Maria Hudgins - Lacy Glass 01 - Scorpion House (27 page)

The procedure for extracting and purifying nicotine, the one Lacy thought sounded the simplest and best from her online reading, called for adding ether to a tar/nicotine/water mixture, then discarding the water. The nicotine would migrate into the ether and the ether could then be driven off by gentle heating in a hot water bath. An open flame, of course, would cause an explosion. Assuming the departing ether was safely vented to the outside, almost-pure nicotine would be all that remained in the flask.

It
must
have been Graham. He had opportunity. He could have done the extraction any time he had the lab to himself. He could have easily filched Susan’s deodorant, doctored it up, and returned it to the exact spot where he’d found it. He had the knowledge. He had the guts. But was he that evil? Lacy didn’t think so, but she had to admit she didn’t know what sort of person it would take. Would she recognize a killer if she worked across the hall from one? If she ate lunch with one a couple of times a week? How many years had people worked with and gone to church with the BTK killer, never suspecting he was anything but a solid citizen?

Could Graham have stood by while his own wife was arrested for the murder he’d committed? Might he have put Shelley’s deodorant in Susan’s room to throw suspicion on her?

Problem: Where’s the motive?

In case it ever came up again, Lacy photographed the window, the wasp nest, and the dead wasps from several angles. She was glad she’d bought a large memory card for her camera.

Part of her burned to run straight to the police with what she now knew. Another part thought it might be wiser to calm down, get her ducks in a row, and run these new ideas past Paul Hannah before she did anything drastic.

* * *

Paul and Kathleen returned to the house shortly after dark, Kathleen harboring a “cat that ate the canary” expression. Officials at the SCA, overwhelmed by the reality of the herbal papyrus, seemed to have forgotten all about the eviction.

“They want Kathleen to teach lessons to new conservators at the University.” Paul said, with a smile and a nod to the older woman. Lacy, sitting in a rocking chair, her bare feet pulled up into the seat, delighted in the new sparkle in Paul’s eyes.

“Wait a minute!” Roxanne rose half-way out of her chair. “Why? What sort of lessons?”

“Lessons on how to repair papyrus.”

“How do they know about Kathleen repairing papyrus?”

Paul stepped back, defensively. “I’m afraid I let it slip,” he muttered. “Sorry, Roxanne, I was so relieved I forgot they weren’t supposed to know.”

Lacy checked Roxanne’s face for signs she might be about to go airborne and attack Paul or Kathleen or both of them. Roxanne glanced from one to the other but said nothing.

Kathleen pursed her lips several times. “And they would never have known if Paul hadn’t told them. They were amazed. Even after we told them what Horace had done, we had to show them where the cut had been.”

“This is all Horace needs. Another charge.” Roxanne lowered her forehead into her hand. “Oh, well. What’s one more felony? They can’t hang him but once.”

“Honestly, Roxanne, I don’t think they’re even going to worry about it.” Paul scanned the porch and asked, “Where are Graham and Shelley?”

“They’re off on a three-day river jaunt. On a felucca.”

“Really? How strange.”

“I thought so, too,” Roxanne said. “What did they tell you, Lacy? Have they been planning this for some time or was it spur-of-the-moment? They hadn’t mentioned it to me. I came back from Luxor and, poof, they were gone.”

“Fairly spur-of-the-moment I think. Graham said Shelley needed to get away.”

A taxi pulled up ahead of its own dust cloud and Marcus Lanier stepped out, settling his rolled-brim Stetson on his head. “Can you folks put me up for one more night? I’m headed back to Seattle tomorrow.”

Roxanne threw one hand to her breast. “Oh, but you mustn’t! Your father needs you here!”

“The lawyer agreed to take his case. He and Dad talked and they seem to get along.”

Paul pulled a chair around for Marcus and offered to fetch him a drink. Marcus waved the offer away but took the seat. “I have to leave. We’re having a baby the day after tomorrow. Did Dad tell you?” His listeners nodded and he went on. “This is our first baby and Dad’s first grandchild. It’s a girl and we’ll name her Abigail,” he smiled as he said the name. “My wife’s due date is next week, but I called her an hour ago and she said the doctor’s sending her to the hospital first thing in the morning. They’ll induce labor as soon as I get there.”

“Is everything okay?” Roxanne asked, letting the last word trail off as if she wasn’t sure how the question, though obvious, should be phrased.

“I don’t know. We didn’t have time to talk much. Seemed like she was in a hurry to hang up so I told her I’d catch the next plane back. I need to be in Cairo by nine in the morning so I’ll be gone before most of you wake up.”

Paul said, “How’s Horace?”

“Not good. I told him the lawyer couldn’t help him if he was dead. He’s on suicide watch—did I tell you that already? I swear it’s like you can see him shrinking. Like he’s trying to fold into himself …” Marcus’s voice cracked. He paused and gazed out toward Hatshepsut’s temple. “I told him, I said, ‘Dad, don’t you want to see your baby granddaughter?’ He just looked at me like …”

The house phone rang.

A
few hours earlier that same day, under the felucca’s multicolored canopy Graham lay on his sleeping bag which, in turn, lay on a rug on top of another rug. He wasn’t too sure about the cleanliness of either rug but the sleeping bags he and Shelley had purchased in Luxor were new. Their skipper, a Nubian man who called himself Captain Marvel, steered the boat with one bare foot while trimming the sail with his hands and singing an easy, rocking song. Captain Marvel did all the cooking, he built the fire his passengers gathered around at night, entertained them with stories and songs, and pulled the boat over to the bank periodically so his guests could have bathroom breaks. A couple from New York and a college student from Rhode Island rounded out the group.

Shelley had stretched out, face down, on the white-painted wood deck forward of the mast. She wore a one-piece bathing suit and was pretending to be asleep under the sun, but Graham knew she was faking. She knew everything now, and he knew she was struggling to deal with it by pretending to be asleep so she wouldn’t have to talk to him.

She knew he hadn’t been stung by any scorpions.

She knew that he knew she had put her own deodorant in Susan’s room. Although Graham didn’t specifically remember it, he must have told her his idea for a “perfect murder” at some time or other. He must have told her how the area under the arms was thin and more susceptible to penetration by small molecules than any other part of the body’s surface. He must have told her how easy it would be to mix a strong poison such as nicotine with a small amount of any solid deodorant and mold it, like ice cream on a cone, back onto the surface of the tube.

Shelley was lying up there, deciding what to do next.

Graham had managed to get her released from police custody by fingering Horace Lanier. He had planted damning evidence in Lanier’s lab, tampered with Susan’s note pad, bought the scorpions from a local man, and stuck them in his own dresser. So what was eating Shelley, now? Hadn’t he fixed things for her? What more could he do?

He ducked under the boom and crawled up, forward of the mast. He sat beside his wife’s prone body, his spine against the mast. On the left bank ahead, a man and a camel plodded toward the little farming village of Esna. A donkey trotted along the river bank pulling a two-wheeled cart piled high with sugar cane.

“Get up, Shelley. Put a shirt on before you get burned.”

“I’m not going to get burned,” she mumbled.

“What are you going to do?”

“Lie here.”

“That’s not what I mean and you know it.”

“I want to go home.”

“Now?”

“Now.”

Graham looked across the dunes to the west. Were those clouds? Probably just smoke from sugar cane fires, he decided. He stood and looked past the boat’s big white sail to the stern. Captain Marvel was on his cell phone and he looked worried.

* * *

Roxanne outran Lacy to the phone. “Qurna Expedition House,” she announced, then listened. A moment later she turned to Lacy and mouthed, “It’s Graham.”

Lacy hung around, helping Bay set the dinner table. She added a plate and chair for Marcus, poured the wine, and stuck a paper napkin beside each plate. From the refrigerator, she pulled out five small bottles of water and distributed them around. Since the Wythe group arrived they had dispensed with the formality of pouring bottled water into glasses. Everyone seemed to like the reassurance of cracking the seal on a new bottle.

Roxanne ran her fingers through her tangled hair. “Oh dear! Is it coming from the west?” Lacy heard her say. Then, “Yes, Marcus is here, but he’s leaving early tomorrow morning. It seems his wife is having a baby and he has to be there for the big event … well, I can understand that, but his father really needs him here!” Another pause, then, “He’s taking the red-eye to Cairo.”

Lacy ran to the kitchen for silverware and placed it around the table, still listening.

“Where are you now?” Roxanne glanced around the room, obviously looking for something in particular. “Very well. See you then.” She hung up. “We’re going to get rain, probably sometime tonight. Their felucca trip has been called off. Where’s our radio?”

“Will wonders never cease?” Lacy’s tone belied the alarm in Roxanne’s.

“You don’t understand. Rain along the river is no problem. We can use it once in a while. Rain above Lake Nasser is no problem either. But rain west of here, in the desert, is a big problem. Flash floods. Have you ever been in a flash flood?”

“No, but I’ve read about them. I should have realized … uh, oh. This valley is shaped rather badly, isn’t it?” As Lacy said it, she pictured the Valley of the Nobles as she had viewed it that morning from the hill above the temple. To the west of their bowl-shaped valley, the Valley of the Kings ran parallel to the escarpment between them. The limestone bedrock had been sculpted by water into ridges and buttes millions of years ago. West of these canyons—miles and miles of desert. She recalled how the road from Hatshepsut’s temple to the Valley of the Kings ran along the bottom of a continuous, curved valley. “We’re sort of at the bottom of a funnel.”

“Remember, the desert has no vegetation to soak up the water.” Roxanne grasped Lacy’s elbow and steered her toward the porch. “When it rains, the water runs down the hills and into the wadis, joins up with the water from other wadis, and comes round the bend at Seti’s temple like Hannibal’s elephants. I was in Luxor for the last flood and I don’t want to go through that again!”

“We may have to. What can we do to get ready?”

Roxanne stopped, turned left, then right, then left, as if she was debating what to do first. “Bay!” She called back to the kitchen. “Hold dinner! We have work to do!”

* * *

Paul and Marcus ran to the roof and snatched up several large blue tarps. Kathleen, Lacy, and Roxanne grabbed burlap bags and flashlights. All five ran to the tomb. Akhmed the night watchman jerked to attention, snapped his trusty AK-47 to port arms position, and stood, feet apart, blocking the tomb’s entrance.

“It’s only us, Akhmed,” Roxanne called out, lest he begin firing. “Rain is on its way. Put down your gun and help us.”

Roxanne switched on the interior lights and, in less than an hour, they had blue tarps spread across the tomb’s entrance and anchored with rocks. They covered the vent above the new chamber and the generator by another expanse of blue polyethylene. Inside the tomb, they gathered all their equipment, all the pottery, everything that wasn’t stuck to the walls and crammed it into burlap bags.

Everything but the coffin.

Kathleen looked at it and cried. “I can’t leave it here! I can’t!” The coffin lay in the burial chamber, the lowest part of the tomb. “If water comes in, it will be ruined!” She wrenched away from Roxanne’s grasping arms. “I’m going to stay here. I’ll stay here until the danger is past.”

“Don’t be silly,” Roxanne muttered. “What would you do if the water did come barreling down the hall? Hold it back, like Moses parting the Red Sea? Shovel it out?”

“I can’t leave it!”

“You have no choice. If you leave, it may be all right. If you stay and it isn’t all right, you’ll simply drown. What good would that do?”

Lacy made a suggestion which she knew would be squelched, but she figured she might as well try. “Can we lift it?”

“Of course not!” Kathleen cried. “It would crumble. I haven’t finished stabilizing it.”

“I mean, can we lift it just a little? If four of us lifted it up a few inches, the fifth person could slide a tarp under it and we could wrap it up. Waterproof it.”

It took a quarter-hour of discussion, but they decided to go for it. Akhmed hauled in a wooden pallet from nearby construction work. They spread the tarp across the pallet, rolled up the edges, and then, on the count of three, Kathleen, Roxanne, Lacy, and Paul lifted the precious relic about eight inches off the floor while Akhmed and Marcus shoved the tarp-covered pallet underneath. They all heard ominous crackles and crunches as they lifted, but the coffin stayed in one piece. It was done in less than ten seconds.

They wrapped the tarp, envelope-style, around the coffin making certain no edges would be exposed to rising water. They shouldered the burlap bags, trekked back down to the house and ate a very late dinner.

P
aul brought Lacy a cup of coffee with cream and no sugar, then sat on the porch floor and leaned back against the column adjacent to the one she was using. “I’ve missed you.”

“Missed me? You were only gone one day.” She tilted her head and smiled. His statement surprised her.

“But we haven’t talked since Kathleen and I started the papyrus repair project. That was three days ago.”