his family had been in the house. He and his wife had been in and out for days, and yes, his cousin and his stepson, along with Nina, the little girl from the town who had often helped Felice, okay, yeah, she,d been in there too. Nina liked to hike the woods back there. Nina wouldn,t touch a thing.
"Remember the alarm," said Galton. "I set that alarm as soon as the investigators left." That alarm never failed. If Miss Nideck had had that alarm set the night she was attacked, why it would have gone off the minute those windows had been smashed.
"Nobody,s been in that house, Reuben," he insisted. Galton said he lived just off the road ten minutes below the point. He would have seen or heard any traffic headed up that way. Yes, there had been reporters and photographers, but that had only been in those first few days and, even then, he,d been up there most of the time keeping an eye on them, and they couldn,t have gotten past the alarm.
"You have to realize, Reuben," said Galton, "that place is hard to get to. Not many people want to drive up this road, you know. Except for the nature lovers, you know, the hikers, well, nobody goes around there at all."
Right. Reuben thanked him for everything.
"If you,re getting uneasy up there, son, I,ll be glad to come back up and sleep in the back."
"No, that,s fine, Galton, thanks." Reuben rang off.
He sat at the desk for a long time, looking across the room at the big photograph of Felix and Company over the fireplace.
The draperies had not been drawn, and he was surrounded with dark mirrorlike glass. The fireplace was laid with oak logs and kindling but he didn,t want to light the fire.
He was a little cold, but not too cold, and he sat there pondering.
There was a distinct possibility here. One of these men, one of Felix,s old friends, that is, had read of Marchent,s murder in this house, read it somewhere far away, maybe on the other side of the globe, where such news would never have penetrated in pre-Internet days - and that person had taken time to research the whole story. And having researched the whole story, that person had come here, entered surreptitiously, and collected those priceless tablets and tablet fragments.
The story of Marchent,s murder had gone viral all right, no question of that. He,d checked that last night.
Now if this was so, it could mean a lot of things.
It could mean that Felix,s precious tablets were in good hands, collected and saved by a concerned fellow archaeologist who might soon return them to Reuben when he learned of Reuben,s honorable intentions, or who might take better care of the tablets than Reuben could.
It gave him a little peace to think of this.
And furthermore: this person, this person might very well have some information about what had happened to Felix. At least it would be a connection, wouldn,t it, to somebody that knew Felix.
Of course that was about the most optimistic and reassuring spin that could be put on this little mystery, and if Reuben had still been in the habit of hearing Celeste,s critical voice in his head, which he wasn,t, he would have heard her say, You,re dreaming!
But that,s just it, Reuben thought, I,m not hearing her voice every minute, am I? And she,s not texting me or calling me. She,s at the movies with Mort Keller. And I,m not hearing my mother,s voice either, and what the hell do either of them know about it? And Phil wasn,t listening when I told him about the tablets, he was reading Leaves of Grass, and I didn,t tell Mort, did I? I,d been too groggy with painkillers and antibiotics to tell Mort anything when he came to the hospital.
Reuben went upstairs, unpacked his laptop computer and brought it down to the library.
There was an old typewriter stand to the left of the desk, and he set up the computer there, verified the wireless connection, and went online.
Yes, before the Man Wolf of San Francisco had ever attacked, Marchent,s story had made headlines as far away as Japan and Russia. That was clear enough. And he knew enough of French, Spanish, Italian, et al., to see that the mysterious beast who,d slain the killers had been given substantial play everywhere. The house was described, even the forest behind the house, and the mystery of the beast of course had