Twenty Blue Devils

Gideon walked between the twin stone pillars of the driveway and headed toward the house at an angle across the lawn.

'Can I help you?'

He looked toward a trellised patio on the right to see a pair of women finishing off a meal with mugs of coffee at a round, glass-topped table; one about forty, the other in her sixties, with scant, dark hair that sat on her scalp like a cloud. The older one was Asiatic—Chinese, he guessed—the younger a mixture of Asiatic and Caucasian and a foot taller, but the shape of their jaws, the slope of their shoulders, even the inquisitive tilt of their heads marked them as relatives. Mother and daughter, he thought. Celine and Maggie.

'Hi,” he said. “I'm Gideon Oliver. I'm—'

'Oh, you Johnny's friend,” said the older woman, her round face crinkling into a smile not all that different from John's. She held up a pitcher. “Want some coffee?'

He shook his head. “Thanks, I had some with lunch. You're Mrs. Druett?'

'You bet. Johnny's Auntie Celine.'

'And I'm Maggie, John's cousin,” said the younger one, the one who had called out, frankly appraising him with sharp, black, intelligent eyes. “Well, well. The family's heard some pretty strange stories about you over the years.'

Likewise, Gideon thought but didn't say. He laughed. “Well, you can't believe everything John says, you know.'

Maggie swallowed the last of her coffee and stood up, a solid, thick-bodied woman with a Chinese-style, bolerolike silk jacket decorously buttoned over shoulders left bare by her pareu. She leaned over to kiss her mother on the forehead. “See you tomorrow, Mom.'

'Okay, honey,” Celine said absently, “you be good now. Gideon, you know something? You looking at the only woman alive who work with John Barrymore.'

'Really?” said Gideon.

'He gonna be my uncle in Pippi of the Islands. Nineteen forty-two. He drop dead right before filming start. Damn picture never got made.'

'Really,” said Gideon.

'He don't believe me,” Celine said.

'It's true,” Maggie told him. “More or less. Mom was the Tahitian Shirley Temple for a while. Listen, I'm on my way back up to the plantation. How about a lift? Poppa said you were coming up for a tour.'

'Sure,” said Gideon. “I was hoping for a ride. Goodbye, Mrs. Druett. Nice meeting you.'

'Work with Abbott and Costello too,” Celine informed him.

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Chapter 15

* * * *

'The man without a mission,” said Maggie as she got into the driver's seat of her gray Peugeot.

'Pardon?'

'Well, you were coming out to do your thing on poor Brian, weren't you? Until Poppa changed his mind?'

Gideon turned to face her more directly as she steered the car onto the highway. “Do you know what made him change it?'

She shrugged. “Nothing makes Nick Druett change his mind. He just changed it, that's all. I guess he thought it wasn't such a good idea after all.'

'And what do you think?'

Not a good question. Maggie's face hardened. “What I think is that my father usually turns out to be right about most things.'

But after a few moments, when she saw he wasn't going to pursue it, she softened. “All the same, I'm a little sorry we're not going through with it. It would have been nice to lay that stupid gangland business to rest once and for all. This way, there'll always be rumors.'

'You don't believe them?'

'That they had him killed? Of course not.” She paused, then glanced at him, one eyebrow lifted. She was wearing carved wooden earrings shaped like conch shells. “Do you?'

Gideon replied with a shrug of his own. “What about those accidents?'

'Such as?'

'I don't remember them all. Didn't his jeep flip over? Didn't the roof of one of the sheds almost come down on him?'

Maggie clucked irritably. “Oh, for God's sake. That jeep was an antique, forty years old, and the ‘roads’ up there are more like goat tracks. It's amazing it never flipped over before.'

'What about the shed?'

'That thing was rickety from the start. I was in there doing a time-management class for the foremen the