Twenty Blue Devils

'I'm out ahead of you, that's all.'

Marti was grinning too. “So am I, I think. Go ahead, Uncle Nick.'

'Okay, you're right: Julio is the other sonofabitch with my winnings. Isn't that something? Two guys get hit, and they're both carrying my money. I practically had a heart attack. Anyway, back I go—by now I have some covering fire—and somehow I get him out of there too. Both of them.'

'Holy moley,” Marti said.

'Wait for the punch line,” John instructed her.

'And not only that,” said Nick, who was too good a storyteller to let anyone throw his rhythm off, “but the lieutenant, who didn't know his ass—well, he didn't have a clue, period—he couldn't believe it. He said it was the bravest thing he ever saw. He put me up for the Distinguished Service Cross, and damned if I didn't get it!'

The telephone chirped just as he got the last words out, and with Marti sitting there laughing helplessly John got up and went to the wall phone in the kitchen.

'Hel—'

'John, it's Brenda.'

Her tone snuffed out the last of his own chuckle. “What's wrong?'

'I just got off the phone with Therese. It's Brian. He's dead.'

* * * *

His body had been found three days earlier on the mountainous, barely populated island of Raiatea, where he'd gone for his annual camping trip. A pair of backpacking New Zealanders had smelled something unpleasant and had discovered him in a thicket at the foot of a rugged, two-hundred-foot bluff near the base of Mt. Tefatua. According to the police, some of his camping gear had been found on the plateau atop the bluff. Apparently, the police said, he had gotten too near the edge, something that inexperienced hikers were likely to do in the loose, rocky volcanic soil. And, like others before him over the years, he had unfortunately fallen to his death.

'But Brian wasn't an inexperienced hiker,” John murmured.

'No, John, I don't believe this was an accident. If you put everything together—sixteen months ago he almost gets killed when the shed blows down; a few months after that he almost gets killed when the jeep turns over. And now he does finally get killed—because he doesn't know you weren't supposed to get near the edge of a cliff? It's just too much. I mean, forget the computer breaking down and the beans burning up and all that stuff. Just think about what's been happening to Brian. Growing coffee isn't that dangerous. Nick hasn't been having any accidents, Maggie hasn't been having any accidents, Nelson hasn't been having any accidents...I think someone's been trying to kill Brian, and now they finally did.'

John heard her out, his head lowered. Behind him in the dining room Nick was on another story. John could hear Marti's unrestrained chortling, Maggie's bluff horse laugh, Nelson's dry whinny. Warm sounds, family sounds.

'John? Say something.'

'I admit,” he said slowly. “It makes you think.'

'What should we do?'

'Do you know if there's been an autopsy? Has a competent pathologist been over the body?'

An arid laugh came from the receiver. “What, on Raiatea?'

'All right, on Tahiti. Isn't that where the government offices are? There must be somebody—'

'No, it's too late. For one thing, his body was out there for a week or more and...well, you can imagine...'

'Oh, Christ. Brenda, how is Therese taking this?'

Therese, as heartbreakingly lovely as she was, had nevertheless been unhappy as a girl, insecure and bumbling—until Brian Scott had come into her life. Then she'd bloomed like some fantastic tropical flower. John had seen them together when she brought him to Hawaii to meet the contingent of the family that lived there, and to say that she had stars in her eyes when she looked at him would have been putting it mildly. And Brian, the protective John had been pleased to see, had been just as moonstruck with her.

That had been five years ago, and the periodic reports that he got from Nick and the others suggested that little had changed.

'She just sounded numb,” Brenda said. “Hollow. And listen, she's already had him buried, up in the old plantation cemetery. I don't think she'd go along with having him dug up, if that's what you're thinking; not Therese.'

'He's already buried? Why so fast?'

'Why wouldn't she bury him right away? You know, it's summertime there now; it's getting pretty warm. There must have been a pretty strong...well, smell.'

Abruptly, something went out of him. He slumped heavily onto a stool at the kitchen counter, bent his head, and passed his hand wearily over his eyes.

Brian Galen Scott, thirty-eight, boyish and bright and handsome and happy, father of a pair of picture-book- perfect four-year-old twins, warmly accepted son-in-law of Nick Druett, fast-rising operations manager and all- around whiz kid at the Paradise Coffee plantation.

Brian, the man with everything to live for.

'Yeah,” he said gruffly, “but you'd think she'd have some kind of service so the rest of the family—'

'She's going to have a memorial service after everybody gets back. You don't need the body to have a service.'