Pigeon Blood

  **********

  Looking around, Blair recognized the apartment. There he was, standing right in the middle of Kevin Massey’s place with Cynthia searching each room as if her brother’s life really did depend on her finding him fast. “Damn it!” she shouted from the bedroom. “He’s not here!”

  Blair traveled down the hall and stepped cautiously inside the bedroom. Cynthia was over by Kevin’s dresser, and she had his strongbox out of the drawer and it was open. When she pulled the corundum crystals from the newspaper they’d been wrapped in, his mouth dropped open.

  “Are those for real?” Blair asked.

  “Yes, they are,” she said. “Vinnie found them.” She stuffed the newspaper back in the strongbox and then paused to consider Blair with a certain respect. “I should’ve told you this years ago, but you weren’t responsible for Vinnie’s death.”

  “Yes, I was. I stood there and did nothing when I knew he wanted to kill himself.”

  Cynthia came closer to him and took him by the arm. He observed the light dusting of freckles across her knuckles before giving her his undivided attention. “You didn’t kill him, Blair. Jeremy did. Do you understand me?”

  “That’s not possible. I was the only one in the room with him that night. Jeremy wasn’t even there.”

  “Yes, he was,” she said, shaking him a little. “Since when did you or Vinnie ever lock the door to your dorm room? Anybody could walk in or out at any hour of the day or night. After you went on a beer binge and passed out, Jeremy snuck into the room and finished what Vinnie had started.” She stared at him as if she really meant what she said. “Jeremy dissolved some sleeping pills in a beer and gave it to him.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “He told me. Jeremy was drunk one night, we were having sex, and he just blurted it out. He seemed proud of the accomplishment. I’m not even sure if he remembers telling me.”

  “Why haven’t you told me this before?”

  “Because I didn’t want to have anything to do with information like that. After all, if Jeremy would kill Vinnie without thinking twice about it, I knew he wouldn’t hesitate to kill me, too.” A horn blew from a passing car, so Cynthia turned toward the window and watched the headlights carefully. The red in her hair seemed brighter, probably because of Blair’s feeling like he was dreaming. Or perhaps the red corundum crystals she was holding helped to enhance that distinctive luster.

  “We’ve got to find Kevin, and we’ve got to hide this thing,” she said, shoving the crystals and matrix against Blair’s stomach until he took it. Cynthia grabbed a few pages from a field notebook, which had also been inside the box. She didn’t take the entire notebook, just those pages. Then she locked up the strongbox again and placed it back in the drawer. After putting some socks on top of the box, she closed the drawer and then dropped the key in her purse.

  “What do you want me to do with these?” Blair asked her, referring to the crystals.

  “Hide them!”

  “Why?”

  “Because Jeremy wants them back.”

  “If you’re so worried about Kevin and your own safety, why don’t you just give them to him?”

  Cynthia looked at Blair as if he were an imbecile. “I’m not giving them back! Those gemstones are worth a fortune!”

  “Are they worth more than your life? Or more than Kevin’s?”

  “I wouldn’t want to live without all the things those rubies could buy for me.”

  “Are you speaking for your brother, too?”

  “Kevin wants what I want,” she said. “Look, you didn’t think I was planning to practice dentistry for the rest of my life, did you? Now stop pissing me off and put those rubies in a place where those bastards won’t be able to find them.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know! Just hide them. If we keep them in that box, they’ll find them for sure.”

  “All right,” Blair said, holding the crystals and looking around at his options.

  Cynthia walked down the hall and took one of the pictures from the wall and opened up the back. “I’ve been so paranoid about that strongbox, that I made impressions of its key today and put them in my dad’s laboratory.” She stuffed the pages she’d taken from the notebook behind the picture and then hung it back up on the wall. “I even put a note in one of my teeth about the impressions in case something should happen to me.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I accessed one of my teeth and put a note inside it.” She shrugged. “Just in case I would have to destroy Kevin’s strongbox key. Pretty stupid, huh? Well, I won’t be needing that note anymore if you can manage to find a better place to hide those crystals.”

  “You accessed one of your own teeth?”

  “Yes, number thirty.”

  “Number thirty?”

  “The note is under a temporary.”

  “Under a temporary? But you don’t have any restorations.”

  “I do now.”

  “Wow! What a tricky thing to do!”

  “Are you going to find a good place to put those damn things, or do I have to?”

  Blair looked down at the corundum in his hand. “No, I’ll take care of them,” he said.

  He walked around the apartment, trying to figure out where to put the gems so that they wouldn’t be found. Going over to the glass double doors in the living room, he was able to look out at the balcony because the blinds were pulled back. That was when he saw the potted plants sitting on the cement floor. After lifting the aluminum bar, he unlocked the door and then stepped out.

  “Where are you going with those?” Cynthia asked, following along behind him to see what he was up to.

  As Blair held the biggest flowerpot over the side of the balcony, he pulled the plant out of it. Letting a good portion of the dirt fall out onto the grass below, he stuffed the corundum inside and then put the begonia back on top. He noticed a huge crack in the side of the pot, so he ran his thumb over it and wondered if it leaked. After placing the plant in its usual spot, he came back inside the apartment and locked the door, forgetting to replace the aluminum bar.

  Cynthia went into Kevin’s bedroom again and came out with his rock pick. “Let’s get out of here,” she said. “I’ve got to find my brother.”

  “Yeah,” Blair said, but he really didn’t know why he said it. What he really wanted to know was what she was planning to do with that pick. And he was too distracted to ask her because Horace kept shaking him.