John nodded. “Something weird's going on, don't you think?"
Gideon slowly climbed the steps, turning around before he opened the door.
"That's for dang sure,” he said.
Chapter 10
As Parks had promised, there was an aerosol spray can on a little shelf beside the door. Gideon read the label in the light from the bathroom. Timor-Protection Contre Insectes Rampants was the alarming legend, on a background depicting a particularly large and depraved-looking cockroach.
The bathroom was full of flowers and potted plants. He fancied he could hear a contented buzzing coming from it. Above his head, in the bedroom, a tiny movement caught his eye, and when he spotted a three-inch gray lizard, lit by the light from the bathroom, on one of the slanting roof struts, it seemed to run shyly from his sight, burrowing into the thatch. He felt very much the intruder, barging in on creatures that had been living there together for weeks, maybe months, symbiotically if not always peacefully.
He returned the can to the shelf, pulled back the bedcovers, and started getting out of his clothes.
The hell with it, he thought. Live and let live.
Once, in the short time he slept, he was awakened by a little plop on the wood-plank floor, followed by a silence during which he fancied a small, surprised animal was collecting its dignity, and then a patter of tiny, scurrying feet making for the far wall. He turned over under the sheet and was asleep again in seconds. But with the first gray smudges of daylight, the tremendous, froglike-cricket-like-crow-like racket from the mynah birds roosting in the trees behind the cottages woke him up for good after not much more than an hour's sleep. He was grumpy and tired, but at least he had established a successful quid pro quo with the mosquitoes. Not a bite on him
Even after he'd showered, using the ubiquitous coconut-scented soap of French Polynesia, and sleepily gotten dressed in a pair of lightweight L.L. Bean pants and a short-sleeved shirt, the sun had yet to come up. Tropical sunsets were famously sudden, but sunrises took their time, as they did anyplace else. The sky was barely streaked with mauve and purple, the land dark, the sea the color of pewter. It was 5:00. Well, he was an early riser at home too, if not quite this early. You could get a lot done getting up early.
A solitary dawn walk along the beach would be a fine way to start the day, he thought. He had some ideas about Nick's odd behavior and he wanted to think them through. With the two-hour time difference it would be 7:30 in Port Angeles by the time he got back. He could give Julie a call before she went off to her job-like John's sister, Brenda, she was a supervising park ranger-at the administrative center of the Olympic National Park, a convenient five minutes from home. After that he would have a few cups of good Tahitian coffee in the dining room and put in some prep time for the upcoming symposium on Bronze Age congenital abnormalities at the winter paleopathological meetings-for which, with commendable foresight, he'd brought his notes.
And all this, he thought with something uncharitably close to smugness, he would do while John, a notoriously late riser at the best of times, snoozed the morning away. He got a pair of beach sandals from the closet and sat down on the bed to slip them on. Still a little drowsy, he stretched and yawned, then lay back against the headboard and closed his eyes for a moment.
When he awakened the sun was streaming hotly through the windows and John was pounding at the door. “Come on, Doc, wake up already! It's nine o'clock! You gonna sleep all day, or what?"
Beneath the outrigger canoe suspended from the ceiling in the Shangri-La's dining room they breakfasted on guava juice, croissants, crullers, and fragrant slices of pineapple, papaya, and the lime green grapefruit of the South Pacific.
Afterward, over coffee, they sat in the breeze of an open French window, gazing contentedly at a reef-rimmed lagoon as blue and brilliant as a swimming pool, at fork-tailed seabirds floating above the cliffs on the warm wind, at the fantastically shaped, impossibly green mountains of Moorea twelve miles away over the water.
Aside from the soft plash of the ocean, the only sounds were the slap-slap of thong sandals from the waitress, a broad-beamed middle-aged Tahitian matron with a pair of harlequin glasses on a lanyard around her neck, a gardenia in her black hair, and her stocky body swathed in a flowered pareu, the all-purpose, wraparound Tahitian garment somewhere between a sarong and a muumuu.
There were only a few other people breakfasting in the big room: a crabby French couple having their morning squabble and two Japanese men who gazed about them in discouragement, as if convinced that they were in the wrong hotel.
The Shangri-La, romantic the night before, looked a bit grubby in the bright morning light, a little timeworn, the arms of the rattan furniture greasy with use, the cushions on them sunken and stained, the straw mats on the floor ground-down and shabby. Despite the benefits of exclusive arrangements with the party-loving tour groups of Chile, it seemed clear that the Shangri-La had seen better days.
"What I think,” John said, disposing of yet another croissant, “is that we ought to drop in on the local police this morning."
Gideon looked at him. “We?"
"Maybe Nick's not giving us a runaround about exhuming Brian, maybe it's just red tape like he says. Maybe we can help clear it up."
"Maybe,” Gideon said without conviction.
"Besides, wouldn't you like to have a look at the police report on Brian before you get started? I mean, we're not doing anything anyway, we're just waiting around."
"I suppose so, but what are we supposed to do, walk in and ask?"
"Sure, why not?"
"Why not? Because we're a couple of nosy foreigners who are here to do some Monday-morning quarterbacking on a case that's closed as far as they're concerned, and cops can get a little funny about that, if you haven't noticed. We're here at Nick's request, and he's the one who should be dealing with the police, John. Or Therese. But not us; we don't have any status here."
"Yeah, that's true,” John said. He went to the buffet table, came back with a sugar-encrusted cruller, tore off a third of it, shoved it into his mouth, and gestured with the remainder. “But what the hell, I'm an FBI agent, aren't I? I'm visiting a foreign country, aren't I? Why shouldn't I pay a courtesy call on my fellow law enforcement officers?"
"No reason at all. Fine, you have my blessing. I'll see you when you get back."
John laughed. “No dice, these guys speak French. I need a translator."
Gideon drank the last of his coffee and sighed. “All right, let's go.” He stood up reluctantly. “But I'm not going to like this."
John got out of his chair, finishing the last of the cruller and licking sugar from his fingers. “You're gonna love it. Trust me."
Chapter 11
"Good day,” Gideon began in his slow, careful French. “We are Americans. My friend is a special agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation-"
"And does your friend possess identification?” asked the civilian clerk without discernible interest.
Gideon translated the request for John, who slid his card over the marble counter. The clerk, less than awestruck, nodded magisterially at Gideon to continue.
"My friend would like to examine a death report concerning an accident on Raiatea a few weeks ago-"
The clerk frowned. “There has been no notification from the FBI concerning this."
"No, my friend is here in a personal capacity, about a family matter, you see. He hopes that-"
The clerk's expression had hardened. “Such files are open only to official inspection. I am sorry.” He began to turn away.