“The lime?” Dino asked. “Viv has it.”
Stone pointed at the table and shook his finger at it. “No, not the lime, the... other thing.” For the life of him, he couldn’t remember the word. Shaking his finger at the table wasn’t helping, but he continued to do it.
“The other thing?” Viv asked.
“What other thing?” Dino followed.
“The goddamned other thing that was there!”
“Stone, you’re babbling. Lie down again,” Dino said.
“I don’t want to lie down!”
And then they heard a faint noise from the cabin below.
“What was that?” Stone asked.
“A toilet flushing,” Viv said.
“Must be the maid,” Dino offered.
“Too early,” Stone said. “They don’t start before noon, in case we’re sleeping in.”
“I know what’s missing,” Viv said.
“What is it?” Dino demanded.
“The plastique bomb,” she said.
And then there was the sound of flip-flops from the companionway stairs, and Vanessa stepped onto the deck.
51
Everybody stood, frozen, saying nothing. Finally, Dino spoke. “Okay, Stone,” he said, “you’re not crazy. I’m crazy.”
“Me, too,” Viv said.
And then the apparition spoke. “Nobody’s crazy. I’m not dead.”
“Prove it,” Dino said.
“What do you want me to do? Bleed for you?”
“Don’t bother,” Stone said. “You’ve convinced me. Please sit down so I don’t have to look up at you.”
Vanessa sat down and crossed her legs. “Well?”
“Explain yourself,” Stone said. “And don’t leave anything out.”
“Dino made a mistake,” she said. “He found the wrong corpse.”
“You think I never examined a corpse?” Dino asked, his voice rising.
“I didn’t say that,” Vanessa replied. “I said you examined the wrong corpse. It was understandable, being covered in blood and all that. I found it about thirty seconds before you did. When you and Stone went out to the vestibule with guns drawn, I grabbed my little bag, then ran through the kitchen and out to the service elevator. I rode it to the basement, then ran into the alley and up to the street, where I got a cab.”
“Why didn’t you say something to somebody?” Stone asked.
“Because I didn’t want to be surrounded by cops and, maybe, arrested for murder. I knew where you were heading, since I was meant to go with you. I went to LaGuardia and got a nonstop to Key West. I remembered that you lived next to a strip joint called Bare Assets, so I went there and looked up the street beside it. I found your name on the mailbox. I went in, and a housekeeper said you had just called and were taking a cruise instead.”
“Sane, so far,” Stone admitted.
“Then Lance walked in. I surprised him, too. After he calmed down, we had a conversation about where you had gone, and he made some phone calls and said you wouldn’t get where you were going until the next day. So yesterday we took the little seaplane out here, where we were met by the Coast Guard cutter, and we were aboard that until you arrived.”
“How’d you get aboard without being seen?”
“Did you see Lance come aboard?”
“Well, no.”
“He’s sneaky that way. He put me in an empty cabin up forward, told me to wait until some things were settled, and eventually, I came up here.”
“Who was the dead woman in your bathroom?” Dino asked.
“I don’t know.”
“I can guess,” Stone said.
“So, guess,” Dino replied.
“Remember the lovely Anna?”
“She was never caught. She could have been anywhere. Why would she go after Vanessa?” Dino said.
“To keep her from ratting out Majorov.”
“Oh, shit. Well, at least we don’t have to worry about her anymore.”
“There was somebody else in my apartment that I didn’t know about,” Vanessa said. “I think he killed her, then got out the same way I did, but earlier.” She recrossed her legs. “I think that about covers it,” she said.
“And it was you who put the amyl nitrate in my lime?”
“It was not,” she replied firmly. “Who else was here?”
“Lance,” Stone said. “But why would he want to do that?”
“Beats me, but I saw him do it. Maybe he just wanted to confuse you.”
“Well, that worked,” Stone replied. “I thought I had had a stroke.”
“No,” Viv said. “The amyl nitrate covers all your symptoms — at least, one squirt would. Two squirts of lime juice, and you’d have just passed out for a while.”
“Where’s the plastique bomb?” Stone asked.
“I flushed it down the toilet at the bottom of the stairs.”
“That didn’t clog it?”
“Nope, it went straight down and out to wherever things go.”
“No,” Stone said. “We can’t flush into these waters. It went into the holding tank. Has anybody pooped since we got aboard?”
All heads were shaken.
Stone picked up a phone and asked Todd to inspect the tank and to bring in any unusual object he found there.
“Why do you want the thing?” Dino asked.
“Because I don’t want it to accidentally go off in the holding tank. I don’t know how I would explain it to my partners in the yacht. I don’t think our insurance covers that.”
“Better safe than sorry,” Vanessa said.
“You should have thought of that before you flushed,” Stone replied.
52
They ate lunch pretty much in silence. When they had finished, Dino said, “Why are you so quiet, Stone?”
“I’m figuring out who’s going to try to kill us next.”
“Valery Majorov,” Dino said. “Who’s left?”
“Okay, it’s Majorov. How’s he going to try to do it?”
“Well, the bomb is tucked away somewhere below,” Dino said. “In the maid’s closet in the hallway.”
“Means of attempt on us: sniper?”
“From where? We’ve got pretty much a 360-degree view from the yacht, and I can’t see a sniper’s perch from where I’m sitting.”
“You see my dilemma,” Stone said.
“How about an air attack?” Dino said.
“The only airplane hereabouts is the tourists’ seaplane from Key West, and I don’t think that’s equipped for strafing or bombing.”
As if on cue, there was a buzzing from the sky. Stone grabbed a handheld radio and raised Captain Todd. “You’ve got some rifles aboard, haven’t you?”
“Yep, two of them.”
“Load them and bring them on deck, will you.”
“Yes, sir. You want the shotguns we use for skeet?”
“If you’ve got any buckshot.”
“I’ll check.”
Stone got up and peered out from under the deck awning toward the east. “It’s coming.”
The skipper arrived on deck with an armful of long guns and some boxes of ammo.
“Dino,” Stone said, “get the ladies to loading and you go below and bring up our handguns.”
“Mine, too,” Vanessa said. “It’s in my ready bag.”
“Stone,” Dino said, “even if we get lucky, I don’t know if we can get away with shooting down a planeload of tourists.”
“Just get the handguns. If they know we’re armed, that might hold them off.”
Dino went below.
The airplane lined up into the wind, set down in the lagoon, and taxied to the dock at the fort.
Dino came up from below and deposited three handguns on the dining table.
Passengers began to leave the airplane and walk to the fort. Soon it was empty.
“Well,” Viv said, “that was a pretty good drill.”
“The next one might not be a drill,” Stone said.