Mummy Dearest (20 page)

“No,” Peter said. “Now, if you’ll excuse us—”

Sittermann blocked our way to the corridor that led to our cabin. “Why don’t you all come along to my room for a drink and a chat? I have some new information that might prove kind of interesting.”

“You?” I said, arching my eyebrows.

“About Buffy.”

Peter and I exchanged looks as Sittermann led us to the upper deck and around a corner to a door. He unlocked it and gestured for us to precede him. His cabin, and I use the term loosely, was a vast sitting room with a bar, wicker furniture, and sliding glass doors to a sizable balcony. An open door on one side gave me a glimpse of a bedroom with a king-sized bed and a pile of silk pillows. It was not as large as the Presidential Suite at the Old Winter Palace, but our cabin on the ship could have been tucked in a corner.

“Wine?” Sittermann said as he went behind the bar. “Martinis? You name it, I got it. In fact, Mrs. Malloy, if you’d like to slip away while your husband and I talk business, there’s a Jacuzzi in the bathroom. You can stretch out and look at the mountains while all them bubbles soothe your aching muscles.”

“How did you get this?” I demanded.

“The owner of the cruise company owed me a little favor.”

Peter sat down on the sofa and distractedly picked up a dried apricot from the platter of pastries and fruit on the table. After a moment, he replaced it. His expression was blank, but I could almost hear him thinking furiously.

“Not in the mood for a bath, Mrs. Malloy?” Sittermann went on. “I seem to recollect you’re a scotch drinker. I’ll call for some ice.”

“I’d prefer lemonade,” I said mendaciously, then joined Peter. We both watched Sittermann as he picked up the
telephone and ordered ice and lemonade. “This is crazy,” I whispered.

“So it is,” Sittermann said, sitting down on a nearby chair and propping his ankle on his knee. “By all rights, you two should have gotten this little bit of heaven for yourselves, it being your honeymoon and all. Guess I got lucky.” He leaned forward and took a honey-coated piece of baklava. “Maybe I should get to the point. I managed to make a few calls while everybody was having lunch.”

“To whom?” Peter asked, coming out of his trance.

“Business associates back home.” He ate the baklava, then licked his glistening fingers with the complacency of a well-fed cat. “It turns out there’s something fishy about this girl calling herself Buffy. Her passport identifies her as Eleanor Franz from Sausalito, but her home address is bogus and her parents don’t exist in the system.”

“Maybe they’re in the witness protection program,” I said, having had some recent experience with such things. “Or her mother remarried and uses her husband’s name.”

Sittermann gazed at me. “And they all live together in a BMW dealership?”

“What about the college group in Rome?” I persisted.

“Hundreds of colleges and universities have programs in Rome, but none of them claimed her.”

“Maybe these business associates of yours haven’t been able to get in touch with every last program.”

“You’d be surprised at how efficient they are,” he said with a smirk.

Peter stood up and glowered at Sittermann. “How did you find out all this? Who are you? Who are these so-called ‘associates’ that can dig up that kind of information in a matter of hours?”

“I am a concerned fellow American,” Sittermann said solemnly. “I shiver to think about that poor little thing in the clutches of wild-eyed tribesmen, who might at this very moment be ravishing her. It may take a passel of them to subdue her, I admit, ’cause the girl does have spunk. I’ve always admired spunk.”

Peter looked as if he was on the verge of leaping at Sittermann’s throat. Although I could hardly fault him, I doubted it would produce more than brief satisfaction. I caught his hand and tugged at it until he sank down beside me.

“Why are you telling us?” I asked.

“I’m beginning to think Mr. Rosen is more than a simple businessman like myself, and you, Mrs. Malloy, have quite a reputation.”

“I think you’d better explain,” Peter said, his face flushed.

Sittermann did not respond but instead went to the bar and began to uncork a bottle of wine. I could hear Peter’s breathing as he struggled to regain control of his temper. His outburst had surprised me, since he tended to display increasing iciness when he was upset with me. He also had the unfortunate tendency to lapse into passive-aggressive retaliation, such as having my car impounded or assigning a police officer to dog me.

Sittermann brought us each a glass of wine. “I thought you might be interested, that’s all. Samuel Berry seems to have taken a dislike to me for some reason, and he wouldn’t spit on me if I was on fire. Why don’t you toss a few questions in his direction and see if he has any answers?” A telephone rang in the bedroom. “Dadgummit, as much as I hate to end this little party, I got to take that call. I sure have enjoyed talking with you. Take the wine with you. It’s a Cabernet Sauvignon from Château Margaux. Got a nice twang to it.”

Peter and I carried our glasses out to the deck where lunch had been served. Neither of us spoke for well over five minutes, but sipped wine and tried to digest the peculiar encounter with Sittermann.

“Expensive taste for a Texan,” Peter said at last.

“It does have a nice twang.”

“I don’t know if we should believe a word he says,” Peter went on, looking at the mountains that jutted out of the water. “I don’t trust him.”

“What would be the purpose in telling us all that about Buffy if it’s a fabrication? Why bother?”

“So we’ll question Samuel, I suppose.”

“Samuel didn’t come up here for lunch,” I said. “He wasn’t in the lounge afterward, either. Do you think he went to the temple with the others? That would be rather callous, considering how upset he was about Buffy.”

Peter finished his wine and put down his glass. “I’m going to find out if the captain has heard anything more from the military or the local police.”

“And call Mahmoud to tell him what Sittermann said?”

“The American Embassy. If the girl’s not found soon, it may set off an international incident. There’s nothing the press loves more than a pretty American girl who’s disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Stories about war, famine, and genocide are buried on the back pages these days. Even terrorism is getting boring. I won’t be surprised to find BBC and CNN at Abu Simbel tomorrow, cameras whirring and microphones being waved like batons.” He gave me a perfunctory kiss on the cheek. “I’ll meet you later in the lounge. I doubt they stock wine from Château Margaux, but I’ll ask.”

I listened to his footsteps as he went downstairs, then leaned back and replayed my few encounters with Buffy. She was very much the vapid stereotype of a pampered California princess. She’d gone to Rome for a semester of shopping. Samuel seemed to be her sole motivation for coming to Egypt. But why would she have a fake passport? I had no idea how one acquired such a thing. Any concept she had of the black market would involve designer rip-offs and counterfeit purses.

I decided to have a word with Samuel, if he was on board. I would have preferred to search Sittermann’s suite, but he was likely to still be there. Unless, I corrected myself, he had a private elevator along with his well-stocked bar and personal communication center.

The cabin roster was posted behind the reception desk
on the lower deck. The cabin shared by Buffy and Samuel was farther down our corridor. I squeezed past cleaning carts and smiled vaguely at stewards laden with fresh towels. Once I reached the door, I stopped for a moment to decide how best to proceed, then gave up and knocked. After two or three minutes, Samuel opened the door.

“Mrs. Malloy,” he said flatly.

“May I come in?”

“Uh, yeah, sure,” he said, stepping back. His hair was damp and he’d changed into clean clothes. How he’d found clean clothes qualified as a small mystery. The cabin looked as if it had been flipped over and shaken. Clothes were draped over the chairs and bed and piled on the floor. The surface of the dresser was cluttered with Buffy’s hair products and makeup, much of it overturned. An open drawer filled with her underwear (unless Samuel had a well-hidden passion for lingerie) was a jumble of lace and silk. “Sorry about the mess,” he added as he swept clothes off the bed. “Buffy brought enough for a monthlong cruise. She kept insisting that she be prepared for every imaginable level of dress.”

“So I see.” I sat down and turned on the sympathy. “You must be really worried about her. What a dreadful, shocking thing for her to be grabbed like that.”

“No kidding. I kept expecting a director to yell ‘Cut!’ any second, and the movie crew to emerge from behind rocks. She’s just a kid, you know. Sure, she can be annoying with all her prattle, but she’s not malicious. She just came along with me because she was bored in Rome. I shouldn’t have let her come. This is all my fault.”

“I don’t agree.” I hoped he would sit down, but he went over to the window and looked out. “Samuel, do you think you ought to get in touch with Buffy’s parents?”

“When there’s something to tell them. Right now, they don’t even know she’s in Egypt, so there’s no point in sending them into hysterics. She’s probably in some dumpy neighborhood in Aswan, trying to call the police, or in Abu Simbel at a bar. She’ll have everybody in the place fighting
to buy her drinks. Anyway, the captain promised that he’d send for me as soon as he heard something.”

“You two met at a bar in Rome?”

“A couple of weeks ago. I was hanging out, and she came in with some girlfriends. She glided right over to my table, and ten minutes later she was sitting in my lap. When I told her I was leaving for Egypt, she decided that she wanted to come along. I tried to talk her out of it, but she went back to her apartment, packed, and showed up at the hostel. It was okay with me, but later I began to wish I’d made sure she understood that I wasn’t going for the exotic nightclubs and luxury hotels. She kept looking around the airport for Peter O’Toole and Omar Sharif.”

“Do you know the name of her college?”

“Some liberal arts college. She’s not Stanford material. She majoring in a ridiculous field like children’s recreation management so she can be a lacrosse coach.”

“Oh,” I murmured.

Samuel closed the window shade. “I’d better go find the captain. He might have forgotten to send up a message. Thanks for coming by, Mrs. Malloy.”

It seemed as though nobody on the ship wanted my company, I thought as I got up. I’d been run off by pretty much everybody, including my husband. “Did Buffy bring her passport on the cruise?”

“How should I know? I haven’t seen it lying around in here. She might have it in her bag, or she may have left it in her luggage at the hotel in Luxor. I told her she wouldn’t need it.”

“And obviously you couldn’t find it,” I said, gesturing at the clutter. “Or maybe you finally did. It’s hard to tell.”

“What’s your point, Mrs. Malloy?

I tried to come up with a credible response. “The American Embassy might need the information,” I said at last. “They could use the photograph to send flyers to the military and the local police stations. She would have to show it if she got a hotel room or used a credit card to get money at a bank. Assuming she’s in Aswan or Abu Simbel …”

Samuel shrugged. “I’ll tell the captain to let the authorities know I have a few photos that I took at the oases—should flyers become necessary.” He opened the door for me. “I’ll see you later, Mrs. Malloy.”

As I headed for our cabin, I realized his parting comment had sounded like a threat.

I failed to see the temples of Abu Simbel at sunrise, having sacrificed aesthetics for sleep. While we ate breakfast at a more civilized hour, Inez raved about the majesty of the moment, and would have carried on at length had I not shushed her. It was indeed spectacular, set into a mountainside and guarded by colossal statues of Ramses II, seated on either side of the entrance. Three of them, that is; a fourth had been toppled by an earthquake centuries ago and left in pieces as it had been when discovered in the early nineteenth century. The nearby Temple of Hathor, built by Ramses as a tribute to his wife, Nefertari, was also fronted by statues, although the old boy outnumbered his wife.

Peter left for the pilot room, no doubt to confer madly with the American Embassy and his covert comrades. He’d been up and down the stairs all night, and the few times he’d come into the cabin he had paced and mumbled in a most unromantic fashion. Buffy had not surfaced in any towns or oases; nor had anyone claimed to have seen her.

Inez finally left me to my coffee and went up to the small observation deck. I would have liked to find out what Sittermann might have heard from his “associates,” but I hadn’t seen him at dinner or afterward in the lounge, where we were entertained by Nubian musicians and dancers. Samuel had not appeared, either. I doubted the two had been consoling each other all night over a bottle of expensive wine.

Caron sat down across from me and stared gloomily at her laden plate. “This is so Not Fair.”

“The sunshine?” I asked. “The breathtaking view of the temples? The freshly baked rolls and hand-squeezed orange juice? The fact that a waiter is hovering discreetly to make sure no insect dares invade your personal space?”

“Why should Buffy be the one to be kidnapped by a sheik? She’s probably just pouting in some tent because she doesn’t have her conditioner and her moisturizers. Never mind that she’s wearing a silk robe and tons of jewelry. The servants are on their knees, begging her forgiveness because they don’t have the most recent issue of
Entertainment Weekly.”

“You’re annoyed because
you
weren’t kidnapped?” I said, appalled. “Does reading that ridiculous book make you more qualified?”

“When she gets back, she’ll be interviewed on every single talk show and have dinner in the White House, like she’s the poster child for international kidnap victims. Somebody better show her a map of the world before she opens her mouth and says something really stupid. I’d bet my allowance she doesn’t even know that Egypt is in Africa.”