Death on Tour - Janice Hamrick [75]
Her jaw dropped a little. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“No, I’m not,” I said. “Look, once we leave, you know they won’t let us back in. Let’s just dash down there while nobody’s looking.”
It was true. None of the men were paying any attention to us at all. And we were so close. “You’re insane,” she hissed under her breath, but she followed me to the other side of the bridge.
We hurried through two more chambers, down a short flight of stairs, and at last came to the burial chamber with its arched ceiling, painted midnight blue and decorated with hundreds of characters in white. A miniature zoo of hippos, lions, crocodiles, and oxen mingled with people. All stood in profile, some fully human and some with the heads of animals. Stars and glyphs dotted the grid etched on the surface, full of undecipherable meaning. I’d never seen anything so beautiful.
The walls were just as fabulous, painted from floor to ceiling in reds, golds, tans, and blues. A beautiful woman floated on a boat with two trees and two attendants. Guarding all, the goddess Isis spread her great wings protectively near the ceiling. The striking colors glowed like jewels on dark velvet. I could not take it all in. It would be impossible to see and appreciate everything in a month, much less a few stolen moments.
“Well,” said Kyla finally. “All right. You were right. There, I said it. It was worth the wait. And very clever of you, I might add, getting rid of all the other tourists, so we could have a private viewing.”
I grinned. My arm was stinging, but it had almost stopped bleeding and I didn’t care. She was right. It was worth it all. We moved together into one of the little side chambers where one wall was decorated with a figure of an enormous cow surrounded by tiny people.
“The Book of the Heavenly Cow,” I announced.
“You’re kidding, right? A holy cow?”
We laughed together, and I scrubbed my cheeks to wipe away any remains of tears. Sounds echoed down from above, thumps and clanks, voices, sometimes in a low murmur, sometimes raised as though shouting orders. The air was still stuffy and humid, even without the crowd. Now that I was over the first shock, my mind was racing, and I didn’t like my own thoughts.
“You know,” I said slowly, “whoever tried to take my purse had to be someone who was fairly close to us in the line.”
“Well, duh. Oh, I see. You mean one of the tourists? Or maybe a thief disguised as a tourist?”
“Maybe. Probably. But what if it was one of us? What if it was Alan?” My voice broke as I said it. I didn’t want that to be true.
Kyla looked at me, appalled. “But he was helping you. He pulled you up. And you said yourself the person was short.”
“Yeah, I know. But that was just an impression. It was so dark, I just can’t be sure. And Kyla, who else could it be? It had to be someone fairly close in line. A common thief couldn’t have been hiding on that bridge. And that someone picked me. Out of all the people on the bridge, they picked me.”
“I’m sure it was just random. You were there, you had a purse. It could have been any other woman just as easily.”
“Maybe. But I bet I’m the only one in the entire valley who owns an extremely beautiful, very mysterious Egyptian necklace.”
Her eyes widened. “Your necklace! Did they steal your necklace?”
“No! I’m not retarded,” I snorted. “I wasn’t carrying it in my purse—I left it in the safe. You saw me put it in,” I reminded her.
She breathed a sigh of relief. “Then what did they take?”
We looked at each other. “I guess we’ll see when the Egyptians gather everything up. But it looked like the wallet was down there in the well, and that was the only thing that had anything valuable, if you call about one hundred dollars worth of Egyptian pounds valuable.”
“Well, it might be valuable to someone. I mean, the thief can’t have meant to drop it over the edge. He probably didn’t expect you to fight back.”
We stood in silence for a few minutes and then slowly moved back into the main chamber with its arched ceiling.