thought.”
“What’s your theory?”
“Now you’re not going to laugh at me, are you? And you won’t interrupt me and start arguing before I’ve finished?”
“Have you ever known me to?”
She laughed. “That doesn’t even deserve an answer. And you’re not going to tell me it’s not a theory at all, that it’s a hypothesis, or a speculation, or a—”
“I don’t see how I’m going to be able to tell you anything unless you get around sometime to letting me know what it is.”
All right, then. Now I know this sounds a little convoluted, so just let me—“
“Julie-”
“Well, what if it wasn’t Edgar that killed Pete Williams? No, don’t interrupt. What if it was someone else? And what if Joey knew who that person was? Gideon, please, you promised. Just let me finish for once. And what if that person was afraid Joey might tell? Wouldn’t that person—” She threw up her hands. “Okay, okay, I should have known you wouldn’t be able to let me finish. What’s wrong with it?”
“What’s wrong is that the bones aren’t Pete Williams’s, they’re Villarreal’s.”
At that she stopped in mid-stride to stare at him. “Edgar! But how can that be? Edgar was eaten by a bear! In Alaska!”
“Julie, I’m not sure how it can be, but it is. I’m ninety-nine percent positive. He wasn’t eaten by a bear, he was stabbed to death— pretty viciously, too—and right now he’s lying—what there is of him is lying—on a desk at the police station right here on St. Mary’s. And I can guarantee that the remains haven’t been through the innards of a bear or of anything else.”
“You’re saying the newspaper got it wrong?”
“I believe such things have been known to happen.”
“You don’t sound very surprised.”
“I’m surprised that the bones on the beach are Villarreal’s, yes; but, no, I’m not surprised that the people in Alaska got it wrong. When you’re looking at tiny bits of bone that have been chewed up by a bear, gone through its digestive process, and come out the other end, it’s easy to let your imagination run away with you and conclude they’re human—especially if you have an unaccounted-for human being on your missing persons list. And the paper made it clear there was no physical anthropologist involved; just the local police surgeon, who almost certainly wouldn’t have been trained to distinguish human from nonhuman.” He shrugged. “So, yes, I had my doubts.”
She nodded slowly, with a faint smile. “That’s what that ‘Hm’ was, when I read you the story back in Penzance, wasn’t it?”
“That’s what it was,” he said, smiling back. They began walking again.
“But why in the world would Edgar have come back to Saint Mary’s?” she wondered. “When would he have come back?”
“Never. I don’t think he ever left.”
They had come to one of the several batteries along the path—a grouping of three black, well-preserved, seventeenth-century cannons, glistening with moisture and arranged in an arc to aim out to sea. Julie leaned against one of them, shaking her head. “But he resigned from the consortium after he left, remember? He sent Vasily a letter, a fax. From the States.”
“No, somebody sent Vasily a fax from the States.”
“That’s so, I suppose. It could have been someone else.”
“For that matter, do we really know that anybody sent Vasily a fax, or do we know only that he says someone sent one?”
“Well… I suppose…”
“As far as I know, no one’s seen it, isn’t that right?”
Julie frowned. “Gideon are you suggesting… you’re not suggesting…”
“That Vasily’s a murderer and faked the fax to cover himself? No, of course not. I’m only pointing out—”
“I mean, for all we know, Vasily still has the fax. In fact, he probably does.”
“Which still wouldn’t prove that Villarreal sent it. Look, all I’m saying is that the evidence for Villarreal’s ever having left and gone back to the States, let alone getting chomped on by a bear, is not exactly overwhelming.”
“That’s so, yes.” She gazed out into the fog. Below, unseen wavelets lapped at the rocky shore. “I’m trying to think of whether I actually saw him get on the ferry or not, at the end of the consortium.
I know we all left the same day. We caught the ferry. I was on it with… well, let’s see… Liz, and Rudy, and… come to think of it, that’s all. Edgar and the others were going to catch the early morning plane, or the afternoon ferry, or something.“
“Did you see him at all that day?”
She chewed on her lip, trying to remember. “I don’t know. I don’t think I did. I’m not sure.”
“What about the day before?”
“The night before was when he gave that speech in town, where he got into the shouting match with Pete Williams, so he was definitely there then. After that, I don’t remember.” She pushed herself from the wet cannon, wiped her hands on a couple of Kleenexes to dry them, and stuffed the sodden clump in a pocket. They resumed walking.
