Twenty Blue Devils

Chapter 31

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'...highs in the upper thirties, with more of the same— low clouds and drizzle, occasionally turning to sleet—continuing right on through the week. But cheer up, folks; by Friday chances look good for the occasional afternoon sun-break...'

'What's funny?” Julie asked.

'Nothing,” Gideon said, “I was just thinking it's nice to be home.'

He reached contentedly across the seat to squeeze her knee and switch the car radio to KING-FM. The Pachelbel Canon in D Major came on, and they listened in cozy, heated comfort to the calm, stately, inexorable chord progressions as Julie swung the car around the forested curves of Highway 101. Downslope on their right, visible through the firs, was Sequim Bay, gray and rain-pelted. On their left, the foothills of the Olympics rose, disappearing into the mist about two hundred feet up. The windshield wipers, making their slow sweep every second or so, kept steady time with the music.

Gideon had arrived in Seattle two hours earlier. He and John had stayed in Tahiti for another day after Rudy's arrest, leaving depositions with Bertaud (they would both have to return for the trial) and having a last sad, hilarious dinner with Nick and what was left of the clan. Then, leaving John to spend another few days with his family, he had boarded the 12:15 A.M. flight to Los Angeles and caught an 8:50 A.M. hop to SeaTac, where Julie had been waiting for him. They decided to go the longer, more scenic way, and she had taken the wheel for the drive across the Tacoma Narrows Bridge and on to the Olympic Peninsula and Port Angeles. For most of it he had been filling her in on the latest developments from the South Seas.

Rudy, he told her, had so far refused to make a statement on the advice of his avocat, but Gideon, John, and Bertaud had pieced together a first, rough set of events that seemed to fit the facts. They believed that the money-laundering operation had been Brian's—that is, Bozzuto's—idea; perhaps he'd had it in his mind from the very time he arrived. Bozzuto, after all, had the racketeering contacts and the firsthand experience with slippery bookkeeping. As if to confirm this, the tricky business with the prices had begun only a few months after he had come to the farm. Besides that, Nelson had now turned up some accounting and telephone records that seemed to show Brian's hand in several of the phony transactions. But Brian wouldn't have been able to do it alone. In the first place, coffee-bean purchases weren't made from the farm but from Whidbey Island, Rudy's turf. In the second, Klingo Bozzuto, even with a new face and a new name, wouldn't have been crazy about going anywhere near his old, betrayed gangland associates.

So Rudy was approached, and whether from resentment of Nick (so much more successful than his own father, so magnanimous, so open-handed), or from simple greed, or for some other reason, he cut himself in. For five years they used Paradise Coffee as a money-laundering conduit. And then something happened to sour the relationship. Bertaud believed that Rudy simply decided to cut Brian out and keep all the profit for himself, and the most satisfactory way to do that was to murder him. John believed that Brian, changed for the better by his relationships with Nick and Therese, and by parenthood, had finally seen the light and wanted to go straight, and that Rudy had killed him to keep him from putting an end to the arrangement, and perhaps even confessing to Nick. Gideon kept his opinion to himself, but he thought that Bertaud was closer to the mark.

Whatever the cause, they were fairly sure that it was Rudy who had killed him during that lonely camping trip to Raiatea. Proving it was going to be impossible, they agreed, but Bertaud had assured them that Tari's murder alone, what with Gideon's findings, would be enough to lock Rudy up for a long time to come. Gideon had set the final seal on things when he'd examined Tari's hut and determined what the murder weapon was: not the fireplace poker that he'd anticipated, but a gancho—a sturdy, five-foot pole with a crook in it that was used to pull the spindly top branches of the coffee trees down within easy reach. Tari had kept one leaning against a corner in the hut, and although Rudy had wiped it clean of hair, blood, and fingerprints, Gideon had been able to show that the shape of the heavy end of it perfectly matched the depressed fracture in Tari's skull.

Julie and Gideon had been quiet while the canon was being played, but when it was done she leaned forward to turn the volume down. “There are still some things that I don't understand.'

'You and me both,” Gideon said.

'What about Therese, for example? Did she honestly not know what Brian was doing? Are you going to tell me she's really as pure and innocent as all that?'

'Well, yes and no. We had dinner with the family at Nick's house last night, and it was pretty interesting; a lot of things came out. And the answer to your question is, yes, she did know all about Brian's past. That's why she was so desperate to have the exhumation canceled, you see. She was scared to death that somehow or other his real identity would come out and his old gangland enemies would find out about it and come after her and the twins for revenge.'

'Well, I guess that makes sense.'

'But as for knowing that he'd been involved in anything shady since he came to Tahiti, that was a total surprise to her. She thought he was completely reformed.'

Julie threw him a sidewise glance. “And you believe that?'

'I do, yes.'

'Well, I don't. How did she really meet him, anyhow? The Bennington story was just so much claptrap, wasn't it?'

'There you're right. It all came out at dinner. Old Klingo had seen her at that first trial years ago and was thoroughly smitten. Never forgot her. Six or seven years later, with a new name and a new face, he called her from the States, claimed he was a reporter—which he wasn't—and said she probably didn't remember him, but they'd met briefly while he was covering the trial in Seattle—which they hadn't—and he was coming out on vacation to Tahiti in a couple of weeks, and could they get together? She said sure, on most Friday nights she went to the movies in Papeete with her friends, and if he wanted to, they could meet for a drink first. And that was that. They fell in love. Later, he did tell her who he really was.'

'And how did Nick react to hearing all that? Did he get mad?'

'Mad—no, I don't think so. Shocked would be more like it. I think he had a hard time coming to grips with the idea that his sweet little baby had actually been going around meeting strange men in bars. Celine didn't have any problem with it, though. I think Therese went up in her estimation.'

Julie laughed. “Celine sounds like a character.'