"What happens to a person under these circumstances?" asked Schell.
"Fever, pain throughout the body, in the organs. Not a pleasant way to go. The only problem with my theory," said Cardiff, "is that there should have been some indication of the other blood in her system. Her type was A positive. There seemed to be other blood there, but it had no type as far as I could determine. Admittedly, I had only one sample and one chance at a test. If I'd had another go at it, I might have been able to determine what it was."
"Ever seen anything like it before?" I asked.
"I've heard of people getting a bad transfusion. But never this," he said.
"You've been most helpful," said Schell as he rose from the chair. "Thanks for the information. You're sworn to secrecy about this conversation. It doesn't matter who's asking. In other words, Mr. Cardiff, do you like your job?"
Cardiff nodded vehemently and laughed, as if Schell had made a joke. Neither of us cracked a smile, though, and the coroner quickly regained his composure.
Once we were back in the car and on the road, Schell said to me, "I feel as if God, in return for my years of flimflam, is working some cosmic con on me. Now we have bad blood transfusions and a conspiracy to contradict the facts. I've never been so concerned with the Truth before in my life."
"Truth is Beauty, that's what Keats said," I told him as I worked to tear off the fake mustache. I'd already ditched the eyeglasses, the overcoat, and the fedora in the backseat.
"The Truth-highly overrated," he said. "Nothing but a big pain in the ass."
When I was finally free of my disguise, I said to him, "And what about Isabel and me?" I'd been waiting all day for his lecture and still it hadn't come. All through the drive out to Cardiff's place, I'd waited for him to broach the subject. Now that our job was complete, I was more than ready to face him.
He sighed and smiled. "Diego," he said, "you're a good person, a good son. I'm going to have to trust your judgment on this, but I think you're moving too quickly with Isabel. Sleeping together in the house? You know that's not right. Why get so deeply involved with her at this point? Who knows where she'll wind up? She may have to go back to Mexico. She'll definitely have to leave the state. You have too much ahead of you that you have to do. I'm expecting great things."
"I thought you would be angrier," I said.
"I was put out this morning, I'll admit, but mostly I'm worried."
"Isabel thinks it's because she's Mexican," I said.
He considered this for a moment and said, "Yes, but not in the way she probably thinks. She seems like a nice girl. She's very smart, very pretty. But I don't want you falling back into that. It's too dangerous."
"Falling back into what?" I said.
"Getting lost in the past," he said.
I didn't have the heart to tell him I was considering returning to Mexico with her if she went. It wouldn't do to heap that upon him now, with all that was happening, so I bit my tongue.
"In general," he said. "you've got to watch out for women. They work a mean con."
"How?" I asked.
He pulled a slip of paper out of his pocket and handed it to me.
"What's this?"
"A list of the boxes that we have to pick up from Morgan's cabin," he said.
I started to smile, but he held his hand up. "Please," he said, "spare me the indignity."
A SWEET DEAL
It was black as a kettle in among the trees near the cabin. Schell had pulled off the road and hidden the car behind a natural wall of brambles some way off from number six. We stumbled through the dark, avoiding trunks and trying to steer clear of the other cabins. Somewhere high above us an owl sounded every half minute. I'd left my trench coat in the car and, wearing only my suit jacket, was freezing.
"I think this is it up here," said Schell as he struck a wooden match to life. The momentary flame showed us the way to the door of the place, and once we were standing in front of the small cabin, he lit another so we could check the number.
"Yeah, you found it," I said.
Reaching into his pocket, he retrieved the key Morgan had given him. He opened the door and we stepped inside. That dank mildew smell made me gag slightly, bringing to mind Charlotte Barnes's body in the tumbledown shack. Schell lit one of the candles on the desk, and the light chased the bad memory from my mind.
"Can you imagine living here?" I said to him, my breath coming as steam in the cold.
"Better yet," he said, "how about hearing someone prowling around outside and having to climb into a hole under the floorboards?"
"She's resourceful, I'll give you that. But she's also…" I was trying to think of a way to describe her eccentric nature without being derogatory.
"…a loon?" said Schell and laughed quietly.
"As a matter of fact," I said, "I think she's very nice, but the singing…" I shook my head.
"My favorite part is the singing," said Schell. "You have that slip of paper?"
I handed him the list. He looked it over and shook his head. "Box with tartan jumper," he said. "What in Christ's name is that?"
I shrugged.
"I'm not going through all of this cargo," he said. "We'll take four boxes, two trips to the car, and then we're giving this place the air."
I grabbed a box and so did he and we headed out. On the return trip it was easier to find the cabin with the candle glowing in the window. Schell had had the trip to the car and back to reconsider his position on the clothes. Once inside the cabin, he took the list out of his pocket and lifted the candle off the desk to get a better look at it.
"Okay, maybe we can actually find some of this stuff," he said.
I walked over to where the boxes were stacked and waited. Eventually, he said, "Here's one that sounds simple enough-box with black dress."
I went to work, moving boxes off the stack onto the floor, reaching in and flipping the folded clothes back to look. I was going to tell him to bring the candle closer when I heard something outside. Schell looked up from the list and turned his head. I froze. A second later, the door, which was unlatched, began to open. The first thing I saw was the muzzle of a gun. An instant later, I could see it was a machine gun. The man who held it, dressed in a black suit, yelled, "Don't move."
Before the gunman could get completely into the cabin, Schell jumped to the side and kicked the door as hard as he could. It caught the stranger in the side, and he went down, the weapon flying from his grasp. Schell wasted no time and kicked the fallen man in the face. At the same time, another fellow was forcing his way in, pushing the door against his partner's body. He managed to get halfway in and began to raise the pistol in his right hand. Schell reached into his suit jacket pocket, took out a handful of something, and threw it in the air. Flash powder. The intruder was about to pull the trigger when Schell tossed the candle into the miasma of powder floating in the air. There was a dull bang and a bright explosion. The second man reeled backward, his gun going off, and the slug hit the ceiling.
"Now," Schell yelled to me, and I leapt across the narrow cabin and followed him out the door. As I passed the machine gunner on the floor, who was scrabbling to his knees, I kicked him again, this time in the ribs. Outside, the other fellow, temporarily blinded by the flash, was furiously rubbing his eyes. He heard us running past him and he squeezed off two shots that went high above our heads. We ran out, around, and behind the cabin, sprinting full tilt.
We'd run for about a minute, luckily not slamming into a tree or tripping on a branch, when something hit me from behind, and I went down. It was Schell who'd knocked me over. "Cover your head," he whispered. And then it came, a storm of machine-gun fire, chewing up the landscape all around us. Bark splintered off the trees and dirt and stones kicked up to the right of us.