Death on Tour - Janice Hamrick [5]
I could tell she didn’t know how to refer to the body. She went on gamely, “… about Millie. I have told the police that we know nothing at all about how the accident happened, and we are free to go. Now, what does everyone want to do? We can return to the hotel and rest,” she suggested.
The group howled a protest. We were in Cairo. We were standing against the sun-drenched side of the four-thousand-year-old pyramid of the great pharaoh Khafre. Twenty paces away, a deep and mysterious tunnel guarded by dark men clad in flowing tunics plunged sharply downward into the heart of the pyramid itself. Nearby, just upwind in fact, waited a caravan of camels led by enigmatic denizens of the desert who had delved the secrets of point and click digital cameras. Go to the hotel? The only dead body that could have made that seem attractive was my own.
Alan Stratton spoke up. “I think we’d all like to carry on as planned,” he said firmly.
I looked at him speculatively, noting again the absence of a wedding ring. He was tall, in his early thirties, and traveling alone, which by itself would have made him the most interesting person on the trip, even if he hadn’t also been very nice looking. Kyla and I had noticed him right away and were dying to learn his story and figure out why he was by himself, but so far we hadn’t had a chance. He seemed to linger quietly on the edge of the group, but was never quite part of the group, which was actually something of a feat in itself. While the rest of us huddled together in shock, he’d been one of the few to hurry to Millie’s side after the initial discovery, and I’d seen him talking to the police and then to Anni. Now he was acting as our spokesman, saying aloud what we were all thinking.
Anni looked around at the rest of us, who were nodding like bobblehead dolls on the dashboard of a semi.
“Then that is what we shall do. Now, who said that they wanted to go inside the pyramid?” she asked, spreading a stack of colorful tickets like a deck of cards.
* * *
Half an hour later, we hopped back on the bus and took a very short drive around to the western side of the pyramids, where a veritable herd of camels waited for us. This was one of the advantages of being on a tour—we never had to walk very far and we didn’t have to haggle for our own camels. Anni kept us on the bus an extra moment to give instructions about tipping while we pressed our noses to the windows like a pack of Pomeranians.
The scene outside was chaos. Dozens of camels lay in the sand, long bony legs folded beneath them. Small patches of brilliant green fodder were sprinkled through the herd and contrasted sharply with the barren ground. The camels’ humps were covered by the kind of quilted pads used by movers to protect furniture, and those in turn were covered by enormous saddles with very high horns in front and back. Patterned multicolored blankets covered the saddles. These wild desert camels wore coats that were almost white, instead of the sandy color preferred by ordinary city camels in zoos, and managed to looked sleepy and mildly annoyed at the same time.
On the edge of the camel herd stood about ten horses in a variety of colors, looking oddly small and almost apologetic by comparison. It was obvious to all concerned that real men rode camels and only pathetic losers or possibly elderly nuns would stoop to riding around on mere horses. The camel drivers were as exotic as their charges. They wore the traditional Egyptian galabia, a long-sleeved blue, gray, or black tunic that fell to the ankles, and most of them also wore white or red-and-white scarves wrapped about their heads to protect themselves from the sun.
We spilled off the bus in great excitement, only to be met by a squadron of shouting camel drivers. The front-runners shied like startled deer. Dawn Kim actually turned and tried to get back