…

"Gideon,” Julie said in a softer voice, “when will you be back? I miss you too, you know."

"As soon as I can, Julie. Now that Bertaud is taking this seriously I feel as if I ought to stick around a few more days in case I'm needed. Tomorrow morning he wants John and me at Nick's office at eleven. He wants to have a few things out with Nick, and I think we're supposed to be there to keep him honest."

"About what?"

"About the on-again, off-again business with the exhumation, I suppose, but I'm just guessing."

"You are having some fun too, I hope? Relaxing a little?"

"Sure, I even took a nap in a hammock the other day. And the whole thing is fun in a way. You know me."

"Do I ever.” They were winding down. “Are you getting all the Paradise coffee you want?"

"Plenty."

"Good, then maybe we won't have to buy any at home for a while."

Gideon laughed. Julie, as much of a coffee drinker as he was, generally went for Starbucks or Seattle's Best; all of Nick's coffees, she felt, were overpriced for their quality. It was one of the few differences in their food preferences.

"Well,” he said reluctantly, “I guess I'll get back to my notes."

"And I'll get to bed. I was staying up, hoping you'd call."

"I'll call again tomorrow. Any more words of wisdom before I hang up? Anybody else we should be casting a suspicious eye on?"

"Nick,” she said without hesitation.

"Because of the way he waffled on the exhumation?"

"That, and because of how hard he was trying to keep everybody from talking about the Superstar thing in front of you and John. He's hiding something too."

"But I told you, he was just being a good host. He's a courtly kind of guy in his own way, and he simply felt it wasn't good taste to talk business in front of dinner guests. That's all."

"And how do you know that?"

"I guess I don't, really,” he said with a smile. “Okay, Julie, I'll admit, you've given me a few things to think about. I'll talk to John about them in the morning."

"You know what I keep wondering?” she said.

"No, what do you keep wondering?"

"I keep wondering, what the heck would you guys do without me?"