Murder Under the Fig Tree

by Kate Jessica Raphael

  “Yes.”

  “He also says that he saw you and Daoud fighting,” said Rania.

  “Sure, we fought. He said he was only sleeping with the soldier, because he helped him with the checkpoints. I did not believe him. I remembered him coming home with the leather jacket he had wanted. He said he had bought it, but where would he get that kind of money? I asked if the soldier had given it to him, and he admitted that he had. I left and took the gun with me.”

  “Why?” Chloe asked.

  “I was angry. I wanted the soldier to get in trouble.”

  “That makes sense,” she said. “So, you still have the gun?” She held her breath. If he did, that meant he must have killed Daoud. She stole a glance at Rania. The other woman was drinking tea, looking nonchalant.

  “No,” he said. “I kept it for a day, but I don’t like guns. I didn’t like having it in my house. So, before I went back to Ramallah, I took it back to the house.”

  “Did you and Daoud reconcile?” Rania asked. “You said you had planned to come up together for Ahmed’s party.”

  Elias nodded. His chiseled face softened. “I could not stay mad at Daoud. I went back to the apartment on Saturday. I told Daoud where I had put the gun. We were going to go north together, but then he said he had to meet someone and he would see me at the party.”

  “Do you know who he was supposed to meet?”

  “No. I asked if it was Ron, and he said no. I thought he was lying.”

  “Where did you put the gun?” Rania asked. Chloe knew where her mind was going.

  “Under the bed in the big bedroom,” Elias said. “Tuesday afternoon, Daoud called me. He said the gun was not there. He assumed Ron had gotten into the house and taken it, but then he saw him in the village, and Ron said he did not. Daoud asked me to meet him at the house. When I got there, he accused me of lying. He was talking crazy. He said he was going to leave Palestine. He thought he could win SuperStar and move to Italy or America. He was such a big dreamer.”

  Elias was crying now for real. Rania fished out a Kleenex from her purse and handed it to him.

  “He said he was going to tell Hanan at the party that night that he could not marry her. He was going to tell everyone what he was, and, if his family did not support him, he would leave the country. I said he could not do that. We fought,” Elias said. “He hit me, and I hit him back. He fell and hit his head on a marble table.”

  “In the bedroom?” Rania put in suddenly.

  “In the living room,” Elias said. “I got a towel for him, and he put it up to his head and was trying to stop the bleeding. I was very angry at him and I left. That was the last time I saw him. You have to believe me.” He looked at Rania when he said the last.

  “I do,” she said.

  “I’ve got to look in that house,” Rania said to Chloe when they were standing on the sidewalk.

  “Don’t you need a warrant or something?” Chloe asked. She had no idea if the Palestinian police used search warrants.

  “Not a warrant, exactly, but we need permission. I am not a policewoman now, so I cannot get the permission.”

  “Wouldn’t you get in trouble if someone found out you searched the house?”

  “I will just have to make sure they do not find out.”

  “Be careful,” Chloe said, kissing her friend goodbye.

  Chapter 41

  If Chloe was not sleeping with anyone, she didn’t need to sleep in the closet either. She took her mat and laid it out on the living room floor. She felt chilly, even though the night was warm. She collected all the covers from both mattresses and cuddled up. Nothing like a pillow and a cry to make one want to sleep forever. She woke up, baking in the mid-morning sun. She tossed the covers aside and went to shower. She emerged, comforted by the hot water, and walked into the closet to find some clean clothes.

  “Ouch,” said a muffled voice from the floor. She had stepped on a leg she had not expected to find there.

  “You’re home,” Chloe said. Tina sat up in bed, rubbing her eyes.

  “Of course I’m home. Did I say I wouldn’t be?”

  “When you didn’t come for dinner, I figured you were spending another night in Tel Aviv.”

  “Another night? I haven’t stayed in Tel Aviv since last Friday. You’re the one who hasn’t been home.”

  Chloe flipped through her few clean shirts. She had told Rania she would take the report on the bullets to Benny Lazar at Ariel. And, since she would be near Salfit, she would go see how Reem was doing. That meant she needed modest but cool clothing. She picked a long, white blouse—the same one she had worn on her first date with Tina. She wondered if Tina would remember taking it off of her, that magical night in the Austrian Hospice. She half-buttoned the blouse over her Jews Against Israeli Apartheid T-shirt.

  “You’re saying you didn’t stay in Tel Aviv after your SAWA meeting?”

  “It wasn’t a meeting. It was just a get-together.”

  “After your get-together, then.”

  “Of course not. I was with Rania. One of the other women from Ramallah has a car. We drove her to Mas’ha and then came home.” Chloe had forgotten that Rania would need to get back home. Tina had stripped off her clothes. Now, she wrapped herself in a bath towel and disappeared into the bathroom. Chloe heard the water raining down as she went to make coffee.

  Tina appeared, wearing black jeans and what Chloe thought of as a Ramallah T-shirt—tight, with a scoop neckline. With her hair still pinned atop her head and a little damp, she looked more swan-like than ever.

  “How was the meeting—sorry, get-together?” Chloe asked.

  “Good. Rania asked intelligent questions. I think all the women really liked her.”

  “Including Yasmina?”

  “All of them,” Tina said. “What’s going on? You’re acting weird.”

  “Don’t say I’m acting weird.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Tina grabbed a bowl and poured corn flakes into it, ignoring the fact that Chloe was cutting potatoes.

  “You took Rania to SAWA, but you won’t take me.” There, she had said it.

  Tina sat at the little table to eat her cereal. “It’s not the same.”

  “Because she’s Palestinian. But she’s not a dyke. I’m a dyke but not Palestinian. So, what’s the difference?”

  “Chloe. The difference is that she’s trying to find help for a friend who has been deeply troubled for a long time. You just want a cool experience to tell your friends at home about.”

  Chloe stood with the knife frozen in her hand. She thought, really thought, about what Tina had said. After a long second, she put the knife down and walked over to where Tina sat. She knelt in front of her lover, removed the spoon from her hand and held both of Tina’s hands in hers. It wasn’t what she had meant to do, but she leaned forward, and Tina met her halfway. Their lips touched. Their mouths locked; their tongues twined.

  “Mmmmm,” Tina moaned. She reached a hand under Chloe’s shirt and teased at the underwire of her bra.

  It hit them both at the same moment what they were doing. They rocketed apart as if a truck were speeding toward them. They turned as one to peer outside the window. Chloe didn’t see Um Malik or anyone else. Chloe pulled herself up and sat demurely in the chair opposite Tina, as far across the little table as she could get.

  “I love you,” she said quietly.

  “I love you, too.” Tina sounded sincere. She also sounded sad.

  “Tell me about Yasmina,” Chloe said.

  Tina did not flinch or look away. “Did Rania tell you?”

  That was a blow. Not only was Tina seeing this other woman, but Rania knew about it? Chloe couldn’t deal with that double betrayal right now. She tucked it away in her “think about later” drawer.

  “No. I saw you together in Ramat Gan.”

  “Chloe, listen,” Tina said. “We were together, what, three weeks? And you were in jail for half of them. I didn’t know if you were ever
going to come back.”

  “I never said you should wait for me,” Chloe said.

  “I know. Shush for a minute. When I told you Rania was in prison, I didn’t know you would decide to come back. I was happy when you did, but, even then, I didn’t know if you would get in or how long you would stay. Yasmina and I are not a couple. But you have to realize that I live here, full-time. I had a life without you here, just like you have a life in San Francisco without me.”

  Did she? Chloe wondered. What Tina was saying made sense. For once in her life she wasn’t going to indulge in a dramatic gesture that she might regret a minute later.

  “Are you having sex?” she asked.

  “Why ask that? Does it matter?”

  “Yes.”

  “We haven’t. But I’m not going to say that we won’t. Our relationship is… different.”

  “Because you’re both Palestinian.”

  “Yes.”

  “I understand,” Chloe said. The amazing thing was that she actually did. “I’m going to stay with Reem for a while,” she said.

  “You don’t have to,” Tina protested.

  “I know. But I need to think. I’ll be there in case Reem needs to go to the hospital again, and, when she’s feeling better, we’ll interview women in the villages. I’m sure you can use the space, too.” To have sex with Yasmina, she added, but only in her mind.

  Chapter 42

  The white house belonging to the absentee Palestinian American was unmissable from the road. It towered above its neighbors, not only because of its size but because it was built on the highest hill in the village. It occupied a massive lot, and, as if that were not enough, it was topped by a golden dome reminiscent of Al Aqsa Mosque. Rania got the taxi driver to leave her at the side of the road near the house and climbed up through the brush to the house, rather than going around to the path. As she approached, she saw that the house was surrounded by its courtyard, but white columns surrounded the courtyard, so, instead of a panoramic view, it was as if you were looking out through venetian blinds. What a monstrosity, she thought. Such a pity that someone with so much money should have such terrible taste. But she wasn’t here to critique the architecture. She looked around, wondering where Daoud had hidden the key. It would have been easiest to ask Elias, but she had not wanted him to know she was going to search the house. His story was only semibelievable. If he was lying, she would not want him to have time to cover his tracks. Or do something to stop her from going to the house.

  She walked around the house three times. The first time, she turned over a heavy bronze turtle on the front porch and put her hand in a watering can in the back yard. The second, she dipped her fingers into the soil of a flowerpot and ran them along the top of the iron door. She opened cupboards that contained water pipes and paraphernalia for smoking argila. There were dozens of places a key could be hidden in the courtyard alone. And then there was the garden. A grid search would take days. She was not going to find the key that way. She needed to think like the person who hid it.

  Daoud would not have wanted to be seen going into the house, so he would not put the key somewhere that took a long time to get to. That left out digging in the garden or climbing anything or prying up a loose flag-stone. She closed her eyes and tried to imagine him mounting these steps, putting his hand…

  She was imagining the boy in the photo she had first taken from his mother’s house, the one with Ahmed and Ron at Abraham’s Garden. Then, he had been a pale, skinny boy, like many others. But that was not who he had been the day he was killed. He had turned into the costumed youth in the pictures she had seen at the bar—rouged cheeks, pouty lips, and long wig. Where would that person have hidden a key?

  Now she saw it. Among the treasures scattered around the hideous courtyard was a Japanese doll: a porcelain courtesan, white skin, white robe painted with little flowers, upswept black hair. It reminded her of the pictures of Daoud she had seen in the bar. Rania picked up the statuette and turned it around. There was a hole in the back, where she supposed you were meant to put flowers. She peered in through the hole and there was the key.

  The inside of the house was as daunting as she expected it to be. She thought of the Greek myth she had studied in school about the labyrinth where men died because they could not find their way out. She should have brought a string to find her way out of this house-maze.

  The entire first floor was presumably what Elias had called the living room, though it was more accurately called a parlor or receiving room, because certainly no living could go on in it, even if anyone had lived in this house at all. All the furniture was hard and dark and cold, from the marble-topped end tables to the hundred or so straight-backed wooden chairs placed exactly four inches apart all the way around the white-walled room. She fought the urge to move one or two of them half an inch, just to drive whoever set them crazy.

  There was a small water closet containing just a toilet and sink off the parlor, so that the family need not allow guests into their inner sanctum. Two little decorative hand towels were draped over little metal circles by the sink. A third little towel holder stood empty. This would have held the towel Daoud used to stanch his blood after Elias knocked him down. Where was the towel? She did not find it in the bathroom.

  She ascended the spiral staircase to the second floor. This contained a vast kitchen boasting three stoves and two refrigerators. She opened the refrigerators, more out of curiosity than anything else, and of course found them completely empty—but not turned off. If the Palestinian American decided to come back at a moment’s notice, she supposed, he wanted his refrigerator to be at forty degrees for the groceries he would have someone buy to prepare for his arrival. The center island was a cutting board, so every square inch of wall space that was not taken up with the stoves or refrigerators was a cupboard. She opened one after another. One was stacked with pots, one with pans, one with spatulas, wooden spoons, and other utensils. There was a deep drawer displaying every type of knife, and drawer upon drawer of kitchen towels and aprons. When the Palestinian American had banquets, he must hire an army of chefs to come and help his wife.

  She moved on to the dining room. More cushioned, dark-wood chairs evenly spaced around a table big enough for twenty. China closets displayed stacks of porcelain dishes, each with a thin band of gold leaf. None of the cabinets were large enough to hold a gun, so she didn’t waste time with them. She climbed up to the next level.

  This is where the family would live, if they ever lived here. The master bedroom, which occupied half the third floor, was entirely off-white. It had a massive bed as wide as it was long, covered by a cream-colored, satin coverlet over cream-colored, heavy-cotton sheets and a cream-colored fleece blanket with a satin ribbon at the top. Two matching cream-colored bureaus stood against the walls, and, though they were mostly empty, the top drawer of one held a few pieces of cheap jewelry (not cream-colored) and the other a few pairs of boxer shorts (cream-colored, though they may once have been white).

  When she pulled back the coverlet, she saw, as anticipated, that this was where Daoud and his friends had done their recreating. Apparently, Daoud had seen no need to change the sheets after his last tryst. She looked under the bed, and, though she could barely see that far, let alone reach to the center of the floor, she was quite sure there was no gun under there. It was not in any of the closets or hidden among the pillows that filled the bottom drawers of each bureau.

  The only photo in the master bedroom was an eight-by-twelve family portrait in a silver frame, sitting on a cream-colored night table. She picked it up. The Palestinian American was a florid man with what English novels called a hail-fellow-well-met countenance. His wife’s black, likely dyed, hair was uncovered. Her children, three boys and two girls, had the bleached-blond hair Rania associated with America.

  Rania was done with the master bedroom, so she made her way to the den where the family obviously watched television and indulged in alcohol consumption. Bottles
and bottles of every description were lined up with their labels in alphabetical order behind a wooden bar made of more dark hardwood. The thirty-inch television was hidden behind a rollback door in an entertainment center that held things Rania had only seen in magazines, like a surround sound stereo system. She didn’t find a gun behind or among any of the toys in that room nor under the couch or buried in the cushions of the overstuffed chairs.

  It did not take her long to search the five children’s rooms on the fourth floor because, although there was a plethora of closets, they were all virtually empty. Only the linen closet was stuffed with sheets and towels—cream colored, naturally—but they were all quite neatly stacked and there was no gun shoved in among them.

  She was about ready to leave this strange house which felt like it held the ghost of a family. She felt disappointed, though, really, she had not expected to find the gun. If it was not where Elias had put it, there was no reason it would have been somewhere else in the house. She thought about who might have taken it, assuming both Elias and Ron were telling the truth. Issa would be the most likely. Daoud had gotten the key from their uncle, so it stood to reason that Issa might have one as well. Of course, any of their cousins could also have gotten one, but, as far as she knew, they had not threatened to kill anyone who had ended up dead.

  She wandered into the little laundry room off the back bathroom (there were three bathrooms on the top floor—one for each of the two girls and one for the three boys to share, she imagined). She opened the washer and the dryer and, not surprisingly, found them empty of lint as well as everything else, including the gun. The hamper was empty except for one small item—a cream-colored towel crusted with dried blood. That part of Elias’s story, at least, was true. She smiled, thinking of Daoud, having daubed his forehead until it stopped oozing blood, climbing all these stairs to throw the soiled towel in the hamper rather than leaving it lying on the floor in the parlor. His mother had said he was a good boy. Despite what many people would think if they knew what he’d been up to, Rania thought she agreed.