When I went downstairs, Rob was already starting dinner preparations. He’d put on his apron and a pair of those demilune reading glasses through which he was peering at a piece of paper, a recipe presumably, on the counter. It gave him a rather endearing air, I had to admit.
“What are you making?” I asked in a feeble attempt to avoid his question.
“Something called beef olives if I have understood the name correctly,” he replied. “Beef sliced very thin, then rolled and stuffed with ground pork, hard-boiled eggs, tomatoes, and spices. It’s cooked in a red wine, onion, and tomato sauce. I decided to try to make something local. A very nice woman in the grocery store gave me detailed instructions,” he added, gesturing toward the piece of paper on the counter.
“You do very well with the women in the stores here,” I said, recalling the women in the bakery in Mellieha.
“Don’t I?” he replied, grinning. “Found the same grocery store as before. The proprietor and I are old friends now. I’m starting to get the hang of finding my way around here. You ignore the signs, I take it. Just because you think your route takes you to Siggiewi, for example, doesn’t mean you follow the signs for Siggiewi. You just head in its general direction. It’s sort of like a bypass on the thru way right?”
I nodded.
“And the rules of the road. Technically, I know, one should yield to the right. I say technically, because as near as I can tell, no one yields to anyone or anything. But once you enter into the spirit of it all, approach driving with a kind of joie de vivre, shall we say, and as long as you don’t mind the odd dent or two, it begins to work for you.
“I’m also getting used to the car. In fact, I’m wondering why Ford and General Motors ever felt the need for second gear! Now, after that pleasant diversion, perhaps we should get back to the subject at hand,” he said, peering at me over the top of his glasses.
“Which is?” I tried, assiduously lining the parsley up in neat little rows and starting to chop.
“Which is, the corpse in the safari suit, of course.”
“Why would you think I would have anything more to add to what I’ve already told the police?” I asked, the knife frozen in mid stroke.
He looked at me for a moment. “I’d like to say it was intuition honed by twenty-five years of dazzling detective work, but the real answer? Let’s just say you shouldn’t take up poker. You don’t have the face for it. And… how do I put this delicately? You seem to be developing the bad habit of finding murder victims, or being associated with them in some way. And not just in Malta either.”
“I assume that in addition to Martin Galea and the guy in the safari suit, you’re referring to an incident in Mexico a couple of years ago.”
“I am.”
“So you’ve been checking up on me.”
“That’s my job,” he said mildly.
I could hear a certain tone creeping into my voice. “And your conclusion?”
He looked across the counter at me. “I’ve just handed you the sharpest knife in this kitchen. You could, if you chose to, take that as a solid vote of confidence.”‘
I really didn’t know what to think of this man, but I willed myself to relax. He smiled at me. “So what do you have to say?”
“There’s nothing much to say, really. I first saw the man in a safari suit on the plane from Paris. He was causing a bit of a scene. Wanted to bring his own drinks on board. I saw him later at customs. I did notice one thing: He had a metal detector stuck in with his golf clubs. He does stick out in a crowd. There aren’t too many people running around this island in that getup.”
“Not many people with golf clubs either,” the Mountie said. “I’m told there is only one golf course on this island. But go on.”
“The next day I kept running into him, sometimes literally—I stepped on his toe—around Valletta. Anthony was taking me on a tour, and we kept ending up at the same places as this guy—the Archaeological Museum, St. John’s Co-Cathedral, and so on.”
“These are all normal tourist spots, I take it?”
“They would be, I think. Anthony was showing them to me because they were all designed and built by the architect Gerolamo Cassar, who he says is an ancestor. ”
“Is that it?”
“No. There’s more. I was trying to drive to the University. I got lost near a place called Verdala Palace, and you know the car… I went past him very quickly, but then he tried to run me off the road.”
“Did he now? Whatever for?”
“I thought at the time it was my terrible driving. But really I have no idea. I didn’t see him for a few days after that, until after Galea turned up, and then, while I was looking around the crypt in the cathedral…”
The Mountie raised his eyebrows and looked at me skeptically.
“I don’t know why I went there. Perhaps I was a little obsessed with death, and maybe I was entitled to be, under the circumstances.” I glared at him. “In any event he was there, and we had this bizarre conversation. He looked very strange, frightened, I’d say, when he saw me, and offered me thirty percent.”
“Thirty percent?”
“Of what, I know you’re thinking. Whatever it is, or was, we got up to splitting it fifty/fifty.”
“You bargained with a stranger for something that you have no idea what it might be? You are nuts!”
“It wasn’t like that. I was tired and a bit out of it, so I just stood there looking surprised, I should think. He took this to mean his offer wasn’t good enough, I guess, and revised it. It’s a technique, I’ve been thinking, that once perfected, could be used to real advantage on my buying trips,” I said, trying to make light of the matter.
“I think he finally figured out that I had no idea what he was talking about, because he ended up by saying, ”Then it isn’t you!“ or something like that,” I continued. “And then he gave me a good push out of the way and dashed out of the crypt. That’s the last time I saw him until yesterday.”
“In the museum.”
“Well, no. Actually in the market. He grabbed me and pulled me into a doorway, told me we had to talk, there was something wrong, danger for me and for others.”
“And this dangerous thing was?”
“I don’t know. I ran away. But then I got mad, and followed him into the cathedral, and from there into the museum. You know the rest. Do the police know who he was?”
“Not yet. There was no ID on him. No wallet, passport, money. You have any idea what his name is?”
I paused. “I am trying to recall if the flight attendants referred to him by name. I think maybe they did, but I’m not sure I can remember it.”
“Accent?”
“American. California, maybe.”
“So what have we got here? An American in a strange outfit flies here from Paris. He’s got a metal detector with him, so presumably he’s looking for something metal. He may, or may not, be a fan of Gerolamo Cassar, but more likely he’s a tourist, visiting historic places of interest. I say that despite the fact that he would appear to be a little, shall we say, nervous, or even possibly paranoid. And his name is…” He looked at me and the name clicked into place.
“Graham. They called him Mr. Graham.”
“Well done!” Rob smiled. “I’m calling Tabone. Here, stir this from time to time, will you?” he said, gesturing toward the skillet.
He came back a few minutes later and checked on my work. It really smelled delicious, I had to admit, and apparently my stirring technique was acceptable, because he appeared satisfied.
“Tabone is suitably grateful for the name. He hadn’t narrowed it down to Mr. Graham yet. As for the murder I’m here to investigate, I also told him about our visit to Mellieha. I expect he’ll be asking Joseph in for a little chat shortly. The good news is that Tabone’s been able to convince the former coroner, Dr. Caruana, in whom he places much more confidence than in his successor, to come out of retirement just this once to help us out. We should start getting some more satisfactory answers as early as tomorrow or the day after. And”—here he smiled at me—“with any luck your friend Joseph will be off the hook.”