by Gerry Belle
Chapter Twelve
Snorkel Submersion
Several days later Zhara had booked a small yacht to take her out for one last look at the giant whale shark that had so overwhelmed her with awe. She’d passed a small park on the way to the marina in the car from the hotel and saw a dark suited Inspector Jaber sitting in the shade reading notes from a slim notebook.
Asking the driver to pull over, she lowered the window and called out, “Inspector?”
Jaber absently raised his head, did a double take when he saw her and bowed his head in greeting, then stood and approached the car. “Lady Six, how are you this morning?” he enquired.
“I’m very well and preparing to go out on the sea to see if I can catch one last glimpse of an amazing whale shark that I saw last week. We are preparing to leave the day after tomorrow and I wanted to get out on the water one last time. Would you care to join us?” she asked.
The Inspector gestured at his dark suit and said, “I don’t think I’m quite dressed for it, my Lady.”
Zhara hesitated, then said, “I’m sure the Captain of the yacht I’ve rented would have something suitable that you could change into if you should want to come.”
Rather than dismiss her out of hand, Zhara was quite surprised when he said, “The Movenpick group are snorkeling today, so I might take you up on that. I have a police boat standing by, but would like to get closer to them than that would allow. Would you mind if I hijacked your plans a bit?”
Zhara bit her lip. She really had wanted to try to see the whale shark again. On the other hand, catching a murderer might be a tad more important. “Very well, Inspector. Come aboard,” she said, indicating the front seat of the car next to the driver. It would never do to have a man in the back seat of the car with her. Rude and a breach of the customs of the country.
Jaber slid into the front seat and the car slid away from the park’s curb and onwards towards the marina. When the Inspector emerged from the Captain’s quarters a quarter of an hour later, he wore a long pair of loose linen draw-string pants, flip flops and a white dishdasha tunic. With the dark sunglasses he wore and a wrapped white keffiyeh turban to protect his head from the sun, none of the suspects would ever recognize him.
Zhara was attired in an elegant caftan over her tank-style swimsuit and had a sunhat shoved down over her head and large sunglasses to protect her eyes from the glare off the water. Neither of them would stand out from any of the other tourist boats on the water. It would allow them to get quite close to the Movenpick group and the large binoculars that the Inspector carried would easily be mistaken for the ones all the tour guides used to search for good places for their guests to snorkel.
The day turned out to be long, hot, and boring. They drank bottles of cool water, munched on a cooler of delicacies the Captain had packed for Zhara and took turns watching the suspects through the powerful binoculars Jaber had brought onboard. Zhara couldn’t actually hold them up for very long as the weight caused her arms to ache after a few minutes. She really needed one of those telescoping walking sticks like Ralph Johnson had to rest it on.
Zhara wasn’t sure what she’d thought would happen when they apprehended the killer, but it wasn’t at all what really did. She’d been gazing at the group on the Movenpick boat and had been about to put the binoculars down when she noticed that Iona Wright had gotten back in the boat, but her husband was nowhere to be seen.
“Where is Claude Wright?” Zhara asked, handing the binoculars to Jaber. “I see his wife, but not him.”
The Inspector took the binoculars from Zhara’s tired hand, shoved it to his eyes and quickly scanned the boat in the distance. The binoculars swept right, halted, swept left, halted, then came to rest for a few seconds before they were dropped onto the padded bench seat of the yacht and exchanged for the walkie-talkie the detective had done a communications check on earlier.
“Patrol boats move in. Quickly! The victim is in the water being kept submerged by the killer. Move in!” Jaber barked into the hand-held device. A chorus of responses came through in answer and Zhara craned her neck this way and that trying to see the boats beginning to diverge on the Movenpick tour group. The Inspector was once again gazing through the binoculars and barking orders into the walkie-talkie all at the same time. “The killer is Jill Clark! Keep your eyes on her! She is holding Claude Wright submerged with a broom handle. All eyes on them!”
Zhara almost snatched the binoculars out of his hand! She wanted to see! Darn it!
“What’s happening?” she almost shouted at Jaber. “What’s going on?”
“Claude Wright is the victim this time. He’s being held under the water by Jill Clark. She was holding a broom and sweeping the deck. Then suddenly, she sat on the side rail and casually let the handle of the broom drop into the water. I can’t really see Claude Wright, but he’s the only one missing,” the Inspector muttered. “It has to be him.”
“Jill?” Zhara gasped. “I never would have guessed that. Did she kill her husband and all the others too?”
“I don’t know. Stop talking, please,” Jaber gritted out at her, waving one dark hand in a curt gesture. Zhara sank back, annoyed, and tried to focus on the other boat. The Captain had ramped up the engines and they were quickly approaching the Movenpick tour boat.
Before anyone on board the tour group really realized it, the police patrol boats were surrounding them. At this distance, even Zhara could see what was happening. Most of the group on the tour boat were tired from the sun and sea. Many snoozed quietly and the honeymooners were off to one side snorkeling. When Jill realized that other boats were approaching, she simply let loose of the broom and quickly twisted, picked up a bottle of water and distanced herself from the spot she’d occupied a few seconds before.
Zhara marveled at her coolness. By the time the police had fished Claude Wright out of the water, still gasping, Jill was feigning shock and clinging to Mrs. Nettlepoolee’s skinny frame. Ralph Johnson had appeared at her side to support her as well, and to anyone who hadn’t witnessed the actions of mere seconds earlier, she would have appeared to be a shocked onlooker.
It didn’t take long for the police to lock her in handcuffs and unload her onto one of the other police boats. Claude Wright was fished out and rushed to a seaside hospital, his stunned wife simply sat gasping like a fish - mouth opening and closing in surreal slow-motion.
The entire Movenpick group was escorted back to the marina and the passengers segregated for questioning. Zhara was shocked and dismayed. She’d liked Jill and just couldn’t figure out why she was killing Claude Wright. What did Claude Wright have to do with any of this?
The car she’d hired from the hotel deposited her back at the Intercontinental tired, confused, and slightly in shock. As she showered, an equally dumbfounded Beatriz heard the whole story. Lowering herself onto the bed, Zhara was asleep in seconds, her system unable to cope with the confusing reality that had just presented itself.
Chapter Thirteen
The Circle of Vengeance
Several hours later, as dusk fell over the patio at the Intercontinental, Zhara sat gazing out over the pink peaks and jagged crests she loved so much and sipped a small glass of Sambuca.
A throat clearing brought her out of her pensive mood and she lifted her tired blue eyes to meet the dark ones of Inspector Jaber. “Have you figured it all out?” he asked, mouth quirking up at one corner in curiosity.
“No. No, I haven’t,” Zhara murmured. “It’s all just too mind-blowing. I guess you’re used to this sort of thing, but this really threw me for a loop. If I hadn’t seen the start of it with my own eyes, I wouldn’t have believed it.”
“I know how you feel,” Jaber muttered back. “Human depravity never ceases to amaze me.”
The waiter appeared and Jaber ordered a large beer. Zhara raised one eyebrow in question at the alcoholic beverage.
“I allow myself one beer whenever I solve a case,” he explained. “I went to universit
y in England, and it’s just a habit I never broke. There it was a beer after exams. Here it is one beer after I solve a case. Don’t tell my mother or my Imam!”
Zhara smiled slightly and said, “This is my second Sambuca. You can tell anyone you want.” They smiled at each other and gazed into the gathering pink-tinged dusk. Small lights flicked on around the pool below and stars began to twinkle gently above them in the dark, dark depths that are the light-free nights in the Middle East.
“Jill didn’t kill her husband,” Jaber began, his deep voice causing Zhara to shiver as though he narrated the beginning of a horror film. She supposed it actually was, if you looked at this series of murders that way.
“Each murder was perpetrated by a different person. There was no agreement about it, like in the movies where they swap murders or anything like that,” the Inspector continued. “The first murder was really a sort of accident that turned to manslaughter.”
“Who killed Ahmed Aboud?” Zhara asked, the tension in her body causing her voice to crack.
“The honeymooners, Gordon and Theresa,” Jaber stated flatly. “Aboud had just sedated Jill, and gone out to blow off his ill-content. When he came upon the honeymooners in the rocks - doing their usual canoodling - he lost it and started berating them. Then he tried to kick Gordon. Gordon simply rolled over Theresa to protect her and Aboud fell backwards, cracking his head on the rocks.”
“So it was an accident?” Zhara questioned.
“Up to that point, yes,” the detective said, hesitating, “but then it wasn’t. Mrs. Nettlepoolee came along and told the honeymooners to go back to their room. The coroner will show that she most likely rolled Aboud over using her cane on his back as a lever and that dumped him low enough that the tide reached him an hour later. So, in actuality, Mrs. Nettlepoolee killed him by drowning. Or by lack of rendering aid, or whatever the Civil Courts will let me charge her with.”
Zhara gasped softly. “Mrs. Nettlepoole! Well, I never!”
“Exactly!” Jaber barked sharply. “We never think little old ladies are going around killing people!”
“No, we don’t,” Zhara agreed softly. “What about Karen at Petra? I know it wasn’t her husband, Gerard, because he was with us.”
“Ralph Johnson,” Jaber stated matter-of-factly. “There must be something to what Basilio was saying about him snapping from overbearing women. “He couldn’t take listening to Karen berate Gerard any longer and simply took a page out of Mrs. Nettlepoole’s book and shoved her in the back with his walking stick, sending her toppling into oblivion.”
“None of the murderers really knew who killed whom. They just began to realize that their small group was giving each other permission to end the lives of people whom they found irritating. Really, it’s bizarre, like generalized group consent suddenly descended on them and they were each allowed to pick off people they judged as “bad”. It’s mind boggling, but exactly what happened,” the detective added, his brow furrowed into thought.
“Theresa, the female honeymooner, overheard the man who was murdered in the cool suite slapping his rather delicate, aged wife in the hallway outside the spa. When she saw how cowed and afraid the woman was, it just flipped a switch in her. Gordon adores her and she couldn’t imagine what it would be like to live an entire marriage with someone who beat you. She simply smashed the control on the door to the suite with the glass-breaking tool that was nearby on a fire extinguisher mounting. It looked similar to Mrs. Nettlepoole’s cane tip and Ralph Johnson’s walking stick end, and so fooled us into thinking it was all one killer,” he continued pensively, pausing to put his head back, take a long swig of beer and peer at the stars.
Zhara said nothing. It was all just so weird.
“Finally, Jill Clark got it out of Mrs. Nettlepoole that she’d left Ahmed lying on the beach having turned him with her cane. Strangely, Jill ended up not minding that her husband was gone. Her life was suddenly better and she was beginning to see the country her husband had denied her. When Claude Wright sanctimoniously criticized her for continuing on this trip though she was a widow, Jill had had enough. That’s when she decided to hold him under the water with the broom. It was really a sort of mass-hysteria induced execution of people they deemed to be “bad”. Wild,” the Inspector said, shaking his head in disbelief.
“I’ll say,” Zhara added. “I’m stunned into silence.”
“No, you’re not,” Jaber said, grinning at her. In the darkness his white teeth glowed in humor. “Nothing stuns you to silence. Admit it!”
“Ok, maybe not silence,” Zhara said quietly. “Stunned, though. That’s for sure.”
“Yes, it will take some time to get this processed,” Jaber nodded agreement, then both fell into a deep silence, as they began to do just that.
Chapter Fourteen
Isolation Location
When Zhara, Beatriz, and Basilio descended to the lobby of the Intercontinental the next day in order to check out and leave for the airport, Inspector Jaber was there to bid them farewell.
No one hugged anyone, as the social distancing needed to prevent the Covid 19 virus was already being touted as the best way to slow its spread.
“Will you return to the U.S.?” Jaber asked softly. “They say the heaviest concentrations of this virus are through airports and other entry points from overseas.”
“Yes, my doctor advised me of that as well,” Zhara replied, twisting her fingers together. “I’ve been uncertain about what to do,” she admitted, sighing heavily. “Frankly, nothing seems like a good solution right now, but I don’t think returning home to a heavily populated area before they have more information, a vaccine, or a cure, is really a good idea. I’ve got people to worry about now,” she said, nodding towards Beatriz and Basilio. “So, I’ve decided to go someplace more isolated until the medical establishment gets a better hold on this.”
Jaber quirked up one eyebrow in question.
“I’ve booked a hilltop house in Cannes, in the South of France,” Zhara said haughtily, waggling her eyebrows at Jaber. “What, you didn’t think I was going to go to the Antarctic or something?” The two grinned at each other.
“Good luck,” Jaber said, saluted her and walked out into the sunshine, turning for a moment to wave at her once more, before stepping into a waiting police car.
“You too!” Zhara called after him, not knowing that she was the one who was going to need the luck. She’d booked them into a villa in Cannes in the South of France, thinking they’d be safe there. This time of year was usually very slow as the Russians now wanted to frequent shiny new villas on Tenerife, Mallorca,Cyprus, or Sardinia. Cannes was a little too retro for them and was preferred, generally, by an older, more dignified crowd. Little did she know what awaited them. Luck would indeed be needed.
Chapter Fourteen
Cannes
The flight they’d taken from Amman in Jordan, to Cannes in France, only took about four hours. Traversing customs in both countries went smoothly, but Zhara was already worried about the lack of sanitary measures she’d seen from officials and other passengers.
The car she’d hired whisked them away from the airport and as it spiraled higher into the hills above Cannes, the beautiful view out over the bay began to sooth her nerves. The car headed south and gradually wound higher into the hills. Rolling down the windows of the car, Zhara breathed in the scents of blossoming almond trees, groves of cypress and pine, and the earth mixture of olive and fig trees. The south of France was always a wonderful delight of scents, textures and tastes.
At last, the car topped the final hill above the bay and drove slowly down a narrow, rutted drive between pillars bearing the carving, “Villa Colline.”
They passed a small stone cottage that Zhara presumed was the “caretaker’s cottage” the real estate man had told her about. Coming to a halt at the outer edge of a U-shaped stone courtyard, the villa appeared to consist of only one level. It was constructed of mellow, old yellow, local stone a
nd was mildly dilapidated in the way regal old chateaux usually are. It’s hard to keep something several hundred years old and in constant need of care from looking otherwise.
A young girl rushed out to greet them. From the way she was twisting her hands together, Zhara assumed all was not as it should be.
“I am Marie,” the girl said hesitantly. “I am so sorry Madame, but the others have left us,” the girl flung a hand towards the chateau and then towards the caretaker’s cottage. “They fear the virus and have returned to their families. I will do all I can to help you.” The girl lowered frightened eyes and kept her gaze to the ground.
“Oh, don’t worry, Marie,” Zhara said bracingly. “We’re quite capable of looking out for ourselves.” With that, Zhara breezed into the house and made a quick tour of the rooms, leaving Beatriz and Basilio to calm the agitated house maid.