While they ate, they continued a generally unsatisfactory and wholly unproductive discussion of who and why, but they managed to end on a positive note.
“Okay,” Julie said, “are you ready for the good news?”
“There’s good news?”
“Yes, I just thought of it. If what’s been happening is really related to those articles in the papers, then at least you can stop worrying. You’ve already given the speech and everybody now knows there was no big revelation. You can stop looking over your shoulder. That’s good news, isn’t it?”
“Very. I hadn’t thought of it myself.”
“Still, I imagine you’d probably like to know what it was all about.”
“Know who’s been trying to kill me? Oh, well, yeah, I suppose I have a certain mild interest in the matter.”
THIRTEEN
Breakfast in the hotel dining room the next morning was somewhat strained, at least from Gideon’s perspective. It’s hard to relax and enjoy your kippers and eggs when you keep sneaking looks around the table wondering just which one of your merry companions has been trying to cut your life short. And – just in case it wasn’t your now-completed and demonstrably harmless lecture that had elicited the attempts – whether he (or she) would be giving it another shot today.
The day before, while he and Julie had breakfasted on their balcony, everyone else had gone down to the dining room, pulled a couple of tables together, and eaten as a group. Apparently, this was to be the pattern for the rest of their stay, inasmuch as the pulled-together tables were waiting for them this morning, covered with tablecloths, with menus and place settings laid out, and everyone there.
If anyone noticed that Julie’s and Gideon’s moods were subdued, it wasn’t apparent. The conversation around them mostly concerned a controversial paper presented at the conference the day before, in which the author asserted, by means of a complicated mathematical model, that, had the Neanderthals been vegetarians instead of meat-eaters, their ecological niche would have been more bountiful, and they would have survived, possibly out-competing the invading Homo sapiens and causing their extinction. Audrey and Pru thought it made sense; Adrian and Corbin asserted it was poppycock. The discussion was spirited, peppery, and somewhat dogmatic, in the usual manner of academics quarreling over the arcane details of their discipline. Julie and Gideon were allowed to eat quietly without participating.
Midway through the meal, Rowley Boyd came in, slipped without saying anything into the vacant chair next to Adrian, and shook his head when the waiter asked if he wanted breakfast. Although the subject matter was something he’d ordinarily have jumped right in on, he sat, silent and grave, his chin in his hand, his forefinger slowly, meditatively tapping his lower lip, his downcast eyes on the table. His trusty pipe peeped unused from the breast pocket of his tweed jacket. Eventually, Adrian, apparently thrown off his rhythm by the mushroom cloud of gloom that had settled in beside him, asked with an impatient sigh if something was wrong.
“Yes,” said Rowley, looking somberly up. His normally affable face was startlingly haggard and pinched.
The arguing came to an abrupt halt. A chill washed over the table like a surge of cold sea water.
“Wh… what is it?” Corbin said after a moment.
“Ivan’s dead.”
“Ivan Gunderson?” Corbin asked stupidly.
“No, Ivan the Terrible, for Christ’s sake,” muttered Pru out of the side of her mouth.
“But he was just here the other night! We were all talking to him!”
It struck Gideon, not for the first time, how often people responded like that to news of a death. “But I had dinner with him yesterday! ” “But I just saw her this morning!” As if it was impossible for someone to be alive one minute and dead the next, although that was precisely the way it was. And yet he felt some of the same dull, hopeless denial. Gunderson dead? Impossible! He was here just the other day, wasn’t he?
“How did it happen, Rowley?” Audrey asked tonelessly.
Rowley was searching the room for their waiter. “I, ah, believe I should like a cup of coffee after all.”
“Take mine,” Gideon said, sliding over his cup and saucer.
The cup was full, but Rowley drained it without setting it down, in two long gulps. “Thank you.” He placed the cup on the table and breathed slowly in and out. His exhausted eyes were now focused on his hands, lying clasped on the table. “It happened the night before last, or rather very early yesterday morning, only a little while after I drove him home from the dinner. I learned of it only last night. I couldn’t believe it. He’d been fine when I left him – well, perhaps a little disoriented, as you know, but-”
“Rowley,” Gideon said. “What happened?”
“Sorry. He was smoking in bed. He did that, you know. He smoked a pipe too; he had a rack of Meerschaums, beautiful things that he used to get from…” He jerked his head and massaged his temples so hard the rubbing was audible. “His bedclothes were full of little burn holes. I warned him about it. His cleaning woman warned him about it. He promised to stop, but no, not him, he-”
“Rowley!” Audrey commanded. “ Will you get on with it?”
“I’m trying to tell you!” cried poor Rowley. “There was a terrible fire. He died in his bed. By the time the fire people got there, his cottage was completely destroyed.”
Julie and Gideon exchanged a quick glance – the fire Fausto had been called away to look into yesterday. Fausto’s opinion to the contrary, it seemed that interconnected monkey business had apparently struck again.
While Rowley did his best to deal with his own emotions and the ensuing storm of questions, Gideon went up to the room to call Fausto. When he got there, the message light on the bedside telephone was blinking. The voice mail message from police headquarters was classic Sotomayor:
“Gideon. Fausto. Call.”
Gideon reached him on the first ring. “Fausto, this is-”
“Gideon, sorry, can’t tell you for sure if the lamp was messed with or not. Has to go to the lab in London. I express mailed it and put in a call to them to say it was urgent, but, you know, Gib isn’t exactly at the top of their list, so I’m not sure how long it’ll take. But we did lift some prints off it here. Four different sets, all pretty clear. Do you remember whether you ever touched it yourself?”
“I don’t think I did… but I’m not sure. Maybe.”
“Then I better get yours, just in case.”
“Okay, I’ll come over there a little later. But Fausto-”
“Now, I talked with that tech guy at the cave, Derek? Who says the work crew all swear to God they never moved that mat, that they don’t know-”
“Fausto, that’s not what I was calling about.”
“What, this isn’t important enough for you? Okay then, tell me, what did you call about?”
“The old man that died in the fire yesterday?”
“Yeah?”
“He was Ivan Gunderson, right?”
“Yeah. So how do you know his name? Is it in the paper already? ”
“Ivan Gunderson was an archaeologist. He was one of our group. He was the one we had the testimonial dinner for the other night.”
“No, uh-uh, this guy was an archaeologist, all right, but he was a resident of Gib. He lived here, had a house in the South District. ”
“It’s the same person, Fausto. He owned several houses. One of them was here. It’s where he spent most of his time the last few years.”
Gideon heard – almost felt the breeze from – the long whoosh of Fausto’s let-out breath. “So…?”
“So, with Sheila Chan,” Gideon said, “that makes two people connected with the dig who’ve now died in ‘accidents.’ Neither one with witnesses, let me point out. Add that to what now looks like an attempt to electrocute me, as well as-”
“But what’s the dig got to do with you? You weren’t on it, I thought.”
“No, but I did the analysis of the bones from it – of Gibraltar Boy.”