I slurped my gazpacho, which is Spanish for vegetable soup they forgot to warm up. “I’ll bet that hasn’t happened.”
She nodded. “There’s a debate in progress as to whether to open the coffin and how to do it without disturbing the remains that may or may not be inside.”
“Looked to me like all anybody’s done lately is dust it. You’d need to pay a bunch of people to go temporarily blind.”
“A highly unlikely caper,” Darla agreed.
“Okay, to do my job, I need a process of elimination.”
“To prove one of us didn’t do it or collaborate, if indeed it was done at all?”
“Yeah. Maybe killing the two birds with one lucky rock. Of course, we have got one prime suspect, Riley Neil. What do you think, Darla?”
“I’m coming around to your dark thinking pattern. I wouldn’t be surprised if Neil planned to withdraw his quote-unquote documentation at the last minute, saying it deserved a bigger and better forum. The alternative of its mysterious disappearance is very convenient. Not to mention the distraction at the cathedral.”
“Who hates Riley Neil more than anybody?”
“It’s a long list, but sure, Chandler Bryce.”
“I’m gonna play a little good cop-bad cop,” I said. “The roast suckling pig we ordered, it’ll be heated up, won’t it?”
In the morning, I intercepted Dr. Chandler Bryce on his way to breakfast. I asked him to stroll around the block with me, promising to keep it brief, as he struck me as the type to get grouchy if he missed a meal.
“What’s Dr. Neil’s shtick, Dr. Bryce?”
He chuckled. “Shtick. I find that word mildly offensive, even when applied to that unseemly individual.”
Excuuuuuse me. “You and Dr. Neil teach in the same town at different schools. How’d you get along before the wine drenching? You guys weren’t competing for a different job, a big step up, department head at his college or yours, or whatever?”
“We got along coolly yet cordially. And he was no competition in any regard before his stunt with the illusory document. He has lost any scintilla of credibility.”
“I’m with you, Doc, and between you and me and the gatepost, I think he’s behind this missing-bones business, too.”
Bryce chuckled again. “He’s ambitious, certainly, but he lacks the audaciousness to be a criminal. Riley tends to play devil’s advocate about virtually everything, in the ugliest, most gleeful sense of the phrase. If you can challenge another’s scholarship, you need not persevere yourself. Neil is a fraud and a revisionist historian.”
“Pretty tough words, Doc, not that I blame you, from what I’ve seen of him. Mind telling me what your professional interests are?”
“I am an historian and an educator.”
“This book deal Neil has, is that out the window now that the alleged documents have been allegedly snatched?”
“I wouldn’t know, Mr. Bates.”
We were stopped at a light. How they drive in Spain, it’s best you wait for the green. “Is Neil a pretty good writer? I mean, good enough to write an entire book?”
Dr. Chandler Bryce snorted. “He couldn’t write a grocery list.”
“I’m getting confused signals synapsing in my brain like pinballs,” I told Darla in our room after breakfast as she loaded her briefcase for the day’s eggheading.
“I don’t believe ‘synapse’ has a verb form, Brick.”
“It does now.”
“What about your interview with Chandler Bryce bothers you so much?”
“He’s not pissed off enough. He doesn’t hate Neil enough.”
“Brick, not everybody resolves disputes and resentments with fists and bloodshed.”
“Maybe we oughta. If you have a fat lip, you’re more inclined to listen to reason.”
Darla sighed.
I said, “The situation doesn’t mesh. It’s haywire.”
“Brick, stop pacing.”
“I’m a detective, Darla. My brain and feet have a direct link.”
“I don’t know what that means, but if you’re thinking of interviewing Riley Neil, that’s not going to happen. I couldn’t tell you earlier, but Ed Dobbs took me aside and said he’s refusing to cooperate further with anyone who isn’t official.”
“That may mean he’s hiding something or he isn’t or he wants us to think he is.”
Darla kissed me and said, “It’s going to be a long day and I already have a headache.”
It was gonna be a long day for me, too. I had nary a glimmer of what my next step would be. Seville’s a spiffy old town full of churches, museums, and narrow winding streets. I set a course westward for their big river, the mighty Guadalquivir, and eventually made it. I walked along the downtown side and went to a café.
It was nice and sunny, so I sat outside. I had me a tapas feast, some of the goodies I had in Madrid, and also sampled artichoke hearts and mushrooms sautéed in olive oil. As I washed the tapas down with cold suds, I whipped out our guidebook. I almost fell outta my chair when I came to a page that had a blurb on El Rinconcillo. It was only three blocks from our hotel!
What’s El Rinconcillo, you ask? Only the birthplace of the tapa, is all. El Rinconcillo’s said to date to 1670 and while the guidebook’s sceptical that the tapa was invented there, hey, like Columbus’s bones, either you got faith or you don’t. I had faith. I had a carload of faith. I was a true believer.
I’m pretty good at reading maps, even if I get myself slightly misplaced afterward. This town, the street layout’s like a bowl of spaghetti. I began back, to pilgrimage on over to El Rinconcillo, a holy and sacred site. When I saw the river for the third time, I gave up and caught a taxi.
El Rinconcillo was an ordinary Spanish saloon, not new, but not that medieval-looking, either. The guys behind the bar were friendly and served ice-cold beer on tap. I’d worked up an appetite getting misplaced. The tapas were mostly in the saturated-fat family: Serrano ham, chorizo sausage, cheese. Yum.
I had my Bryce-Neil itch to scratch and it was getting itchier by the minute. El Rinconcillo was my inspiration. It was the ideal, perfect venue.
Darla was none too thrilled by my request, but she agreed to slip a note under Riley Neil’s door, asking him to meet her at eight-thirty at El Rinconcillo. I did the same with Chandler Bryce. I saw Mary Beth Lambuth in the hall and a plot aspect thickened in my head. I asked her, “Any good news from your agent?”
“We’re hopeful.”
“How’d you like to make a status check with her, among other things, and join us for a party tonight?”
I arrived at El Rinconcillo fifteen minutes early and positioned myself in a back corner, outfitted with sunglasses and a Real Madrid baseball cap. They’re this famous soccer team and my shades were wraparounds. You’d never guess I was on surveillance. Euro tourists of some flavor were guzzling wine at the bar and the joint was filling up with locals. The dinner hour comes late in this country, getting into full swing when at home I’d be rooting around in the fridge for a bedtime snack.
In bopped Riley Neil. He stood at the end of the bar, head on a swivel, an eager beaver. Not two minutes later, Chandler Bryce appeared. Their eyeballs met. They were flabbergasted, flummoxed, but recovered fast. I could tell by their slippery body language that no fur was gonna fly. That was my case in a nutshell!
They’d smelled a rat and decided to scram, but I popped up and beat them to the door.
“Mr. Bates,” Chandler Bryce said.
I removed my cap and shades. “Don’t go away mad or thirsty, gents. I’m buying the drinks.”
“No, thank you,” Bryce said.
“I saved us a table,” I said.
“We have no comment,” Riley Neil said.