“Hey,” she answered lazily. She has caller ID, but I wasn’t positive it would have mattered.
“Alan! It’s Alan. He’s coming to take me out.”
“What?” I could hear her sitting up.
“Alan Stratton. He’s here.” I dropped the phone as I pulled my shirt over my head.
“Alan? From Egypt? Are you kidding me?” she was saying as I picked it back up.
“No, really, he just called.” I kicked off my shoes. One of them flew across the room and left a mark on my white wall. I didn’t care.
“When you say here…”
“Here! In Austin. He’s coming over.”
“What the hell are you doing talking to me, you idiot?”
“I’m doing what we swore we’d never do to each other. I’m canceling with you for a man.”
She laughed. “Hell, I’d do it to you in a heartbeat. Just remember, you’ll owe me details later. Specific, sweaty, bodice-ripping details.”
“I don’t think so. Besides, I don’t think he’ll be wearing a bodice.”
She ignored this. “And wear that new sundress. If I find out you met him in those pathetic fat-ass jeans, I’ll slap you into the middle of next week.”
I laughed and hung up, then paused. What was wrong with my jeans? Nevertheless, the sundress it was.
Alan arrived at my door exactly one hour later, looking different somehow. And it wasn’t just the small scar above his right eyebrow. He seemed taller or something. Maybe his eyes were more green than ever. Maybe he just seemed more remote now that he was on my turf and out of the tour setting where I’d come to know him. He seemed to be searching my face, looking for something. I felt suddenly shy.
“Come on in,” I said, remembering my manners. I stepped back and held the door wide.
He walked past me then turned to give me a hug. Unfortunately, it was the kind of hug you might give a friend.
“It’s really good to see you,” he said, but at least he really seemed to mean it.
“You too,” I said. “How are you feeling? No lasting effects?”
“None at all. I’m completely fine, thanks to you. You saved my life, you know.”
“I don’t think so,” I protested. “I didn’t really do anything.” I shot a glance at his scar again, feeling even more guilty.
I led the way to my tiny living room, glad the place was relatively neat. It had taken three weeks, but I’d put away the last remnants of my Egypt laundry and souvenirs the weekend before. On the wall near the kitchen hung the papyrus in its unbreakable glass, the one I’d bought after the saleswoman bounced it off the floor. It was actually a nice piece, the Eye of Horus, and here, where it was not surrounded by hundreds of other prints, it did not look so garish. Beside it, on a small shelf, sat the gold pyramid he’d given me on Elephantine Island. With a smile, he paused to look at it.
A thought occurred to me. “You know, I never even asked if you had my address. I’m not in the phone book. I hope you didn’t have trouble finding me.”
“Not for someone with my innate and impressive detective skills,” he said with a grin. “Also, Anni handed me your contact information.”
“She did?” I knew I hadn’t tipped her enough.
“She did. And told me she hoped I was smarter than I looked.”
“She never said that!”
He grinned. “She might as well have. She certainly implied it.”
I went to the refrigerator and returned with two beers. He gave me an approving look. “Shiner Bock. A woman of taste and discernment.”
We clicked the bottles together. He was looking at me in the oddest way, as if he wanted to say something but couldn’t quite find the words. I’m not sure how long we would have stood there staring at each other, but I decided to break the spell.
“Come on, let’s sit outside. It’s such a gorgeous day. And then you can tell me what happened after we left.”
He followed me to the back porch where I had two lawn chairs and a small iron table. The roses around the patio were covered with small buds and the tomato plants in the raised bed near the back fence were already spilling over their cages. My fat little poodle, hearing the door, lifted her head and leaped to her feet, yapping obnoxiously. I stomped my foot at her and she subsided, tail wagging.
Alan stared. “What is … I mean, who is that?”
“You had it right the first time. She’s a pest. But a pretty good pest,” I couldn’t help adding. “Her name is Belle.”
He scored points by dropping down on one knee and holding out his hand. Belle waddled forward and licked his fingers, which meant nothing about his character at all. She was not a discriminating dog.
We sat down. Belle leaped into his lap, tried to stick her tongue in his beer bottle, which he jerked away just in time. Then she jumped back down and curled up at his feet. He laughed out loud.
“I told you she’s a pest. An old pest. She was a present for my sixteenth birthday, which seemed very cool at the time. Anyway, tell me what happened with Fiona and Flora. I’ve been trying to find out, but there hasn’t been a thing in the news, and Anni hasn’t written me.”
“Well, it’s not exactly something the Egyptians want to advertise. And the press there doesn’t have the same freedoms that it has here. But I stuck around long enough to give a deposition.”
“So tell.”
“Well, Fiona and Flora are being held in jail in Cairo on charges of murder, diamond smuggling, and antiquities theft. Actually, I’m not even sure the Egyptians bothered to file charges for the assault against me, they had so much else to work with.”
I leaned forward. “I heard them talking with Mohammad about diamonds, and they mentioned that Millie had seen some sort of statue. Poor Millie. I guess that’s why they killed her. You know, that entry in her notebook—where she suspected someone of smuggling? I actually thought she was talking about me and Kyla,” I admitted. “I thought she was crazy, when she was really smarter than all of us.”
He nodded. “I think she figured out Fiona and Flora right away. She may not have known the extent of their plans. In fact, I don’t see how she could have, but having found the statue, she knew enough to ruin their trip and possibly get them arrested. They couldn’t take that risk. She was a dead woman the instant she opened their bag.”
“And what about Mohammad? Did they ever catch him?”
“Almost immediately. He might have escaped if he’d left Karnak and never looked back, but he wasn’t prepared to do that. He wasn’t even carrying his passport, much less any money. He decided to sneak back onto the ship to get his things, and of course the police were waiting for him.”
I digested this. “You know, he might have been involved in the smuggling, but he never wanted anyone hurt. He really seemed appalled by Fiona and Flora’s activities.”
“Yes, murder was never supposed to be part of the plan. And from his point of view, everything that could go wrong did go wrong. He wasn’t in the same league with them in terms of ruthlessness, not that it will matter much when it comes to prison time over there.”
I thought back to the conversation at Karnak. “Fiona and Flora seemed to know him pretty well.”
Alan smiled his attractive smile. I thought he looked exceptionally good on my back porch. “This wasn’t the first time they’d worked for him.”
“They worked for him? After hearing them talk to him at Karnak, I thought it was the other way around.”
“Oh no. This was Mohammad’s deal all along. He came up with the plan, he made the contacts, he arranged the transfers. Then all he needed was someone who could play the part of a tourist and collect the items. It was very clever, deciding to use tour groups for smuggling purposes. Very low risk.”
“Low risk? You’re kidding, right?”
“Not at all. You’ve seen how tour groups are treated. One big happy family. Luggage scooped up all together, identities vouched for by the tour guide. If the luggage is inspected at all, i
t’s very cursory. And everyone expects to see all kinds of fake Egyptian crap in tourist luggage. How easy would it be to throw in one or two real pieces? It would take an expert eye to notice one authentic item in a load of fakes.”
I blushed a little. “I suspected DJ, as a matter of fact. He was buying so much worthless stuff. And once I read Millie’s journal and started thinking about smuggling, he moved to the top of my list. I feel bad about it.”
“Well, you had company. I thought the same thing for a while.” He reached down to pet Belle. “It was an easy mistake to make, or at least I hope it was. Anyway, Mohammad was WorldPal’s chief director in Egypt, and he was ideally placed to set up exchanges and contacts. We were even paying him to scout out locations and make local contacts. In fact, if he hadn’t gotten greedy, he could have done it for years.”
“Greedy?”
“He thought he found the ultimate smugglers in Fiona and Flora. Looking over our records, they’ve been on at least two other WorldPal Egyptian tours. And from what has come out in the investigation, they were apparently quite good at fencing stolen items. With their abilities, I think Mohammad was planning to repeat his little scam indefinitely. Everyone was getting rich, and it was seemingly foolproof. He had no idea Anni had become suspicious and had contacted me.”
“It just seemed so elaborate. All those people involved. I don’t see how he could have kept it going without getting caught.”
“To be honest, I think the previous trips were on a much smaller scale—I suspect they just took out one or two small items. But Fiona and Flora had decided to retire and apparently they told him this would be their last trip. He decided that he would arrange as many exchanges as he could. If the statue that got Millie killed was the only goal, they would have gotten away with it. But Mohammad had something set up in nearly every place we stopped, and they couldn’t handle it. I’m sure you noticed that Flora was getting a little … confused at times.”
“I wondered about that. I thought it might be part of her act.”
“I’m sure it was at one time, but it was becoming all too real. In fact, I’m pretty sure that’s the main reason things got out of control. Flora at least wasn’t able to make cool judgments anymore. She should have stopped the operation the minute Millie Owens became a threat. In fact, according to Mohammad, that was one of the many scenarios they had worked out in advance. If any of the other tourists noticed or commented on anything whatsoever, the whole thing was supposed to be canceled, and Mohammad himself would swoop in to remove the item and replace it with something similar but very fake. But instead, Flora killed her.”
“Flora did it?” I’m not sure why I was surprised. Maybe because Flora had seemed fluffier and softer than Fiona, with her talon-like hands and stringy shoulders.
“Yep. According to Flora herself, she killed Millie, and Fiona took out the vendor in Abu Simbel. By then, Mohammad had joined the tour so that he could prevent that sort of thing, but you’ll remember he had to help carry Kathy Morrison to the first aid tent. While he was occupied, the two ladies took the opportunity to retrieve the diamonds. But the vendor refused to take the outdated currency they had.”
“Yes, what was that about? I heard them talking about that too, but I didn’t understand.”
“One of their many operations was a little money laundering. On Elephantine Island, they met with your friend, Aladdin, and traded him a load of Egyptian pounds for Sudanese currency, which they were to use to buy the diamonds at Abu Simbel. That transaction went without a hitch, except that Aladdin double-crossed them. A couple of years ago, the Sudan switched from the Sudanese dinar to the Sudanese pound. The dinars are now all but worthless. I suppose it might be possible to exchange them for pounds, but not without going through the Sudanese banks and certainly not without attracting attention. It was a lot of money.”
“So when they got to Abu Simbel, their money was no good?”
“Exactly. And the vendor wasn’t going to give them their diamonds. And again, they had a chance to walk away, to contact Mohammad, but they decided to act on their own. Flora distracted him by bursting into tears and when he leaned forward to comfort her, Fiona stabbed him in the neck. Flora was quite proud of her acting skills and was happily describing it all in gory detail. Fiona was frantically trying to shut her up.”
“I bet she was.” I gave a little shudder. “Horrible.”
“Horrible and crazy. Flora especially.”
“Did they say anything about my necklace?” I asked. I still thought of it that way. My necklace, heavy and warm against my throat.
“That was the final straw. All through the tour, you must have noticed over and over how strangers were approaching you and Kyla, making odd references to sisters and Utah?”
“Yes! What was that about?”
“That was the code for all the transactions Mohammad had lined up for Fiona and Flora. The parties involved were to look for and contact two sisters on the tour to pass money or goods. What no one foresaw was another set of sisters on the trip. I know you’re cousins, but you and Kyla looked more like sisters than Fiona and Flora do. Plus, who would suspect two little old ladies of being involved in anything illegal? The contacts, scanning the group for two sisters, fastened on the two of you every time.”
I thought about it. “The guy in the carpet shop—he asked me about Utah and wanted me to go in that back room. He scared me.”
“From his point of view, I’m sure he couldn’t understand why you weren’t cooperating. It must have been very confusing.” He gave a little chuckle.
“I saw Fiona with him as I was leaving. I actually felt sorry for her,” I remembered. “I thought he was going to con her into buying an expensive rug. What did he actually want from them?”
He shrugged. “No one knows. By the time the authorities tried to arrest him, he had vanished. And Fiona and Flora aren’t saying much.”
“So, the guy in the rug shop, the guy on Kitchener’s Island who called himself Aladdin, and the stall keepers in Edfu who gave me the necklace,” I said slowly. “They all thought they were supposed to contact Kyla and me.”
“And one tour group owner,” he said ruefully, meeting my eyes.
“Ah.” My mouth dropped open a little as I processed this. Several things clicked into place. “That’s why you were following me … us … around. That’s what you were talking about at the hotel on Elephantine Island. I could not figure out what you were getting at.”
He nodded. “I was an idiot. As soon as Anni told me about hearing someone talking about sisters, I was sure it was the two of you. But the more I got to know you, the less sense it made. Give me a little credit, I really couldn’t see you as a murderer.”
“No, you just thought Kyla had pressured me into a life of crime.” I stifled something between a laugh and a sigh. “You know, part of the time, I actually thought you sort of liked me. And all the while, you thought I was a murderer. Or at least an accessory.”
He laughed with me. “I did like you. That’s why I was trying to get you to come clean about your life of crime.”
“Turn in my evil cousin, who’d led me astray.”
“Exactly.”
“When did you know you were wrong?”
“Well, remember I was questioning my own judgment right from the start.”
“Uh-huh.”
“But I was positive at the Valley of the Kings. I saw the knife cut on your arm. After I figured out that you’d been handed a necklace you didn’t know anything about, things started to make more sense. I looked around for anyone else who might be involved and finally took a look at Fiona and Flora. They seemed too old and senile at first glance, but they were the only other group members who were at Seti’s tomb at the right time.”
I blinked. “You mean it was Flora and Fiona who attacked me and tried to take my purse?”
“One of them at least.”
“But whoever it was knocked me down. He … or she … was strong!”
I protested, indignant that he thought one of those old ladies could overpower me.
“Probably Fiona then. She’s a big woman, and she’s in surprisingly good shape. Very surprising, in fact.” He looked embarrassed.
I stared. “Wait, you mean…”
“Yup. They popped out of nowhere while I was following Mohammad. I thought they were lost and was actually trying to show them the way back to the group. I didn’t want them to blow my cover. Fiona sidled over to me with a map, and while I was pointing out where we were, she knocked me flat. Flora injected me with the morphine while I was trying to get up. I guess I’m just lucky she didn’t knife me. And even luckier that you came along before they talked Mohammad into killing me.” He took a drink of beer. “Totally humiliating.”
I grinned. “You’ll get over it. Besides, in a fair fight, my money would be on you.”
“So, you think I could take her?”
“I’m sure you could. Well, two out of three anyway.”
He gave me a mock glare, and then we both burst into laughter.
“What will happen to them, anyway?”
“The U.S. State Department found a lawyer for them and has filed dozens of protests and appeals, but so far the Egyptians haven’t budged. On the plus side, there’s enough attention and pressure from the United States to ensure that they aren’t mistreated.”
I thought about that. “I guess that’s good. Do you think they’ll send them back here?”
He shrugged. “Who knows? I’m not sure which outraged the authorities more—murder or antiquities theft. I imagine either one normally warrants the death penalty. But in this case, especially in light of their age and nationality, I think they are probably looking at long prison sentences.”
Satisfied, I sat back in my seat. The afternoon sun, still filtering warmly through the new leaves of the live oaks, was gently sinking toward the horizon. A bee hovered lazily around the pink petals of the roses in the garden, and two squirrels chased each other down the bole of a tree across a patch of grass and then up and over the back fence. Belle raised her head and uttered a fierce little growl, but she didn’t bother to get up. I was intensely aware of the man sitting next to me, long legs stretched out comfortably, the light turning his hair a soft chestnut color and his eyes bright green.
Death on Tour Page 24