shook as he picked up his slide rule. “They can be strange.
A lot of them are ex-hippies.”
“Excuse me,” put in Margo. “I don’t think that makes sense,
Frank. Who would find a body and make a joke out of it?
Why didn’t they call in a forest ranger? No, I’m afraid Ms.
Jones’s cousin is right.”
“Poor Barry!” Andrea was still reeling in her chair. “He
was so sweet! Do you remember the duck pate he left for
us? It was divine.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” Margo snapped. “You ate all
of it.”
“Did I ever meet Barry Newcombe?” Russell Craven asked
in a bewildered voice.
Killegrew intervened before the two women could go at
it again. “Let’s not get derailed,” he urged. “We don’t want
to go off on a sideline and miss the depot.”
“What the hell happened?” Max demanded from his place
behind a big wood and leather sofa. “Barry took off here
around two in the afternoon. Did somebody jump him outside?”
“He didn’t take the van.” The speaker, who had been silent
until now, was the gnarled little man Renie had identified
as Leon Mooney.
All eyes turned to the vice president and comptroller.
“That’s true,” said Ava. “Or if he did, he came back and then
disappeared.”
“We thought he’d walked to the store at the summit,” Ward
said. “It was a mighty funny thing to do, but Barry was a
great walker.”
A dozen questions flashed through Judith’s mind, but it
wasn’t her place to ask them. Renie, however, possessed the
corporate cachet. “How long was it before you realized he
was missing?”
Glances were exchanged; several people shrugged. “A
couple of hours?” Max finally offered.
“It was at dinner,” Andrea said. “Actually, it was before
dinner. We expected Barry to serve as bartender. When he
didn’t show up, Gene stood in for him.”
Gene Jarman uttered a self-deprecating laugh. “I’d tended
bar while I worked my way through Stanford Law School.”
He lifted one shoulder in a dismissive gesture, as if to suggest
that those degrading days were far, far behind him.
Judith couldn’t resist. “What did you do when Barry never
showed?”
The others looked at her in mild astonishment. “We carried
on,” Margo said. “We figured he’d…had one of his whims.”
“All that’s behind us,” Killegrew declared before Judith
could speak again. “Let’s get this tugboat hooked up to the
barge. The question is, what do we do now?” His glance
