I could even rise from my chair, though, the door to the office opened with a bang.
The blonde stood in the doorway. She looked more mussed than last night but had changed her clothes.
“Is this then true?” she blurted out. Not California. Her grammar and accent pegged her as European—maybe Scandinavian. Michael’s girlfriend from last night.
M. Faisal jumped up, as though nature called. Police plus one disruptive female was bad enough; two were more than a man should have to bear.
“I must go,” the manager said. “Soon I return.”
I turned to her. “Perhaps I can help you. Are you asking about the man you had dinner with last night? About Michael Petrovich?”
She nodded, tension in the corners of her blue eyes. Instinctively, I made sure she was sitting down before continuing.
“I’m afraid he’s dead.” It was strange telling her this. For all she knew, since Michael had stopped to talk to me as they went to their table, I was another romantic interest of Michael’s.
“Dead? Dead? Michael is dead?” The young woman seemed shocked. Her lovely jaw hung open. Then she closed her mouth and her throat worked. She looked more fearful than grief-stricken, but it can be hard to tell about these things. I felt shocked, myself, and I had hardly known the guy.
“Did you know him well?” Nothing like getting to the point. “And, by the way, I’m Elizabeth Darcy. What is your name?”
“Christine,” she muttered, almost sullenly. “Christine Helmund.” The tragic blue eyes reminded me of Ilsa, in Casablanca. “I am with International Volunteers. Michael knew some of our projects. Came to see us. No, I didn’t know him very well…” Her voice trailed off.
That might be true or it might not. They’d looked like old acquaintances. I’d assumed last night that she was the reason he didn’t accompany me to the hotel the night we landed. “How did you know him?” I asked.
“Michael is a businessman. With French firm.” Her blue eyes swiveled to the side, away from my gaze; the same movement she’d used to scan the dining room last night. Who was she looking for? Apparently not the Brit, since he’d left as she arrived.
“When did you last see Mr. Petrovich?” I asked.
“He walked with me home and left me. I did not see him after.”
Well, I couldn’t disprove it. And the mysterious Brit had been lurking about. He’d been surprised at the sight of Christine and Petrovich entering the dining room. Why? If there was a connection, I’d like to know. This young woman seemed a weak link.
Mr. Faisal had summoned up the courage to return, and with some misgiving I turned Christine over to him. This young woman wasn’t going to pieces there in the office, though she might later. She had become eerily calm, a hardness in her eyes.
On impulse, I handed her a card. “Come to see me if you wish.” Now, why did I do that? Reporter instinct, natural kindness (my personal choice), or prurient interest in her relationship with Michael?
I went up to my room to change, carefully avoiding the room from which Michael’s body had already been removed. Mrs. Weston was sound asleep, making a perfect circle, paws covering eyes.
I jotted a three-line e-mail note to Mac outlining the murder of Michael Petrovich—omitting the fact that I’d met him as well as any mention of suspicious Brits and international beauties—and promised to look into the matter.
I glanced out the window and thought about my duplicity with the policeman. Why hadn’t I mentioned the Brit going into the room? The cage-like jail in the souq with its ghostly inhabitant flitted through my mind. Back to when I thought I might become that ghost. Better to find out what I could on my own. Oh, Halima. I needed you then. I need you now.
It seemed like hours since that dawn wake-up. White dusty sunlight had erased early morning shadows from Jebel Nabi Shu’ayb to the west, bringing out all the sharp edges of Sana’a. The change from sunrise and its magic to the white sameness of mid-morning added to my sense of shock. I still couldn’t believe Petrovich, was dead. Inshallah, God willing, it wasn’t an omen for how Halima’s problem would end.
I rested a little while on the bed, Mrs. Weston close beside me. It had been quite a morning and was only nine o’clock now. But lying around wasn’t going to help. I patted the cat, arose, adjusted my clothes, and went back down the stairs. I’d treat the murder of my seatmate as I would any other murder. Just cover it, to the extent the Trib was interested.
After all the excitement, the hotel staff went quietly about its routine in the hall: sweeping the stone floors; changing the beds and hanging tan sheets out on a windy clothesline; moving dust on every surface so that for a few moments, fingerprints wouldn’t show up as visible tracks.
There was a constant stream of whispers among the employees, though. One could tell from the atmosphere this was no ordinary day at the Dar al-Hamd.
What did they think about last night’s murder? Could there have been fingerprints? Had there been a second cup or glass? Only the police would know. Unless I could find a way to get close to them and gain their confidence, they wouldn’t tell me anything. For all I knew, I was a suspect in their eyes. I wished for a moment I were an official investigator and could get hold of the murder weapon, the jambiya itself. I wished I were a doctor.
Mac back in Washington had expressed interest in the murder, of course, so I was off to the U.S. Embassy to pick up tidbits. News people love murders. Well, doesn’t everybody who doesn’t have to deal with it first hand? Murder is the ultimate tragedy or evil, both for perpetrator and victim. It’s also the ultimate revenge, the last great chance to wipe success off the face of your competitor, to get even with your enemy.
Michael had clearly been murdered. What was the motive?
Walking away from the hotel to do some investigating for the crime that had stabbed its way into my preoccupation with Halima (and the Sana’a story I’d promised the Trib,) I noticed that dust had blown up around the Dar al-Hamd’s front entrance, making little dunes where none had been last night.
Dust to dust. I walked a little faster.
CHAPTER 24
“Allah will protect us,” was all that one could say.
Freya Stark, A Winter in Arabia
Halima and Zuheyla sat in the mufraj, which smelled faintly of lavender, hookah smoke, and incense. The usual scents of hospitality had faded since they no longer had the problem of chatty women neighbors crowding in to have tea with them. No one came to see them these days. In becoming an outcast himself, Ali had brought virtual imprisonment to the family.
Halima couldn’t believe Ali would do those things. Killing civilians, even if they were non-believers? Un-Muslim. She hated the sheikh from Sa’da, whose charisma had managed to penetrate a young man’s adolescence, even though he had a solid and respectable family behind him.
Yes, she should have paid more attention when Ali became so religious a few months ago. For a while, he seemed to spend all his time at the Great Mosque a few streets away. Then he began staying away from home at night. That’s when she said something to Zuheyla, Ali’s intended bride and also their cousin.
