Honey Bear was grimly determined to get me into some decent clothes and see to it that I had a decent meal under my belt.
Cosmo, as I would have expected, spent a great deal of time explaining where I had gone wrong. Ever the mentor, I could tell that the old boy was torn between fatherly compassion and wanting to be certain that the next time he recommended me for a job I was capable of pulling it off.
We drove from Miami to Clearwater and stopped at Cosmo's doctor in Tampa just long enough for him to confirm what I already knew — that the nasty little bullet hole in my left arm was "nothing more than a flesh wound." The second opinion made Honey Bear feel better, but it didn't change the way my arm hurt.
Both Honey Bear and Cosmo were adamant about the fact that I stay with them so they could look after me through the balance of the holidays. The solitude of Ginny's pad at the Sea Breeze had a certain amount of appeal to it, but I went with the flow and did as they asked. Honey Bear disappeared when we arrived back at Clear-water Beach and returned hours later loaded down with more sacks than the local supermarket. She had bought some of everything. When we finally sat down for dinner that night, I was going to be resplendent in new attire, a fresh haircut and a nice, clean, new bandage on my arm.
Cosmo, who knows how to do it right, shaved some ice, spilled it into a tall glass and then trickled the Black and White over it. "To the gods," he toasted, "and to Bormann's cylinders, wherever they may be."
Honey Bear stopped with her drink poised gracefully halfway to her lovely lips and let a delicate frown play on her carefully shaped eyebrows. Honey Bear played in the same league with Maggie Chrysler — or Linda whatshername. "Honestly, Elliott, do you really think all those cylinders are bombs?"
I shrugged. "I do — and I think Hannah Holbrook does, too. But nobody else seems to think so."
"So what happened to Hitler and his girl-friend? What about the so-called Bachmann process? Was Manfred Kohler's diary legitimate, or did Bormann put the whole diabolical scheme together to get even with the world for crushing the Third Reich?"
"I know what I think," I admitted.
Cosmo refilled our glasses and led the way into the formal dining room. It was a feast fit for kings and losers of lost cylinders. Honey Bear had worked even more of her magic.
"So, Elliott, what's your next move?" It was typical Cosmo Leach. As far as he was concerned, it wasn't over till it was over, and since there were two cylinders floating around somewhere that I considered to be lethal enough to destroy thousands by simply popping the lid, he wanted me to know that as far as he was concerned there was still work to be done.
"I need someone with some authority to listen to my story, someone who doesn't think I'm spaced out, someone who can do something about it."
"I can probably arrange that," Cosmo said.
"What about Zercher and the lady you called Maggie?" Honey Bear asked.
"They're out there somewhere, and…"
The phone rang, and Honey Bear got up to answer it. When she walked back in the room, most of the color had drained from her pretty face. "It's for you, E.G." Her voice was strangely subdued.
I walked into the foyer, picked up the phone and slumped up against one of Honey Bear's meticulously polished French antique pieces. "This is Wages."
"Elliott," Maggie cooed, "I just had to call you. Guess what Alonzo and I found?"
I was suddenly in a state of shock. Here I was, getting a phone call from the lady whose big hairy boyfriend had recently relegated me to a one-way journey to Caribbean oblivion. Now she was making it sound just like we were old friends at a high school reunion.
"Where the hell are you?" I blustered.
There was a soft cooing sound on the other end of the line. "Now, now, Elliott, be nice. You know I can't tell you that. Alonzo wouldn't like it."
Somehow it seemed as though it was my duty to drag the bitch back into the world of reality. "Maggie, or whatever your name is, did it even occur to you that I might be just a little upset? That boyfriend of yours did his level best to kill both of us."
"I know, but it didn't happen, did it?" Somehow, in Maggie's mind, that made everything all right. "Anyway, that's not why I called you."
"How the hell did you even find me?"
"Oh, that wasn't hard. When I heard from Mookie that you and Hannah were turned over to the Coast Guard in Marathon, I started calling around. I knew that once you got to Florida you would check in with Cosmo."
"Clever lady," I admitted sarcastically. "So why did you call?"
"Well, I was talking to Alonzo about those cylinders, and the more we talked about it, the more we got to thinking about why Bearing wanted those things so much. Alonzo thinks it's because Bormann was trying to hustle gold or something out of Germany before the Russians took over — and he thinks Bearing found out about it. So I told him there was still one lying on the floor of the reef. A couple of days ago we went over and brought it up."
"For God's sake, Maggie, whatever you do, don't open that thing!"
"Wait, that's not all. We know it has to be something important because we already found Hitler's body."
"You what?" I sputtered.
"Sure, they were there all the time. That was what was in those two old steamer trunks. Alonzo had them brought up when we went down after the last cylinder. We opened them and it was pretty yucky — just a couple of water soaked skeletons and some rotting clothes. But it was him, all right. We could tell by the medals on what was left of the old boy's tunic."
I was speechless.
"Well, gotta go now," she said cheerily. "We're having some people over for a little party tonight. Alonzo is so funny. He says we're going to get royally bombed and open the cylinder."
"For God's sake…"
The phone clicked in my ear. I stood there for a moment, too stunned to think. Finally I placed the receiver back in the cradle and walked back to the dining room. Honey Bear and Cosmo were waiting.
"Don't tell me. That was Maggie Chrysler?" she asked.
I nodded.
"Well," Cosmo demanded, "what did she want?"
I wasn't quite sure what to tell him so I sat down, picked up my drink and took a long, thoughtful sip before answering. "Believe it or not, Cosmo, she just wanted to tell me she was having a little party." I stopped, took another sip and set the glass down. "And based on what she told me, Zercher may not be a problem after tonight."
Cosmo gave me a long, quizzical look.
Honey Bear shrugged and picked up her glass. "Sounds to me like you've got the basis for a pretty good novel here," she said. "Suppose you'll ever get around to writing it?"
"Who knows?"