“No,” Felix said in answer to Molly’s question, “although now that we’re getting good at this game, I think that may need checking out. You, Stirling, and I can do a little bit of homework, shall we?”
“Josh’s father first,” Stirling said, and Molly twisted in her seat to kiss her little brother’s shoulder.
“’Course,” she said. “That just bubbles up from my bitter depths sometimes.”
“As it should,” Felix acknowledged. “It has been too long unaddressed. As has Matteo’s death.” He let out a sigh. “We have much good to do, children. I hope you’re ready.”
“So ready,” Grace said. “I have no idea why we’re not out doing it yet. Go on!”
Some of the tiredness lifted from Felix’s smile. “Of course. Matteo’s mysterious circumstances were pretty much the exact opposite of a sinking yacht. He was killed in the middle of the Mojave Desert, along with thirty-six incubating eggs from a species of endangered bird.”
There was a rather stunned silence.
“We’ll get back to the birds later,” Hunter said, although it was clear from his tone that the birds were very much on his mind. “How was he killed?”
“His car drove straight into a cliff.”
Another stunned silence.
“Not off a cliff?” Chuck probed. “Because, you know, off a cliff would be a way to go.”
“True. But this wasn’t the Grand Canyon, where the roads are on top and the cliff was on the bottom. This was going through Nevada toward Arizona, in which the road was on the bottom and the cliff was just sort of there.”
More silence, and then to Felix’s obvious relief, an aerial shot came up of a long flat stretch of desert with a crossroad. To the southeast of the crossroads was the pointy pie end of what looked to be a long mesa, the striations of rock exposed by erosion splashed like paint along its sides. The mesa extended down the lower quarter of the picture and far beyond the scope of the camera, and everybody in the room gasped in comprehension.
“Ohh!”
“So instead of running him off the road,” Chuck said, “somebody ran him into a cliff!”
“Yes,” Felix cried, obviously excited for the concept to be understood. “That’s exactly what happened. Two somebodies, we suspect. Matteo had planned a cross-country excursion, but a very peculiar one. He went from wine tasting in California before traveling through Nevada, and according to his brother, he was planning on continuing southward down Arizona to cross the border into Mexico and thence to the Gulf of Mexico to board a yacht about two weeks after his accident occurred.”
“Why?” Molly asked, her eyes wide and horrified.
“Why what, dearest?” Julia asked.
“Why? Why? Why would you drive from California, through the desert, then go south through more desert, then cross the border through more desert, then catch a boat into the ocean and go sailing to—where was it, Felix?”
“It was to be a trip across the ocean,” Felix said, eyebrows furrowed. “The yacht was fully outfitted to travel to the African coast. Why?”
“Because that’s even more desert!” she protested. “Why would anyone do this? Why? Why?”
“Molly,” Julia said delicately. “I do realize you, perhaps, might not have made that trip.”
“She wouldn’t have survived that trip,” Stirling said dryly. “She blows up like a giant heat blister in the sun. She would have needed her own tent, fully formed, around her person.”
Molly shuddered. “Heinous,” she proclaimed.
There were some hidden smiles around the room, and then Chuck commented, “It’s pretty country, Molly-girl. I know, I know. Hot. But the rock formations in Arizona and throughout the Sonoran Desert? There is some real beauty there. And the gulf is—” He grimaced. “—was a gorgeous place before mankind came along and fucked it up. If anyone wants to run a scam on the fuckers who did that, I am all in.”
“Environmental polluters are third or fourth on the list,” Felix said crossly. “We can only do so much.”
“I hear you,” Chuck said. “Did you hear that, Lucius? We’ll get to your factory eventually.”
“I’m working on it!” Lucius huffed, and Carl raised his eyebrows at Chuck because this had not come up during all of the soul-baring small talk of their little adventure.
Chuck mouthed, “Later,” at him, and Carl nodded, content.
“And continuing on,” Felix interrupted. “So Matteo was killed in a car accident that involved two other vehicles, according to crime scene photos.” A picture came up—obviously from a helicopter—that showed a terrible twisted mass of metal mashed against the side of the cliff. The body was, thank heavens, not visible, but that this accident had been fatal for somebody was indisputable. Felix’s voice dropped. “We were fortunate in this case that the scene was spotted by helicopter first, and the aerial shots were taken from far away. The tire tracks are very clear.” They were, too, carved in the dust that coated the road like flour. The story was easily read; the crashed car had been going fast, tread marks straight and purposeful, when another car had pulled in front of it, sliding sideways to force it off the road. The car in the rear had driven parallel to the wrecked car just long enough to keep it from turning a complete 180, and the cliff face had been the only choice.
For a moment there was a horrified quiet in the room—not silence, because there were comments, clarifications, people making sure what they saw was what the others saw—but when the quiet was over, the silence was grim and resigned.
They weren’t looking at an accident. At the very least, they were looking at a pursuit. At the worst, they were looking at a murder.
“Did the police find anything?” Josh asked. He sounded sharp—a little gruff, but sharp—and Carl wondered what a day like this would cost him.
Felix grunted, and the next words were thoughtful. “The problem,” he said, “is that the first response when arriving at a scene like this one is to see if there’s a chance of survival. By the time the police arrived, the crime scene was a giant dust storm, and several firemen and EMTs were attempting to cut the body out of the car. If it were not for the aerial shot from far enough away to not disturb the tire tracks, we’d have nothing.”
“But we know he was driven into a cliff, probably going at high speed,” Hunter said thoughtfully.
And it was Michael who asked the next question. “What was he driving? That wasn’t no ordinary car, was it?”
“That, my friend, was an acid-lime-colored, up-to-the-minute Jaguar F-Pace. One of the fastest SUVs in the world. Matteo was something of a car aficionado. He even raced the European circuit for a number of years after he got married.” Felix paused. “No children from the marriage, I’m afraid.”
“Subtle, Dad,” Josh said. “Real subtle.”
“Well, we did look into all avenues,” Felix replied modestly.
Michael stood up from Carl’s side and got closer to the screen. “Danny, could you make that a little bigger?” he asked, pointing to the blob of iridescent green wreckage. “There’s something here, to the side. Like it shot through the rear windshield and took out the whole thing. It’s connected by wires….” He paced a little, muttering, giving everybody a look at something long and square, like a metal case. Then he spoke up again, turning toward Felix. “Felix, how fast did you say this thing was going?”