Always Love a Villain on San Juan Island (13 page)

“The money will be transferred at the moment of the exchange. I need to tell you, there are other potential buyers. I will be back to you in seven days, at just this time.” The line went dead.

What other buyers? Was the seller going to turn this into a bidding war? There'd been no mention of any interested others. Till now. Who? Germany? Not likely. China? India, possibly. Probably not the Japanese; they'd have less use for it.

He picked up the office line, pressed 44. “What did you get, Jim?”

“Too short a call.”

“Damn.”

“From inside the country, though. We'll try again when they call back. Setting up the exchange will take longer.”

“Okay.” He put the phone down. He wanted to know where they were located
before
the exchange happened.

Noel had shifted into a short-sleeved shirt and gray summer flannels. He left the house at 1:45. First he'd driven into Friday Harbor to pick up tonic and some limes; Kyra would expect that with her vodka. Then he drove out to the airport and parked in an ample lot which was nearly full, fifty cars easily. Lotsa San Juaners flitting back and forth to the mainland, he figured, maintaining a car here and another there. He stepped inside the long, low, glass-fronted terminal. Handsomely done but strange to find a landlocked airport on an island. Back home, islands were serviced by float planes. He figured these San Juan folk must prefer their terra firma. But he believed strongly in float planes: safer. In an emergency, you could land on any body of water.

At the airline desk, he asked if Kyra's flight was on time. And why should it not be, the attendant chirped. He explored the terminal. The runway, he learned, was nearly 3,500 feet long, limited to a weight of 12,500 pounds of incoming—and presumably outgoing—traffic. Also available, space for forty-five small planes to tie up. Which, he guessed, explained the large number of cars in the lot; life gets simplified with your own aircraft parked between your two motor vehicles.

Earlier, after leaving his breakfast place, he'd checked in again at the Chamber of Commerce. The same young woman with the black hair sat at a desk behind the counter, still smiling. “Hi there,” she said. “You find your way to the university okay?”

“I did, yes. But I need your help again.”

“Of course.” The smile broadened, and warmed.

“I'm trying to find someone I know who lives here on the island. His name, if you can believe it, is Spider Jester, and—”

She cut him off by laughing for a couple of seconds. “Oh, I know Spider.”

“Oh? Great. You think his name is funny?”

“Oh no. I think it's first-rate. We were in high school together. In fact he took me to the senior prom.”

“Ah,” said Noel. These island towns, everybody knows everybody. Handy. “Then you know where he lives?”

“I do indeed. With his parents in Roche Harbor, at the north end.” She gave Noel his address. “A big white house a couple of minutes from the village.” She took a brochure like the one she'd given him yesterday and spread it flat, map side open. With a red pen, she circled Rouleau Road. “You can't miss it.”

“You have his phone number too?”

She giggled. “I think I can remember that.” She wrote it on the blue water of Haro Strait.

Noel had thanked her, returned to his car and called the number. No, a woman's voice told him, Spider wouldn't be back till about four.

Now, outside on the runway, a two-prop plane approached the terminal and slowed to a stop. A woman in overalls rolled a set of stairs to the plane's near side. A door opened and passengers descended, Kyra the ninth. He waved but she likely couldn't see him through the glass. At last she was in, broke into a smile, and walked quickly his way. She looked well, he thought; that yellow top and the white jeans fit her perfectly. Now she was giving him a hug. “Hiya, partner,” he said.

“Yeah, good to be working together again.”

“Let's get out of here.”

“Have to wait for my luggage.”

Which came off the plane quickly. They marched out to Noel's car, the new Honda Civic, replacement for the Civic that had been totaled. The insurance company had come through nicely. Neither of them spoke of any of this now.

“So tell me, what do we know?”

He put the car in gear and laid out for her where the investigation had gone so far: friendly fellow, this Jordan; no hard matches for his novella on the Internet; hung out at a bar and restaurant called Thor's; and a waiter there, Tom, mentioned a possible girlfriend, Susanna—no chance yet to follow up on her. Supper tonight at their client's home.

“And what's he like?”

“Pleasant guy. Affable. He and I had dinner together last night.” Noel chuckled. “He's getting a divorce. Peter's thinking he might be gay.”

“Ah,” said Kyra. “Peter.”

He took his eyes off the road for a moment and glanced her way. “Ah?”

“Is he attractive?”

Noel stifled a sigh. “You'll see for yourself at supper.”

Kyra smiled.

Noel said, “You want to go to the place we're staying, get unpacked, lie down for a while?”

“What're you going to do?”

“Around four, have a talk with Spider Jester, friend of the alleged plagiarist.” He waited. No response. “You coming?”

“Sure. That's why I'm here. Let me dump my bag at this house that”—small smile—“
Peter
is loaning you. Where does this Spider live?”

They drove onto the Morsely campus. Kyra found the Mansion impressive and said so. They drove on. Noel parked and took her suitcase into the house. She decided on the bedroom with a regular bed, not bunks, thanks. She wondered if Noel was personally interested in their client.

Back in the car, he showed her on his map where they were going.

“Oh hey,” she said, “right past English Camp.”

“What's that?”

Very satisfying to know something about this island that Noel didn't. “That's were the British had their fortifications in the Pig War.”

“Oh yeah.” He stopped at the T, then turned left. “I've forgotten the details.”

So she told Noel about a British pig rooting up a just-planted potato crop belonging to an American farmer named Lyman Cutlar. In 1859. San Juan Island, then called Bellevue, was maybe owned by the British, but given the confusion of a treaty signed thirteen years earlier, farmed by whoever was there. Cutlar complained about the pig to the British Authority, the Hudson's Bay Company, but they did nothing about the grievance and the pig continued to steal Cutlar's potatoes. So Cutlar shot the pig. Much unrest between the British and the Americans. Then the governor of British Columbia sent a warship to San Juan in support of the Hudson's Bay officials, who demanded Cutlar be punished. So an envoy from the American president convinced both sides that the island be divided into two camps at opposite ends of the island, Americans south, British north. Life continued over the next few years because the Americans had found themselves in a much larger and bloodier strife, another division between North and South. On San Juan, peace prevailed. In the end, both sides agreed that binding arbitration should decide the fate of the island, and brought in the German kaiser, Wilhelm I. In 1872, thirteen years after the pig had gobbled down the potatoes, the kaiser gave the island to the Americans. “So there's still an English camp and the American one. In the sixties they became two parts of a national park. I'd kind of like to see both.”

Noel checked his watch: 3:35. “If there's time.” Little desire to be a tourist today. And they had to be at Peter's at 6:30. Let her judge for herself whether the client was attractive.

Wold Road became Boyce, which took them onto West Valley Road. Minutes later Kyra said, “Hey, there's English Camp!” Pleased with herself.

“Just where the map said it should be.” He drove past the entrance, onward toward Roche Harbor Village.

“We've got to check it out later.” She leaned back in her seat and watched Noel's face. His determined-to-get-on-with-business look.

Noel glanced at the clock. Nearly 4:00, in time for Spider Jester's return home. Given that it took about half an hour to drive the length of the island, they'd have a couple of hours before they were expected at Peter's. Might be time to stop at that camp on the way back. A right on Harbor Road, a left on Rouleau. Just as the Chamber woman had said, a large white house. With red shutters beside each of the windows. He parked beside a white picket fence with a gate protecting the driveway, and they got out. No cars parked in the drive.

A cement pathway led to the front door. The grass on either side had gone brown, as had several bushes along the façade. Up two steps to a small landing, the wood once painted gray, now faded or gone bare. Noel pushed the doorbell. Inside chimes played “My Dog Has Fleas.” A shuffling sound and the door opened. A large woman in brown pants and a faded Disneyland T-shirt faced them, her mouth set hard. “Yes?”

Noel introduced himself and explained that he'd phoned; he wanted to talk to Spider Jester.

“Well you better come in. He's not home yet. I'm his mother, May Jester.”

Noel introduced Kyra. To her, May Jester smiled, transforming her face. “Welcome, dearie.” She led them into a parlor. “Will you have some tea?”

At ten minutes to five, Spider Jester still had not appeared. May Jester had excused herself and gone off to her study—she needed to finish writing the minutes of last week's Museum Society meeting and send them to everyone over the Internet; Spider kept saying she must move at least into the twentieth century. Kyra and Noel had sat and chatted, paced and chatted, Kyra increasingly irritated.

“He didn't know we were coming,” Noel said.

“Maybe not, but it still pisses me off.”

Somewhere a phone rang. A couple of minutes later, May Jester appeared. “Sorry, that was Spider, he's meeting some friends this evening and staying at the south end. You maybe can find him at Thor's, it's right in—”

“I know it,” said Noel, getting up. “Thanks for the tea.”

“Unless they move on to some other place, of course.”

They left. A wasted afternoon. No time left, really, for Kyra to be a tourist. She wanted to get back to the house before dinner. She said this to Noel. She didn't say she wanted to get dinner done with, and return to the house with time to explain to Noel how much she wanted this baby. Fathered by a man she trusted.

At the house she decided, What the hell, showered and put on the new dress. The sandals were fine.

Downstairs, Noel changed to a short-sleeved shirt, slacks and sockless loafers, poured himself a vodka-tonic, and stared out the window at glimpses of trees through trees. Knowing full well he must not muse about impossibilities, he still couldn't keep his mind off Peter Langley. A kind man, clearly a moral person. Noel could imagine, very easily, spending time with him. Except he was hardly ready for another relationship. Go away, brain.

So he didn't see Kyra till she appeared beside him and said, “Will you make me one of those, please?”

“Hey, you look great!” And she did, curly hair down to her shoulders, setting off the creamy dress. Cut too low, he thought—she should be more modest. But who was he to judge. Not out loud, anyway.

“Thank you.” She smiled as she watched him move to the kitchen. Just the kind of great body, she thought, to make a beautiful baby.

Back, he said, “You'll have to drink it quickly. We're due at Peter's in half an hour.”

“Is he far away?”

“About ten minutes.”

“Oh well, I'll gulp.”

They toasted the possible success of the case. Noel was leaning, he said, toward believing Jordan's writing had somehow evolved, so no plagiarism. Kyra said she'd read the material tonight or tomorrow.

Langley lived in a condo on Tucker, across from the high school. He let them in, well pleased, or so he said, that he was at last meeting the other half of Triple I. Kyra always felt better when she knew what her clients looked like. She carried her bag, though it was highly unlikely that she'd need pistol or mace tonight. They walked down a hall to the kitchen at the back. Noel noticed a bedroom on the right, a study on the left beside a large bathroom.