Twenty Blue Devils

'He didn't do anything on the farm that required a lot of balancing?'

'Not that I can think of. Bouncing around in a jeep over those roads, maybe, trying to keep from falling out?'

'Uh-uh. You'd need to be standing, not sitting.” He thought for a few seconds. “Did he have a sailboat?'

'You could get those from sailing?'

'To tell the truth, I don't know. You'd have to do a lot of sailing. But it seems logical, doesn't it? With the deck tilting and shifting and all?'

'You're asking me? How would I know? But I never heard about him being any kind of sailor.'

'Well, then, my guess is, this is a result of something he used to do, before Tahiti; something he did for a long time. What did he do before he came out here?'

'He was a, what do you call it, a teaching assistant, at Bennington. That's where Therese met him.'

'He was already around thirty, then, wasn't he? What about before that?'

'Who knows? He was a student, I guess.'

'Do you know if he—'

'Doc, what's the big deal, anyway? I mean, the bone stuff is interesting, but what does it have to do with anything?'

What it had to do with, Gideon said, was the fact that there seemed to be an awful lot about Brian Scott that wasn't general knowledge. How had he sustained that awful damage to his skull, and what had his life been like during the many months it must have taken to repair it? How had he developed muscles that were the fibular equivalents of a champion weightlifter's huge triceps? In a family as talkative and open as John's, wasn't it remarkable that nobody seemed to know?

'I guess so,” John admitted, “but, you know, Brian always was a pretty quiet kind of guy, not like the rest of us, didn't blow his own horn. And it wasn't like he grew up out here with everybody else. There are probably a lot of things about him we don't know.'

'That's my point. What else is there? He was murdered, that we know for sure. But why are we so sure that it had anything to do with his life in Tahiti? He'd only been here a few years. Maybe this was something from his past catching up with him.'

John stood up and took a few steps around the table with his cup, thinking about it. “Like that old business with his wife back in the States, you mean?'

'Like anything.'

John put down his coffee and chewed his lip. “Doc, what do you say we go have a talk with Therese? She ought to be able to fill in some of these holes. I've been wanting to talk to her anyway.'

'Shouldn't we just mention this to Bertaud and let him—'

John waved this aside. “Am I getting in Bertaud's way? Am I interfering with him? There are just some things I'd like to know for myself. How about going to see her after you finish here?'

'John, I hate to keep being a wet blanket, but that part of it is your affair. The bones I'm willing to deal with, but I barely know Therese; I'd be an intruder.'

'Well, what the hell am I supposed to do, ask her how he got hyperdeveloped fibular musculature? And then figure out if what she says makes sense?'

After a moment, Gideon laughed. “Tell you what. Let me finish up here—I need to write up a report—and meanwhile you can go over to the gendarmerie and tell Bertaud whatever he wants to know. It should take me a couple of hours at most. I can meet you there when I take the report over. Say one o'clock? Then Therese, how's that?'

'Lunch first,” John said.

'That,” said Gideon, “goes without saying.'

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Chapter 23

* * * *

'I don't know what you mean,” Therese said, her upper lip beginning to tremble.

'I mean,” John said gently, “we have to clear up these things. Brian was murdered, Therese. Don't you want us to find out who did it?'

Her lovely eyes brimmed instantly. “I don't see how you can say...how you can know that he was...from just a few little b...a few little b...” Tears flowed down silken cheeks. She bowed her head.

John, in obvious discomfort, appealed to Gideon. “It's the truth, isn't it, Doc?'

'It's true, Therese,” Gideon said, not very comfortable himself. The interview with John's cousin had been painful from the start. Since Brian's death she had been living at her parents’ house in Papara, and they had found her there, down at the beach, in a yellow sundress, sitting in a thatch-roofed pergola with a simple word-puzzle book open in front of her. The twins, happily unencumbered by frocks, or by any clothing at all other than little straw hats, played companionably in the sun a few yards away. She had received the two men warmly—there was no mistaking the affection between her and John—but every question about Brian had been met with lowered eyes, hesitant mumbles, shrugs, and sentence fragments.