Gold Trap

by Lilly Maytree

  “Would you like to move up to 4-D?” Not even a trace of French accent.

  “Why…yes, of course…”

  “That’s first class!” Vidalia accused.

  A courtesy upgrade! Meg didn’t have to be asked twice and began gathering her things. Whatever the reason, she was grateful for it, and more than a little relieved that she wouldn’t have to spend the next few hours listening to Vidalia. Then when she discovered her new seat companion to be none other than the white-haired professor, she breathed a sigh of relief.

  At least, this was someone she could relate to.

  Except that he was tipping several white pills into a trembling palm at the moment, and she felt obliged to wait while he swallowed them down without water. Then he got unsteadily to his feet so she could slip into the window seat, and a waft of pleasant-smelling aftershave enveloped her. Only it was mingled with alcohol.

  “Don’t know why they have to board us so early when there’s such a beastly long wait at the runway,” he muttered. “Hotter than blazes in here.” He sat down, twisted around, and looked past the open first class curtain down the long narrow aisle where the coach passengers were still settling in. “Waitress!” he called over the crowd.

  The clinking of trays and glasses stopped in the forward galley, the beautiful stewardess poked her head out with a startled expression, and then quickly made her way toward him. The old gentleman hollered the demeaning word out into the main cabin, again, only to be interrupted by a polite, but firm hand placed on his shoulder from behind.

  He jumped as if she had pinched him. “Oh, there you are!”

  “Is there something wrong, Mr. Anderson?”

  He fumbled in an inside breast pocket of his white suit-jacket, shuffled his passport and airline ticket to lay hold of a wallet that seemed practically bursting with money, and came up with an American twenty dollar bill. “Bring me a double gin and tonic, will you dear?”

  “Certainly. But you don’t need this in first class.” She returned the money. “Would you like something, too, Miss Jennings?”

  “Not just yet, thanks,” Meg replied. Though she was delighted to have been unexpectedly upgraded to first class, the thought of gulping down six ounces of ginger ale before take-off was not appealing.

  “Nonsense,” said her new seat companion. “A little light wine, at least. Going to be a ghastly long wait before we even get off the ground.”

  “Well,” Meg turned questioning eyes on the stewardess.

  “He’s right. Busy today on account of all the delays.”

  “Well, I suppose.” If there was time, it would be nice to enjoy a cup of tea. And if they should have green… “Do you—”

  “Absolutely not, Professor!” The stewardess intercepted the man just as he retrieved a pipe from his side pocket. “This is a non-smoking flight.”

  “All the way to St. Louis?”

  “All the way to St. Louis.”

  “No law against…” He clamped the stem between his teeth and spoke around it with a practiced ease. “Smoking without lighting it, is there?”

  She looked at him warily, glanced at her watch, and then relented before turning to get back to her duties. “I suppose not. We’ll give it a try.”

  She returned a few moments later with the double gin and a glass of white wine that she set down on the trays in front of them, and then hustled off, again. Meg took one look at the miniature stemmed glass with the offending liquid and gasped. “Oh, but this isn’t what…”

  “Would you rather have red?” The professor reached up to jab at the call button. “I’ll get her right back here, and…”

  “No.” Meg stopped his hand more out of reflex than thought. “Thank you very much, Professor, but I think we’ve taken up quite enough of her time, already. It really doesn’t matter.”

  “When you’re on vacation, everything matters. You are on vacation, I take it. What with all that stuff you’re carrying around. Bremen Tours?”

  “The carry-on came with the deal.”

  He took two long swallows of his drink and agreed. “Good advertising for them and a nice souvenir for you. How long have you been into it?”

  “Only since this morning. Even though it started officially yesterday with a brief tour of Paris and an orientation dinner at…”

  “Voodoo, I mean.”

  “Voodoo…why, I’m not into that at all.”

  “But the bag says, Voodoo Relics of the Dark Continent.”

  Meg glanced toward the continuing tumult in coach for a moment, where even though a great many other bags being stuffed into overhead bins sported the same slogan, the very phrase was beginning to weigh heavy as a curse on her. “It was a budget tour,” she explained. Then she lowered her voice in a confidential whisper, “To tell you the truth, I have other plans.”

  “Well, now”— his blue eyes twinkled with pleasure at the shared secret— “I can see the plot thickens! Not some spy on a clandestine mission, are you?”

  “Absolutely not, I’m a schoolteacher.”

  “Ah, a fellow educator. But not a voodoo enthusiast and not a spy. Let’s see. Why else would you be carting around such expensive equipment? I suppose you’d like to meet someone in one of those exotic tourist traps… man of your dreams, and all that.”

  “Hardly. No, I have long since resigned myself to the fact that I’m too strong-willed and unorthodox to be compatible with anybody in the dream category. A price one seems to have to pay for independence, these days.”

  “There have always been independent women, my dear. Their mistake was in giving up the femininity they used to hide it behind. There are very few men around who have any aversions to being charmed, you know. But the way you’re dressed, I’m sure you’re already aware of that.” He finished off his drink and set the empty glass down on the tray with a decisive thump.

  “Professor Anderson, I do not have this outfit on to charm men. If you must know, it’s sort of an experiment I’m working on. Look here”—she reached for the bundle of brochures stuffed into the outside pocket of her bag—”the fact is, I am interested in one of those tourist places. Have you ever heard of Mole National Park?”

  “The one where they come knocking on your door at four or five in the morning to announce what animals are drinking at the local waterhole you might want to see?”

  “They all do that. But this one”—she pulled her reading glasses down from the top of her head to peer through them long enough to choose the appropriate flyer, and then push the glasses back up, again— “actually allows you to walk right out there. On foot. With a guide, of course. Should be perfect for what I have in mind.”

  “Ah, so that’s it!” He guessed, again. “You’re planning to get rid of the husband.”

  “Oh, honestly!” She gathered the brochures with a disappointed sigh and put them back in the pocket. Did everyone who spent exorbitant amounts of money on a trip to Africa have to be so odd?

  “It’s cheaper than a divorce.”

  She looked over at him with a discerning scrutiny. “The term incompatible, Professor, has other meanings besides grounds for divorce. Do you always ask such personal questions when you’ve only known someone for five minutes?”

  “Such questions are more than acceptable on vacations. I don’t mind admitting I’m only interested in redheaded characters with arresting green eyes, dressed like something out of the Victorian era. Carrying around – not one, but two – expensive cameras. Not to mention that copy of Moviemaking for Beginners.” He indicated the telltale yellow and black binding of one of the books protruding from the bag. Then (without even asking) he traded his empty gin and tonic glass for her untouched white wine and took a tentative swallow. “Not bad. But then, this is France.”

  “How would you know what kind of cameras I have in my bag?”

  He ignored the question and went on with his deductions. “A mere schoolteacher on vacation would have been more than content with her old digital model, or
even a couple of those throw away types you can buy at any airport. No, Miss Jennings, I’d say you are clearly up to something.”

  The engines came to life beneath them, but they didn’t go anywhere, as there was still a line of other planes waiting to take off ahead of them. But at least the stuffiness of the cabin began to clear. In a moment, the stewardess returned to meander between the rows in first class offering refills.

  “I’d like tea this time, if you don’t mind,” Meg informed the professor as he finished off her wine. “In case she leaves before I get a chance to order for myself.”

  “Miss…” He put a hand on the young woman’s elbow as she was still serving passengers in the row ahead of them. “Another gin and tonic for the lady, and I’ll switch to tea.”

  Since the two of them were sitting in the last seats before coach, the stewardess simply gave him a nod and turned back to the galley without as much as a glance in Meg’s direction. Which seemed rather an odd thing (in Meg’s estimation) since she was clearly not traveling with the man.

  “Now, what on earth did you do that for?” Meg leveled one of her no-nonsense-in-the-classroom expressions on him. “It just so happens I do not drink. And unless you are trying to cover up the fact that it’s barely four o’clock in the afternoon and you’ve already passed your limits…”

  “My dear, there are no limits when one is on vacation. If you must know, I’m gearing up for take-off. They’re revving up the engines already, and I’ve still got the jitters. Hardly any alcohol in these drinks, anyway.”

  So, he was afraid of flying. Meg’s irritation with him melted a little. “Well, has anyone ever told you it’s safer to fly than drive?”

  “Yes, but has anyone ever told you about the abominable maintenance regulations they have on these African airlines? There aren’t any! Statistics are so stacked against us, that there’s more chance of a plane crash…”

  “This plane is not going to crash,” she declared.

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Because I’m on it. And I have a destiny.”

  Professor Anderson shifted the stem of his pipe from one side of his mouth to the other beneath the neatly trimmed mustache, and allowed himself a few moments to savor the response. “I believe you,” he finally pronounced. “It rings true, yes, indeed. But I don’t see how you can be so sure of yourself.”

  “Well, for one thing, I have a sort of formula I go by that helps me decide if it’s safe to go ahead with something, or not.”

  He glanced back into coach for a moment and then lowered his voice. “I could use that kind of formula,” he admitted. “As I’m walking on some pretty thin ground, myself, right now.”

  The stewardess returned with their drinks, and Meg switched the gin and tonic that had been set down in front of her with the tea, that had been placed in front of him. Black tea.

  “Footsteps, Professor. I don’t venture out anywhere without a…sort of…trail to follow. Sometimes it’s only the signs of someone I trust that has gone on ahead of me. But other times, it’s more like unusual little coincidences that pepper the trail with a glow all their own. And if I can’t find any of those signs…divine footsteps, I call them”—she stopped dunking her tea bag up and down in the cup for a moment and looked him in the eye, again—”I don’t go.”

  “Hmmm. Just whose footsteps would you be following now?”

  “Mary Kingsley.”

  “Mary Kingsley…” A look of startled surprise came over his face before it was replaced by something that resembled suspicion. “Why her, of all people? She died a hundred years ago. And she certainly never traveled anywhere on a plane. I don’t see the point.”

  “The point, Professor, is that neither time nor death is a part of the equation. The secret is in jumping into her shoes, so to speak, and literally following in her footsteps in order to find out her secrets.”

  His blue gaze involuntarily dropped down for a closer look at her boots, at which point he gasped and then looked searchingly over her face, again, as if she really might be the ghost he had referred to back in the gate area. Meg made a quick mental note of jotting that down in her list of reactions to dressing like someone out of the past, and then went on with her explanation.

  “Of course, I didn’t mean Mary Kingsley, personally. She has nothing to do with the actual formula, itself. But then that’s not exactly true, either. Because she happens to be the reason I’m even going to Africa in the first place. She’s got something to do with my destiny, I’m sure of it. You see, she’s the subject of a documentary I want to film. Tentatively titled, In the Footsteps of Mary Kingsley.”

  This time, the professor startled as if someone had thumped him from behind, snatched the pipe out of his mouth, and threw a look over his shoulder as if someone from coach might be trying to listen in. Obviously, nobody was, so he absently stuck the pipe back into his pocket, and began to chuckle with a nervous sort of relief. “You…you had me going there for a minute…thought I was seeing things! Did Tom put you up to this?”

  “I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about.”

  “That rascal! I must say, you’ve done a good job of it, my dear. How much is he paying you?”

  “Not a dime. I don’t know anyone named Tom.”

  “Well, I suppose he wouldn’t have used his real name. Dark hair and mustache…speaks French like one of the locals. Looks something like me, on account of he’s my son. Always up to something!”

  “That description could fit any number of people,” she replied, although a distinct impression of the man standing in the rain came to her mind. In fact, the professor did seem to bear some resemblance to him if she really…oh, but that was absurd. Absolutely uncanny. Why, a coincidence like that would be nothing short of a…”Professor Anderson, oh, my goodness!” An excitement suddenly came over Meg that she was barely able to contain. “Do you, by any chance, believe in divine appointments?”

  Gold Trap

  4

  A Wrong Turn

  “However, that is the path you have got to go by if you are not wise enough to stop at home.”

  Mary Kingsley

  “Believe in divine appointments? Not particularly.” he admitted. “But if you told me you were an angel and then disappeared out of that seat, I would probably have to consider it.”

  “There are other kinds of divine appointments.” Meg insisted. “I’m talking about the kind where two people are miraculously brought together for a divine purpose.”

  “Well, then, that settles it. Because I’m about as far as anyone could get from anything divine. In fact, the way I see it, the only reason anyone of that nature should take the slightest interest in me, would be out of pity during a time of trouble.”

  “Are you in trouble, Professor Anderson?”

  “I’m in trouble, or going crazy,” he replied. “Either one of which will probably spell disaster.”

  “Disaster?” Meg was about to ask if he was serious, but it was at that moment the stewardess came by to gather things in preparation for take-off. He breathed a muffled “Shh…” and momentarily froze like a statue. Which left Meg to hand over her barely touched tea (along with his third empty glass) and dutifully fasten both of their trays into locked and upright positions.

  By the time the plane rolled forward to the nearby head of the runway, revved up its motors, and spun its tail around smartly to open throttle and hold back all at the same time, he had come to life, again. With a quick— “Hold on, here we go.”—the professor gripped the armrests, leaned his head back and closed his eyes.

  The plane shot smoothly forward and began to gather speed. Meg left off trying to figure out the professor for a moment, and turned her gaze out the window to watch the ground change to a blur and see all the buildings race by. It was her favorite part of flying, and she reveled in the sensation of speed it gave her.

  Only a fleeting sensation, though, because all feeling of movement was lost after the slight
dip and elevator feel of having arrived up on the first “step” of the highway in the sky. And once the city below disappeared beneath mile after mile of white billowy clouds, there would be less sense of movement than riding in a car. When the brief experience was over, Meg gave a contented sigh and turned back to the professor, who had his eyes open now and was watching her with a look of… what was that look?

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “Quite. Now that part is over. Taking off is the most dangerous under these circumstances. Once up, you can land a bucket of bolts even if only one engine has half a cough left in it. But I have something of a confession to make, Miss Jennings.”

  “Call me Meg.”

  “Meg. There’s a reason I wanted to talk to…”

  She waited for a moment, but he seemed to have lost the thought. Instead, he cast a hopeful gaze toward the galley. The stewardess was belted into the forward jump-seat and they were still climbing. So, instead, he began to fumble through his pockets, in search of the pill bottle, again. He gave over his attentions to opening it, tipped several pills out into his hand, then gave her a wink before popping two of them into his mouth. Or, was it three?

  Meg watched him replace the bottle in his pocket and then feel for it, again, as if to make sure it was still there. “Are you always this nervous on airplanes?” she ventured. “Maybe you should try counseling.”

  “My dear, I have enough trouble working out the problems I already know I have, without some young idiot convincing me I’ve got more.”

  “I’ll bet you don’t take yearly physicals, either,” she guessed.

  “Why would anyone waste perfectly good money just to have someone tell them all their body parts are in working order? It’s a conspiracy of idiots.”

  “Hmmm. And what’s your family got to say about all this?”

  “My family!” It was more of an expression of exasperation than affection. “Young lady, I get along perfectly with my family. In fact, it just so happens I’m on my way to meet up with that son of mine you claim you don’t know. Who hasn’t seen fit to come home in nearly a year. Even missed Christmas. Now, whether or not that rascal appreciates what I have to go through even to find him, is another thing.”