TWENTY-THREE

I am too old to drink myself into a stupor. That night I made an exception. Esme had arrived at the lab a few minutes after I had and listened to the same lecture from Flinders Mott. She’d asked a lot of questions and then, in the face of the little man’s reasoning, wilted and admitted defeat.

“I’ll have to tell the vice chancellor,” she warned.

I shrugged.

They invited me to dinner, but I had no taste for wakes, and elected to go home instead, where I got out a bottle of Elmer T. Lee I’d been saving for a special occasion.

No sense calling Pepper: Why ruin her evening? She’d probably feel sorry for me and come running over. Well, I could do all right feeling sorry for myself.

I’m a slow drinker and by nine-thirty the bottle was still half full, but what I’d drunk was more than enough.

After all, the governor had been a drinking man. Captain Russell had taken away his hard liquor and put him on wine.

“Not exactly cold turkey,” I told Digger, who looked at me with infinite sympathy. “But it probably beat the water.”

His eyes told me he agreed.

“So we’re back to square one,” I explained. “Somebody fabricated this whole business. And that means the governor really is buried under that granite block and Pringle still isn’t going to be able to dig him up. At least Freddie’ll look like a fool, and DeLage won’t make money from his tourist park.”

The phone rang and I stared at it. I didn’t want to talk to anyone in this condition, with my words jumbled and my thoughts five seconds behind. The recorded message said to leave a number and then fell silent.

“Can’t be important,” I told Digger and he nuzzled me.

Then I heard a familiar voice: “Al, you son-of-a-bitch, what are you trying to pull? The vice chancellor called Nick and told him about the forgery. Is that your work? You trying to make us look stupid? You trying to screw up this whole deal?” By now the voice had grown to a shout. “My lawyer’s gonna have your ass. That’s a promise.”

“Fuck you, Freddie,” I said, and erased the recording.

I looked down at my confidant.

“Who, Digger? Who would do something like this?” I hiccuped. “Nick doesn’t know enough. Sure, he could’ve hired somebody. But does he think nobody would catch it?”

I reached for the bottle and poured another swallow into my glass.

“But, then, why should they? Nick’s cheap. He probably hired some half-assed amateur historian who thought he was too bright to get caught.”

The whiskey went down warm and smooth.

“But does that mean our forger is the killer?”

Digger cocked his head.

“But what about Miss Ouida’s journals? How could they be forged? But they have to be, Digger, ’cause, like Lincoln said, this onion can’t endure half forged and half free.” I shook my head. “Well, you know what I mean.”

I wasn’t sure he did, but the whiskey hit the bottom of my already inflamed stomach then and a sudden urge to heave overwhelmed me. I raced for the bathroom and the rest of the night was a kaleidoscope of retchings and tortured dreams of the governor, heading for Grinder’s and telling someone (probably me), “I’m on my way to die. Don’t look for me anywhere else.”

The next morning I lay awake for an unknown time, wishing my stomach would disassociate itself from the rest of my body. My head hurt, but I couldn’t bear to move, for fear it would set off my stomach again. My mouth felt like I’d gargled with cotton balls and the room stank with a sourness.

I had to get in to work or they’d be worrying about me.

And then I remembered it was Saturday.

Last night I dreamed Freddie called me, raving.

Except that as I lay there, sorting out memory from imagining, I realized it hadn’t been a dream.

I reached over for Pepper and felt a furry body.

When I turned my head that way I saw two soulful eyes and a long snout.

“Go find that possum,” I moaned.

Half an hour later I forced myself up and headed for the shower. The unshaven specter who stared at me from the mirror with bloodshot eyes was someone I barely recognized.

What was wrong with me? I was acting like a kid. Grown-ups didn’t take their disappointments this way. After all, the only thing that had happened was that the company had lost a couple of grand and missed being involved in a scandal that could have ruined our reputation.

Or was it really the Lewis business I was disappointed about?

I showered, fed Digger, put on some coffee, and pulled out some frozen waffles. As I ate, I tried to make sense of it all. Someone had concocted this business, but the size of the fraud was what astounded me: He’d had to know about the burial of Louis, and he’d had to also know the story of the mysterious death of Lewis. That pointed to a historian, or at least a very well read amateur. But not just any amateur had access to Désirée. Ergo, we were looking for someone with connections to the Fabré family, and that led back to Nick.

But he didn’t know enough history, so the idea had to have originated with the person who put him up to it.

I was back where I’d started last night. And the pieces still didn’t fit.

I swallowed the last of the coffee and tried to jump-start my mind. Charlie Fabré had probably gotten a tax break by donating his family papers to the university. But someone had been needed to put the collection in order. Maybe Fabré had employed an archivist.

Who? Would the university have a record? Maybe … but the rare book room would be closed until Monday.

I cleaned up the dishes and tried to think what to do next. I wanted to call Pepper, although I didn’t want to be the bearer of bad news. But Esme had probably already talked to her. Still, I couldn’t be sure and I wanted to know she was all right.

She answered on the first ring.

“You talk to Esme?” I asked.

“Yes. It’s a bitch, isn’t it?”

“It was too good to be true,” I said. “We should’ve known.”

“Sometimes you have to take a chance.”

“I guess.”

“Alan, you’re such a pessimist.”

“Sorry.”

“I mean, I won’t let it go. I refuse.”

“Pepper …”

“There’s a poor old lady Nick DeLage has taken advantage of. I don’t think for a minute she had anything to do with this.”

“You’re going to see her, then.”

“Yes.”

“Good for you. But watch out for that nurse, Krogh. I don’t trust her.”

“Me either. And Alan …”

“Yeah?”

A pause. “Nothing. We’ll talk later.”

“Right.”

The rest of the day oozed away. I straightened up the house, and when my headache was gone, I took Digger for a mid-afternoon walk. It was a pleasant day, with a home football game tonight, and cars rushed past me along Park Boulevard with their purple banners rippling in the wind. In the big stadium parking lot, campers would be almost bumper to bumper, with people cooking chicken, sausages, and steaks on small grills. A few would even have prepared pots of jambalaya, feeding all comers in a spirit of general benevolence. And, of course, regardless of university rules, there would be plenty of beer.

I had to get my mind off Pepper and back to the real problem, which was the death of Meriwether Lewis.

Or was it?

The only death that could be effectively investigated was the murder of Brady Flowers.

Monday morning I would go to the rare book collection myself and see if I could find out who had catalogued the Hardin collection, if such records, in fact, existed.

I went back to the house, put Digger in the backyard, disconnected the upstairs phone, and took a long, fitful nap. When I got up it was nearly dark. I went downstairs, checked my answering machine, and saw, to my chagrin, that there were no messages. I watched an old movie and then flipped to the five o’clock local news.

After a story about a three-car pileup at Whiskey Bay, I poured myself a glass of milk. When I came back I was looking at Sarah Goforth, standing outside the now locked gate of Désirée.

Oh, shit.

“Today, a story we brought you yesterday has taken a strange and unexpected twist. We reported that a local businessman, Nicholas DeLage, was sponsoring an investigation to determine if the final resting place of the famous explorer Meriwether Lewis is located at Désirée Plantation, just across the river from Baton Rouge. DeLage had hired a local archaeological consultant and had even brought in famed forensics scientist Marcus Pringle to study the bones buried at Désirée. But now, according to a high official at Louisiana State University, the documentation that purported to prove that the bones were those of Lewis has been shown to be a forgery. Dr. Pringle is unavailable for comment, but we have learned that he has returned to his university in Michigan. We called Nicholas DeLage, but he has not returned our calls. And according to the consulting firm chosen, the project has been canceled. A spokesman for Pyramid Consultants, Dr. Frederick St. Ambrose, blamed DeLage’s previous consultant. According to St. Ambrose, the first archaeologists involved in the project ‘failed to perform the most elementary research to verify that these documents were genuine.’”

I switched off the television.

It really wouldn’t help to kick anything.

I went to sit in the backyard, away from the telephone. I didn’t really want to have to commiserate with Esme or Marilyn or David, and I was afraid that the one person I wanted to talk to wouldn’t call.

Digger’s barking shook me out of my thoughts.

I turned my head: He was staring at the back door, which meant he’d heard somebody was at the front.

Pepper.

I let him in and he rushed to the front, still barking. I stopped in front of the big front door, took a deep breath, and looked through the peephole.

A pug face, black curls, square figure. And my spirits fell.

Sarah Goforth.