Death on Tour

by Janice Hamrick

  “So are they not allowed, or are they just smart?”

  We giggled.

  Our driver parked the carriage in a long row of covered stalls, which reminded me of a SONIC drive-in, minus the teenage girls on Rollerblades swooping by with trays of tater tots and limeades. Although cool right now, later in the season the heat would be unbearable on the asphalt, and it was comforting to know that horses and drivers had shade at least. Our driver hopped down with the agility of a boy and offered a hand to assist us from the carriage, his smile revealing several missing teeth. We joined the others around Hello Kitty, and walked past the inevitable line of stalls to the temple.

  One of the more enterprising young entrepreneurs jumped out in front of Kyla and me.

  “Hello, pretty ladies!”

  Kyla ignored him and kept her eyes straight ahead, while I tried to look away. He waved his hands as though checking to see if we were blind. I couldn’t help grinning, which was a huge mistake.

  Encouraged and elated, he began walking backward in front of us, slowing us down, but not enough to get by. The rest of the group streamed past us heartlessly.

  “I have many fine things in my shop, beautiful things for beautiful ladies,” he announced.

  “We can’t stop now,” I said. “We have to stay with our group.”

  “No, no, it will not take any time at all. You can easily meet up with your group,” he said persuasively, stumbling a little as he continued backward.

  “No, we can’t,” said Kyla shortly.

  He got another idea. “On your way back, then. On your way back, you will stop in my shop. I will make you a very good bargain. A beautiful bargain for a beautiful lady.”

  Kyla just snorted, an unladylike sound reminiscent of a camel. I would have to find out how she did that.

  “At least tell me your name. Tell me your name, pretty lady.”

  With an evil sidelong glance at me, she answered, “Jocelyn,” and pushed past him with a burst of speed.

  I scurried to catch up, cheeks red, listening to his shouts of “Jocelyn, Jocelyn, come back!”

  “Good one,” I admitted to her, as she burst out laughing.

  It is a sad truth that repetition dulls appreciation. What had been mesmerizing at Giza, fascinating at Aswan, and interesting at Abu Simbel had finally become monotonous at Edfu. The huge walls, covered by magnificent carvings that we had never seen before, seemed disconcertingly familiar. The height and the massive weight of the rocks were old hat. Entering a courtyard, we did perk up a bit at the black stone statue of Horus, the falcon god, wearing the crown of Egypt. Not large by Egyptian standards, it stood only six or eight feet tall, but we had seen nothing like it before, and it presented a good photo opportunity. We took turns standing in front of it, obligingly handing cameras back and forth to get pictures.

  Alan joined us, speaking to me for the first time since Abu Simbel. “Here, give me your cameras and I’ll take the two of you,” he offered.

  Well, it wasn’t romantic, but at least it was something. And we didn’t have many pictures with the two of us, so we handed over the cameras and posed. After making the obligatory rabbit ears behind my head and posing for two snaps, Kyla bounced forward and claimed the cameras.

  “Now you stand there with Jocelyn,” she ordered.

  Alan obligingly traded places with her. Kyla took a step back as if she was having trouble getting us both in the picture. “Move a little closer together,” she called.

  We each took a step at the same time and bumped together. Alan laughed and threw his arm around my shoulders, and Kyla snapped the picture. For one second I leaned my head against his shoulder. And then I caught myself and stepped away smoothly with a smile and a word of thanks. Was it my imagination or did he seem just a little disappointed? I knew I was. I could still feel the pressure of his arm on mine.

  He looked as though he were about to say something, when Charlie de Vance made a kind of hooting noise like an owl caught in a blender. “Yoohoo! Mr. Stratton. Alan! You remember how to work our camera. Would you mind?”

  Alan gave me an amused glance under his lashes and then turned with a smile to help.

  Kyla and I walked on. When we were a few paces away, I turned on Kyla indignantly. “What was that about? Making me take pictures with him?” I asked under my breath.

  “Oh come on, you have the hots for him so bad. You needed a souvenir of the hot guy who got away.”

  “What makes you think he’s going to get away?” I asked indignantly. “And anyway, I do not have the hots for him. I told you before, I don’t trust him. I think he’s up to something.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Yes, of course. He’s some crazed psycho killer. Well, here’s photographic evidence.”

  She pointed her little Canon over my shoulder and snapped.

  I turned my head and saw Alan bending over to retrieve Yvonne’s bag for her.

  Kyla grinned. “Now you have a picture of his heinie, too. We have him coming and going.” She giggled to herself on and off for the next five minutes. She has a truly unfortunate habit of cracking herself up.

  I didn’t think Alan could have seen her snap the picture of his backside, but he did not rejoin us. Oddly, he trailed after Ben, Lydia, and Jane almost the whole time, sometimes chatting with them, sometimes just loitering nearby. He couldn’t be interested in Jane, I told myself. She’s way too young for him and so scrawny. I considered her, following listlessly behind her aunt and uncle, dark glasses hiding the even darker circles under her eyes, and I thought again of the vivacious, laughing girl I’d seen with the Carpenters in the airport. And this girl’s terror at Abu Simbel. Surely that had been excessive, even for a nervous invalid, if that was what she was. I did not know what to make of it.

  I caught up with Dawn and Keith Kim along the high wall where Anni was pointing out the carvings of crocodiles.

  “Before the Aswan dam was built, many crocodiles lived along the banks of the Nile, all the way to Cairo and beyond to Alexandria. But after the dam was finished, they vanished too. We hardly ever see them anymore.”

  “I bet nobody misses them,” I said, by way of a conversation starter.

  Keith looked at me earnestly. “You don’t understand how devastating the dam has been on the environment here. The crocodiles aren’t the only creatures affected. Without the annual floods, the farmland is not renewed every year. Farmers are resorting to using chemical fertilizers, which have been killing wildlife and plants. Even the papyrus reeds are dying out. And people have been able to build much nearer to the banks of the Nile, which causes more pollution than ever to reach the river water.”

  I was already regretting that I’d said anything. “I’m sure you’re right,” I agreed quickly.

  Dawn gave Keith a half-amused, half-exasperated look. “She doesn’t want to talk about the environment, Keith. No one wants to talk about the environment.”

  He frowned at her, opening his mouth to protest how shortsighted or selfish that was, but Dawn cut him off and turned to me.

  “I wanted to ask you about yesterday,” she said. “You actually went into that shop, didn’t you?”

  Her almond-shaped eyes gleamed with curiosity under skillfully applied shadow and liner. She really was a very beautiful woman.

  “Yes, I did,” I admitted. “It was horrible. That man was just lying on his face on the floor.”

  “Was there blood?”

  “Dawn!” protested Keith.

  Dawn looked annoyed. “Oh like you don’t want to know. I’m sorry that that poor man is dead. So tragic. Blah, blah. But damn it, it’s interesting. Why shouldn’t I ask?”

  I tried not to laugh. I knew I liked Dawn.

  “Ask away,” I said. “I don’t know much anyway. But the thing that hit me most was how similar it was to what happened to Millie. Pretty strange coincidence.”

  “What do you mean?” ask Keith, but Dawn was nodding.

  “Exactly. Two people killed. Makes you
think.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Keith protested. “There’s no connection at all between the two … events. One was an American tourist, in Giza, hundreds of miles away. The other was a simple shopkeeper. Completely different,” Keith added stoutly.

  “Both stabbed in the back of the neck,” I pointed out. “Neither one of you noticed anything unusual in the market before it happened, did you?”

  Keith sputtered. “Look. This is our first vacation together. Whatever is going on, it doesn’t have anything to do with us.”

  Dawn gave him a look, then turned back to me as if he hadn’t spoken. “We didn’t notice anything, or at least I didn’t. The shopkeepers are so aggressive and in your face, I can’t even see what they’re selling, much less pay attention to anything else going on. You know what it’s like when you go into one of those shops.”

  I didn’t, but I nodded anyway, not wanting to admit I’d never had the nerve to do more than lower my eyes and rush by, ignoring the calls and offers of the hawkers.

  “Oh, you and your conspiracy theories,” said Keith indulgently. “Look, just because someone totally unrelated to our group died someplace we just happened to be, doesn’t mean there is something going on. I still don’t think Millie Owens’s death was anything more than a really sad accident. You read about people breaking their necks all the time in strange ways.”

  “But she didn’t break her neck,” Dawn protested. “Alan said she was stabbed.”

  “Oh, Alan,” Keith’s voice was laden with scorn. “What does he know about it? I’ll tell you what. Nothing. He just wants to dash around looking important and listening to himself talk.”

  “That’s not true, my love. Alan is a very smart man. Very educated.”

  “Hmph,” he snorted. “I don’t know why he’s talking to you about it anyway. It’s none of his business. He’s just a busybody. Worse than Millie … God rest her soul,” he added quickly, suddenly aware he’d spoken ill of the dead. “Alan’s been asking questions all over the place, stirring everyone up. I tell you what, I saw Fiona and Flora go into that shop about ten minutes before that French woman started screaming, but I wasn’t going to tell him. He’d just hound them to death, poor senile old things.”

  “Do you think they’re senile?” I asked, trying to steer the conversation away from Alan, of whom Keith was obviously jealous. I wondered if Dawn had made some admiring comment about him.

  “Of course they’re senile,” Dawn said, apparently glad to find something on which she could agree with her husband. “Classic dementia. Look how they’re always confused and always late. They never seem to know what’s going on. How they were able to make arrangements for this trip is beyond me. I suspect a young relative handled everything for them. I know Fiona has a son—we were talking about him at dinner. I wish I could give him a piece of my mind. Those two should not be on the loose in a foreign country. What if they wandered off?”

  Probably exactly what the son was longing to find out, I thought cynically. And with the possible exception of Dawn Kim, I think we were all right with him on that.

  “They seem to be handling it, overall,” I said weakly.

  “Exactly what I tell her,” said Keith. “Senile or not, they are doing fine and you should leave them alone.”

  “I was a nurse for fifteen years,” she explained to me. “And I can tell you they’re not fine. Have you smelled them? Urine! On Flora, at least.”

  I had gone to considerable trouble not to get within smelling distance of either one of them, and now I was going to redouble my efforts.

  “That’s terrible,” I said truthfully.

  “Something needs to be done about it.” She looked from her husband to me as if expecting us to march off and take action. I made my escape quickly.

  * * *

  On the walk back to the carriages, I steeled myself and decided enough was enough. I couldn’t possibly leave Egypt without trying to haggle for something in a shop. I had a large, smelly wad of Egyptian pounds in my purse, and I was determined to spend it on something. Accordingly, I slowed down. The boy who had walked backward for us was nowhere to be seen. I was a little disappointed, because I thought that kind of initiative should be rewarded, but I tried to decide from a distance which little stall looked the most promising. As far as I could tell, they were all identical, with racks of postcards and brightly colored dresses swaying in the gentle, cool breeze.

  “What are you doing?” Kyla asked, slowing with me.

  “I want to buy something.”

  “You’re kidding. What could you possibly want here?”

  “Nothing. I just want to try it.”

  “You should wait and let DJ help you. They’ll eat you alive.”

  I grinned. “I know. I’ll make some guy extremely happy and come away with a total piece of crap. I just want to try.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I can’t bear to witness the carnage. I’ll meet you back at the parking lot. Remember we only have fifteen minutes.”

  “Plenty of time for me to get ripped off,” I said, as we started toward the shops.

  We were immediately besieged.

  “Hey, pretty lady! What’s your name? You are very beautiful. What’s your name?”

  The hawkers were relentless. “Pretty ladies, you sisters!” called one. “Pretty sisters. I would pay five hundred camels just to gaze on your beauty. No, one thousand camels!”

  Kyla stiffened, threw me a malevolent glance, and dashed away, although I wasn’t sure whether it was the reference to sisters or camels that ticked her off the most. Either way, this guy had won me over. I moved toward his stall.

  However, just then another shopkeeper, a young man with a missing front tooth, jumped out and waved frantically at me. “No, no! That’s the wrong place. You should come in here. Pretty lady from Utah. In here!”

  I hesitated. Utah again. What the hell was it with Egyptians and Utah? I shook my head and gestured to indicate that I was going with the guy who thought I was worth five hundred camels. However, to my surprise, camel boy had lost his smile and was backing away from me into his stall. He waved his hand as though to shoo me away. The man with the tooth, or rather, without the tooth, beckoned me again. I took a hesitant step into his stall, quickly glancing around at the racks of t-shirts, the scarves, the revolving stands of postcards. Surely there was something in here that I could haggle for.

  But before I could choose something, three large men wearing white galabia appeared from the back and surrounded me, blocking my way out. I froze in alarm. The way they were standing effectively hid me from anyone passing the shop front. A fourth man pulled a rack of men’s shirts into a new position and blocked any chance I had to escape. I tried to keep my face calm, heart pounding in my chest. This could not be happening.

  The oldest man present, dark hair greasy and graying, stepped forward and thrust something under my nose. “Here it is,” he said.

  I tore my eyes away from his face and glanced down into his hand. A gleam of gold shown through his fingers, and he opened his palm to reveal the most exquisite necklace I had ever seen. Lapis lazuli and brilliant red carnelian glowed against the gleam of gold metal work. He scooped up the pendant so that it draped heavily across both his hands, a stunning piece and obviously genuine. Even the clasp at the back was ornate and fine. Without thinking, I put out a finger to touch it and he snatched it back, holding it in his fist, high near his ear.

  “The price has gone up,” he said unpleasantly.

  I bet it had. Nothing else in here was half as good. I’d seen necklaces like this in the window of a fine jewelry store in Cairo, and the original or something very much like it in the Egyptian Museum.

  “Okay, well thank you for letting me see it,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm.

  I looked around again for a way out but I was still blocked. I chose the smallest of the four, a younger man whose eyes were on a level with my own, and gave him my best teacher stare. “Please mov
e, I want to get by.”

  He actually shifted half a step before a sharp command from Mr. Greasy with the necklace brought him back into position. I didn’t take my eyes off the young man’s face.

  “I want to leave,” I said forcefully and walked right into him.

  Give him credit, he wasn’t made to be a bully or a thug. He couldn’t scramble away from me fast enough, and I was almost out of the store before the man with the necklace caught up to me and grabbed my shoulder and spun me around. He thrust the necklace into my face, his fingers pressing painfully into my arm.

  “You will give me fifty thousand pounds more. We have heard about what happened, and the deal has changed.”

  “I don’t have fifty thousand pounds, and let go of my arm or I’ll scream.” Inside, I was already screaming, but I kept my voice steady.

  He released me instantly, but thrust his face into mine. His breath smelled of tobacco and garlic.

  “Maybe your sister has it then,” he said with an ugly look. “Mahmoud can go to bring her here. Then we can negotiate.”

  Terror for Kyla raced through me like an electric shock. “No!” I almost shouted the word. “I don’t want your fucking necklace, and I’m leaving! Now!” I spoke as forcefully as I could, surprised and a little proud my voice did not squeak. I had never been so frightened.

  He reached out a hand, and I filled my lungs in preparation for the scream of my life. But at that moment, a fifth man burst from behind the curtain in the back. “Enough!” he shouted.

  He thrust himself in the middle of the group, a small old man with a forceful personality. He tore the necklace away from Mr. Greasy’s grasp and pushed it into my hands. “Here. Take it and go. The deal stands. I am sorry you were troubled.”

  And before I knew it, I was back on the asphalt with the Egyptian sun streaming down over my shoulders clutching a very beautiful and obviously expensive necklace for which I’d paid not a pound. Behind me I could hear voices shouting at each other in Arabic. I thrust it into my purse and rushed back to the waiting carriages, half walking, half trotting as fast as I could. I kept expecting to hear shouts and running feet behind me. Shaking, I made it to the parking lot, spotted the white horse, and broke into a run.