Mummy Dearest

by Joan Hess

  “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.

  CHAPTER 10

  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.”

  I pushed aside my coffee. “If Buffy’s still alive, she’s liable to be in a filthy little mud house, sleeping on a dirt floor and eating rancid meat. She may have been beaten and raped.”

  “Not her,” Caron said, jabbing at a turkey sausage.

  I waved off the waiter, who had an eye on my coffee cup. “Your naïveté is absurd, as well as petty and selfish, and I don’t want any more of it. If you can’t find any sympathy, then keep your mouth closed.”

  “Oh, right,” she said. “Poor Buffy. I hope she’s surviving without her curling iron.” Ignoring my hiss, she took a bite of a roll and gazed at the temples. “I got up with Inez this morning to watch the sunrise. It was pretty cool until that rich woman wiggled her way to the railing between us and started asking Inez about Hathor and those people. After that, I might as well have been bird poop.”

  I was beginning to understand Caron’s snit. “Listen, dear, fellow travelers can become very chummy, especially in a foreign country, but once they get home …”

  “Mitzi invited Inez to fly with her to Cairo on her private jet, and then on to Greece for a Mediterranean cruise on her yacht.”

  “And?” I said, trying not to gulp so loudly the waiter felt obliged to thump me on the back.

  “Inez said she didn’t think she could, but her voice trembled. Mitzi must think Inez is some sort of biped encyclopedia just because she can spout off all that stuff about pharaohs and gods. Inez isn’t going to impress anybody with her vast knowledge of ancient Greece. She nearly threw up when she had to be in a skit based on Lysistrata in Mrs. McLair’s class, and she thinks the story about Leda and the swan is out of a bird-watchers’ guidebook.”

  “You don’t need to worry about Mitzi’s invitation. Peter’s arranged for our luggage to be taken ashore while we’re at the temple, and we’ll head from there to the airport. A private jet sounds nice, but we’ll be on a commercial airline to Luxor. I’m not sure when we’ll go to Cairo. The middle of next week, maybe.”

  Caron made a face. “I sounded pretty juvenile, didn’t I? Is it too late to plead jet lag?”

  “Much too late,” I said sternly. “I’ll allow you this one display of petulance. You’re entitled to be a bit overwhelmed by everything that’s happened in the last month, including the wedding. You don’t have to think of Peter as your stepfather unless you want to. He can just be my husband.”

  “I haven’t decided. I was pissed off yesterday when he acted like he had the right to send me to my cabin, even if I deserved it. Then again, I would have been pissed off at you, too. Maybe it’s okay.” She put down her napkin. “I’d better finish packing. Do you know where Inez is?”

  I did, but I shrugged and watched Caron go down the steps. She and I had never sat down and discussed her feelings about Peter. She’d occasionally resented his presence over the last several years, but she’d resented almost everything at one time or another, including the weather, her class schedule, her lack of designer jeans, and my rare demands that she fill in for me at the Book Depot. I was so accustomed to her outbursts that I seldom listened to the nuances. I hoped I wasn’t like the cheerful residents of Pompeii, oblivious to Vesuvius when it began to spew a little smoke.

  The waiter cracked under the strain and began to sweep crumbs off the table. I returned to the cabin, made sure I hadn’t overlooked any of my or Peter’s things, and went to the lounge. The other passengers began to filter in for a final cup of coffee or tea before boarding the launches. Most of them were sailing back to Aswan, stopping at a few more sites along the way. Although I am not at all claustrophobic, I was eager to escape the tiny cabin and the forced camaraderie. Dennis, who’d given Peter the memory disc from his camera (after requiring a signed note promising it would be returned), and Joel stopped to wish me a pleasant flight to Luxor, then went outside to jockey for seats in the first launch. Eventually, the rest of my party joi
ned me. When I glanced inquiringly at Peter, he shook his head. Caron and Inez were both silent as well. It did not bode well for a jolly outing.

  The launch deposited us on what was nothing more than a ledge. For the first time, I could see the stairs that led all the way to the top of the hillside. I eyed them unhappily. My calves still ached from the interminable hike at Maharakka, Dakka, and Wadi es Sebua. This was worse.

  “I don’t suppose that’s an escalator,” I said to Peter as we sidled along the ledge to a slightly wider patch of dirt and loose rocks.

  Grinning, he took my hand. “One step at a time.”

  The other passengers were progressing like a swarm of ants. I took a deep breath, and we began the ascent. Someone had been thoughtful enough to design places to sit along the way. I availed myself of them as necessary, then glumly watched elderly passengers hurry past us, chatting cheerfully as they went. Eventually we arrived at the top of what proved to be more than eighty torturous steps, then walked down a steep path to the facades of the two temples.

  Several tour groups were already there, taking photos while their guides droned about the intricacies of the design. I found a rock of acceptable height and sat down to pull off my shoes and massage my feet. I declined Peter’s invitation to go inside the temple, trying not to think about the walk back up the hill to the tourist center. When we got to Luxor, I vowed to spend countless hours in a hot, bubbly bath, sipping icy drinks and making peace with my legs and feet.

  Eventually, Peter, Caron, and Inez emerged from the second temple and we trooped up the hill. The girls lagged behind us, whispering to each other. I was relieved that they were more amiable, since I had no enthusiasm for further bickering. When we arrived at the center, Peter and I found a shady café table while Caron and Inez shopped at the rows of stalls that undoubtedly had the exact same things as every other tourist destination in Egypt. There had to be a market for tacky T-shirts and amateurish replicas of tomb relics, but I had no theory about the demographics of the buyers.