The Crocodile's Last Embrace (5 page)

“No,” said Jade, cutting him off. “I’m sorry, Neville. That was rude of me. No, I haven’t heard from Sam. I just needed to get away and I wanted an excuse to visit you.”

Neville smiled, accepting the compliment. Madeline, however, pursed her lips and studied Jade’s face with the practiced eye of a mother looking for unspoken hurts.

“You never need an excuse to visit us, Jade. You know that,” Maddy said. “But you do look a little drawn. I suppose those girls are running both you and Beverly ragged.”

“They are active little creatures,” Jade said with a chuckle. “I suppose it’s nothing less than I deserve after the trouble I gave my mother.”

“Hmm,” mused Madeline. “Oh, did you know that Harry is back in the area? He stopped by yesterday on his way to look at his old ranch property. Surprised he hasn’t sold it.”

“He should,” added Neville. “He’s off on safari so much that he just stays in some rooms above Newland-Tarlton’s offices when he’s in town.”

“He asked after you,” added Madeline.

Jade frowned. Harry Hascombe, rancher turned safari guide, had been a thorn in her side on several occasions. His interest in her, coupled with Maddy’s tendency to play matchmaker, made Jade wary.

“Maddy, thank you for the delicious meal and for giving those soup bones to Biscuit. It was nice visiting both of you, but I’d better collect my cheetah and head back. It’s late.”

“You could stay the night,” Maddy offered.

“Thank you, but no. You have a full house without us.” She looked around for Biscuit. “Where is he anyway?”

They found the cat lying next to Cyril on the boy’s bed. Neville smiled. “The little chap’s got his arm tight around Biscuit’s neck. Let Biscuit stay the night. We’ll bring him back tomorrow. I’ve got errands to run in town and it will give Maddy a chance to take that rose to Beverly.”

Jade agreed and headed back to Nairobi by way of the road. Her motorcycle’s light lit her path, leaving the rest of Kenya drenched in a velvet blackness that reminded her of Sam’s eyes. There was no moon tonight. Jade longed to look up at the thick sweep of stars above her, but she didn’t dare take her eyes from the road. To prove her point, a little civet darted across her path, its eyes shining back at her from its raccoonlike mask.

Over the Power Plus’ engine, she heard a distant
bwaa!
as a lone jackal called out, seeking its pack. The only reply came from a spotted hyena. Its ascending
whooo
, repeated more than a dozen times, told Jade that a single male, ignored by the matriarchal pack, was also seeking company.

All of Africa is lonely tonight
.

She understood the animals’ mood. She longed to cry out herself. She crossed the Getathuru River, a tributary of the Nairobi River, and felt as if she’d crossed a moat and entered the castle keep, with all its sordid noise and business. Suddenly, she didn’t want to return to the Dunburys’ house or to her silent rooms. Not yet.

On an impulse, she turned off the Fort Hall Road and onto the Limuru Road back out of town. Ahead of her stood the Limuru Bridge. She maneuvered her motorcycle in the deep, dry ruts made during the last rainy season, now baked to a bricklike consistency. Once across the bridge, she rode another hundred feet. Jade pulled her motorcycle to the side of the road and shut off her engine and the light. Then she gave herself to the night sky.

At first she faced north, seeking Ursa Major, the Great Bear. One of the better-known constellations, especially to a pilot, he was her link to Sam wherever he was. The bear’s nose and foreleg pointed up to the Lynx. But his body, which formed the Dipper, barely cleared the horizon.

After finding the bear, she turned east and located Leo, a constellation she’d come to associate with Africa. The great cat, too, climbed skyward tonight. Near his feet sat a bright orb.
Jupiter.

Jade sat down on the grass close to her motorcycle and watched the sky, drinking in the deep black. Only Nairobi’s glow diminished the gems of light winking out of the ebon veil. The bridge’s embankment shielded her from much of the town’s lights and most of the noise, although on a Thursday night, even the Muthaiga Club would be subdued.

A deep
hoo-hoo
sounded from a spotted eagle owl in one of the nearby trees. When Jade turned her head to better hear him, she caught sight of two streaks of light pitching across the sky. She’d forgotten there was to be a meteor shower. She waited, attentive to her peripheral vision as well. Within a few minutes, three more meteors sped across the sky, burning themselves up in their run. Jade felt as if the fireballs had coursed through her, searing her lungs and heart with an overwhelming need to see and touch Sam until her desire and loneliness threatened to suffocate her.

Jade rose when a slight noise from the bridge frightened the owl and alerted her. She expected to hear an approaching engine, see a pair of headlights. She stepped farther back from the road, lest the sudden sight of a person standing alone startle the driver. But no lights appeared, which was odd. The Nairobi police were fully intent on enforcing their headlamp law. Jade listened more closely. The engine noise sounded labored, but muffled, as though something between her and the vehicle was blocking the sound. Then the engine noise lessened and she heard a car door shut.

At first, she wondered whether someone was having automobile trouble. She took a step towards the road to see whether she could offer her help as a mechanic. The sharp crack of snapping wood arrested her in midstride. It was immediately followed by the groan and crunch of metal and a soft splash.

Jade hurried back to her motorcycle and rummaged in the dark for the flashlight in one of her panniers. She slid the switch on, and used the beam to find her way down to the car and its driver. Hopefully, someone was still alive. Farther away from the bridge, the bank wasn’t as steep as it was under the bridge. If there was a route to the driver, it would be there, following the river back upstream to the car. As she scrambled down the embankment, she heard another sound, but it wasn’t the expected moan of an injured victim.

It was the soft putter of a car slowly backing away in the darkness.

—The Traveler

JADE SNAPPED OFF HER LIGHT and froze.

She waited, listening for footsteps, a cough, anything to alert her to another presence—to danger. All she heard was a faint grinding of gears coming from the bridge. Then silence.

Someone pushed the car over the bridge!
Her hope of finding someone alive in the car disappeared. Instead she wondered how many bodies had been dumped.

She turned on her light and hurried up the shallow river to the wreck, at times sloshing through ankle-deep water when it was easier than plowing through the scratchy brush and large rocks that bordered the steep bank. Something small rustled through the debris nearby, but other than the frightened rodent, all was silent.

Jade reached the car, a Dodge, resting on three tires; the fourth was hung up on a rock. The car’s hood was crushed where it had struck the rocks below before righting itself. Peering through the broken windshield, Jade spied one occupant, a man, slumped over the steering wheel, motionless. A very thin dab of blood stained his forehead. She moved around to the driver’s side and opened the door, careful to cover her hand with her sleeve. If the police were going to search for fingerprints, she didn’t want hers on the handle. The smell of alcohol wafted out of the car. Jade put her index and middle fingers to the driver’s neck. No pulse. She wasn’t surprised, only saddened.

“Sorry,” she said to the victim, and crossed herself, reciting a brief prayer for the man. Then she headed back to her motorbike and into town.

One lone police constable sat at the desk on duty, reading yesterday’s newspaper. Jade recognized some of the headings:
Another Plague Victim in the Indian District
and
Limuru Road Bridge a Danger to Life and Limb.

The constable, a young Englishman, jumped to his feet. “How may I help you, miss?”

“I’m reporting a death, possibly a murder.”

“A death? I say. Where?” He ran his gaze over Jade’s muddied shirt and trousers. “Are you all right?” He took a sheet of paper from a desk cubby and pulled a pencil from his shirt pocket.

Jade pointed to the newspaper lying on the desk. “At your Limuru Bridge. A car went over the rails. The driver is dead.”

“Then it’s an accident.”

“I doubt it. I heard another car drive off slowly. There were no lights.”

“Well, if someone was driving with no lights on that bridge, it’s no wonder that they went over. That is a violation of the law, you know.”

Jade sighed. “You misunderstand me, Constable. I suspect the car was pushed off the bridge intentionally, made to look like an accident.”

Her statement suddenly struck home and the constable momentarily ceased scribbling on his paper. “And what were
you
doing there at this hour, miss?” He studied her again. “Were you in the vehicle?”

Jade noticed that he didn’t specify
which
vehicle, the one that went over or the one she reported hearing leave. “Neither. I had stopped my motorcycle on the north end of the bridge before going into town.” When she noticed his arched eyebrow, she added, “I wanted to look at the stars.”

“Alone?”

“Alone!”

The constable bent down and made some notation. “Your name and residence?”

“Jade del Cameron. I’m a guest of Lord and Lady Avery Dunbury near Parklands.”

She answered a few other basic questions regarding where she’d been and again why she was alone at night near the bridge. Jade replied patiently, wishing for a cup of coffee. When she’d heard the crash and reacted, it was with the nearly instinctive reflexes that had carried her on her ambulance runs during the war. Jade was certainly no stranger to death there. Several of her runs had ended in unloading a deceased soldier whose wounds had been too severe to withstand the long trip from the lines to an evacuation hospital. But the aftermath was always the same, sitting with Beverly and the other women in some farmhouse basement, drinking tea, cocoa, coffee, or Bovril—whatever someone had received in a package from home. She felt the need for that now, only she knew she’d be drinking alone. It wouldn’t be right to disturb Beverly.

The constable’s voice startled her out of her reverie. “I rang up the inspector, miss. Gave him all the particulars. He’ll send some men out to the spot to fetch the body tonight.”

“Did you tell him that it might be murder?”

“I did. Funny thing, miss—when I gave Inspector Finch your name, he didn’t seem at all surprised. He said you had best go home now. Inspector will contact you tomorrow if he has any questions.”

Jade nodded, thanked the constable, and went outside to her motorcycle. Her hand shook as she gripped the handlebars and it took all her presence of mind to steer the machine north through town to the northern edge of Parklands and to her rooms. She recognized the symptoms as a type of aftershock that hit after the initial surge of energy came in times of danger. While she was on the riverbed or by the car, her mind felt as clear as the African night. Her leg muscles had carried her willingly up and down the embankment, her arms assisting by pulling on low branches. But whatever extra strength she’d gained, she paid for now with trembling limbs and an exhausted, foggy brain.

One light burned in the Dunburys’ windows. Bev, Jade knew, would either keep watch or have Farhani keep watch and alert her once she had safely returned. For a moment, Jade considered knocking on Bev’s door, but decided against it.

No sense waking the baby.
As she turned on her own house lights, the one in the big house across the yard went out. Beverly would retire now. Jade headed into her bathroom and took off her filthy clothes. It was too late to heat water out in the main kitchen for a hot bath, so she settled for a cold sponge bath and shampoo at the bathroom basin. She put on a fresh camisole and drawers and tossed the dirty clothes onto a chair. While she toweled her hair, she looked on her supply shelf for coffee. The can was not beside her little spirit burner.

She moved aside some tinned meats and, not finding it, looked to see if it had fallen onto the floor. There was only her wooden chop box, where she kept her camping supplies. That was when she spied a tin on her little table with
Miss del Cameron
printed on a tag. Two notes lay beside it. One simply read,
Please give this to Miss del Cameron with my compliments. It’s a spiced South African red tea. Quite delicious and purported to be very healthful, more so than her coffee. Your friend, Major Anthony Bertram.