Death at the Voyager Hotel (10 page)

Paula wrote,

1. Oliver – rejected
lover?

Thelo nodded. “Yes, correct. Who else?”

“Diane,” Paula
said uncomfortably. “She was smitten with Oliver for a while, and then Heather
came along. Diane claims she was already done with him, but that might be sour
grapes.”

“Agreed,” Thelo
said. “So, jealousy would be the motive there.”

She wrote down,

2. Diane – jealous of
Heather? Disgust for “jungle fever”?

“Jungle fever?”
Thelo said in surprise. “Like in that movie?”

“Yes. Diane’s
words, not mine. She looked revolted when she talked about relationships
between Ghanaians and white people. I still can’t see how she could kill her
friend Heather, though. And I can’t see Oliver doing it either.”

“There you are,”
Thelo said, a little smugly. “Not so easy when you find yourself investigating
people you know and like, is it?”

“There has to
be someone else,” she said weakly.

“There very
well might be,” he said, his words beginning to slur in his drowsiness. “We’ll
see what Dr. Biney can dig up.”

She looked at
him as his eyes began to drift closed. “Good night, sleepy-head.”

“Mm,” he
muttered. He was out for the count.

On her sheet of paper, she wrote:

To do:

1.
Interview
Amadu

2. Meet Mr. Peterson

3. ?

Yes, Paula intended to ask more questions. It wouldn’t hurt
to have Dr. Biney help in any way, but for the reasons she had given Thelo, she
wasn’t going to hang her hopes on him, and certainly not on Chief Inspector
Agyekum. In effect, she thought with irony, she was up against a men’s club—men
who didn’t fundamentally understand why Heather Peterson would not go swimming
drunk and in the nude.

On Saturday, Thelo had family affairs to attend to, and Paula
was to drop Stephan and Stephanie off at their cousins before going off to do some
shopping. They were running a little early, so Paula opted to first swing by
the
General
Post Office
to pick up some mail. On the way there, they passed through
Jamestown, home to most of the students at High Street Academy and probably the
oldest part of Accra. It was a jumble of open-air markets, houses with
corrugated metal roofs, winding streets and mysterious alleys.

Traffic slowed
to a crawl at
Ussher Fort
. People walked by the decaying edifice without
regard for its ancient history. In the next block, in an abandoned, skeletal
building that had never gotten past the first floor, teenage boys in mismatched
shoes or none at all played a sweaty game of soccer under the burning morning sun.
Market women with impossible loads on their heads walked the uneven pavements
and cut across the street between cars, while itinerant vendors used their best
sales tactics to unload trinkets on captive drivers in the paralyzed traffic.

Stephan was
beside Paula in the front passenger seat, his head bent studiously over his
handheld video game as his thumbs worked. He had begged her to allow him to
take the device along and she had relented.

“Five more
minutes of that, then you put it away,” she told him quietly. “Hear me?”

“Yes, Mummy,”
he said, looking up at her for a brief moment of acknowledgement.

Paula was
undecided whether these games were good, bad, or of no consequence. Facing the
reality that she could never stamp out the boy’s devotion to them, she limited his
playing time. She turned for a second to look at Stephanie, who was in the back
seat gazing out of the window with absorption. Physically, she was a female
copy of her fraternal twin brother, but she was the gentler and more
introspective of the two, often exerting a moderating influence on Stephan, who
could easily get out of hand. 

 A young man with
vestigial, crumpled legs rolled up the middle of the street on a skateboard that
he propelled with his hands, stopping at each vehicle to beg for some loose
change. He and many others like him all over Accra had astonishing traffic
negotiation skills, but what they did was still dangerous. As he drew up to Paula’s
Highlander, he stopped and looked up, reaching up with a hopeful, cupped palm.
She lowered her window and greeted him in Ga. “How are you?”

“I try, madam.”
He had a brilliant, infectious smile and a powerful upper body from years of his
particular form of locomotion.

She smiled
back. “All your life in the street?”

“Since about
twelve years old.”

“Tough, eh?”

“Very tough,
Madam.”

She gave him a
cedi bill, perhaps ten times what many people would give. His face lit up. “God
bless you, Madam.”

“Thank you, sir.
And you.”

He sped off and
zigzagged to safety on the pavement as traffic began to move again. She put her
window back up.

“Why is he like
that, Mummy?” Stephanie asked.

“He probably
had polio when he was a little boy.”

“What’s that?”
Stephan asked, looking up at her.

“It’s a disease
where the germ goes to your spinal cord and you can’t move your legs anymore.
So they get small and weak.”

“Can we get it,
Mummy?”

Paula shook her
head. “No, we’re all safe, because we had the vaccination at the doctor.”

“Oh,” he said,
looking relieved.

“Is it because
he’s crippled that he’s poor and has to beg for money?” Stephanie asked.

“Something like
that,” Paula said. “It could be his mother and father couldn’t take care of him
or didn’t want to, so they put him out on the streets and he never got to go to
school.”

“That’s cruel,
Mummy.”

“Yes, and it
reminds us to always be kind to people, no matter what they look like or how poor
they are.”

Paula welcomed
these discussions. She often fretted that the twins were too sheltered and privileged,
too insulated from hardship. Their riding along in an air-conditioned SUV
sealed off from the sweltering weather outside was emblematic of that cocooned
life. They attended a private international school where they interacted with children
of similar status, not the kind of deprived kids who went to High Street
Academy. Paula often felt guilty about it, and she had once brought the twins
to spend a half-day at Academy so they could experience something profoundly
different from their relatively posh school. They had enjoyed themselves and
made some friends, and Paula had almost wished Stephan and Stephanie could also
stay the night with their impoverished counterparts in their cramped,
dilapidated Jamestown quarters. But Thelo, less plagued than Paula by these
angst-filled existential questions, had vetoed that idea.

Stephan was now
watching the soccer match in the abandoned building.

“Anyway,” he proclaimed,
“I like poor people more because they play much better football than rich
people.”

Stephanie
giggled. “Stephan, you’re so silly.”

Her brother chortled,
and before long all three of them were laughing until their sides hurt.

Once Paula had left the twins with her sister Ama, she went
off to continue her errands. She wondered if Mr. Peterson had arrived in Accra
last night as he had planned. Midafternoon, while she was at the Melcom
supermarket, she received a call from him.

She stepped
into a side hallway where there was less noise. A Saturday in Accra was
shopping chaos. “Okay, that’s better. How are you, Mr. Peterson? Did you arrive
safely?”

“Yes, thank
you.”

“Where are you
staying?”

“At the Airport
Holiday Inn.”

“I’m only a few
minutes away,” she said. “I would very much like to meet you.”

“Shall we say
in an hour?”

A mixture of Ghanaians and white people were drinking and
eating in the Holiday Inn lounge area when Paula arrived. With a sprawling
lobby and a massive, expensive flower arrangement in the center next to a
miniature fountain, this was a far cry from the Voyager Hotel. You can just smell
the money, Paula thought. Four attendants were busy at the reception desk,
compared to the Voyager’s one or two. Paula looked around for Mr. Peterson,
realizing she didn’t know what he looked like.

“Paula?”

She turned. “Mr.
Peterson?”

“Right. I
recognized you from the photos Heather sent us.”

“Pleasure to
meet you, sir.”

She had
imagined him as taller. He was in his late fifties, his hairline withdrawing
from his forehead. Paula saw where Heather had inherited her stunning aqua
eyes, but his were weary and reddened.

“I’m at that
table over there,” he said. “Would you like to join me?”

She followed
him.

“I’m so sorry
that we have to meet under these circumstances,” she said, taking a seat
opposite his.

“So am I,” he
said. “But I thank you for coming.”

He had finished
a soft drink. Paula ordered one for herself and insisted on getting him another
with a sampler plate of Ghanaian appetizers. They dispensed with the customary
banter about his flight and how scorching he found the weather in Accra.

“I’ve called
Chief Inspector Agyekum’s number several times without success,” he said.

“Yes, weekends
are not the best,” Paula said sympathetically, “I’m sure he will get back to
you quite soon.”

“On Thursday, he
emailed me a scanned copy of the conclusions of the autopsy,” Peterson said, “but
I gotta tell you, it looks like a bunch of BS, excuse my language. Why’ve they
been in such a hurry to close this case up and forget about it? My daughter
does not drink, nor does she drown in six feet of water.”

Paula leaned
forward a bit. “Mr. Peterson, I talked to an associate of my husband’s who is a
forensic pathologist. He wasn’t directly connected with this case, but we
called him because he’s one of the best forensic experts we have in Ghana – not
that we have many. Anyway, he told us something I didn’t know before. Forgive
me for this indelicate language, but the bacteria in a dead person can actually
produce different types of alcohol. So, when they measure the blood alcohol concentration
in the lab, it might appear that the person drank more than he or she actually
did.”

“Really?” he
said, sitting bolt upright with a new brightness in his face. “That must be it.
I knew there had to be some kind of mistake. Could your forensic guy intercede
in the case somehow and do the autopsy over?”

“He said he
would see, but honestly, I think it’s doubtful. In addition, he’s out of town
until the middle of next week, unfortunately.”

“Oh,” Peterson
said, deflated again. “Forget it. I want Heather out of here before then.”

“I see,” she
said, with a sense of disappointment that Dr. Biney wouldn’t get the chance to redeem
the investigation.

“I was at the
mortuary this morning to officially identify Heather’s body,” he said
despondently. He choked up and attempted to hide it by taking a sip of his
Sprite.

“It’s hard,”
she said with feeling. “Very hard.”

He looked away
from her, desperately trying to stem the flow of tears.

“You also mentioned
the FBI might assist the investigation?” she asked quickly, hoping that keeping
him talking would help.

“That didn’t
turn out the way I had expected,” he said in resignation. “The agent I spoke to
was supportive, but the bottom line is the FBI can’t go barging into a
sovereign country and start investigating. They’d need the cooperation of the
local authorities,. Apparently, they’re on good terms with the Ghana Police and
they don’t want to spoil that.”

Paula nodded.
More or less what Thelo had told her.

“Who is this
man called Oliver?” Peterson asked her, with sudden intensity.

“Oliver Danquah?
He’s one of the teachers at the High Street Academy.”

“Before I left
home, I talked to Heather’s best friend, Jody, and she said Heather had told
her Oliver was hustling her to help him get to the States. What was going on there?”

“I don’t know
the details,” Paula said awkwardly. “I assume Jody also told you that Oliver
and Heather were dating each other?”

Peterson’s face
twitched as if he’d tasted something unpleasant. “Yes, she told me.”

“I really
wasn’t privy to their private discussions,” Paula said. “At least, not
regarding this particular topic.”

He looked
bitter and disconsolate. “This whole thing is crazy. It’s a nightmare.”

“Have you ever been
to Ghana before?” she asked him. “Or anywhere in West Africa?”

Peterson shook
his head as if he wouldn’t have dreamt of it. He looked haggard and battered by
grief, bewilderment and jetlag.

“Things are
very different here from what you’re used to in the States,” Paula said. “I
realize that must make what you’re experiencing all the more difficult.”

“I just want to
get out of here and take my daughter with me,” he said, his voice trembling.