Fortune's Light - Michael Jan Friedman [58]
With hindsight, it did seem like a coincidence—didn’t it?
“For what reason?” he asked out loud. “Because someone else killed Conlon? Someone she didn’t want us to know about?”
His mind had finally kicked into gear, and his mouth along with it. But it took a couple of moments for his emotions to catch up—for him to realize the implications of what he was saying.
They looked at each other. For their own individual reasons, neither of them wanted to believe it. To Riker, Norayan was a friend. To Lyneea, she was an official of the madraga that the retainer had sworn to defend with her life. But if she was guilty of deceiving them …
God. What if Norayan herself was the killer?
“Let’s say it’s all true,” Lyneea told him. “Let’s say that Norayan led us to Kobar to keep us off the real killer’s trail. Why would she first alert Kobar by accusing him of the crime?”
Riker shook his head. “Maybe to make him act the part of a hunted criminal, to make his behavior more convincing to us.” Something else occurred to him. “Or maybe to turn him on us, to take us out of the game.”
Lyneea’s temples worked. “So we wouldn’t live long enough to find out she’d deceived us.”
The human nodded. “And the rest of Criathis wouldn’t suspect a thing. Kobar’s a known hothead. It wouldn’t be so farfetched if he killed an offworlder, and maybe a Criathis retainer as well, without knowing it.”
His partner scowled. “What about Fortune’s Light? Could Norayan have been in on the theft of that, too?”
Riker met her gaze. “It’s hard to believe, I know. But is it any less believable than the rest of this?”
It hurt to say these things. However, it hurt even more to think that Norayan was trying to kill them.
Maybe Teller wasn’t the only one who had changed. Maybe.
“Unless we’re jumping to conclusions,” said Lyneea. Her scowl deepened. “Or was that what we did back in the maze?” She sighed. “What about that oath of secrecy that Norayan swore you to? That sounded like something of genuine importance to her.”
The human had to agree. “Maybe she was telling the truth about her affair with Teller and lying about the rest of it.”
“But if that was the case, why let us in on her association with Conlon and the maze? Why not just let us blunder around and leave her secret a secret?”
Riker pondered that one. “Could it be,” he suggested, “that we were close to the truth and didn’t know it? That Norayan had to lead us on a wild-goose chase and take some chances because otherwise we would have found her out?”
Lyneea had a queer expression on her face. It had some surprise in it and some respect and maybe a couple of other things. “You know,” she said, “you’re not such a liability after all.”
He wanted to smile, but his temple was throbbing too badly now. “Thanks” was all he could muster up.
“Don’t mention it.” She looked away from him. “So now,” she said, “there are two questions staring us in the face—assuming, of course, that Norayan is truly hiding something about the murder or the theft or both.”
“Number one,” said Riker, picking up the thread, “what were we looking at that made Norayan so nervous? What were we doing that we should start doing again?”
“And number two,” continued Lyneea, “whom was she protecting?”
Lyneea seemed to think, as Riker did, that Norayan could have committed the murder herself. But, like Riker, she didn’t want to drag it into the open—not yet. It was the one possibility that neither of them was quite willing to countenance.
The human pulled his tunic more tightly about himself. Somehow it seemed colder here in this narrow street.
“Let’s go back,” he suggested, “to the time before Norayan’s visit. We had just tailed Bosch to his place at the Golden Muzza, right?”
Lyneea’s eyes lost their focus a little as she remembered. “You think that Bosch was mixed up somehow with Norayan?”
“Maybe. In any case, I think we should call on him again