A Whisper of Danger (12 page)

“It is very green—many years without polishing.”

“Are those rugs? See those rolled-up things propped over there?” Jess stepped across a small chest and walked between a pair of heavily carved chairs to the back of the room. “They are! Persian rugs! If moths haven’t eaten holes in them, we can carpet almost every room in the house. This is amazing, Mama Hannah. Dr. bin Yusuf must have collected from China, India, Persia, Turkey—the whole Orient. I’ve never seen such a collection.”

“Baskets, carvings, chests, tables, vases. Ehh, I am afraid your friend was storing up his treasures here on earth, where they can erode away or be stolen.”

“Maybe I could be called a thief, but I’m going to take all these things out into the house so we can enjoy them.”

“You are wise. The rich man believed he would store all his goods. He would lay them up for many years. But God says ‘a person is a fool to store up earthly wealth but not have a rich relationship with God.’”

“I think you’re being a little hard on Dr. bin Yusuf,” Jess said. She picked up a large copper pot and an armload of dusty baskets and started toward the door. She intended to set them out on the verandah for cleaning. “Maybe he had some very selfless plans for these things. Or maybe just collecting them made him happy.”

Even as she said the words, she remembered Solomon telling her that Uchungu House had never been a place of happiness. She found that hard to understand. Her art teacher had clearly had so much to enjoy, so much to bring him pleasure. He’d had money, this wonderful home, servants, rooms filled with treasures, and his enormous talent. What more could anyone want?

“Sikilizeni,”
Splinter was singing on the verandah as he sorted through his piles of clamshells.
“Furaha yangu. Mungu ni pendo; anipenda.”

I am happy. God is love; he loves me.

As Jess set down the copper pot and arranged the baskets in a row, she thought about the words to Hannah’s song. Maybe her old
ayah
was right about Dr. bin Yusuf—as she was right about so many things. Perhaps the artist had tried to find happiness by storing up treasure on earth, instead of enjoying the richness of God’s love.

Even so, Jess knew it was hard to feel much satisfaction with God when your life was filled with the kinds of trials she herself had gone through. Certainly something had been a big problem in Dr. bin Yusuf ’s life. After all, someone had murdered him.

“Where’d you get the baskets?” Splint asked.

“I unlocked a storeroom upstairs. It’s filled with great stuff. I want to bring it all outside and clean it up. Then we’ll decorate our house.”

“Can I help? I’ll bring things down for you! I’ll clean! Can I use the spray wax? I’ll be really careful, I swear. Hey, how about we turn on a garden hose? We could blast off the dirt!”

“Let’s leave any blasting around here to Hunky Wallace and his crew. Go tell Miriamu what we’re doing, Splint. See what kinds of cleaners she’s got in the kitchen. Then you can help me bring everything down.”

Splinter danced his way into the house singing Hannah’s Swahili song. The African woman passed him as she walked out onto the verandah toting the large brass tray on her back. To it she had tied a strap, which went over her forehead just like the straps she had used to carry heavy loads of firewood. Jess was always startled when reminded that Hannah was not truly her own mother but a simple village woman who had taken on the role of caretaker for four little white children. How Hannah had blessed their lives. What happiness her love had given them.

“This is a very, very green tray,” she said as Jess helped relieve her of the burden. “What a shame that the wealth has rotted away. As the Scriptures tell us, it will stand as evidence against its owner and will eat his flesh like fire.”

“Mama Hannah, good grief!” Jess said with a laugh. “You’re turning poor Dr. bin Yusuf into a demon just because he didn’t keep his brass tray polished.”

“Ehh,” Hannah said.

“He was a good man. At least I think he was. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to kill him.”

Hannah straightened. “Someone killed him?”

Jess nodded and told her about Mr. Patel’s visit. “The police have taken Solomon in for questioning.”

“Why?”

“Apparently he didn’t give an accurate police report after he found Dr. bin Yusuf ’s body.”

“Ehh.” She pondered a moment. “But why would Solomon beat his employer on the head? Was he caught stealing something valuable from this house? Or was he angry with Dr. bin Yusuf?”

“I don’t think robbery was the motive. Mr. Patel didn’t mention anything missing from the house. I don’t know why Solomon would kill anyone. I’m sure the police have questioned him. After he had worked closely with Dr. bin Yusuf so many years, I can’t imagine what could come between them that would cause such a huge problem.”

“Lust, pride, envy, greed, gluttony, anger, sloth. All can cause sin.”

“I guess that about covers it.”

“But perhaps another person killed your teacher.”

“Who? Both Solomon and Nettie told me he didn’t have any friends. It must have been someone with whom he had a relationship. Someone he knew well enough to let into the house. Or a person already working in the house.”

“Miriamu? I don’t think so. She is a woman of great peace.”

“Peaceful people can be driven to murder.”

“When unforgiveness holds them . . . yes, this is true.”

Unforgiveness.
Jess flushed at the word. Was she capable of something as terrible as murder? Why not? How many years had she despised Rick McTaggart? How many ways had she imagined torturing her own tormentor? Of course, she felt sure she would never actually carry out such an act. Yet someone had taken revenge on Dr. bin Yusuf.

“The killer would be a person who knew him,” Hannah said. “Who knew your friend? Solomon. Miriamu. Mr. Patel.”

“Mr. Patel is a lawyer. He knew Dr. bin Yusuf only on a business level. He wouldn’t have done it.”

“Did he stand to gain wealth by the death?”

“Just attorney’s fees. That wouldn’t be a very strong motive.” Jess thought for a moment, trying to make a mental list of anyone who might have had contact with the artist. “Well, our neighbor down the road, Nettie Cameron, told me Dr. bin Yusuf has a sister in Zanzibar town. Maybe his sister was holding something against him. Nettie told me everyone expected him to leave her the house.”

“Perhaps you should pay this woman a visit.”

“What if she knocks
me
on the head?”

“We should take Solomon with us for protection.”

“Are you kidding? He’s the primary suspect, Mama Hannah. Besides, he’s at the police station in town.”

“No, he returned in the Renault one hour ago. Miriamu told me.”

“The police let him go?” Jess glanced around, instantly wary. She had assured herself the artist had been killed by someone who had a motive tied directly to him—and who would not be interested in coming after her. But she still felt uncomfortable. Had the death of Dr. bin Yusuf resolved the killer’s problem and assuaged his rage? Or would he . . . or she . . . feel compelled to strike again?

“Miriamu told me the police could find no reason to arrest Solomon at this time,” Hannah said. “He has returned to Uchungu House while the police continue their investigation.”

“Do you think we’re safe here, Mama Hannah? If anything happened to Splinter . . . or to you. . . . Maybe we should move to a hotel in town. With so many people around, we’d be safer.”

“‘The Lord is my light and my salvation—so why should I be afraid? The Lord protects me from danger—so why should I tremble?’”

“Sounds good, but even David ran for his life when Saul was chasing after him. Remember the psalm? ‘O Lord, how long will you forget me? Forever? How long will you look the other way?’”

“Ehh, you have not forgotten the Word of the Lord!” Hannah beamed. “I believed that perhaps the root of bitterness had eaten too deeply into your heart.”

Jess leaned against an arched verandah support and stared up at the palm trees swaying in the afternoon breeze. Again, she found herself fighting a lump in her throat. It was an odd feeling. How many years had it been since she had allowed herself to cry? How many years since she had swallowed the ache and forced herself to feel nothing?

“This morning when we were sitting on the cliff-side steps, Rick asked me to forgive him,” she said. Her voice was barely audible over the murmur of the palm leaves. “I don’t want to.”

“Ehh.”

“Would
you
, Mama Hannah? I mean, I’ll admit I played a part in the fiasco of our marriage. I was young and unrealistic. I expected Rick to conform to my image of the perfect husband. I pushed him too hard, and I was impatient with the struggles he was going through. I’d fallen in love with him for his wildness, for that rebel streak that made him do crazy things. But once we married, I wanted him to settle down and act like a responsible husband.”

“You wished to change him. You forgot that only God can change a man.”

“I made a mistake, and I acknowledge that. But I wasn’t the one who drank beer until three in the morning. I wasn’t the one who rode around on a motorcycle and spent nearly every waking hour scuba diving. And I wasn’t the one who took off and left a pregnant wife.”

She crossed her arms and glared out at a bougainvillea bush loaded with purple blossoms. Just the mention of what she had been through made anger eat at her insides. She could feel it gnawing. She could feel the pain as though it had all just happened.

“I don’t see how I can forgive Rick for what he did,” she said. “I just can’t.”

“God can do what men cannot,
toto
.”

“God’s got his work cut out for him if I’m supposed to forgive Rick McTaggart. Just the sight of the man makes me sick. I hate him, Mama Hannah. I really do.”

The old woman ran her dark fingers over the green tray. “You know what I have always believed concerning people. I have always believed that hate and love are very close to each other.”

“I know, and I’ve always thought that was a bunch of bunk.”

“What’s a bunch of bunk?” Splinter stepped out onto the verandah carrying a bucket filled with warm soapy water and an empty bucket laden with a sea sponge, three rags, and a bottle of lemon oil.

Jess moved away from the pillar and went to inspect his finds. “Oh, Mama Hannah doesn’t think love and hate are opposites. She says they’re two sides of the same coin.”

“Hmm.” He cocked his hands on his hips and stared at the floor for a moment. “I’m with Mama Hannah.”

“You would be.”

“Sure, because she’s right. It makes perfect sense. Remember how once in a while I used to come running in from Nick’s house and tell you we’d had a terrible fight, and I hated him? I did, too! But see . . . I could only hate him that strongly because I liked him so much.” He knelt down on the verandah floor. “Look, Mom, here’s the deal. Pretend like this soapy water stands for my feelings for Nick. This bucket is love, and this one is hate. Are you with me so far?”

Jess nodded, always both amused and perplexed by her son’s analogies.

“Okay,” he went on. “Now, see how much I love Nick? The bucket’s full of my feelings. But if we get mad at each other, the hate bucket gets full.” He poured the soapy water into the empty bucket. “The feelings don’t go away, just like the water doesn’t go away. The feelings just get transferred back and forth. The only way I could hate Nick this much—all the way to the top—is if I loved him this much.”

“I still think when you’re full of hate, you’re empty of love. And that means they’re opposites.”

“Wrong. See, this is the
same
water, Mom. It can go right back from the hate bucket into the love bucket and make it just as full as it was before.”

“Maybe.”

“Okay, now think about James Wiggins.”

“Do I have to?”

Splint laughed at her reaction to the memory of the irritating little boy who had lived in a flat near theirs in London. “This is how deep my feelings go for James Wiggins,” he explained, emptying all but a cup of the soapy water into the copper bowl his mother had brought down from the storage room. He showed her the barely wet bottom of the pail. “See what a small amount of feelings are in the bucket that stands for love? It’s all I can muster. When James is hanging around and trying to be nice, I can sort of semi-like him.”

“You can remotely, slightly like him.”

Splint chuckled as he poured the trickle of water into the second bucket. “Once in a rare while there might be the slender, barely negligible chance that I’d like him. But even when I don’t like him, all I can make myself feel is a sort of inert apathy. See?”

“Inert apathy?” Jess repeated as she looked into the second bucket.

“I can’t hate James Wiggins the way I can hate Nick, Mom. My feelings aren’t full enough. So, it’s just like Mama Hannah said. If you really, truly hate somebody, then that means you once really, truly loved them. And you could love them that much again.”

“Oh, is that so?”

“Yeah, that’s so! Who is it you hate, Mom?”

Jess glanced at Hannah. The old woman was rubbing a rag over the green tray and humming under her breath.