“Gordon sneaked up on you, too, did he?” Charles’ mind’s eye had the scenario down pat. “Shot him before he knocked your brains out?”
Obviously, Teddy wasn’t following the projection as well as the others. “Shot who?”
“Shot Gordon?” Melanie put to him. The idea made her queasy. She didn’t want responsibility, and the tale, as conjured by Charles, painted her as some kind of femme fatale, right in the middle.
“You think I shot Gordon?” Teddy sounded incredulous.
“Didn’t you?” Charles held fast to his theory of an attractive woman, two jealous swains, and the passion-spawning isolation of the Amazon Basin.
“We heard three shots.” Carolyne blew a stray wisp of grey-rooted red hair out of her green eyes. “You did say Gordon was dead?” She didn’t trust her memory.
“He’s dead, all right, but I didn’t kill him. My gunshots were attempts to save him; I was just too late.”
“Take it from the top, why don’t you?” Melanie figured any reality was better than her uncle’s fanciful imagination.
“Jaguar got him,” Teddy obliged.
“Jaguar?” It was Carolyne’s turn at incredulity.
“Cat, big as a house.”
Carolyne had trouble buying it. It contradicted her theory of wildlife, that size, forced into deeper jungle by encroaching civilization.
“It had to have taken him unaware; I didn’t hear Gordon make a sound.” Teddy gave Melanie a comforting hug. “It was the animal growls that got my attention.”
Melanie shivered. Disappointed by a jungle so apparently sterile of fauna, she’d wished for one of the big cats, and here it was. It just went to prove that the bane of all wishing was the chance the wish might come true.
“Once I had the cat in sight, I saw it was mauling Gordon; I fired and scared it off. I may even have hit it. Whatever, it genuinely took off like a bat out of hell.”
“Horrible!” Melanie didn’t doubt.
“We’ve seen no previous sign of any big cats,” Carolyne complained. “We’ve seen no sufficient amount of smaller animals to support a carnivore.”
“Which might account for the animal attacking Gordon,” Felix, eyes shut, added his two cents.
Teddy noticed Felix for what seemed the first time. “What happened to you?”
“The same fate as happened to our radio.” Felix tried to open his eyes but decided against it. The pain was receding but had a long way to go.
“Someone sneaked up and laid poor Felix low,” Carolyne clarified. “Same person apparently smashed our radio and ran off with our SOS device.”
“Uncle Charles figures it was all part of Gordon’s plan to get back at you.”
“Get back at me?” Teddy answered his own question: “Because of our little to-do last night, you mean?”
“Seemed more than a little to-do to me,” Charles argued.
“You think I’d blow Gordon away for his wanting to kiss Melanie? Lighten up, Charles!”
“I see it as a spontaneous reaction to Gordon coming at you with a club.”
“What club? There was no club.”
“I keep trying to tell him that the thing with Gordon was no big deal.” Melanie couldn’t believe her uncle kept trying to make it something more than it was.
“Oh, it was a big enough deal, all right,” Teddy disagreed with Melanie. “It just wasn’t so big that I’d kill the guy over it.”
“You sound more magnanimous in retrospect.” Charles held firmly to his way of seeing things.
“With time to think it over, I figure I might have tried a kiss from Melanie, too, in Gordon’s shoes,” admitted Teddy, an accusatory glance in Melanie’s direction.
“Where’s Gordon now?” Carolyne brought the conversation back to where she wanted it.
“That way,” Teddy said, his arm movement encompassing a lot of the surrounding jungle. He narrowed it down: “Not far from the river. I was going to bury the poor bastard, but there are only a couple feet of topsoil.”
“We better move fast,” Carolyne took charge. “If a big cat is hungry enough to attack a man, your shots won’t scare him far, especially if he’s now wounded.”
Melanie released her hold on Teddy. “I’ll get my camera.”
“God, Melanie!” Teddy was aghast.
Carolyne was less shocked. “It’s best to have a record, Teddy. It’ll be at least a week before we get out with the bad news, longer before anybody gets back here. A lot can happen to a body in that time, considering this environment.”
“It’s not something Melanie should even see,” Teddy insisted.
Once again, Carolyne argued Melanie’s case. “It’s something none of us should see, but that doesn’t mean we won’t later be asked questions whose answers will be better accompanied with substantiation. Melanie knows photography better than the lot of us.”
“It’s okay, Teddy.” Melanie was less certain than she sounded, but she went for her camera nevertheless.
Teddy continued to object: “It just, somehow, seems macabre to photograph the corpse.”
“The police do it all of the time,” Melanie reminded, camera in hand. “My college photography class had one of the cameramen who do that sort of thing come around to guest-lecture.”
“From whom you gleaned enough insight to handle this?” Teddy didn’t make it a statement.
Melanie was piqued. She wasn’t a child but a grown woman good at her chosen hobby. Carolyne had had no trouble seeing that, so what was Teddy’s problem? “I’m doing this as much for you as for anyone, you know?” Melanie said. His look said he didn’t follow that, so she spelled it out. “You think Uncle Charles has given up on his version of the story, especially when he’s had a few drinks? Without the very best photographic record of this, do you really want to tell the authorities that a jaguar killed the man you assaulted, and it did so at a spot that probably hasn’t seen another jaguar in years?”
“Look, Melanie,” Teddy was conciliatory; “while I’ll concede that pictures are a great idea, I’d just prefer it if I took them. Or, how about Felix? He has a camera.”
“Felix is staying right here with his headache,” said Felix. “If whoever wants to finish me off, the way I feel, he’s welcome to me.”
“Shouldn’t someone stay with you?” Carolyne suggested.
“If anyone had really
