Mummy Dearest (17 page)

“It’s Not My Fault,” Caron said as she spun around. “Inez and I both kept telling him that we weren’t sure where we went. A psychotic stalker can be a distraction, you know.”

“Which wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t gone to the nightclub,” I pointed out.

“Not necessarily. You keep insisting he’s just some ordinary businessman. Don’t you think it’s kind of a coincidence that he was there?”

Peter studied her for a moment. “I agree that it’s not likely to have been a coincidence. Mahmoud will question
the staff and track down some of the patrons. Other people must have noticed him, too, especially if he was dressed the way Inez described.” Before Caron could express further outrage, he bent down to give me a swift kiss. “I’ll be back in time to finish packing. Perhaps we might enjoy the illumination at Luxor Temple tonight. It’s hokey but very dramatic, with booming voices, flashing lights, and all that.”

“Oh, please, spare me.” Caron went to the doorway of the bedroom she shared with Inez. “Let’s eat, darling,” she said loudly, imitating Salima. “Your camel awaits you in the hall.”

“Then shriek for the sheik to join us,” Inez trilled. “The sheik,
très chic!”

There is a reason why newlyweds should go on their honeymoons before they have children. Or teenagers.

I’d finished packing my things and Peter’s, and was reading a mystery novel on the balcony when Abdullah materialized at my side. Had I been a giddy heroine, I would have swooned, or at least let out a blood-chilling screech.

“Begging the
sitt
’s pardon,” he murmured. “The door was ajar, and I was alarmed. The Winter Palace is very safe, but thieves have been able to slip in through the basement and take the service elevators.”

I found my breath. “Thank you for your vigilance, Abdullah. I will call if I encounter any thieves in the suite.”

“I will take extra care while you, Mr. Rosen, and the young misses are away.”

“How do you know we’ll be away?” I demanded.

“One hears things.”

“Did you hear what happened to the young misses last night?”

Abdullah began to brush crumbs off the chair cushions. “It must have been alarming for the
sitt.
Visitors are much safer in Luxor after dark.”

“Especially snoopy ones who ask too many questions?”

“That is not for me to say. Will you be wanting to have tea here later?”

His expression was as imperturbable as that of the Sphinx. If the lower floors of the hotel were on fire, with raging flames threatening to destroy the entire structure, I could picture him in the doorway of the suite, gravely saying,
“Sitt
Malloy, if I may be so bold as to disturb you …”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “My husband and the girls are out at the moment. We’ll call room service unless we decide to have tea on the terrace.” I glanced at my watch, suddenly annoyed. The girls, having sworn they would not leave the hotel grounds, had gone downstairs for lunch almost two hours earlier.

“The young misses are using the computer in the lower lobby,” Abdullah said. He hesitated, then looked out at the Nile. “It is very nice weather for a cruise,
Sitt
Malloy. I do hope you enjoy yourselves.”

He turned to leave. As he reached the door to the hall, Alexander breezed past him and came out to the balcony.

“Is this a tag team event?” I asked, wishing I could get back to my novel.

“You should appreciate my restraint.” He sat down and propped his feet on the rail of the balcony. “I’m dreadfully eager to hear what happened last night. Did Caron and Inez have a decent excuse for coming in late? At school, we had an antiquated curfew, strictly enforced by caning and endless hours of supervised study in a cramped, stuffy room where so much as a cough was forbidden. To avoid such brutal punishment, I became quite adept at shinnying up the drainpipe to the roof, then skittering from chimney to chimney until I was above my bedroom window. I came very close to breaking my neck on innumerable occasions. The reckless abandon of youth.”

“Maybe you should have run away and joined a circus.”

“That’s a peculiar American tradition,” he said. “Shall we drink to it while you tell me what tale the girls concocted to avoid your wrath?”

“I suppose so.” My response was perfunctory, since he was already headed for the mini-bar. When he returned, I merely told him that the girls had gotten separated from
Salima and lost in the alleys of Gurna. His look of incredulousness provoked me into adding that they’d taken the robes and scarves to avoid being noticed, and therefore harassed, by the local males.

“I wish my headmaster had been as gullible as you, Mrs. Malloy.” He took a noisy sip of his martini, then said, “My father and his cohorts are having cocktails this evening in his suite. He hopes you and Mr. Rosen will join us. Magritta will be there with her weekly report, which one has to suffer through with feigned interest. We can count on Shannon to make rude remarks about the lack of progress, followed by Wallace’s blustery defense. Mrs. McHaver will interrupt with caustic comments, while Miriam twitches as if she’s infected with some sort of exotic rash. Unless a miracle occurs, Miss Portia and Miss Cordelia will get totally potted and sing bawdy songs from the war era. Given enough gin, Lady Emerson may bash someone with her parasol. I’m hoping it will be Sittermann.”

“It sounds delightful, Alexander, but we have some lastminute packing to do before we leave in the morning.”

“Ah, yes, the cruise on the Nubian Sea. The ship is rumored to be terribly posh. Have you ever seen the film version of Agatha Christie’s
Death on the Nile?
I doubt the cabins will be as spacious, but the lounge is done in an elegant Victorian decor. Don’t take any midnight strolls on the deck, and you should be fine.”

“Are you implying we’ll be in danger?”

“Prudence is a virtue. If you’ll excuse me, I must convey your regrets to my father. He’ll be distraught. He’s enamored of you, Mrs. Malloy. If you weren’t happily married, you could have been the next Lady Bledrock. What a delightful stepmother you would have been, and I the envy of every chap in the county.”

I returned my attention to the mysterious affair at Whit-bread Crossing, where the local squire had been found bludgeoned in a ditch, much to the dismay of the bumbling constable. After an hour, I began to think that crumpets and tea sounded like an excellent idea. Rather than call room
service, I decided to go downstairs and drag Caron and Inez away from the computer before they ran up a bill comparable to the gross national product of an obscure South Pacific kingdom.

I carefully locked the door that led to the hall, then took the elevator to the lobby. A bellman directed me to the grimy, claustrophobic computer room. Caron and Inez were hunched in front of the monitor.

“Still sending e-mail?” I asked, trying to catch a glimpse over their shoulders.

Inez hit a key and the screen went dark. “Hi, Ms. Malloy,” she said in a strangled voice. “I was—well, I was looking up Abu Simbel on the Internet.” She yanked off her glasses and began to clean them on the hem of her shirt. “Did you know that it would have been covered by Lake Nasser, so an international effort was made to raise money so that it could be moved two hundred and ten meters away? It took the UNESCO team four years, and it’s considered—”

“Fascinating, and so forth,” Caron said. “Is Peter back yet?”

“No,” I said, bemused by their flushed faces. “I came down to see if you wanted to have tea with me on the terrace.”

They looked at each other as if I’d suggested something preposterous and potentially fatal. Caron at last said, “We need to go up to the suite and pack. I don’t know what we’re supposed to wear. Are we sitting at the captain’s table? That’d be cool.”

“Don’t count on it,” I said. “Take one nice outfit, just in case people do dress for dinner on the final night. Other than that, T-shirts, shorts, and walking shoes.”

Inez shut down the computer with a few deft clicks. They edged around me and scurried toward the elevators. I was heading for the desk when Ahmed caught me.

“Is there something I can do for you,
Sitt
Malloy-Rosen? I do hope Abdullah is seeing to your needs. He is very old,
you know, and not as quick as he used to be. I would fire him, but his father and his grandfather also worked here. His father served drinks to Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon in our bar. It looks much the same now as it did then. We are very proud of it.”

His smirk reminded me of a gargoyle on a cathedral. “Abdullah is quite competent,” I said evenly. “If my husband comes through the lobby within the next hour, please let him know I’ll be on the terrace.”

“Of course,
Sitt
Malloy-Rosen, and do have a pleasant cruise. The ship is very nice, I hear, very nice indeed.”

I nodded, then continued out to the terrace. To my relief, Lord Bledrock was not at his usual table, nor was Mrs. McHaver. I found a shady table and ordered tea and cakes. Weary tourists staggered up the marble stairs from their day trips, laden with shopping bags filled with items bought on a whim, to be gazed at with bafflement when they returned home. Carriages lined the curb of the corniche, their drivers eternally optimistic. Two Saudi men in long white
thobes
, their heads covered with red-and-white-checkered
ghutras
held in place with black cords, walked by, intent on their conversation. Following them were two women in black burqas. Their attire reminded me of the clothes taken by Caron and Inez. Peter and I had discussed their story after we’d retired for the night, but had finally agreed that it was impossible to separate the truth from the hyperbole. They might have been chased through the alleys. On the other hand, they might have panicked when a nightclub employee opened the back door to set out a crate of empty bottles. From that point, any footstep would have been misconstrued. The cart on the road could well have been transporting inexpensive pottery, and the men armed with nothing more lethal than walking sticks.

My thoughts were going nowhere when Samuel Berry and Buffy Franz asked if they could join me. Having no plausible reason to say no, I gestured at the empty chairs. Samuel ordered drinks from the waiter, then rocked back
and closed his eyes. He’d trimmed his beard, I noticed, but he was still scruffy enough to earn a few curious glances from other customers.

“I am so glad we spotted you,” Buffy said, who was a paragon of perfection from her moussed blond hair to her designer sandals, “because I just don’t know what to do. We’re going on this same cruise tomorrow, just so Sammie can prowl around a bunch of old ruins. I have no idea what to take. I’ve been on cruise ships where you have to look sensational every night at dinner, and I’ve been on the ones where people wear robes over bathing suits. I just hate not being dressed appropriately, don’t you?”

“Oh yes,” I said. “I lie awake nights worrying about it. I was told this was casual. I’m taking a dress and a sweater, along with clothes for the excursions.”

“I don’t have any of my good jewelry. The few pieces Daddy let me bring are in Rome with the rest of my luggage. It never occurred to me I might go on a cruise.”

“Then don’t,” Samuel said, his eyes still closed.

She swatted at him. “And do what—sit around the hotel? Hey, maybe there’s a hot bingo game somewhere in town. Now that’d be exciting …”

He grinned. “Sittermann will be delighted to escort you.”

“I hadn’t thought of that.” Her lips pursed as she toyed with her napkin. “He’s creepy, but he’s rich. And Alexander Bledrock—one day he’ll be a baron. That is so cool. Maybe I’ll persuade one of them to take me to Cairo to see the pyramids in the moonlight. Daddy must know somebody who knows somebody at the American Embassy. We might just drop in for dinner.”

“Sounds like a blast.”

She gave him a dark look. “And then I’ll fly back to Rome. You can go by yourself to all those litter boxes that you call oases.”

I thought it sounded like an excellent idea, and I expected Samuel to concur. Therefore, I was surprised when he reached across the table to stroke her cheek and said, “Aw, baby, I was teasing. I don’t want you to leave. The
oases may have been crude, but we certainly managed to have some fun in the sleeping bag, didn’t we? Remember that night when we went out into the desert and …” He glanced at me, then gazed intently at her. “Please don’t go back to Rome. You’ll have a great time on the cruise, especially since you’ll have people to hang out with. You and Mrs. Malloy can lie on the top deck all day, while a waiter brings you fancy drinks. Maybe there’ll be a hot tub. We’ll sneak up there at midnight and lie naked in the steamy water. Antony and Cleopatra, under a sparkling canopy of stars. That ought to make a good story when you get back home.”

Buffy ate one of the cakes while she pondered all this. To my dismay, instead of opting for the Cairo-Rome scenario, she said, “Well, I do like cruises.”

Had she but known.

We drove to Aswan in a military convoy, which I found unnerving. As Caron pointed out numerous times, it was a peculiar way to protect tourists, since we made a convenient, economical target, should anyone be inclined to plant a few roadside bombs or land mines. As we drove through uniformly brown, dusty towns, the soldiers began to peel away in their jeeps and trucks, until we were under the protection of two camo-clad youngsters who might have been recruited that morning.

We boarded the
Nubian Queen
at a dock near the dam. Peter and I had a nondescript cabin down the hall from the admittedly spectacular lounge, replete with a dozen sitting areas, columns, large windows, and a curved mahogany bar beneath a stained-glass window. I could not help thinking about Alexander’s remarks as Peter and I unpacked, then went to the lounge.

The cruise director, a pleasant Egyptian gentleman with impeccable English, came by to apologize for the suite having already been booked. We assured him that our cabin was satisfactory. Some of the other eighty or so passengers nodded politely as they found seats and ordered drinks.
From remarks I could overhear, I concluded that they were primarily German and British, with a sprinkling of Americans. The only Arabs I saw were wearing stiff white jackets and fetching drinks from the bar for the infidels. After a few minutes, Caron and Inez joined us. We were sipping a bon voyage toast when Samuel and Buffy sat down.