The Mountains Bow Down (48 page)
“I like swinging,” she said.
“So do I, Claire.” I took the hammer from her hands. “So do I.”
V
innie was damaged.
But not dead.
As Vinnie had pressed my face into the pillow, Claire came up behind him and slammed my rock hammer toward his head, connecting with the top of his spine, just below the cerebellum. One inch higher and Vinnie would've dropped dead. But the woman with broken-clock accuracy hit a hole-in-one. The perfect strike, immediately shutting down Vinnie's deranged motor.
As Jack said, drunks will surprise you.
Holding her hands like she was a misbehaving child, I maneuvered her back into my cabin, setting her down on my bed. She was still babbling about swinging, and some thin strands of dried Superglue dangled from her forehead. As she prattled on, I yanked the pink benitoite. She didn't even feel it.
Backing away, smiling, I leaped into my aunt's cabin, locking the door.
Vinnie snored on the bed. In profile, the forehead looked like a continental shelf.
I took the nylon evidence tape from my rock kit and wrapped his wrists behind his back. I taped his ankles together, moving quickly because he was stirring, grunting toward consciousness. Once he was tied, I went into the bathroom and grabbed a washcloth.
When he grunted again, I stuffed the cloth into his mouth and sat on the twin bed opposite him. From the cabin phone, I called the concierge and reported a drunken woman in cabin 513. She was behaving erratically and needed immediate help.
Vinnie's eyelids were fluttering as I hung up. When they opened, he stared at the bedside table for several long moments. But somebody was already knocking on Claire's door and I got up. In the hall, I saw Jack standing at her door, holding a plastic bag.
“Wrong one,” I said.
“Why is your face so red?”
“Hurry!” I motioned for him to come inside, and as he passed through the door, he handed me the plastic bag. It advertised a Ketchikan gift shop.
“Open it,” he said.
The jewelry box was inside.
When I looked up, Jack was already standing beside the bed, staring down at Vinnie. “You want to ask me how I found it, but I want to know how you hog-tied this guy.”
I set the plastic bag on the bureau, relief spilling out of my heart, welling in my eyes. I could only nod.
“Okay, I'll go first,” he said. “Dad was keeping the box.” He looked down at Vinnie. “You rotten creep. Dragging those old people into it, like they don't have enough problems. I should throw you overboard right now, with your hands tied.”
“Jack.”
He didn't hear me. Or couldn't. Locked on Vinnie, his eyes had that cold camera-lens expression. I reached out, touching his arm.
He pointed at Vinnie like he was Exhibit A. “He took the box. That day Milo sent us to get his shoes. Vinnie realized that if Milo noticed the box was gone, he could blame the FBI. And the bodyguard had a key to the cabin.”
Vinnie tried to turn his head, gagging on the washcloth. The forehead dripped with sweat.
“After he grabbed it, he had to get back to the set. He was on a supposed bathroom break, and the girl with the clipboard was watching the door. Whose cabin is three doors from Milo? Sandy's parents, Mr. and Mrs. Butz.” He looked down at Vinnie again. “You miserable thug. You killed her, didn't you? You killed Judy Carpenter.”
The forehead rippled, the eyes darted.
Jack sat down beside him, leaning down close. “That bracelet and those stones in her jewelry box, that's what this is aboutâshe died for some pretty rocks?”
Vinnie shook his head, then moaned in pain.
I rifled through my rock kit, searching through the mess I'd made. When I found the list from the purser, I checked the names again. I didn't get far. Third name from the top:
Herman Butz
. I stared at the sheet, dumbfounded. According to the schedule, it was on Sunday. Ramazan worked for more than ninety minutes.
Safety concerns for handicapped passenger
.
“Jack, did his father say anything about a handyman?”
“No. Why?”
I walked over, pointing to the schedule. Suddenly I remembered something Larrah Sparks told me. “His mother was causing problems before the ship left Seattle. She locked her husband's wallet in the safe, then forgot the code.”
“The safe, huh?”
“Ninety minutes seems like a long time.”
The name!
I kicked myself. That might have been my biggest mistake. When I spoke to the father at the phillumenist convention, he was grateful that Lysander-turned-Sandy had “at least kept me in his last name.” Sparks. I thought that was their name. But Sparks was a stage name. The son was honoring his father's passion for collecting matchbooks.
Lysander Butz of Philadelphia became Hollywood's Sandy Sparks.
I had assumedâand it did exactly what the medical examiner said it would.
Jack slapped Vinnie on the back, hard.
The bodyguard winced, moaning again into the washcloth.
“I'm sure you know what happened, and why. You knew enough to give the old man the jewelry box. And if Raleigh's got you bound up like this, she's got plenty of
rope
. Get it, Vinnie, rope? You're going to a place where they'll call you Vickie. If you're lucky, it's Vickie.” He paused, letting the image sink in. “But I'm a nice guy, not like that Dutchman. Did Martin Webb tell you about him? The big guy just does not care at all about your rights. And when he hears what you did on his ship . . .” Jack shook his head, feigning compassion. “You'll wish somebody was calling you Vickie.”
Vinnie started talking into the washcloth.
Jack pinched the edge but didn't pull it out. “But here's the deal. You can tell us the truthâand I mean the whole truthâand it will buy you some really good favor with us later. Or you can not tell us and we'll hand you over to the Dutchman who will be happy to take care of it. Which one?”
Vinnie gave his answer to the washcloth. Jack still didn't pull it out.
“And make it fast,” he said. “We don't have a lot of time.”
I
t was 2:47 when I rode the service elevator up to the Sky Bar.
Two Ninjas rode with me.
The buffet tables were gone, the shutters lifted, the black lights turned off. The wrap party was over and the public had been allowed inside. On the dance floor, a bleary couple swayed together although no music played. At the large windows, where coral-colored clouds streaked a sky that was neither dusk nor dawn, a valiant middle-aged couple pulled all-nighters, sipping coffee drinks. I stared at the mountains across the silver sea. The rock looked black, but the crowns were backlit by a sun ready to rise again.
I nodded, the way Geert would. The Ninjas moved silently.
Bar closing, they told the passengers on the dance floor and at the windows. Move along, folks, nothing to see here.
I watched from a spot protected from sight by a half wall near the elevator. The remaining movie people sat at the bar, ducks in a guilty row. Sandy, Larrah, Milo. Next to Milo, a pretty brunette half his age gazed at him with a star-struck expression. When the Ninja approached, Milo started to argue about having to leave.
I walked over as the Ninja led the brunette away.
“Too late,” Sparks said, rising from the bar stool to leave. “They just said the bar's closing.”
I picked up a stool and placed it beside him and his wife. At this hour, the blond actress looked strange. Ravaged and skeletal, her pale hand clutched the drink in front of her. A short skirt displayed her long bare legs and a gold starfish anklet.
“I have a surprise for you.” Reaching into my pocket, I dangled the fake blue jewelry. It wasn't a bracelet. That's why it seemed large even on Claire's wrist. “Is this yours?”
She glanced at her husband before answering. “No.”
I laid it on the bar. Jessie stood across from me, behind the counter. If he was tired from the long shift, it didn't show. His alert brown eyes followed the Ninjas when they returned to the bar. They would ask him to leave next.
“Coke, please?” I asked, before he left. “No crushed ice.”
“Yes,” he said.
Yes.
Jessie said yes tonight each time Vinnie ordered a Long Island Iced Tea, extra sweet. The highball combined sour mix, triple sec, vodka, gin, tequila, and rumâwith cola, so it resembled real tea. “Extra sweet” meant extra cola, enough to cover the taste of alcohol. Claire sipped one while she peered into Vinnie's palm and discovered several odd intersections on his lifeline. She drank a second “iced tea” while reading his auraâgray, she informed him. And when he leaned over the table, whispering in her ear, Claire was ready. Claire wanted love; Vinnie wanted that pink stone. And now the bracelet. His lucky night. Claire had already complained to him about the noise next door to her cabin. My cabin was now her cabin. Which meant Vinnie could search for the stones from Judy Carpenter's jewelry box.
Benitoite and Neptunite. Each stone worth tens of thousands of dollars.
Finders keepers.
On the bar Larrah's pale hand inched toward the jewelry. And a strange expression came over her face. Some idea was trying to cinch down on her brain. But her forehead muscles only quivered, paralyzed by botulism toxins. All that Botox now made her look like an inebriated puppet.
“You're sure,” I said. “That's not yours?”
She nodded.
“Absolutely sure?”
“Leave her alone,” Sparks said. “She's drunk.”
“So's Milo. But he can tell me about breaking into your mansion.”
Jack was right. Drunks, they surprise you.
Milo gave a slow turn of his head. With his shoulders hunched, he reminded me of a turtle. The green eyes glanced first at Sparks. Catching the producer's expression, the movie star let a smile blaze across his face.
Then he laughed.
“Milo,” I said, “don't even bother.” I was too tired for this many games. “Vinnie already told us how it worked.”
Vinnie told us three times. Start to finish. Twice in my cabin, a third time in Geert's office. It all began more than a year ago, when Judy started begging Sandy Sparks to make a sequel to Milo's most successful movie. She insisted work would save their marriage. But Sparks didn't want to make the movie. He told me as much, sitting in the hot tub that Tuesday morning after we found her body. Milo, he said, wasn't exactly box office gold.
But Sparks had another reason: he was broke.
I picked up my Coke, sipping. Ninjas had taken Jessie and now they stood as sentries. One blocked the exit ramp to the upper deck. The other guarded the elevator. I took another sip. Sugar, bubbles, caffeine. I could get through this.
I could.
“So Milo and Vinnie broke into your house,” I said, turning to Sparks. “They took the usual. Electronics, computers, your wife's best jewelry. But all that was a cover. They came to steal your benitoite. That irreplaceable collection of benitoite. What's it worth now, a million six?”
For once, Sandy Sparks made no nervous gestures. “I heard your mom went crazy,” he said. “Must run in the family.”
I smiled, officially. “The way collecting runs in your family?”
In Geert's office, as Vinnie told us the facts again, Jack started an Internet search. As a producer, Sandy Sparks didn't have much press in the entertainment magazines. But four years ago he loaned his benitoite collection for an exhibit at San Jose State. His alma mater. Home of the Spartans. The mascot on his baseball cap and boxer shorts, the campus that sat just north of the San Benito mountains, with those singular mines. His obsession with the mineral began in college, when he first heard about how rare and unusual it was. His collection grew with his income, and when he loaned it to the school, its estimated value was $1.4 million. But benitoite was very special. With each passing year, it increased in value: nobody could make more.
“You filed an insurance claim on the benitoite,” I said. “LAPD told us. But like your dad, you're a true collector. And collectors don't like to sell, like your dad won't sell any of his matchbooks. It's hard letting go.”
Reaching into my pocket again, I set the pink stone on the bar.
Claire's supposed third eye.
Sparks couldn't take his eyes off it.
“In exchange for making the robbery look real, Vinnie got money. Milo got his sequel. And Judy came on as co-producer. But Judy was more clever than you.”
In the quiet bar, these people hung on my words. So silent, that I heard the service elevator brush open. When I looked over, Geert was coming around the half wall, pushing a large trash can on wheels.
I took a deep breath. Fresh horses. And I was tired.
“All that stolen benitoite was supposed to come back to you. File the claim, keep the stones. What a deal. But Judy knew you. And she knew you didn't want to make the movie. If you decided to back out, her marriage was really over. So she kept some collateral. And with it, she kept you over a barrel. Now you had to make the movie. Or she could report you for insurance fraud.”
Geert stood behind us, the trash can at his side.
“Smart woman,” he said.
Woman
no longer sounded so derogatory, though the same could not be said for her home state. “Smart, even from Caw-lee-for-nee-ya.”
In no hurry to explain the trash can, he probably would have liked me to continue. String it out. Leave the lid on. But even with a clean bag inside, the trash can must have stunk. I reached over, plucking off the lid.
Sparks jumped. “What theâ”
Jack stood up, grinning. “How you doing?”
He wore the black jacket from Martin Webb's closet. The motorcycle jacket supposedly worn by Brando. But I doubted that; I doubted everything about these people.
