Remi raised her coffee cup. “To the groom to be.”
The three of them toasted Langdon, whose face turned a deep shade of red. He nodded his thanks and murmured, “Madam, if there’s nothing else . . .”
“Go on, Langdon, before you have a stroke.”
Langdon disappeared.
“Unfortunately, this means I’ll be losing him,” Yvette said. “He’ll be a kept man now. A gigolo, if you will.”
“Not a bad job if you can get it,” Sam said.
Remi lightly punched him on the biceps. “Mind your manners, Fargo.”
“I’m just saying, there are worse jobs out there.”
“Enough.”
They chatted and drank coffee until Langdon returned thirty minutes later. “Mr. and Mrs. Fargo, Mrs. Wondrash is calling for you.”
They excused themselves and followed Langdon down to the study. Yvette’s MacBook Air sat open on a mahogany desk overlooking the garden. Langdon had already arranged a pair of club chairs before the laptop. Once they were seated, he left and closed the door behind him.
The laptop’s screen displayed Selma’s workroom back in La Jolla. “Selma, are you there?” Sam called.
Pete Jeffcoat’s tanned face appeared before the camera. He smiled at them. “Hi, Sam. Hi, Remi.”
“How’re you, Pete?”
“Fantastic, couldn’t be better.” Pete’s sunny attitude knew no bounds. He could not only turn lemons into lemonade, but he could turn them into a grove of lemon trees.
“And Wendy?”
“She’s good. Getting a little stir-crazy, being all cooped up here. The bodyguard guys are great, but a little strict.”
“It’s for the best,” Sam said. “Hopefully it’ll be over soon.”
“Sure, no worries, we’re cool. Hey, here’s the head honcho. . . .”
Pete disappeared from view and was replaced by Selma, who settled onto a stool in front of the camera, casually dunking a tea bag into a steaming cup. “Morning, Mr. and Mrs. Fargo.”
“Morning, Selma.”
“You want the good news or the bad news first?”
“Both at the same time,” Sam replied. “Like peeling off a Band-Aid.”
“Whatever you say . . . The printout you faxed did the trick. Very good image; high resolution. I used it to decipher the next lines of code. Here’s the bad news: The riddle has us stumped. Maybe you’ll have more luck with it.” Selma grabbed her clipboard from the table and recited:
“Anguished House Fellows in amber trapped;
Tassilo and Pepere Gibbous Baia keep safe the place of Hajj;
The Genius of Ionia, his stride a battle of rivals;
A trio of Quoins, their fourth lost, shall point the way to Frigisinga.
“That’s it,” Selma said. “I’ve e-mailed it to your iPhones with the standard Blowfish encryption. We’ll keep working on it, but it seems clear this one’s a bit tougher than the last.”
“I’d say so,” Remi replied, already deep in thought.