I followed the blue marble.
Ignoring Mile, I moved to the couch and stopped in front of Rock and Buffy. They didn’t notice me at first, but I stood there until they both raised their heads and looked at me.
“Tell me something,” I said. I wanted to sound casual, detached, I wanted to sound like I had everything under control, but my voice twitched. “How was Simon supposed to kill Cat?”
In unison Buffy and Rock blinked at me. Their mouths hung open.
“You’re stallin’, boy,” Mile put in. “This ain’t no mystery camp now. We ain’t in no mood to waste our time figurin’ out a pretend crime that never had no chance to happen anyway.”
I still ignored him. I ignored Connie and Maryanne and the Carbones and Faith and Lara. And I ignored common sense, too. Common sense suggested that I wasn’t in a particularly good position to make promises or bank on my credibility.
I did it anyway.
“Trust me,” I told the Altars. “This isn’t irrelevant.”
Rock closed his mouth and cleared his throat. Buffy answered me.
“We aren’t sure.”
That wasn’t what I wanted to hear. “What do you mean, you aren’t sure? This is your camp. You hired Simon and Cat. You designed this whole experience. How could you not know what they had planned?”
Buffy nodded. “We designed it, yes. But only in a general way. We couldn’t know what the rest of you would do, so we couldn’t be too rigid. Otherwise the actors couldn’t adjust it to fit the circumstances. It might go wrong. You might say we”—she glanced at her husband—“I designed the theory, but Simon and Cat were responsible for the application.”
“Tell him the truth,” Rock murmured heavily. “You’re just confusing him.”
Buffy ducked her head. As if she were ashamed of something, she admitted, “I used to plan out the whole thing. I liked doing that. It was like writing a mystery novel myself, except better. I had live characters to work with.
“But then”—her voice was so gray and small that I could hardly hear her—“Rock started tampering with the clues. After that, the camps didn’t go the way I planned.
“So I stopped planning them. All the details, I mean. I wanted to make it harder for him to interfere.” Now she looked up at me, almost gallantly daring me to doubt her. “And when I didn’t plan everything, I could be surprised myself. That made our camps fun in a different way. Instead of being like a writer, I was more of a participant. And Rock had to work harder if he wanted to tamper. He had to pay more attention. I liked that, too.”
For some reason, she needed to make me understand that she didn’t resent her husband.
But that wasn’t the point. Clinging to my reasons for asking the question, I pursued, “So you had no idea what Simon and Cat cooked up between them? Her taste for port wasn’t your idea?”
Again Rock cleared his throat. “Actually, it was my idea.”
Huh?
“Part of the planning,” he explained, “involved creating opportunities for a murder. We didn’t tell Simon what to do, but we did help invent circumstances he could use. And I still wanted to interfere. I thought if I planted a suggestion, and Simon used it, I’d have the upper hand. So I suggested the port. And I told Cat it would be clever to get herself poisoned at a time when it would be hard to connect the port and Simon.” For instance, while Cat and I were alone—and Simon had gone out for a walk. “I meant to smuggle the marble out of the port after she collapsed. Then no one would know how she was killed.” He shrugged limply. “But when she was shot I forgot all about it.”
“You done yet, Axbrewder?” Mile demanded. “You ready to start facin’ some facts for a change?”
With an effort, I pulled myself away from the Altars. In an odd way, I was ready for Mile now. What Buffy and Rock said changed nothing, at least as far as Cat’s murder, and Simon’s, and Mac’s were concerned. But it affected the tissue of hints inside my head. Hints don’t kill anybody. They don’t prove anything. But they help make intuitive connections. And on that level Cat’s port told me as much as any fact.
“Oh, sure,” I said across the den at Mile. “If you have some facts that need facing, you might as well mention them now.”
“Fine,” he growled, “fine,” trying for assurance. If nothing else, my attention to the marble question unsettled him. He didn’t know what I had in mind.
“Take your time,” I retorted harshly. “We’ve got all day.”
Lara had stopped pacing. She stood opposite Mile, facing me. Her burning eyes gave the impression that she’d remembered why she wanted to go to bed with me.
Truchi finished with the fires and moved to stand beside his wife. Both of them watched me, too. But Connie and Maryanne had turned in their seats to look at Mile. Maryanne concentrated on him as if he hypnotized her the way a snake does a bird.
“What you all ain’t thinkin’ about,” he began, “what you been refusin’ to listen to, Axbrewder, is that we ain’t got one killer here. We got two.”
I nodded, trying to project a confidence I didn’t feel.
“You been workin’ too hard to figure out how one man shoots Cat and plants that gun on Abel and gets him out of the wine cellar and breaks Westward’s neck and still has an alibi. It don’t wash. There ain’t enough leeway. There ain’t no way one of us could do all that.
“But if you’re goin’ to claim we got us an outside killer, you got the same problem. There ain’t no way the man who shot Fistoulari is goin’ to come back here to snuff Westward ‘less he knows he got a way in he can count on. He ain’t goin’ to sneak around here in broad daylight just hopin’ there’s a window open. He’s got to have him an accomplice. Just like any one of us got to have an alibi.
“That means there’s two of ’em.
“But if there’s two of ’em, we don’t need to take no notice of this outside killer idea. Ain’t none of us here got that kind of enemies ’cept you, Axbrewder—and you ain’t dead. All we got to do is look for two of us who always got the same alibi. They’re the ones lyin’.
“That don’t include none of us.” He waved a fat hand around the room. “Sometimes we got alibis, sometimes we don’t.” He indicated Connie pointedly. “When we got more than one, they ain’t the same.” This may’ve been a reference to Lara Hardhouse, or to me—or to himself. “But you can’t say that about good ol’ Dr. Sam Drayton, or his floozy wife neither.”
“On the other hand,” Connie put in with the kind of sarcasm that wilts house plants, “Queenie Drayton is the one dying right now.”
“So that lets ’em out,” Mile went on fiercely. “But it don’t let out Joseph Hardhouse”—he faced me with his teeth bared—“and that bitch you call your partner.”
Before I could protest, he snapped, “They say they was together when Cat got shot. We know they was together when that rat poison went down the chimney. He got no alibi for killing Westward, he admitted that. She don’t either. And for all we know she went after Abel so she could kill him. Maybe she and Hardhouse didn’t have time when they broke him out. Then she clubbed herself over the head—or she got Abel to do it for her before she killed him—so she could look innocent.
“Queenie Drayton is goin’ to end up dead”—his teeth resembled the fangs on a dog with distemper—“because you let two killers help her husband save her.”
Lara wanted to say something. Once again, however, Connie was the first to speak.
“Houston Mile,” she pronounced firmly, “you are out of your mind.”
“Why would they do that?” Maryanne’s question came out like a little wail. “People don’t just kill for no reason. Joseph and Ginny didn’t even know each other before we came here. Why do they want Cat and Mac dead? Why did they try to kill Brew? They must have had a reason.”
“How the hell should Ah know?” Mile shouted back at her. “Ah ain’t God! Ah don’t see inside their heads. There just ain’t nobody else got the means and the opportunity to kill
us like this!”
Out of the empty air, Rock mumbled, “It’s possible, I suppose.”
In an incredulous tone, I demanded, “Say what?”
“Well,” he replied without focusing on any of us, “suppose there’s an investor who wants to buy Deerskin Lodge, but the owners don’t want to sell. One way to get a property under those conditions is to devalue it in some way. Perhaps by making it the site of multiple murders. So the investor hires Ms. Fistoulari. But she can’t rely on her partner due to his injuries, so she turns to Joseph for help. Perhaps they were already lovers. Or perhaps he’s the investor. Together they come here and begin killing the rest of us.
“Of course, this won’t work unless they appear innocent at the end. Otherwise they wouldn’t escape arrest. That may be your role, Mr. Axbrewder. You’ll vouch for Ms. Fistoulari. You’ll explain about el Señor. But it’s possible.” He glanced, not at me, but at Buffy. “Isn’t it?”
His theory must’ve sounded plausible to Connie. Turning to Lara, she asked, “Is your husband capable of such a thing, Mrs. Hardhouse?”
Whatever Lara thought about the situation, she thought it intensely. She kept it to herself, however. Instead she flared, “Anything is possible. Joseph is capable of anything. But he isn’t the only possibility here.” Facing Rock and Buffy, she demanded, “You’re an investor yourself, aren’t you, Mr. Altar? Who would be better placed than you are to set up such a scheme?”
Rock didn’t react, but Buffy seemed to gag on something horrible. When she could get words out, she admitted thinly, “That’s one of the scenarios we considered. A series of murders to lower the value of the lodge. I rejected it because it was too—too abstract. The murderer would be too difficult to catch because the motive was so impersonal.” In a sickened tone, she added, “It was Rock’s idea.”
Rock nodded dully.
“You see?” Lara insisted, facing Mile now. “You can’t pin this on Joseph. There are other possibilities.”
“No.” Mile didn’t waver. “You care about reasons. Ah don’t. All Ah want is to stay alive. All this couldn’t happen ‘less two people did it. And the only two people could’ve done it are your husband and Fistoulari. You want a reason, try holdin’ a gun to one of ’em’s head. Maybe that’ll make ’em talk.”
“No,” I said myself. This had gone on long enough. “You weren’t listening, Mile. You missed the point.”
“The point?” he rasped. “What point?”
“Catherine Reverie was the only one who drank port. We all knew that. She made an issue out of it, she made sure we all knew. And Ginny is my partner. She doesn’t want me dead. If she did, she could’ve left me in the hospital, come on this case alone. I would’ve been too vulnerable to defend myself. Her only reason to bring me along was to keep me alive.
“But if you’re right, her reason was to make the idea of an outside killer believable. Because el Señor really does want me dead. So she still can’t afford to kill me. If someone else gets killed after I’m dead, the whole plan goes out the window. Therefore whoever shot Cat was not aiming at me. She was the intended victim all along.
“That pretty well destroys your accomplice theory, doesn’t it.”
I was too far ahead of him. His lips flapped on his teeth before he managed to ask, “How?”
“Because”—I wanted to shout at him, but my stomach hurt too much—“Cat didn’t need to be shot.” I was goddamned if I’d let anyone else die because I didn’t think fast enough. “The port was already poisoned. Why would Ginny and Hardhouse—or anyone with an accomplice—bother shooting a woman who was already as good as dead?”
That did it. I’d finally said something effective against Houston Mile. In fact, I’d scared him down to his socks. His attack on Ginny was his way of fighting off his fear. Without it, he looked suddenly defenseless—as frightened as Maryanne.
“Axbrewder,” he murmured thickly, “give me a gun. Ah got to have me a gun.”
Everyone ignored him. He might as well have made himself irrelevant. Even Maryanne turned away.
“So what you’re saying,” Lara proposed in a thoughtful tone, “is that none of our theories is any good. These crimes must have been committed by someone working alone—but they couldn’t have been committed by anyone working alone. Nothing makes any sense.”
“Not quite. All I’m really saying is that Cat must’ve been killed by accident. That shot was aimed at me. Which lets Ginny out.” And Hardhouse as well, since he’d been with her when Cat died. “Everything else is still open to question.”
“Axbrewder,” Mile begged, nearly blubbering. “Ah got to have a gun.”
“Perhaps we’re going about this in the wrong way,” Connie offered. “We’re attempting to reason from opportunity or motive to guilt. That’s the method of most novels. It’s easier. But perhaps we should try to reason from capacity to guilt. Certainly those of us who are incapable of committing any of these crimes can be dismissed from consideration.” She made this sound like a reference to Maryanne. “We may be able to go further, however. We’re intelligent people, and we’ve spent some rather concentrated time together. We may be able to evaluate who among us is sufficiently determined, desperate, or unscrupulous to have done these things.”
“But how can we do that?” Buffy protested plaintively. “You want us to figure out who isn’t capable of murder. Until now, I would have said I’ve never met anyone who is.”
“Axbrewder!” Mile came at me before I noticed the white craziness in his eyes, the frenzy in his movements. “Ah got to have a GUN.”
He was fast when he thought his life depended on it. And my own special brand of desperation clogged my reflexes. He came past the couches at a run and threw himself at me before I could do anything more than gape at him.
I went down hard.
Which was just what I needed, a fall like that, with him on top. I didn’t even know whether he knocked the air out of me. Too many other kinds of pain happened at once. The impact and his weight lit napalm in my guts, sudden flame splashed along my nerves, I blazed from head to foot. The way he scrabbled at the .45 in my pocket felt like he’d cut into me with a welding torch. The walls and the tree crackled like the hearth, and the ceiling blurred.
Somehow I remained conscious. Distinctly I heard Ginny yell, “Stop it or I’ll blow your fucking head off!”
Now I could see her. She crouched over me with her .357 jammed into Mile’s ear. Sam hadn’t bandaged her forehead yet. Blood oozed from her wound, staining her pale skin. But the wound itself didn’t look especially deep or dangerous.
Hardhouse must’ve come in with her. When Mile froze, Hardhouse heaved him off me.
I still had the gun.
Mile sounded like he was whimpering for his life, but it didn’t come out in sentences.
As soon as his weight left, I began to take fractured little gasps, trying to sneak pieces of air past the voiceless howl of the fire.
“Brew.” Ginny knelt beside me. “Are you all right? Can you stand?”
I croaked, “Sam.”
What I meant was, I need Sam. But that wasn’t what she heard, so she said, “He’s taken Queenie to their room. He doesn’t know yet whether she’ll make it. He finally got enough IV Valium into her to ease the seizure. But by then she’d been unconscious for a while. She may be in a coma. And she could have another attack anytime. Her heart could stop. He’s doing what he can to stabilize her. But he can’t tell how much poison she swallowed, or how powerful it is, or whether she’ll ever wake up.
“Can you stand?”
Fire filled my chest. I had too many things to say, but the words had been burned away.
“Help me,” I croaked.
“Sure.” She braced her arm under my shoulders.
Hardhouse didn’t help her. Maybe he was still busy with Mile. But Rock seemed to appear out of the air at Ginny’s side. The two of them got me onto my feet.
The difference between up and down conf
used me. And I couldn’t hear anyone except Ginny. Only her voice penetrated my distress.
“I’ll get you to Sam’s room,” she told me. “He can take care of you there. Maybe the distraction will do him good. Then I’ll organize a search. If we have a killer hiding here, we’d better find him. Anybody who doesn’t want to help I’ll send to you.”
Did that make sense? I had no way of knowing. As far as I could tell, I was being taken in the direction of Sam’s room. At the moment, nothing else felt important.
One step at a time. Across the den to the hallway. The people behind me seemed to do too much moving around. General panic? Struggling to control Mile? Whatever it was, I couldn’t do anything about it.
Ginny knocked on Sam’s door before we went in. A wasted precaution. He sat on the bed beside his wife without turning his head to see who we were. Instead he gripped both her hands as if he wanted to anchor her somehow. The strain left his knuckles white. From time to time, a tremor ran down his shoulders. If he kept holding her like that, he might crush her fingers.
Her pallor made her look like she’d lost blood somehow, and her limbs sprawled, limp as a corpse’s. Her eyes were closed. Her breathing seemed too shallow to sustain her life.
Ginny steered me to a chair and propped me there. She didn’t try to talk to Sam. Instead she asked Rock if he wanted to stay with me.
He took a deep breath. Without looking at her, he said, “This is your job. You’re being paid for it. But you’re here because of me. I’m responsible for this whole camp. Buffy and I. And I’m the one who didn’t mention Lawrence Smithsonian. I won’t let you risk searching the lodge without help.”
She didn’t comment on his unexpected determination. She just accepted it with a nod and turned to me.
I managed a nod of my own.
A moment later, she and Rock left me alone with the Draytons.
Sam still didn’t glance in my direction. After a minute or two, I realized that I’d better attract his attention somehow, so I wheezed his name.
That made him turn his head. He couldn’t refuse the sound of need. Slowly he focused on me. “Brew,” he said dully, almost like he’d become stupid. “What happened to you?”