A Whisper of Danger (34 page)

S
IXTEEN

“I don’t believe I did it,” Jess whispered to Hannah the next morning in the kitchen. The two women, along with Miriamu, were preparing to carry breakfast out onto the courtyard dining table. “It seemed so right at the time. But then I lay awake all night worrying and praying and wondering if I’d made the biggest mistake of my life.”

“You used to tell me that marrying Rick was your biggest mistake,” Hannah said. She scored a mango half and flipped it inside out to expose the orange fruit. “I did not agree with you then. And I do not agree now. You were right to tell him. When will you tell the boy?”

“I can’t even think about that!” Jess handed Miriamu a basket of fresh rolls and croissants. “
Bwana
McTaggart spent the night here at Uchungu House, Miriamu. He slept on the sofa in the living room, so we’ll need to put away the blanket and pillow later. He’ll be joining us for breakfast this morning.”

“Yes,
memsahib
. And tomorrow?”

“I don’t know about tomorrow.” Jess paused. “No, definitely not. He’ll be going back to his apartment this afternoon.”

“Memsahib,”
Miriamu said. Her dark eyes stared intently at Jess. “Two policemen came yesterday morning to talk to Solomon. They think someone killed
Bwana
bin Yusuf.”

“Yes, Miriamu. I know they talked to Solomon about it.”

“Solomon believes there may be danger here at Uchungu House for you and the boy.”

“He does?”

“Perhaps it would be good for
Bwana
McTaggart to stay here with you until the policemen catch the bad man.”

Jess picked up a bowl of steaming scrambled eggs. It was odd to think of Solomon Mazrui expressing concern over her and Splint. For so long now, she’d been thinking of him as the prime suspect.

“No, Miriamu,” she said. “I don’t believe that’s necessary.”

“Then Solomon can sleep here at Uchungu House. We have no children, so my husband is not needed to protect a family each night.”

“Your husband? Wait a minute—are you telling me you’re married to Solomon?”

Miriamu’s black eyebrows arched. “Of course,
memsahib
. We are married for two years.”

“I didn’t know that. Then no wonder he walks you home at night. And the village . . . you always go together.”

The young woman’s face broke into a radiant smile. “Solomon and I live in the village near the shop of Akim, who offered to take you to Zanzibar town on his bicycle.”

“You know about that? About the goat?”

“In the village, nothing is a secret.” Miriamu hitched the basket of bread onto the curve of her hip. “Maybe one day you will come to the house of Solomon Mazrui. I will serve you a cup of tea.”

As she strolled into the courtyard to finish setting the breakfast table, Miriamu left the scent of frangipani blossoms in her wake. Jess turned to Hannah.

“They’re married. Did you know?”

“Ehh. She told me one day. They wish very much to have children, but God has not given them any babies. It is a great sadness to them.”

“Mama Hannah, why didn’t you tell me all this?”

“You must learn to look and ask questions for yourself. You study many things with your careful eyes. You see the colors and shapes and shadows of everything you paint. But in some things,
toto
, I believe you are completely blind.”

Chagrined, Jess followed the old woman into the courtyard in time to catch Rick emerging from a dip under the outdoor shower. Shirtless and barefooted, he was clad only in the jeans he had put on before their boat ride the day before. He rubbed a towel over his wet hair and gave her a lopsided smile.

“Morning, Jessie,” he said. He hooked the towel around his neck, leaving his hair standing on end in a mass of damp spikes. “Sleep all right?”

“Okay, I guess. You?”

“Not a wink.” He walked toward her, so close she could see the water droplets glistening on his neck. “About last night. I’ve decided not to say anything to Splint. I think that should be between the two of you.”

Jess nodded. For all her self-admonishments about how stupid she had been the night before, it was all she could do to keep from slipping her arms around Rick again. He looked so warm and real. So perfect in his damp jeans and messy hair and goofy grin. Thank goodness Hannah and Miriamu had both gone back into the kitchen.

She swallowed. “Okay. I’ll tell Splint. I’ll tell him today.”

“Will it be all right with you if I take him out on the boat this morning?” He held the ends of the towel in his fists. “I’d like to be with him, if you wouldn’t mind. Sort of just observe him. Get used to the whole thing, you know.”

“Thank you for asking my permission, Rick. I guess you’ve figured out you really don’t have to anymore. You do have certain rights as his father.”

“No, Jessie. I surrendered those rights ten years ago. I’ll only take what you choose to give me.”

She laid her fingertips on his arm. “Rick, I—”

“Come with us, Jessie,” he urged her, his blue eyes intense. “Come out on the boat with Splint and me. We’ll dive around the new wreck site. You can sketch whatever we haul up in the basket. I’d like to . . . I’d like to be with you, too.”

She shook her head, feeling off-balance with him standing so close. “I really need to paint today. My illustrations are due in London soon, and I can feel the deadline looming. James Perrott wrote me a letter. He wants sketches for the new book.”

“The jealous jackal?”

Jess nodded, her eyes filling with tears again over the fact that Rick knew. He knew about the jealous jackal. He knew about her life, her work, her son. And he cared. He had made her important to him once again.

“Oh, Rick, I’m so scared about all this!” she said and covered her face with her hands.

“Jessie, I’ve got you.” He pulled her into his arms, held her close, cupped the back of her head with his hand. “I promised I’d protect you. I said I’d never hurt you again. Please try to trust me—”

“Mom, did you know some of the caves in the coral cliffs along the coast of Zanzibar . . . were once used . . . to hold . . . slaves . . . ? Hey, what’s going on?”

Splint was halfway down the stairs before Jess managed to stiffen and pull out of Rick’s arms. Flushing like a guilty teenager caught spooning on the front porch, she brushed at her skirt. Rick cleared his throat.

“That’s good research, Splint,” he said. “At Mangapwani, about fourteen miles north of town, there’s a slave hole. It’s been covered by a stone slab.”

“Oh yeah? I’d like to see it sometime.” Splint walked down the steps, his eyes darting back and forth between the two adults standing in the courtyard. “So, what’s going on?”

“Breakfast time,” Jess said. “Did you wash your hands?”

“I mean what’s going on with you guys? Have you been crying, Mom?”

“I’m just a little tense, Splint.” She pulled back her son’s chair. “I didn’t sleep much last night. How about you, sweetheart? No more nightmares?”

“Nah. To tell you the truth, I think I was just kind of hungry last night.” He picked up his fork. “Remember we had to eat that Indian curry for lunch? And then for supper all we had was samosas. I bet it was just hunger pangs.”

Jess glanced at Rick. He gave her a wink.

“Hunger’ll do that to you,” he said, sitting down beside Splint. “We’ll take along some extra snacks when we go out on the water today.”

“Hey, am I going with you again? All right! Can we explore the new wreck site? Are you going to let Hunky go at it with the airlift? A slave ship—that’s amazing. You know, the first thing we ought to do is put down a grid. I’ll help you with that. But what about those eels that nearly got Mom?”

“I’ll take my speargun.”

“Cool! So, what do you think we’ll find at the new site? Draw me a diagram of everything you discovered so far.”

Splint slid a paper napkin in front of his father and grabbed a croissant. Rick took a pen from the back pocket of his jeans. He took a bite out of a roll and set it on his plate as he leaned over the napkin and began to sketch.

“See, here’s where the anchor lies,” Rick said around a mouthful of bread. “It’s crusted over in a lot of places, but it’s in remarkable shape for the number of years it’s been underwater. The ring’s still in place, and both flukes look great.”

“Flukes?” Splint asked, his own mouth so full of bread it came out sounding like
fooks
. “Are those the finlike projections on the ends of each of the anchor’s arms?”

Jess watched the two of them for a moment, and she had to bite her lip to keep from laughing out loud. Brown heads touching, they were bent over the diagram shoulder to shoulder. Oblivious to the world around them, munching on bread they weren’t even tasting, they discussed the anchor as though there were nothing more important in life than the condition of the anchor and its
fooks
.

“
Bwana
Hunky has come,” Hannah said, passing by Jess with a plate of sliced mangoes. She paused beside the younger woman and studied the two at the table. “I think they do not see or hear anything but each other.”

“Like father, like son,” Jess murmured.

Hannah smiled. “This is a good thing you have done,
toto
. In Swahili we say,
Mwana umleavyo, ndivyo akuavyo
. As you nurse your child, so he grows up.”

“I hope you’re right, Mama Hannah,” Jess said. “Tell Hunky and his crew to come on in and join us. We might as well get this day off to as crazy a start as possible.”

After the divers left for the morning, Uchungu House settled into an uncharacteristic calm. The rainstorm had left everything damp and muggy. Jess thought about Dr. bin Yusuf ’s artwork as she cleared the breakfast table. Giles Knox had been right about one thing. The paintings and sculptures did belong in a safe, dry environment.

But should she do business with the gallery owner? Undecided, Jess spent the morning painting impala and monkey illustrations in her studio bedroom. From the balcony, she could see Solomon laboring over the engine that still hung from the Red Hot Poker tree. Miriamu was singing in the kitchen below. Later in the morning, Hannah strolled down to the beach to have her usual prayer time.

At noon, Jess ate lunch on the sand with Hannah. They could see the diving boat out in the bay, but it was almost impossible to distinguish one figure from another. After lunch the police showed up again. This time they talked to Solomon, Miriamu, Jess, even Hannah. They examined the small storage room behind the stairs where Splint had found the bloody urn. Then they counted steps, took measurements of distances from one room to the next, and drew diagrams of the house.

The policemen had just left when a crew from the electric company showed up. They examined wires and drew more diagrams. Jess tried to keep painting, but her thoughts were on Splint and Rick anyway, so it hardly mattered that her work had been disrupted all afternoon.

She was putting the final touches on Impala’s big birthday gala—complete with visitors from the previous books: Anteater, Baboon, Cheetah, Dik-Dik, Elephant, and so on— when Giles Knox drove up in a long white limousine. Jess watched him from her balcony as he emerged, looked around, smoothed down his natty ecru safari suit, and tucked his mirrored sunglasses into his shirt pocket. As he walked past his chauffeur toward the verandah, he ran his hand over his hair. Beneath her, Jess caught the unmistakable scent of roses.

Not wanting Miriamu to have to make the trip upstairs to alert her, Jess went on down to the sitting room. If Giles Knox was a killer, he was certainly the most dainty one she had ever heard of. He looked as slender and fragile as a hothouse flower. On the other hand, despite the urn’s weight, both Splint and Nettie had managed to carry it without too much trouble.

“Mr. Knox,” she said, pulling open the carved front door. “I see you decided to pay me a personal visit.”

“I should have preferred to ring you up first, of course, but it’s quite impossible to telephone Uchungu House,” he replied, holding out a thin-fingered hand. “I’m sure you’re well aware of that.”

“Yes. Won’t you come in?”

He was already walking through the door, his gaze fixed on the large painting of the storm scene that hung over the sofa where Rick had spent the night. “This is simply magnificent, isn’t it?” he gushed. “But what’s this? Oh, dear! Oh, my goodness gracious . . . do you see this? Look, Ms. Thornton.
Mildew
!”