CHAPTER 22
GOLDFISH POINT,
LA JOLLA , CALIFORNIA
EXHAUSTED AND WANTING TO HIT THE GROUND RUNNING WHEN they got home, Sam and Remi spent the majority of the flights home sleeping and eating and generally trying to keep their minds off Selma’s proclamation regarding Winston Blaylock. Their chief researcher wasn’t prone to hyperbole, so they took seriously her suspicion which, if true, cast a pall on their efforts to recover the Shenandoah’s bell. Of course, while the bell was of significant historical value regardless, the cryptic inscription on the bell’s inner surface and Blaylock’s obsession with the ship (either under the guise of the Ophelia, the Shenandoah, or the El Majidi) had suggested to them a deeper mystery-one that had apparently prompted Itzli Rivera and perhaps someone in the Mexican government to murder nine tourists.AS PROMISED, PETE JEFFCOAT and Wendy Corden were waiting for them in the baggage claim area. Pete took their carry-ons. “You look tired.”
“You should have seen us eighteen hours and a couple dozen time zones ago,” Sam replied.
“What happened to you?” Wendy asked, gesturing to Sam’s swollen cheekbone and his taped finger. While the latter was now properly bandaged with medical tape, the cut on his cheekbone was crusty with Super Glue-a remedy Ed Mitchell swore was better than stitches.“I burned a casserole, and Remi got mad,” Sam said. He got a light punch on the arm from his wife in return.
Remi said to Wendy, “Boys being boys, that’s what happened.”
“We’re glad you’re home,” Pete said. “Selma’s been pulling her hair out. Don’t tell her I told you.”
The baggage carousel started turning, and Pete wandered off to collect Sam and Remi’s luggage.
Sam asked Wendy, “Any word on the bell?”
“It’s en route. Should be halfway across the Atlantic by now. With luck, we’ll have it the day after tomorrow.”
“Care to give us a hint why Selma thinks Blaylock is a fruitcake?”
Wendy shook her head. “She’s been up for almost three days straight trying to piece this together. I’m going to let her explain.”
SAM AND REMI’S HOME and base of operations was a four-story, twelve-thousand-square-foot Spanish-style home with an open floor plan, vaulted maple-beamed ceilings, and windows and skylights enough that they bought their Windex in ten-gallon buckets.
The upper floor held Sam and Remi’s master suite, and below this, one flight down, were four guest suites, a living room, a dining room, and a kitchen/great room that jutted over the cliff. On the second floor was a gymnasium containing both aerobic and circuit training exercise equipment, a steam room, a HydroWorx endless lap pool, a climbing wall, and a thousand square feet of hardwood floor space for Remi to practice her fencing and Sam his judo.
The ground floor sported two thousand square feet of office space for Sam and Remi and an adjoining workspace for Selma, complete with three Mac Pro workstations coupled with thirty-inch cinema displays, and a pair of wall-mounted thirty-two-inch LCD televisions. On the east wall was Selma’s pride and joy, a fourteen-foot, five- hundred-gallon saltwater aquarium filled with a rainbow-hued assortment of fish whose scientific names she knew by heart.
Selma’s other love, tea, she approached with equal passion; an entire cabinet of the workroom was devoted to her stock, which included a rare Phoobsering-Osmanthus Darjeeling hybrid that Sam and Remi suspected was the source of her seemingly boundless energy.
In appearance, Selma Wondrash was eclectic in the extreme: She wore a modified 1960s bob, horn-rimmed glasses, complete with a neck chain, and a default uniform of khaki pants, sneakers, and a tie-dyed T-shirt.As far as Sam and Remi were concerned, Selma could be as strange as she wished. There was no one better at logistics, research, and resource scrounging.
Sam and Remi walked into the workspace to find Selma leaning over the tank, writing something on a clipboard. She turned, saw them, held up a finger, then finished writing and set aside the clipboard. “My Centropyge loricula is looking sickly,” she said, then translated: “flame angelfish.”“That’s one of my favorites,” Remi said.
Selma nodded solemnly. “So, welcome home, Mr. and Mrs. Fargo.”
Sam and Remi had long ago given up trying to convince Selma to call them by their first names.
“Good to be home,” Sam replied.
Selma walked to the long, maple-topped workbench that ran down the center of the room and sat down. Sam and Remi took the stools opposite her. Blaylock’s massive walking staff was lying lengthwise on the table.“You look well,” Selma said.
“Pete and Wendy disagreed.”
“I was comparing your current condition to how I imagined you over the past few days. Everything is relative.”
“True enough,” Remi said. “Selma, are you stalling?”
Selma pursed her lips. “I’m not fond of handing you incomplete information.”
Sam replied, “What you call incomplete we call mysterious, and we love a good mystery.”
“Then you’re going to love what I have for you. First a little background. With Pete and Wendy’s help, I dissected, indexed, and foot-noted Morton’s biography of Blaylock. It’s on our server in PDF format, if you want to read it later, but here’s the condensed version. Selma opened a manila folder and began reading.
“Blaylock arrived in Bagamoyo in March 1872 with nothing but the clothes on his back, a few pieces of silver, a .44 caliber Henry rifle, a bowie knife big enough to ‘chop down a baobab tree’ stuck in his boot, and a short sword strapped to his hip.”“Clearly, Morton had a creative streak,” Remi said. She looked to Sam. “Do you remember the story we read about the murdered British tourist?”
“Sylvie Radford,” Sam finished.
“Remember what she found while diving?”
Sam smiled. “A sword. It’s a long long shot, but maybe what she found had once belonged to Blaylock. Selma. Can you . . .”
Their chief researcher was already jotting a note. “I’ll see what I can find out.”
“A short sword and a bowie knife could easily be confused. Maybe Morton got it wrong. Sorry, Selma, keep going.”
“Evidently, Blaylock terrified the locals. Not only was he a foot taller and wider than almost everyone, he wasn’t prone to smiling. On his first night in Bagamoyo, half a dozen thugs got together and decided to separate Blaylock and his money. Two of them died, and the rest required medical attention.”“He shot them,” Sam said.
“No. He never picked up his Henry, the bowie, or the sword. He fought with his bare hands. After that, no one bothered him.”
“Which was probably the point,” Sam replied. “Doing that to six men while unarmed tends to create an impression.”
“Indeed. Within a week, he was serving as a bodyguard for a rich Irishman on safari; within a month, he’d started his own guide business. As good as he was with his hands, he was even better with the Henry. Where other European guides and hunters were using big-bore hunting rifles, Blaylock could take down a charging Cape buffalo-a mbogo-with one shot from his Henry.
“About two months after Blaylock arrived, he contracted malaria and spent six weeks on his back near death while his two mistresses-Maasai women who worked in Bagamoyo-nursed him back to health. While Morton never came out and said as much, Blaylock’s brush with death seemed to have left him slightly . . . touched in the head.
“After the malaria Blaylock would disappear for months on end on what he called ‘vision quest expeditions.’ He lived with the Maasai, took concubines, studied with witch doctors, lived alone in the bush, hunted for King Solomon’s mines and Timbuktu, dug fossils in Olduvai Gorge, followed the trail of Mansa Musa, hoping to find his staff of gold . . . There’s even an anecdote that claims Blaylock was the one who found David Livingstone first. According to Morton’s account, Blaylock sent a runner to Bagamoyo to alert Henry Morton Stanley; shortly after that the pair had their famous ‘Dr. Livingstone, I presume’ moment near Lake Tanganyika.”“So if we’re to believe
