"I did have some juice, Russell man."
"Juice. Did it taste funny?"
"It wasn't mine. I just had a sip."
"Who gave it to you?"
"Dottie."
By lunchtime the clouds had miraculously disappeared. The morning's deluge was settling into puddles and potholes of muddy water or flowing up and down the city's slanted streets and alleyways, looking for somewhere to go. A weak sun was doing its best to show its face through a haze of gray. As the day brightened, so, it seemed, did people's moods.
Our group congregated at a post-eruption building that housed a collection of souvenir shops and boutiques and a busy cafeteria-style restaurant. Hundreds of tourists were laughing and chattering away in a hundred different languages, enjoying the sunny respite. Even though there was an extensive indoor dining area, most were choosing tables in the outdoor courtyard, hoping the sun would last long enough to dry them off while they ate their authentic Pompeii hot dogs and pizza slices.
I also chose an outside table, situated near the restaurant's entrance. From there I could keep an eye on the counter and the door to the women's washroom through which I'd last seen Charity disappear. I scoured the courtyard for the rest of the family but saw only Dottie and Flora at one table, obviously waiting for Charity to return, Jackson, looking much better and sitting by himself near one edge of the courtyard, and Ted and the twins at the opposite edge shovelling down sandwiches and colas.
Many minutes passed. What the hell do women do in the can? Just as I was about to get suspicious the bathroom door burst open, expelling a huffing Marsha and then a few seconds later Charity. Marsha joined her husband and sons while Charity calmly proceeded to the cafeteria counter to order lunch. The bathroom door opened again and out came Errall.
"You'll never guess what I just overheard." Errall plopped herself down on a folding chair next to mine.
"Aren't you eating anything?''
I looked at her, keeping Charity in my peripheral vision. "I was waiting for Charity to get done in the washroom. What did you hear?"
"First of all, if you need to do more than pee...well, I'd wait until I got back on the ship if I was you.
Men are so frigging lucky they don't have to sit down. It was disgusting in there."
Yeah, yeah, tourist spot bathrooms are gross, no big news there. "Errall?" I prompted.
"Well, while I was in the cubicle, Charity and Marsha came in and they had a major blowout."
Now she had my attention. "They were arguing?"
"Not at first. Marsha started by saying how Charity had always been her favourite aunt-yeah, tough call there, girl-and how she hoped Charity would reconsider changing her will-get this-for the children's sake.
Hah! She wants the money for a facelift."
"I take it Charity wasn't buying it either?"
"She was actually pretty quiet at first, listening to what Marsha had to say. And boy, did she have a mouthful to say. She said the kids needed the money for medical reasons."
"What?" This surprised me. Did the twins or Kayla have health problems? "What's wrong with them?"
Errall smirked. "According to their mother-and I'm sort of quoting here-Kayla is a nymphomaniac and Nigel and Nathan are burgeoning fags and they all need significant psychological and psychiatric help from expensive psychological and psychiatric-type doctors. End quote."
I choked back a laugh. "Oops. I bet that went over as well as a makeup counter in a lesbian bar."
"Yeah, uh-huh, but not funny, Quant. Anyway, when Marsha was done spouting, Charity clued her in on a thing or two. She told her in no uncertain terms that the boys were both straight as arrows, but even if they weren't, the only one who needed psychiatric help was their mother and that Kayla was only following in her mother's footsteps."
"Yikes." I winced, hearing every biting word in Charity's chilliest of tones. I glanced over at my client who was now carrying a tray of foodstuffs over to Dottie and Flora. She was a vision of tranquility. There was nary a sign of the recent fireworks in the bathroom. And I expected none. Charity was a woman used to that sort of thing.
"There's more," Errall told me. "Apparently Marsha pretended to be pregnant to get Ted to marry her then didn't have the baby for four more years.
"That's a rather lengthy gestation period," I commented.
"Unless she gave birth to an elephant," Errall agreed. "Anyway when Charity reminded her of this, Marsha went off the deep end. She threatened her, Russell."
My heart did a little thrum in my chest. "What exactly did she say?"
"She said, 'If you change your will, you'll be sorry'." Errall recited. "And that's a direct quote. And then she left. Russell, Marsha Moshier could be the killer."
I nodded, thinking this over. "Kayla told me her parents are on the verge of divorce. Marsha might want the money to make a clean getaway and start another life somewhere."
"But Ted could get half of it with the right lawyer," Errall countered.
I nodded again. "Better than nothing at all, which is what Charity is giving them now."
"I'm getting some lunch," Errall told me, getting up. "You want anything?"
"Sure," I said, distracted. "Whatever you're having is fine."
As I watched Errall walk away, I pursed my lips and considered my suspects. Sure, Marsha Moshier wanted, maybe even needed the money. But who in this screwed up family didn't? Any one of them could have killed the damn cat. Any one of them could have sent Charity the threatening notes. Any one of them could have arranged to have Charity attacked in the medina and our tender sabotaged. Certainly some of the Wiser clan were higher on my list than others. Nick Kincaid had a secret I had yet to get to the bottom of. Jackson Delmonico had been skulking around Tunis and refused to tell me why. And one of those two men was carrying around an awful lot of cash. Patrick Halburton, although not fond of his son-in-law, seemed to be covering for him. James McNichol was growing more and more unhappy to have his romantic intentions towards Charity scorned, he'd been threatened by another passenger and reportedly was out of money. Ted Moshier knew the most about engines and could have orchestrated the problem with the tender. Marsha had just shown her true colours in the bathroom. And what of the others?
Were they truly innocent, or was there something more about them I hadn't had a chance to uncover yet because I was too busy running around the ship or guarding Charity?
"Russell, look!"
I spun around and found Errall, empty-handed, crouching over me but looking off in the distance.
I craned my neck to see what she was staring at.
"There," she said, "by those crumbling Roman columns."
Oh yeah, good one. We were surrounded by Roman columns and everything around us was half crumbling. "Where? What is it?"
"Didn't you say you saw Jackson snooping around in Tunis? Well, there he goes again."
At the mouth of a narrow passageway was Jackson Delmonico in a tête-à-tête with a local-looking youth. What was going on here? How could he possibly know anyone here? The two of them disappeared down the passageway, Jackson behind the young man. I jumped up from my seat and headed in their direction, trying not to run so as not to draw unwanted attention. But by the time I reached the entrance and peered in, there was no sign of them. So, in I went.
The hubbub of the courtyard was quickly replaced by stone-cold silence; towering thick walls on either side of me soaked up noise like gin into Auntie Mame. The tunnel-like passageway was only wide enough for maybe two medium-sized people to pass. Not that this was an issue, as there seemed to be no one else around. Hesitantly, I tripped along the uneven stone pathway as it zigzagged and slanted downwards, hearing only the echo of my own pattering footfalls. Every so often I passed a doorway or side alley and worried that Jackson and his cohort had taken one of these other routes rather than the one ahead of me.
But a faint glow in the distance beckoned me. Something was up there.
The light ahead of me grew stronger and the rough walls defining the thoroughfare became brighter.
Finally, I reached my destination. It was another courtyard, much smaller than the one outside the restaurant, much dirtier and smellier too. There were two dozen young men, also dirty and smelly, loitering in the area. And in the middle of one group of four or five of them was Jackson. He was handing over some cash, no doubt from one of the rolls I'd found in his room.
Oh.
It was a drug deal.
Immediately, I knew he had been in the medina in Tunis for the same reason. He hadn't been hiring thugs to kill Charity or following me for some nefarious purpose. He was scoring drugs to support a habit he had no way of feeding while on The Dorothy. A luxury cruise ship is a tough place to be for a dedicated drug addict.
His bloodshot eyes met mine as I stepped into the dusky light of the courtyard. We regarded each other.
There was nothing to say. After a moment I noticed that the young men were all staring at me too, wondering if I was another buying customer or a source of trouble that needed to be dealt with. They were scraggly hoodlums but I knew I'd have no chance against all of them at once. With a menacing look on my face, I slowly turned around and headed back into the passageway. I'd gone about a hundred metres when I heard the running footsteps. Shit. They'd decided I was a problem and now I had one
too. They were coming after me.
I took off like a jackrabbit. If only I could reach the restaurant, I knew I'd be safe. I could feel my adrenaline spike and the muscles in my calves and thighs pump. My breathing grew shallow and regular as I hit my stride. I listened for my pursuers, trying to figure out how far behind me they were and if they were gaining. But then, horror of horrors, I realized the steps weren't coming from behind me, but from in front of me! How did they manage that?
It was too late to adjust. Just as I zigged a dark figure zagged and ran directly into my arms.
It was Errall, out of breath and looking shaken.
"Russell," she said, barely able to speak between deep breaths as she pulled away from me. "Come back. I think something's happened to Charity."
"What is it?" I asked her as we both began jogging back to the courtyard.
"Charity left to take a walk and look at more ruins while Dottie finished her lunch. Then we heard screams," Errall explained, her breathing growing a little more regular as we ran.
"You let her go alone!" I yelled, quickly matching her level of distress as I heard the news.
"I threw myself down in front of her to try and stop her but she stepped over me...you asshole!" she yelled back.
Okay, I deserved that. She was a lawyer on holiday; I was the bodyguard who'd abandoned his client.
Thinking Jackson might be the linchpin of this entire mystery, I'd left Charity's side to pursue my prey. I knew I'd made what might turn out to be a grave mistake.
"Flora went with her. I thought they'd be all right."
When we reached the entrance of the courtyard we came to a halt. Everything looked just as I'd left it.
People were eating lunch and drinking coffee, enjoying the sun. I looked at Errall as if to say, what the hell are you talking about?
"I guess only some of us heard the yelling." She pointed towards a winding street to our right that inclined sharply upwards. "Up there, she headed up there."
"You stay here in case she comes back!" And with that I ran off to find my client.
I made my way up the path, ducking into alcoves, checking empty buildings and gutted structures, each one looking much the same as the last. Why had she come up here, I wondered, especially when she knew her life was in danger? But even as I silently scolded her, I knew Charity couldn't change her independent ways any easier than a Saskatchewan duck could resist migrating south in winter.
Eventually I stumbled upon a small, roofless enclosure: four walls of battered mosaics with dim tints of colour that hinted at past magnificence. This was probably what the two women had been studying when the dirt-filled clay urn came crashing down on their heads. When I found them, Flora was on the floor, her back against the wall, legs straight out, glasses off. Charity was hovering over her, ministering to a nasty-looking scrape on her granddaughter's forehead.
"Oh Russell, thank God you're here," Charity exclaimed when I dropped to the ground next to them.
"Are you all right?" I asked Flora.
"I'm okay," she answered. Her cheeks were flaming red but the scrape, although angry-looking, had only bled a little. Otherwise she appeared to be fine, just shaken.
"She got bonged on the head! She is definitely not okay!" Charity vehemently disagreed.
"What happened?"
"I wanted to escape that fool, James. He'd come by our table, to moo his pitiful love for me yet again.
I've told him as plain as I'm able that Dottie is my love, so he never could be, but it doesn't seem to help.
"I thought I'd come up here to get away, see more sights while the others finished eating. Flora kindly offered to come with me." She patted her granddaughter's hand and looked up at me. "But I'm obviously as much a fool as James, aren't I, Russell?" She shook her head as if disappointed in herself. "I'm sure that's what you're thinking, and I concur. I seem to be losing my capacity for learning from experience. I should have known this wasn't safe. I should have listened to you and stayed aboard The Dorothy. But I hate to be boxed up like that, especially when there are all these wonderful sights to be seen." She raised her arms to indicate the faded, patterned walls, gazing at them with sparkling, forever-inquisitive eyes.
"What happened here?" I asked again, giving the smashed pottery a pointed look.
"Someone pushed that pot on our heads. On purpose! Look at them up there!" Charity pointed a reedy finger at a row of similar pots on the top ledge of the wall where the ceiling should have been. "They are perfectly safe up there. None of them are sitting in anything nearing a precarious position. Someone had to have pushed it!"
I gave Charity a stern look and said, "Do not move. Stay right here."
I ran out of the enclosure and several metres further down the street until I found a set of uneven stone steps that led up to the roof level. I found the area above where the women were waiting and inspected what there was to see. Indeed the remaining containers, each partially buried in a thick red clay, seemed like they had been in their current position forever, heavy and immovable unless another volcano erupted...or a murderer did. Had James followed the women after being spurned once again? Where were the others? Other than Jackson, who I'd been with at the time of the incident, I couldn't be sure. I went back down.
"Can she walk?" I asked, inspecting Flora's eyes for signs of disorientation or dizziness.
"Yes I can," Flora answered for herself. "If it wasn't for Grandmother pushing me away, I'd have been killed, Mr. Quant,"
she told me with teary eyes, the eyes of someone who was just grasping the fact that they'd narrowly escaped a violent death. Again.
As we helped Flora into a standing position, a worrying idea came to mind. Was the murderer just a lousy shot with a clay pot? Sure, they were probably unwieldy, but enough to have missed Charity and nearly hit Flora? It was a niggling feeling, the kind that bugs me like an ill-fitting shoe with a pebble in it.