Side Trip to Kathmandu (A Sidney Marsh Murder Mystery Book 3) (16 page)

“Adam invited me,” I said.

Lucy and Justin exchanged glances.

“Has he spoken to you of his wife,
chérie
?” Justin asked. “You are like her. She looked a lot like you.”

“No, actually,” I said, annoyed by his question. “He hasn’t really discussed her much with me. Why should he?”

Justin gave one of his insolent shrugs, and threw Lucy another pointed glance.

“It was tragic,” Lucy said. “Her name was Meghan and she was a lovely girl, full of life. Her death was so sudden, such a shame. It shocked us all. Justin is right, you know. You remind me of her too. She did look like you. She was tall, with long dark hair and lashes like yours.”

Great, I thought. The man has asked me out because he thinks I’m a ghost. Just my luck.

Jay was tickled to hear what they had to say about Adam’s dead wife, I could tell.

I knew I would hear a lot more from him later on the subject. Even as we were served an excellent meal, and the dinner conversation turned to other things, his eyes danced as he mouthed to me whenever the others weren’t looking, “Marsh Curse, Marsh Curse, Marsh Curse.”

A
t the hotel entrance, Adam helped me into a motorized rickshaw and we were off, whizzing through the ancient streets toward an ancient festival in an ancient city. Everything about the core city of Kathmandu feels unbelievably old. I felt as if I were in a time machine, and only the warm grip of his strong arm around my waist as he helped me out of the rickshaw and guided me through the crowd reminded me that I was very much in the living present.

The festival was an explosion of light, color, smells and sound, bombarding the senses. The air was scented with the orange marigolds strung as necklaces for the statues of the gods, sandalwood incense, and the sizzling oil used to fry dumplings at street-side burners. We wandered, laughing, down the streets and alleys that meandered amid the many buildings, some made of wood and some of stone—two tall Westerners towering over the tiny beautiful people like Gulliver among the Lilliputians.

“Lady, look, lady, look!” and “my friend, my friend,” peddlers shouted, trying to sell me bracelets, necklaces, scarves, and even, to my horror, bones set in silver.

Adam bought himself one of the sharp curved knives of the famed Gurkha regiment of the British Army, the fierce Nepali soldiers who were said to have so terrified the Argentine soldiers in the Falklands War. He bought me necklace after necklace, laughing his deep laugh and draping them over my head until I felt I must resemble one of the hundreds of statues of gods being worshipped with candles, flowers, and sticks of burning incense.

Young men ran in the streets, pulling the huge empty wooden carts used by the Living Goddess. The wheels of the enormous carts were also of wood, taller and thicker than a man, and it took teams of a dozen men or more to pull them. Once underway, the carts careened under their own weight through the crowded streets, and only the deep rumbling sound warned people to spring out of the way just in time to avoid being crushed to death under the giant wheels.

After a narrow escape of our own, Adam pulled me with him behind the safe shelter of a stone wall, and leaning down, kissed me, gently at first and then fiercely, pulling me close until I was breathless.

I closed my eyes and leaned into his strong, hard body, returning his embrace. His hands twisted in my long, wild hair as he pulled me tight against him.

“Oh, my dearest, my darling,” he murmured, kissing my neck and pulling me even closer. His face was buried in my hair, and he hugged me so tightly I could hardly breathe. “My precious Meg ….”

Meg?

I pulled free and stared at him for a moment in shock, searching his face. Then I whirled and took off, away from him, through the crowd.

“Sidney, wait!” he shouted. “I’m sorry, so sorry. I didn’t mean …. It was a mistake. Come back! Forgive me ….”

But the rest of his words were lost to me, swallowed up in the noises of the night, in the explosions of fireworks as I wove through the crowd.

I was shocked and embarrassed, and all I wanted to do at that moment was get away from him. I wanted to forget that the strong attraction I had felt between us and welcomed so freely was apparently intended for another woman, and a dead woman at that. How humiliating! I, Sidney Marsh, clearly meant nothing to this man except as a surrogate for his lost wife. I had been an idiot to imagine anything else. I wove swiftly through the crowd, ignoring his distant shouts as he attempted to follow me, tears streaming down my face, until I finally stopped to catch my breath and realized that he was no longer following. I had lost him, in more ways than one. As laughingly predicted by Jay, The Marsh Curse had struck me again, in full vengeance, and when I least expected it.

I marched on through the frenzied crowd, barely noticing the revelry swirling around me, trying to think and soothe my wounded pride. Finally calming down, I stopped acting like a jilted teenager and came to my senses, realizing that my own emotions and the shock of reality had caused me to totally overreact.

Now I had an even bigger problem. I had absolutely no idea where I was in the complicated network of medieval streets. I stopped and stepped out of the crowd into the shelter of an overhanging building to try to get my bearings. I did not speak the language, and the peddlers who might have understood me—the ones used to dealing with tourists—had packed up and gone. I was alone, lost and alone in the exuberant crowd.

I recalled earlier passing the plaza in front of the house of the Living Goddess, so I tried to retrace my steps. But I apparently took a wrong turn and now was really lost, even more so than I had been moments before.

The festival crowd thinned and then disappeared as I walked away from the center of the festival revelry, looking for a taxi. It wasn’t long before I knew I was in real trouble. In my silly, heedless flight from Adam I had put myself in a grave situation. I had absolutely no idea where I was, or how to find my way back to the hotel.
Think, Sidney, think!
I told myself as I crept along the dark, now deserted streets, trying to discover the right direction.
Where is the way out? Where are the cabs? Was it this corner or that one? Did we turn here? Does that building look familiar?

Finally, something did, and I turned into a street by a building that I seemed to remember passing earlier in the evening as we entered the old city. I stopped, finally catching my breath. After a moment I walked on, and it was then that I noticed a man walking behind me in the dark street with purpose, then another, on the opposite side. They were both grinning and watching me intently as they slipped from shadow to shadow.

Icy fingers of fear clutched my heart, and I walked faster, trying not to look back, but in a moment they were joined by two others. As their pace increased, narrowing the gap between them and me, stalking me like pack of wolves, so did mine. Soon I began to run, tears streaming down my face, and they followed, barely half a block behind me.

Just when I thought I would be caught, I dodged around a corner and an expensive car slid to a stop beside me. The window rolled down, and a silken arm beckoned, bracelets glinting in the car light. Only then did I realize that it was Jasmine.

I’ve never been so glad to see anyone before in my entire life. I looked back, and the men who had been stalking me were slinking back into the shadows, no longer in pursuit. All the negative thoughts I’d ever had about Jasmine evaporated in a wash of gratitude.

“Sidney,” she shrieked, “what do you mean, walking these lonely streets by yourself in the night? Everyone is looking for you. When Brooke and I got to the hotel after dinner she wanted to speak with you but they said you had not returned. They are all back at the hotel. Brooke was very worried and I had this car so she sent me to look for you. Get in, get in quickly.”

Her security guard held the door for me, and I climbed in, sinking into the deep leather seats in profound relief. What a close call I’d had! And what a fool I’d been, unfortunately not for the first time.

There was simply no rational explanation I could give Jasmine for my chaotic evening, and she didn’t want to hear it anyway after I was stupid enough to tell her that I’d gone to the festival with Adam. At the mention of his name, anger flared in her eyes. Too late I remembered that he had rejected her advances and that she had been not at all pleased about it.

The car rolled smoothly away. The security man was in the front seat with the driver, and her assistant sat in the back with me and Jasmine.

“So you are with this dog, Adam, and now you come to me for help, is that it, Sidney?” she hissed, eyes flashing.

Terrified that the temperamental actress would stop the car and put me out again to brave the night alone, I attempted to mollify her anger. I told her that Adam and I were only friends, that I had been separated from him in the crowd, then got lost and couldn’t find my way back from the festival. No way was I mentioning what had happened between us when the mere fact of my presence with him that evening caused her jealousy to flare.

My nonchalant manner as I downplayed my date with Adam seemed to mollify her somewhat and she fell silent, turning her back to me, watching the dark streets as we rushed through the night.

I relaxed and closed my eyes, resting my aching head on the back of the seat, my mind flooded with the extremes of the last few hours. I was thankfully headed back to Jay and the safety of the hotel, and the morning flight would take me back to Delhi and then home, to my dear little apartment in New York, where life would be calm again.

I would give Sharma’s paper to Brooke, I thought, let her handle it as she saw fit, turn in my detective badge and go home. Simple as that.
Calf-rope
, my Uncle Earl would say.
Stick a fork in me, I’m done
.

“Sidney,” Jasmine said, her voice silky and musical once more, “Brooke tells me you think my dear Felix did not die a normal death after all, that Mr. Sharma bribed the official to change the report and now has given you the true one. Is this so? Do you have a document proving his death from the fruit of the suicide tree?”

I was shocked by her question. How could she know about the paper? Brooke didn’t know about it. I hadn’t told her yet, or anyone else. Only Jay and Sharma knew. Even in my foolish moments of intimacy I had not confided in Adam. And I knew Jay would not have told her or anyone.

I opened my eyes and looked at her. She was smiling the wide smile that had dazzled hundreds of her adoring fans.

And in that moment, I knew. I remembered Mohit’s singsong words as he spoke of the potent poison of the suicide tree, “A lovely fragrant tree with white flowers and dark green leaves, but its seeds bring death. It flourishes in the Kerala region.” Kerala. Jasmine’s home town.

“Yes, Jasmine,” I said, thinking fast. “I believe that he was deliberately killed, but what proof could I, an American tourist, have of such a thing? That is ridiculous. I am not the police.”

“No, but you could cause inquiries to be made, and those inquiries could bring results. This is not your world, Sidney. In this world there are many eyes, many ears. It is known to me that foolish Sharma gave the report to you. He told me so himself before he died.”

“Sharma is dead?”

“Yes,” she said, again with the radiant smile, “The night after we left for the Terai, Sharma fell beneath the wheels of a festival cart and was crushed. Such accidents are not uncommon at such times in such a crowd. Just another tragic accident, no? I know you have the paper, Sidney. Sharma told me himself. Now you must give it to me. Where is it? Must I have you stripped to find it?”

“In my room,” I said. “Hidden in my room at the hotel. Take me back there and I will give it to you.” I suddenly knew why my bag had temporarily gone missing at Big Tiger Watch Camp. Jasmine had known even then about the document and thought I might have it with me.

She laughed then, a raucous laugh, enjoying my terror.

“Oh no, Sidney. I cannot afford to do that. I can search your room and destroy this paper without you. Unfortunately you will not be there to hand it over yourself. You will only be a sad reminder of what can happen to a foreign girl wandering alone in a strange country at night. Remember the sad newspaper stories of the girl on the bus in Delhi? You will die like her.”

She tapped the driver on the shoulder. The car pulled to the side and stopped.

At Jasmine’s nod, the man on my left opened his door and pulled me out, forcing my arms behind me as he dragged me to the side of the road. The other man got out of the front seat to help, dodging my kicks and stuffing a filthy rag in my mouth to stifle my screams. Neither said a word. The second man opened the car trunk and removed a length of long thin rope.

“Tie her to that post and leave her,” Jasmine hissed. “The jackals of the streets will soon find her. Before she dies she will know what it means to cross Jasmine.”

The two burly men tied me tightly to the post. My struggles were nothing to them. Minutes later they were back in the car. Then the car doors slammed and they drove Jasmine swiftly away. I heard her mocking laughter through the open windows grow ever fainter as the car’s taillights disappeared around a corner.