“Nah, just a friendly warning.”
With that he slapped the window and, suddenly laughing, strode back down the road. Martha and I exchanged glances.
“Busy man, that Diamond,” said Martha.
chapter nineteen
I shoved the Land Rover into gear and headed on down toward the turn to the biology station. A small red convertible, top down, was signalling to turn onto the main road, and I recognized Roberta at the wheel. I pulled up alongside her, rolling down my window.
“Just wanted to thank you again for rescuing me.” Roberta smiled. “Anybody would have done the same, you know.”
“Any news about Don yet?”
“Nothing. Not a word. Three days and no sign of him anywhere.”
“He had a lot to be depressed about, didn’t he?”
Roberta jerked her head up and stared at me, the wine-dark specks in her blue eyes standing out like the reverse of snowflakes on black velvet.
“He was cooking his data, wasn’t he?”
She tried to stare me down but her heart wasn’t in it and she looked deflated.
“How did you know?” she finally asked quietly.
“He told me, the day I was to meet him. He said he could explain it all and not to tell anyone until he had spoken to me.”
Roberta smiled a long sad smile. Finally she said, “He’s a good man, Don is. It must have broken him to have to resort to cheating like that. I knew he was having trouble paying his bills for his daughter. I’d even questioned some of his data. It didn’t seem to fit, but he was good at what he did. I never suspected he was cooking it until he admitted to me he was in deep shit. He only spoke to me because he knew that I might be affected just by association. He is my supervisor.”
“So you knew that Diamond was going to tell the Dean and that your own thesis would be suspect? Rather convenient for the two of you that he died before the cat was let out of the bag.” God, I felt horrible saying this to the woman who had saved my life, but I had to get to the bottom of things and I knew being nice wouldn’t cut it.
Roberta stared at me, a hollow, vacant look in her eyes.
“I guess you could say that, but you don’t understand. Fate was really mean to him. He felt he had to choose between his daughter and his ethics. When Diamond found out, Don came up here to his camp to try and reason with him, to get him to give him some time to redo the paper, undo the damage.”
“He came up here? When?”
Roberta hesitated, looked down at her hands, and then shrugged.
“It was a bunch of days before Diamond was found dead. He left the barricade and sneaked up to talk to him. When he came back he was upset, white and trembling. He said Diamond had agreed to wait, but he was really uptight. It seemed odd at the time, and since then I’ve thought about it a lot. He could have been there when Diamond died, you know.” She paused as if she felt she’d said too much, and then she blurted out, “Don’t you see? His daughter was far more important to him than his work. He was willing to risk anything for her. Can’t you understand that?”
“I can understand it, but I can’t condone it,” I said, feeling like a righteous prick. “His research is based on data that has been made up and he was going to publish it. Now that Diamond’s dead he’s off the hook.”
“If you don’t go and blab it, he is. But that’s why I’m so worried about his disappearance. In his state of mind he could do something really dumb.”
And with that she put her car in gear and left me with an unanswered question on my tongue.
Martha was busting a gut beside me.
“Cordi, did you hear that? Don went to see Diamond around the time he died.”
“That means he might have seen what happened. Or he might have found him already dead and was just too afraid the police would think he had had something to do with it to report the body.”
I thought back to the first time I had met Don: nervous, jumpy, so sure it was Diamond up there in the bush. Too sure?
“What if he stumbled on the killer moving the body back?” suggested Martha.
“What if he was the killer? He could have gone up the night before, killed Diamond in the cedar forest, and for some reason couldn’t move the body, so he went back for it the next night and used the barricade as an alibi.”
“Except that Roberta knew he went to see him.”
“Yes, but she had a lot to lose if any of it came out.”
Our conversation came to an abrupt end as we rounded the corner and there in front of us stood the lumber camp, carved out of the woods in record time with bulldozers and backhoes and other equipment I didn’t recognize. I drove down the makeshift street until I saw a handwritten sign on a door saying “Office.” I parked and we got out of the Land Rover and looked around. The place was a hodgepodge of trailers, prefabs, and machinery. I headed toward the office but stopped when I realized Martha wasn’t with me.
“Come on,” I said.
Martha shook her head at me. “You go on ahead. I’m going to check out the cookhouse.”
“What about my life you were so worried about?” I asked.
“Oh, you’re okay here. I’m going where the gossip is.” I watched as she gingerly picked her way through the muddy ruts, her bright crimson shift swaying around her like a tent as she headed off toward what appeared to be the cookhouse.
I took a deep breath to gather my nerves. I was not looking forward to the conversation ahead because I didn’t know what to expect. I climbed the steps to the makeshift office, and as I held out my hand to knock on the door it was yanked open and Donaldson stood on the threshold.
“Well now, what do we have here?” he said as his eyes roller-coastered over me, taking in every curve and valley in wide-eyed pleasure until they finally ambled back to my ice-cold brown eyes.
We have a woman, in case you haven’t met one before, I thought while I offered him my hand. “Cordi O’Callaghan. I’m here to see Ray.”
“Right-o. Hey, Ray! We got a live one!” he yelled, ignoring my hand and ushering me in with his arm draped over my shoulders.
Ray came to greet me, glanced reproachfully at Donaldson as I shrugged off his arm, and hastily shook my hand.
“You’ll have to forgive Donaldson. He’s from the old ‘letch’ school.”
Donaldson’s smile became sweetness and light.
“He’s here on sufferance,” said Ray, shooting an intense frown, full of meaning, at Donaldson. “Just here to see where I’ve decided he should start cutting first.”
Donaldson cracked his smile and was about to speak when Ray waved him into silence and said, “This is the Doctor Ph.D. I told you about who found Diamond’s body. Thinks her data disks were swiped because of Diamond.”
Donaldson’s pale blue eyes narrowed, and he and Ray exchanged glances. Donaldson stroked his chin with short stubby fingers but didn’t say a thing. Ray moved over to a table by the window.
“Want some coffee?”
I shook my head and watched as Ray poured some thick black liquid into the cup and then drowned it with milk and sugar. As I started to say something, a huge bulldozer rumbled by.
“Are you cutting already?” I asked, startled.
“No, but we’re finally gearing up now,” said Donaldson. “The injunction was only