What you do is faint.
“Chase,” said Jacob. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”
The floor rose and dipped, and I couldn’t get air. I tried to scream, but I don’t think I did anything except gag. Jacob was calling Alex, calling help, help, she’s down, something’s wrong.
A door opened and closed upstairs, and I heard Alex on the stairs. The office was getting dim, the walls closing in, darkness closing in. And I was suddenly far away and at peace.
Then I was outside lying on the ground on a pile of dead leaves with a jacket thrown over me. I looked up to see Robin struggling to get Alex out the front door. I wanted to help, but when I tried to get up, my head went around again, and I fell back.
I think it put me out again.
I’m not sure how much time passed. The rescue squad was there, and they were administering oxygen. When I tried to push them away, they tightened their grip. Somebody, Robin, I think, told me to be quiet. Alex was standing off to one side talking to Robin. He seemed to be okay.
I was inside an ambulance. A medical tech was doing an exam. She told me I’d be fine, and I should just lie still. “Just relax, Chase,” she said.
She said we were headed for the hospital. “Just for a check. We want to make sure everything’s normal.”
Alex, leaning on another tech, climbed into the vehicle. “Good to see you breathing again, Chase,” he said.
Then Robin leaned in. “Hi, love. You okay?”
I raised a hand to signal yes.
“Good. I’ll see you at the hospital.”
The tech asked me how I felt and removed the mask so I could answer.
Alex leaned over me. “You threw a scare into us for a minute there, kid.”
“What happened?” The ambulance was lifting off.
“Somebody tried to kill us.”
SIX
Did you see any lights?
—The question routinely put to Sunset Tuttle by his colleagues and, eventually, picked up by comedians
Fenn Redfield was waiting with a police unit when we got back to the country house. “Somebody shipped you a pagoda,” he said.
By then my memory had returned, and I recalled how impressed I’d been by it. “It’s loaded,” he continued, “with powdered magnesium. The pagoda has a solid-state refrigeration unit. When you handle the thing, the refrigeration unit activates. It cools the magnesium. And sucks the oxygen out of the house. Or at least off the ground floor. It’s a good thing Robin showed up when he did.” The unit was still on my desk, in front of us. “Any idea who wants you dead this time?”
We looked at each other, and I immediately thought of Brian Lewis and Doug Bannister. But no, that didn’t make sense.
“Did you check with the shipping company?” Alex said.
“Sure. Nobody has any recollection about who had mailed the package. Of course, Baylor Purchasing doesn’t even exist.” He looked at us disapprovingly. “You sure you have no idea who’s behind this?”
“Don’t know,” said Alex.
He looked at me. “Me neither, Fenn.”
“Okay,” he said. “We’ll ask around. If I can come up with something, I’ll let you know. Meantime—”
“We’ll be careful.”
When we were alone, Alex told me he thought it would be a good idea if I took some time off. Stayed away from the country house until Fenn figured out who did it.
“I can’t do that,” I said. “I’m not going to leave you alone to deal with this.” And, after a pause, “You think it’s connected with the tablet?”
“Probably,” he said. “Chase, that was a scary experience. I thought for a minute we’d lost you.” His voice sounded odd.
“I’m okay,” I said. “Just have to be more careful for a while.”
“I could fire you.”
“You’d only have to hire somebody else. I wasn’t the target.”
Robin was very gracious about it all. I thanked him, and he told me he was just grateful he’d gotten there when he had. “I’m worried about you,” he said. “Maybe you should stay at my place until this thing gets settled.”
Well, I was taken by his generosity, and I told him so. “But I’ll be more careful from now on when I open packages.”
“This is serious stuff, Chase. I wouldn’t want to lose you.” That was said in a more serious tone than his offer for me to bunk with him.
“Thanks, Robin,” I said. “I’ll be careful.”
Audree was a member of the Seaside Players, an amateur theater group. When Alex invited me to join him for Moving Target, the production in which she was performing, I said sure and took Robin along. “Strictly for security purposes,” I told him.
“Listen, Chase,” he said. “This is not funny.”
“You don’t want to go?”
“I’ll go. Sure. But somebody wants you dead.”
“Actually,” I said, “the package was addressed to Alex.”
I like amateur theater. Always have. Audree has tried to talk me into joining Seaside, but the prospect of standing on a stage in front of an audience while I try to remember my lines scares me more than anything I can think of. So I always pretend I’m too busy. “Maybe next year.”
It turned out to be opening night for the show. Audree played the harried beauty of the title. She is pursued by police, who think she killed her husband; by the actual killer, who wrongly believes she knows who he is; and by a crazed former boyfriend who has never been willing to let go.
At one point she calls her lawyer. Robin commented that it was exactly what people do: Put the lawyer in the maniac’s crosshairs. And, of course, when the lawyer got picked off, at the end of the second act, he reacted with a resigned sigh.
Eventually, the ex-boyfriend makes off with her eleven-year-old daughter, whose safety he is willing to exchange for the heroine’s virtue. And, as the audience was aware, her life. Ultimately, of course, everything ends well.
Audree was a bit over-the-top, maybe a trifle screechy when she was being chased around by the nutcase, but otherwise she delivered a good performance. Afterward, we attended a cast party. Robin told me he was tempted to join the Seaside group.
“I didn’t know you were interested in acting,” I said.
He glanced around the room. It was filled with attractive women.
We found others who had known Sunset Tuttle. One, a financial advisor who’d visited him hoping to pick up a client, told us yes, he’d seen the tablet. “Kept it in the cabinet, just like you said. I was in there one time. The cabinet door had been left open. When he noticed, he got up and closed it. It was no big deal. But I remember thinking how odd it was to keep a gravestone—that’s what it looked like—in his office. I mentioned it, but he just shrugged it off. Said something to the effect it was an artifact. That he had to keep the cabinet door shut to maintain an even temperature.”
“That’s nonsense,” Alex said.
“I thought that, too, but I wasn’t going to argue with the guy. I didn’t care if he kept rocks in his cabinet.”
The OAAA, the Orion Arm Archeological Association, maintains a museum and conference center with attached living quarters for visiting historians and archeologists in the Plaza, adjacent to Korchnoi University in Andiquar. The Plaza also serves as a social center for members of the organization and their guests. Alex had a blown-up picture of the tablet propped against the wall. “There has to be somebody down there who’d recognize this thing,” he said.
Alex attended meetings periodically. It was a good way to keep in touch with what was happening in the field. Usually, I went along, not because I had a professional knowledge of whatever subject happened to be on the agenda but because my presence fit with the social environment. As long as the conversations appeared casual, there was less chance of alerting anyone to the possibility that something substantive was happening, thereby running the price up.