“Brew,” Sam said. He sounded calm the way a doctor does when he doesn’t want to scare you. “That’s pretty thin.”
I looked at him while water trickled through my whiskers.
“I think I understand what you’re saying,” he explained, “but it requires too many inferences. The amount of snow depends on how long and how wide the window was open. There are too many variables. You’re jumping to conclusions you can’t trust. The evidence is too ambiguous. You can’t blame yourself for what’s happened to Simon.”
“That’s not the point.”
He watched me steadily. “Then what is?”
I did my best to be clear. “The point is that we had good reason to question Simon’s guilt. But I didn’t think it through. I ignored some of the possibilities. I didn’t figure out that if he didn’t do it, someone else did it to him. And if someone else did it to him, he was in danger. The real killer wouldn’t want to take the chance that Simon might be able to prove his innocence somehow.
“I should’ve realized that if Simon didn’t kill Cat he’d be a target himself.”
“You did,” Sam retorted. “You locked him in the wine cellar. By rights, that should have been the safest place in the lodge.”
True enough. Ginny probably would’ve told me the same thing. In fact, she’d probably thought of all that last night and just hadn’t mentioned it. But she wasn’t the issue here. I was. I was supposed to keep all these people alive, and I hadn’t even figured out that Simon might be in danger.
There in the snow, with Sam studying me and cold everywhere, I decided to get the sonofabitch who did this. Just holding the fort until Ginny came back wasn’t enough for me anymore. Somehow I intended to get the bastard.
As if I’d accepted Sam’s reasoning, I said, “We can’t stay out here. Let’s go inside.”
He approved. “Good idea. You’re not due for another injection, but you could use some rest.”
Something still bothered me, another detail I’d missed, like the evidence that Simon might be in danger. It had to do with this hole in the wall. But I decided not to nag at it. I had plenty of other things to think about. And it might come clear faster if I left it alone.
In any case, what I really wanted to do was go to my room and shave. I hated feeling this scruffy. It messed up my brain, and I couldn’t afford that. If I wanted to catch Cat’s killer, I needed to be able to think.
17
Standing up was easier said than done, but Sam helped me. No one shot at us. He gave me the .45, and we returned to the kitchen.
The Carbones had joined Faith. With an air of impersonal weariness, as if his fatigue were metaphysical rather than practical, Truchi watched Ama help Faith with lunch.
Queenie and Rock stood there as well. As Sam and I clumped into the kitchen, shedding clots of snow, she approached us with a handful of pills and a glass of water.
Behind her, Rock wandered away like a man who had no idea where he was headed.
Sam let go of me. I braced myself on a countertop while he hugged Queenie.
“What’s happening?” Her voice was softly intense. “I asked Rock, but he didn’t make much sense.”
With a tilt of his head, Sam referred the question to me.
“Sam’s taking me to my room,” I replied as if that were an answer. “I want to shave.”
Queenie frowned. However, Sam’s expression persuaded her to contain herself. “First your pills,” he ordered me. “As long as you need a nurse as well as a doctor, you’d better do what we tell you.”
She handed me the pills and the glass of water.
I took them. Then I let Sam and Queenie help me in the direction of my room.
Truchi observed our departure as if he wondered whether pain had any spiritual justification.
Maybe Sam’s injection was wearing off. I reached my room too tired to do anything as energetic as shaving. Ignoring my wet pants, I sat down on the bed, took as much air as I could into my cramped lungs, and tried to remember what strength felt like.
With an odd sense of dislocation, I noticed that I hadn’t covered my window. In fact, I hadn’t latched it. I’d told everyone else what to do, but I hadn’t done it myself.
Brilliant, Axbrewder. I was off to a great start.
Fortunately Queenie had the presence of mind to latch and blind the window for me. At once the whole room went as dim as the inside of my head.
“All right,” she said firmly. “Tell me.”
Again Sam looked at me.
I nodded.
He told her.
She gnawed on the information for a minute or two. Then she asked, “Are you going to tell this to everybody else?”
I said flatly, “No.”
“Why not?”
“Three reasons.” It’s amazing how clear you can be when you don’t mean it. I was just stalling for time. “First, we can’t be sure we’re right. We haven’t got enough facts. Second, nothing has changed. What we need to do until Reeson gets back,” never mind Ginny, “remains the same, no matter who the killer is. Third, these people are scared enough already. If we start telling them stories about a faceless hit man, they may panic. That will make the situation even harder to control.”
Fourth, my brain still didn’t function worth a damn. I couldn’t find the flaw in my own reasoning, the small detail I’d missed.
Queenie opened her mouth to ask another question, but the sound of Ama’s chimes in the hallway interrupted her.
I didn’t know which impressed me more—the lunacy of playing lunch chimes or the determination to behave normally at a time like this.
Both Sam and Queenie considered me. I said, “You go ahead. I’ll be along.” To ease their obvious doubt, I added, “I have to learn to walk on my own sometime.”
The way they consulted each other without speaking made them seem like the most married couple I knew. After a moment Sam gave me a nod. “But if you don’t show up in ten minutes, I’m coming back.”
I agreed. I was in no mood for an argument.
When they’d left, I spent a while mustering my resources. Then I got up off the bed. In the bathroom, I washed my face. Grimly I ground my electric razor over my whiskers like I wanted to eradicate my essential mortality, clean away the part of me that felt too grubby and human to cope.
In an effort to efface the clinging smell of port and blood and smoke, I slapped on so much aftershave that I reeked like a brothel. Mostly to prove that I could do it, I put on dry pants. Trying to warm my frozen feet, I put on socks. Somehow I remembered to transfer the .45 to my pocket.
At the same time, I tried to decide how to do my job.
From my perspective, that implied not trusting anything I’d come up with so far. I’d already demonstrated that my brain was ripe for a factory recall. And I had at least one nagging inarticulate, intuitive reason to believe that there was more to this mess than met the eye.
So I had several options. I could reverse my field like a running back and tell everyone my latest theory. That might elicit some interesting responses. Or I could play the mystery lover’s detective and go around probing people like mad, seeing what came out.
Or I could make a concerted effort to convert my crippling disadvantages into strengths. I could use my weakness as a kind of camouflage to conceal what I really had in mind.
I liked that idea.
Before Sam had a chance to come back for me, I went to lunch.
When I’d succeeded at tottering to the dining room, I found everyone there ahead of me. Buffy and Rock sat at the ends of the table where they belonged, but they looked gloomy and beaten, like they’d been dispossessed. The guests had seated themselves in their proper pairs—Joseph and Lara, Mac and Connie, Houston and Maryanne, Sam and Queenie. Faith and Ama had just started to clear away bowls of vegetable stew.
They all stared at me. Except Faith, of course. And Amalia, who concentrated on her work.
For a moment I didn’t sit down.
Instead I blinked back at the group—mostly at the Hardhouses. The belligerent shape of his face never relaxed, but his flexible smile seemed almost affectionate. If I didn’t know better, I would’ve thought that he was glad to see me. And the dark intensity in her eyes only made her beauty more poignant.
I couldn’t figure them out. Why were they still together? Why did they look so much like they’d achieved a reconciliation after each time one or both of them got into bed with someone else?
Oh, well. My instincts told me nothing, and I had no other clues. Shrugging to myself, I sat down.
Like magic Faith appeared beside me with a bowl of stew. I sipped at it as if everyone weren’t watching me.
By accident I sat across from Mac Westward and Constance Bebb. Over my spoon, I noticed that Mac had a bottle of wine at his place. He was the only one drinking, but he didn’t let that slow him down. Every now and then, he aimed an oblique glance at Joseph or Lara. When he did that, his gaze conveyed an astonishing depth of venom and helplessness.
At his side, Connie was stiff with disapproval. Maryanne’s face gave a whole new meaning to paleness. This wasn’t Faith’s devout translucence. It was the kind of pale you get when you drain all the blood out of the heart. She looked like the victim of a vampire.
As for Mile, he kept chewing something even though he didn’t have any food in front of him. The malice in his little eyes gave the impression that he’d acquired a taste for violent fantasies.
Of all the people at the table, only Sam and Queenie seemed to have kept their emotional balance.
Ama passed around a platter of bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwiches. I waved them away—stew was as much as I could stomach. So did Buffy and Lara. But Hardhouse and Mile stocked up as if the prospect of murder made them ravenous.
By degrees the group stopped watching me so hard. On the other hand, no one had any conversation to offer. At intervals someone glanced up at the empty gun cases, then looked away.
Abruptly Hardhouse threw his napkin into the air. “You people,” he said in a tone of humorous disgust, “act like we’re all doomed. Don’t you have any ideas? Can’t you think of anything to say?”
Maryanne actively flinched. Sam raised his eyebrows.
Like soft acid, Connie articulated, “Perhaps you can, Mr. Hardhouse.”
“Perhaps I can,” he admitted. Rubbing his hands together, he scanned the table. “For example, here’s an idea. Houston and Queenie had a bet, remember? They were trying to guess who the actors are—and the detectives.” His grin included me. “They wrote down some names so that they couldn’t cheat later by changing their minds.
“Let’s settle the bet.”
Both Buffy and Rock gaped at him like he’d suggested a gang rape. Sam started to object, but Mile got there first.
“Shee-it, boy,” he snarled fatly. “You out of your mind? We got us a real killer on our hands, and about the only thing standin’ between us and murder is Axbrewder’s opinion of hisself.” A subtle reference to my position on gun control. “This ain’t no vacation. It stopped bein’ a vacation when Cat Reverie took that slug. I ain’t got time to play vacation games so you can be entertained.”
Mile’s outburst didn’t daunt Hardhouse. “Shee-it, yourself, Houston,” he drawled. “What I had in mind isn’t a game. We know who the actors and detectives are. Nobody cares whether you win or lose that bet—although I would guess from your attitude that you were wrong on all four names.
“What interests me,” he went on, “is your ability to think. You’re right, we’re not on vacation now. We’re trying to survive. And we’re up against a professional—a man who kills for money and gets away with it. As far as I can see, our best chance to survive is to play the mystery game for real. If you have it in you. If you can stop feeling sorry for yourself long enough to think.”
“If that’s what you want to know,” Queenie put in without hesitation, “why didn’t you just say so?” She sounded curious rather than irritated. “Why bring up that bet at all?”
Hardhouse shrugged. “It’s a place to start. As I say, nobody cares what your guesses were—but I’m quite interested in your reasoning. From there, we might be able to work our way to an understanding of our situation. And that might save us.”
“I don’t have the papers,” Buffy said unexpectedly. I’d thought that she was too shell-shocked to follow the conversation. “But I remember what they said.”
“Houston said the detectives were Ginny and Brew. But he said he didn’t think we’d hired any actors this time. He said Rock and I were going to do the crime ourselves.”
“Shee-it,” Mile repeated, ladling out disgust like rancid lard.
Buffy didn’t stop. Maybe she didn’t hear him.
“Queenie named Ginny and Brew, too. But she thought the actors were Houston and Maryanne.”
At this Maryanne let out a little laugh like a glimpse of hysteria.
All the rest of us sat still with our brains going numb.
“In any case,” Hardhouse concluded as if he hadn’t been interrupted, “I doubt that we have anything better to do.”
“But what is there to understand?” Maryanne asked. Her voice sounded like her pallor—like she’d used up all her courage a while ago. “Simon killed Cat. We know that because he’s gone. He wants to kill Brew. We know that”—for a moment she seemed to lose the handle—“we know that because of Lawrence Smithsonian. What is there to understand?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Hardhouse mused. “I’m just not sure the situation is that simple.” He paused briefly. Then he explained, “For example, I’m not sure Simon shot Cat.”
“Why not?” Connie interjected. The gleam in her eyes looked hard and unreconciled, like a threat.
He met her gaze and smiled. “His speech last night impressed me. One thing I think we can be sure of. When he shot at Brew and hit Cat, he knew he’d missed. He must have been able to see the wrong person go down. He knew he hadn’t finished his job.”
“So?” pursued Connie.
“So he knew he might need that rifle again. And we know he’s a professional. So why did he hide the rifle in his own closet and then reenter the lodge in a way that forced us to suspect him? That doesn’t sound very professional to me.”
Westward burped up some wine. “He wanted to look so foolish that we wouldn’t believe in his guilt.”
Hardhouse was enjoying himself. “I doubt that. He couldn’t be sure how we would react. For all he knew, we might do exactly what we did do—lock him up so that he couldn’t kill anybody else. We forced him to reveal himself at a time when he needed to keep himself and his intentions secret.
“I don’t know about you,” he said to the rest of us, “but I find it easier to believe the killer is someone else.”
Rock squirmed in his seat. He opened his mouth to say something, closed it again, looked at me.
Sam and Queenie looked at me as well.
What the hell. As long as Hardhouse wanted to do my thinking for me, I didn’t see any reason to stand in his way. Indirectly, he was helping me keep a low profile.
“Tell them,” I muttered.
Apparently Sam approved of my change of tactics. Without hesitation, he explained my theory about the killer and Simon.
“Christ Almighty!” Mile was so angry that he spattered saliva on the tablecloth. “Do you mean to say there’s two of us dead now, two of us dead, and you want us to practice our reasonin’?” Ignoring Hardhouse, he aimed his ire at me. “You knew about this, you and Rock and them two”—he swung a hand at the Draytons—“but you wasn’t goin’ to tell the rest of us. You wasn’t goin’ to tell me because you know Ah won’t put up with it!
“By God, Ah’m goin’ to keep mahself alive if I got to kill ever’ one of you to do it!”
Slamming down his napkin, he bounded to his feet. His chair clattered against the wall behind him. So hard that he nearly made the floorboards complain, he stamped out of the room.
Just for a second, the rest of us sat with our eyes wide and our mouths open, as if we actually believed him.
Then Hardhouse glanced at the ceiling. “For a fat guy, ol’ Houston sure is temperamental.”
Before she could stop herself, Maryanne let out another burst of laughter.
“But if you don’t count him,” Sam put in, making sure everyone knew that I still had his support, “nothing has changed. Our problem remains the same.” He nodded at Hardhouse. “If we want to survive, we need to think.”
Connie nodded as well. Even Maryanne nodded, doing her best not to laugh—or wail. Mac took a long drink and refilled his glass. Lara studied me with her eyes on fire, as if I’d suddenly become wonderful.
Which was as good a reason as any for me to get out of there. After all, I had my own pose to maintain. “Speak for yourself,” I muttered, levering my weight off my chair. “If I want to survive, I’ve got to get some rest.”
“Good idea,” Sam said. “I’ll check on you in a few minutes.”
No one took exception to the fact that I proposed to be alone, even though I was the killer’s target—and in no shape to defend myself. Presumably we’d locked him out. Certainly we’d covered and latched our windows. The group let me go like it never crossed anyone’s mind that I wasn’t being sensible.
My withdrawal wasn’t entirely a pose, however. My insides had a strange reaction to the stew—“digestion,” possibly—and I feared that if I didn’t lie down soon I would puke. With my guts gurgling like a worn-out sump, I returned to my room.
But I wasn’t really sleepy, so I didn’t take off my clothes. Instead I stretched out on the coverlet and let the room’s dim quiet filter through my head. For a while I succeeded at what I needed most, which was to not think about Ginny. If I did, I might panic—which wouldn’t do any of us any good.
Nevertheless when I heard a hand on the doorknob I thought it might be her. My heart jumped like I’d been poked with a cattle prod. I was half off the bed by the time Sam and Queenie entered.