Creature Discomforts

why didn’t he? What stopped him? Why didn’t he go ahead and blow the whistle?”
    “He died,” I said.
    “Good girl!”
    Kimi wagged her tail.
    “Axelrod hates trees,” Buck resumed. “He’s in lousy shape. He goes for a hike. On a slippery day, he hikes with the head of a foundation he’s going to expose as a Ponzi scheme. Why? And Fairley, no one’s asking you.”
    “To discuss things,” Quint suggested. “Take a walk together and talk things out.”
    “Oh, Quint!” Effie said. “That’s what you’d’ve done. You know perfectly well that it’s not what Norm would’ve done. And even if Norm had wanted to ask Malcolm some questions, or go ahead and confront him, he could’ve done it over the phone. Or at the foundation. Or anywhere else.” I said, “Norman Axelrod expected to meet one of the Rockefellers.”
    No one asked whether I was hypothesizing or reporting. “He’d’ve climbed Everest for that,” Effie said. “Never mind Dorr.”
    “Norman did have a weakness for celebrities,” Gabrielle agreed. “But maybe what happened was that Norm expressed his, uh, doubts about the Pine Tree Foundation to Malcolm.”
    “Threatened to expose the whole scheme!” Wally amended.
    “So,” Gabrielle continued, “Malcolm must have arranged a secret meeting to assuage Norm’s suspicions.” Everyone, of course, turned to Malcolm Fairley, who Promptly said that he was not at liberty to reply. “I’m a man of my word,” he said.
    I again tried to report on the fragments of conversation * d overheard, but Gabrielle was determined to confront Fairley. His smugness probably annoyed her as much as it did me. “Malcolm, really!” she exclaimed. “Being a man of your word doesn’t mean refusing to answer straightforward questions about what’s obvious anyway. We have taken your word for a great deal, you know, including the finances of the foundation and the support of the benefactors and your hike with Norm. Now, stop being mysterious!”
    Buck beamed at her. “Cut to the chase,” he said. “Fairley sets up this Ponzi scheme. Axelrod gets suspicious. Fairley lures him up here by promising him he’s going to meet a Rockefeller. Hah! Poor sucker! Axelrod dies.”
    “I was not there!” Fairley protested. “For some reason, Norman wandered off, and I was, in fact, hunting for him in the wrong place when he fell. I was near the top of Dorr and nowhere near the Ladder Trail. The person who was, in fact, nearby when poor Norman died was your daughter!” He glared at Buck.
    “If we’re going to start trading accusations about daughters,” Opal said, “let’s not neglect yours, Malcolm. If the foundation is, God forbid, a Ponzi scheme, then Anita is in on it, too. For all we know, she murdered Norm to save her own skin. And yours, too!”
    “Anita’s a proven sneak,” Effie pointed out. “She snuck around behind Malcolm’s back to do Opal and Wally’s legal work. Maybe she snuck up behind Norm’s back and—”
    “Anita was with me,” Steve interrupted.
    “Sir Galahad,” Buck commented.
    “He’d say anything for her,” Effie agreed. “Lawyers and developers! The scum of the earth!”
    1 was about to remind her that Steve was a veterinarian, not a lawyer or a developer, but before I had the chance, Opal spat out, “Effie O’Brian, I’d like to give you a good swift kick and send you tumbling down this mountain! Your holier-than-thou attitude makes me want to puke! In case you wondered, everyone knows that before you married Quint, you didn’t have a plug nickel, and if you had to work for a living like the rest of us instead of living off the Beamon money—”
    “If there’s any left,” Gabrielle said glumly.
    “Maybe your hew stepped in to make sure there was,” Opal said nastily. “He certainly seems to believe his own conspiracy theory. He probably killed Norman Axelrod to give you time to get your money out before Axelrod was supposedly going to blow the whistle.”
    “Wish he’d warned us,” Wally said.
    “You seem to have missed the grand finale that Steve outlined for you,” Anita said. “He showed you how a Ponzi scheme begins, and he showed you how it ends. You have overlooked the last act. When the house of cards begins to collapse, the organizer absconds with the goods, whereas my father is right here and has shown no indication whatever of going anywhere. I, however, have had enough of this performance. I cannot imagine why we allowed