Everyone's Dead But Us (8 page)

The view was tremendous. The bar had numerous exotic liqueurs and top-shelf brand hard liquor. The bathrooms were pristine solid marble. No tile on these floors or walls. The fixtures were gold plated. A device that remotely resembled a microwave oven sat on the edge of the bathtub.

“What’s this?” I asked, highlighting it with my flashlight.

Deplonte said, “A towel warmer.” Adding enough “how could you be so stupid not to know that?” to his tone that I’d have cheerfully shoved the appliance up his recently penetrated butt—sideways.

Tudor’s laptop computer sat on a desk in the study. This room was lined with books and was the only one with skylights. The rain poured unrelentingly. I opened the computer top. It didn’t even beep or peep or make a protest. It was very dead. Even were it designed to do so, we weren’t going to be able to send wireless messages with it.

I asked Morgan, “Do you know if anybody had a wireless one?”

“Not that I know of.” I told him about Sherebury’s not being able to connect to the Internet.

Morgan said, “Tough luck.”

I said, “We need to look through these things to see if there is anything that would give a clue to the murderer.”

Morgan said, “You don’t have the right to do that.”

“Nor do you have the right to stop us. It’s like the old cliché when the amateur sleuth breaks into the house without a search warrant, and the owner demands a warrant, and the sleuth replies, ‘The police need one, but I don’t, I’m not the police.’ Do you want to try to stop me? And, if you do, whatever for? Was he your employer? A friend of yours?”

Morgan said, “The family that employs me is going to want this handled delicately.”

“Good for them. As soon as they get here, they can take over. Right now, we’re here. So let’s get this done. Even if you expect this all to be taken care of with a total cover-up, you must be curious about what the hell happened.”

Deplonte said, “I’m bored.” I wasn’t sure if it was Scott’s calm or Morgan’s bodyguard presence or my pity for those less fortunate than I, but I didn’t pound his face into the nearest wall. Would have felt good, though.

In one room we found weapons. There were three shotguns, an AK-47, two revolvers, and three Walther PPKs. They were neatly displayed in a gun cabinet, which was unlocked. All the ammunition needed was in the bottom drawers of the same cabinet. Tudor had enough rounds to hold off a small army.

I said, “Was he afraid of something?”

“Not that I know of,” Morgan said. “Maybe he was a collector.”

“With enough ammunition to hold off a siege?” Scott asked.

Morgan said, “He could have a bazooka. Having firearms on this island is not a crime.”

“Did he have a bazooka?” Scott asked.

Morgan said, “Not that I know of.”

I said, “There’s no spot in the cabinet that looks like a gun is missing.” I opened the cabinet and sniffed each of the weapons. I said, “None of them smell like they’ve been fired recently.” The three of them watched me load one of the guns and jam it into the belt of my jeans. Morgan made no move to stop me or assist me. Deplonte looked like a poster boy for bored—sighing, rolling his eyes, yawning. Or was all this an elaborate show for covering his nervousness? Scott took a small-caliber weapon as well.

We didn’t find a will or a note that said, Fred is the killer. We saw absolutely no sign of Derek Harris, the lover.

Morgan said, “Any guesses on the whereabouts of the lover?”

“He’s dead or he’s the killer,” Scott said.

There were other possibilities, but I suspected his grim analysis was all too accurate.

Henry Tudor’s valet entered while we were going through the desk. The valet was a man in his thirties. He was slender and athletic. I wondered if he was more than a valet. His arms were wrapped in bandages. He was carrying the Picasso from the castle. I doubted if the value had been increased by the water damage. He was obviously no longer on guard for flare-ups at the castle.

I said, “No more problems at the castle?”

He said, “No.” He came closer to us and said, “You can’t be looking through Mr. Tudor’s things.”

I said, “We’ve got to find out who killed him.”

“How would going through his things help that? These aren’t your things.”

“You don’t care who killed him?” I asked.

The valet looked to Morgan and Deplonte. “Of course I do,” said the valet.

“How long had Harris and Tudor been together?” Scott asked.

Another look to the guard and his royal buddy. “I don’t know,” the valet said.

“Were they happy together?”

He did the glance-at-them thing again. “I don’t have to answer these questions.”

Scott asked, “What is so horrible about answering them?”

Another glance. “It’s just not done,” the valet said.

“Is something wrong with your neck?” I asked.

He look puzzled.

I asked, “Why do you keep looking at Morgan and Deplonte when we ask you questions?”

“I can look at whatever or at whomever I wish whenever I wish.”

“Do you know who inherits the island?” Scott asked.

“I have no idea.”

I asked, “Do you have any idea who would want to kill Mr. Tudor?”

“He was a good and kind and generous man.”

“Everybody has enemies,” Scott said.

The valet shrugged. I saw raw scrapes on his face. He moved as if he was in pain. He’d been at the fire. “Are you okay?” I asked.

“I’d prefer to sleep.”

Scott said, “I’m sorry you’re hurt. It might help us find who killed Mr. Tudor if you could help us.” The valet didn’t look cooperative or uncooperative. He looked mostly tired.

Scott continued, “Was he under pressure from anyone? Visitors whose French milled soap wasn’t up to the highest standards?”

“This isn’t funny,” the valet snapped.

“I wasn’t going for humor,” Scott said. “I was going for reality. I’m trying to discover problems, real or imagined, that might lead to suspects that might save other lives. Please, if you know something, anything.”

The valet looked troubled. He’d been among the silent at Apritzi House when we’d asked questions. He said, “I just don’t know. Everything here was good. There was…Well, no…It’s silly.”

Scott’s “What?” was very gentle. The man’s got a thrum to his voice that is totally soothing and comforting.

The valet said, “This all started only a couple of years ago. I do know that he was under pressure to let terrorists use the island as a base.”

Why give us this information? Everything except terrorists is a secret? Was he trying to throw us off? Had he slipped? Accidentally or deliberately? Although a genuine concern about terrorists was sensible in this day and age.

“Which terrorists?” Scott asked.

“Several different groups from several different causes. He turned them all down, but this island has no official police. The nearest antiterror group is in Athens.”

Scott asked, “Are you saying there are terrorists here?”

“Threats were made.”

“By whom?” Scott asked.

“I was never told which groups made which threats. I know they were made. Mr. Tudor would sometimes confide in me as I was helping him dress.”

Outside of a nursing home, I never wanted to have enough money to want or feel the need to have someone help me dress.

“But he turned them down?” Morgan asked.

“As far as I know.”

“Or paid them off,” Scott said. “Blackmail?”

The valet shrugged, “I don’t know. He may have confided in Mr. Harris.”

I asked, “Why didn’t Tudor ask the government for help?”

“Mr. Tudor felt the less contact we had with governments, the better.”

“Were there any recent threats?” I asked.

“He was a bit more nervous than usual lately. I thought he was supposed to have another meeting soon. I’m not sure with whom.”

“Yet you stayed on here,” Scott said. “Did you feel safe?”

“Mr. Tudor has made a lot of things happen with a lot of money. In my experience those with money have always triumphed.”

I asked, “Is there anyone who might know more about the threats?”

“Perhaps his business partner, Mr. O’Quinn. I really don’t know anything more about it. I’ve probably said too much as it is.”

“Does Mr. Harris or Mr. O’Quinn inherit the island?” Scott asked.

“I have no idea.”

I asked, “Where did Mr. Tudor keep his private papers?”

The valet looked stubborn.

“We’re going to find them,” Scott said. The valet left. We kept looking. In twenty minutes the valet came back with Oser and Movado. Oser looked a minor stroke short of death.

Movado glared at Scott and me. “You were supposed to find some means of communication with the rest of the world and to try and account for everyone. You did not and do not have permission to hunt through the belongings of the people here as if you were some totalitarian police force.”

I said, “You’re not interested in who killed Henry Tudor?”

Movado said, “We still have only your word that he’s dead.”

“Then where is he?” Scott asked.

Movado said, “It was your room that was blown up. As far as I know, it was you who caused the explosion.”

“Why would we do that?” I asked.

“Why would any of the rest of us?” Movado asked.

The valet said, “Maybe the explosion has some natural explanation. Maybe something happened with the storm. A lightning bolt could have set off something. We stored electrical equipment in that basement.”

“Enough to blow the tower to hell and gone?” Scott asked.

“I don’t know,” the valet said. He sounded more defiant about his insistence than certain about his knowledge.

Movado said, “If what you say is true, what was Henry Tudor doing in your room alive or dead?”

“We weren’t there,” Scott said. “We don’t know.”

“And where were you?” Movado asked. “Trysting like schoolboys gone back to nature?”

“Better than murdering people and blowing up castles,” Scott said.

I’d had the same thought as Movado. What was Henry Tudor doing in our rooms? There had to be a master key so him getting in wasn’t a problem, but why do it at all? A meeting with the killer? Why there? A surreptitious break-in? But what for? There were a hell of a lot of unanswered questions.

I said, “Mr. Movado and Mr. Oser, are you ready to guarantee the safety of all the rest of the people on the island?”

Deplonte said, “You mean we could still be in danger?”

“Yes,” I said. Now it was sinking into the twit?

“No,” Movado said.

“I want this all to go away,” Deplonte said.

Pietro entered the room. He looked ghastly pale. He said, “We found Jeff O’Quinn.”

We all followed Pietro into the storm. We went back the way we’d come until we got to Klimpton’s place. Instead of taking the way down to the harbor we continued east, past more little clever blue-capped domes, and beyond little alleys that must once have been part of the town up here. There was a path down to a crumbled amphitheater and then we hooked up with the east road up from the harbor. We passed five more villas.

Jeff O’Quinn was the grandson of a wealthy real estate investor. He name was frequently mentioned in gossip columns. His grandparents had bought land in the San Fernando valley about ten years before the Owens Valley water began to flow and made a few shrewd investors very rich. There were those who thought those investors were on the illegal side of shrewd. As time had passed, they’d become revered city fathers instead of crooks. O’Quinn’s father had played baseball and hit nearly five hundred home runs. His mother had been a minor Broadway actress. They hadn’t been Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn, but they’d been pretty and athletic, as had their son. According to our source, Wayne Craveté, their son had also been a flaming queen who was an embarrassment. The son had lived in Europe for the past fifteen years.

O’Quinn was lying on his back in his underwear. He wore gray silk boxer shorts. He had a bullet hole in the middle of his forehead. No gun near the body or anywhere in sight. Not a likely bet for suicide.

“Who found him?” I asked.

Pietro said, “I was checking these villas.”

Deplonte said, “I’m tired of this.”

I said, “Somebody get him out of here before I strangle him myself.”

“Nobody should be left alone at this point,” Virl Morgan said. “Everybody who is still alive should be in one place.”

“Then we could all be killed at once,” Pietro said.

Scott said, “It would be okay for all of us to stay in one spot, but we aren’t sure who is on the island in the first place, and we don’t know who all is missing.”

Oser said, “All the missing are probably dead.” Oser sounded like the saddest and most depressed attendee at a funeral. The man was pale and trembling. Actually looking at the corpse was bringing it home that murder was afoot. With luck he’d realize that blind loyalty to the super-rich wasn’t the best choice he could make at this time.

Scott asked, “Why would you say that?”

“Awful things have been happening. The explosion. You told us Mr. Tudor was dead. He was a good and kind and fair boss. Mr. O’Quinn is dead. He was a fine young man. We’re all probably going to be dead.”

Movado said, “Get a grip, Oser.”

Oser said, “It won’t do any good for us to split up and then find more dead bodies. More of us would probably be killed while we’re alone looking.”

“Be psychotically depressed if you wish,” Movado said. “I thought you had more sense. I’m not going to be bound by any ruling of the group. That’s why I have a security guard. He’s not a killer. He’s been with me for seventeen years.”

“He’s not here now,” Scott pointed out.

“Where is he?” I asked.

“He’s not a killer,” Movado said.

“Where is he?” I repeated.

“In our rooms. I told him to make sure nothing in there was touched. Even with the storm, it’s light enough now. No one can sneak about.”

I said, “This island isn’t that small. The killer is doing mad and dangerous things. He’s blowing up significant chunks of castles, destroying parts of the island, yet leaving bodies with bullet holes in their heads at various points.”

Movado said, “We still don’t have any proof for any killings besides the one you claimed to have seen.”

“And this one,” I said.

“And the people who died in the collapse of the Atrium,” Scott added.

I said, “So the castle explosion wasn’t meant to cover up a murder? Was it meant to kill us, or kill someone else?”

Movado said, “All the electronics equipment, backup generators, except the gasoline powered one, were in the castle basements, the old dungeons. The server for the computers was down there, too. All the equipment must have been destroyed, if not from the fire then from the collapse of superheated stones on top of it. We’ve run out of gas on the last generator.”

I said, “Sherebury couldn’t get his computer to connect with the Internet before the explosion. Maybe someone was in the dungeons sabotaging things.”

Movado said, “We’d need bulldozers to get down to it. Maybe there was a lightning strike that set off an explosion. Maybe it was spontaneous.”

“Bullshit,” Scott said.

We got another glare from Movado. He seemed to be doing that quite a lot. Maybe if he got good at it, we could enter him in competitions.

Sounding like an oboe on downers or Eeyore on his worst possible day, Oser said, “The real problem is, we have no way on or off the island or of communicating with the outside world.”

I said, “What kind of business were O’Quinn and Tudor in together?”

“How should we know?” Movado asked.

Scott said, “Why don’t you shut up?”

Movado bristled. Oser gasped.

I said, “It’s not that difficult a question. People talk about their businesses quite often. It’s a stunningly normal thing for them to do.”

“They didn’t,” Movado said.

“Don’t you find that odd?” I asked.

“No.”

Scott said, “You must be the most singularly uncurious person on the planet.”

“We don’t pry into each other’s lives,” Movado said.

“Who inherits the island?” I asked.

Pietro said, “Among the servants it was believed that Mr. O’Quinn did. We hoped it was him. He was most kind. None of us claimed to know this for a certainty.”

I said, “We’ve got numerous members of the staff who died in the collapse of the Atrium. The owner and the most likely person who would inherit the island are dead. The person next in line is now either the prime suspect or, very possibly, the killer’s next target. If that person knows what we know, wouldn’t they be worried? I would be. Shouldn’t we try to talk to him or her?”

Movado said, “And why would that be your job?”

“Because I’m on this island and my room and everything I had with me got blown up and maybe if I hadn’t gone running off to report a murder, I might be dead. Because murder has been done, you son of a bitch, and we’re the ones left on this island to restore order and civilization as it should be. People being murdered and blown up isn’t my idea of a perfect paradise vacation spot or of a good way to live anywhere.”

I got a brief nod of agreement from Pietro, which he concealed from the others. I got not an ort of sympathy from any of the rest. Our side didn’t seem to have a lot of allies at the moment.

The archeologist, Alice Gavin, entered the room with Joseph Martikovic, one of her helpers. She said, “We can’t find Bobby Feige.” She got blank looks from everyone. “He was my other student assistant.”

“How long has he been gone?” I asked.

“About half an hour. We were down at the dock trying to find out if the yacht had a radio that could reach help. The beam that put the hole in its side didn’t crush the electronic equipment. We found all of the radios broken and shattered. Bobby said he was going to the end of the pier to look out past the breakwater. When we got done with our inspection, he wasn’t around. We went out to the end of the pier. He wasn’t there. Beyond the breakwater looks like a sailor’s version of hell.”

“Somebody’s doing a lot of planning,” I said. “They must have smashed the radios before the explosion.”

No one disagreed.

Gavin said, “Right now I’m more worried about Bobby.”

“Could a wave have swept him off?” Oser asked.

Gavin said, “The harbor itself isn’t that rough. One might have. I doubt it.”

I asked, “Does anyone know how many boats were in the harbor?”

Oser said, “Just the yacht, the small boat that burned near the castle, and now the one that Ms. Gavin came in on.”

Scott spoke up. “One of the help who left with the last shift could have smashed the radios on the yacht.”

Movado said, “So now we have a conspiracy?”

Scott said, “Why do you think sneering nastily is going to help?”

“What have you lost?” Movado asked. “Why do you care so much? What has the killer done to harm you?”

I said, “Our room? Our stuff? One of us could be next.”

Movado snorted. He said, “What we need to do is protect ourselves and our reputations and the reputation of this resort. Most of us don’t want to lose this as a refuge.”

Scott said, “There are other refuges.”

“Are there?” Movado asked. “Then why aren’t you at them?”

“The charming company here,” Scott replied.

We all indulged in a round of nasty glares. Movado broke the silence. “There are not a lot of places left for us to go to and keep ourselves away from prying eyes.”

“This isn’t going to be one of them anymore,” I said.

“People have been murdered. You really think what has happened here can be kept under wraps?”

Movado shot back, “You really think the rich can’t control anything they want?”

I said, “Are you saying the rich are controlling this right now? You don’t seem to be in control. Unless you’re the killer and planner.”

Movado said, “Henry Tudor was my friend.”

I said, “Don’t you think we actually need some protection right now? Whoever is doing this is still at large. You and the rest of us are still in danger.”

“Perhaps you’re the killer, Mr. Movado,” Scott said.

Movado didn’t deign to become defensive. He said, “Mr. Oser is in charge for now. That’s good enough for me. He will know what to do.” Movado must have assumed he could control or intimidate the functionary.

Oser looked put upon, nervous, and out of his depth. His hands still trembled and his shade of gray would suggest an immediate visit from a team of paramedics, which we weren’t going to have anytime soon. Oser said, “I’ve never been involved with murder. We have to be careful.” He also didn’t seem ready to defy Movado.

I said, “I intend to do everything I can to find out who the killer is. I am not bound by any restraints of decorum the rest of you might feel about dealing with death.”

Movado said, “You’re one of the rich or you wouldn’t be here.”

“That may be,” I said, “but I haven’t joined the ranks of the superasshole rich.”

“Haven’t you?” Movado said.

Scott said, “We should all stay together.”

Movado said, “I’m staying in my villa with my bodyguard. Any of the other guests who wish to join me may do so. I don’t care where the rest of you go or what the rest of you do. Once we are in contact again with civilization, we’ll see who’s in charge and what will happen to whom.” He marched out of the room. Deplonte followed him and Virl followed Deplonte. Oser looked crushed. He left with them. They’d forborne preventing us from examining this villa. I didn’t know why. We were armed, but so were some of them. They’d come to their senses? But we had no evidence of that. We would find no clues to the murder? And the killer knew that and didn’t care what we saw?

Alice Gavin and Joseph Martikovic stayed with us. When the others were gone I said to her, “We’ve got to find your other graduate student.”

“We checked our boat, but Bobby wasn’t there. He’s got to be on the island. I hope he hasn’t come to harm. We’ll be happy to stay here and help with any investigation. Finding a killer could prevent harm coming to him or to the rest of us. I have no connection to those morons. What do we do now?”

I said, “Carefully examine the villa. I wish they had all stayed with us.”

“Well, they didn’t,” Scott said.

Martikovic was tall and raw-boned. His bright red hair was soaking wet. Alice and he followed in our footsteps. We made a circuit of the rooms in the villa, opening every drawer as well as the suitcases.

“No guns,” Alice said. We returned to the foyer.

“Was he here with anyone?” Scott asked.

“Only one size underwear in the suitcases,” I said.

Alice said, “Dirty laundry, one pair of shorts, one pair of socks, and one shirt.”