Why did Manville always seem so surprised, every time Curtis offered to shake hands? I’m accepting you as an equal, you damn fool, Curtis said inside his head, be grateful for it.
Manville did consent to the handshake, grasping Curtis’s hand briefly, then letting go. “Have a good trip,” he said.
Curtis was almost out of the house, following Cindy, when Helen Farrelly called to him from down the hall. “You go ahead,” he told the girl, “I’ll catch up.”
Helen bustled up to him, but not, as he’d expected, merely to say goodbye. “We’ve had a phone call just a few minutes ago,” she said. “Some sad news.”
“Oh?”
“The captain of your yacht. Captain Zhang?”
What now? Curtis thought, and knew at once that this was fresh trouble. “Yes? Captain Zhang?”
“He’s killed himself, Mr. Curtis,” she said. “And no one knows why.”
16
The flight from Brisbane to Sydney was full, and delayed, so that they sat on the ground for twenty minutes before takeoff. Kim didn’t care. She was too full of everything else that was happening to worry about simple problems like travel delays. She was both eager and apprehensive, eager to see her parents, and apprehensive about George Manville.
Could George really have caved in to Richard Curtis, the way everybody else thought, even that police inspector, Fairchild? She couldn’t believe it, and yet what other explanation was there? Why would Curtis clear George’s name — as casually as he’d smeared it — if George hadn’t agreed to come over to his side, to help him in whatever it was he was scheming?
But how could she have been so wrong about him?
They’d given Kim the window seat, with Jerry in the middle seat to her left, and Luther on the aisle. She sat and looked out at other planes landing and taking off, little trucks scurrying busily this way and that, and her brain scurried like the little trucks around the problem of George Manville, while beside her Luther and Jerry talked. Until something Luther said attracted her attention, and she turned away from the dreary sight of Brisbane International Airport to say, “What was that? Where are you going from Sydney?”
“Singapore,” Jerry repeated.
“But why?”
“Curtis, of course,” Jerry said, surprised at her. “If what he’s up to next is so damn important, if he was actually willing to commit murder just to keep me from finding out what he’s doing — and I must say I didn’t know I was that important in his life, the bastard, and I’m glad I am — well, I have to find out what he’s doing, don’t I?”
“I suppose,” Kim said. She hadn’t been thinking about Richard Curtis at all.
Jerry said, “And his headquarters is in Singapore, and I just happen to have a friend in his offices there, he’ll know what’s going on, or he’ll be able to find out.”
“This is the man,” Kim said, “that told you things before, about what Curtis was doing.”
“Like Kanowit Island, for instance,” Jerry said. “Yes. So we’ll go to Singapore, Luther and I, and we’ll find out what Curtis is up to, and we’ll stop him cold.”
“I’ll come with you,” Kim said, so quickly that the words were out of her mouth almost before the thought was in her head.
Jerry frowned at her. “Why? Kim, haven’t you been kicked around enough?”
“I want to know what George is up to,” she said. “If Richard Curtis is based in Singapore, and if that’s where he’s planning whatever it is he’s going to do, then that’s where George will be.”
Luther, leaning forward to speak past Jerry, said, “Kim, if you’ll take advice from an old campaigner in the wars of love, forget the name George Manville. Go home to Chicago with your mother and father.”
Kim knew that Luther meant well, and that he felt kindly toward her, but every time he tried to say something sympathetic, it came out sounding like an order that you were almost honor-bound to disobey. “Thank you, Luther,” she said. “You may be right, but I just can’t walk away from all this until I know what’s going on. If you and Jerry don’t want me along, I’ll go to Singapore on my own.”
“It’s not that at all,” Jerry said. He put a hand on Luther’s arm.
Luther shook his head. “If you’re that determined to go into the lion’s den, Kim,” he said, “and Jerry’s determined to let you, better you stick with us.”
“Thank you,” she said, and the plane jerked forward, on its way at last.
Tired, cranky passengers pressed against one another like cattle in a chute, getting off the plane. Kim just let the movement take her, not really caring anymore, but then she saw her dad’s face back there among the people waiting, and next to him Mom, and she waved her arm high above her head and saw them start when they spotted her, and she began pushing and shoving along with everybody else.
Greetings were breathless, and incoherent at first, until they got away from the deplaning crowds, and then her dad said, “I rented a car, just follow me. Is that all your luggage?”
She held up the new string bag she’d bought this morning in Brisbane. “It’s all I’ve got.”
Dad turned to Jerry and Luther, saying, “We’ll give you a lift to the hotel.”
Kim’s mom put her arm through Kim’s, leaning in to say, “When I thought you were dead, Kim, it was the worst day of my life.” Kim pulled her close. Her chest still ached, but she didn’t care.
She’d tell them about Singapore later. They’d try to argue her out of it, like Luther had, and she’d stand her ground, and maybe there’d be tears or shouting. But that would be later. Right now she just felt so good to have her mom’s hand in hers and to squeeze it tight.
17
By Sunday afternoon, Manville was edgy, tense, frustrated. He was also desperately bored. He knew his best move right now was not to move at all, to stay here at Kennison as though he intended to stick to his bargain with Curtis, but it wasn’t easy. Still, if he did stay put, just for a few days, if he gave the impression he intended to make no trouble, then Curtis should have no reason to go on pursuing Kim, and the clearing of Manville’s name would not be interrupted, and when the time was right he could still do his best to stop Curtis from whatever scheme the man had in mind.
But it was hard, it was very hard. Manville was active by nature, a doer, not a contemplater. There was nothing to do here at Kennison, and beyond that, he was absolutely alone now, since Curtis had clearly said something to the Farrellys; they were cold now, distant, utterly unlike the friendly couple at dinner the first night. Now he ate his meals alone, served by silent staff members in their tan pantsuits.
He had access to almost the entire house — he stayed away from what was clearly the Farrellys’ quarters, and they kept the downstairs office locked when they weren’t in it — and he was permitted to roam the nearby countryside as well. At times, he sat and watched television, without absorbing any of it, or he leafed through books in the library without taking in the words. And every minute was interminable.
His room wasn’t locked at night, and the servants treated him as though he were an ordinary houseguest. But the vehicles in the garage had had their ignition keys removed, and whenever he went for a walk he was aware of Steve or Raf, some distance away, keeping an eye on him. And, worst of all, there were no telephones.
It had to be deliberate. There wasn’t a telephone to be seen, not even in the kitchen, though there were phone outlets here and there, and it seemed to Manville he remembered a telephone on a particular end table in the living room when he’d had his first surreal conversation with Curtis.