Scorpion House

by Maria Hudgins

  “If I’d known, it might have influenced the reference material I brought with me. Are these new papyri written in hieratic or hieroglyphics?”

  “They’re in hieratic,” Lanier told her and, to the other newcomers, he added, “Susan is a whiz with hieratic script. She’s our go-to woman when we need something in hieratics translated.”

  “So how did you and Susan hook up?” Lacy directed this to Roxanne. “Was it just coincidence that you both were here last winter and living in the same house?”

  “Not entirely. We first met at Oxford. Susan came over to do research on the papyri in the Bodleian Library and I was doing post-graduate work there.”

  “We were both interested in the Eighteenth Dynasty.”

  To Lacy, it sounded as if Roxanne and Susan had joined hands in pursuit of a common goal but she suspected it was more like they’d locked horns.

  “Funny, isn’t it?” Joel Friedman spoke up for the first time. “What is it they say? Six degrees of separation? Small world, isn’t it? I’ve got another one for you. Graham and I have worked in the same department for five years, but only last week I learned that his aunt, Joanne Clark, is a girl I dated in high school. She was Joanne Myers at the time.”

  “Aunt Joanne raised me,” Graham said. “But I don’t recall her ever mentioning how Joel Friedman broke her heart.”

  Friedman laughed. “It wasn’t that serious. Joanne, by the way, is now the registrar at Wythe University. I knew that, of course, but I didn’t know she was Graham’s aunt.”

  “I’ve got a better one for you,” Lanier laughed. “Do any of you remember Simon Scott? Taught archaeology in the social studies department at Wythe a few years back?’

  Friedman shook his head.

  Susan said, “I do.”

  “Ran into him a few months ago in Cairo, wandering through the museum. I couldn’t believe it.”

  “What was he doing here?”

  “Just visiting, he said. He had his wife with him.”

  “Small world.”

  Graham stretched his legs out and leaned back, cradling his head in his laced fingers. “Think about this for a minute: What would King Tut have said if he knew folks, thousands of years in the future, would come half-way around the world to sift sand for every little scrap of evidence about him?”

  “And run into people they already know.”

  “Small world,” Joel said.

  * * *

  Lacy climbed the stairs to the roof and gazed eastward across the Nile to the lights of Luxor. Her head ached from jet lag and, although she hadn’t slept for thirty-six hours, she didn’t feel like going to bed. She needed to think. The night was pleasantly cool. Temple lights and stars pierced the darkness all around.

  She thought about the scuttled seaweed project she’d left in the greenhouse and, again, considered the possibility that she might be in the wrong line of work. She now believed the relationship between pigments and light was more complex and elegant than was currently recognized. But two major projects in three years had come to nothing because of—what? Her own clumsiness. Yet she could juggle, she could skate, and she could dance. It wasn’t coordination. It wasn’t clumsiness.

  Was she subconsciously sabotaging herself? Why?

  Ohmigod! I left the seaweed and the water in all six tanks with the pumps turned off! That’s going to smell like shit. By now almost everyone would have left campus for winter break but a few people should still be there. Luke, the graduate assistant who had promised to keep an eye on her tanks, was going home for the holidays and it hadn’t seemed necessary to ask someone else to watch them for that short time. Lacy must, she decided, call the school first thing tomorrow and tell Maintenance to drain the tanks and toss out the seaweed.

  “So. You’ve found the roof already.”

  Lacy jumped at the unexpected voice behind her and jerked her head around. It was Paul Hannah. “It’s nice up here.”

  Instead of answering, Paul pulled a yo-yo from his pocket, flipped it over his upturned hand and yanked it back to its original height. Lacy, startled at first, stepped back and watched as he executed a couple of complicated-looking moves. The yo-yo’s strobe lights flashed as the orb flew out, back and around. After what seemed to her like a reasonable period, she applauded.

  “Little hobby I picked up to help me quit smoking,” he said, flipping the yo-yo down and up again. “Keeps my hands busy.”

  “Is it working?”

  “I haven’t had a cigarette in over ten years.”

  Lacy wondered if he had a family. He had told them at dinner that his research was mostly in Turkey, Lebanon and Israel, but here he was in Egypt and apparently working alone. “How long have you been here?”

  “Four months, so far. I came first to Abydos, did some work there, and then came here. I’m studying material they have at Chicago House across the river, but I’ve also become interested in Kheti’s tomb.”

  “How does that relate to your research?”

  “It doesn’t, really. I have a tendency to get side-tracked.” He glanced at her and grinned. His round glasses reflected the light from the temple, giving him a sort of Orphan Annie look. He wasn’t unattractive, Lacy decided, but he seemed a bit vague. A rolling stone, perhaps, or maybe a dabbler. One of those men who hop from one thing to another but never devote themselves to anything for long. But he did have a PhD because Roxanne had introduced him as Dr. Hannah. That indicated he could at least stick with a research program long enough to get a doctorate.

  “I see Bay leaving the temple,” he said.

  “How can you see that far? From here, I can make out a few people on the flat part, but I couldn’t begin to tell you what they look like.” She squinted across the dunes to Hatshepsut’s floodlit temple.

  “It’s easy. Bay is the one walking backwards.”

  “Why?”

  “Bay always backs out of her mother’s temple, sweeping away her footprints with a sort of rush broom as she goes. She heard the ancient priests used to do that, so she does it, too.”

  “What else does she do? Roxanne told us she goes there every night.”

  “Who knows? Some silly ritual she made up.” Paul stepped closer to the thigh-high retaining wall that surrounded the roof and looked down. They were standing directly over the porch where the orientation session had taken place earlier. “Bay thinks she’s the reincarnation of Hatshepsut’s daughter and that she was murdered in her past life to keep her from succeeding her mother as pharaoh.”

  “Did Hatshepsut even have a daughter?”

  “She did. And we don’t know what happened to her, but Hatshepsut was succeeded by her stepson. She was only supposed to be acting as regent until he came of age, anyway. Hatshepsut’s daughter probably died of the plague or something.”

  Lacy glanced at Paul’s face again and with a small jolt, decided that this man was absolutely alone and adrift on a very large planet.

  * * *

  Before turning in for the night, Lacy stopped by Friedman’s room and borrowed his Neosporin. She rubbed it onto the cat scratches on both arms and the left side of her chin.

  Friedman grabbed her shoulders and turned that side of Lacy’s face to the light. “Be careful with the wash cloth until your chin gets better.”

  Lacy ignored his mother hen clucking. “The new chamber Roxanne told us about. Is that the big thing you told me Lanier was onto?”

  “No, no. I was referring to something bigger than that. Much more important.”

  As Friedman studied Lacy’s chin, she peered down at the old man’s left arm. It looked greasy, and a small blob of greenish, jelly-like material clung to the arm near the bend of his elbow. Lacy frowned. “What’s that?”

  “I’m testing Horace’s magic wrinkle eraser. If it works on my arm, I’ll try it on my face.”

  “If it works, don’t tell Horace. We can steal the formula and sell it to a cosmetic company.” Lacy lowered her eyebrows, conspiratorially.

 
; “What do you mean, we? What makes you think I’d let you in on it?”

  * * *

  Some time after two a.m. Joel Friedman’s door opened, closed, and a pair of bare feet padded down the tile hall.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Lacy woke to the smell of coffee and bacon. Her tiny window opened onto the back side of the house not far from the kitchen. Realizing her last bath was two hectic and sweaty days ago, she picked up a towel, washcloth and basin and headed for the shower out back. She knocked on Friedman’s door as she passed it, but got no answer.

  The whole shower procedure felt awkward. At home, Lacy’s morning routine was robotic. She normally showered, dressed, ate a bowl of corn flakes, and left for work without once thinking about the motions her physical body was going through. She located the plastic water bags Roxanne had mentioned, found the shower stall and the hook on which to hang the bag, but she wet her whole body before she realized she had no soap. She found a small sliver stuck to the wall and made do with it.

  Returning to her room with a basin full of water, she used her bare heel to knock on Friedman’s door again. “Hey, Joel. If you’re in there, wake up.”

  As she dressed, she considered what she would need for the day’s work. She and Shelley had bought wide-brimmed hats at a little place near the airport yesterday. Boots. Thick socks. Khaki shorts. White cotton shirt. How odd, to be wearing shorts in December. Back home everyone would be asleep now, under thick comforters. She wondered what Bart would wear to his veterinary clinic today. She hoped he froze. She hoped every cow and horse in the county decided to give birth this week and he had to work around the clock in unheated barns.

  Lacy heard Graham’s and Shelley’s voices as they passed her door. She slipped out and knocked on Friedman’s door for the third time. I guess he’s already up and gone.

  Lacy opened the door and looked in. Nope, there he was, sound asleep on top of the sheets. He’d tossed his bedcover onto the floor, probably because he felt too warm, and fallen asleep in T-shirt and boxer shorts. Face down with his head in the pillow and his bare feet hanging off the end of the bed.

  “Wake up, Joel! Breakfast.”

  Nothing.

  Lacy flew across the room and shook him. The grey head rocked against the pillow. Joel’s neck was cold. Cooler than the air in the room. She seized his shoulders, turned him over, and started CPR. She cried out, “Need help! Need help in here!”

  Within seconds the room was full of people, all of them as useless as referees at a cat fight. Lanier approached the bed and raised one of Joel’s eyelids with his thumb. The pupil was dull, fixed, and dilated.

  Roxanne ran out to call an ambulance.

  * * *

  Lacy sat on the floor at the foot of Joel’s bed until the ambulance arrived some thirty minutes later. Paramedics strapped the body onto a stretcher and left. Roxanne slipped back into the room and told her, in a voice that sounded to Lacy as if it was echoing through a tunnel, that Selim and the Jeep were outside, ready to drive anyone who wanted to go to the hospital.

  She stood and took one last look at the bed in which her best friend had died. There was a damp ring about the size of a poker chip on the rumpled pillowcase. Was it just drool or had Joel’s body seized up and forced his face into the pillow? Had Joel forgotten to take his digoxin last evening? Lacy had promised Joan she’d make sure and remind him, but she hadn’t once thought about it last night.

  Even if Joel had taken his pill, there was no guarantee he wouldn’t have had a heart attack, anyway. That must have been what it was. A heart attack. He’d had a big one a few years back. She wondered if Joel woke up when his heart sent daggers of fire through his chest or if he’d died in his sleep. She hoped it was the latter.

  She didn’t realize Graham was in the room until she looked up and saw him. He too, was staring at Joel’s empty bed. “The Jeep’s leaving, Lacy. You going with us?”

  “One minute. Give me a minute.”

  Graham backed out the door, his curly head nodding. “Yes. All right.”

  The bed had been pulled away from the wall by the paramedics but the top sheet still bore the impression of Joel’s body. Lacy pulled it up and smoothed it.

  An odd, greasy smear near the margin of the sheet nearest the wall caught her eye. She grabbed it up and sniffed it. It smelled a bit like grass. She touched it with her finger, then touched her finger to her tongue. Sweet. Like honey.

  * * *

  At the hospital in Luxor someone contacted a doctor, an ex-patriot American named Chovan, and sent him to the waiting room. Communication, an Egyptian doctor told them, was hard enough at a time like this without the added struggle of dealing with two languages. The ex-pat doctor, whose practice was mainly treating the ills of tourists, told them he was originally from Houston.

  “It looks like cardiac arrest. Did he already have a heart condition?”

  Lacy told him Joel had been on digoxin since his earlier heart attack. “If he suffocated would there be any signs of it?”

  “Suffocated?”

  “Yes. I found him face down in his pillow.”

  “It’s hard to imagine why he wouldn’t have turned his head if he was suffocating. We do that, you know, even in our sleep.”

  “But what if he couldn’t, for some reason?”

  The doctor tilted his head and looked at Lacy, quizzically.

  “For instance, what if he had a seizure?”

  “Did he have seizures?”

  “Not that I know of, but what if he did?”

  “Then we may or may not find evidence of it in the autopsy. Sometimes we find broken capillaries in the whites of the eyes. Sometimes not.”

  “I see.” Lacy didn’t like the picture forming in her mind.

  * * *

  It fell to Lacy to make the gut-wrenching call to Joel’s wife. By her voice, Lacy couldn’t tell much about how Joan was reacting, but she dropped the phone twice while they were talking.

  “You’ll need to come here, Joan. Do you want me to make the airline arrangements for you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Don’t do anything right now, Joan. I’ll call you back in a minute.” Lacy made a quick call to Peter Swain, the head of Wythe’s biology department. She knew that Peter’s wife and Joan Friedman were friends. Swain’s voice, gravelly from sleep, answered on the third ring. She told them the bad news and said, “Can Virginia drive over to Friedman’s, right now? I’ll keep Joan on the phone until she gets there.”

  Lacy was using the house phone because her cell phone didn’t work in Egypt. Graham told her she needed to buy a SIM card for it. A card specifically for Egypt. She called Joan back, kept her talking until she heard their doorbell ring and heard Virginia Swain’s voice in the background.

  She made arrangements for Joan to fly to New York at noon and to Cairo that evening. It was still barely seven a.m. in Virginia so Joan would have time to pack a bag. She called Peter Swain back and asked if they could drive Joan to Reagan Airport in D.C. Her plane would arrive in Luxor late the following afternoon.

  * * *

  Lacy found Graham Clark sitting on the porch and pulled up a chair for herself. She turned it, like Graham’s, to face the western hills and sat. “Where is everybody?”

  Graham nodded toward a dirt path that seemed to lead westward to a spot near a light pole and what might be excavation equipment. “Those two we met last night. Paul and what’s-her-name, Kathleen. They went over that way to the tomb. I don’t know about everyone else.”

  Graham’s blue eyes squinted into the afternoon sun. He just barely missed being too handsome by having a nose a bit wider and larger than suited his face. His eyes were startling—pure blue fringed by thick, black eyelashes. He wasn’t known for being a flirt, however, even when actively pursued by undergraduate girls who signed up for his biochemistry courses in greater numbers than could be explained by their graduation requirements. Shelley, Lacy knew, was keenly aware of her competitio
n.

  This was the first time she had seen Graham in shorts and she noticed he had lean, muscular legs. At school he was usually in a chemical-stained white lab coat with acid burns on the sleeves. Like several other staff members, he lectured in his lab coat, wore it to lunch and only took it off when he went home. It felt odd, she thought, to see your co-workers in this rather family-like setting, sleeping across the hall from them, waiting for them to finish in the shower, sitting on the porch with them, staring out together at a foreign world of sand and rock.

  “You’ve talked to Mrs. Friedman?” Graham asked.

  “She’ll be here tomorrow night.”

  “I can’t believe it. I can’t fucking believe it.” Graham shook his head. “He was so looking forward to this project! And he dies the first night here!”

  Lacy said nothing.

  “Had he been having heart problems lately?”

  “No.”

  “How did his wife take it?”

  “I couldn’t tell, over the phone.” Lacy ran one hand over her face, squeezed the bridge of her nose. “Why didn’t he call out or something? Wouldn’t the pain have woken him up?”

  “Seems like it would have.”

  “We’d have heard him, wouldn’t we? I mean, these walls are thick, but still, we’d have heard him if he yelled.”

  “I certainly would have. I’m a light sleeper and I thought I’d never get to sleep last night.” Graham turned his red-veined eyes to Lacy’s face. “What can I do to help? I’m no good at this sort of thing but you shouldn’t be doing all the work.”

  “I’m not doing any work. I called his wife because I know her better than the rest of you do.”

  “Joel was crazy about you, you know.”

  “He helped me a lot. When I first came to Wythe, I was clueless about departmental politics. If it hadn’t been for Joel, they’d have given me an office in the broom closet.” Lacy noticed she was wearing flip-flops and wondered when she had put them on. She pulled at the bottom of her shirt, checking to see if it was buttoned right. All memory of getting dressed that morning was gone.