Maria Hudgins - Lacy Glass 02 - The Man on the Istanbul Train (26 page)

Lacy took over again. “Now they’ve got two bodies, one is wrongly assumed to be Max Sebring and one is wrongly assumed to be a drifter.”

Sierra, hanging on Lacy’s every word, had scooted so far forward in her folding chair it threatened to collapse on her. “Wait! Are you saying that Michael didn’t complain when Henry killed his brother?”

Paul said, “He may
have
complained but we wouldn’t know about it, would we? And then what? Michael wasn’t in any position to tell the cops.”

Lacy silently thanked Paul for answering a logical question she herself had not thought through, then continued. “Henry sees a chance to pass Clifford’s body off as Max. He can take advantage of the lack of embalming to insure the casket remains closed, but there will be an autopsy back home. No way around that. I’m not sure how he managed this part. Of course, Henry had formally identified the body as Max before it left Turkey. Maybe that was sufficient. Anyway, their best chance at this point is the old switcheroo.

“Next problem. What to do about me? I’d met Michael on the train, although he introduced himself as Jason Remmick. I tell him I’m going to an archaeological dig but I don’t say where. I even hand him Max’s trench coat with Max’s name inside, and I tell him to give it to the police. After all, he told me he
is
a policeman. Did I see that label? Michael doesn’t know, but he passes this information along to Henry, and Henry keeps a close eye on me in camp.

“Then I borrow Henry’s car. Gülden and I go to the train station and to the gendarmerie. Now he knows I’m snooping.”

“Did you tell him where you went?” Paul asked.

“I told him I was going to the train station because I lost my credit card.”

“Ohh!” Gülden’s hand flew to her mouth. “I think Henry asked me where we’d gone. I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to tell.”

“There’s no reason you should have known,” Lacy said. “But once he knew I’d been to the gendarmerie, he knew he had to silence me. That night he sees me going into Paul’s tent but he doesn’t see me leaving it. He waits outside in the dark until he sees a female coming out of Paul’s tent. He attacks her.”

Sierra winced. “Why did he hit me only once? Why didn’t he finish me off?”

Paul, sitting next to her, put a hand on her shoulder. “You screamed. Or somebody screamed. Thank God. If no one screamed, I’m sure he would have finished you off.”

“Your scream woke everyone up,” Bob said.

“Anyway, Sierra, I’m sorry you had to take the attack that was meant for me,” Lacy said. “But that was only the start of it.  Monday morning Henry took me to the airport in Adana so I could fly to Istanbul. His buddies are waiting for me when I get off the plane. Elaine rides into town on the same shuttle bus as I do, but at the time I don’t know who she is.

“I’m sure they tracked me to the Pera Palace Hotel, to my interview with Elbert MacSweeney, and to the Spice Market. I go there only because I learn that two weeks earlier the real Max and another man were taken there by taxi. By that time I’m getting too close for comfort and they have to stop me. Jason—excuse me, Michael—catches up with me in that god-awful room over the fishmonger and tosses me out the window. I wake up the next morning, bound and gagged.”

Sierra said, “And again! Why didn’t he finish you off? These guys didn’t flinch at murder. Why were you so lucky?”

Bob Mueller’s head snapped up. “He couldn’t carry her body out while people were still there shopping. Bound and gagged? No way. If he’d tried to carry her out unbound and ungagged, she might have come to and started screaming.”

“Good point.” Gülden studied her hands folded in her lap but didn’t look up.

“So he taped my hands and feet and left me there unconscious. I wonder why.”

“To get a wheelbarrow?” Süleyman suggested this so timidly they all cracked up.

“Something like that,” Lacy said. “Carrying dead weight is not easy.” She stopped long enough to wet her parched mouth with the bottle of water in front of her. On the advice of the nurses she’d been forcing liquids all day. She looked across the table at Bob Mueller’s bare arms and, again, wondered what that cuneiform tattoo meant. She asked.

“You notice it’s on the inside of my arm so I’m the only one who sees it right side up? It’s a reminder to myself. Loosely translated, it says, “Success comes to those who don’t quit.”

“Exactly what I was saying to Lacy just the other day,” Paul said.

“Funny, what I heard was, ‘You are the stubbornest girl I ever met.’ ”

Chapter Thirty

Paul followed Lacy to the top of Four Bars Hill and sat on a rock while she phoned Milo Dakin. They talked for more than a half-hour but Paul said nothing about the fact that the call was on his phone and his dime. Lacy knew this, but the white Ford rented to Milo was totaled, lying in a mangled heap somewhere north of her current location, and Milo was liable for the damages. He lived with his sister in a walk-up flat, no job, only known source of income a book that probably sold no more than a half-dozen copies a month, if that. He couldn’t pay and it would be wrong to ask him to. Lacy told him to do nothing until she came to Istanbul. She’d go with him to the rental agency and take full responsibility herself.

There went her discretionary spending for all of next year. Her father should be back at his office in a day or two and she could get him to cover it for now. She’d pay him back and her mother would never know. She promised herself this was the last time she’d ask her dad to bail her out of a jam.

“How will you get to Istanbul?” Paul asked when she’d hung up and joined him on the rock.

“I can take Henry’s car. It’s from a different rental agency, but I can turn it in for him.”

“Did Henry ask you to do this?”

“I suggested it.”

“Awfully nice of you, considering he tried to kill you three times.”

“I’m not being nice. I can’t fly without a passport and I intend to use his car in Istanbul until I’ve run all my errands. Like going to the American Consulate again. The taxi cost an arm and a leg last time.”

“I’m sorry about everything, Lacy. I wish … I never called you.” Paul’s head hung low between his shoulders, his elbows on his knees. Lacy couldn’t tell if he was crying but his voice caught on the word “wish.”

It was more than she could take. After four attempts on her life. After her dream of being with Paul unceremoniously burst like a little bubble, she was now down about twenty thousand dollars in wrecked cars, plane tickets, and hotel bills. Her entire body was scraped and bruised. She hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in ages, and her nerves were raw. All it took was, “I wish I never called you.” She dissolved in a heap, her battered head against her bruised knees.

Paul pulled her over, kissed the top of her head, then her cheek, then her lips. He drew back, studying her face through the glasses that had become twisted on his face by the close contact. “I have issues, you know. You don’t want to get mixed up with me, Lacy, and I won’t let you.”

“Can we talk about it?”

“Maybe. But not tonight. Tonight we celebrate.”

He pulled her to her feet and they started down the hill together. Lacy felt better. She was alive, she hadn’t quit, and Paul had just kissed her. “I guess I won’t get my dinner at the Four Seasons now,” she said. “Henry bet me a dinner at the Four Seasons that he could identify the man on the train if he got a look at the police photos.”

“The Four Seasons in Istanbul? Wait. He
could
identify the man. Henry was right so
you
owe
him
dinner.”

“But he identified the man in the photos as Clifford Craven. That was wrong.”

“Tell you what. How about I go to Istanbul with you? I need to go anyway and Bob can manage things without me for a few days. I’ll take you to the Four Seasons.”

Lacy thought.
It’s a two-day drive. We’d have to stop for the night somewhere. Linus Pauling Hannah, you’re mine.
But all she said was, “Okay, you can do the driving. I have no license.”

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