"According to what she told the police, if Cliff had married again, he would have to pay her a whopping sum of money to break their agreement. I don't know if it would really stand up in court, but she would be almost certain to get something under those circumstances. I just don't think that mattered as much as having the security of everything being paid for and looked after for her."
"This relationship between her and Cliff sounds a little . . . What's the word I'm groping for here?" Briars said.
"Sick?" Ben said. "I'd say so. I'm sorry I can't be more sympathetic, but she really hurt me. Winslow is her maiden name, I take it?"
I nodded. "She went back to it after the divorce."
"I know why she was after me," Briars said. "What did she kill Rick for?"
"Rick stumbled upon her, in a manner of speaking, out on the Elissa Dido. He'd gone out to trash the place to try to keep you from finding the shipwreck. The idiot actually swam out to the boat, by the way. Nora, who is infinitely more resourceful, borrowed, without the owner's permission, a little rowboat. She was probably going to fix the tanks right then and there, but he showed up, so the two of them trashed the boat, she rowed him back to shore, and they made a pact not to tell anybody.
"The trouble was, you know what Rick was like: The man could not stop talking. He droned on all the way back, and by the time they got to the hotel, she decided there was no way he'd be able to keep his trap shut about what they did, nor about the fact she was out there. He even asked her if he could borrow some money. So she hit him with the first thing she could find that would do the job, the croquet mallet, and then tossed him into the pool. She had to get his shirt and shorts off, but he had his bathing suit on already. That's what gave her the idea, apparently. Then she just came in: It was before dawn, and there was no one at the desk. She went upstairs, changed into her jogging outfit, picked up Susie, and off they went for a run. There was no time for her to go back to the boat to finish what she'd started, so she just waited for another opportunity.
"I don't think she realized that Briars was actually a scuba diver. Like me, she thought he was just--I know, I'm not supposed to say just--that he was an archaeologist. She would have been very disappointed if he'd died that day, I think. She desperately wanted both Briars and Groves--that's the owner of the Susannah and a competitor of Briars', Ben--to know she was the one wreaking vengeance and why. What she hoped would happen is that Sandy Groves would die, so Peter would know what it meant to have a child killed. Then she planned to go after both Peter and Briars."
"Tantaene animis caelestibus irae?" Ben said. Briars nodded. I expect I looked baffled.
"Latin," Briars explained. "From Virgil's Aeneid. Maybe you know the opening line: Arma virumque cano, of war and a man I sing. The phrase Ben used means "˜Can rage as fierce as this abide in the mind, or soul, of heaven?' or something to that effect. Appropriate, don't you think, given the circumstances, to use a line directed at Juno, mother of the gods, who took such a dislike to Aeneas that she plagued him for many years, among other things changing the winds--multum ille et terris iactatus, much buffeted by land and sea--to send him to the North African shores, and the city of Carthage and a love tryst with Queen Dido, rather than where he was fated to go, that is to Italy to found Rome."
"I love it when I get the perfect Latin phrase for a situation," Ben said.
"I feel bad about Nora," Briars said. "Even if she did try to kill me. The last few hours have felt like an emotional roller coaster. I guess she'll be tried here. I don't know anything about the law regarding murderers. I don't even want to think about it. What happened to her son was such a terrible thing. Her only son. I guess her life fell apart. God knows, mine did, after Mark died, and I wasn't his father. What's really bothering me is that I didn't recognize her, just as she said. I didn't look at her, ever, in court, not directly anyway. I couldn't face either of Mark's parents. I only saw the surface, you know--she was just a shape to me. All she had to do was lose a lot of weight, cut and dye her hair, and change the way she dressed, and I didn't know her. I think somewhere, though, I did have some sense of it. I kept dreaming about Mark. I'd start out dreaming about Ron, but then I'd be back in the water looking for Mark again. I suppose it was my subconscious working away. I should have paid more attention to it."
"I dreamed about it, too," I said. "I was in the tophet, and a child was sacrificed. Unlike in ancient times, if we believe the stories, the mother cried. I guess my subconscious was trying to tell me it was the mother. I just had to figure out who that was."
"We still don't know who set the fire on the Susannah, do we? Any theories on that one?" Ben asked.
"I swear it wasn't me," Briars said.
"I do have a theory," I said. "At first, I thought that it must be someone who didn't want the shipwreck found at alclass="underline" in other words, one individual who had something to gain by having the wreck stay down there was trying to stop both Briars and Peter. But Nora has confessed to one of these things, and unless Briars here has a secret admirer who is doing his dirty work for him, I can say goodbye to that theory.
"But I have another. I checked out a number of individuals on this tour . . ."
"Including us?" Ben asked.
"Including both of you," I said. "And Star Salvage. I noticed that Star is really good at finding wrecks, and not so good at making any money at it."
"That's true," Briars agreed. "More and more jurisdictions are claiming offshore wrecks as their own, and there are a number of competing interests that are often in conflict."
"Exactly. At some point, and my theory is that it has already begun to happen, investors are going to stay away, in droves, unless they're compulsive gamblers like Curtis Clark."
"Did he invest in Star?" Briars asked indignantly.
I nodded. "A half million dollars of Aziza's money. If it makes you feel any better, Briars, he didn't know the other guy was you. He's not all that bright. He should have stuck to golf."
"Was that a sexist comment?" Ben said. "I think it was."
"Do you two want to hear my theory or not? I've suggested to Ben Osman that he take Groves in for questioning again, not for the tanks but for arson. I think Groves took advantage of a golden opportunity, Briars, one that you and your temper provided. You went down to Sousse, created a big scene that several people witnessed, threatened Groves with who knows what, and then stomped off. Groves needed the insurance money, and I'll bet he set the fire himself. He did it at a time that he thought no one would be on board, but Maggie went back for some reason, and got badly hurt. I think that really rocked him. He'd been drinking heavily when I saw him later at the police station. I thought he was shattered at the loss of his boat and the girl's injuries and because he was a suspect in Ron's murder. I now think it went much further than that: He was feeling guilty about causing Maggie's injuries."