A Whisper of Danger

by Catherine Palmer

  “Hey, can we get this show on the road?” he called from the backseat. He rolled his eyes at Hannah. “You realize what a target we are in a car, don’t you? Lightning loves metal. It races right to it, and zap! You’re fried! And a tidal wave? In this car, we’d be at the bottom of the ocean in two seconds flat.”

  “Ehh. We must be strong in the Lord,” Hannah said. “Paul told us to give thanks in all things. Did you know my people were able to give thanks even when they were sold into slavery?”

  “Give thanks?” Splint jumped as the car chugged to life. He felt like all his nerves were jangling. “Maybe the slaves gave thanks, but how can we be anything but freaked out when we’re on the verge of being swept out to sea in a tropical hurricane?”

  “Did I teach you the Swahili song of thanks?” Hannah closed her eyes and gave a hum. “Are you ready?”

  “Let us go to heaven,” Splinter finished in the traditional response.

  “Asante sana,Yesu.

  Asante sana,Yesu.

  Asante sana,Yesu, moyoni.

  “Asante sana,Yesu.

  Asante sana,Yesu.

  Asante sana,Yesu, moyoni.”

  Splint liked the tune, and the words were easy. Before long he could sing it as well as Hannah.

  “What’s it mean?” he asked as Rick pulled the car up to a small street-side restaurant.

  “‘Thank you very much, Jesus,’” Hannah translated. “‘Thank you very much, Jesus, in my heart.’”

  As he hurried into the restaurant, Splint hummed as loudly as he could in hopes of drowning out his fears. He was counting on things getting a lot better after he was inside looking at a menu full of good food. They weren’t any better at all. The restaurant was an Indian curry joint!

  It featured a big buffet with all kinds of unrecognizable stuff—mustard-colored stew with hunks of cauliflower, potatoes, and chicken floating around in it; mounds of fluffy yellow rice; chutneys that looked like something Splint had stirred up in his home science lab; and flat white bread hardly thicker than a sheet of paper. You’d have thought Rick and his mom had just stepped into paradise.

  While the storm raged outside, the lovebirds ate and ate, talked and talked, laughed and laughed. It might have been okay if they’d been discussing the slave ship. But Rick had asked about the Kima the Monkey books.

  He would say things like, “Did you do one on Kima and the Cranky Coelacanth?”

  That totally hilarious comment sent Splint’s mom into gales of giggles. Then she would say something equally hysterical like, “How about Kima and the Elusive Eel?”

  Then they’d both guffaw. It was enough to make a kid want to hurl. After lunch, Rick drove them through the rain to his apartment where he could use his telephone to call Hunky. The apartment was pretty cool. It was small with bare white walls and a couple of chairs, a little square table, and a twin bed. Splint wouldn’t have thought much of the place, but Rick had filled his shelves with all kinds of wonderful artifacts—everyone of them labeled and tagged.

  “I do not believe we will go home to Uchungu House today,” Hannah said, assessing the storm through Rick’s big window. “The ocean is very rough. The waves are big.”

  “Maybe we’ll just stay here with Rick until it blows over,” Splint said. “It would be okay to spend the night here, wouldn’t it, Mom?”

  “No, sweetheart. If we have to stay, we’ll take a hotel room.”

  “Aw, Mom! Rick wouldn’t mind.”

  “Splint.” Her voice held that note of warning.

  “Look, Mom, this has been the worst day of my entire life, okay? I mean, I’m expecting a tidal wave any minute. And you and Rick take me to eat curry. And the treasure ship turns out to be a slaver. And now you’re telling me—”

  “Someone’s knocking on the door, Splint,” she said. “Now, answer it, please, and stop your griping.”

  “Or I’ll give you something to gripe about,” he finished under his breath. Moms didn’t have a clue. They really didn’t.

  He pulled open the door. Two tall African men stood in the hallway, the shoulders of their uniforms splattered with raindrops. The one in front studied Splint for a moment.

  “Spencer Thornton?” he asked.

  Splint backed up. “Yeah.”

  “We will take you to the police station in Zanzibar. You must give your fingerprints to check for the possibility of murder.”

  FIFTEEN

  “This is a ten-year-old boy,” Rick said to the policemen who had stepped into his apartment. “He’s capable of a lot of things. The murder of Ahmed Abdullah bin Yusuf isn’t one of them. First of all, he and his mother weren’t even in this country until several months after the artist’s death. Second, he’s not strong enough to have won out in a struggle with a grown man.”

  “Yes, Bwana, but Mrs. Cameron gave us a report that the boy discovered the container on which the blood of Dr. bin Yusuf was found. Was this not a true statement?”

  “It is true, but—”

  “I didn’t do it!” Splint shouted. “I didn’t kill anybody!”

  Jess took her son’s arm and pulled him against her. She could feel the trembles of fear radiating through every muscle in his body. Nestling him close, she ran her hand over his thick brown hair.

  “Sir, my son is a child,” she told the officer. “You’re frightening him. I’m sure you can tell he couldn’t possibly—”

  “Madam, we are searching for the person who committed the murder of one of Tanzania’s premier artists. Of course we do not have any reason to suspect your son. But if the boy touched the container that was used in the crime, his fingerprints will be evident. We must record and study them in order to distinguish your son’s prints from any others on the murder weapon. Surely you can understand why this is necessary.”

  “I didn’t do it!” Splint hollered. “Mom, tell them I didn’t kill anybody.”

  “They don’t think you did it, Splint.” She wrapped her arm around his chest, holding him tightly against her. “Sir, this is a Sunday afternoon. How did you even find us here?”

  “Solomon Mazrui told us you had gone to Dar es Salaam to the church of Daniel McTaggart.”

  “Solomon!”

  “He works for you, does he not?”

  “He’s my gardener.”

  “We went on the police boat to Dar es Salaam, and we questioned the minister, Bwana Daniel McTaggart. He directed us to this flat. Now we are eager to return to our headquarters in Zanzibar with this boy. Will you and your son come with us to the police boat, Ms. Thornton?”

  “In this kind of weather?” Rick interjected. “You can’t possibly take a little police boat safely across twenty-two miles of raging ocean. Why don’t I drive Spencer to the Dar es Salaam police headquarters and get them to record his fingerprints? Then you can ferry the information over to Zanzibar whenever you want to.”

  The first policeman looked at the second, and they both shook their heads. “Bwana McTaggart, believe me, we do not wish to go across that water again today. It is a very bad storm. But we have been given orders to bring back the boy. The chief of detectives wishes to speak with his mother. And with him.”

  When Splint started to cry, Jess felt her ire rise. “I will not allow my son to travel in such dangerous conditions.”

  “Jessie, I’ll go with Splint,” Rick said. “There’s no way these guys are going to agree to leave him here. I’ll put him into my best life jacket, and we’ll tough it out together. We’ll be okay.”

  “I’m not letting my son go anywhere dangerous without me beside him,” Jess said.

  “But there’s no need—”

  “No, Rick. I’m going with you.”

  The light mood of the morning evaporated as Rick called his brother and relayed the news. Daniel affirmed that the police had been to his house just after noon to ask the whereabouts of Jessica Thornton and her son. Before hanging up, Rick asked his brother to pray for the safety of the passengers. Then everyone pulled on oran
ge life vests. Even Hannah made up her mind to go along, announcing that she would not abandon Splinter in his hour of trouble.

  “Jesus calmed the stormy seas,” she reminded Jess as they trooped out to the police car. “Perhaps he will stop the wind and smooth out the waves.”

  He didn’t.

  The little police boat bobbed and dipped as it rose on the swell of one wave and plunged into the trough before the next. All around the boat, lightning flickered and flashed. Heavy gray clouds moved like a battalion of rumbling steamrollers across the sky. Sheets of rain pummeled the passengers. Thunder boomed across the water.

  Jess didn’t know when she had ever been so frightened. Though he put up a brave front, Splint’s fear resounded into her like crashing waves as she sat cradling him in the bottom of the boat. Eyes shut tightly, Hannah sang hymn after hymn. Rick moved anxiously back and forth across the deck. When he wasn’t giving the inexperienced policemen directions on how to pilot the boat through the storm, he was crouching beside Jess with his arms around her and their son.

  The sound of Hannah’s singing swept around the boat like a mournful dirge:

  “I was sinking deep in sin,

  Far from the peaceful shore,

  Very deeply stained within,

  Sinking to rise no more—”

  “Mama Hannah, do you mind?” Jess called during the lull right after a loud clap of thunder. “That’s not at all comforting.”

  “‘Save me, O God,’” Hannah muttered, “‘for the flood-waters are up to my neck. Deeper and deeper I sink into the mire; I can’t find a foothold to stand on. I am in deep water, and the floods overwhelm me.’”

  “Mama Hannah.” Jess laid a hand on the old woman’s arm. “Come over here and sit close to Splint and me. We need your strength.”

  “Ehh, I am like the disciples of little faith,” Hannah whispered, scooting into the protecting haven of Jess’s embrace. “Oh, Lord! ‘Pull me out of the mud; don’t let me sink any deeper! Rescue me from those who hate me, and pull me from these deep waters. Don’t let the floods overwhelm me, or the deep waters swallow me—’”

  “Mama Hannah,” Jess cut in. “Isn’t there a verse that goes, ‘Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too great for me to know! I can never escape from your spirit! I can never get away from your presence! If I go up to heaven, you are there; . . . If I ride the wings of the morning—’”

  “‘If I ride the wings of the morning, if I dwell by the farthest oceans, even there your hand will guide me, and your strength will support me.’” Sopping, shivering, her voice still tremulous, Hannah began to recite verse after verse of God’s comfort. “‘Our fears for today, our worries about tomorrow, and even the powers of hell can’t keep God’s love away. Whether we are high above the sky or in the deepest ocean, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God. . . .’”

  On a good day, the twenty-two-mile crossing would have taken little more than an hour. This was far from a good day. Three hours after they had left the Dar es Salaam wharf, Rick finally spotted the coast of Zanzibar. Amid pouring rain and tossing waves, the policemen managed to bring the little boat into port. A few minutes later, the whole bedraggled crew stood in the Zanzibar police headquarters.

  “Solomon put them up to this,” Jess muttered to Rick as she watched the officers inking her son’s fingers one by one and pressing them onto a sheet of white paper. “I’m going to fire him. He may have killed Dr. bin Yusuf, and he might turn on me. I don’t want him around.”

  “I wouldn’t blame Solomon for this,” Rick said. “The police are just doing their job.”

  “On a Sunday afternoon?”

  She turned to find a well-dressed African approaching from the rear of the building. He spoke to the two wet policemen. Then he examined Splint’s fingerprints. Finally, he walked toward the sopping visitors.

  “Madam, will you follow me, please?” he said in an educated British accent. “I wish to ask you a few questions regarding your acquisition of Uchungu House.”

  Jess spent the next hour confined in a small room with the chief detective of the Zanzibar police force. While she dripped onto the floor, he asked her one question after another, writing down her answers in his small notebook. Outside the narrow barred window, the rain finally stopped and the sun went down.

  “Madam, during your residence in Zanzibar, have you encountered a gentleman by the name of Giles Knox?” the detective asked.

  “The art-gallery owner? I’ve met him.”

  “And when did you first meet Mr. Knox?”

  “Last week, I think it was. I was introduced to him by Omar Hafidh. He’s the—”

  “The nephew of Dr. bin Yusuf. Yes, I know him.”

  Jess went on. “Giles Knox had contacted Omar Hafidh, and together they looked me up. Knox wants to sell all of Dr. bin Yusuf ’s works that are still in storage at Uchungu House. He told me he has a buyer—some rich movie star in Hollywood.”

  “And Omar Hafidh? Did he expect to benefit from this sale?”

  “Apparently his mother has a few paintings and some sculptures that her brother gave her years ago. Knox said the buyer would pay a higher price for the complete collection.”

  “Of course.” The detective scribbled in his notebook for a moment. “Ms. Thornton, did you agree to sell the art collection using Mr. Knox as your agent?”

  “I haven’t made a decision about that. I really don’t want to keep all the paintings, but I—”

  “So you did not agree to his offer at the time you discussed this with Mr. Knox?”

  “No.”

  “What was his response, Ms. Thornton?”

  Jess thought for a moment. “He said . . . he said if I didn’t take him up on the offer . . .”

  “Yes, Ms. Thornton?”

  “He said I’d regret it.”

  The detective’s face betrayed nothing as he wrote down her words. Jess shivered. At the time she had spoken with Giles Knox she had found him manipulative and slightly repugnant, but not threatening. Now she wondered if his words had hinted at retaliation if she failed to comply with his wishes.

  “Do you think Giles Knox might have killed Dr. bin Yusuf?” she asked the detective. “I mean . . . he really did want those paintings very badly.”

  “Did Mr. Knox give you any idea how much money would be involved in the sale of the artworks?”

  “He didn’t give me numbers, but he indicated that both he and I stood to earn a great deal of money.”

  “And Omar Hafidh also would benefit, of course.”

  Jess studied the man’s dark eyes. “That’s right.”

  “Thank you very much, Ms. Thornton. I apologize for the inconvenience we caused you and your son. Your husband also has expressed his displeasure.”

  “My husband? Oh, Rick. He told you he’s my husband? Well, yes, he is . . . but . . . it’s a little complicated. Anyway, I hope you don’t need to talk to Splint. He was pretty frightened.” Jess stood. Her skirt stuck to her legs like a piece of wet newsprint, and she made a feeble effort at detaching it. “You know, if you ask me, I think Solomon Mazrui might have killed Dr. bin Yusuf. At least Nettie Cameron says—”

  “Solomon Mazrui’s fingerprints were not found anywhere on the murder weapon, Ms. Thornton.”

  “But . . . but he—”

  “Mr. Mazrui was, of course, our primary suspect. We have questioned him thoroughly. Twice. The first time was shortly after the murder, the second time was just after Mrs. Cameron brought the urn to the station. It is true, Solomon Mazrui found the body, and his original police report failed to disclose all the details of that event. But as you know, Mr. Mazrui has . . . shall we say . . . a distinctive style of communication. Sometimes it is difficult to determine exactly what he intends to convey.”

  “That’s true. But you know, he’s got my Renault engine hanging from the Red Hot Poker tree . . . and then there’s Miriamu. And Nettie Cameron said—”

  “Sol
omon Mazrui has not been eliminated as a suspect, Ms. Thornton, but I do not believe you should feel overly concerned about your family’s safety in his presence. Again, thank you for your time. We shall call upon you again if the need arises.”

  I’m sure you will, Jess thought as she followed the man down the long hallway toward the front desk. Night had fallen, and Rick, Splint, and Hannah were eating spicy Indian samosas and drinking warm sodas in the lobby. When Splint looked up at her, his eyes revealed his continuing agitation over what had happened. She knelt at his side and wrapped her arms around his damp shoulders.

  “It’s okay, honey. They know you didn’t do anything wrong.”

  He nodded and swallowed hard. “I want to go home, Mom.”

  Though Uchungu House had once been a place of threat, bitterness, even murder, tonight it was home. Jess lifted her eyes to heaven for a moment as she hugged her son. “Let’s go home, sweetheart,” she whispered.

  The eerie wail woke Rick from a dead sleep. He sat up, fumbled for a lamp, and then remembered that Uchungu House had no electricity. What on earth was that noise?

  “Aaa-aaa-aaa!”

  His spine prickling, Rick swung his feet over the side of the couch in Jessie’s downstairs living room and stood on the cool concrete floor. Moonlight poured through the long arched windows. Outside, the distant sound of waves crashing against the cliffs mingled with the rustle of palm leaves blowing against the glass windowpanes. Rick groped for his jeans, realized they were wet, and yanked them on anyway.

  “Maa-aaa-aaa!”

  It was a cry of desperation tinged with terror. Rick grabbed the first thing he could put his hands on—a carved ebony sculpture about the size of a baseball bat. Perfect. Thank you, bin Yusuf. For once, the man’s artwork might prove useful. Pulse hammering, Rick followed the wail through the front of the house toward the courtyard. If anyone was hurting Jessie, he would—