“The police know, too.”
“Is that so? That sounds right out of a telly script. Go on, dig.”
I faked some more. “So she came on to you?”
“All saucy talk and meaningful glances, quite a piece. A virgin, though you’d never have known it.”
“She didn’t stay one Saturday night, did she?” Chop. Grunt.
“Oh,” he said. “Are we being politically correct? Are we saying a saucy little piece who crawls up on your lap and puts her tongue in your ear doesn’t want it? We treated her like a lady—ill-deserved. She was totally stoned, unbuttoning her blouse, singing Jefferson Airplane songs. Then she vomited. All over me.”
His mouth twitched. “But I cleaned her up anyway. Dressed her and combed her hair. Curt even put makeup on her—are you slacking, Ms. Daughter? Get those hands working.”
Lucy scooped and tossed dirt. Her eyes were dry and her thoughts were impossible to read. Nova’s cheek was squashed against the earth, her swollen eye totally shut, her lip split.
I breathed conspicuously and gave him another few shovel strokes. “So what went wrong?”
“What do you think? She didn’t wake up—but how did you find out?”
I didn’t answer. He put the gun to Nova’s head.
“I remembered it,” said Lucy.
“You?” Graydon-Jones was amused. “What were you back then, a fetus?”
Lucy started to say something. I shook my head at her.
“The old idiot told you,” said Graydon-Jones. “Fucking bloody fool. Well, as usual he’s screwed up.” Giggles. “You’ve missed the spot completely.” Letting his gaze coast over us, toward the larger of the willows.
Lucy made a soft, catlike sound.
I said, “Who was at the party besides you and App and Lowell?”
“Not Lowell,” he said. “Thankfully. He was always such a bore. Friday night, he had her on his lap, sad tales of the writer’s lonely life. But Saturday he was too busy for that—Caligula in his toga.”
“So why’d he get involved in burying her?”
“Because he’s such a kind man.” Laughter. “He dropped in to pick up some papers and found me trying to revive her, and panic, panic, panic. All that blood-and-gore verse; turns out he had soft-boiled guts.”
“Did he drop in alone or was he with Mellors and Trafficant? How big of a private party was—”
“Shut up. I want you finished well before dark.”
I pantomimed more effort. “So the party was right over there?” Glancing across the pond.
He said nothing.
“Far from the madding crowd,” I said.
“Far from the meddling crud.”
Graydon-Jones pushed his foot on Nova. Her eyes had stopped moving and her jaw was being pushed down in an unnatural position, the scars compressing. . . .
I said, “App’s got a good thing going. Sits on the beach and you do the dirty work.”
“Wrong,” he said. “You do the dirty work.”
Aiming the gun at the center of my nose.
I kept on faking, moving dirt from place to place. Lucy had caught on and was doing the same. Her hair was caked into dreadlocks. The hole was at least five feet deep. I wondered how much longer we’d be able to avoid the next foot.
Graydon-Jones must have been thinking the same thing.
He grabbed Nova by the back of her collar and dragged her closer to the pit. The gun moved back and forth from her head to Lucy and me. Nickel-plated automatic. Plenty of bullets for everyone.
Nova tried to shield her face. Her shut eye was purplish, ballooning, and the gun barrel had made red circles on her temple.
Graydon-Jones stopped six feet from the rim, letting her drop, again, and putting his foot on the back of her neck. It wouldn’t take much pressure to snap her cervical vertebrae.
He looked down.
“Bloody hell. Playing games, are we?”
Training the gun on Lucy, he started to squeeze the trigger.
I dove to push her away but she was up, screaming, throwing a clump of hard dirt at him. Direct hit on his chest. The gun fired somewhere up in the air. Nova seized the moment to arch her back and grab his foot. That diverted his gaze downward as he kicked at her and tried to tighten his grip on the gun.