A Steal of a Deal (6 page)

Aunt Weeby unzips her suitcase, her small, well-shaped nose high in the air. “I like me my sloths, sugarplum. And if you don’t mind, I’ll be brushing my teeth first.”

Briefly, very briefly, I wonder if she even knows what a sloth looks like. Not exactly
GQ
cover material, get my drift?

Before long, we’re both under the covers. We pray together, whisper our good nights. Then, in that same hushed tone, Aunt Weeby adds, “Glad you came back home, Andie?”

“I don’t have to think about it. I was glad when I came home, and I’m gladder now. Good night.”

“God bless you, sweet sugarplum.”

“The Lord bless you too.”

“Sweet dreams.”

Nightmare . . .

I fight it.

A woman’s scream . . . pounding footsteps.

Bad nightmare.

More screams . . . knocking on a door. Garbled voices,
male and female
.

“Andie! Wake up, sugarplum.”

I roll to my right side, pull the pillow over my head.

“. . . She sleeps like a rock, I tell ya,” Aunt Weeby says, her voice shaky.

“But at a time like this!” Miss Mona counters, a hitch in her voice.

“How’s she to know, Mona Latimer?”

Aunt Weeby? Wailing?

I fight the cobwebs of sleep but don’t get too far. I’m beat. “That, Livvy, is why you have to wake her up!”

I want to sleep. And they want to wake me up. This is no dream. Might be a nightmare. It is the Daunting Duo I hear.

Then it hits me: shaky voice, hiccuplike hitch, wailing—
a
scream
? I bolt up. “Why’d you yell?”

“I didn’t—”

“We didn’t—”

“
Someone
screamed.” I rub my sleep-foggy eyes, but nothing changes. Aunt Weeby’s still in her rose silk pajamas, and Miss Mona’s in a flowing, flowered nightgown. Trust me. You don’t want to know about the hair situation.

When I look at the ladies again, I notice the fear in their eyes, the worry in their expressions, the lack of color in their cheeks.

I leap out of bed. “What happened? Are you okay? Is everyone else all right? Did the government goons with the guns come get us?”

Aunt Weeby gives a tight shake of the head. “Not yet.”

Yet?
My trouble-o-meter starts its deafening
wee-uh, wee-uh,
wee-uh
. “Tell me what’s going on. Now!”

Miss Mona reaches for my hand. “I’m afraid, honey, it’s worse than government officials and all that. Glory and Allison stayed in the lounge for a while after we went to bed. Then they went to their room. And that’s . . . that’s when they found . . . it.
Him
.”

She sways, and for a moment, I’m afraid she’s going to faint. I run to her side, wrap my arm around her waist. “It’s okay, Miss Mona. Whatever they found, it’s going to be okay. Just breathe, breathe slow and easy—”

“Sugarplum! A’ course she can’t breathe at a time like this. What are you thinking? Come on, now. Let’s go. You gotta get to getting.”

“But if she doesn’t breathe, she’ll pass out and won’t get any-where—” I catch myself. Why am I trying logic on Aunt Weeby in the middle of the night? “Okay. Let’s go . . . wherever.”

“To Glory and Allison’s room.”

Here we go again. I’m resigned to my fate. “Lead the way.”

But Miss Mona’s reluctance speaks volumes. Something’s really wrong here. This isn’t one of the Duo’s usual escapades. My heartbeat speeds up. The chill I feel doesn’t come from a breeze behind any silk draperies. I don’t think Glory’s found a mouse or a spider in her room.

With every step I take, I shiver more. That’s when I start to pray. “Please, Lord . . . Father, help us. Keep us safe . . .”

The door to the bedroom is open, but neither Miss Mona nor Aunt Weeby will go in. I look from one to the other. Each shakes her head. I close my eyes, call out to the Lord again, and take that final step over the threshold.

“Oh, Andie!” Allison groans. “Look!”

There, on the floor between the two beds, is Farooq, motionless, his head twisted and lolling in an unnatural way.

I suck in a long, hard breath. “Not again . . .”

400

Remember those essays way back in grade school: “What I Did on My Summer Vacation”? Yeah, you know. Most kids go to Disney. Me? I go to jail. In Kashmir.

Trust me. Time in a Srinagar police holding pen is not something you want to do. Imagine five of us—plus Robert— in an eight-by-ten-foot cell: cozy.

Not.

Filth, stench, and nasty officers are about as good as it gets. It’s worse, much worse than being chased by angry government goons with guns drawn through the wilds of Myanmar. That time, at least we had a vehicle around us, and it was moving.
Away
from our hunters.

Now, we’re sitting ducks. And until someone comes out and confesses to whacking poor Farooq, we’re stuck.

Let’s face it; he had Allison’s backpack in his clutches when we found him. Even the somewhat dim cop doesn’t need too many mental lightbulbs to figure out Farooq got caught mid-theft and Allison took matters into her own hands—or broomstick, as the case may be. It looks like that’s what the killer used to choke the guy.

Only problem is, Allison didn’t kill Farooq.

She couldn’t have. Wouldn’t have.

I know Allison.

But how do you get foreign officials to listen when the evidence looks way clear?

Oh! You want to know why they’ve locked up the rest of us too? Accomplices, they say. One delicate little woman couldn’t possibly have killed the “strong”—scrawny, if you ask me—male houseboy all by her weak self. We
all
took part in sticking a broomstick under his chin, pulling back, and asphyxiating him.

Yeah, right.

Hours float by.

We pray.

We try to lighten the mood with a couple of stories, tell jokes, but that goes nowhere. Even Aunt Weeby doesn’t have much to say. My one question, of course, is why, if we were supposed to be short-term missionaries, did we wind up in a glam floating palace where some guy went and got himself choked?

You know I can’t ask Miss Mona that. Not while she’s scared, nervous, pale, and at times, green around the gills from the wretched stench. Instead, I put my arm around her, tell her I love her, pray with her, and remind both of us that even now our God is in control.

I check my watch, but every time I do, it seems to have stopped working. Then I look again, and I realize it’s doing its thing, just way slower than I’d like. I’m dying to get out of this place. Time creeps by, hour after hour after hour . . .

Around dawn, Aunt Weeby and I lean against each other and manage to snooze for a very brief while. But Kashmiri jails don’t exactly encourage rest and relaxation. Nor do they offer privacy for . . . ahem . . . bodily functions. At least not our sumptuous holding cell. The thought makes my skin crawl.

But God is good, you know? Are we still in jail?

Well, no. That was then. Now, midmorning, we’re in a limo.

How’d we get out?

Let me tell you. Miss Mona’s resourcefulness is a wondrous thing. Remember the political problems and all that stuff going on in this part of the world? Well, it’s not so much against us as against each other, not like the unpleasantness between us and Myanmar. We have a good embassy in Srinagar, and all it takes is Miss Mona’s call to get someone from the good old U.S. of A. to show up and plead our case.

I don’t want to know if money changed hands.

Unfortunately, our freedom means bad news for poor old Robert. He’s charged with Farooq’s untimely demise and will be held for trial—if one can really call it that in this part of the world.

In the embassy limo, Allison shoves her brown curls from her forehead. “Could someone explain to me how things went from me killing Farooq because he was stealing my wallet to Robert killing him because they had a falling out over the loot?”

I blow out a gust of pent-up air, and with it goes a ton of stress. “Maybe they have some kind of evidence on the guy? If that’s the case, he belongs in jail. If not . . .well, I don’t know if there’s anything anyone can do. We are where we are.” I shudder. “But I will praise God we’re not still there.”

“D’y’all really think that nice Robert could’ve killed that poor little waiter?” Aunt Weeby asks, for about the fiftieth time since we got sprung. “And really, Allison, dear. Why’d you ever travel with all that loot in the first place?”

“Loot?” our makeup diva cries. “All I had was twenty bucks. I keep my traveler’s checks in a pouch around my waist under my clothes.”

“Isn’t it so sad,” Miss Mona says, her eyes tired and her face showing her age. “So many thieves lose their lives for so pitifully little. It just breaks your heart, you know?”

What else is there to say? Miss Mona’s a pretty sharp cookie.

When we pull up before a tall, brightly lit building, I turn to my sharp-cookie boss. “Where are we?”

“The Hotel Broadway.” She sighs. “I didn’t think any of you would want to return to the houseboat after . . . well, after what happened. I sure didn’t.”

I scramble out of the limo and give her a hug. “You think of everything. I hadn’t even considered that.”

“Miss Andie, it scene of crime,” Xheng Xhi, our new escort says with an alarming amount of relish—and an intense look for me. “Police investigate. A lot.”

“How about our things?” Glory asks. “I had a ton of camera and video equipment.”

“Mr. Moffett at the embassy is pretty sure we’ll get everything back by the afternoon,” Miss Mona answers as she enters the lush lobby. “I think we can all make do without our things for a few hours.”

Aunt Weeby perks up for the first time since the shrieking paddy-wagon-type van hauled us off to the pokey. “Betcha they have all those cute l’il soaps and lotions and shampoos at the front desk! And I’m gonna ask at the desk for a toothbrush, toothpaste, razor, and shaving cream. Nice hotels hand ’em out like souvenirs.”

My idea of souvenirs runs along the lines of the airport’s luscious leather handbags.

We split up as before: Miss Mona in a single, Glory and Allison together, and Aunt Weeby and me, roomies again. I think of Robert’s fate: somewhere he has his own single—with iron bars—and his own problems if he did kill Farooq.

I just don’t buy it. But who am I to say?

The elevator spits us out on the tenth floor and we scatter down the hall. Aunt Weeby leads the way to our home away from home, her loot—as opposed to whatever loot Farooq imagined Allison had—clutched in her happy little fist. True, the rest of us asked for toothbrushes and paste too, but it didn’t mean much to anyone but her. Home comforts have always been important to my aunt, and I know how much this night has rattled her. So if dinky sample toiletries make her smile, bring ’em on!

When we’re both ready for sleep, me still in my wrinkled Tazmanian Devil pajama pants and blue tank top and Aunt Weeby in her rose silk jammies, slightly worse for the wear in a Kashmiri jail, we kneel between the queen-sized beds and pray, tears of gratitude wetting our faces, our love and trust in God almost palpable.

As the sun reaches the apex of the sky, we both crawl under the sheets, and in minutes, fall asleep.

After an uneventful if exhausting evening, and now a hotel breakfast of very American eggs and toast, we’re treated to another Srinagar-style grilling by grim cops. When they finally give up on us, we head out to meet the missionaries who’ve been stationed here in Kashmir since a few weeks after the quake. The Sewards are still stateside, working to raise funds for and more interest in Kashmir’s lingering disaster. Wow! So much has happened, it seems as though we met them in another century.

We meet our hosts, the Musgroves, outside the Anglican All Saints Church. Trevor Musgrove turns out to be a British man, tall, thin, and dressed in jeans and a short-sleeved, button-down plaid shirt. His wife, Emma, a tiny five feet— max—looks stunning in the most amazing green sari. She wears her blond hair coiled into a chignon at the base of her head, and her leather sandals peep out from under the swaths of fabric when she walks toward us.

After quick introductions, Emma holds out her hands in a gesture of welcome. “We’re so happy to have you join us. Laura Seward has told us a great deal about you and your television network.”