Scorpion House

by Maria Hudgins

  “Would he do that?” Lacy asked.

  “I don’t know. He might. Where’s Dr. Breen?”

  “I’m on my way to Kathleen’s room. I’ll see if Dr. Breen is up.”

  Roxanne, already dressed and on her way out, met Lacy in the hall outside Kathleen’s door. Paul and Kathleen had pushed two tables together in the center of Kathleen’s bedroom and laid out an array of brushes, bowls and magnifying glasses on a third table. Three goose-neck lamps, clamped to the edges of the long table, spilled cones of light across the wood. The two segments of the herbal papyrus lay side by side in the center, awaiting the operation to reunite them. Paul was sitting Indian-style under the table, sorting out extension cords and cables. Kathleen asked Lacy to bring in her video microscope and set it up.

  Lacy told Roxanne she wanted to go to Luxor and find Graham but she couldn’t locate Selim or the Jeep.

  “Oh dear, it’s so awkward. I intended to ask Selim for the keys and tell him his services were no longer required. He must be expecting it. He knows we got the papyrus back so he knows we know he stole it. But I woke up a minute ago and said, ‘Hold on! Do we own the Jeep or does it belong to the SCA, the same as the house does? We’ve been evicted!’ I can’t demand the keys if they’re not mine! I think the Jeep was bought with money from my own grant, and then deeded to the SCA.”

  Mentally prioritizing, Lacy shifted Whiz Bang and their eviction problems to the back burner and zeroed in on getting herself to Luxor. “I could ride the other bike to the ferry dock if the handlebars weren’t missing.”

  “Yes, I remember. That’s why Paul couldn’t go with Graham last night isn’t it?” Roxanne frowned and pushed her tousled hair back. “It’s so strange. I could swear I looked at both bikes yesterday morning and they both had their handlebars intact.”

  “Would you call me a cab?” Lacy asked.

  She and Roxanne were heading for the telephone in the dining room, when they heard the great commotion.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  The police crashed in, Major-General El-Alfi in the lead. “Police!” he yelled. Two uniforms followed him into the east wing while Myerson intercepted Roxanne and Lacy at the dining room door. Through the open door on the opposite side of the antika room, Lacy saw one man barge into her bedroom and immediately step back out. He tried the next door, Susan’s, and stepped inside. El-Alfi banged on Lanier’s door, yelled something but didn’t wait for an answer. He barreled through followed by the other uniformed officer, his AK-47 at the ready. Muffled, angry voices, a shout or two, but Lacy couldn’t make out the words.

  “They have a warrant for Horace Lanier’s arrest,” Myerson told them. “If they can find a couple of items they’re looking for, they’ll serve the warrant for the murder of Susan Donohue.”

  “What? What items? This is outrageous!” Roxanne tried to duck around Myerson but he stepped sideways and caught her arm. “What items?”

  “Some vessels with residue of nicotine, I believe, and a sort of journal or notebook of Dr. Donohue’s.”

  “Who told them? Who said they needed these things?”

  “I don’t think I can tell you that.”

  Lacy broke in. “Aren’t you here to make sure we Americans are treated fairly? If so, I suggest we all move across so you can see what’s happening. Dr. Breen and I won’t make any sudden moves, we promise.”

  From the center of the antika room, Lacy saw the policeman emerge from Susan’s room, sealing what appeared to be Susan’s steno pad into a plastic bag. Sounds of crunching pottery and breaking glass from Lanier’s lab. Voices, then silence.

  Lanier stumbled out, handcuffed, followed by the police chief and the officer with the gun. From Roxanne’s throat came a pained squeak. They prodded him out the front door and toward the squad car. Myerson allowed Lacy and Roxanne to follow as far as the porch.

  Lanier seemed to grow smaller as he approached the police car. His shoulders drooped, his back hunched over as if the handcuffs weighed a ton. El-Alfi guided Lanier’s head through the car door and into the back seat.

  “He’ll never survive. This is the last time I’ll see Horace Lanier,” Roxanne whispered.

  Lacy thought that was an overstatement and told her so.

  “I’m serious. We talked about it once. Horace read an article about conditions in an Egyptian prison—the dirt, the vermin—and I remember he said, ‘Roxanne, I’d have to kill myself. I’d rather die.’ “ She gazed down the driveway at the departing squad car, and nodded toward the front door. Following Lacy inside and down east wing hall, she added, “Think about it, Lacy. Have you ever seen anyone as clean or as tidy as Horace Lanier?”

  It was true. Lanier’s lab with its pristine counters and floors, its neat rows of labeled and alphabetized jars, made the one she shared with Graham and Shelley look like a backwoods crystal meth lab. In spite of Lanier’s frequent use of honey, oils, and animal fats, she’d never seen so much as an ant in Lanier’s lab. How could a man like that deal with rats, cockroaches, overflowing toilets? Twenty men in a single cell? Lacy had read an article or two herself.

  The police left Lanier’s lab in a mess. The glass front of one cabinet was shattered, pottery shards sprayed across the floor, and a couple of ceramic bowls lay upturned on top of the glass as if a bowl from the bottom of the stack had been yanked out carelessly.

  Roxanne headed straight for Horace’s bedroom. “I have to find Horace’s address book. His son, Marcus. I must call him immediately.”

  * * *

  Within the hour, a taxi pulled up and Graham and Shelley Clark got out. Graham had bandages around both forearms and he was moving slowly.

  Lacy called into the house for Bay to bring out tea for the new arrivals.

  Shelley took a seat on the porch, but Graham shook his head saying, “I’m on heavy meds, folks. Have to go lie down. The good news is I’ll live. The bad news is, for the next couple of days, anything that touches either of my arms will shoot a bolt of unbelievable pain to my brain.”

  “What does it look like under those bandages?”

  “Like nothing, actually. You’d expect a red, swollen lump, but it doesn’t look like anything special. Just little red spots. They told me it’s the way scorpion stings usually look. Like nothing much.”

  Shelley took the tea from Bay with trembling hands. Roxanne lifted the cup from her hands and set it on the porch floor. “Don’t rush yourself, dear. Take your time. Tell us.”

  “I’ve never been so scared. I thought I’d be tried and convicted and sent off to prison for the rest of my life.”

  “Were you mistreated?”

  “Just being there was mistreatment. An American woman came in and sat with me while they questioned me. There was a spooky woman who watched me all day and all night. I don’t know when she slept or ate. She wore black—headscarf and all—like a big eggplant sitting outside my cell.”

  “Why did they let you go?”

  “I’m still not sure. They came around early this morning, unlocked my cell, and took me out front. Graham was there waiting for me. He told me they had new evidence now. Evidence that cleared me.”

  “What evidence?” Lacy asked.

  Shelley looked down at her clasped hands. “I don’t know, really. Graham may know, but as soon as they let us go, we started talking about his scorpion stings. We haven’t got around to … He could have died! Do you realize that?”

  * * *

  Myerson showed considerably less enthusiasm for protecting the rights of Horace Lanier than he had for Shelley Clark. After explaining to Lacy and Roxanne that Lanier still had U. S. citizenship because he had not yet fulfilled the ten years residency required to become an Egyptian citizen, nevertheless it was apparently his intention to do so. The U.S. Embassy considered him to be an expatriated American. Myerson did check on Lanier and the conditions under which he was being held (he said) and went back to Cairo, leaving his card with them in case Shelley had further problems.

 
; Graham and Shelley spent much of the next two days in their rooms. Shelley came out for walks and to put Graham’s meals on trays which she then carried in to him. His eyes were sensitive to light and he was finding it difficult to swallow. She had to cut his food into tiny bits. The worst part was the electric pain that shot up his arms whenever the area near any of the stings was touched. He removed the bandages which had protected his arms as soon as he was safely back in his room, telling Shelley that the pressure of the gauze was enough to generate pain with every move. For most of those first two days he lay on his bed, his hands resting lightly on his chest. The doctor had told him the first seventy-two hours were the worst, but there was no guarantee the symptoms wouldn’t return later.

  Paul and Kathleen stayed holed up in Kathleen’s room for those same two days. Lacy took them their meals, checking the progress of the herbal papyrus toward unity each time she went in to see them.

  Roxanne had a long talk with Selim. Having heard nothing further from the SCA about their eviction, Roxanne was in limbo. She didn’t want to say anything to Akhmed or to Selim until she had to. Selim and his family were already suffering the trauma of watching the wrecking ball swing ever closer to their own home as neighbors fled the wreckage of theirs. She was actually more interested in finding out who, if anyone, had offered to pay Selim for the papyrus and how much he knew about its importance. How much had he been offered? The harder Roxanne tried to pin him down on these points, the worse Selim’s English became.

  Marcus Lanier was on his way. He lived in Seattle but twelve hours after Roxanne’s phone call, he called her back from a lay-over in Cincinnati.

  * * *

  That first evening after Lanier’s arrest, Graham and Shelley joined Roxanne and Lacy on the porch. Shelley positioned a chair for her husband and, her hands at his waist, helped him sink carefully onto the seat. She placed both his hands on his thighs.

  Again, Roxanne pumped Shelley for information about the Luxor police and what evidence they had against Horace.

  “I honestly don’t know,” Shelley said. “Seriously. They came to my cell, unlocked it, and told me I could go. I went out front and told Graham to take me home immediately.”

  “What did they tell you?” she asked, turning to Graham.

  “They told me nothing. Mark Myerson, though, he told me they were looking for a ceramic mortar with traces of nicotine in it, and Susan’s steno pad.”

  “They took the steno pad from Susan’s room,” Lacy said, “and a couple of brown paper bags from Lanier’s. I couldn’t tell what was in them.”

  “Myerson says they think Susan threatened to turn Horace in for hiding an important document. That’s what they were calling it. They don’t know about the herbal papyrus.” Graham sat, ramrod straight, in his chair, his hands perfectly still on his thighs.

  “But Susan didn’t know about the papyrus,” Lacy said. “She tried to get me to spy on Horace for her. She knew he was up to something but she didn’t know what. I told her he was infusing blotter paper with papyrus juice.”

  “Lacy!” Roxanne threw one hand to her throat. “You never told me!”

  “Until now, there was no reason to tell anyone. If Susan knew about the papyrus I promise you it wasn’t because of anything I said.” From the back of Lacy’s mind came the uneasy thought that it was something she had said. She knew Susan hadn’t believed her story about the blotter paper.

  Graham said, “Susan did know about the herbal papyrus. I’m sure she did. I saw her coming out of Lanier’s room. He wasn’t here at the time and I know she’d been in there by herself. She saw me watching her and she said, ‘I’ve got him by the short hairs, now. Just you wait!’ “

  “When was this?”

  “It was the afternoon before she was to go out with Dave Chovan. I remember, because she had told me about the date a few minutes earlier.”

  “The afternoon of the night she died.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Lacy was crossing the road at the foot of the drive when Paul caught up with her. “My eyes must be deceiving me,” she said. “Has the prisoner escaped his dungeon?” She hadn’t seen Paul since he and Kathleen started work on repairing the herbal papyrus.

  “Boss lady give me fifteen minute smoke break.” Paul said in a faux Cajun accent. “I no smoke but I take break anyway.”

  Lacy laughed. She intended to scale the cliff on the north side of the temple from which she would be able to see the entire valley past the green strips on both sides of the Nile to the city of Luxor. But if Paul really did have only fifteen minutes, she’d follow his lead instead. She missed their evening talks on the roof.

  “How now, brown cow!”

  They both turned toward the source of that strange greeting, and saw a little boy in a dirty gallabeyah. His huge brown eyes in a round, olive-toned face stared up at them as he walked forward, holding out a yo-yo in his tiny hand. “How now, brown cow,” he repeated.

  “It’s the kid from Selim’s house,” Paul said to Lacy. He took the yo-yo from the little boy’s hand.

  “Let him keep it, Paul.” Somehow Lacy knew this yo-yo was the best toy the child had ever had.

  “Watch this.” Paul looped the string over his middle finger and performed a couple of tricks. He handed it back to the boy. “You try it.”

  The tyke put the loop on his own middle finger even though it was much too loose, palmed it, then looked around. He dashed across the road and scrambled onto a rock on the other side. Flipping the yo-yo over the top of his first finger, he let it drop, let it spin for a second, then popped it back up into his hand.

  “I can’t believe it! He’s shorter than the string, so he climbs up on a rock to make himself taller!” Lacy said.

  “The kid has talent,” Paul said. He took the toy, shortened the string, and showed him it would now work closer to the ground.

  The little boy tried it standing on level ground, looked up and smiled at Paul. The sweetest smile, it tugged at Lacy’s heart. Offering the yo-yo back to Paul, he said, “How now, brown cow.”

  “Time for a new word,” Paul said, closing the child’s hand around the toy and indicating by signs that it was a gift. “Thank you. Say that. Thank you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Good-bye,” Paul said, and waved one hand.

  “Good-bye,” the child said and scurried away.

  * * *

  Had it been a panoramic photo, Whiz Bang itself, with its dun-colored domes and arches, would have been the focal point with the palm tree-lined Nile on the left, the small village of Qurna and Hatshepsut’s temple on the right. Lacy sat alone on a rock half way up the cliff and watched Paul’s retreating form as he trudged back to the house, his fifteen minutes now up. A blue water truck pulled into their parking area and a couple of men pulled a thick black hose from the truck around the back of the house.

  They had heard almost nothing about Horace Lanier since the police took him away. Roxanne had gone across the river and done her best, but she wasn’t a relative or an official of any sort and hadn’t been allowed beyond the front desk. Lacy couldn’t decide whether she believed Horace had killed Susan or not. The man had a motive. If Susan had indeed discovered the herbal papyrus, she probably threatened to turn him in. She certainly would have done so, Lacy thought, since there had been no love lost between them before. But if he did do it, it meant that Lanier had sat idly by as Shelley was arrested, carted off, and held in the Luxor jail for two days, all the while knowing she was innocent. Could he have been that cruel? How odd, that it should seem more evil to let an innocent person be arrested for murder than to commit the actual murder.

  Lacy considered the concept of evil. Good and evil. Did they exist as actual forces, or was it all, as psychologists insisted, a matter of people—inherently neither good nor evil—doing what made sense to them? Was everyone simply doing what seemed best given the rules by which they thought the world operated? If that were the case, why should one bot
her making an effort to do good? If you, like everyone else, were nothing but the sum of your nature plus your nurture, it was a clockwork universe after all. Good and evil either didn’t exist or else were beyond clockwork man’s sphere of influence.

  If Horace Lanier murdered Susan, would he stick at watching an innocent Shelley get arrested? If anyone murdered Susan, and someone did, would he or she care whether Shelley was arrested or not? Suppose it was Shelley after all. No one in the house would have seen an injustice being done, since none was being done. Was it possible Graham had made up evidence against Horace in order to spring Shelley? He had, after all, been in Luxor at the time of her release.

  She spotted a man struggling up the slope toward her, his face obscured by the brim of his hat.

  One thing Lacy now knew for sure. Roxanne was in love with Horace. Until yesterday, she’d maintained a façade of being his good friend, but now she had come unglued. Ever since she returned from the police station, she had been unable to talk about anything else, including the fact that they all really ought to be packing up. They were evicted. The officials could come around at any moment and pop a padlock on their door. Roxanne seemed to have forgotten about that, about firing Selim, about where she would go from here, about everything except Horace.

  The man scrambling up the cliff turned out to be Graham, the climb doubly hard for him because, unlike Lacy, Graham couldn’t catch himself with his hands when his feet slipped on the thin sheets of calcite that littered the slope. Instead, he stopped every few feet, studied the terrain ahead, placing his feet at an angle and testing his balance before proceeding.

  “How are your eyes today?” Lacy asked as Graham picked his way up the last few feet and looked around for a rock to sit on.

  “Much better. I still need sunglasses and a hat, though.”

  “Arms?”

  “Better. I still get those electric shocks now and again, when I accidentally hit something, but I’m over the worst. Definitely.”