Death on Tour - Janice Hamrick [54]
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Nimmi was still fingering the pieces of jewelry in the small black velvet tray sitting before her on the counter. Briefly, she laid an elegant little hand over a ring, and when she lifted it, the ring had vanished.
Shocked, I completely lost the thread of conversation between Anni and Mr. Elgabri. This was the sort of thing I had come to expect when I took my students on a field trip. So many of them were under enormous pressure from their friends, and of course a significant percentage were amoral little bastards who shouldn’t be allowed out of their cages. But this was a new one. Could a woman like Nimmi, obviously wealthy, obviously socially elite, steal from a shopkeeper who probably earned less in a week than what she spent in a day? I didn’t think so. Not today.
She made a show of pushing back the tray and started away from the counter.
“Great ring,” I said to her. “That will look terrific on you, Nimmi. May I see it?”
She flushed, a subtle red color creeping up her neck and tinting her cheeks. Anni and the shopkeeper stopped in midsentence to stare. For one instant, I knew she was considering denying that she had a ring, but the pressure of three pairs of eyes was too much, particularly when Mr. Elgabri looked down at the jewelry tray.
Shooting me an ugly look, she held out the ring, and I took it, holding it to the light and admiring it. It wasn’t too bad. A broad gold band shaped into the Eye of Horus, the ancient symbol of protection.
I smiled as I handed it back. “Really lovely and so unusual. You’ll enjoy that forever.”
With a huge smile, the shopkeeper turned to her and asked if she were ready to check out. Trapped like a rat, I thought. She looked around frantically, but her husband had made his purchases and was no longer in the shop. In fact, I suspected that she’d waited for him to leave before she tried her sleight of hand. With a rigid smile, she opened her purse and pulled out her wallet.
“Oh, no. I don’t have nearly enough cash,” she said.
I hoped she didn’t have acting aspirations. Usually when you saw someone give a performance that bad, they were moments away from being eaten by a mutant rubber shark. “I don’t suppose you take credit cards.”
She would have been right in most places, but this was a Swiss-run tourist boat. “Of course we do,” said the shopkeeper, holding his hand out. And she had no choice but to hand over her card.
I turned back to Anni and asked for a demonstration of how to tie my scarf, mostly to avoid any more evil glances. Nimmi might suspect, but she could never be sure that I had done it on purpose. She completed her purchase and stormed out, her face still brick red.
With a big smile, the shopkeeper met Anni’s eye, then said to me, “For a lovely lady, the price is eighty pounds. And you will be so kind as to accept the scarf as my gift. It suits you perfectly.”
Anni patted my shoulder lightly. “You will not get a better deal than that. And you didn’t need my help after all.”
* * *
After shopping, Kyla decided that a nap in our cabin would be just the right thing, but I was feeling oddly restless. I handed her my purchases to put away, then climbed the stairs leading to the sundeck of the Nile Lotus. I blinked in the brilliant sunshine, then gave a little shiver. Here on the river, with the March breeze streaming across the bow, the temperature was cool to the point of being chilly.
The sundeck was huge, stretching almost the full length of the ship, and lined with deck chairs gleaming green and white in the sun. In the center, a very large white canopy covered a bar and about twenty lounge chairs, providing a generous patch of shade for anyone who couldn’t take any more sun. No one was taking advantage of it. I could see a few die-hard sunbathers draped over the green-and-white-striped chairs along the rails, white flesh blinding in the light, but several others were huddled in their towels.
I walked toward