Keeper whistled. “In Palo Alto. Worth how much?”
Finn shook his head, and Keeper turned away with a smile. “All the victims but Mauritz’s wife were doing biological research, related one way or another to yours, as near as I can tell,” Finn said. “But I’m no expert. To me, it’s all buzzwords and jargon.”
“Biology can seem that way at times.”
“Coincidence?”
“I truly don’t know,” I said. “Do you?”
“And now your brother, shot to death in New York,” Finn said.
I cleared my throat. “I still have to tell our mother.”
“What’s going on, Dr. Cousins?” Finn took a deep breath. “Somebody trying to scare scientists, or discredit them, maybe? Radical Greens, animal rights freaks?”
“I don’t torture kittens or puppies.”
“Any other threats you’re aware of?”
“I’ve never been threatened,” I said.
“Nobody ever tried to call you?” Finn asked.
“Other than my brother, no.”
“He didn’t threaten you.”
“Of course not.”
“Did he say anything unusual?”
“Yes.”
Finn’s face filled with patient encouragement.
“He asked if our father had talked to me. Our father is dead. My brother seemed tired.” I looked from Finn to Keeper and back to Finn in the warm, stuffy room, a lump rising in my throat. It was certainly no place and no time to start crying.
Finn pulled up another sheet of paper and scanned it with his pale blue eyes. “A lot of odd behavior. We’re getting nowhere trying to find a motive.”
“I doubt Nadia Evans did anything,” I said.
“She is attractive, isn’t she?” Finn said.
“Was Mauritz jealous of her?” Keeper asked.
Finn was not impressed by this question, either. He waved it aside, arranged his papers on the table, and pulled a chair close to mine before sitting. He clasped his hands earnestly.
“How would you induce coordinated, malicious behavior?” he asked. “Surely not with food poisoning.”
“Hypnosis,” Keeper suggested, clasping his knee with big rough-skinned hands. Finn scowled ever so slightly and Keeper tilted his hands back, giving it up.
“Was there food poisoning?” I asked, trying to get into the spirit of this peculiar tête-à-tête.
“The FBI lab says no. The food on the ship was free of bugs or toxins. Besides, Mrs. Mauritz was dead before you put out to sea.”
“Drugs?” I asked. I did not want to reveal my earlier line of thinking, so I played as if this were all new to me.
Finn didn’t seem to mind my reversing the roles. “No drugs we can find.” He faced the window, resigned to futility.
I began to feel for the first time that I might be more a source of information than a suspect. Keeper, however, was still trying to keep up the pressure with a baleful stare.
“The feds seem to have put this on a back burner,” Finn said. “Our Seattle shoes walk us only so far. I can’t be concerned with crimes at sea or in other states, except where they tell us something about our own single, lonely murder. Dr. Mauritz, frankly, is a pitiful specimen, a mental case. No memory of what happened on the ship or at his house. We’ll prosecute, and maybe the feds will prosecute, but I doubt it will give anyone satisfaction.”
“I wish I could help,” I said.
“So do I,” Finn said, and waved his arm in dismissal. “You’re free to go, Doctor. Sorry about your brother. It’s a crazy old world out there. If you learn anything interesting, we’d appreciate a heads-up.”
“Live long and prosper, Spock,” Keeper cracked from his corner, with a wicked little smile.
18
CORAL GABLES, FLORIDA • JUNE 27
Lissa threw her broad black sun hat on the dark maple dining table. “God damn it all to hell,” she muttered, and lifted her fingers as if to drag on a cigarette. She tapped her lips, pink, with long nails a tasteful shade of pearl, and gave me a flicking, sidewise glance, to see what I thought of her manners, not that she cared. “He deserved better. He deserved a lot better.”
I could not disagree. Never in my life had I felt the impact of mortality so strongly, not even when Dad died. I had just buried my genetic double.
At our mother’s insistence, Rob had been encased in a ridiculous waterproof Aztec Bronze casket. At the funeral, under the hideous sun, we had watched the shiny sealed tub of pickled meat drop into a seven-foot pit backhoed from Florida limestone.
