Scorpion House

by Maria Hudgins

  “Susan.”

  “No. Susan is dead. Dead people don’t hurt.”

  Paul’s neck jerked backward, obviously shocked by that statement.

  “Who is right now, right this minute, suffering what his own son called a fate worse than death?”

  “Horace,” he mouthed the name, no sound coming from his lips.

  “Horace. Right. A man who suffers from claustrophobia, who’s probably got OCS he’s such a neat freak, who can’t stand bugs, is sitting in a tiny, dirty, bug-ridden cell and facing life in prison if he’s convicted.

  “So what if Susan wasn’t the target? What if Susan was no more than a means to an end? What if the idea was to get Horace Lanier convicted of Susan’s murder so he’d spend the rest of his life suffering a fate worse than death?”

  Paul let out his breath in a sort of hiss. “You make it sound like Dante’s Inferno.”

  “That’s exactly right. For Horace, that’s how it must be. Listen. You heard Marcus. Horace has already tried to kill himself. He’s obviously decided death would be an improvement over prison.

  “So who could possibly hate Horace that much?” Lacy leaned forward on her stool until she nearly toppled into the water. “How about the kid who got removed from his home, his neighborhood, his friends, thanks to Horace and his wife, who, incidentally, was also murdered! Who could kill poor Susan just to get Horace arrested? Who could be so heartless? How about the kid who tortured innocent animals? A kid who Marcus told us was living in a horribly dysfunctional home?”

  “You keep saying his, so you must think it was Graham, not Shelley. If this was all Graham’s trick to get Horace arrested, why did Shelley get arrested? Remember? She got arrested first.”

  “I still haven’t figured that out.”

  * * *

  Shortly before dawn, the pump had done all it could do. Paul and Lacy turned on the exhaust fan above the vent to pull fresh air through the burial chamber and dry the wet, muddy floor. They walked back to the house together, Lacy’s groggy head on Paul’s shoulder, his arm around her waist.

  “There was something else the other day that struck me as odd,” Lacy said. “Were you on the porch when Marcus first arrived? When Roxanne came out to meet him?”

  “No.”

  “She said something when she first saw him. She said, ‘It’s been a long time. Five years isn’t it?’ Like they had met each other before. But when could they have met?”

  Paul stuck out his hand in a gentlemanly fashion, to help her over a rock wall. “I don’t know. I’ve never heard either Horace or Roxanne mention Marcus ever coming here. Maybe she went to Virginia at some point?”

  “But why?”

  Paul shrugged and reminded her of the little task they needed to perform at their first opportunity, then crossed the antika room and flopped into a chair at his computer. Lacy grabbed another one across the table from him and fired up her own laptop. She went online, pulled up the Wythe University website and clicked on “administrative staff.” She read one of the short bios, leaned back in her chair and stretched. Several weary bones popped. Now she knew almost everything she needed. Only one puzzle piece still missing.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  They were six for breakfast. Kathleen tromped in from the tomb and announced the coffin was in as good shape as one could expect after its watery ordeal. Lacy, her pale yellow hair in an unruly twist, announced she was going back to bed as soon as she ate, because she’d been up all night. Paul announced the burial chamber was now dry and the poor old pump could be passed along to the next group on the waiting list. Shelley and Graham announced they were still waiting for a call from Myerson about plane tickets.

  Roxanne set her tea cup down. “I’m going to Luxor this morning to visit Horace.” She dabbed up a spot of orange juice with her napkin. “A friend of mine at Chicago House is a friend of the police chief and he’s worked it out for me. I probably won’t be allowed more than five minutes, but do any of you have a message for him?”

  “Any word from Marcus?” Shelley asked. “It would be nice to tell him he has a grandchild.”

  Lacy glanced quickly from Shelley to Graham, hoping to catch a revealing expression on either face. She saw nothing and reminded herself that she already knew they were dealing with a cool character. Susan’s killer, probably also Lanier’s nemesis, wouldn’t be caught out on anything as simple as an accidental grimace. “We promised Marcus we’d call him every day but I assume no one called yesterday. He wasn’t scheduled to get back to Seattle until …” she looked at her watch, “about now, actually.”

  “What about the new chamber, Paul? Did it get wet?” Shelley’s face was sunburned on only one side, giving her a sort of Phantom of the Opera look. Lacy imagined she’d fallen asleep lying on her stomach with her head resting on her hands, her face turned to one side.

  “The new chamber’s in good shape. The water didn’t even touch it.”

  Roxanne set her fists firmly on either side of her plate. “Well! If we can find it in ourselves to go on, what with … everything … excavating the new chamber should be a very welcome adventure!”

  * * *

  Paul watched from the roof as Graham and Shelley walked out and down the driveway together. He dashed down the stairs and into Lacy’s room. She climbed down from the chair she was standing on to set her wet boots on the sill outside her little window. From the oversized T-shirt she was wearing, the one she always slept in, Paul deduced that she was getting ready for bed.

  “Now’s our chance. They both just left. They’re walking toward the temple.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Stand watch outside Graham’s room and let me know if you see them coming.”

  “How about if I watch from the roof? I could see them sooner and give you more warning.”

  “But then how could you warn me without shouting?”

  “I could throw a rock down and hit Graham’s window.”

  “Good idea.”

  Lacy pulled on a pair of shorts and headed for the roof.

  Paul walked into Graham’s room, yanked out the top dresser drawer and extracted the passport he’d seen Graham put there the day before. He rushed up the stairs to the roof and showed Lacy the name on the photo page. Now they knew everything.

  * * *

  “Joseph Graham Clark. That’s his full name. He’s Jody Myers, all right.”

  Paul and Lacy moved to the back side of the roof in case someone was listening on the porch below. Paul stood there, still staring at the passport. “What about the Myers part?”

  “Graham was raised by his aunt, Joanne Clark, who is also the registrar at Wythe. He told us his parents had been killed in a car crash, but that must have been a lie. His Aunt Joanne took him when he was removed from his home by Social Services after the Laniers got the community involved. Joanne Clark is married. Clark is her married name. What was her maiden name? I couldn’t think how to find that out without asking Graham directly, but then I thought of the Wythe University website. I checked her biographical information this morning and guess what? She’s Joanne Myers Clark.”

  “So her brother could have been Somebody Myers. Graham’s father.”

  “Her brother was Somebody Myers, a pervert and general all round bad influence. Joanne and her husband must have formally adopted Graham and changed his name to Clark.”

  “And the Jody part?”

  “Jody is a nickname for Joseph.”

  Paul reached out and cupped the back of her neck in one hand. “That has to be it. You’ve cracked it, Sherlock.” Paul looked over the edge of the roof. He turned to Lacy, one finger on his lips. “Graham and Shelley. They’re coming back.”

  In a low voice, she said, “What about Shelley? Is she in on this whole thing?”

  “She must be. Shelley’s not dumb. She’d have noticed something that didn’t add up, surely. Probably several things.”

  “I don’t think she is. At least I don�
��t think she was. Something happened on that felucca trip, Paul. When she came back she was like a different person.”

  Lacy looked over the edge into the back yard and saw Graham pulling a length of reinforced polyurethane tubing from a box beside the water tank. He draped it around his neck and disappeared around the west end of the house. “Think about it, Paul. This kid grows up so full of hatred for the Laniers, he vows someday he’ll get his revenge. Maybe he even goes into biochemistry as an excuse to get a job close to Horace. Maybe not. I have a feeling Graham has always been drawn toward chemistry, but I’ll bet revenge was the reason he applied to Wythe for a position as soon as he got his PhD in Texas. It wasn’t long after that, Cheryl Lanier was murdered at their mountain home. Horace and Marcus had alibis, but the police would’ve had no reason to suspect Graham Clark. None at all. Her killer used strychnine which causes a horrible death.

  “If I wanted to kill someone with poison, just to get rid of them, I’d use cyanide or sedatives or something. No need to cause them undue pain. Get the job done. Get it over with. But strychnine! You’d only use strychnine if you really, really hated your victim.

  “Just think. As soon as the Cheryl thing is fading from the newspapers, before you can get even with Horace in whatever equally horrible way you have in mind for him, he ups and moves to Egypt! Oh shit! Now what does he do? He bides his time until he comes up with an idea. Susan Donohue, Wythe’s resident Egyptologist, is returning from her field season in Egypt where she worked and lived at the same house where Horace now lives. Graham makes up a good interdisciplinary project involving Susan and himself, among others, and pitches it to Susan. Susan applies for the grant and there you are!”

  “So now he’s living in the same house as the man he intends to kill.”

  “But now he’s decided killing’s too good for him. He’s gonna make him really suffer. How? Horace is claustrophobic, he’s a neat freak and he has a bug phobia. He decides to get him arrested for murder and thrown into an Egyptian prison. Poor Susan is the designated murderee.”

  Lacy looked out toward the tomb again. She could see Graham, now fiddling with the generator on the slope above the tomb. A woman in a straw hat tied round with a yellow scarf approached the tomb from below. It was Shelley. Lacy recalled Graham saying he didn’t want Shelley going back in the tomb after the flood waters had brought in God knows what. “Why is Shelley going toward the tomb?”

  “I don’t know.” Paul turned toward the river and its strip of emerald green. “Help me out here. What do we do first? We can’t screw this up. Do we go to the police first? What about the language thing? How do we explain it? It’s hard enough to understand this mess in English. Should we tell Roxanne first? Should we call Dave Chovan and ask him to be our translator? Should I have a show-down with Graham first, in case we’ve got this all wrong?”

  “Roxanne’s already gone across the river. She won’t be back until this afternoon and she has no cell phone.”

  “Right. How about Chovan? He works over there.”

  Lacy shifted her weight from one bare foot to the other. The sun was heating the roof. “How about the man from the American Embassy. Myerson, isn’t it?”

  “Good idea. We at least have to tell him not to get them plane tickets home. We don’t want Graham leaving the country. If we’re right, and he finds out we’re onto him, we’d never see him again.” Paul squinted into the bright sun bouncing off the sandy hills. “Look who’s coming.”

  Little Yasser, scrambling down the slope between Whiz Bang and the settlement where Selim’s house was and where his own had been. He toddled his way around a large boulder and scrambled over another.

  “Yasser!” Lacy called out.

  The child didn’t seem to hear her. They called out several more times, but, unheeding, he turned half way down the slope and headed toward the tomb.

  “Does anyone ever keep an eye on that kid?” Paul asked.

  “In the U.S., his parents would be arrested for neglect.”

  Graham, they could see, was doing something with the polyurethane tubing in the area of the tomb’s exhaust vent. Bent over, he wrapped something around and around something else. Shelley had disappeared, possibly into a dip in the path.

  Paul squinted, raised his glasses to his hairline and watched for a minute or more. “Oh my God! We’re standing here talking while he’s committing murder number three right in front of our eyes!”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  In a flash, Paul assessed his chances of getting to the tomb in time. The overland route would be easiest, but Graham would see him coming and Paul would lose the advantage of surprise. The secret tunnel would be shorter and it would let him emerge at a spot directly below the tomb. He could climb the ridge and take Graham by surprise. But it was more important to save Shelley and Yasser. “You go to the tomb. Hurry!” he told Lacy as he headed for the stairs.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’m going to try to surprise him.” A half-dozen ideas collided in his head. Lacy is barefoot. Can she make it to the tomb in time? How about calling Shelley? Would she have her phone with her? Sure. She’s waiting for a call from Myerson. Call her how? What’s her number? “Lacy, call Shelley on her cell phone and tell her, don’t go into that tomb! Give any reason you can think of but make sure she doesn’t go in! And find Yasser.”

  Paul remembered he’d written Shelley’s number on his note pad, but he feared it would take him too long to find it. His chest pounded. He yelled her name as loudly as he could but got no answer. She might be behind the hill between the house and the tomb, or she might be there already.

  Paul had often wondered how it is when you need a miracle one pops up. Why, for instance, do you notice the child’s ball out of the corner of your eye before it rolls into the street? There are plenty of other things whizzing past in your peripheral vision as you drive along and you don’t notice any of them. Trees, benches, a basketball game. Why is it that when you’re trapped in a longshore current, as he had been once, a man on the beach just happens to be watching you and he just happens to be standing beside a rope-tethered life ring? And why is the rope long enough but only barely?

  And what made Graham leave his cell phone on the computer desk next to Paul’s laptop? “All right! Here Lacy, Shelley’s number is on speed dial number 1.” The fact that he wouldn’t have known this if Selim hadn’t stolen the herbal papyrus didn’t escape him, but he filed it away to think about later. He threw her the phone and ran.

  He looked for a flashlight on his way out the back, couldn’t find one, then flew across the back yard. He ducked into a couple of crevices before he found the one behind which lay the tunnel entrance. Screwing up his nerve, he plunged into the dark, claustrophobic tunnel. Reminding himself that he’d done this before, he used his hands as a cat uses whiskers to guide himself along the walls. Scooting his feet rather than stepping straight down, perhaps on a snake, he ignored the burbles, clicks, and whirrs. Sounds that seemed magnified by the stone silence of the passage. Something clutched at his hair. A bat or a pigeon, probably.

  Paul felt the curve in the walls that preceded the gap he sought. He was almost there, but where was the daylight? A wall of something stopped him cold. Something not solid, but made of bars and chunks and slabs. Of metal and wood and pottery. Running his hands over whatever it was, he reached forward hoping to trace what felt like a chair leg to its other end. He slipped. As he fell, his body dislodged an avalanche of unknown objects. Something large fell on his head.

  It must have knocked him out for some period of time because his next conscious thought was of something rope-like sliding across his shoulders. A snake, he knew, even though he couldn’t see it. His heart pounding so hard he felt sure the snake could feel it, he lay still. Snakes, he had heard, didn’t strike unless threatened, and he had every intention of posing no threat. He felt the rest of the snake’s body slip across his ribs, its size diminishing until he felt the tip of its tail flick
his right arm.

  Slowly, he rose and explored the blockage in front of him with his hands. Apparently, someone had filled this section of the tunnel with furniture, pottery, and household items. One object felt like a wooden pizza shovel. His dark-adapted eyes now saw light beyond the blockage, but fighting through it to the opening seemed hopeless.

  He turned and ran back the way he’d come.

  * * *

  Lacy ran toward the tomb, holding the cell phone to her ear. She counted the rings, checking to the left and to the right for any sign of Shelley or little Yasser, and scrambled, stumbling upward, falling, scrambling to her feet again. It was as if they’d both been swallowed up by the hills.

  Reaching the retaining wall at the tomb entrance, she climbed up and scanned the area for any sign of a woman in a straw hat or a child in a ratty gallabeyah. She saw nothing. She flew into the tomb, down the long hall and into the burial chamber. She stopped, dead in her tracks, and cried out, “No!”

  A stepladder sat beneath the hole leading to the new chamber. Shelley’s army/navy backpack, yellow scarf and straw hat lay at its feet. The hole, however, was no longer a hole. It was blocked solid with rocks and with chunks of plaster. Lacy scrambled up the stepladder and began pulling whatever she could budge out of the hole, tossing it onto the floor behind her.

  She called out, “Shelley!” as she worked, but she heard no answer. Her fingernails, already trimmed short and variously broken, ripped into the quick and bled. Is Yasser in there with her? Did he want to see what was in the hole and did Shelley boost him up, follow him in? Lacy shook her head sharply to eject the tears clouding her vision. How could there possibly be so much debris blocking this hole? Had there been a complete collapse? The workmen had cleared the room out, why hadn’t the junk fallen to the floor? Why would it still be blocking this hole only a few feet from the top?

  “Shelley!” she cried out. “Yasser!” But there was no answer.