Death at the Voyager Hotel (3 page)

“No,” she admitted.
“All foreign donors have become stricter with their funds, and they now demand
that certain criteria are fulfilled in order for the sponsorship to continue.
We have to show results if we want to keep the money coming in.”

Abruptly,
Prempeh’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t you think that your relationship with these
Danish donors fosters Ghana’s continuing dependency on foreigners’ handouts?”

She pulled back
a little at the loaded question. “That’s a subject of debate, but while we’re wasting
time arguing about it, Mr. Prempeh, I’m not going to sacrifice those kids
outside in that classroom.”

Her phone rang,
and she was thankful to get away from a potential argument with Prempeh. “Excuse
me.” The screen showed Edward Laryea was calling. “I need to take this. Hello,
Edward?”

“Hi, Paula,” he
said. “I saw you called earlier, but I was tied up. It’s about Heather
Peterson, isn’t it?”

Fleetingly, Paula
thought Edward might have good news, but then she recognized the sober tone of
his voice.

“Something
terrible has happened,” he said.

Her stomach plunged.

“I’m so sorry,”
he said. “Heather was found dead this morning in the hotel pool.”

Paula was still shaking from the shock.

 “She was only twenty-four,”
she told Detective Chief Inspector Agyekum, a fiftyish, bony man with spidery
fingers. He wrote everything down in his notebook.

The office door
was shut for privacy. He had helped himself to a chair, but Paula had remained
standing. For the moment, the schoolchildren were in the playground oblivious to
the tragedy. Paula knew that she would soon have to call assembly to break the
horrifying news, and she dreaded the prospect.

“Did you see
her over the weekend?” Agyekum asked Paula. His voice was thin, like a river reed.
He had a plodding air, and could have been either a dullard or a genius.

“No,” she said.
“We seldom got together on Saturdays or Sundays unless we had a special school
event.”

“I see.” He
studied her. “The last time you saw her was Friday afternoon, then?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Was she acting
normally?”

“The same Heather
we always knew. Happy, laughing, cracking jokes, helping the students in the classroom.
They loved her. We all did.”

As the DCI
jotted down his notes, Paula gazed out of the window. She felt as if her chest had
been hollowed out. The day had taken on a nightmarish quality. Heather had
drowned to death.
How could that be?

“Do you know if
Miss Peterson could swim?” Agyekum asked, breaking into Paula’s thoughts.

“Yes, very
well,” she said emphatically. “She often swam in the Voyager pool or at the
beach, which is why I don’t understand how she could have drowned. What exactly
happened, Chief Inspector? Do you know?”

He finished
what he was writing before answering her, as if he didn’t like to do two things
at once. “The medical examiner will have the final word when he does the postmortem,
but our first impression is that it was an accident. Maybe she wasn’t such a
good swimmer after all and found herself unable to handle the deep end of the
pool.”

“But she
was
a good swimmer,” Paula protested. “That’s what I’m telling you.”

He shrugged.
“Even good drivers have car crashes.”

Paula fought
the impulse to roll her eyes. “How deep is the pool?”

“About two
meters. At least, that’s what the hotel manager told me.”

“How long was
she in the water before she was found?”

“We don’t know
yet,” he said, shaking his head slowly. “Did Miss Peterson drink alcohol or use
drugs?”

“She drank beer
and wine on occasion, but not heavily, and she definitely did not use drugs.”

“All right.” He
stared at Paula again for a moment, as if pondering something. “I would like to
talk to”—he looked at his list—“Diane Jones. Please have her come in.”

While he was waiting for Miss Jones to come in, Detective
Chief Inspector Agyekum went over his notes. With years of experience under his
belt, he knew that suspicious deaths were not always what they at first seemed.
Apparent suicides could really be homicides, for example, but in this
particular case, his strong impression was that this poor young lady, Heather
Peterson, had gone swimming under the influence—probably of alcohol—and drowned
as a result. The sad fact was that alcohol was a cause of a very high
percentage of accidental drowning deaths. Still, Agyekum knew it was good
practice to proceed with this investigation with all possibilities in mind—at
least until the results of the autopsy were in. He was a good detective, and he
felt confident that the autopsy would confirm the scenario he suspected.

Miss Jones seemed dazed as she entered. Looking completely
deflated, she collapsed into a chair. When prompted by Agyekum, she gave him her
full name and contact information in a soft monotone as she stared at the
ground.

“When was the
last time you saw Miss Peterson?” he asked her.

“Saturday
afternoon at the Voyager,” she said, quietly. “I stay there too.”

“Seems like
that hotel is very popular with the staff here,” he commented.

“Paula arranges
for all the teacher’s aides to get a discount,” she informed him.

“Ah, I see,” he
said, giving her a reassuring smile. “So, on Saturday, you spent time with
her?”

“We were
together for a couple of hours by the pool. When it started to get dark, we
went back to our rooms.”

“Did she tell
you about any plans for the night?”

“She said she
would probably be going out.”

The inspector
perked up. “To where?”

“She didn’t
tell me and I didn’t ask.”

Not like a
woman not to ask, he thought. “Was she going to meet someone?”

Diane hesitated
slightly. “She didn’t say.”

He pursed his
lips and studied her. “Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure.”

A fly had
gotten into the room and he swatted at it as it zigzagged around his head. “Did
you and Heather swim while you were at the pool on Saturday?”

“She did,
mostly,” Jones said. “I dipped my legs in at the shallow end, but that’s as far
as I go. I can’t swim at all. ”

He jotted down,
Jones – can’t swim
with an asterisk. “Was Heather in the habit of
swimming late at night?”

“Sometimes,
yes—to cool off. She didn’t like to use the a-c because it bothered her
sinuses, so on hot nights, she went to the pool for about thirty minutes.”

“This is
March,” he pointed out. “Every night is hot in Ghana around this time. Did Miss
Peterson go to the pool every night?”

“I’d say often,”
Jones said uncertainly. “If not every.”

“You didn’t see
her go to the pool last night, or hear her swimming?”

“No. You can’t
hear anyone from the rooms—at least I can’t, especially with the air
conditioner on. Plus, at night the windows are shut to keep out the
mosquitoes.”

“Did Heather
swim naked sometimes?” he asked, interested to observe Jones’s reaction.

She was visibly
startled. “What?”

“Naked. Did she
swim naked?”

“No,” she said,
looking offended. “Why do you ask that?”

“Because that’s
how she was found in the pool—naked.”

“Oh, my God.”
She put her hand to her mouth and tears welled up. He could see she was
genuinely upset.

“Sorry,” he
said, regretting his bluntness, although he thought it was plausible that an
American woman would do something like go swimming in the nude. He’d heard that
people did that in the US. Apparently they had special beaches where you could
walk around naked. Appalling, he thought. He waited a moment before continuing.
“What time did you go to bed last night, Miss Jones?”

She thought
back briefly. “About midnight.”

“Between the
time you were with Miss Peterson on Saturday afternoon,” he said carefully, “and
the time you went to bed last night, did you see her anywhere or have any
contact with her?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Did you wake
up at any time during the night?”

“No—not for any
significant period, at least.”

“Did Miss
Peterson drink?”

“She had a beer
every once in a while, but not that afternoon. Why, did someone say she was
drunk?”

“Did you ever
see her intoxicated?” he asked, ignoring her question.

She frowned. “No.”

“What about drugs—marijuana,
cocaine, and so on—did Miss Peterson take any?”

Diane shifted
in her seat, clearly annoyed. “She wasn’t that kind of person. Why, are you
suspecting her of drugs or something?”

“No, Miss Jones,
I am not,” he said, a trifle impatiently. “Did Heather have a boyfriend?”

Her eyes
fluttered slightly. “Well, I guess she and one of the teachers here were
dating.”

“Which
teacher?”

“Oliver Danquah.”

Agyekum hadn’t
spoken to Mr. Danquah yet. “Did he and Heather get along well with each other?”

She shrugged. “They
were dating, so they must have been, right? I didn’t stick my nose in her
business.”

Agyekum was
skeptical of that claim, because he’d never met a woman who minded her own
business.

“Where was Miss
Peterson from?” he asked.

“Portland,
Oregon.”

“How long had she
been at High Street Academy?”

“Four months.
She was going to stay a total of six.”

“And yourself?
How long?”

“I’ve been here
seven months and I’ll be staying another two. It’s my second visit to Ghana.”

“You like it?”

“Yes, I do.”

He smiled at
her. “Thank you, Miss Jones.”

He held the
door open for her.

Oliver Danquah, powerfully built and stylishly dressed, looked
morose and tense.

“I’m sorry for
your loss,” Agyekum said.

“Thank you, sir.”

“I understand
she was your girlfriend.”

“Yes, sir.”

“When was the
last time you saw her?”

“Yesterday.” A
faraway look came to his eyes as he recalled. “After church, I went to meet her
at the hotel around noon. We went to the
Accra
Mall
to see a movie,
and then to
Shoprite
. After that, we ate at one of the
restaurants.”

“Was that all
you did?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did she plan
to swim in the evening?”

“I don’t know,”
he said, clenching his jaw. “I don’t think so.”

“Did you go
back to the Voyager Hotel with her after leaving the mall?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And then?”

Danquah looked
puzzled. “And then what?”

“That’s what
I’m asking you,” Agyekum said with a one-sided smile. “After you and Heather returned
to the hotel, what did you do?”

He shrugged.
“Nothing.”

“How nothing? Mr.
Danquah, if you had sex with her, just say so. If you watched TV with her, then
say it. None of this is a crime. Why are you evading my questions?”