Читать книгу Amaz'n Murder - William Maltese - Страница 5

CHAPTER ONE

Pleasurably frightened, as a child, by the contents of her father’s journals, Melanie Ditherson expected (hoped for?) a reality of bloodthirsty natives, or at least a slavering jaguar; she got neither.

“Sorry if I gave you a start.” It was her Uncle Charles who looked romantically dashing in his bush outfit that included the brim-upturned hat he removed to wipe sweat from his forehead. His hair was stunningly silver; Melanie had always suspected he used some kind of rinse, but, unless he brought his own supply, his two weeks in the Amazon had produced no telltale roots of less magnificent color. “Haven’t seen our guide, have you?”

“Gordon?” She made it you have to be kidding.

“Said he was off to use ‘the facilities’ and didn’t bother to return. As he was headed this way.…”

“Teddy is within hailing distance.” Melanie waved her arm in a southwestern direction. “He said to call any time that Gordon might again decide to be a bother.”

“Rather unpleasant business—that.” Charles didn’t refer to Gordon’s more immediate disappearance, although that was unpleasant enough, but to what had happened the night before. “I hope you don’t hold it against your dear uncle that he didn’t vote in favor of our trotting back to civilization in retaliation for Gordon’s unseemly behavior.”

Melanie took a handkerchief from the front pocket of her pants and freed her face of as much perspiration as she could manage. “I’m the one who insisted we stay, remember?”

“Yes, but if I’d been a little more insistent.…”

“We all made too much of it,” Melanie rationalized. She left it at that, because she’d never assumed Gordon anymore immune to her harmless flirtations than any other man. Last night had merely proven her right.

“Having missionaries for parents doesn’t make any child one.” Charles’ tone insinuated an access to more information than was at Melanie’s disposal. “Especially it doesn’t make Gordon one.”

Melanie was curious for any specifics but she was detoured.

“Ah, I thought I heard voices.” Carolyne Santire said, sweeping aside a large frond to join them. “Any luck, you two?”

“Plenty of rubias, myrtles, leguminosse, epiphytic orchids, bromeliad, and fern.…” Melanie ran down the list.

“Don’t I know it,” Carolyne consoled. Unlike Charles’ hair, hers, a henna-rinse red, was definitely coming in a different color—grey—at the scalp. She ran her fingers through the variegated results in an automatic exploration for whatever creepies or crawlies had hitched rides since her last search and seizure.

“Not only have I not found anything even vaguely resembling Lygodium cornelius, but I seem to have lost our guide in the process,” admitted Charles.

“Surely, that young man learned from his mistake of last night and isn’t up to any new mischief,” Carolyne criticized Gordon-in-absentia.

“He didn’t come this way.” Melanie had no desire to get him into any more trouble.

“Left me on the other side of the gully,” Charles lamented. “I could have broken my neck in my balancing act to get back across.”

For not the first time, Carolyne knew Charles Ditherson was no way as decrepit as he was always letting on. After so many years of traversing gullies, chasms, sink holes, and an occasional abyss, he had a lot of expertise upon which to draw.

“I’m not a kid any more,” he insisted.

Carolyne wasn’t about to take any of his bullshit. “Were you as near to pasture as you insist, I doubt you’d have joined this little expedition.”

“This is hardly the place to which an uncle willingly sends his niece without a chaperone?”

“Seems Teddy is bodyguard enough.”

Charles snorted. “Teddy might protect her from Gordon Wentlock, but who, besides me, protects her from Teddy Rhingold? You?”

“Is anyone hungry but me?” Melanie changed the subject.

“You’re hungry, even knowing as you do that Felix is in charge of the chow?” Carolyne’s insinuation was that their cook-of-the-day wasn’t likely to relieve any pangs of starvation: an anomaly when hours of traipsing the tangles left everyone famished at meal times.

“He’s promised to follow package instructions, this time: ‘put plastic bag in boiling water,’” Melanie reminded. It had been a promise forced from him after his last ill-fated Julia Child in the wild improvisation.

Not from Missouri, but California, Carolyne had to see to believe. “I guess it’s chow time, nonetheless!” She wasn’t enthused.

The three turned in unison and formed a line, Carolyne in the lead, Charles in the rear. Between each of them was space enough to avoid the constant whiplash from flora shifted forward and released.

Melanie relied upon Carolyne’s sense of direction and focused her own concentration on pondering, once again, the absence of wildlife. Her father’s journals were filled with tapir, jaguar, cavy, armadillo, sloth, peccary, anteater, and monkey. So far, Melanie had spotted none of the above, nor any anacondas which she’d once believed hung, like Christmas icicles, from every Amazon Basin tree. “I haven’t even seen one snake,” she commented aloud.

“Blame the tramp, tramp, tramp of many feet,” said Carolyne. “Most of the indigenous animals have headed for deeper pockets.”

Melanie found that answer insufficient. After all, this jungle was as wild and as greenery choked as any imagined. Surely, tramp, tramp, tramping human feet hadn’t been nearly enough to stampede the whole indigenous wildlife population.

Carolyne was happy to elucidate. “Prospectors and geologists, like Roy Lendum, looking for gold, oil, emeralds, copper, iron, platinum, whatever.” She was invisible except for the waves she made in the greenery that allowed Melanie to follow in her wake. “Hunters, museum people, zoologists, ornithologists, looking for animals and birds. Lepidopterists looking for butterflies. Tourists looking for the Great Adventure.”

“I can’t imagine even the most foolhardy tourist this far off the beaten path.” Charles, too, had become just one more disembodied voice somewhere within the shifted shrubbery.

“Nonsense!” Carolyne was a teacher chiding a recalcitrant student who failed to see the obvious. “This isn’t so far out of the way, so far removed from civilization, once you consider how few days of slash-and-burn remain between the Georni Ranch and here. How much of this forest, after all, is consumed daily by flames designed to ‘reclaim the land’ for crops and pasture?”

Charles should have known better than to disagree with Carolyne. She had a way, which he never liked, of making him feel he’d not done his homework; no matter that he could match her find for find, expedition for expedition, award for award, recognition for recognition, at least since she’d ended her professional association with his brother.

Carolyne droned on: “Come back next year if we don’t luck out with our illusive Lygodium cornelius; I’ll bet all you’ll find, right here, where we now walk, is pasture with Kyle Georni’s fat cattle grazing.” Even Carolyne would have found such a prediction harder to believe if she hadn’t seen, first-hand, plant-hunted jungles, just like this one, which once thrived, full and verdant, become open pastureland, almost overnight, stocked with Georni beef destined for world markets. All those short hours they’d jeeped from the ranch house to the edge of this jungle had once taken days of machete-cutting to maneuver on foot.

Charles slapped at a bug landed on one of his sweaty cheeks; he complained the mosquitoes hadn’t been scared off by any tramp, tramp, tramp.

“You’re getting soft!” Carolyne said but knew better.

Melanie expected to hear Teddy at any minute; he was assigned the section between hers and the campsite. To see him would be another matter; the choke of flora often made it impossible to see one’s hand in front of one’s face. She preferred stretches wherein giant trees, like supports for massive circus tents, suspended their high canopies of interlocked limbs and leaves, nothing below but groundcover clogged with decay and no sunlight. This was claustrophobic by comparison. Only her clothes kept the plants from flaying her alive; evidence was scratches on every part of her unprotected body.

“I need a rest,” Charles complained; Melanie loved her uncle, but sometimes even she tired of his insistence that he wasn’t up to the task. Excerpts from Cornelius Ditherson’s journals, written during expeditions that his brother had accompanied, indicated just as many complaints from a Charles in his prime.

Carolyne stopped suddenly, which caused a pileup.

“Sorry,” Melanie apologized for back-ending Carolyne, echoed by Charles who, by then, had stepped on his niece’s left heel.

“Do you smell food?” Carolyne sniffed the air like a carnivore for rotting carrion.

“Vacuum-sealed food packets, my dear,” Charles reminded. “Gone with the wind are the days of smelling the aroma of freshly killed game roasting over an open fire.”

“Felix!” Carolyne called.

“Please, don’t tell us you’ve lost the way,” Charles punctuated. “I’ve counted upon you to eye spot reference points. Not professional of me, I admit, but my mind does tend to wander some with encroaching old age.

Carolyne’s dilated nostrils, mere appendages of her intuition, “smelled” something wrong.

Melanie inhaled deeply, too, but took in only the usual combination of heat, humidity, fecundity, and decay.

“Likely, Felix has taken a few z’s,” Charles analyzed. “Far healthier for us than were he to subject us to whatever his latest concoction in the communal pot might be.”

“I’ve a sixth sense for things not right,” Carolyne bragged. “Or have you, Charles, forgotten how right I was in Chile?”

“I still believe I would have survived quite nicely without you having thrown me that rope, thank-you.” It was a sore point with Charles that this wasn’t the first time she’d brought it up to play one-upmanship. Charles wished for a jaguar so he might return the favor by yanking Carolyne out of harm’s way, to brag about it until the grim reaper finally cut him down; then again, he doubted he had the strength to save even himself. This expedition had genuinely tired him out.

“See if I give you any assist next time,” Carolyne threatened. “Then, we’ll count the years it’ll take you to extract yourself.”

Melanie had previously been subjected to enough of her uncle and Carolyne’s banter to ignore it now; no indication of Teddy’s presence was her more immediate concern. “I’m surprised we haven’t found Teddy.”

“Teddy!” Carolyne called. Her only answer was the flight of those few birds left in the area. “Through here,” she led the way into an even denser gauntlet which she said was “a short-cut.” Melanie was battered by a renewed lashing of leaves and stalks; Charles complained bitterly of his own beatings behind her.

Carolyne’s sudden, “Felix, what’s happened!” was preview of upcoming events that warned Melanie of the worst even before she, too, followed into the campsite.

Felix Tenner, though conscious, was seated on the ground, hands-to-head, rocking to and fro.

“Overdosed on his own cooking, most likely,” diagnosed Charles who was last out and the last to decide if it was something more serious.

Carolyne, down on one knee, quickly found, “A bump the size of a goose egg.”

“Whacked from behind.” Felix’s voice, weak under the best of circumstances, was hardly audible. Luckily, everyone was close enough to hear.

Charles jumped to conclusions: “Considering the lead-in, our hormones run amuck guide is the most likely culprit, yes? Although, Teddy seems a more logical target, in his having rescued Melanie from Gordon last night.”

“I’m not sure of that motive, but that’s certainly a good place to begin,” Carolyne agreed.

“Got me from behind,” Felix complained.

“You already said as much,” Charles reminded.

If looks could kill, Felix’s expression would have sent Charles to The Big Arboretum in the Sky. Taking what Charles said as unadulterated criticism, Felix said. “I’ve yet to see someone with eyes in the back of his head; I’m no exception.”

“Well, pardon me.” The apology from Charles wasn’t really an apology at all. “I suppose this means we must all fend for our own meals?”

That got him a Charles, this could be serious look from both Carolyne and his niece.

“I’m someone who thinks levity more conducive to rational thinking, especially in a crisis, than proceeding like chickens with their heads cut off,” Charles excused.

“Charles, be useful and soak a rag for Felix’s head,” Carolyne suggested.

“What kind of rag?”

“Melanie, can you help your helpless uncle improvise?”

Headed for a towel in her knapsack, Melanie noticed how the main canvas flap on their radio encasement hung by only one ill-tied strap. That didn’t interrupt her Florence Nightingale mission as much as did the radio part revealed by the breach. “Someone has battered our radio in!”

For the moment, Felix was forgotten, along with his aching head; Carolyne and Charles performed a mass exodus to Melanie.

“That young man’s lusting after my niece has really gone too far,” was how Charles judged the situation.

No way could Melanie think that. Gordon trying to steal a kiss was one thing, but taking his frustration to this extreme was out of the question; he simply wouldn’t have.

Actually, the radio wasn’t their only means of communication, even though the area had no reception whatsoever for cell phones. “Where’s that ‘satellite gizmo’?”

The piece of gear in question was a small contraption that Carolyne didn’t really understand, except that it somehow, in an emergency, could be counted upon to bounce not only an SOS off some U.S. satellite but transmit longitude and latitude to would-be rescuers.

“Gone!” announced Charles after he’d joined the women in a futile search. “Gordon to blame!”

Melanie remained unsure, admitting only, “Yes, Gordon tried to kiss me. Yes, Teddy knocked the wind out of him. Yes, Gordon’s forced apology sounded less than sincere at the time. On the other hand, his second apology, given me this morning, seemed sincerely genuine.”

“Felix bonked himself on the back of the head, did he?” Charles offered in alternative. His niece obviously didn’t recognize just how attractive she was, even in her slightly funky, two-week old jungle chic. Teddy, whom Charles still thought not the right fiancé for his niece, might have hit Gordon, but Gordon run amok was more a real example of a man driven to distraction by boiling passion. “Or, maybe Carolyne, or I, sneaked back and did this dastardly deed?”

“Charles, don’t be ridiculous!” Carolyne insisted.

“Ms. Super Sleuth sees motives around here, other than physical attraction, does she?”

“Scientists—and may I remind that you and I are scientists—are supposed to look at things more objectively than the average man on the street,” Carolyne decided.

“What average man on the street finds himself stranded in the Amazon with all lines of communication severed?”

“Don’t jump to any conclusions, Charles, before we’ve heard Gordon’s side.”

“You think Gordon went through all of this bother so he could sit down and explain it to us?”

“It’s not just Gordon unaccounted for.” Carolyne meant it as an objective let’s wait until all of the alibis are in; Melanie took it differently.

“My God, where is Teddy?” Melanie managed to deliver with the same emotional emphasis of a scream.

Her answer was a distinct gunshot.

“From somewhere near the river,” Charles isolated. He may have some diminished capacities, but his hearing was still good enough.

Two more shots confirmed.

“Could be a hunter,” Melanie ventured. Immediately, she argued against it, “Hunting what, though? Hunting where? Far away?”

“Not far.” Charles had a more experienced ear. “You don’t need much jungle to muffle a sound.” He drew his revolver and checked its load. He’d fought his share of enemies in hostile environments like this one, and he knew the procedure.

“This isn’t happening,” Melanie decided.

“Oh, but it is, my dear,” Carolyne disagreed. She, like Charles, had been in predicaments where the only thing between her and safety had been a firearm and her ability to use it with precision. “The worst thing we can do is pretend it’s otherwise.”

Three to one, they voted to stay put; Melanie was odd-man (woman) out; even Felix, still doubled over with pain, cast his vote with the majority. Concerned for Teddy’s welfare, Melanie was distraught by the decision. When Charles proceeded to make something to eat, his main concern apparently his belly, rather than Teddy’s well-being, Melanie was made more upset.

Carolyne took it upon herself to explain how the combined voice of experience was preferable to the lone, illogical, but natural, contrary response of Melanie. Firstly, Charles was less callous than he seemed by his concern over whether to serve beef or lamb stew. “The last thing we want is to lower our energy levels,” said Carolyne. “After a morning of expending calories, we have to restock or risk performing at less than optimum when the very best is exactly what’s most demanded of us. We’ve food available, and it behooves us to take advantage of that good fortune. The absence of facts, regarding the real state of our situation, can’t assure us indefinite access to provisions.”

“Whoever was here, for some reason, didn’t bother scrapping our food supply,” Melanie reminded.

Carolyne was patient; after all, this sort of thing was new to Melanie, while Carolyne had successfully endured the mutiny of her bearers in the Gobi, as well as assassins in India who had intended an international incident by taking out the English/American botany team at Tumkur. “Maybe, whoever didn’t, because we interrupted him before he finished,” Carolyne suggested. “Maybe, he wasn’t clever enough to see how stealing our food could be as debilitating as smashing our radio. Maybe, a lot of things. If he left us food, he can’t be counted upon to be so obliging within the next hour, day, even week.”

“Week?” Melanie shouldn’t have been surprised. Without communications to the outside, they were at least that long of a forced march from the Georni Ranch.

“Now, as to our lopsided vote to stick here,” said Carolyne, “rather than launch an immediate search for Felix’s assailant, or Teddy, or for the source of the gunfire down by the river. It’s a question of not having the faintest notion of the exact whereabouts of any of those. It’s a big jungle, out there, my dear. Look how unsuccessful our concentrated efforts to locate even one Lygodium cornelius, a jungle plant, when any search for Teddy and Gordon would best be accomplished in just that same way: splitting the area into sections, one for each searcher. Except, as individuals, we’re more vulnerable than as a group.” She held up her hand to delay interruption. “We can’t know the assailant will be any the less vindictive to you, or to me, than he was to Felix, and we shouldn’t chance that will be the case. Teddy and Gordon, out there somewhere, know exactly where we are and the way to get to us.”

“What if Teddy is injured?” Melanie asked, although she still refused to believe Gordon responsible. “What if Gordon is hurt? What if either of them fired those shots to get our attention?”

“Then, get our attention they did,” Carolyne reminded. “However, their logical follow-up would be more gunfire, in an established rhythm, to indicate shots less likely aimed at an enemy and more likely a signal for help. What have three, erratic shots told us but that someone was off in the direction of the river with a gun? Is he there now? Is he injured, or is his intent to injure? We don’t know, and it’s preferable we do know. Our best bet is to wait until we have a better grasp of our situation. Until then, I suggest, you check your weapon to make sure it’s operational.”

“I could never shoot anyone,” Melanie prophesied.

Carolyne’s smile made redundant her, “You may be surprised by what you can do, my dear, if put to the test.” She went to soak a towel for Felix; it was a chore originally assigned Charles, then Melanie, but forgotten by both. If you want something done.…

They were joined as Melanie, surprised by how hungry she’d been, contemplated seconds from the stew pot. It was a good thing the new arrival wasn’t the enemy, with full intent to do bodily harm, because, although he remained concealed, he was within easy striking distance of one and all when he requested, “Permission to join the party?” His voice was so near that Melanie dropped her mess kit in surprise. Still concealed, he filled in more pertinent details: “Roy Lendum, here. Remember me from this morning? I introduced myself, and you were kind enough to let me use your radio to relay a message via the Georni Ranch.”

It was obvious by how Carolyne and Charles looked about that neither had located Roy yet. Melanie was only certain he was very close; she was right.

“I heard gunshots.” Roy emerged from his crouch within a group of ferns not six feet from where Melanie had been seated before his announced presence had brought her to her feet. “I thought maybe you’d lucked out by bagging that rare bit of game. The idea of some fresh meat appealed to my meat-deprived taste buds.”

“We suspect two-legged quarry.” Charles replaced his pistol in its holster. “There’s been a bit of mischief, as Felix and our radio can bear witness.”

If he hadn’t already, Roy noticed Felix’s towel-draped head. Of the four, Felix had responded the last to Roy’s unexpected arrival; he sat, eyes closed, and his head against a tree root that conveniently bowed up though the soil.

“I’ve seen no one,” Roy admitted. His mental headcount was two short. He mentally went through the introductions of that morning. “Teddy and Gordon presently missing, right?”

“Both possible candidates for the gunfire,” Charles conceded. “Although, we presently lean toward Gordon who.…”

“You, personally, presently lean toward Gordon,” Melanie corrected. “I’m not putting any responsibility on anyone until I have more to go on.”

“We all need more input,” Carolyne agreed.

Charles wasn’t assuaged: “Gordon made a pass at Melanie just last night, and Teddy took exception. I used to wonder why, in all those adventure movies, there was always one attractive woman among all those virile men; it seemed to beg trouble, and this just proves my assumption right.” He realized his faux pas and diplomatically made amends: “This expedition, of course, comes complete with two ravishing beauties.”

“Charles, cut the crap!” Carolyne knew she wasn’t a beauty, ravishing or otherwise; nor had she ever been. Certainly, she didn’t look her best with her hair gone grey at its roots, clothes continually wet with the humidity and perspiration, bathing and toilet facilities next to nonexistent. Even Melanie, who had looked so good for so long, was beginning to go a little ripe around the edges; far less likely to spark unbridled lust in someone not hopelessly lost to the outside world for a very long time. Then, again, what did Carolyne know about men? Two husbands, and as many divorces later, still didn’t exactly make her an authority.

“Pubescent boys will be boys,” Charles concluded his summation.

“Not to where Gordon would endanger our lives and smash our radio,” Melanie defensively insisted.

Roy was getting the specifics piecemeal.

“Took off with our satellite gizmo, too,” Carolyne admitted.

“Wouldn’t have run across a stray radio or space gismo, lately, have you Roy?” Charles knew it unlikely. Roy, a prospector and geologist, traveled light in order to cover a wide range of rough terrain. It was because he considered even his damaged radio excess baggage, jettisoned, that he’d appeared earlier that morning to borrow the use of theirs.

“I can offer a quick run-through of the immediate area,” Roy volunteered, “if you’d like me to take a look.”

“Would you?” Melanie was quick to accept.

Carolyne was reluctant. “We’ve decided it’s best to stay put for the time being. Certainly, I wouldn’t want you hit by a bullet that didn’t even have your name on it.”

The pros and cons were temporarily made moot by Teddy’s call from a distance: “Hey, you guys, I’m coming in!”

Melanie would have rushed into the bush to meet him, but Roy, closest to her, put a cautionary hand on her shoulder.

Neither Roy, nor Carolyne, nor Charles took any chances; each had a pistol drawn. Even Felix drew his.

As was usually the case in the thick greenery, Teddy was heard long before he was seen. That he didn’t go out of his way to be stealthy was emphasized by his virtual stumble into the small clearing.

“Teddy!” Melanie was the only one with welcoming arms, not an aimed gun. She hugged him close, her cheek so tightly against her fiancé’s sweaty chest that she heard his runaway heartbeat and felt his rasping intakes of ragged breaths.

“Gordon is dead!” was what he said to them all by way of additional greeting.