Everyone's Dead But Us (6 page)

“Really,” Movado said. His voice dripped A-gay disdain. “Is it going to help to become overwrought?”

I had had it in my lifetime with supercilious and snotty gay people. And at a time like this? I said, “Why on Earth would you believe it appropriate to be supercilious and snotty at this moment? People have died. More people could die.”

Movado seemed surprised that anyone challenged him. He looked around. I don’t know if he was looking for his bodyguard to rough me up or for a group of his peers trained in sneers who would put me in my place or if he was hunting for a herd of the help to tackle me and eliminate me as a possible irritation to his well-being.

Wayne Craveté pointed a bandaged hand at Movado. “The supercilious snots have not conquered the world. Shut up.”

“Neither have the drag queens,” Movado snapped.

“We’re closer to success than you are,” Craveté said.

Ignoring them, Scott said, “Tom and I will check the villas. We’ll start on the west slope. If the staff and the archeologist would be willing to start at the harbor end of the Atrium and the guests present were willing to start at the castle, we could finish more quickly, and then everyone could meet back here. Mr. Oser, is there outdoor gear people could wear?” Oser quickly went to hunt for appropriate foul-weather clothing. He didn’t wait for agreement or disagreement. We donned the yellow Land’s End rain slickers they passed out. Scott and I started off for the homes on the west slope.

In the shelter of the porch of Apritzi House, I said, “Those people are impossible. Don’t they understand—?”

Cutting me off in midrant, Scott said, “No, and a tirade now would help relive tension, I know. But we’ve got things to do.”

I sighed, took a breath, then said, “You’re right.”

Scott said, “You know who Derek Harris, Tudor’s lover, is?”

“The name rings a vague bell.”

“He won four gold medals in the last summer’s Olympics. He was a gymnast.”

I said, “Everybody thinks the male gymnasts are gay, the swimmers, too.”

“Everybody can think what they want. I remember watching him on television. He was an attractive man. He set several world records.”

“Did you ever meet him?” I asked.

“You and I both did. It was in New York at some benefit banquet during the baseball season. You and I had the hotel room at the top of the building they drop the ball from on New Year’s Eve.”

I remembered. It had some of the snottiest, rudest, most ignorant front desk people I’d ever encountered in a hotel.

I said, “I met about a million people.” Scott is far better at remembering names and faces than I am. His fans love it when he actually remembers their names. I asked him how he does it after meeting a fan once and then seeing him again a year later. About his gift Scott had said, “It’s a gift.” I did not slug him one.

Scott said, “Harris seemed perfectly nice. You don’t remember the speech he made about teamwork?”

“That was him? He was hot. I remember thinking it was kind of an odd speech. Gymnastics is a pretty individualized thing as far as I can see. He wasn’t with a rich older man/ lover?”

“Not that I saw.”

“Why would he need to be the boy toy of the owner of an island?”

“Maybe they were in love,” Scott said.

“Tudor had to be at least in his sixties,” I said. “Harris certainly wasn’t in his thirties.”

“Midtwenties,” Scott said.

“Although I have no objections to age differences in relationships, usually the younger guy is getting something from the older guy. You win four gold medals at the Olympics, sure you’re getting some kind of money from endorsement deals. Be that as it may. We aren’t finding him by standing out here on the porch.”

Except for the obscenities and the massive explosion, we were having a very Agatha Christie time of it.

Somebody had rounded up two heavy-duty emergency flashlights, which actually had batteries near full power. We got one. The other was given to the group looking for victims amid the rubble. With the records destroyed and Sherebury dead, it was no longer possible to ascertain the exact number of people who were supposed to be on the island. Much less the possibility that an interloper or killer could be skulking about or dead by his own ill-planned devices. We dashed through the torrential rain and howling wind.

Oser had given us keys and a list of who and how many were supposed to be in each villa. We would begin by taking the road that skirted the west face of the headland, visiting the palatial villas at that end. Most of the smaller dwellings of the original inhabitants had been bulldozed. The larger ones, keeping their ancient walls and clever domes, had been refurbished and expanded, many with rooms dug farther into the low hills.

The first villa began halfway up the cliff face. The wall nearest the harbor may have in fact dated back three thousand years. The front of this villa was whitewashed and one story. It was built into the cliff with the part farthest away from the street seeming to crawl up the rock face. On top of the roof there were several clever little minarets, some with beige tile on top and others with blue. Little paths swirled among these appurtenances all the way up to a short, steep stair that joined it to the parapet/road at the top. Perhaps it was part of some early defense works, but it was referred to as the King’s parapet. As far as we knew there had never been a king on Korkasi, but this parapet, in various states of decay, ran about halfway around the island. In spots it was mostly weathered stones barely distinguishable from the surrounding countryside. In a few places it was superbly preserved and nearly intact. Mostly it was a sort of Fairly Adequate Wall of the Aegean. I’m not sure it ever kept out hordes of barbarians. The road along the headland often served as part of the roof of these structures. It went through the front courtyards of several of them.

We pounded on the door of the first home. Powerful as the flashlight beam was, it gave us only a bare glimpse into the storm. Water sluiced from the eaves. I was about to use the master plastic door opener they’d given us when Calvin Fitzgerald answered the door. He was a pale, tall, thin, older man. He let us come in out of the storm and shut the door behind us. Fitzgerald, according to our sometimes impeccable source, Wayne Craveté, was the real thing, British aristocracy going back to the Norman conquest. His lover was Edward Bracken, whose name I vaguely knew from an insider trading scandal that had cost him three months in jail and left him fabulously wealthy. Bracken was an American, in his midthirties. I didn’t remembered seeing Fitzgerald or Bracken earlier. Then again, the scenes at the Atrium and the castle had been chaotic, and I hadn’t been taking attendance.

I asked, “We’re checking to see if everyone is all right. Is Mr. Bracken here?”

Fitzgerald said, “I’m sorry, I can’t imagine what you are doing here. I don’t answer questions from you.”

I was about fed up with the level of cooperation. There was a killer on the loose. Didn’t these people have a clue?

I said, “I didn’t just ask for the account numbers of secret stashes in Swiss banks. It’s a pretty normal question.”

“So what?” Fitzgerald said.

Scott knew me well enough to know when my temper was getting short. He said, “You didn’t hear the explosion?”

Fitzgerald gave us a mystified look. I listened. I was barely able to hear the slightest trace of the storm.

“No.”

“You weren’t curious when the lights went out?”

“Mildly. I used the battery on my laptop. I don’t need much more. We have plenty of candles.”

I told him what had happened. He looked genuinely horrified. “All those people dead! How awful. Is there anything I can do?”

“We’re trying to account for everybody.”

“My lover has been asleep for an hour.”

I said, “I need to verify that.” I needed to be sure where everyone was. I hadn’t seen Bracken. I needed factual observations.

“Certainly not.” I was decades younger than he, but having to overcome Fitzgerald physically wasn’t high on my list of priorities for this night. Neither was failing to check everything.

“I’m sorry,” Scott said. “There really isn’t much choice. Everyone is going to have to be present and accounted for, and for now we’re doing the accounting. We need everybody to gather in Apritzi House. We want to make sure everyone is okay.”

“Tell me again what has happened.” I didn’t get the reason for this, but Scott repeated the explanation. I fidgeted through the last nine-tenths of it. When he was finished, Fitzgerald said, “Your choosing where we would be safest seems a bit presumptuous. You are certainly free to make whatever choices you wish. I, however, am not concerned with your choices or whatever actions you take based on them. While I do care about capturing whoever may have done this, I’m afraid I cannot accede to your request.”

“Oh hell,” I said. I walked to the connecting door to the rest of the house. I shoved it open. I passed through an anteroom. It was connected to a small bedroom with a twin bed, carefully made, everything in place, a small washroom off it, also pristinely neat. I presumed these were a servant’s quarters. A farther door was ajar. I looked in. It led to the rest of the house. I stepped inside. It was exquisitely decorated as all the villas were. One room was done in midcentury furniture from Brazil, a Rodriguez Mole chair and matching sofa. The dining room had eight jacaranda-wood dining room chairs. We hunted through every room. In the master bedroom a votive candle had been lit. The bed was mussed and unoccupied. Clothes were strewn in a heap. Drawers were half open in the antique dresser. Scott and Fitzgerald had followed me.

“I must protest this outrage,” the British aristocrat said.

“Where is he?” I asked.

“I do not answer your questions.”

“When was the last time you saw him?”

He was mum.

I said, “It’s going to look suspicious if we can’t account for him.”

“It can look like anything you say it might look like. I don’t particularly care.”

Scott said, “A killer is on the loose. He shot one man in the head. Most likely the same person caused the explosion which killed many more. Besides being a suspect, your lover could also be dead.”

“The rich don’t die like that,” Fitzgerald stated.

“For the future of your relationship, I hope you’re right,” I said. “We’ve got to figure out who might still be missing or dead out in the storm.”

“I must stay here until my lover returns.”

Scott said, “The killer could be anyone. You want to be here alone to meet a killer? Isn’t it reasonable for you to help yourself and your partner? It’s sensible to get everyone together.”

Fitzgerald’s complexion turned a little paler, but he remained obstinate. He said, “The killer could also be one or both of you. Now that you have violated this space, I suggest you leave. I will take care of myself.”

Outside under the eaves of the porch I said, “You’d think the rich would care about life and death.”

“They do. About their own. Just not anybody else’s.”

“I guess.”

“You know,” he said, “I always wondered if there was something you could wear that didn’t make you look sexy. I think we may have discovered it.”

I looked down at my yellow rain slicker. I said, “I had a yellow one like this when I was a kid. My mom made me wear it. The kids made fun of me. In the world of cool kids, I guess you were supposed to get wet and be happy about it.” I sighed. “Once a nerd, always a nerd. Yours isn’t stunningly becoming either.”

“I hope not. We could get pictures taken of ourselves in these and caption them ‘Nerds in love.’”

I swept the flashlight beam through the pouring rain.

Scott said, “We should get to the next villa.”

I said, “I could very quickly learn to not care about these people.”

“If I didn’t think we had to do something proactive about the killer, I would absolutely agree with you.”

We hesitated just a little longer. “I wonder,” I said, “did the killer know that the explosion would destroy the satellite dish and was that the point of blowing up the castle? Did the killer wait for a storm to strike so no one could get away? If so, this was tremendously well planned, or the killer was extremely lucky. He might have had to wait days, weeks, months, years for this kind of violent storm system. Unless the killer was one of the help, then it would have been random chance if a particular victim was here when such a storm would strike.”

“Maybe the killer didn’t care who was here or care who died.”

“You’d think he’d care about getting caught.”

“Unless he had an escape plan.”

“I don’t see any method of escape. There’s a storm and there ain’t nobody going nowhere.”

“Might depend on how desperate you are,” Scott said, “and my guess is the killer has got to be pretty desperate by this point. We assume the killing and the explosion were done by the same person. Us getting away could be coincidence. Or we were the intended victims and for some reason Henry Tudor was in our rooms, and he got dead instead.”

“I don’t believe in coincidences when this kind of thing happens. The killer is stuck on the island along with all the rest of us. We’ve got to find someone who knows these people, who knows all the connections between them. There’s got to be a reason people are dying. Who knows who, and who knows what and why, have got to be connected. Maybe there’s background here that would make all this wonderfully simple to understand, if we only knew it. I don’t understand what makes them tick. I need more information.”

Scott said, “Remember, the only person for sure shot by a killer is Henry Tudor. Maybe he committed suicide.”

“Even if I had the time or inclination to inspect such a wound, I wouldn’t have the expertise to tell if it was suicide or not. I guess it could have been.”

“Was there a weapon near the body?”

“I didn’t see any, but I didn’t want to do much besides get out of the room. Now we’ll never know if it was there or not.” With these new doubts in mind, we struck out into the storm.

The next villa up the road belonged to Rufus Seymour and Matt McCue. They were still down at Apritzi House. We sloshed past it and made our way up to the next villa. The semipalaces at this end of the island began halfway up the slope and continued past the crest for over a mile. The path itself dipped and meandered. It crossed the headland where much of it was part of the old parapet/defense structure. At other points, parts of the villas themselves became part of the old defense walls or parts of the parapets. It was a delightful maze to wander around except for the nerve-pounding storm overhead and bodies that were starting to pile up alarmingly. Side paths dipped and meandered inland often leaving and then rejoining the main branch which, in this westward direction, meandered far inland to avoid the impassable shore west of the castle. One of the side paths led out to the castle, which actually sat on a small peninsula. The castle was half a mile away at this point.

Where the path met the headland it branched in several directions. The villa sitting at this crossroads was one of the largest. It had been expanded farthest inland both above- and belowground. The bottom floor back into the hill had a spa/sauna area centered around a heated, Olympic-size swimming pool. We had to knock and ring for a very long time. The two guests listed as staying here had not been accounted for. I’d begun to think we’d have to use the key. I was worried about what we’d find. As I reached out my hand with the key in it, we heard footsteps.

The first name on the list for who was in the villa was Blake Marsala. I didn’t recognize it, but I recognized the person who answered the door. He was in a bathrobe that fell to midthigh. He wore black, silk boxers under it and shower clogs on his feet. I knew his first name for sure was Blake, but Marsala was not his last name. I panned the flashlight over his face. He was Blake Klimpton, the quarterback for last year’s winning Super Bowl team. They were already out of the playoffs this year.

He said, “What do you want?” He might have been barking at recalcitrant linemen.

I said, “There’s been murder, death, and destruction. You seem to have missed it all.”

“Is this a fucking joke? Get that fucking light out of my face.”