while?”
“Oh, that Cheryl,” Gideon said, laughing. “I didn’t think you noticed.”
“I bet you noticed.”
“I did, but I hope you also observed that she didn’t get to first base with me. Why would she? I can do a whole lot better than Cheryl Pinckney.” He swung an arm around her shoulder, pulled her to him, and kissed her warmly. “Have I mentioned to you today that I’m in love with you?”
A gruff “Hey, you two, knock it off there” came from a nearby niche in the walls, where Liz was having a post- prandial cigarette, its end glowing red in the dark. “We’re running a G-rated consortium here. This time, anyway.”
“Hey, yourself,” Gideon growled back, leaving his arms where they were, “go find your own parapet.”
But after another lingering moment with their arms wrapped around one another they separated and resumed their slow tour of the ramparts, their fingers entwined.
“This time?” Gideon said. “Meaning, ”As opposed to last time‘?“
Julie nodded. “It got pretty torrid around here a couple of years ago.”
“Rats,” Gideon said. “I was hoping it was just something about me that brought out the beast in Cheryl.”
“ ‘Fraid not, the beast in Cheryl is pretty easy to bring out. But it wasn’t just Cheryl—well, it was, but the hanky-panky was really pretty general. I mean, I know this stuff happens at conferences, but that was the first time I’d ever experienced anything quite like that.”
“Not first hand, I hope.”
She squeezed his fingers. “Not a chance. Edgar was at the center of it all, and I guess I wasn’t his type. He made only one move on me that could be construed as a pass—about as subtle as Cheryl’s move on you—and then quit.” She smiled. “I suppose I should have been insulted, because I was the only one he didn’t keep after. He managed to have affairs—well, to have sex with—all three of the other women. Not that he had to try too hard.”
“In one week?”
“Well, you know, the man was brilliant, famous, moody, edgy, good-looking in a dangerous sort of way… the kind that appeals to a lot of women.”
“But not to you, I take it.”
“Ugh, no!” He was absurdly pleased by her enthusiastic shudder. “Not that I have any objection to brilliant, famous, and good-looking, but I like my men a lot bigger, and sunnier, and friendlier… and I already have me one of those.”
You sure do, Gideon thought. And just you try and get rid of him. “But I thought Villarreal was supposed to be some kind of loner, a recluse—preferred living with the bears and the wolves to being around people. Was that all hype?”
“No, as far as I know it was true. He spent a lot of the year in the wilds. When he left here he was heading straight out to the Alaskan wilderness to spend the summer all by himself, keeping tabs on a cluster of bear families—you know, tracking their eating, and mating, and migration activities. All alone with the bears, that’s what he loved.” She shook her head. “But when he was around people— women, anyway—he got very, um, shall we say, social.”
“Yeah. Well, who knows, maybe I would too, if I spent my summers all alone, watching bears have sex.”
They walked on a few steps, still hand-in-hand. “You said all three of the women,” he said. “That means Cheryl, which is not exactly a huge surprise, and Liz—which is a surprise, because I wouldn’t have pictured her going for a one-night stand—but who else was there?”
“Victor Waldo’s wife, Kathie, was here with him too, and she—”
“Ah, that’s right. You asked after her when we met him on the boat and he said they were separated, and you and Liz gave each other a couple of ‘aha’ glances.”
“Really? Was it that obvious?”
“Hey, don’t forget you’re talking to the Skeleton Detective here. Not too much gets by me. So you think they broke up on account of what went on between her and Villarreal?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised. She and Victor had a real wingding when it came out. It was pretty bad. I’m surprised you didn’t hear them back in Port Angeles.”
They had taken four turns around the ramparts now, and had them all to themselves, with Liz having gone back inside, and they stopped to lean their elbows on the parapet, overlooking the lights that were beginning to twinkle on in Hugh Town.
“It started right on the first night,” Julie mused, “the night of the opening reception.”
You’d have to have been out to lunch, she told him, not to notice that Cheryl and Villarreal had begun circling each other like storks doing a mating dance, about five minutes after they’d set eyes on one another. An hour into the reception, both had disappeared for a while, not even bothering to disguise the fact that they’d left together and returned together. Afterward, their little shared giggles and glances at dinner, and even at breakfast the next day, had left little doubt about what was going on. At first Julie had been embarrassed at their behaving that way in front of Donald, but it was soon obvious that he was used to it, and it wasn’t long before Julie was used to it too.
Villarreal’s affair with Cheryl lasted all of two days, Sunday and most of Monday, after which it cooled perceptibly. By Monday evening, he and Liz were a pair, a relationship that continued for most of the week, to Liz’s transparent delight.
“She really thought he was in love with her,” Julie said, shaking her head. “She thought she’d found the man of her dreams. Liz and I were pretty close, and I could see what was going on even if she couldn’t… anybody could, really… and so I tried to calm her down a little, get her to take the long view, but, you know, when somebody is like that…” She shrugged. “And anyway, I didn’t want to rain on her parade.”
