Bones of Contention (13 page)

Chapter Twenty-one

Dinah washed her cup and peered out the kitchen window. Twenty yards across the weedy lawn, sublimely oblivious to the risk of death adders, a half-naked Seth went through a sequence of slow, stretching motions. T’ai chi, she assumed. She hung over the sink entranced as his lithe body flowed through each movement with a sinuous grace. God, but he was sculpted.

Tanya clumped into the kitchen, muttering darkly. “Has to get out of the house, she says. Pack a lunch, she says. Stuff some eggs. Make sweet iced tea. Make sandwiches. Skinny boy wants roast beef, sliced thin. Her and the girl want pimento cheese with the crust trimmed off the bread. Probably want a side salad of dollar bills.”

Dinah wondered what sweetener had induced Tanya to return to work. Perhaps Mack had doubled her pay or Jacko had cajoled her to stay on and spy for him. “Tanya, is there a roster of who’s staying in which room?”

“Why?” She clumped into the pantry and lugged out an armful of jars, mayo and mustard and pickles, and dumped them on the table.

“I have some old family photos. I thought I’d slip a few under everyone’s door.”

“How come you don’t hand them out at dinner?”

“They’re sentimental. Best enjoyed in private.”

Her forehead pleated with suspicion, but it was clear from her snort that she didn’t give a rat’s patootie what Crow Hill’s troublemaking guests found under their doors. “No list.”

“Well, do you know who’s where?”

“Who you think makes the beds?”

Nobody had made up Dinah’s rumpled aerie, but this was hardly the time to complain. “Will you please tell me?”

“Eight, you and the snooty girl. Seven, the no-good painter and the poofter. Six, my Victor and the boy that hoons around with his video games and his iPod. Five, the glum one.”

“Wendell?”

“Him, yes. His bossy mum’s next door in four.” She turned on the tap full force and filled a kettle. “Gotta be Darjeeling. Gotta seed the lemons and slice ’em just so.”

“What about the second floor?” prompted Dinah.

“Old muckety-muck and Lady La-de-da are in the big room at the far end. No number. Mackenzie took three for himself. He put the new son doing the crazy dance out there in one.”

Dinah had to hand it to her. The woman had a knack for the concise putdown. Was it a reluctance to speak ill of the dead that kept her from tagging the former occupant of Room 2 a scumbag? Or a galka? Dinah wanted to ask her what it meant, but something volatile in the air between them stopped her.

Tentatively, she asked, “Where do you sleep, Tanya?”

“In the shed behind the house. Where’d you think, the captain’s suite?” As she clanked a pan with last night’s leftover roast beef onto the stove, she radiated antagonism.

Dinah had nothing to say in the face of her withering stare. It was pot-bangingly clear that the fellow feeling they’d established beating egg whites for meringue had expired. Dinah didn’t have to ask why. If Tanya had poisoned Fisher, she’d be afraid to say anything that could give her away. But if she believed she’d prepared the fugu correctly, she’d assume that one of the Dobbs clan had murdered Fisher. She’d worry that the family would try to lay the blame off on her. And she’d be right, thought Dinah, smarting from guilt.

She left Tanya to her clanking and muttering and went out into the foyer. In the great room, the only voices she heard were Lucien’s—raw and edgy. “For the love of Christ, if he knows, why doesn’t he come straight out with it?” And Eduardo’s—querulous, “Because he positively revels in goading you.”

The
he
was obviously Cleon. Dinah was torn. If Cleon knew what? Should she go and beat the truth out of Lucien or give Seth’s room a whirl while she had the chance?

She skulked to the back door to see if he was still tai-chiing. K.D. dallied on the veranda, ostensibly brushing and grooming Cantoo. Her eyes were hidden behind her pink Juicy Couture sunglasses, but Dinah had no doubt that she had staked herself out to observe Seth. He was still feinting and thrusting and pivoting with a contained, balletic grace. A towel and gym bag lay on the lawn near where he was exercising. When he finished, he’d probably head straight to the shower. But he’d have to get past K.D. first and shaking loose from that cocklebur would take time.

Her thoughts racing, Dinah padded back down the hall and tiptoed upstairs to the second floor. A quick glance to make sure no one had seen her, a twist of the door handle and she was safe inside Room Number 1.

Like everything else at Crow Hill, it was comfortless and dingy and the furniture looked as if it had been salvaged from a junkyard. The bed was a rickety single with a split headboard. Moths had pastured on the meadow-green upholstery of the only chair and a battered hulk of an armoire balanced on three bun feet and a ratty copy of Plato’s
Collected Dialogues
. A satirical drawing of a pig holding a “Welcome to the Trough” sign had been tacked haphazardly on the wall above the bed. It was limned in exquisite detail, which meant that the artist had to be Lucien. She groaned. Either he or, more likely, Eduardo on his behalf, had gotten here ahead of her. But had he searched the room or merely left this memento to haze Seth?

In the tiny water closet was a rusty basin with a medicine chest above it. Nothing incriminating inside—razor, shaving gel, toothbrush, toothpaste. She moved on. A canvas satchel lay open on the bed. Underwear—crew necks and packers, a pair of Nikes in a clear plastic sack, a bottle of Wild Turkey and a carton of Chinese cigarettes. Chung Hwa. She would have pinched one, but the cellophane seal hadn’t been broken.

On a luggage caddy next to the armoire was a water-stained suitcase. It had been patched with duct tape and plastered with markings and stickers indicative of numerous border crossings. She inventoried the outside pockets first and came up with a couple of year-old boarding passes and a wad of strange currency spendable in no country she’d ever been to.

She sorted through a stack of neatly folded shirts, socks, cotton slacks. At the bottom, wrapped in a nylon windbreaker, was a handgun. A Glock. Black. Compact. Sexy.

But telling? The murders in question had been perpetrated using a spear and a fish. A weapon as technologically advanced as a Glock didn’t fit the pattern. She carefully rewrapped it and opened a large camera bag. Inside she found a dog-eared copy of Al Gore’s
Earth in the Balance
and a U.S. passport. Jason Seth Farraday, born in Fresno, California, February 14, 1975. The photo was definitely him, but a more prosaic him. The Brooks Brothers-ish suit and conservative blue necktie clashed with the persona of a man who wanted to come back as a koala. The Seth in this picture looked like he might come back as a predator. A panther, maybe. He had an intimidating countenance. Like a litigator or…or a man backed up by a badge.

No! She shook the thought out of her head. She was seeing cops behind every tree. She noted the issue date, six years ago, and thumbed through the pages of exotic stamps and visas.

She took out a Canon digital camera and hit display. Up popped a picture of a large boat. There were several more shots of the same vessel. A close-up of the bow showed the name, Suwannee. Cleon’s yacht.

Something whumped against the door.

Shit.

Voices, hushed and urgent. The door handle turned.

Unthinking, she tore open the armoire door, which creaked, and clambered inside. Instantly, she felt stupid. Stupid and scared. It was pitch black in here and she could practically feel the spiders foraging up her pant legs. She swept a cobweb out of her face and groped about for something soft to put under her knees. Why did she always react like a guilty child? No matter how humiliating, she wished that Seth would fling open the doors and let her out. Surely he’d heard that creak. She’d rather be caught red-handed than to have a herd of hairy spiders grazing on her flesh.

“Oh, God, what are we going to do? He knows. Did you hear him last night? I tell you, he knows
.
”

Neesha? What the hell was Neesha…?

“Shhh. It’ll be all right, darling. He can’t possibly know. We’ve been discreet.”

Holy Shit. It was Wendell. Wendell calling Neesha darling
.

“Oh, Wen, I could’ve stood three more nights. Three and then…but he’s saying he can’t go through with it now, not ’til the police have finished investigating the doctor’s death. How could this have happened?”

“I don’t know, but he can’t last many more weeks. I’ve asked him not to change his will until we learn more about this Farraday character. The man’s obviously an impostor.”

“Not Cleon’s son?”

“I don’t know. He’s a fraud. I just don’t know what kind of a fraud.”

“What if he walks in on us?”

“He won’t. He told me he does that t’ai chi stuff for an hour every morning.”

“Oh, Wen.”

There was an interval of quiet during which Dinah inferred kissing. During which her skin tickled and crawled. During which she brooded on infidelity and the parameters of incest and what seemed a remarkable lack of curiosity on the part of the kissers about the cause of Fisher’s death. During which she debated whether to burst out of the box and scream “Aha!” or “Small world” or “Somebody get the assassin out of my shirt.”

The smell of dry rot and mouse droppings made her want to retch. How many thousand years had she been trapped in here? There were Egyptian mummies who hadn’t been shut up this long.

“Your mother’s being horrid to me, Wendell. I know you have feelings for her, but the way she’s hounding Cleon to take away what’s mine…Can’t you stop her?”

“Not as long as Dad puts up with her nagging. She acts like she’s lobbying for me, but I think she just enjoys sparring with him. In some dark cranny of her brain I think she still loves him. Whatever her idea of love is.”

“This is my idea.”

Presumably, there was more kissing. Fondling, too, if Neesha’s ardent little moans were any indication.

A zipper whished and Wendell began to moan.

“Oh, Jesus. Oh. Oh
.
”

Dinah didn’t like to think what the Victorian lady was doing to her wooden-faced stepson to elicit such noises. Could he be panting that hard? That close?

Cantoo. Cantoo was snuffling and scratching at the door of the armoire. Sweet Jerusalem, she’d been treed. She massaged a cramp in one knee and tried to envisage a far distant time in a far distant place when this would seem funny.

The dog gave a sudden, frustrated yip.

“Damn it, Neesha.”

The zipper whished again.

“Leave it, Cantoo.”

The scratching and snuffling stopped. Neesha must have picked up Cantoo.

“Can we meet in town this afternoon, Wen?”

“Too risky. We have to sit tight for a few days. Trust me, darling. With the money you and the kids get from Dad and my share of Dez’s business, we’ll be fine.”

“None of it matters as long as we’re together.”

Dinah couldn’t stand the armoire or the lovey-dovey any longer. Her hand was on the door.

“Give it back!”
K.D.’s high-pitched shriek cut through the thin walls like a chain saw. “Give it to me this instant, Thad.”

Cantoo barked, Neesha and Wendell whispered urgently, and what sounded like a herd of buffalo thundered up the stairs.

“He has bedroom eyes the color of jade and his body is like a glorious temple that cries out to be desecrated.” Thad, very loud and with that intrinsic sneer in his voice.

“Thadeus Dobbs, if you don’t give it to me this minute, I’ll kill you.”

“In your dreams, fugly. I’m gonna read this shit to everybody.”

The sounds of battle passed by the second floor and moved on to the third.

After a moment, Neesha said, “When can we talk again?”

“We’ll have to play it by ear. Don’t let him rattle you.”

A few more inaudible whispers and the door snicked open and shut again.

Dinah scrambled out of her cubbyhole mussing and brushing her hair like a mad thing. Her skin felt itchy and her already jaundiced opinion of mankind was in a nosedive. Wendell fornicating with his stepmother. It made Nick’s two-timing seem tame. Unless the redhead was his sister. Nothing was beyond the pale. Life was a masquerade. No one was who or what he pretended to be.

And K.D. wasn’t where Dinah assumed she’d be, which meant that Seth wasn’t either. She put his passport and camera back where she found them and repaired to her room to shake the spiders out of her shirt and reassess.

Chapter Twenty-two

A tizzy is what her mother would have called it. A twitchy, distracted, hair-on-fire feeling that could only be alleviated by moving. Preferably at full tilt. Cooped up in that spidery hutch with a head full of refractory emotions, Dinah had a tizzy. She went back to her room, but she couldn’t sit still. Her thoughts were in ferment. She had to move or go mad.

Heedless of the noonday sun, she twisted her hair into a ponytail, changed into her running togs, laced up her Nikes, and went out for a run. She’d discovered the release valve of running when she ran track in high school and she’d been a runner ever since. When she ran, life’s upsets and letdowns seemed to fall away from her mind, left behind in the dust. Her grandmother believed that running was an affirmation of her Seminole blood. Seminole was what the Spanish had called the Cimarron Indians. It meant either “wild” or “runaway.” In Dinah’s present tizzy, it meant both.

The lane at midday was brutally hot, but she set out at a furious pace, pursued by a posse of thoughts she didn’t want to think. Whatever Cleon’s defects as a husband and a father, he didn’t deserve to be betrayed in so sleazy a fashion. All that lovey-dovey baloney from Neesha, all that bogus loyalty from Wendell—they were hypocrites of the highest order. All they wanted was to see him dead so they could snaffle up his money and feast on each other’s flesh. And Wendell’s wife and children back in Brunswick? Collateral damage, evidently not worth mentioning. And lo and behold, Wendell had expectations from Fisher’s will.

She checked her watch. She was running six-minute miles, sweating profusely and the upsetting thoughts weren’t falling behind. If anything, they were gaining on her. She slowed to a walk. After a few minutes, a previously unnoticed walking path angled off into the trees. It had a smooth, well-beaten look, not too snaky and more shaded than the road. Impulsively, she turned onto the path.

Breathing more easily now, she began to jog and to think more constructive thoughts. Wendell had nullified any allegiance she might have owed him. The important thing now was to help the police nab Fisher’s murderer and put this sick-making episode behind her. Much as she hated to rat, she would tell Jacko about Wendell’s sordid affair with Neesha and their financial incentive to hurry both Fisher and Cleon out of this world. For good measure, she’d throw in a tip about Seth Farraday’s Glock.

“You’ve spoiled my shot!”

Her heart caromed off her chest wall so hard she bent double.

Seth Farraday materialized out of the trees like a ninja, camera slung around his neck, and pointed. “That was a Gouldian finch. They’re nearly extinct.”

Heart hammering, she sagged against a tree. “What the hell are you doing?”

“You’re always asking me the same question. What does it look like I’m doing? I’m taking pictures. What are you doing?”

“Wishing you were extinct.” Breathing hard, she straightened up and glared at him. He was exasperating, but if she were going to find out more about him, she’d have to mind her tongue. She wiped the annoyance off her face. “Just kidding. I was about to turn around and walk back to the lodge. You’re welcome to join me.”

He reprised the enigmatic smile. “Thanks, I will.”

They fell into step and she asked, “Are you a birder as well as a photographer?”

“I encompass multitudes. You know Walt Whitman?”

“I read some of his poetry in school.”

“He was a nature lover, a transcendentalist who valued the spiritual above the factual. He believed in the affinity between man and his environment, mind and soul in perfect harmony with Nature.”

She stemmed the poetical drift. “Where did you go to school, Seth?”

“I dropped out of Berkeley in my junior year, built a concrete skiff, and sailed it across the Pacific.”

“You sailed solo?”

“To Penang on the Malay Peninsula. I bummed around Thailand for a couple of years logging teak up north. I had my own elephant until the assholes who ran the company modernized and replaced the elephants with hydraulic grapple skidders.”

She tried to picture him working an elephant. It seemed a throwback to another age. Obsolete. Like hunting with spears. “What did you do after Thailand?”

“I dropped anchor in Papua, New Guinea, for a year to photograph the initiation rituals of the crocodile people.”

She felt a pique of jealousy. Studying the rituals of such an obscure tribe would be an anthropologist’s dream. “What are the rituals like?”

“The men make rows of cuts on their bodies and when they heal, they look like the raised nubs on a croc’s hide. A man with no scars gets no respect from his tribe.

“Shhh.” He dropped his arm in front of her like a railroad gate and raised his camera. “It’s a willy wagtail.”

The little black and white bird seemed almost tame as it hopped about on a fallen log and cheeped at them. Seth took a few sunflower seeds out of his pocket and sprinkled them on the ground. The bird seemed to regard this offering as its rightful due. While Seth snapped pictures, Willy cavorted about like a star ready for his close-up. Funny little character that he was, Dinah couldn’t help but feel a stirring of disquiet. In her book of Aboriginal myths, the willy wagtail was a harbinger of bad luck.

When Willy had flown, she returned to Seth’s bio. “Where did you go after you left New Guinea?”

“Oh, I trekked through Burma and across the Gobi, photographed some camel races for National Geographic. I lived for a year in the mountains in Kyrgyzstan, but it started to get too touristy. I moved on to Ninghsia where I entered a Buddhist monastery as a novitiate monk.”

“You’re a monk?”

He gave her a playful biff on the arm. “I didn’t take the final vows.”

The needle on her truth meter fluctuated between
what beautiful eyes you have
and
what a crock
. She almost asked why a monastic dropout found it necessary to pack heat, but that would’ve given away her snooping.

They had reached the road and Dinah’s feet itched to start running again. She felt toey, as Jacko would say. Toey and ready to toss the hot potato of Wendell’s perfidy and the unharmonious fact of Nature Boy’s Glock to somebody who could do something about it.

There was just one thing she had to do first.

She turned to Seth. “I’m sorry. I just remembered I have to be someplace really fast.” She took off like a gazelle and did six-minute miles all the way back to the lodge.

***

“Lucien, let’s go for a drive.” Dinah had showered too soon after her run and she was still perspiring.

“It’s too hot. Sit down under that fan and cool off.” He’d been holed up in his room for hours, apparently absorbed in his painting. The Taipan monstrosity had been replaced on his easel by an elongated polka-dot man with elongated polka-dot baskets hanging on his arms. Weird, but a bit more in the style of the paintings in Mack’s library.

She stood in front of the electric fan and plucked at her damp shirt. “The car’s got air-conditioning.”

“It’s two o’clock already. Time to go downstairs and rustle up some lunch.”

“We could stop somewhere on the road and have lunch, a picnic, just the two of us. It’ll do us a world of good to get away from the lodge and talk.”

“You can talk all you want right here.”

In front of Eduardo isn’t what Dinah had in mind. She didn’t want to insult Eddie by saying that her business with Lucien was private, but he refused to take a hint. He lay propped up on the bed doing needlepoint. The abandon with which he plunged his needle in and out of a half-finished yellow bird was painful to watch.

She said, “You could do with some fresh air and sunshine, Lucien. Wouldn’t you like to go sightseeing?” She didn’t know how she’d disinvite Eddie if he made a pitch to come along, but one name might taint the idea of an excursion for him. “Mack told me about this really fascinating place, Manyallaluk or something, not far from here. There’s an arts and crafts center and lots of rock art. We could do a self-driving tour. Maybe you’ll be possessed by a Dreamtime spirit who’ll guide your paintbrush metaphysically like you said before. Please?”

Eduardo plunged his needle through the bird’s wing with a savage jab. “He’s already possessed. By Ian Effing Mackenzie. You mark my words, Lucien. The primrose path he’s taking you down will lead from bad to worse. De mal en pis.”

“Manyallaluk sounds like a great idea,” said Lucien, angrily jamming his brush into a jar of turpentine and reaching for his crutches. “In fact, Mack downloaded a story about the place for me on my Nano. He knows a couple of the guides. Maybe they’ll give us the royal treatment.”

They left Eduardo pouting and started for the car. Dinah had a hundred questions. She wanted Lucien’s input about the Wendell-Neesha liaison before she told Jacko and she was also turning over in her mind how to broach the subject of Lucien’s rift with Cleon. Cleon had it in his head that Lucien had been dishonest with him about something. It was probably a tempest in a teapot, but forewarned is forearmed. It was time for Lucien to come clean with her. If there was a doubt that Cleon had been the poisoner’s intended victim, they would have to shoot down any suggestion that Lucien had a motive.

But when they got to the car, Lucien handed her his crutches, pulled his Nano out of his pocket, and insisted on stretching out in the back seat.

“But Lucien, I wanted to…”

“It’s a podcast about Manyallaluk.” He plugged his earphones into his ears. “It’ll give us some background, help us make the most of the experience. Anyway, my leg will be more comfortable back here.”

“Fine.” Having committed herself to the trip, she could only hope an opportunity for conversation would present itself as the day progressed.

She looked over the map Mack had sketched for her, adjusted the seat and the mirrors, and set off. The drive, much of it on dirt roads, was longer than she’d expected and her optimism flagged. Rocks pelted against the undercarriage of the Charade and she couldn’t get anything on the radio but static and soccer. At one point, she had to stop for a half dozen wild donkeys which stood brazenly in the middle of the road, unfazed by her honks and shouts. Lucien offered no help, not even an encouraging word, and she began to resent his aloofness, to feel that he was deliberately ducking her. Why would anyone need that much background on this godforsaken place unless he was planning to join the tribe?

At last she saw a big green gate with Welcome to Manyallaluk on one side and The Dreaming Place on the other. She pulled in and parked and, to her considerable irritation, Lucien hopped out, grabbed his crutches, and vaulted off to the reception building. She trailed along behind him, chafing inwardly. They were greeted by a smiling Aboriginal man in a broad-brimmed hat and khaki shirt. The name on his pocket was Peter. Lucien immediately dropped the name Ian Mackenzie and, sure enough, the royal treatment commenced.

The entrance fee was waived and Peter, a mustachioed man with laughing eyes and irresistible dimples, took Lucien under his wing and led him off to the art center. Dinah couldn’t face another dissertation on art and asked a pretty young woman with a pixie hair cut and a professional smile if she could just wander around the grounds.

“Yes, of course. But please stay within the grassed tourism area.” She handed her an information sheet and wished her a pleasant afternoon.

Dinah began her tour, reading as she walked. Manyallaluk, she learned, means the Frog Dreaming because it occupies a site along the song line, or creative journey, of the frog ancestor. The people of the Frog Dreaming passed through the area as part of their pilgrimage to places sacred to their “moiety” or clan. Mines and cattle stations established by “white fellas” once predominated, but the land was eventually returned to its traditional Jawoyn owners and Manyallaluk is now an Aboriginal owned and operated tourism venture.

A list of cultural guidelines advised visitors how to comport themselves.

Aboriginal people dress conservatively, please respect their culture by avoiding flamboyant or revealing clothing
.

She was wearing long pants, but she had rolled her sleeves up above the elbow. She rolled them down to her wrists and turned up her collar.

Our guides are used to “Western” ways, but do not take it as impoliteness if other residents of the community do not make eye contact or accept your offer of a handshake. If an individual appears uncomfortable with eye contact, avert your eyes
.

She repositioned her Wayfarers more firmly on her nose and focused on the didgeridoos rather than the elderly men who were blowing them, and on the pandanus baskets rather than the elderly ladies who were weaving them.

Cultural information is provided to a certain “public knowledge” level, but more information may be forbidden to be told by traditional law. If you are given an answer that doesn’t make sense, the guide is trying to avoid the question for cultural reasons.

These people were as stingy with the truth as her family. As she was accustomed to people avoiding her questions, she moved on to the next rule.

Please avoid asking questions about “Sorry Business” (death, funerals, etc.), “Secret Men’s/Women’s Business,” and cultural stories.

That puts a lot of business off limits, she thought. How did Jacko go about investigating the Melville Island murder if it was culturally verboten to mention death? She remembered the story she’d read about the woman found dead under suspicious circumstances, but the newspaper hadn’t printed her name or her community for cultural reasons.

A trio of Aboriginal women sat under a large mango tree tending a cookpot suspended over a campfire. They were encircled by a group of onlookers. Dinah stopped for a while to watch and listen. One of the women explained that the red meat they were chopping was kangaroo tail. It would be stewed with some bush herbs and eaten with damper bread, a hard-crusted bread baked in the ashes of the open fire. The strong, gamy smell of the meat didn’t entice Dinah to wait around for a sample.

She was growing bored and impatient. Somehow the day had gotten away from her without talking to Lucien or Jacko and she felt stymied and increasingly antsy.