Death on Tour (6 page)
I slipped the lip balm into my own pocket and unzipped the little notebook. Yes, it was wrong, but I hardly hesitated.
The first page or two was just what you would expect. Her own name and address, passport number, and then a list of phone numbers and addresses, beginning with one labeled “Mom.” I felt a little pang of pity. Somehow I hadn’t thought of Millie as having any family or friends. Yet she’d obviously planned on sending the postcards she’d bought. I flipped forward another page and froze. In Millie’s scratchy writing were the words:
Day 1
Meetings at hotel.
Subj. A:
Older than she says she is. Not a day under 45.
Obvious plastic surg.
Lying when she talks about their cars.
IF
they have them, then they are either leasing or owe more than they are worth. Certainly could not afford this trip.
Diamonds are real enough—how did she obtain them?
Shocked, I thought about the group. Who did she mean? It could be Dawn Kim, Lydia Carpenter, or Susan Peterson, I supposed. None of the other women were close to forty-five, at least as far as I could guess. But I hadn’t noticed any signs of plastic surgery and certainly no one looked as though they were living beyond their means. In fact, as far as I could tell, I was the poorest person on the trip. I wondered what she had seen or heard.
I turned the page and read:
Subj. B
Wants to be admired, but very rude.
Doesn’t like women much. Just a bully or something worse?
Hasn’t been to Paris, no matter what he says.
Is she really his daughter?
Well, that has to be Jerry Morrison. Pretty funny and pretty perceptive, at least about the wanting to be admired. I didn’t agree with the last assessment. No pretty young girl like Kathy Morrison would be hanging out with a creepy old man like Jerry, at least not on a G-rated tour like this one, unless he was really her dad.
I flipped the page again and gave a little gasp.
Subj. C and D
Sisters? There’s a superficial resemblance if you get past the makeup.
Probably lesbian.
The older one is hiding something. Must check her purse to see what she got at the hotel.
Lip balm! It was a lip balm, you old bat, I thought, torn between amusement and outrage. The same tube you stole from me. Who’d have thought that a lip balm from the hotel gift shop would be such a subject of interest to anyone. I hadn’t even noticed that Millie’d been around when I went in. I thought about it for a moment, trying to picture the scene. As far as I could remember, there’d been no one but the clerk and myself in the shop, and I hadn’t seen anyone from the tour in the lobby, either before or after I went in. I pictured Millie hiding behind one of the potted ferns like a character in a bad movie. And why was I the “older one”? I wished Millie were still alive just so I could give her a piece of my mind.
The sound of voices just outside my window gave me a start. I thrust the items back into the bag as quickly as I could, but the door of the bus swung open and I had no chance to replace it, even if I wanted to. I certainly didn’t want anyone to know I’d been snooping through Millie’s belongings and extras. Hastily I stuffed the entire thing into my backpack. I’d leave it on the bus at the end of the day, I thought. No one else knew it was there anyway, and it wouldn’t be missed. Achmed would find it when he took the bus away to be cleaned, and he could turn it over to Anni.
We arrived at the Egyptian Museum at about four o’clock, as the brilliant light was finally softening into a mellow afternoon and the shadows yawned and stretched gracefully across the lawns like tired cats. The red brick of the museum darkened to the color of dried blood, contrasting with the white stone columns and carvings that accented the massive front doors. A miniature weathered sphinx waited patiently in the courtyard, surrounded by tourists and palm trees. As the bus rolled to a stop with a squeak of brakes and a loud whoosh of hydraulics, we rose eagerly, but Anni waved us back and picked up the microphone.
“Just a few instructions before we disembark. This is very important. You cannot take your cameras into the museum, not even inside your purses. They are very strict about that here. We will be going through metal detectors and if you have a camera, the guards will make you go back outside to put it on the bus. Achmed cannot park here, so the bus will be gone. You will have to wait for the rest of us here in the courtyard, all alone. Your cameras and anything else you want to leave here will be completely safe because Achmed will stay with the bus the whole time. Do you all understand?” She spoke as though we were children, and not bright children at that.
However, we all nodded obediently and stashed our cameras in our packs or on the seats before following Anni off the bus. After taking so many pictures, the thought of leaving my camera for an hour or two came almost as a relief. I was tired of the distraction of examining each artifact and site more for good photo angles than for its historic interest. I thought of the old days when tourists in white linen suits sat for hours at the base of a monument, sketching curves and angles because there was no other way to capture the image and because time was a commodity in abundant supply. Not like the seven-day dash we were on now.
The grounds of the museum were crowded at this hour. Tired tourists sat on the stone benches lining the walkway and rested aching feet. A few children ran about the fountain, dodging the older pedestrians and laughing. Counting aloud, a harried male tour guide circled a small group, brows creased with concentration. We watched through the bars of the ornate iron gates while Anni bought our tickets, then we followed her through the museum doors.
As Anni had promised, two metal detectors waited just inside the entrance, surrounded by an excessive number of guards carrying small but lethal-looking guns. I eyed the guards warily, but they seemed bored and complacent. Dropping my small purse on the conveyor belt, I went through without incident and joined the others beside a replica of the Rosetta Stone.
The main hall of the Egyptian Museum could hold its own with the finest museums in the world. The ceiling rose two full stories, supported by Greek columns that seemed out of place beside the ancient and massive stone coffins, tables, and statues that filled the hall. In fact, the pieces were so famous, so iconic, that the hall felt more like a movie set than a real place.
A commotion behind us made us turn. Fiona and Flora were blocking the scanning machine, surrounded by guards who were suddenly very alert. The screener was holding up a camera and Fiona was shouting at him. Anni said something in Arabic and flew past us, throwing herself between the ditz duo and the guards. The rest of us stood frozen, our mouths hanging open.
“Tell me that is not a camera,” said Kyla in disbelief.
“Those women shouldn’t be allowed to travel by themselves. They’re a menace,” said Jerry Morrison with contempt.
There was a brief silence. Not that he was wrong, and not that the rest of us weren’t thinking exactly the same thing, but he was so obnoxious that no one wanted to agree with him about anything.
The Australian couple, Ben and Lydia, moved away from him rather pointedly. Their miniature feud was heating up, which made for some interesting moments. I wondered if another wager with Kyla was in order.
A man in a suit appeared and instantly the shouting ceased. The guards drew back respectfully. The man said something in a quiet tone to Anni and then vanished into an office with Fiona and Flora in tow.
Anni returned, her lips pressed tightly together. For a moment, I thought she was going to explode, but she drew a deep breath and produced a smile from somewhere. Kyla smirked at me.
“She’s still fine,” I said in an undertone.
“Oh, she’s going to snap.”
“Yes, but not until Wednesday,” I said bravely, although I thought the odds against me were rising dramatically. No one could stand firm under the dual pressure of Flora and Fiona. Mother Teresa herself would be flexing her fingers for a bitch slap of epic proportions.
“We’ll wait here a moment,” said Anni, and began explaining that the only replica in the entire museum was the Rosetta Stone, the original of which was in the British Museum in London. Everything else was authentic and thousands of years old. We walked a few paces away to a huge stone table, a massive block carved from a single piece of stone. It rested in the middle of the aisle, concave on top, with odd carved channels designed to draw away fluids. I thought I could guess what it was, and gave a little shiver, then poked Kyla to see if she’d noticed. Her grin told me she had, and together we moved closer to look for stains, unrepentantly ghoulish.
Fiona and Flora rejoined us after a few minutes, oblivious to our cold stares. Fiona plunked her oversized purse down on the table. Anni went white and in one smooth moved whisked it off and dropped it back in Fiona’s arms. Fiona looked startled and almost dropped it. I could tell it weighed a ton. I wondered what she carried in it and how her scrawny arms could tote it around all day.
“This,” said Anni loudly to forestall any protest, “is a three-thousand-year-old funerary table where the ancient Egyptians placed the bodies of the dead to prepare them for mummification. Notice the drainage hole at the foot.”
Fiona looked disgusted and began rubbing at the bottom of her bag. I was surprised to see a look of anger pass over Flora’s usually vapid face. For a moment, I could swear she almost glared, not at Anni, but at her sister. But the moment passed swiftly, and in another second she began talking to Lydia, who was trying to listen to Anni. Lydia looked annoyed and shuffled away from her.
Anni herded us skillfully through the museum, stopping to point out the highlights, which we dutifully admired. Some of the treasures were surrounded by other tour groups, and we had to wait for our turn to swarm the object. After the grand tour, Anni turned us loose to explore on our own.
“Thirty minutes,” she called after our retreating backs. Our life as tourists seemed chopped into thirty-minute segments. We checked our watches and scurried away like cockroaches in a kitchen.
* * *
Kyla and I made a beeline for the mummy chamber, completely ignoring three thousand years of history and artifacts along the way. It was the type of behavior I’d expect from a couple of high school girls, which just underscored my theory that no one really matured beyond the age of about fourteen. We paused just long enough to locate the room on a map, then giggled all the way up the stairs.
The Egyptians, no fools, had figured out that tourists thought the mummies were the most interesting thing in the entire museum and were charging an additional fee to go inside. I pulled a wad of crumpled, musty Egyptian pounds from my wallet and paid for a brightly colored ticket. The tickets at the tourists sites were beautiful enough to save for a scrapbook. A few steps away, we showed them to a bored guard who nodded us through, and I stowed mine in my wallet, careful not to wrinkle it. Kyla wadded hers up, looked around for a nonexistent trash can, then stuffed it into her pocket.
The mummy room was small, dimly lit, and absolutely silent, worse than a church or a library. The ceiling was low and the air seemed musty and stale, as though it, like the mummies, had come from inside a crypt. I felt a trickle of sweat slide down the small of my back. As our eyes adjusted to the light, we could see walls lined with display cases and a couple of low glass boxes resting in the middle of the floor. Strategically placed weak lights threw a halfhearted glow on the shadowy forms within. In the far corner, a couple of tourists stood before the glass. They did not turn around as we entered.
We approached the first box on the floor cautiously, steeling ourselves for any number of grisly horrors, and found ourselves looking down into the open coffin of a woman.
“She’s tiny,” said Kyla finally. “And so … dry.”
She was, too. Small and brittle and creepy.
“We may have seen too many horror movies,” I admitted.
“I swear I saw her on a beach in Florida last year. That leathery skin, those anorexic cheekbones.”
We both burst into laughter. The two other tourists turned to look at us with deep disapproval.
The door to the mummy room opened again with a quiet swoosh, and Alan Stratton walked in, pausing for his eyes to adjust to the low light. Kyla brightened visibly, and instantly forgot all about the shriveled bandaged corpses.
“Now that’s more like it,” she whispered to me with a wink. She immediately went to his side.
I wandered over to another display case so I wouldn’t have to listen to the flirting on an empty stomach. I was ready for dinner and my feet and back were hurting. And now I had no one to mock the mummies with. Definitely time to head back to the hotel.
Susan and Tom Peterson burst into the room and looked around wildly, Susan’s plump little face frantic with worry.
“Damn it!” said Tom. “Where the hell are they?”
“I was sure they would be here,” answered Susan, sounding tearful.
They caught sight of me and hurried over.
“Have you seen the boys?” asked Susan. “They ran ahead of us and we’ve lost them.”
My heart went out to her, she sounded so apologetic. Trying not to laugh, I said, “No. They haven’t been in here. Shall I tell them you’re looking for them if I see them?”
Tom made a sound like a low growl. “You can tell them we’re going to kill them when we see them!”
“Tom!” Susan gave him an outraged glare, then turned back to me. “Don’t tell them that,” she pleaded.
I did laugh then. “I won’t. But if it helps, I’m sure they are fine. Probably back in the King Tut room or looking at the mummification tools. And this will probably be their next stop, so you might as well wait for them and take the opportunity to see what you want to see. You can kill them when they catch up to you.”