Uneasy Relations (28 page)

“Detective Chief Inspector. Whoa! I love those great old names. Like Inspector Morse. He was a detective chief inspector too, am I right?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Fausto said, wincing as he got the hand-mangling treatment.

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure he was. Hey, I think you all know our guest of honor here . . .” He glanced around. “Where’d he go? Hey, guest of honor!”

“I haven’t gone anywhere, I’m right here.” From behind Lester, where he’d been completely hidden by his bulk, an abashed but beaming Rowley Boyd emerged, basking in the glow of his newfound celebrity. “Er . . . thank you all for coming.”

“It’s our pleasure, Rowley,” Julie said. “Congratulations.”

The others joined in with congratulations of their own, which the new author accepted with blushing self-deprecation, teeth clamped happily on his unlit pipe.

“Lester, are you doing some promotion for the book?” Gideon asked. “As you so kindly did for mine? Although I really don’t see how you can beat, ‘It’s going to stand the scientific world on its ear.’ ”

Lester threw back his head and trumpeted with laughter. “Hey, complain to me after we see the numbers.” He looked fondly down at Rowley. “I’ll come up with something, don’t worry. I know, maybe we’ll submit it for the Nobel Prize in Archaeology, how’s that sound? You never know what could happen. I got some influential friends in Stockholm. Or is it Oslo? What the hell, I got friends there too.”

“But there is no Nobel Prize for archaeology,” Rowley said.

Lester looked at him as if he’d just discovered that the latest addition to his prestigious stable of Frontiers of Science authors was a simpleton. “Well, the peace prize, the literature prize. Whatever.”

“Lester . . .” Rowley hesitated, embarrassed. “I appreciate the gesture — and your confidence in me — but . . . well, I really don’t think it’s the kind of book . . . I mean, it’s just a popular treatment, it’s not as if it contributes anything new. I’d feel, well, a bit awkward about...”

“I think Lester was joking,” Gideon said gently. “He does that.”

Now Rowley was really embarrassed. “Oh . . . well, of course, ha-ha.” He chewed furiously on the pipe, shifting it from one corner of his mouth to the other with his teeth alone. “Yes, that’s funny, really. I didn’t get it at first. . . .”

“Well, great talking to you guys,” Lester said, his burly arm coming down around Rowley’s slight and shrinking shoulders. But now there are plenty of other people eager to meet our famous author.”

“Oh, I don’t know about ‘eager’ . . .” Rowley was murmuring as he was hauled away.

“Did he really think Lester was going to try to get a Nobel Prize for him?” Julie asked. “You told me he was literal-minded, but that’s amazing.”

Gideon smiled. “That’s Rowley for you. He’s — hey . . .” His observation, whatever it was, petered out. He stood without speaking, staring intently into the middle distance.

“What?” Fausto asked, puzzled. And then again:
“What?”

“Don’t bother,” Julie told him. “When he gets like that, he’s inaccessible; you just have to wait him out. He’s hatching something. ”

So he was. He had just that second, out of the blue, experienced that minute, barely perceptible
click
he was coming to know; the sense that a few small parts of a difficult, intricate puzzle had separated themselves from the jumble of pieces and snapped neatly into place, with the rest now poised to follow.

Or maybe not. Getting a couple of pieces fitted together didn’t necessarily mean you were on the way to solving the puzzle. More data was needed.

“Have you seen Buck?” he asked, surfacing.

Julie pointed. Buck was coming from one of the bars, carefully balancing the brimful glasses of wine he held in each hand. Gideon put down his own glass and intercepted him.

“Buck, can I ask you a quick question?”

Buck came to a careful halt, sipping a little from each glass to keep it from slopping over. “Sure, what?”

“Well, remember when you went on that tour of St. Michael’s Cave before my talk? With Rowley and the others? Did you happen to mention what we talked about in the van on the way up there?”

Buck frowned mightily. “What we talked about on the way up?”

“You know, the problems that go along with erect posture — what my talk was going to be about.”

“Oh . . . well, yeah, I guess maybe I did mention it.” He looked like a kid whose secret history of cookie stealing had finally caught up with him, even going so far as to scuff his feet. “I’m sorry, Gideon, I know I promised not to, but it was just so damn
interesting
. It blew my mind. And I thought . . . I mean, I figured it was just some of us, just, you know, Rowley and Audrey and Corbin, so—”

Another
click
; another piece in place.

“—Anyway, I’m sorry if I spoiled anything for you.”

“No, don’t worry about it. You didn’t spoil anything. Far from it.”

Far from it, indeed. If what he was thinking was right, Buck had saved his life.

The cloud lifted from Buck’s meaty, friendly face. “That’s good to hear. You had me scared there for a minute.”

“What was that about?” Julie asked as Buck headed off. “What
are
you hatching?”

“Maybe nothing at all,” Gideon said slowly, “but on the other hand, I just might be on to something. I need one more piece.” He scanned the terrace and found what he was looking for. “Let’s go, Fausto. If this amounts to anything, I think you’ll want to be in on it.”

“I want to be in on it too,” Julie declared.

“Then come on along.”

Fausto’s mouth formed to say, “In on what?” but Gideon wasn’t waiting for them. He was striding after Buck. Fausto and Julie looked at each other, shrugged, and hurried after him. “What the hell,” Fausto sighed to himself.

Buck’s destination — and Gideon’s — was a gaggle of people clustered near one end of the pool, next to the roast beef buffet. There Audrey, Corbin, Adrian, and Pru, drinks in hand, were bunched around Lester and a frazzled if happy-looking Rowley, who was accepting their compliments and congratulations.

Gideon waited until there was an opening in the conversation, at which point his silent, waiting presence was sensed. They turned expectantly.

“Rowley,” Gideon said as casually as he could manage, “didn’t I hear you saying something the other night about doing an archaeological site survey on the west side?”

“It’s quite possible,” Rowley said. “I do them with some frequency. It goes with my job. Why do you ask?”

“This would have been, oh, a year or two ago — 2005, I think. It was during that Europa Point retrospective that they had here.”

Rowley removed his pipe and tapped his lower lip with it. “Mmm . . . you know, I think you’re correct. I believe I was evaluating a potential sewer construction site near Casemates Square. Nothing came of it, though. They went right ahead and installed the sewer.”

“No,” said Gideon, “it couldn’t have been Casemates Square. You said it was on the west side of the Rock.”

“Did I? Hmm, well, I do a lot of them, you know.” He was beginning to get edgy. “What’s the difference? Why do you ask?”

“It was Catalan Bay, wasn’t it?” Pru said. “I’m sure that’s what you told us.”

Fausto and Gideon exchanged a quick, extremely meaningful look. Gideon could almost hear the
click
in Fausto’s head.
Catalan Bay
.

“Catalan Bay?” Rowley coughed softly. “Yes, by George, I believe you’re right. Now that I think of it, it was—”

“Mr. Boyd,” Fausto said, “I think you and I should have a little talk.”

“A talk,” Rowley repeated dully. A muscle below his eye twitched erratically. He brushed at it is if he could sweep it from his skin. “Of course, if you like, but this is hardly the time. What is this about, Chief Inspector?”

The others had become quiet as well, and intent, sensing something in the air.

“I think it’d be better if we talked privately,” Fausto said.

“You mean it can’t wait? We’re right in the middle of a party.”

“Probably best to take care of it now.”

Scared as he was, Rowley stood his ground. “No, sir, I demand to know what it’s about.”

“Yeah, I demand to know,” put in Lester, who could have had no possible idea of what was going on, but wasn’t one to pass up an opportunity for a little theater.

Patience had never been Fausto’s long suit. His lips tightened. “Okay, then, I got a couple of questions about some sticks of gelignite missing from a construction project at Catalan Bay.”

“And what is that supposed to have to do with me? Exactly what are you implying?” Despite the brave words, his voice was choked. He could hardly be heard. He had grown perceptibly paler, perceptibly more still.
He knows it’s over
, Gideon thought.
He’s dying by inches.

Fausto, finished with cajoling, moved toward Rowley to reach for his arm, bringing Rowley suddenly to life. Twisting just out of Fausto’s grasp, he grabbed a shocked Audrey by the bun at the nape of her neck, quickly getting his arm around her spindly throat and jerking her up against him.

“Hey!” Buck cried, starting forward, but Fausto stopped him with an arm across his chest.

“Rowley, damn you, don’t be ridiculous,” Audrey snapped. “You know you’re not going to hurt me.” She tried to pull away his arm but couldn’t. Rowley wasn’t a big man, no more than five-eight, and not powerfully built, but Audrey, for all her lean sinewiness, was little more than five feet tall and weighed perhaps a hundred pounds soaking wet. It was hard for her to get any meaningful leverage.

“This isn’t going to do you any good,” Fausto said. “You gotta know that, Rowley.”

“If you come any nearer,” Rowley said in a choked voice, “I’ll kill her, I will.” He spat the pipe out onto the terrace.

It seemed too incredible, too histrionic, to be real. Some of the onlookers began to laugh, under the impression they’d been roped into one of those interactive murder mystery plays. But that impression was quickly dashed when Rowley snatched up a barbecue fork from the roast beef table and quickly pressed it against the side of Audrey’s neck, creating two little dents that immediately filled with blobs of blood. There was a collective gasp, a whispered chorus of “Oh, my
God
!” Audrey instantly stopped struggling and stood stone-still, her eyes open very wide, as if she were straining to listen for some faint and distant sound.

“Rowley, if you hurt her, I swear to God I’ll kill you,” Buck snarled, his voice husky and trembling with rage. There was little doubt he meant it.

“Rowley, come on, don’t you see you’re making it worse for yourself?” Fausto said reasonably. “Think about it a minute. Look, you haven’t hurt her yet. We can still sit down like reasonable people, you can call your solicitor—”

“Shut up!” Rowley said, or rather screamed. With that, even the people at the other end of the terrace became aware of what was happening. Conversation ceased. The musicians stopped playing. Many of the women had their hands to their mouths. All eyes were on Rowley and Audrey.

Rowley looked quickly behind him. A few people were standing between him and the double doors that led out to the elevators. “I don’t want anybody behind me,” he yelled. “Move out of the way!”

They quickly grasped the situation and retreated toward the walls, except for one wide-shouldered man who looked as if he intended to bar the way, but Fausto motioned him aside. “Do as he says, please. I’m a police officer.”

With reluctance, the man complied. Rowley began to move slowly backward with Audrey, keeping the fork pressed against her throat. Audrey moved with him, rigid and unresisting. The blood had begun to dribble down her neck in two streams. Gideon, along with everyone else, watched helplessly.

“Rowley,” Fausto began. “Mr. Boyd—”

“Shut
up
!” Rowley shrieked. “Just . . . shut . . . up!”

He looked quickly behind him again to make sure the way was clear, then continued backing toward the doors some thirty feet away.

Julie grasped Gideon’s forearm. “He doesn’t see the tub,” she whispered excitedly. “I don’t think he sees the tub!”

“The what?” Gideon asked, but even as he said it he saw what she was talking about. Not far behind Audrey and Rowley, between them and the elevators, there was a circular, ten-foot-wide hot tub sunk into the terrace floor. It was obvious that Rowley wasn’t aware of it; he was dragging Audrey directly toward it.

There were more whispers as the watchers pointed it out to one another. An electric ripple seemed to flow among them. They watched, transfixed, many holding their breath. Now they were eight feet away . . . now six . . . now four . . . two more steps and . . .

With his foot almost on the rim, Rowley sensed the crowd’s restiveness and twisted around to glance nervously behind him. As he did so, the points of the fork came a few inches away from Audrey’s neck, and she responded instantaneously. A hard whack in the ribs from her right elbow, an almost simultaneous one from the left, and then a scrape down his shin with the heel of her shoe, ending in a full-bodied stomp on his instep, all of it in the space of a second.

“Ow! Ai—!” Rowley teetering on the rim of the tub, one arm still around Audrey’s neck, flailed with the other one, struggling for balance, but a last, sharp elbow in the gut (“Whoof!”) sent the fork flying and tipped him over backward. In the two of them plunged with a huge
sploosh
, the barbecue fork plopping in a moment later with its own modest
splish
.

AND
so what might have culminated in high tragedy ended instead as low comedy, in a foofaraw of spluttering, splashing, and thrashing of arms and legs. Buck dived gallantly but unnecessarily in (the tub was only four feet deep) to “rescue” Audrey, hit his head on the sitting ledge, and wobbled dazedly to his feet, from where he had to be led unsteadily up the three steps by Audrey. Eager hands reached out to help them, but she batted them away like pesky mosquitoes. Audrey didn’t like being rescued any more than she liked being abducted.

Rowley too hit his head, stood up, and sank dizzily back onto the ledge, from which he was unceremoniously fished out by the wrists by Gideon and Fausto. Passive and unresisting, he was then led away by Fausto and another police official who was there as a guest. Dripping, drooping, and utterly wilted, leaving a snail-like trail of moisture in his wake, he looked like an old sneaker that had been put through the wringer one time too many.