She had coal-black hair, very wide-set coal black eyes.
Standing on the edge of the pool, Jack was vacuuming the pool’s bottom with a wide, long hose.
Already he was tired of hearing the huge flags over the main house cracking in the wind.
There was no one else in the pool area.
She said, “Hi.”
“Hello, Miss.”
“Let me see the back of your leg.”
“Do I have to do that, too?”
“Turn around.”
He turned around.
He knew she was looking for the small blue eye tattooed on the calf of his left leg just below the knee.
“I thought you look familiar.”
“I am, Miss. Some people say, Much too.”
After watching him another minute, she lifted herself out of the pool.
She said, “Fletch.”
“Jack Faoni, Miss. Nice of you to remember me, Miss.”
Her low, warm voice said, “Who’d ever forget?”
“I didn’t,” he said.
“We had fun that night.”
“Yes, Miss.”
“Great fun. I mean, it was really nice. Did you bring your guitar?”
“Yes, Miss.”
“Do you work here?”
“Yes, Miss.”
“When did you arrive?”
“Last night, Miss.”
Standing a meter away from him on the pool edge, she looked up at part of the main house. “I thought you were going to be my cousin.”
Jack lowered his voice’s register. “It would never have worked. I would have had to meet with you, learn everything about your family, who I would be in that family …”
“You’d rather work here than be a guest here?”
“I’m freer this way. Anyway, who wants to be all that polite all the time? Occasionally, I’m given to flatulence.”
“That would never do,” she said.
Shana Staufel sat in a long chair two meters behind him. His back to her, he continued working.
They continued talking softly, conversationally.
“Nice of you to come,” she said.
“What am I doing here?”
“As stated,” Shana said. “Weird things are happening. The people here have everything anybody could possibly want, looks, brains, health, prestige, every toy in the world, and yet the tension is so thick I don’t think you could cut it with a chain saw.”
“Aren’t the spoiled always discontented?”
“I’m talking about resentment, cruelty, hatred, Jack, all aimed at a specific person.”
“Who?”
“Chester Radliegh.”
“The captain of the ship.”
“I’m afraid the tension is bubbling over into violence. Covert violence.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Ten days. At first, I thought what I was hearing from everybody was just a general, loving, humorous ribbing of the old man. Whenever he was out of earshot, everyone would begin muttering. Then I realized there was no humor intended. These comments were not being made with love, but with hatred. To them, Chester can say nothing right, do nothing right. If he says it’s Tuesday, everyone complains and says it’s Monday, or Wednesday, when, in fact, it is Tuesday, if you understand me. It’s all rather unfair.”
“Who is ‘everybody’?”
“His wife. His children. He has his home office here, over by the golf course, airport. His chief executives, such as his chief executive officer, Eric Beauville, seem to be the same way: very nice to Chester’s face, hateful toward him as soon as he turns his back.”
“So Doctor Radliegh is a genius. You don’t expect people around a genius to understand him. Of course there are misunderstandings.”
“I tell you, it’s dangerous. You know how it is when you’re boiling eggs, or spaghetti, and there’s too much water in the pot, too much heat, and the water bubbles up to the rim of the pot?”
“Yeah, I’ve burned spaghetti.”
“If you don’t turn down the heat, it spills over, scalds the stove, douses the flame, whatever. That’s the way it is here. The pot is just beginning to bubble over.”
“What do you mean by ‘covert violence’? Got any specifics?”
“Yes.”
He heard her take a deep breath. “You going to make me ask?”
“Every morning a few minutes after dawn Chester rides his huge stallion madly over the hills, jumping the fences. I guess he does it to rid himself of tensions. The morning of the day I called you, while he was riding out of the stable yard, his horse keeled over dead. They say it died of a heart attack.”
“Horses die of heart attacks.”
“A three year old horse? I think he was drugged.”
“Any proof?”
“Chester refuses to have a blood test done on the horse. I think he doesn’t want to know.”
Jack felt Georgia’s summer sun crisping his shoulders. “That’s not much.”
“Chester has a one-room cabin in the woods up in the hills. He calls it his ‘think house.’ Every afternoon he goes there at four o’clock, and spends an hour by himself, unwinding, I guess, listening to Haydn. Yesterday afternoon shortly after four o’clock the cabin blew up. It exploded into matchsticks. They say the heater must have exploded.”
“The heater?” Sweating, Jack squinted up at the sun. “Why would the heater be on in this weather?”
“You tell me.”
“Was someone working on it?”
“Got me.”
“I take it Doctor Radliegh was not in the cabin when it blew.”
“On his way there, the front axle of the Jeep he was driving broke.”
“Hum. If the front axle on the Jeep had broken when he was coming down from the cabin, would he have gotten hurt?”
“Probably killed. The road is unpaved, twisting, right on the edge of the hill much of the way. It was muddy yesterday afternoon.”
“You count that as three possible attempts on his life.”
“There was a fourth, this morning. Every morning before dawn, Chester makes his own coffee in his dressing room. This morning, he found the coffeepot unplugged. The plug was wet. The natural place he would have held on to the wire to plug it in had been scraped bare.”
“How do you know this?”
“He complained of not having his morning coffee.”
“These are a lot of coincidences.”
“Too many, wouldn’t you say?”
“I notice you call him ‘Chester.’”
“Yes.”
