“Expert advice would be very helpful at this point. I should probably call Mr. Patel. You remember my attorney?” Jess slid the tablecloth from under the tea tray and carefully wrapped the urn. “Maybe the surface is smooth enough for the police to collect fingerprints. If they can prove Solomon was the one who used it as a weapon, that would go a long way toward resolving everything.”
“We can only hope so.” Nettie lifted the bundle into her arms and gazed sympathetically at Jess. “Of course, the police will need to take your son’s fingerprints. He handled the urn, you know. I think you’d better tell young Spencer what we suspect, my dear. Not only will it explain the presence of the police when they come, it may help him to be more alert.”
“Alert to danger, you mean? Nettie, I’m beginning to wonder if I shouldn’t just go back to London. I could probably sell Uchungu House. I might even give it to Dr. bin Yusuf ’s sister. I wanted a home for Splinter and me. I wanted a haven . . . but this . . . this is turning into a nightmare.”
“Now, duckie, don’t be too hasty. You must think things over carefully. I should hate to see you go. Perhaps it’s much ado about nothing.”
“Nothing? Nettie, you’re holding a murder weapon there.”
“Indeed I am, and I must get it to the police station at once. Do pardon me while I shuffle back home to fetch my car. Now, you tend to your son and your affairs here at the house. Put all this out of your mind.”
Jess watched from the edge of the verandah as the elderly woman strolled down the driveway. She walked right past Solomon, who was fitting something onto the Renault’s engine, stopped and spoke briefly with him, and continued on her way. Amazing. In her early years in Africa, Jess had known more than one woman like Nettie—resolute, tough, and anything but squeamish. It comforted her to know she had a capable neighbor who cared for her and Splinter.
“Where’s the urn?” Splint asked, coming up behind her.
Jess nearly jumped out of her skin. “Don’t sneak up on me like that! You scared me half to death.”
“Hey, where’s Nettie going? What about our Scrabble game? Did she take the urn with her? What’s she planning to do with it? I’m the one who found it. I think we ought to keep it here at Uchungu House.”
Jess took her son’s shoulders. They felt small and fragile. He was so young. Like a scrawny baby chick, Splint was all skin and thin muscle stretched over a bony framework. And, like a mother hen, she wanted to protect him with every fiber of her being. Yet she knew sometimes protection meant he had to be told the truth about difficult subjects.
“Listen, Splint,” she said softly. “I need to talk to you about some things that have happened. Nettie’s going to get her car and drive the urn down to the police station in Zanzibar town. We think it might have been used in a crime.”
“You mean like to kill somebody? Who?”
“A few weeks ago Mr. Patel, the lawyer, told me the police think Dr. bin Yusuf might have been murdered. Now I don’t want you to get worried or scared—”
“Murdered! And you didn’t tell me! How come? Mom, you said he fell down the steps.” His face went dark. “You lied to me! You lied about it just like you’ve been lying about my father!”
“Spencer Thornton, I have
not
lied to you! Ever!” Jess’s fingers tightened on her son’s shoulders. “Now listen to me. I told you Dr. bin Yusuf had fallen down the stairs because that’s exactly what Mr. Patel told me when I first talked to him about Uchungu House. That’s what everybody believed had happened until a few weeks ago when they did an autopsy. I didn’t want to tell you the new information because I thought you might worry about living here. I thought—”
“You think I’m just a little kid, don’t you! It never occurred to you that I might find a bloodstained urn in the storeroom, did it? What about that? That would scare some people half to death. But I’m not scared. I’m just mad. I’m mad because you didn’t tell me the truth!”
Jess stared into her son’s face, reading clearly the mixture of rage and defiance written across it. But she saw another emotion in his violet eyes—an emotion she recognized all too well. Splinter felt betrayed. Somehow, he sensed that his mother had not told him things he felt he should know. And the knowledge of her betrayal was making him bitter.
Betrayed and bitter. Just as Jess herself had felt for so many years. Like mother, like son.
“Splinter, honey, I want you to try to calm yourself.” She ran her hands down his thin arms, hoping she was overreacting to the stress of the incident. “Sweetheart, you’ve been so angry lately. You’ve really been upset with me. Is it because I grounded you from the beach?”
“It’s because you’ve been keeping things from me.”
“You’re ten years old, Splint. Moms don’t tell their kids every little detail that happens. There are some things you just don’t need to know about yet. When you’re older—”
“Mama Hannah!” Splint tore away from his mother and dashed across the lawn toward the dark figure atop the cliff-side staircase. “Mama Hannah, guess what I found! Somebody killed Dr. bin Yusuf, and I found the bloody urn! Nettie’s taking it to the police station. Oh, hi, Rick! Hi, Hunky! Did you hear the news? I found a murder weapon in the storeroom. It was an urn. Somebody hit Dr. bin Yusuf and killed him with it!”
Jess wrapped her arms around the verandah post as Hannah made her way across the lawn followed by Rick and the rest of the diving crew. Splint was scampering around, dancing back and forth among them like he’d just discovered the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. No doubt the news would be all over Zanzibar by morning, once Hunky Wallace made his nightly rounds to the local saloons.
With all the energy she could muster, Jess stepped off the verandah and walked down the steps to meet the tired crew. They were carrying heavy bags filled with artifacts from their day’s treasure hunt. They wore a motley assortment of faded bathing trunks that were dotted with white sand. Hunky sent his men to the trucks to deposit the haul; then he, Hannah, and Rick met Jess in the driveway.
“Splinter, I have found a new shell for you today,” Hannah said softly, her warm brown eyes searching the boy’s face. “I do not believe you have this one in your collection.”
“Really? Let me see! Where’d you find it?”
“I was praying on the beach. When I opened my eyes, there it was beside my knees. Look.” She unfolded her hand to reveal a small purple shell on her palm. “Do you have one like this?”
“No way! This is awesome. Hey, let’s go look it up, Mama Hannah.” He grabbed the shell. Then he paused. “Wait, you better look it up for us, Mama Hannah. I want to stay here and listen to this. Mom’s going to tell them about how I found the urn.”
The old woman gave a shrug.
“Haraka haraka, haina baraka.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Hurry, hurry, and you will not have the blessing. If you wish to know the complete truth about this shell, you must take the time to look for it yourself.”
“Okay, I’ll identify it later.”
“Spencer,” Jess said, “go look up the shell now. I’ll call you when I’m ready to talk to you about everything.”
“When you’ve made up another half-true story, you mean?” Splint hardened his jaw. “Rick, don’t you think parents ought to tell their children the truth? You’d tell me the truth, wouldn’t you? If I asked?”
Rick glanced at Jess. “I think children ought to obey their parents,” he said. “Your mom loves you, kiddo. She’s doing what she thinks is right, and you need to respect that.”
Splint kicked at a pebble in the driveway. “Okay, okay. I guess it’s one of those grown-up conspiracies. Come on, Mama Hannah. I bet they haven’t told you diddly-squat either.”
As Hannah and the boy walked into the house, Jess let out a deep breath. “Nettie Cameron has taken the urn to the police station,” she said. “I’m pretty sure it’s the murder weapon.”
“Ahmed bin Yusuf was murdered?” Hunky asked. He let out a low whistle. “McTaggart, you didn’t tell me that.”
“I figured you already knew,” Rick said. “You’re a suspect.”
“Me? You must be joking. Why would I kill a harmless old man?”
“You wanted to explore the sunken ship in the bay,” Jess explained. “Dr. bin Yusuf wouldn’t let you. Now that he’s dead, you’re out here every day. Once he stood in the way of your goals, and now he doesn’t. You got what you wanted.”
“Great ghosts!” The Scotsman rubbed a beefy hand over his bald head. “What are you saying, lassie? Do the police have me on a list or some such? Do they truly think I did it?”
“Did you?”
“Of course not. I’ll be the first to admit I’m greedy and ambitious. I fight for what I want, as McTaggart well knows, and woe to the man who blocks my path. But I’m no killer.”
“You’d better hope your fingerprints aren’t on that urn.”
“How could they be? I’ve never seen the thing in my life! I wasn’t even in Zanzibar when the artist died. I was searching through the maps-and-antiquities section in the Nairobi museum. You’ll vouch for me on that, won’t you, McTaggart?”
“Hunky, I don’t keep tabs on your comings and goings.”
“But I recall it clearly. When I got back to Zanzibar, I heard the news about the old man’s death, and I rushed straight out here to have a bit of a look-see. Sure enough, the house was all shut up. Solomon said his employer had fallen down the stairs, and that was that. So I brought my boat in and set to work. But I didn’t kill the man! Absolutely not!”
“I believe you’re telling the truth, Hunky,” Rick said. “You and I have had our troubles, but I’ve never known you to be cruel. You waited a lot of years to get at that ship, and I don’t know of anything that could have happened a couple of months ago to push you over the edge. But you’re going to need a documented alibi. Especially if your fingerprints show up on that urn.”
“They won’t!” He gave the waistband of his bathing suit a flip. “If I kept better records, I’d have my Kenya travel voucher for you in a second. As it is, I’ll have to piece it all together. But mark my words, I’m innocent. I had nothing to do with it!”
He turned on his heel and stomped away, a flush spreading from his neck down his bare back. In moments, he had climbed into his truck with his crew and was pulling out of the driveway. Jess shook her head.
“This is so unbelievable,” she said softly. “Splint found the urn, Rick. It was covered with dried blood.”
“He doesn’t seem too traumatized.”
“He’s in his Hardy Boys mode right now. This is all a grand adventure. But tonight in his bed, he’ll start imagining the whole murder, and he won’t get a wink of sleep.”
“Jessie, if there’s anything I can do . . .”
She studied Rick for a long time, unable and unwilling to break the bond between their eyes. If Splinter had a father to cling to, things would be so much easier. And sometime . . . sometime she would have to tell her son the whole truth. But not yet. She still wasn’t ready to go that far.
All the same . . .
“Maybe there is something you can do for me, Rick,” she said. “Nettie’s pretty sure Solomon is guilty. I don’t want my son hanging around that man. I just don’t trust him. Would you be willing to take Splint out on the diving boat with you? School’s starting soon, so it wouldn’t be long. But if you were with him, I wouldn’t worry so much. I know he can be kind of a pain, but—”
“Jessie.” He reached out to her but didn’t touch. “There’s nothing I’d like better than spending time with Splint.”
“He thinks you hung the moon.”
“I can’t claim that one. But I figure the guy who did is on my side.”
Jess smiled at the image of the benevolent Creator hovering protectively over this man . . . over the boy . . . their son.
“I’ll watch out for Splinter, Jessie,” Rick told her. “He’ll be safe.”
“What about Hunky? If he did it—”
“He didn’t do it. Whoever killed Dr. bin Yusuf had a stronger motive than getting to a sunken ship. Under the waters around Zanzibar, there are a lot of boats that Hunky Wallace can’t get his hands on. Some of them are rumored to be holding valuable treasure. It drives Hunky nuts. But it doesn’t drive him to kill. Even if he had murdered Dr. bin Yusuf, Hunky wouldn’t have anything against Splint. In fact, I think he’s got a real heart for your son.”
“Do you?”
“Sure. Splint’s a little scamp, but he’s a charmer, too. Hunky liked having his help on the boat the other day. He’ll be fine.” Rick looked into her eyes. “It’s you I’m concerned about, Jessie.”
“I’ll be all right.”
“At night . . . if you’d like me to stay—I could sleep downstairs.”
“No. We’ll be fine.”
“I promised I’d protect you, Jessie. If you need me, say the word. I’ll come.”
For some reason her eyes filled with tears, and Jess had to look away. She did need Rick. She had needed him for so many years. But she was used to taking care of herself now. Sufficient. Competent.
Then she remembered her prayer that afternoon in her studio. It was time to let go of the controls of her life and stop being so self-sufficient. Time to allow Christ to be the Lord of her heart. Time to empty out the bitterness and be filled with his peace.
“Yes, you did promise to protect me, Rick,” she said. “You know, I’ve been thinking you may have been right about something you said the first time we talked, on the cliff. I think God may have allowed you back into my life for a reason. Maybe he wants you to protect Splint and me. But I find it so hard to trust you. Hard to trust God. I’m afraid I’m not very good at it.”