Dr McRae wasn’t doing anything suspicious But he really meant Robin Redd Somewhere between the Coast Guard meeting the Meandering Manatee at the mouth of the harbor and Chris and Carrie being escorted into the police station by a federal agent who had her hand glued to the gun on her hip Robin Redd had managed to disappear It’s not disappearing exactly Bethy sighed I think at least He said Oh my goodness the Grey Cove shots and made a beeline for the rental car place and to be honest he really has to be at Grey Cove or we won’t be able to shoot there and I’m not sure we’d get anything coherent out of him anyway so Detective Hermann looked like he wanted to argue but had met Redd before and so couldn’t really If we could just get a clear story out of each of you that would be very helpful he said instead looking from Carrie to Chris to Bethy Chris and Carrie shared a worried look They had both spent several weeks trying to keep different 6
things secret from different people had told several different variations of what was essentially a lie and if not quite a lie a very misleading statement and were now not entirely sure what they had told to whom and when Chris felt very much like that time he had tripped over a rubber bouncy ball while carrying a fully loaded tray of tea cups in the split second just before all of the cups hit the floor and shattered when he saw what was about to happen but couldn’t do anything to stop it Well he said You see Carrie started I have absolutely no idea what’s going on Bethy admitted One desk over Dr McRae looked like he would rather be anywhere but there and Maddison looked as though she’d had a minor revelation revelation Detective Hermann looked from one desk to the other and sighed Well this is going to be a loooong night he said 7
In the end Chris and Carrie told the detective the truth but without bringing the San Telmo into the story Most people didn’t immediately assume the two scared and still-damp kids had been looking for a lost treasure ship and it was pretty easy to skate around why the professor had decided to leave them in the ocean So Chris and Carrie told Detective Hermann that they’d been accompanying the professor professor and some grad students who were supposed to be studying coastal erosion and that the professor had gotten a fake grad student to throw them overboard They did not say that they suspected it was so that they couldn’t interfere with the professor’s hunt for the San Telmo As for the other pieces of the story they had nothing to hide They’d met Bethy and the currently AWOL Redd on a camping trip recently they’d fallen down the well in the cistern at Saint Erasmus while doing research for a school project and they’d been threatened recently by the same man who had killed their aunt Uh-huh Detective Hermann said 8
We did do a little research into the San Telmo when we were doing that school project Chris offered hoping desperately that the detective wasn’t about to see through him and demand that he stop looking for the San Telmo altogether But I don’t know why Professor Griffin is so obsessed with it Willis Griffin is a very obsessed individual Agent Grey said startling everyone She’d folded herself into a chair next to Detective Hermann just as he was starting to question Chris and Carrie One desk over her partner appeared to be doing the same thing with Maddison and her family But the instant Agent Grey had sat down she’d faded into the background background almost completely It was a terrifying skill to have and Chris could see why it would be useful for a law enforcement official Griffin’s dangerous He’s intelligent he’s driven and for some reason he’s convinced that you two are the key to his delusions Agent Grey went on And as of this moment he’s in the wind Harvey Tanner called the first Kingsolver phone number he 9
