Mummy Dearest

by Joan Hess

  Even Alexander was waiting for my reply. I realized I’d been ambushed and had no graceful retreat. “If you’re sure they won’t intrude …,” I began reluctantly. “After all, it is a family party and—”

  “Good heavens no,” Salima said. “It’s settled, then. Caron, Inez, I’ll be in the lobby at seven. Some of my aunts are priggish, so I suggest you dress conservatively. You might want to bring a box of candy or dried fruit for my mother, and a little something for Jamil.” She gulped down the martini, hopped off the rail, and paused to touch my shoulder. “I’ll take very good care of them, Mrs. Malloy. Have a lovely time at the dinner party on the dahabiyya. Mr. Bledrock, it’s been ever so lovely seeing you again. We must get together in another ten years, unless, of course, you’re occupied pulling wings off flies. Ma’asalama, everyone.”

  “Isn’t she fantastic?” Caron demanded after the parlor door had closed. “She knows everybody in Luxor.”

  “I’d be surprised if she doesn’t know everyone in Egypt,” Alexander said. “She’s hardly a shy sort.”

  “Hardly,” I murmured.

  Inez picked up the copy of The Savage Sheik that I’d left on a corner table. “I’ve been looking for this.”

  The three of them looked at me. It occurred to me that it was time to shower and change clothes, and I excused myself rather hastily. As I fled into the bedroom, giggles and snorts were audible from the balcony.

  Peter returned as the sun was setting behind the mountains across the Nile. He went into the bathroom and emerged after half an hour, damp but clean and dressed decorously. I glanced up from my book (a civilized British mystery) as he came out to the balcony. “How was your meeting? I noticed that you didn’t mention it until we ran into that lout in the lobby.”

  “Sorry about all that, but I knew you were capable of fending him off. Lovely evening, isn’t it? Did you ever imagine you’d be gazing at the Nile as the moon rose?”

  I allowed him to nuzzle my neck for a moment, and even went so far as to reciprocate in a seemly fashion. After a few minutes, he sat down across from me and sighed. “Bad news, I’m afraid. I have to fly to Cairo in the morning to meet with”—he hesitated—“some people. You and the girls can come along if you like, but I’ll be tied up most of the time. I’ll be back Saturday in time for us to have dinner on the dahabiyya.”

  There was no point in protesting. I reminded myself that I’d been warned this would happen—not that said warnings made it more palatable. I told him what Alexander had said about Oskar’s death, and when he failed to offer speculation, I continued with Salima’s whirlwind appearance. “I guess Caron and Inez will be safe with her,” I added.

  “Bakr can tag along if it’ll make you feel better.”

  I shook my head. “The idea appeals, but the girls would be furious. It’s not as if they’ve been sheltered all these years. Their track record is impressive. They’ve talked themselves out of more nasty situations than any politician ever has.”

  “Very few politicians have been taken into custody by an animal control officer,” Peter murmured, grinning, “or stolen frozen frogs from the high school biology lab. Let’s just hope they don’t decide to steal the Sphinx.”

  On that note, we gathered up the would-be felons and went to dinner.

  Lord Bledrock swept down on us at breakfast, his mustache trembling with anticipation. “Dear Claire, how delightful to find you here. I understand Rosen has gone to Cairo for a few days. I hope you’ll allow us to entertain you and the young ladies in his absence.”

  Caron and Inez busied themselves with their waffles. I put down my coffee cup and said, “How did you happen to hear about Peter?”

  “You must realize this is a tight little community. Ahmed noticed Rosen’s departure and mentioned it to Alexander, who had been out taking an early-morning stroll with Miss Portia and Miss Cordelia. One of them told Miriam, who reported it to Mrs. McHaver, who called me to inquire if there was any hint of marital discord.”

  I started to protest, but he ignored me.

  “However, Alexander suspected it was due to Rosen’s meeting yesterday with Chief Inspector el-Habachi, who asserted that the trip was a business matter involving the Minister of Economic Development. You see, I can be quite the Hercule Poirot myself, when need be.”

  “Shall I assume you are also aware that I sneezed twice this morning while taking a shower?” I said.

  He stepped back. “Now you mustn’t think we were gossiping about you, Claire. It’s our obligation to look after any young woman of our acquaintance who has been abandoned in such a fashion, if only for a few days. Several of us are attending a lecture this morning at the Mummification Museum on the floral motifs on the coffins of the twenty-first dynasty. Some Swedish chap who’s written a book. I’ve met him, and his accent is impenetrable, but he has slides. I do hope you will join us.”

  I ignored the intakes of breath across the table. “Thank you for the invitation, Lord Bledrock, but we have other plans for the day.” I looked at my watch. “Our driver will be picking us up soon, so we must go. I hope you enjoy the lecture.”

  Caron, Inez, and I hurried up the stairwell to the suite. Once I’d collapsed in a chair and caught my breath, I said, “Think of something.”

  “We could go to Luxor Temple,” Inez suggested timidly. “It’s next to the hotel.”

  “If we leave on foot, Ahmed will rat us out,” said Caron. “But if we stay here, then the maid will say something and we’ll end up on the local news.”

  “True.” I leaned back, feeling empathy for a fox in a burrow on the day of the hunt. The hounds were baying in their kennel down the hall, eager to catch a whiff of us should we venture forth. “What a bunch of busybodies. Lord Bledrock is probably speculating about our outing, as well as my sneezes. I wouldn’t be all that surprised if he were telling Ahmed to locate an allergist who makes house calls.”

  “What if,” Inez said, “we have Bakr pick us up and drive around for a while, then drop us off at the Luxor Temple? They’ll all be at the museum by then.”

  “Lame, but workable,” Caron said, shrugging disdainfully since it was not her idea and was therefore second-rate at best. “Just promise me that we don’t have to gaze soul-fully at every hieroglyph while Japanese tourists take our pictures.”

  I called Bakr, and after fifteen minutes we crept down the stairs and out through the lobby of the New Winter Palace to the van waiting at the curb. Bakr took us to an area with narrow streets, crowded shops, and tourists burdened with dauntingly large backpacks and maps in hand. We bought a few native crafts to take home, then had tea and biscuits. An hour later, we decided it was safe to proceed to Luxor Temple.

  Bakr dropped us off at the ticket office on the corniche, which was well away from the entrances to the Old and New Winter Palaces. Once inside, we headed down a stone walkway toward the imposing facade of the temple.

  “That’s the avenue of sphinxes,” Inez said as she gestured to a long path flanked with smaller versions of the more famous Great Sphinx at Giza. “It used to go all the way to Karnak , which is three kilometers to the north. The temple is an expansion by Amenhotep III during the New Kingdom on the site of a sanctuary built by Hatshepsut. Over there by the entrance are the colossi of Ramses II and a pink granite obelisk. There were two obelisks, but the second is in the Place de la Concorde in Paris. The wall is twenty-four meters tall and—”

  “Howdy!” boomed Sittermann, stepping out from behind one of the colossi. “Fancy meeting you here!”

  I was almost glad to see him. “Good morning.”

  “Ain’t this a dandy coincidence,” he continued, oblivious to the chill in my voice. “I got some folks I want you to meet. Americans, just like us. I met ’em out at the Kharga Oasis.”

  Nudging and jostling, he hustled us inside the temple as if we were wayward calves. I tried to pause long enough to gape at the towering pillars and lucid blue sky above them, but Sittermann was relentless. We went throug
h several rooms, edging our way past tour groups, until we were allowed to stop. A couple stood near a scaffold, talking to a mason above them.

  “I was wondering where you two ran off,” said Sittermann. “I want you to meet a real good friend of mine, Claire Malloy. She’s over here with her husband, who’s in development, same as me. Mrs. Malloy, this is Samuel. I don’t rightly recollect his last name.”

  The young man turned around. His scruffy beard, stained T-shirt, cutoff jeans, and sandals were appropriate collegiate wear. A frayed canvas bag hung on a strap on his shoulder and an elaborate camera from another strap. His dark hair hung in his eyes in the style of punk celebrities. His shirtsleeve partly obscured an amateurish tattoo. “Hey,” he said, squinting at me. “Samuel Berry, from Richmond. Pleased to meet you, ma’am.”

  His companion looked over her shoulder at me, then more closely at Caron and Inez. “Me, too,” she said in a squeaky voice. “I’m Buffy Franz, from Marin County, across the bay from San Francisco.” There was nothing scruffy about her appearance. Her ash blond hair was shoulder length and artfully flipped, her makeup adequate for a presidential reception, and her blouse and skirt discreetly adorned with designer labels. If she’d come from an oasis, she’d found a manicurist and a pedicurist in a mud hut next to a hair salon.

  “How do you do?” I said. I was aware of Caron and Inez breathing on my neck, but neither spoke.

  “Isn’t this just fantastic?” demanded Buffy. “All these really big columns and statues and stuff? I just shudder when I think how old it is!”

  “Me, too,” Caron said softly. “Shudder, that is.”

  I stepped on her toe, but only hard enough to illicit a small gasp. “Yes, it is fascinating. Please don’t let us interrupt you. There’s so much more to see, I’ve been told. The… ah, hypostyle hall and so forth.”

  Sittermann deftly blocked my path. “Samuel and Buffy are staying at the Old Winter Palace. What say we have a look around here, then go back to the bar and cool off?”

  “I’d rather eat spiders,” Caron muttered in my ear.

  Samuel frowned for a moment, then said, “Sure thing, Sittermann. The columned hall is this way, Mrs. Malloy. There are some great frescoes from the Roman period.”

  Buffy fell into step next to me. “This is my first time in Egypt. I’m not supposed to be here. My parents think I’m in Rome doing the junior year abroad thing, but it was really boring after the first few weeks. We had to go to classes and listen to these funny little Italian professors drone on and on about history and architecture. It was all I could do to sneak away for a few hours to shop. It was maddening. There I was, sitting on the Spanish Steps listening to a lecture about some dumb Bernini fountain, when Armani, Gucci, Versace, Valentino, Hermès, and Prada were all within a block. I thought I was going to throw up!”

  “Brutal,” Inez said ever so innocently.

  Buffy sighed. “It was awful. So one night some of us went to a bar, and Sammy came in with a couple of guys he’d met at a youth hostel, and one thing led to another. Isn’t it amazing? Even though the shopping here is positively dismal, I’ve always wanted to see the pyramids. They were built by aliens, you know. There’s like no way those stones could have been piled up like that without the help of extraterrestrial technology. When we go back to Cairo, I’m going to bribe somebody to let me spend the night in the room at the bottom of the pyramid. Supposedly, if you have a crystal, it gets all kind of mystical power and you can use it to cure cancer and promote worldwide peace.”

  “Those are admirable goals,” I said.

  Samuel stopped until we caught up. “Buffy, lay off the crap about the aliens and crystals, okay? The pyramids were built by Egyptian laborers, who had nothing better to do during the season when the Nile flooded their fields. They had a system of ramps to move the stone blocks up the pyramid. Construction engineers figured it out a long time ago.”

  “I thought they were slaves,” Buffy said, pouting.

  “Don’t rely on Hollywood for historical accuracy.”

  Sittermann, who’d been uncharacteristically quiet, swung around, nearly toppling an unwary tourist with a camcorder. “What are you, Samuel—a historian or an engineer?”

  “An architect. I finished my degree in May, and I’m taking a year off before I settle down at a firm. I’m a big fan of the Graeco-Roman period. I’d been in Rome for a couple of months when I met Buffy. When I told her I was heading here, she begged to come along. She makes a cozy tent mate.”

  Buffy rolled her eyes. “As if I’d be caught dead in a tent. That hotel at the oasis was the nastiest place I’ve ever slept in. The sheets felt like old towels and the bathrooms were your worst nightmare.”

  “What were you doing out there?” I asked Samuel.

  “There’s a good museum of antiquities, a couple of temples, a necropolis, and the Monastery of Al-Kashef, which overlooks what was once the most significant crossroad in the Western Desert.”

  “Caravans and camels?” Inez asked, perking up. Behind her glasses, her eyes were bright.

  Samuel grimaced. “It was the major route for the slave trade from Darfur to Asyut in the Nile Valley. Untold numbers of poor souls died of starvation and thirst along the route. The Brits finally put a stop to it, but not until the end of the nineteenth century. These days it’s all Humvees and ATVs. Not very romantic.”

  “Why were you there?” I asked Sittermann. “It’s a little desolate for a theme park. I guess you could have a giant sandbox and shovels.”

  “Now, now, Mrs. Malloy. I’m as curious as the next fellow. I have to admit I was hoping to see sheiks and exotic dancing girls instead of backpackers and ruins. Little Buffy here was the prettiest thing out there.”

  We remained silent as we resumed walking, although Buffy was wiggling her bottom and tossing coy glances at Samuel as if she were in contention for “Miss Sand Dune.” Samuel gave us a detailed talk on the faintly visible fragments of Roman frescoes. Caron and Inez retreated to a pillar and perched on the base, whispering and sending dark looks at me. Buffy did her limited best to appear interested, then gave up and wandered into a shady corner to file her fingernails.

  Samuel at last ran out of minutiae. Sittermann slapped him on the back, then took my arm in a proprietary way that set my teeth on edge. “I do believe we’ve earned that drink, Mrs. Malloy, and I’m not going allow you to beg off. Your husband’s in Cairo. You’re not one of those meek wives who are scared to be seen in public with a man other than their husband, are you? I’d be mighty disappointed in you. It ain’t like you have to go to your room and iron his shirts.”

  “I drink with whomever I choose,” I said as I removed his hand. “Thank you for the invitation. The girls and I have a car waiting for us, and an engagement for a late lunch. Perhaps we’ll join you another time.”

  “Good thing you’ve got sweet young chaperones to protect your reputation.”

  I clamped down on my lip for a moment. “Samuel, Buffy, I enjoyed meeting you. I hope you have a lovely time in Luxor.”

  I spun around and walked toward the front of the temple, confident that Caron and Inez were following me. We kept a brisk pace until we arrived outside the ticket office. I allowed myself to exhale. “That contemptible man!”

  “We have an engagement for a late lunch?” Caron blotted her face with a tissue, then dug a lipstick out of her purse and pinkened her lips. “Thanks for mentioning it.”

  “I think she made it up,” Inez volunteered.

  Caron snorted. “The end justifies the means? How come you always jump down my throat when I tell one tiny fib?”

  For a moment, I felt like the Savage Sheik facing a pair of whiny English ladies. They were saved only by the arrival of our car. Bakr leaped out and opened the back door for me.

  “Did you enjoy your outing?” he asked. “Luxor Temple is very, very magnificent, is it not?”

  I glared at him. “Just drive, okay?”

  CHAPTER 5

 
We opted to have lunch at the Hilton, where we were safe from the unwanted attentions of Sittermann and the British contingent. Once we’d savored final bites of ice cream, we strolled around the pool and then found Bakr near the car, chatting with other drivers. “I’d like to have another look at the bookstore,” I said to Caron and Inez. “What would you like to do?”

  “Go back to Luxor Temple,” Inez admitted. “I didn’t have a chance to see Amenhotep III’s birth room scenes and the barque shrine rebuilt by Alexander the Great. He’s depicted as a pharaoh in the reliefs, although I don’t see how he could—”

  “I’d rather shop,” Caron said. “I want to get souvenirs for Emily and Ashley. I can go with you, Mother.”

  Her tone, interjected with martyred sighs, suggested that I was begging for company on the way to the guillotine, but I merely nodded. Since we’d all be within easy walking of the Winter Palace, Bakr dropped Inez at the ticket office and then took Caron and me down to the quirky little mall. I told him that I would let him know about our plans for the next day as soon as we had any, then sent him home or to the police department or wherever he went when not hauling us around. From his expression, I inferred that he’d be much happier sitting in the car with his paperback and a can of soda.

  Caron announced that she’d find me in an hour or so. She had already disappeared into a swarm of tourists as I went into the bookstore. Sneezing occasionally, I poked through books with photographs of Egypt during its days under British rule. The text was dry and vaguely disapproving of the local culture. I moved on to botanical books, most of them written in German. Even when indecipherable, the written word has a certain glory. The invention of the wheel led to mobility (and the tainted gene pool that included SUVs), but the alphabet gave us the ability to communicate with humanity and our posterity. If one read German, anyway.

  I bought a battered novel by an obscure English novelist who’d been disregarded due to her flagrant inclusion of plot, then realized almost two hours had elapsed since I’d parted ways with my daughter. I went out to the walkway and peered in the direction she’d taken. It was less crowded, as many of the tourists had faded away to their hotels for afternoon naps. The idea of a cold drink on the hotel terrace appealed, but I was reluctant to abandon Caron. Pop music blared from some of the shops as I walked by them, peering inside for a flash of red hair. Shopkeepers came to their doorways and held out linens for my inspection. A shoeshine boy approached with a glint in his eyes. “La, la, shukran,” I said in what was quite likely to be an excruciatingly bad accent. He looked down at my sandals, shrugged, and went after other prey.