Birds of Prey : Previously Copub Sequel to the Hour of the Hunter (9780061739101) (18 page)

I
N THE CRYSTAL DINING ROOM
, Margaret Featherman's table was set for six, but it was totally empty when I arrived. Marc Alley came rushing in a few minutes later. He was flushed and out of breath.

“Did you hear what happened?” he asked, as Reynaldo passed him his linen napkin. “To Margaret, I mean?”

I played dumb. I guess I wanted to know how much Marc Alley knew without my having to tell him. “What?” I asked.

Marc waited until Reynaldo turned away. “They say she fell overboard yesterday afternoon,” he confided in a whisper. “I overheard two of the ship's officers talking about it just now, out in the lobby. They were speaking Italian. I don't guess it ever occurred to them that one of the American passengers might actually
understand
Italian. They seemed pretty shocked when I asked them about it directly. As soon as I did, they clammed up and said they weren't allowed to discuss it.”

Joaô, Reynaldo's assistant waiter, came around, poured Marc's water, and took our drink orders. “And where are the lovely ladies this evening?” he asked with a smile. “Will they be joining you?”

The news about Margaret Featherman may have been common knowledge among some members of the crew, but it must not have filtered down to the dining-room staff. “I have no idea,” I told him. “No idea at all.”

Shaking his head, Joaô went on his way.

“What could have happened?” Marc asked as soon as Joaô was out of earshot. “Do you think it was an accident?” he asked. “Or do you think she may have committed suicide?”

“If Margaret Featherman is dead, I doubt it was either an accident or suicide,” I told him.

“Murder then?” Marc asked. I nodded. Marc had lifted his water glass to his mouth. Now he set it back down on the table without taking a drink. “Why do you say that?” he asked.

“I saw the tape,” I said. Then, realizing that could be taken either way, I added, “The videotape.”

“Of her falling?” I nodded. “But how did you see it?” he demanded. “And how come, when I asked you a little while ago if you knew what had happened, you pretended to know nothing about it?”

“I was trying to mind my own business,” I told him. “As for seeing the tape, it doesn't matter how I saw it. The point is, I did.”

“And you don't think it was suicide? Why? Who would have wanted her dead?”

It was time to take the bull by the horns. “Marc,” I said. “Not only do I think Margaret was murdered, I also have reason to believe that the same people who killed her may try to kill you as well.”

Marc's eyes widened in surprise, but before he could say anything, Reynaldo turned up with menus and our drinks—a glass of Cabernet Sauvignon for Marc and a tonic with a twist for me. By now, most of the other tables were full. Some of the early-arrival diners were already starting in on their appetizers.

“If you don't mind,” I said to Reynaldo, “Mr. Alley and I will go ahead and order. The ladies seem to be delayed this evening. If and when they arrive, they'll have to fend for themselves.”

Even in the glowing chandelier light of the dining room, I could see Marc's face had turned ashen. “What on earth are you talking about?” he demanded as soon as the two of us were alone once more. I told him what I knew, explaining about Leave It To God in as understandable a manner as I could, although explaining the unexplainable is never easy.

The end of my story was followed by a period of utter silence. I thought Marc was coming to grips with everything I had said, but it turned out I was wrong. Rather than taking what I said into consideration, he rejected it out of hand.

“That's utterly preposterous!” Marc announced when I finished. “You say all the information about Leave It To God and their so-called plot came from the FBI?”

I nodded.

“Well, they probably made up the whole thing,” Marc said. “It's the most farfetched story I've ever heard. What a crock!”

Dismayed by his reaction, I tried to argue him out of it. “Nobody made anything up, Marc. You've got to listen to reason. This is a serious situation—a deadly serious situation, and you may be in danger.”

“Wait a minute,” he said. “Have you ever been down to the Experience Music Project?”

Located at Seattle Center, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen's baby, a state-of-the-art rock and roll museum, is only a matter of blocks from my Belltown Terrace condo. But Janis Joplin artifacts have never been high on my list of must-sees. “Never,” I said.

“Well, I have,” Marc returned. “As it happens, I've seen the facsimile edition of the FBI's file on ‘Louie, Louie.' That alone runs to well over a hundred pages. If the FBI was dumb enough to try to prove that an indecipherable song was really a far-reaching communist conspiracy, then they're probably also dumb enough to fall for all this crap about somebody called Leave It To God. What I find hard to believe is that you fell for it, too.”

“Marc, all I'm asking is that you take this seriously.”

“And do what?”

“Keep your eyes open, I suppose,” I said. “Don't do anything risky. Don't hang out with anyone you don't know. You could be in danger.”

“I've been in danger,” Marc Alley replied coldly. “Having three and four grand-mal seizures a day is dangerous. I could have fallen down in the street and been run over by a Metro bus. Having brain surgery is dangerous. Living life is dangerous. Don't think I'm going to put my new life on hold because some fiction-writing jerk down at the FBI has dreamed up a crazy conspiracy theory about a group of kooks bent on killing doctors and their patients. If any of this were true, don't you think someone from the FBI—someone official—would have told me about it?”

I didn't want to have to come out and tell him the truth—that the FBI had determined that patients were expendable, while their high-profile physicians were not. Meanwhile, Marc's voice had risen in volume so much so that people from nearby tables were glancing curiously in our direction.

“What do you expect me to do about this?” Marc continued without bothering to lower his voice. “Am I supposed to lock myself in my cabin and stay there until we get back home to Seattle? Go from being a passenger to being a prisoner? Not on your life!”

“Marc, all I said is for you to be careful.”

“I've spent a lifetime being careful, and I'm sick of it,” he retorted. “If somebody from Leave It To God wants to come looking for me, they're welcome. In the meantime, I'm not changing a thing. Now, if you'll excuse me, I don't feel much like eating right now.”

With that, he tossed his napkin down over the remains of his half-eaten appetizer and stalked off through the dining room.

Reynaldo appeared at my shoulder. “Was something wrong with Mr. Alley's food?” he asked with a concerned frown.

“Mr. Alley's food was fine,” I told him. “It was the company he found objectionable.”

I ate the rest of my meal in solitary splendor, well aware of the sidelong glances from neighboring diners, who were probably wondering by then if I was a kind of Typhoid Johnny carrying some horrible germ that had sickened all my companions. I had about decided to forgo dessert and leave when Todd Bowman came striding into the dining room. With help from the maître d', the FBI agent zeroed in on my table. The thunderous expression on his face told me things were about to go from bad to worse.

Todd's was a formidable presence. He's one of those weight-lifting characters with a twenty-inch bull neck that comes with a set of massive shoulders and biceps to match. Glowering at me, he looked pissed as hell.

“Did you get a charge out of impersonating a federal officer, Mr. Beaumont?” He took a seat without bothering to observe any of the social niceties like saying hello or waiting to be asked.

“Look,” I said in what sounded to me like a calm, placating fashion. “What happened was simply a matter of mistaken identity. When I told the attendant at the purser's desk who I was, he must have heard Beaumont as Bowman. It's an easy mistake. No harm done.”

“No harm?” Bowman snarled. “How can you say ‘No harm'? I've just come from speaking to Captain Giacometti. He's torqued beyond belief and of the opinion that the FBI is an agency made up entirely of morons. He's quite unhappy that someone who wasn't a sworn FBI agent was allowed access to highly sensitive material. He bristles at the idea that an ordinary passenger was made privy to the ship's security tapes. I personally am ticked off that you, Mr. Beaumont, took it upon yourself to notify Margaret Featherman's family about the nature of her disappearance. Where the hell do you get off, and who do you think you are?”

Bowman was big, and he was also young. Like Rachel Dulles, he couldn't have been much older than his late twenties or early thirties. Sitting there bristling with anger, he looked more like a petulant high school football player than like a self-respecting FBI agent.
When did FBI agents get to be so young?
I wondered.
Or else, when did I get so old?

“First Officer Vincente asked me to make the notifications, so I did,” I told him.

“Of course he did,” Bowman replied. “He asked you because he was under the mistaken impression that you were a member of the FBI. And it sounds to me as though you did nothing at all to disabuse him of that notion. Did it ever occur to you that the way he was treating you was rather unusual?”

The truth was, it had occurred to me at the time it was happening. It had seemed odd that First Officer Vincente was treating me like visiting royalty and taking me to parts of the ship that should have been off-limits to fare-paying passengers. But even if I had understood what was happening at the time, I doubt I would have mentioned it. At that moment, I had been far too intent on finding out exactly what had happened. First Officer Vincente and I both had wanted to know for certain what Mike Conyers had witnessed. Had he seen a real body go overboard, or had he made up the whole story?

Not wanting to get as worked up as Bowman was, I took a calming breath before I answered. “I went to First Officer Vincente because I was in possession of vitally important information concerning one of the ship's passengers who had been reported missing,” I replied. “At the time I felt Vincente's treatment of me was entirely warranted—that it was completely in line with the caliber of information I was providing.”

“How is it that you happened to be the one in possession of that ‘vitally important' information in the first place?” Bowman demanded. “Did you yourself witness Margaret Featherman's fall from the ship?”

“No,” I replied. “I did not.”

“Who did, then, and how did you find out about it?”

Siccing the likes of Todd Bowman on someone as fragile as Mike Conyers or as stressed out as Lucy Conyers seemed like the last thing on earth I wanted to do, but I didn't see any way around it. Morally and legally I was obligated to tell the FBI investigator everything I knew about the case under investigation.

“Would you care for something to eat, sir?” Reynaldo's timely interruption couldn't have come at a better time.

“No,” Bowman growled back at him. “No, thank you,” he added as if remembering his manners.

“Something to drink, perhaps?”

“No. Nothing.”

“What about you, Mr. Beaumont? Could I interest you in some bananas Foster?”

“Why not?” I said. If Agent Todd Bowman was going to wring my neck, at least I'd die happy.

The waiter moved away from our table while giving his head a regretful shake. I'm sure that, in view of the dwindling number of diners in his section, Reynaldo was seeing his opportunity for generous tips on this cruise disappear as well.

“It's too bad you didn't get here earlier,” I said. “If you had, you could have met Marc Alley.”

“Who's he?”

“Dr. Harrison Featherman's patient, and, and in the opinion of some ship's gossips, Margaret Featherman's one-night fling on the first night of the cruise. As near as I can tell, the cutting-edge brain surgery techniques Dr. Featherman used to cure Marc's epilepsy were enough to put both of them on the map as far as Leave It To God is concerned.”

Todd Bowman's tie looked as though it were about to burst under the pressure of his bulging neck. “How the hell do you know about that?” he demanded.

I decided now was the time to be straight with him. Any delay and anything less would serve only to make matters worse. “Rachel Dulles told me,” I said. “She and Alex Freed are working the list detail. She was good friends with my former partner, Sue Danielson. I'm a retired Seattle police officer, Agent Bowman. When Agent Dulles found out I was on the ship and happened to be sitting at the same table with Marc Alley, she contacted me and asked me to help out. And, as far as that's concerned, it looks as though you guys need all you can get.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“What if LITG let themselves into Margaret's room thinking it was actually Harrison Featherman's cabin? Just because they made one mistake doesn't mean Featherman is out of danger. I don't think Marc Alley is in the clear, either.”

“Dulles and Freed are under orders to protect Dr. Featherman.”

“Yes, I know. Protect the doctors at all costs and leave the patients to their own devices. That doesn't sound like such a fair deal to me, and maybe it didn't seem fair to Agent Dulles. Maybe that's why she called me in on it. And I'm serving notice, Agent Bowman. You do what you have to do, but I'm taking it on myself to protect Marc Alley.”

“If you interfere any more—”

“Think how it's going to look if this ever comes out—and it will come out eventually—that the FBI saved the doctors and left their patients twisting in the wind. Believe me, John Q. Public is going to be royally pissed. This may be the new FBI, Agent Bowman, but I never heard anyone say that only the rich and powerful are worthy of being protected from domestic terrorism. You can call what I'm doing interference if you like, but in protecting Marc Alley I'm saving the FBI's bacon. Including yours, now that I think about it.”