Death on Tour - Janice Hamrick [27]
“Yes, all of it. You must stop. We can possibly try again in August. Or even next year.”
A longer pause this time. “You wouldn’t. You can’t. Look, it is not too late to back out. No?” After a long pause, his long sigh escaped into the air like a punctured balloon. “You are right. I can’t stop you. But it is very risky. For all of us. Fine. We will talk tomorrow.”
I heard a sharp snap of a cell phone being closed. Not wanting to be caught listening, I quickly started walking again. And just in time. A man stepped out of the bushes a few yards away. A big man, although in the dim light, I couldn’t see his face. He gave a start when he saw me, then turned quickly and hurried away down a side path.
I walked on toward my room, wondering about what I’d overheard. The words themselves could have applied to any number of things, although the urgent tone seemed to give them added meaning. I wished I could place the low voice. Could the speaker have been Mohammad? I stewed about it for a long time before finally deciding I would probably never know.
* * *
Sometime later, Kyla slipped into the room, looking somewhat disgruntled and slightly tipsy. I was already in my pajamas, snuggled under the blankets and rereading my Egyptian guidebook for the hundredth time. Now that I had been to Giza and seen the pyramids for myself, everything I read meant much more to me. And tomorrow we would be traveling to Aswan, and I wanted to be prepared for that as well. In the back of my mind, I was already mapping out a lesson plan for my students, who would be completely unappreciative.
“I didn’t expect you back so soon,” I said.
“Everyone was tired,” she said, kicking off her heels. One flew across the room and smacked into the closet door with a thump. “What do you think about Alan Stratton?”
“He seems very nice,” I answered, keeping my voice expressionless.
“Nice?” she snorted. “What a word. Nice and single, maybe. Nice and hot. Nice and…”
“Okay, I get it. You like him.”
“Maybe I do, maybe I don’t.” She pulled her dress over her head, laid it on the bed, and began carefully folding the shimmery yellow material. “He’s certainly interesting though. I just can’t tell what he thinks about me.”
“I thought you two were hitting it off.”
“He just seemed more polite than interested, if you know what I mean.” She sounded puzzled.
I didn’t answer. I was torn between surprise and satisfaction. I couldn’t remember the last time an attractive man, single or not, hadn’t been under Kyla’s spell within thirty seconds of meeting her. For an instant I let myself wonder what he thought about me.
“Maybe he’s just got a stick up his ass. Or maybe he’s gay,” she mused.
“He’s not gay. He was married,” I protested.
“So he says.”
Time to change the subject. “Never mind about that. Guess what I overheard in the garden.”
I told her about the telephone conversation. She lifted her eyebrows.
“Hmm, well it doesn’t sound like much, even if it was Mohammad.”
“Doesn’t it sound like he’s got something going on? Something not quite legal? But what could it be?”
“Oh, who knows? He’s probably fencing stolen camels or something. Does it matter? We won’t be seeing him again anyway—they told us he stays in Cairo while Anni takes the groups south. And you still don’t even know it was Mohammad. It was probably one of the hotel employees.”
She vanished into the bathroom, and I closed my book and turned off my bedside light. She was probably right. I’d never find out what that conversation had been about. I thought of telling her about Millie’s bag, but decided that could wait. I still needed to figure out how to return the stolen things without being accused of stealing them myself. As I drifted off, one last thought occurred to me—hotel employee or not, the conversation had been in English.
Monday, Cairo to Aswan
Travel by air over 500 miles to the desert resort