Death at the Voyager Hotel (13 page)

“Listen to this,”
Paula said. “Amadu said he saw definite signs of Edward’s attraction to Heather.
He used to visit her in her room, supposedly to check if everything was okay,
so to speak. Heather was very friendly toward Amadu, however, and he’s
convinced that Edward was jealous and sacked him for that reason.”

Gale frowned.
“The ramblings of a misguided young man, if you ask me.”

“Perhaps,”
Paula conceded, “but there’s more. Edward was at the hotel until past midnight
on Sunday. Amadu says he sometimes makes surprise appearances at the hotel to check
if his workers are doing their jobs properly. While he was there, a German guest—apparently
a friend of Edward’s—checked in late after a long road trip from Tamale. Edward
welcomed him to the hotel and stayed there for some time after that, although we
don’t know exactly how long.”

Gale was studying
her. “Okay. Go on.”

“I think it’s
strange that when Edward and I talked about Heather’s death, he didn’t mention
that he had been around the hotel late that Sunday night.”

“He might not
have thought it was that important.”

“How could it
not be important?” Paula demanded. “He was at the hotel on the same night Heather
was killed, and he doesn’t once remark on it, not even in passing?”

“So now you
believe Edward and Heather had an affair that went wrong,” Gale challenged, “or
that he lusted after her, she turned him down, and it came to a head on Sunday
night?”

Paula was
steadfast. “On Monday morning when Amadu ran to the swimming pool, he noticed
that the lights had gone out. They’re set to turn off automatically at six in
the morning, but it was a few minutes before, and Amadu is certain about that. So,
was it technical failure, or were they deliberately turned off, and for what
purpose? Who would do that? The murderer, because he needed the cover of
darkness to commit the crime. Apart from Amadu, guess who else knows how to
turn the lights off and on?”

“Edward.”

“Correct. So let’s
say Heather goes to Edward’s office around eleven forty-five Sunday night. While
she’s in his office, some kind of argument develops between them.”

“About what?”
Gale asked.

“I don’t know—that
he loves her and wants her, and why does she reject him and insist on being with
Oliver? Edward wants to make love to her in the office. She refuses his
advances. In the middle of the argument, the German man arrives from Tamale
sometime past midnight, and the front desk calls Edward to let him know his
friend has arrived. Edward goes out to greet him, telling Heather to wait a few
minutes until he returns.

“After he
welcomes his friend, Edward goes down to the pool, turns the lights off, and
then returns to the office. He asks Heather to take a walk with him, so they
can talk more, but really, what he plans to do is kill her.”

“Wouldn’t it be
difficult to persuade her to go with him after they’ve just had an argument?” Gale
asked.

“Edward can be
very persuasive.”

Gale closed her
eyes and repeatedly traced her eyebrows with her thumb and index finger, something
she did when she was deep in thought. “My goodness,” she said, opening her eyes
again. “I never thought we’d come to this.”

“What?”

“Suspecting our
friends and associates. Oliver, Edward – maybe even Diane?” She shook her head.
“It’s horrible.”

“I know,” Paula
said, but not with quite as much despondency. “Thelo is afraid I’m going to
confront Edward and accuse him of murdering Heather.”

“Are you?”

“No, but I
would like to confirm if there’s any truth that he lusted after Heather.”

“How will you
find that out?”

“I thought I
might ask Jost Miedema.”

“You trust him?”

“Yes. He’s an honest
observer.”

“Okay.” Gale
sighed. “Meanwhile, what shall we do about Oliver?”

“We need to get
the truth from him about what time he left the Voyager that night.”

Gale was
uneasy. “We do it together?”

“I would like that,
but if you would prefer not, it’s no problem.”

“I’ll do it,”
she said resolutely. “So long as you take the lead.”

They looked up
as Diane came in with her laptop.

“I have a
surprise for you,” she said, beaming.

“What’s that?”
Paula asked.

“I’ll show
you.”

The three women
sat together in front of the screen and Diane turned it on and went to iPhoto.
For a moment the screen was dark as soft music began, and then faint letters
became visible, spelling out the title,
Heather Peterson: Still in Our
Hearts

The slideshow
went roughly in chronological order starting from the very first snapshot of Heather
emerging from the arrivals hall at Kotoka International Airport. Paula and Diane
had been there to meet her. The background music of the collage changed
according to the theme and captions
,
and
each photo faded
smoothly into the next.

The first set,
At Work
, had a jaunty score and showed Heather supervising the kids, taking
a break to wipe off her sweaty face, piling a bunch of laughing students on her
lap, taking part in a tug o’ war contest, and then hanging out in the office, posing
with Paula, Diane, Gale and Oliver.

In
Outings
,
Diane had captured Heather on the infamous Kakum National Park canopy walkway
stretching from one soaring tree to another. Heather was firmly staring ahead,
refusing to look down into the plunging depths.

The music switched
again for
Fun in the Sun
: Heather drinking out of a freshly cut coconut
at a
Cape Coast
beach, pulling funny faces at the
camera with Diane, executing a handstand, and making a two-person pyramid by
standing on Oliver’s shoulders. After the beach collection came photos of
Heather at the barbecue Paula and Thelo had held for the Street Academy staff
about a month before.

“This next part
was hard,” Diane said. “I wasn’t sure if I should include it, but swimming was
something that Heather loved, so I put it in.”

Diane had
become teary, and Paula saw why. There was Heather in the Voyager pool, where
she was eventually to die. She was lovely against the turquoise water that matched
her eyes. She was gazing happily at the camera. In another, Oliver was sitting
next to her at the edge of the pool, he muscular and handsome, and she tan and
lean in a black swimsuit.

When the next
photo came up, Paula asked Diane to pause it for a moment. It was a poolside photo
of Heather in the same black bathing costume with Diane, Oliver, Jost, and Edward.
Everyone was smiling and Heather looked especially happy.

“That’s a
really nice one,” Paula said. “Who took it?”

“The bartender.
That was only about three weeks ago.”

“I really like
it.”

Finally came
the two shots from Jost that Paula had forwarded to Diane. As the last photos appeared
and the music died away, Paula felt her own tears pricking, and put an arm
around Diane.

“That was
lovely,” Gale said, dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief.

“It was,” Paula
said. “Thank for doing that, Diane. I’d like you to show it to the children if
you wouldn’t mind.”

“I’d love to.”

 “It would also
be nice for Mr. Peterson to see it,” Gale suggested.

“I think so too,”
Diane said. “I can email it to him.”

She put the
laptop away and the three women got ready for work. All through the morning,
Paula was thinking about the upcoming confrontation with Oliver and very much dreading
it.

The day was over and the kids had gone home. Oliver had
agreed to meet with Paula and

Gale after
classes and he came into the office at a few minutes after two. They seated
themselves in a triangle. Paula had chosen not to sit behind her desk because
it acted as both a physical and psychological barrier.

“So,” he said,
“what’s up?” His demeanor was both wary and falsely cheerful.

“Whatever comes
out of our discussion today,” Paula said, “remember we care about you, Oliver,
okay?”

“Why?” he said
with a nervous laugh. “Am I in trouble?”

“Something I
need to ask you,” Paula said. “You said you left Heather at the hotel on Sunday
night around eight thirty, correct?”

“Right,” he
said, but now he didn’t sound quite so sure. “Around there.”

“Yesterday, I
talked to Amadu, the security guard who was on that night. You remember him?”

“Yes, I often
saw him when I went to the Voyager.”

“He told me
that you left the hotel at
eleven
thirty, not eight thirty.”

He stared at
Paula for a moment, and then he looked at Gale and back at Paula.

The two women
waited for his response for what seemed like several minutes.

“Amadu is both correct
and wrong,” he said finally.

“How so?” Paula
asked.

“I did leave the
hotel at eight thirty to visit my father at Korle Bu hospital, but then I came
back again to see Heather about two hours later. I stayed only about forty-five
minutes and then left again. That’s when Amadu saw me. Diane did too.”

“She did?”
Paula asked, surprised. “Where?”

“She was in the
lobby talking to one of the clerks when I came down from Heather’s room.”

“I see,” Paula
said. “Is that why the two of you have been giving each other such funny looks
over the past week?”

“I suppose so,”
Oliver admitted. “I’ve wanted to talk to her about it, but somehow I couldn’t
bring myself to. She knows that I didn’t tell the full truth to you or the
police. But I swear to you, I didn’t do anything to hurt Heather.” Oliver
looked back and forth between Paula and Gale, clearly desperate for them to
believe him.

“Why didn’t you
tell the truth?” Gale prodded him.

“Because I knew
it would have seemed suspicious.” He dropped his head. “Maybe I’m a coward. I’m
sorry.”

“You’re not a
coward,” Gale said, reaching out to squeeze his hand.

“A lot happened
that Sunday, didn’t it?” Paula said to him.

“I confess I only
told you some of the story,” he said despondently. “What I said about Heather
being unusually quiet was true, but what I didn’t tell you was that we
quarreled that evening.”

That concurs
with Jost’s story, Paula thought.

“I loved Heather,”
Oliver continued, “and she said she loved me. I wanted us to be married and I told
her that many times. But she could never say yes to me, and I couldn’t
understand why. On Sunday evening when we went for a walk in the hotel garden, I
asked her if she could write a visa request letter to the U.S. embassy officially
inviting me to the States. She said the process is not as easy as all that, and
I asked her why she wasn’t willing to try. I asked her, is it because you don’t
want to see me again after returning to the US?

“Then she
became annoyed. She said she didn’t want to do this anymore, and I said, what
do you mean? She said she’d heard about how young Ghanaian guys like me try to
take advantage of American girls and use them to get visas, or to marry them so
we can become US citizens, and I was shocked. I asked her who told her such a
thing but she wouldn’t say. It really pained me.” He touched his chest over his
heart. “And me too, I have a hot temper and I began to quarrel with her. She
turned her back on me and ran into the hotel.”

Paula was
visualizing what must have been quite a dramatic scene.

“After a few
minutes,” Oliver continued, “I went to her room and knocked, but she didn’t answer,
so I called her on the phone three or four times. She still didn’t respond. I
tried to talk to her through the door, but she told me to go away. I sat in the
lobby for a while, not knowing what to do, but I had to leave at eight thirty,
because I had promised my father that I would visit him in hospital. I don’t
think Amadu was on duty yet, so he didn’t see me leave.”

Paula was
watching him closely. Knowing his mannerisms well, she felt he was telling the
truth—so far.

“I stayed with
my father for about one hour,” he went on, “but all the time I was thinking
about Heather. I was very confused. She had hurt me, but at the same time, I
started to feel bad about the things I had said to her. When I was leaving the
hospital, I called her again and told her how sorry I was. I asked if I could
see her again that night. At first she said no, but I begged her over and over,
and she agreed. So I went back.”

He folded his
lips inward, as if the next part of the story was going to be the hardest to
tell. “Heather told me we had to have a serious talk. She said she liked me
very much, and that she enjoyed sex with me, but in her heart, she didn’t
believe we were made for each other and so she didn’t see her future with me. I
asked her if she had someone waiting for her in the States, and she said not at
the moment. So I asked her, what shall we do next? She said we should give each
other some space and not see each other romantically any more. We can work
together, but not sleep together. That’s how she put it. I felt stabbed through
my heart. I was sad, but I was angry, too, because I felt she had wronged me for
no good reason.”

He lowered his
head again. Gale got up and stood beside him, gently rubbing his shoulders.
“Tell us what happened next, Oliver.”

He shrugged. “That
was the end.”

“The end?”
Paula asked.

He nodded.
Stunned, the two women exchanged glances. They did not want this to be the
resolution, nor Oliver the culprit, but they both knew that the confession they
had feared most was soon to come.

“Then you
persuaded her to go down to the pool with you?” Paula asked softly.

He looked up at
her, puzzled. “What do you mean, go down to the pool?”

She was
confused. “You didn’t…take her to…”

“Take her to
where?” he said with another shrug. “There was nowhere to go anymore. We shook
hands and agreed to end our relationship then and there, but not as enemies. I said
good-bye to her and returned home. Like Amadu said, by that time, it was about
eleven thirty.”