Death at the Voyager Hotel (5 page)

On Thursday, having done little or no paperwork in the past
three days, Paula went to the office early to try to make some headway writing
up the goals for the next quarter. She had been working twenty minutes when her
phone rang. It was Chief Inspector Agyekum.

“Good morning,
Chief Inspector.”

“Good morning,
Mrs. Djan. I have some news regarding the death of Miss Heather Peterson.”

“Yes?” she said
tentatively.

“The medical
examiner has done the autopsy and found no signs of foul play. However, Miss
Peterson’s blood alcohol concentration was very high, so it appears that she
had an excessive amount to drink prior to entering the pool. We therefore
conclude that this was an accidental death, and that she most unfortunately
drowned as a result of being highly intoxicated.”

Paula was
stunned. “Highly intoxicated? I don’t understand. Heather was not a heavy
drinker. In fact, she drank very little.”

“Could it be
simply that you never witnessed her drinking heavily?”

She thought she
detected some sarcasm in his tone. “But no one else has reported her drinking
heavily either,” she objected. “Otherwise, I would have surely heard something
about it.”

“Sometimes the findings
at autopsy come as a shock to the loved ones of the deceased,” he said. Maybe
he was trying to be sympathetic, but to Paula he only sounded condescending.

“But why was
she naked in the pool?” she demanded, hearing her voice rise. “Can you explain
that?”

“Please, Mrs.
Djan, as I’m sure you know, alcohol reduces one’s inhibitions. I have seen many
strange things as a result of alcohol consumption. This is not the worst of
them.”

“Maybe
you
can imagine Heather taking off all her clothes to swim naked,” she said
heatedly, “but I cannot. Are you sure this isn’t some kind of mistake? Perhaps
her blood sample was accidentally switched with someone else’s?”

“Oh, no, I
don’t think so,” he said, and Paula could hear him smiling in tolerant amusement,
which annoyed her.

“Something doesn’t
fit, Chief Inspector,” she said emphatically. “I just know something is wrong.”
He didn’t comment, and that aroused her suspicions. “I think you sense it too.
I think you know something is wrong but your superiors at CID would much rather
drop this. I know how it works over there. They’ve instructed you not to go any
further, am I not correct?”

“The case will
be officially closed by the day’s end,” he answered decisively.

“Please, you
didn’t answer my question.” She felt desperate. “Your higher-ups ordered you to
discontinue the investigation, didn’t they?”

“No, Mrs. Djan.
I’m very sorry for the bad news. Goodbye.”

She sat staring
at her desk without seeing, and jumped as Gale came in.

“Morning, boss.”
She stopped in her tracks. “What’s wrong?”

“I can’t
believe it!” Paula exclaimed in shock. “I’ve just gotten off the phone with
Chief Inspector Agyekum. He says the conclusions from the autopsy are that
Heather drank heavily and became so intoxicated that she went swimming naked in
the pool and drowned.”

“No!” Gale
exclaimed, dropping her backpack on the floor. “
Heather?
How can that
be? I’ve never seen her drink to excess. Have you?”

“Certainly not.
The first time she was at my house was for the Sunday lunch for the staff, and she
might have had one beer at the most. The second time was that Saturday evening
to celebrate her birthday—remember?”

“Yes,” Gale
said, nodding. “She had a glass of champagne—said it was sweet the way she
liked it, and that she wasn’t much of a drinker.”

“I’m sure
there’s more to this story,” Paula said. “How can Chief Inspector Agyekum not
see how strange it is that Heather was found naked?”

“He doesn’t
know her the way we do.”

“Well, did he
ask what she was like?” Paula asked sharply. “No, he did not. What kind of detective
is he?” She brooded. “And this is going to drag Heather’s name through the mud.
People will say, ‘ah, well, she suffered the consequences of swimming while
drunk. And what in heaven’s name are they doing over there at that school? Some
alcoholic woman coming from America to teach our children? Swimming naked in a
public area?’ You know, we don’t like that kind of thing in Ghana.”

Gale sucked her
teeth three times in rapid succession as she imagined the troubling scenario.

“And then we
have the kids to worry about,” Paula said in growing dismay as all the
implications began to dawn. “Especially Ajua. How will she respond when she
hears these terrible stories about her teacher?”

“And we’re
struggling to keep this Danish grant going, too,” Gale added. “Bad publicity is
what we don’t need.”

“We have to do
something,” Paula said.

“What?”

“I don’t know
yet.” Paula got up and paced the distance the small room would allow. “But we
will
do something.”

Mid-morning, John Prempeh called Paula to ask her if she had
a statement to make on the death of Heather Peterson. Paula had prepared
herself for media inquiries, but Prempeh was the last person she wanted to talk
to.

“We’re devastated
and saddened by her death,” she said. “She was a valued asset to the Street
Academy. Because it’s an ongoing investigation, I can’t comment any further
than that.”

“Had she been
drinking heavily?”

“Mr. Prempeh,”
she said sharply, “as I just said, I can’t comment any further.”

“What about the
possibility that she committed suicide?”

“Nothing
further, Mr. Prempeh. Good day.”

She dropped the
call in disgust.

At the end of the school day, Paula found Diane sitting alone
at the teacher’s desk in the first classroom marking students’ papers. Paula
asked her how she was feeling. Since Heather’s death, she had been very quiet.

“I’m a little
better, I think,” Diane said. “I haven’t been sleeping that well though, and I’ve
been thinking of moving out of the Voyager. Every time I catch a glimpse of the
pool, I feel sick to my stomach.”

Paula pulled up
a chair. “Diane, the chief inspector called me this morning about Heather’s
autopsy and toxicology results.”

Diane sat up
straight. “What did he say?”

“They’ve
concluded that Heather drowned accidentally. They claim she had a high alcohol
concentration in her blood, so they think she drank heavily, went swimming and
drowned because she was so intoxicated.”

Diane jerked her
head back, as if someone had tried to prod her in the face with a garden fork. “What?
Intoxicated!
But she hardly drank. And no
way
she’d go swimming in
the nude. What kind of crappy investigation is this?”

“That’s what Gale
and I were saying to each other this morning,” Paula said. “We’ve been asking
ourselves if we missed something? I feel like we have. Did you see Heather on
Sunday?”

“No, only
Saturday afternoon. We hung around the pool for a while and then went back to
our rooms when the light started to fade.”

“Was she
downcast?” Paula asked. “Did she say whether she and Oliver were having any
problems?”

Diane dropped
her gaze.

“What’s wrong?”
Paula asked.

“The police inspector
asked me if Oliver and Heather had been getting along well, and I answered that
I thought they were, but that isn’t true. On Saturday, while Heather and I were
talking by the pool, she said she needed some advice on something. She told me that
in the time she’d been seeing Oliver, he’d gone from asking her to help him get
to the States to asking whether he could accompany her when she went back home
to Portland; and just recently, he proposed marriage to her.”

Paula’s
eyebrows shot up. “Go back to Portland with her,” she echoed. “Marriage? What was
Oliver thinking?”

“That was
essentially Heather’s question. Honestly? I think she started something she
would never have been able to finish properly. The way I saw it, she was less
in love with Oliver than with the novelty of being with a black man.”

Paula was
surprised. “Oh? Why do you say that?”

“I’m sure I’m
not the only one who’s noticed these white women who come to Ghana and get swept
up by the whole African virility myth. You know, all that jungle fever
nonsense.”

Diane’s tone
was bitter and she was frowning in distaste. Paula had never seen this
judgmental side of her, and she was shocked.

“And on the
other hand,” Diane continued, “Oliver may have had ulterior motives in their
so-called relationship.”

Paula was puzzled
by these analyses. “You don’t think he was in love with her either?”

“In a way,
but…”

“You don’t
trust him? I mean, what exactly are you saying?”

“I guess that’s
it,” Diane said with a shrug. “I
don’t
trust him.”

Paula watched
her for a moment as she brooded. “Let me ask you something, Diane. It’s very
personal, so you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to. Did you and Heather
ever fight over Oliver?”

Diane sighed
and put her pen down. “Okay, I’ll tell you what happened. A while after I
started working at High Street Academy, I got interested in Oliver. I mean,
look at him. What red-blooded woman wouldn’t be?”

Paula smiled
slightly, but wasn’t about to admit she agreed.

“But after I
got to know him a little,” Diane continued, “my character meter started sending
me alarm signals. It’s hard to explain; but at first, his focus seemed to be
all about me; but then I realized that underneath it all, he’s really all about
himself. That’s when I backed off and left him alone. Then Heather got here and
I saw her falling for him, and I didn’t like it—for her sake, I mean.

“So, about a
month ago,” Diane continued, leaning closer to Paula and lowering her voice, “I
was coming out of my room at the Voyager when I saw Heather going downstairs.
She’d left her door ajar. As I passed it, I saw Oliver inside her room,
watching TV with his shirt off. He didn’t see me. When I got downstairs, I
bumped into Heather as she was coming back up. I don’t know what got into me,
but I blurted out to her that she shouldn’t do anything she would later regret.”

Diane
paused,
wiping her sweaty palms on her skirt. “Of course, as soon as I said that, it
was me who regretted it. Heather got upset and accused me of being jealous of her
relationship with Oliver, and then we started bickering. Oliver heard us, and
he came down the hallway to find us arguing. The whole thing was ugly and
embarrassing, and I blame myself for starting it. But, you know, in the end, I
was only concerned about Heather. That’s all it was. I know it might have
seemed like jealousy, but it wasn’t.”

“I see,” Paula nodded,
even though she wasn’t convinced that no jealousy had been involved. Diane’s
head might be saying that, but Paula doubted her
heart
was.

“So anyone
suggesting I had it in for her,” Diane said with a weak grin, “don’t pay them
no mind.”

“Anyone like
whom?” Paula asked curiously. Perhaps she meant Oliver.