Skeleton Dance

'And do what? Read books? Watch TV?'

'Sure, what's the matter, you never saw The Flintstones?'

'Well, that's a point,” Gideon said laughing and throwing an arm around her shoulders. “Come on, it's getting a little chilly. Let's head back; I'm ready for a drink and some dinner.'

* * * *

The short drive back to Les Eyzies took them first through the tiny village of Tursac, clumped at the base of its massive, forbidding Romanesque church, and then along the valley of the Vezere, through a landscape of willows, poplars, and occasional stone houses, rimmed by low, white, mineral-streaked cliffs, and always threaded by the green, slow-flowing river. It was the same route they had taken to get to Prehistoparc only a couple of hours earlier, but then Gideon had been so absorbed in telling her about Carpenter, and Julie so engrossed in listening, they they'd hardly noticed the scenery. Now, with Julie driving (she was both the better driver and the jumpier passenger; they had discovered long ago that they both tended to be happier when she was the one behind the wheel), they took advantage of having largely talked themselves out to take in the sunny, fresh, agreeable countryside.

She had pulled the Peugeot into a parking slot in front of the hotel and turned off the engine before they returned to the subject of murder.

'Gideon, does Lucien think there's a connection between the Tayac hoax and Carpenter's death?'

'No. Or at least he prefers not to consider it yet. He actually quoted the law of parsimony to me. In Latin, yet.'

'And what about you?'

'Sure there's a connection,” Gideon said as they climbed out of the car, “I don't know what it is, but I'd bet twenty bucks it's there.'

'So would I,” Julie said with vigor, “unless somebody's decided to repeal Goldstein's Law.'

At that they both smiled. Abe Goldstein had been Gideon's professor at the University of Wisconsin, a brilliant, eccentric Russian Jew, and the only person on whom Gideon was whole-heartedly willing to confer the title of mentor. Later, as an old man, he had become a close friend, of Julie's as well as Gideon's, and his loss was still deeply felt.

His Law of Interconnected Monkey Business—so named by Abe himself—was simply that when a lot of unusual or suspicious incidents occurred in the same place, at the same time, to the same people, the odds were that a relationship existed between them. And in Gideon's opinion, a string of events involving an elaborate archaeological hoax, the murder of the director of the archaeological institute that was involved in it, and his burial in one of that same institute's sites qualified as sufficiently unusual, suspicious, and connected to bring Goldstein's Law into play.

In Abe's own words: “In real life—I'm not talking about theory-construction, but real life—interconnected monkey business trumps parsimony. Every time.'

* * * *

But later on, in the wood-beamed hotel dining room, as they sat digesting a relatively simple (for France) a la carte dinner of pumpkin soup, medallions of veal, and green salad with warmed goat cheese, Gideon had second thoughts.

'You know,” he said over coffee, “I wonder if we've been just a little too quick to invoke Interconnected Monkey Business. I've been thinking: there might be other reasons—other things besides the Old Man of Tayac—for somebody's wanting to kill Ely.'

Julie looked up from the log fire into which she'd been contentedly and a little sleepily staring. “Mmm?'

'Did I ever mention to you that when he got the directorship he wasn't the only one in the running?'

'Yes, you said the board was considering Jacques and Audrey too.'

He nodded soberly. “That's right.'

She came fully awake. “Oh, wait a minute! You're not seriously telling me somebody killed him over the promotion, are you? That's crazy, why? Academic jealousy? Gideon if you people went around murdering each other over that, there wouldn't be a department head left standing in America.'

'Well, that's true enough,” Gideon said. “All the same I keep thinking about Jacques; I keep coming back to him.'

'Jacques Beaupierre,” Julie said, laughing. “Now there's a vicious, bloodthirsty killer if I ever saw one.'

'I know, but the thing is—'

'Yes, you told me; he couldn't think of the name of the museum the bones came from. Sorry, I don't think that would hold up as evidence of foul play—not with anyone who actually knew anything about him . . .” She trailed off, peering into his eyes. “Why, you are serious, aren't you?'

'Well . . . not in the sense of accusing him of murder, no, I suppose not, but as something to think about, or rather for Joly to know about . . .” He stared down into his demitasse cup, rotating it on its saucer. “Julie, this whole thing is pretty painful to me. I mean, sitting here saying ‘Let's see, which one of my old friends, people that I know—and like, for the most part—which one of them would I want to help Joly catch for murder and put away for the next thirty years? But somebody did do it, somebody blew apart Ely Carpenter's heart with that gun of his, and covered his body with dirt in the cave, and faked that crash to cover it—and I think it's going to turn out to be one of them. I wish to hell it wouldn't, but . . .'

She covered his hand with hers. “I know. You're right. I think so too.” She shook her head. “It just seems so . . . impossible.'

'Jacques was the most senior member of the institute, you see, and Ely was the most junior and kind of a loose cannon besides, a firebrand, the sort of guy who attracted controversy without trying.'

'Then why was he appointed? And come to think of it, why wasn't Montfort in the running? You'd think he'd be the obvious choice.'