Scorpion House

by Maria Hudgins

  Lacy had no idea she had been sitting at her computer for three hours until she heard the front door slam, tried to stand up, and fell sideways. Her left leg had gone to sleep, possibly quite some time ago. Roxanne called out a greeting and disappeared into the dining room, her voice drifting around the corner. “Have you eaten lunch yet?”

  When Lacy walked into the kitchen, Roxanne looked up from the sandwich board on the counter. The smell of mayonnaise and pickles made Lacy’s mouth water but she waited for Roxanne to finish, resting her butt against the rim of the cool sink, punching her leg to wake it up.

  “I’ll probably stay in the tomb until dinner,” Roxanne said, “unless you hear from Horace or Marcus. If either of them calls, come and get me.” She seemed jumpy. Lacy decided she had ample reason but it was a different sort of jumpiness than she’d seen in her before. As if the air around her was electrified. Roxanne stuffed her sandwich into a jacket pocket, grabbed a bottle of water, and slammed the screen door on her way out.

  Lacy made herself a sandwich of cheese and pickles, grabbed a bottle of water and retreated to the roof. She felt it now, too. Something was changing. The sky had become a grayer shade of blue and in the west—clouds. She couldn’t recall seeing a cloud since she’d been in Egypt. Could it be that they were about to get rain? Rain?

  She had wasted half the day on the computer. Half of what could be the last day of work before the authorities came and closed the tomb. She should be wrapping up her investigations and making certain she had enough data for a paper worthy of publication.

  She had stood on this very spot her first evening here and thought about those two scuttled projects back home. The pigment solution that had poured out across the cold room floor in the middle of the night because the automatic test tube changer was off-center. Probably because she had kicked it herself. The phosphate-dissolving granules that had fallen into her seaweed tanks when Otto’s aerial gymnastics knocked the bottle off the shelf. She couldn’t blame the cat. The blame rested squarely on her own shoulders. Only an idiot puts a bottle on a shelf and doesn’t screw the lid on first. A sophomore chemistry student would know better. Basic lab procedure that, by now, was second nature to her.

  In a flash, she knew she had unconsciously sabotaged both projects. She saw it now so clearly she wondered why she hadn’t seen it before. Following swiftly on this revelation, her mother’s words rang out from somewhere behind her ears. The letter from home, from a mother who truly loved her daughter and wanted only happiness for her. Your father and I will be proud of you if you decide to go for a PhD, but please bear in mind one simple but inescapable fact: Few men want a woman with more degrees than they have. Remember this, if marriage and children are your goal. At the time, her mother’s letter made her so mad, Lacy tore it to shreds and vowed to get that degree or die trying. Now, ten years later, she was still unmarried and wondering if her mother had been right. Hadn’t Bart dumped her for a bimbo?

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Lacy grabbed her hand-held spectrometer and a notepad, then wheeled around on the porch and returned to her room for a camera. Until now, saving photos of the walls in the tomb hadn’t seemed important but since they’d all been evicted, every visit might be her last. She started in the long hall, photographing the garden scene along one wall in three-foot segments. A luxury not permitted in the Valley of the Kings, taking pictures was one of the perks enjoyed by researchers on this side of the hill.

  She lay on her back to shoot the ceiling, used her boots to scoot herself along. The opposite wall, its dye vats and dyers frozen in time, reminded her of the linen swatches still in police custody. As she descended into the burial chamber she passed Roxanne, headed out with an armload of equipment. “When you leave, Lacy, would you bring those two jars back to the house?” She indicated a couple of clay vessel leaning against the wall.

  Lacy stood in the center of the chamber for a moment, savoring the colors around her. The brilliant reds and yellows. The electric blue in the brows of the Eye of Horus. She closed her eyes and concentrated on the claylike smell of the room, the stillness. She started photographing the walls in three-foot segments as she had done in the long hall, then stopped. She peered down the long hall, saw Roxanne’s retreating body silhouetted in the daylight at the tomb’s entrance, slipped over to the big, green, dead Osiris and touched the wall.

  * * *

  Lacy spotted a small brown lizard perched on a rock and stepped around it, careful of the bulky clay vessels she was carrying back to the house. A dragonfly vanished from the air a few inches above the rock. The lizard, a passable imitation of a smile on its face, chomped down, swallowed, and drew the tag ends of two iridescent wings into its mouth. This reminded her of wasps. And scorpions. And ether. An idea occurred to her. She set the pots down in the antika room, tramped straight to her own lab, and pulled out the one-liter bottle of ether from beneath the cabinet. The bottle was more than half empty. She had used no more than twenty milliliters when she anesthetized the scorpions in Graham’s dresser. Graham wouldn’t have used more than twenty when he’d done the same to the scorpion from Lacy’s room. So what happened to the other five-hundred-plus milliliters? None of Graham’s work and none of her own had required any ether at all. She was certain of this because, the room lacking a fume hood, if Graham had used any he would have had to jerry-rig something to vent the fumes outside and Lacy would have known about it.

  She looked at the window.

  She crawled up onto the counter, the laminate cool against her bare knees, and examined the window. It was a casement-type, hinged on the left side and opened by a handle at its base. She cranked it open. At the top, it opened onto the mud dauber’s nest. Dead wasps still lay along the sill at the bottom. From her undergraduate experiments with fruit flies, she recalled that a few seconds exposure to ether would anesthetize insects and a few minutes would kill them. What she saw in this window was consistent with what one would expect if a tube venting ether fumes had been led up to this window, perhaps held in place by cranking the window in until the tube was caught between the pane and the frame.

  The procedure for extracting and purifying nicotine, the one Lacy thought sounded the simplest and best from her online reading, called for adding ether to a tar/nicotine/water mixture, then discarding the water. The nicotine would migrate into the ether and the ether could then be driven off by gentle heating in a hot water bath. An open flame, of course, would cause an explosion. Assuming the departing ether was safely vented to the outside, almost-pure nicotine would be all that remained in the flask.

  It must have been Graham. He had opportunity. He could have done the extraction any time he had the lab to himself. He could have easily filched Susan’s deodorant, doctored it up, and returned it to the exact spot where he’d found it. He had the knowledge. He had the guts. But was he that evil? Lacy didn’t think so, but she had to admit she didn’t know what sort of person it would take. Would she recognize a killer if she worked across the hall from one? If she ate lunch with one a couple of times a week? How many years had people worked with and gone to church with the BTK killer, never suspecting he was anything but a solid citizen?

  Could Graham have stood by while his own wife was arrested for the murder he’d committed? Might he have put Shelley’s deodorant in Susan’s room to throw suspicion on her?

  Problem: Where’s the motive?

  In case it ever came up again, Lacy photographed the window, the wasp nest, and the dead wasps from several angles. She was glad she’d bought a large memory card for her camera.

  Part of her burned to run straight to the police with what she now knew. Another part thought it might be wiser to calm down, get her ducks in a row, and run these new ideas past Paul Hannah before she did anything drastic.

  * * *

  Paul and Kathleen returned to the house shortly after dark, Kathleen harboring a “cat that ate the canary” expression. Officials at the SCA, overwhelmed by the reality of the herbal
papyrus, seemed to have forgotten all about the eviction.

  “They want Kathleen to teach lessons to new conservators at the University.” Paul said, with a smile and a nod to the older woman. Lacy, sitting in a rocking chair, her bare feet pulled up into the seat, delighted in the new sparkle in Paul’s eyes.

  “Wait a minute!” Roxanne rose half-way out of her chair. “Why? What sort of lessons?”

  “Lessons on how to repair papyrus.”

  “How do they know about Kathleen repairing papyrus?”

  Paul stepped back, defensively. “I’m afraid I let it slip,” he muttered. “Sorry, Roxanne, I was so relieved I forgot they weren’t supposed to know.”

  Lacy checked Roxanne’s face for signs she might be about to go airborne and attack Paul or Kathleen or both of them. Roxanne glanced from one to the other but said nothing.

  Kathleen pursed her lips several times. “And they would never have known if Paul hadn’t told them. They were amazed. Even after we told them what Horace had done, we had to show them where the cut had been.”

  “This is all Horace needs. Another charge.” Roxanne lowered her forehead into her hand. “Oh, well. What’s one more felony? They can’t hang him but once.”

  “Honestly, Roxanne, I don’t think they’re even going to worry about it.” Paul scanned the porch and asked, “Where are Graham and Shelley?”

  “They’re off on a three-day river jaunt. On a felucca.”

  “Really? How strange.”

  “I thought so, too,” Roxanne said. “What did they tell you, Lacy? Have they been planning this for some time or was it spur-of-the-moment? They hadn’t mentioned it to me. I came back from Luxor and, poof, they were gone.”

  “Fairly spur-of-the-moment I think. Graham said Shelley needed to get away.”

  A taxi pulled up ahead of its own dust cloud and Marcus Lanier stepped out, settling his rolled-brim Stetson on his head. “Can you folks put me up for one more night? I’m headed back to Seattle tomorrow.”

  Roxanne threw one hand to her breast. “Oh, but you mustn’t! Your father needs you here!”

  “The lawyer agreed to take his case. He and Dad talked and they seem to get along.”

  Paul pulled a chair around for Marcus and offered to fetch him a drink. Marcus waved the offer away but took the seat. “I have to leave. We’re having a baby the day after tomorrow. Did Dad tell you?” His listeners nodded and he went on. “This is our first baby and Dad’s first grandchild. It’s a girl and we’ll name her Abigail,” he smiled as he said the name. “My wife’s due date is next week, but I called her an hour ago and she said the doctor’s sending her to the hospital first thing in the morning. They’ll induce labor as soon as I get there.”

  “Is everything okay?” Roxanne asked, letting the last word trail off as if she wasn’t sure how the question, though obvious, should be phrased.

  “I don’t know. We didn’t have time to talk much. Seemed like she was in a hurry to hang up so I told her I’d catch the next plane back. I need to be in Cairo by nine in the morning so I’ll be gone before most of you wake up.”

  Paul said, “How’s Horace?”

  “Not good. I told him the lawyer couldn’t help him if he was dead. He’s on suicide watch—did I tell you that already? I swear it’s like you can see him shrinking. Like he’s trying to fold into himself …” Marcus’s voice cracked. He paused and gazed out toward Hatshepsut’s temple. “I told him, I said, ‘Dad, don’t you want to see your baby granddaughter?’ He just looked at me like …”

  The house phone rang.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  A few hours earlier that same day, under the felucca’s multicolored canopy Graham lay on his sleeping bag which, in turn, lay on a rug on top of another rug. He wasn’t too sure about the cleanliness of either rug but the sleeping bags he and Shelley had purchased in Luxor were new. Their skipper, a Nubian man who called himself Captain Marvel, steered the boat with one bare foot while trimming the sail with his hands and singing an easy, rocking song. Captain Marvel did all the cooking, he built the fire his passengers gathered around at night, entertained them with stories and songs, and pulled the boat over to the bank periodically so his guests could have bathroom breaks. A couple from New York and a college student from Rhode Island rounded out the group.

  Shelley had stretched out, face down, on the white-painted wood deck forward of the mast. She wore a one-piece bathing suit and was pretending to be asleep under the sun, but Graham knew she was faking. She knew everything now, and he knew she was struggling to deal with it by pretending to be asleep so she wouldn’t have to talk to him.

  She knew he hadn’t been stung by any scorpions.

  She knew that he knew she had put her own deodorant in Susan’s room. Although Graham didn’t specifically remember it, he must have told her his idea for a “perfect murder” at some time or other. He must have told her how the area under the arms was thin and more susceptible to penetration by small molecules than any other part of the body’s surface. He must have told her how easy it would be to mix a strong poison such as nicotine with a small amount of any solid deodorant and mold it, like ice cream on a cone, back onto the surface of the tube.

  Shelley was lying up there, deciding what to do next.

  Graham had managed to get her released from police custody by fingering Horace Lanier. He had planted damning evidence in Lanier’s lab, tampered with Susan’s note pad, bought the scorpions from a local man, and stuck them in his own dresser. So what was eating Shelley, now? Hadn’t he fixed things for her? What more could he do?

  He ducked under the boom and crawled up, forward of the mast. He sat beside his wife’s prone body, his spine against the mast. On the left bank ahead, a man and a camel plodded toward the little farming village of Esna. A donkey trotted along the river bank pulling a two-wheeled cart piled high with sugar cane.

  “Get up, Shelley. Put a shirt on before you get burned.”

  “I’m not going to get burned,” she mumbled.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Lie here.”

  “That’s not what I mean and you know it.”

  “I want to go home.”

  “Now?”

  “Now.”

  Graham looked across the dunes to the west. Were those clouds? Probably just smoke from sugar cane fires, he decided. He stood and looked past the boat’s big white sail to the stern. Captain Marvel was on his cell phone and he looked worried.

  * * *

  Roxanne outran Lacy to the phone. “Qurna Expedition House,” she announced, then listened. A moment later she turned to Lacy and mouthed, “It’s Graham.”

  Lacy hung around, helping Bay set the dinner table. She added a plate and chair for Marcus, poured the wine, and stuck a paper napkin beside each plate. From the refrigerator, she pulled out five small bottles of water and distributed them around. Since the Wythe group arrived they had dispensed with the formality of pouring bottled water into glasses. Everyone seemed to like the reassurance of cracking the seal on a new bottle.

  Roxanne ran her fingers through her tangled hair. “Oh dear! Is it coming from the west?” Lacy heard her say. Then, “Yes, Marcus is here, but he’s leaving early tomorrow morning. It seems his wife is having a baby and he has to be there for the big event … well, I can understand that, but his father really needs him here!” Another pause, then, “He’s taking the red-eye to Cairo.”

  Lacy ran to the kitchen for silverware and placed it around the table, still listening.

  “Where are you now?” Roxanne glanced around the room, obviously looking for something in particular. “Very well. See you then.” She hung up. “We’re going to get rain, probably sometime tonight. Their felucca trip has been called off. Where’s our radio?”

  “Will wonders never cease?” Lacy’s tone belied the alarm in Roxanne’s.

  “You don’t understand. Rain along the river is no problem. We can use it once in a while. Rain above Lake Nasser
is no problem either. But rain west of here, in the desert, is a big problem. Flash floods. Have you ever been in a flash flood?”

  “No, but I’ve read about them. I should have realized … uh, oh. This valley is shaped rather badly, isn’t it?” As Lacy said it, she pictured the Valley of the Nobles as she had viewed it that morning from the hill above the temple. To the west of their bowl-shaped valley, the Valley of the Kings ran parallel to the escarpment between them. The limestone bedrock had been sculpted by water into ridges and buttes millions of years ago. West of these canyons—miles and miles of desert. She recalled how the road from Hatshepsut’s temple to the Valley of the Kings ran along the bottom of a continuous, curved valley. “We’re sort of at the bottom of a funnel.”

  “Remember, the desert has no vegetation to soak up the water.” Roxanne grasped Lacy’s elbow and steered her toward the porch. “When it rains, the water runs down the hills and into the wadis, joins up with the water from other wadis, and comes round the bend at Seti’s temple like Hannibal’s elephants. I was in Luxor for the last flood and I don’t want to go through that again!”

  “We may have to. What can we do to get ready?”

  Roxanne stopped, turned left, then right, then left, as if she was debating what to do first. “Bay!” She called back to the kitchen. “Hold dinner! We have work to do!”