“That’s so, I suppose. It could have been someone else.”
“For that matter, do we really know that anybody sent Vasily a fax, or do we know only that he says someone sent one?”
“Well… I suppose…”
“As far as I know, no one’s seen it, isn’t that right?”
Julie frowned. “Gideon are you suggesting… you’re not suggesting…”
“That Vasily’s a murderer and faked the fax to cover himself? No, of course not. I’m only pointing out-”
“I mean, for all we know, Vasily still has the fax. In fact, he probably does.”
“Which still wouldn’t prove that Villarreal sent it. Look, all I’m saying is that the evidence for Villarreal’s ever having left and gone back to the States, let alone getting chomped on by a bear, is not exactly overwhelming.”
“That’s so, yes.” She gazed out into the fog. Below, unseen wavelets lapped at the rocky shore. “I’m trying to think of whether I actually saw him get on the ferry or not, at the end of the consortium. I know we all left the same day. We caught the ferry. I was on it with… well, let’s see… Liz, and Rudy, and… come to think of it, that’s all. Edgar and the others were going to catch the early morning plane, or the afternoon ferry, or something.”
“Did you see him at all that day?”
She chewed on her lip, trying to remember. “I don’t know. I don’t think I did. I’m not sure.”
“What about the day before?”
“The night before was when he gave that speech in town, where he got into the shouting match with Pete Williams, so he was definitely there then. After that, I don’t remember.” She pushed herself from the wet cannon, wiped her hands on a couple of Kleenexes to dry them, and stuffed the sodden clump in a pocket. They resumed walking.
“Okay,” she said, “let’s say you’re right. Somebody here on St. Mary’s killed Edgar. Two years later, somebody kills Joey. It’s got to be the same somebody, wouldn’t you think?”
“I’d say so. Unless we have two murderers running around the place, which is really low on the probability continuum.”
“And the two murders-they just about have to be related.”
Gideon nodded. “The Law of Interconnected Monkey Business.”
This was a “law” posited only partly in jest by Gideon’s old professor and all-around mentor, Abe Gold-stein: When too many extraordinary things-too much monkey business-started happening to the same people, in the same context, you could count on there being some connection between them. And while “two” might not be very high on the “too many” scale, murders were off the charts on the “extraordinary” scale.
“Okay, then,” Julie said, “what if you took what I said before and switched the names?”
“What you said before?”
“About why somebody would kill Joey. What if Joey knew who killed Edgar? And maybe he was keeping quiet these last two years, but now that the news was going to come out that the bones weren’t Pete’s after all-they were Edgar’s-that changed things. And the person who killed him-killed Edgar, I mean-couldn’t trust Joey to keep quiet, so he-”
“Uh-uh,” Gideon said.
Julie, swept away with her reasoning, didn’t hear him. “No, wait a minute, what about this as an idea? Maybe it wasn’t murder at all, in Joey’s case. Maybe it was suicide. Maybe Joey killed Edgar, and now that he knew it was going to come out, he killed himself.”
“Uh-uh,” Gideon said again.
“ Uh-uh? Just plain uh-uh? Not even a ‘maybe’? Not even a ‘possibly’? At least an ‘improbably’?”
“Nope, just plain uh-uh. Julie, maybe it was murder, maybe it was suicide, maybe it was an accident, but it couldn’t have been because Edgar’s murder was going to come out. Neither Joey nor anyone else could know that, because I didn’t know it myself until this morning. And you, Mike, Kyle, and I are still the only people who do know. Last night, when Joey was killed, everybody-including me, including Joey-still thought the bones were probably Williams’s.”
“Oh,” she said, deflated, “that’s so, isn’t it?”
“Not only that, but even if he did know, which he couldn’t have, there was nothing to tie Joey-or anyone, for that matter-to Villarreal’s murder, so why should he have been worried? I hadn’t even come up with a cause of death yet. The only reason we knew it was foul play was the fact that the body was dismembered.”
“That’s true,” she said thoughtfully. “You know, for all we know it wasn’t a murder at all-I’m talking about Joey now, not Edgar. Maybe he fell off the catwalk while he was trying to light one of those awful cigars or something. He was pretty well sloshed, after all, and the railing isn’t much above your knees. Maybe there’s no big mystery here at all.”
“I agree. That could very well be. But it still leaves Edgar. And that was no accident.”
“No.” She nodded soberly. “And unlike Joey, there’s no shortage of people who had it in for him.”
“No.”
They walked on in gloomy silence for a while, and Gideon had no doubt that their thoughts were running along the same lines: compiling the long list of Star Castle residents whom Edgar Villarreal had antagonized-a list that would most assuredly have to be given to Clapper. There was, first and foremost, the sexual-predator angle. Liz Petra and Victor Waldo had had good reason to detest him, and maybe Donald did as well. He appeared not to care about Cheryl’s blatant peccadilloes, but you never knew about something like that, especially with a seemingly bland guy like Donald. And what about Cheryl? Had she dumped Villarreal, or was it the other way around? And then there was Rudy, whose wilderness convictions had made an enemy of Villarreal and vice versa. And Kozlov. Hadn’t Julie mentioned that he and Villarreal had grated upon one another?
Other than Mrs. Bewley and Mr. Moreton, neither of whom had been in Kozlov’s employ at the time of the last consortium two years ago, that was pretty much everybody in the place; everybody who was still alive, anyway. The only one who hadn’t shown any ill feelings toward Villarreal-who had, in fact, declared his admiration and even affection for him-was Joey. And Joey, like Villarreal, was dead.
After a few more steps she shivered. “Let’s go back, I’m chilled through. ‘Fog season,’ brr. The people here must hate this time of year.”
“Everyone,” said Gideon with a smile, “except Mike Clapper.”
Dinner at the castle was a sober affair, and quiet as well, inasmuch as Clapper had asked them not to talk about Joey’s death for the time being. But it was clear, from the few comments that were made, and from the furtive, side-long glances shooting around the table, that they had all arrived at the same conclusions that Gideon and Julie had: Joey’s murderer, if indeed Joey had been murdered, was sitting right there among them. It was also clear, from their generally dazed demeanor, that learning that the bones from the beach were those of the very definitely murdered Edgar Villarreal (Clapper had informed them) had hit them hard; an appalling double whammy. Already upset about Joey, they were all thoroughly stunned by the news about Edgar.
All but one.
EIGHTEEN
The next morning Kozlov, true to form, announced it was back to work for the consortium, starting with the usual working breakfast, so Gideon walked down the hill and into Hugh Town for something to eat. By now he looked forward to a couple of those D-shaped Cornish breakfast pasties to start the day and would miss them when he got back home. Egg McMuffins were fine, but nothing like these supremely dense, tasty things that sank to your stomach like so much lead and continued to warm you for hours.
Late the previous afternoon he had met with Clapper for the distasteful purpose of telling him about the numerous antipathies that Villarreal had aroused among the consortium Fellows. Clapper, tired and preoccupied, had seemed unimpressed, but that was his affair. Gideon was simply glad to have the task behind him. Today he would be pleased to get back to his own element: bones.