Lianna held up her hands in a gesture of helplessness. “Look. I’m not here to hear your rendition of how you found the body. I’m here because Jake accidentally took my diary with him and I sort of want it back.”
“Haven’t the police contacted you about his belongings?” I asked.
“The police finally released everything to me. But there was no diary. I called them but they knew nothing about it — said they’d never seen a diary.”
“It must have been lost,” I said, trying to remember if I’d seen it. “The cops must have misplaced it.”
“I don’t think so,” said Lianna. “I mean the cops, anyway. They did double-check for me. And why would they lie?”
“What’s this got to do with me?”
“You were there, before the cops got to the scene. Was it there?”
My interest quickened. “What did it look like?”
“It was about the size of a deck of cards, hard black cover with bright orange tape on both sides, so that I wouldn’t misplace it easily.”
I thought back to the inside of the tent, saw the empty canister, the sleeping bag where I had thought a body would rear up and bite me. I saw an image of a small black book with an orange slash poking out from under the tent, but the name on it had not been Lianna’s. I hesitated, then said, “I think there was a small black book of some kind, but I didn’t look at it.” It had been there and yet it wasn’t when the cops arrived. What had happened to it? What was going on here?
“Look, Lianna, it was likely lost in the shuffle,” I added. She looked at me curiously and I ploughed ahead. “There was a lot of stuff the police took. They could easily have lost it, or more likely misplaced it. I’m sure it will turn up. Why is it so important?”
“You can ask that? I’ve just lost the man I spent fourteen wonderful years with and you ask me why I want my diary of some of those years?”
“I didn’t mean to sound callous but …” Jesus, I did mean to be callous, I thought. And why this reluctance to tell her everything I knew? And why hadn’t she asked me about their cat — presumably it was hers too? And it was still lost out there in the woods, as far as I knew. We’d forgotten about it in our haste to get back.
“Look, I don’t see that there’s anything I can do,” I said, hoping my lies weren’t as transparent to her as they were to me.
Liana stared at me, and then gathered up her bag. “It was there. You saw it. You said so. Maybe you took it.”
The words hung between us like a red flag and I said. “Look, I have no idea …”
But Lianna suddenly lashed out at me. “No idea, my ass. I had hoped you could help, but I can see there’s no point.”
“Perhaps I can help you if you explain why you insist that it is your diary. The book I saw had Diamond’s name on it.”
She looked at me, her eyes widening and narrowing like a camera focusing. Her anger vanished and she seemed to shrink back into a vulnerable snakelike bundle in the chair.
“He once asked me that if I outlived him, would I please burn all his black books, without reading them.”
I raised my eyebrows at her and Lianna hurriedly continued.
“He sometimes read bits of his diaries to me, about other people, and he could be pretty cruel — truthful, but then truth can be cruel, crueller still if the person is no longer around to soften the written words. I just wanted to carry out his wishes.” Her eyes flickered past me but refused to meet my eyes. She dabbed them with a handkerchief.
“Look, all I can tell you is that I saw a black book in his tent, so the police must be mistaken. You’d better ask them again.”
After Lianna had gone I stood by the window fiddling with the blind, my eyes unfocused, thoughts swirling. Things were getting decidedly suspicious. No signs of bear, the possible attempt on our lives, my fumigated insects, no larvae, the loss of my disks, and now the mysterious disappearance of a small black book that I had seen with my own eyes, and Lianna’s sudden vehemence when I remembered the book but didn’t know where it was. Suppose there was something suspicious about Diamond’s death? More to it than a bear? But what? Suppose that was the link? Someone was hiding something, and whatever it was, it had to do with Diamond’s death.
I looked down over the quad and saw Lianna walking briskly toward a row of parked cars. I watched as she unlocked the driver’s door of a candy apple red Porsche and roared out of the parking space, cutting off a cyclist who raised his fist at her as she sped away.
I sighed and went in search of Martha. I found her in my lab cutting liver to feed the newly arrived larvae and others, which I’d begged from a colleague.
“One of the larvae from you know where has pupated.” Martha raised her plump forefinger and pointed, the look on her face almost palpable — if a face could roll its eyes, Martha’s face was doing so now.
I moved down to the cage in question and stood staring inside. I read the label. One of the grubs from Diamond’s body. The ones salvaged from the lab next door where I’d left them the night of the fumigation. I looked inside. The fly was settled on a hunk of liver, its wings still clinging to its body. I’d pickle it and identify it later. Something twigged in my mind and I looked at the label again, remembering the pine forest where I had collected the grubs. Surely it wasn’t possible? But I remembered distinctly the cedar twigs collected with the larvae and the cedar embedded in Diamond’s wounds.
“Well, I’ll be dammed,” I whispered. What the hell was going on here?
I stared at the newly pupated insect and realized I was out of my depth.
chapter eight
I hauled down my entomology and forestry texts and spent the next couple of hours immersed in them. Ryan called to say he had a ride back with Mac, who had come into town for a doctor’s appointment, so I was able to stay until I found what I was looking for. I finally called it a day at 7:00 p.m. Now I needed Ryan as a springboard for the theory forming like a wasp’s nest in my mind.
I pulled in by the barn and saw Ryan dismantling a cedar rail fence, making the most of the long daylight hours. I walked over and leaned on the fence watching him. I decided to be blunt and came straight to my point.
“Jake Diamond’s body was moved after he died.”
“So what?” said Ryan.
“But it’s weird, Ryan,” “Why? It’s really no big deal. So the bear dragged him a short distance. There’s nothing ominous about that.”
“It was moved a long way, Ryan. At least a mile and a half.”
“So the poor guy hauled himself all that way trying to find help before he died.”
I don’t know what I was expecting his reaction to be, but his lack of interest to this point was disheartening. I needed to find a reason for my stolen disks before I could hope to find a lead. I was pretty sure I had that lead, but I wanted support.
“You think he could have crossed a river and walked over a mile in rotten terrain while mortally wounded?”
Ryan raised his eyebrows at that and finally looked at me with a modicum of interest.
“And,” I added, “you show me a bear that would do that and I’ll make my name in zoology. It’d be a rogue bear in more ways than one.”
“How in the name of God do you know it was moved that far?” asked Ryan.
“There was no bear sign in the area where he was found.”