Coming down off my high, I handed the phone to Betty. She listened for a moment, then shut it and turned to me.
“Owen insists that dinner is on him. And after dinner he wants to see you. He’s flying into Seattle.”
Dan and Valerie high-fived me. Betty was more subdued, though I wouldn’t learn why for five more hours.
Angels can be pipers, too.
15
Dinner at Canlis was elegant but quiet. The somber gray-stained wood and white tablecloths framed a terrific view of Lake Union. I could seldom afford to eat so well, but I was nervous and excited all at once, and the best I could do was share a champagne toast with Valerie and Dan and pick at my plate.
We shook hands and parted at midnight. Betty Shun drove me in her Lexus to one of Montoya’s four Seattle residences, a penthouse apartment on the top floor of a complex less than five blocks away. I catnapped during the short drive.
Betty woke me when she set the emergency brake in the underground garage. I jerked up in the seat. She was staring at me. Her face glowed pale violet in the garage’s cruel fluorescence.
“I have one question,” she said. “Why do you want to live a thousand years?”
I cocked my head to one side to work a crick out of my neck. “More is better than not enough,” I said.
“Life is full of pain and disappointment. Why prolong the misery?”
“I don’t believe life is all pain and misery,” I said.
“I’m a Catholic,” Betty Shun said, still searching my face with her eyes. “I know the world is bad. My grandmother is a Buddhist. She knows the world is illusion. I want to live a healthy life, a useful life, but I don’t want to live forever. Something better is in the wings.”
“I’m more of a Shintoist,” I said. “I believe the living world is all around us, thinking and working all the time, and that all living things want to understand what’s going on. We just don’t live long enough to find out. And when we die, that’s it. No second act.”
“You will push out others not yet born,” she said.
“If the world is full of pain, I’ll be doing them a favor,” I said testily. I wasn’t up to a sophomoric debate at midnight, not after a hard and enlightening day’s work.
Betty Shun blinked at me with her patented empty face and opened her door to get out.
Compared to the mansion on Anson Island, the penthouse was positively demure. Less than five thousand square feet, vaulted ceilings throughout, bedrooms suspended above a maple-floored workroom slash studio, with sixty feet of glassed-in sunporch currently fending off a spatter of early morning rain. It smelled of spearmint and tea roses.
Montoya met us on the sunporch and handed me a cup of very strong coffee.
“Explain it again,” he demanded as Betty left us. “I’ve got five funerals to go to in the next week, and I can’t keep it straight. I want to know where we’re headed.” He bit off his words angrily, but his face seemed calm. “I’m afraid of death, Dr. Cousins. You showed me a possible escape hatch. And I took the bait.”
I sat stiff as ice on the lounge. I had no idea what he was driving at, but I did not like it.
“Sometimes I sample every dish on the menu,” he said. “I blow money just to taste all the choices. Understand?”
I regarded him through bleary eyes. “No,” I said.
“I’m concerned—or rather, let’s say some people are concerned for me. Concerned about your involvement. You’re a mystery, Hal.”
His expression was one of wing-plucking curiosity. I wiped my damp palms on my pant legs.
“Betty told me about your tiff with Mauritz before you went aboard Sea Messenger. You had quite an argument.”
“We just said hello.”
Montoya ignored me. “Murder is following you around like a cloud of smoke.” He gestured vaguely at my head with a crooked finger. “Bloom recommended I not even meet with you again.”
I balled up my fists and stood. “I’ve been completely straight with you, Mr. Montoya.”
“Owen, please.” He scrutinized my fists with that same wing-plucking curiosity, then looked up at my eyes like a little boy wondering idly what this strange little package, so tightly wrapped, might contain.
“I don’t know why Betty would lie to you.”
“I have to believe my people.”
“There has to be more. I deserve an explanation.”
Montoya seemed to lose all interest. I might have been fading to invisibility right on his porch.
I’ve never taken rejection well. Lies can drive me to fury. But something was deeply wrong, and if I were Montoya, considering what had happened and what his people were saying, perhaps I would feel the same way. I needed to get out of this rich man’s playhouse and do some detective work of my own. But the meeting wasn’t over, not as far as I was concerned.
“Our agreement specifies I complete substantial ongoing research if for any reason you decide to cut off funding.” I congratulated myself on getting that out without a single garbled syllable.
Montoya tapped his watch. “Time to sleep.”
He walked off the porch and climbed the stairs to his bedroom. Bloom and Shun waited at the edge of the studio. Bloom was bent over examining an impressive collection of glass paperweights in a tall cabinet. Shun stood back a step or two with arms folded like a guilty schoolgirl.
“I’m being sacked,” I told them. “I could give him what he wants, but he won’t listen to me. He listens to people who lie.”
Bloom gave a comradely nod, lips turned down. “Sorry to hear it. I’m to escort you downstairs.”
