"Besides, you and John think she's holding things back too. You said so."
"Well, yes, but…yes."
But Julie hadn't met Therese, he had. As John had once put it, there were some people in the world who did unto others and other people who got done unto. And Therese was definitely a done-unto. A clinging vine, a model of low self-esteem, a mother's (or rather father's) darling-but not a murderer, never a murderer. Still, he'd been wrong about that kind of thing before…
"Gideon,” Julie said in a softer voice, “when will you be back? I miss you too, you know."
"As soon as I can, Julie. Now that Bertaud is taking this seriously I feel as if I ought to stick around a few more days in case I'm needed. Tomorrow morning he wants John and me at Nick's office at eleven. He wants to have a few things out with Nick, and I think we're supposed to be there to keep him honest."
"About what?"
"About the on-again, off-again business with the exhumation, I suppose, but I'm just guessing."
"You are having some fun too, I hope? Relaxing a little?"
"Sure, I even took a nap in a hammock the other day. And the whole thing is fun in a way. You know me."
"Do I ever.” They were winding down. “Are you getting all the Paradise coffee you want?"
"Plenty."
"Good, then maybe we won't have to buy any at home for a while."
Gideon laughed. Julie, as much of a coffee drinker as he was, generally went for Starbucks or Seattle's Best; all of Nick's coffees, she felt, were overpriced for their quality. It was one of the few differences in their food preferences.
"Well,” he said reluctantly, “I guess I'll get back to my notes."
"And I'll get to bed. I was staying up, hoping you'd call."
"I'll call again tomorrow. Any more words of wisdom before I hang up? Anybody else we should be casting a suspicious eye on?"
"Nick,” she said without hesitation.
"Because of the way he waffled on the exhumation?"
"That, and because of how hard he was trying to keep everybody from talking about the Superstar thing in front of you and John. He's hiding something too."
"But I told you, he was just being a good host. He's a courtly kind of guy in his own way, and he simply felt it wasn't good taste to talk business in front of dinner guests. That's all."
"And how do you know that?"
"I guess I don't, really,” he said with a smile. “Okay, Julie, I'll admit, you've given me a few things to think about. I'll talk to John about them in the morning."
"You know what I keep wondering?” she said.
"No, what do you keep wondering?"
"I keep wondering, what the heck would you guys do without me?"
Chapter 24
The offices of the Paradise Coffee Company were in a large Quonset but of indeterminate age and origin that had been set up near the drying shed. This musty fossil had originally been found abandoned in a jungly section of the land that Dean Parks had purchased to build the Shangri-La. Nick had bought it from him forty-five years earlier for $100, moved it to his plantation, and set it up as headquarters for his short-lived copra empire. When that had fizzled and he'd switched to coffee he had seen no reason for new office space. Nelson's never-ending arguments that a more civilized habitat was good business practice had finally convinced him to lease a handsome suite of offices overlooking the loading docks in downtown Papeete, but Nelson himself was the only one who used it regularly, along with his staff of four. The Hut, as everyone referred to it, remained the locus of most of the hurly-burly of Paradise Coffee's day-to-day management.
But when John and Gideon arrived the next morning at a quarter to eleven, there was no hurly-burly in evidence. The clerk who generally sat in the anteroom was out sick, Nelson was at the Papeete office, Maggie was conducting a training session, and Rudy was off somewhere. As a result, they found themselves looking through a string of empty cubicles at Nick Druett, sitting alone in his Spartan office at the far end. Even through four partitions of cheap glass, they could see the scowl on his face.
"Nelson was right, how does that grab you?” was his muttered greeting when they rapped on the glass wall of his cubicle.
"About what?” John asked.
"About Tari.” He slammed shut the account book he'd had opened on his desk. “The guy has screwed up everything he's gotten his paws on.” He banged the book with the flat of his hand. “The only difference I have with Nelson is that I don't believe it's a bunch of innocent mistakes; I think the big bastard's been ripping us off from here to Patagonia.” He puffed his cheeks and let out a long, exasperated breath through his mouth. “Or who knows, maybe I'm wrong, maybe the guy's just dumb. Rudy's in there with him right now, trying to get it all sorted out. Hey, sit down, sit down."
Without asking he poured them coffee from a jug on a side table. Blue Devil, Gideon thought appreciatively at his first sip.
"Listen, Gideon, I've already said this to John, but I want to apologize to you too.” He was wearing an honest-to-God shirt, with buttons and sleeves (short) and a collar, apparently in honor of Bertaud's impending visit. “For the runaround."
"That's not necessary, Nick."
"Yeah, it is. I'm sorry I gave you such a hard time. You were right-you were both right-and I was wrong. If you hadn't stuck to your guns we still wouldn't know what really happened to Brian. So thanks for…well, thanks."
"I'm sorry it's been so tough on your daughter,” Gideon said awkwardly.
Nick smiled vaguely, joylessly. “Yeah, me too. But believe me, she's happier going through this than if she knew she was letting somebody get away with Brian's murder,” He sipped mechanically from his mug. “John, who killed him?” he asked softly.
"Who knew where he was camping?” John replied.
"Are you kidding? Everybody knew. He used the same spot year in, year out. I've got thirty acres on Raiatea. That's where he set up camp-on the plateau.” He shook his big head slowly back and forth. “I'll never build them now, that's for sure."
Gideon's mind had been running along a side track of its own. “Nick, just how was Tari ripping you off?"
"Well, he was-” Nick looked at him sharply. “You think there's a connection? To Brian?"
Gideon shrugged. “Could be.” When a lot of funny things are going on together, Abe Goldstein had pointed out more than once, they got a funny way of turning out to be related. The Law of Interconnected Monkey Business, his old professor had called it.
"Well, he was skimming,” Nick said. “Not hard to do in a business like this, where there are a million different prices and they change every day. Say we're buying five thousand pounds of green beans from a farm in Java to go into the Weekend Blend or one of the other low-end products-” Gideon winced. “-and they're charging us a buck-eighty a pound. Well, Tari just adds a little zero, records the price as ten-eighty a pound instead of one-eighty, and keeps the difference. The people in Java get their money so they don't complain, and the books balance, and we don't know any better. So Tari just walks away with nine times five thousand."
"Fifty thousand bucks,” John said.
"Forty-five thousand,” said Nick bitterly. “Let's be fair to the guy. And that's only one example. I can give you at least two more and I guarantee there'll be more to come when we really dig into things."
"But how could he get away with it?” asked Gideon. “That's a big difference, one-eighty to ten-eighty. Surely you, or Rudy, or Nelson, or somebody would know what's what, would know what the price was supposed to be."
Nick shook his head. “It's not the way we do business. At Paradise when we give somebody responsibility we trust him,” he said righteously, then laughed at himself. “Or did until now. Look. For the past two weeks Tari has been spending half his time at the Papeete office, half here. He's had complete access to everything-the books, the accounts-and complete authority to do anything Brian could do. If he needed help, he asked for it, that's all. We trusted him. Thanks to Maggie,” he couldn't resist adding in a grumpy aside.