Frederick Ramsay_Botswana Mystery 01 (18 page)

Chapter 40

Brenda’s feet hurt. She hadn’t realized that the concrete walkway turned into gravel before she would reach the scene of the late Henry Farrah’s demise. She limped back to her room, making a point to snub Leo, Travis, and the Russian guy. And she was in no mood to put up with any more of Bobby’s evasion. He’d been into something and she needed to know what it was. Like the time he ran from the accident. The jerk was drunk, the paper said so, so it wasn’t really Bobby’s fault. She wasn’t about to lose her regular paycheck, so Frankie had fixed it with a garage and the car disappeared and the new one showed up. She didn’t see any problem there, and it did give her a hammer to bonk him with when he started to stray.

She hurried along the path and stewed over his behavior, past and present. First he screws them both over by selling out to Leo and now something else was on his pea brain. He knew about Travis, for sure, but he musta let it go. No surprise there. She had a way, things she could do, like, in bed and stuff, which would keep anyone except a eunuch in place. So what?

Since she’d dropped her purse with her key, she had to knock to get in the room. She thought she heard the slider slam, but she couldn’t be sure. Bobby let her in. Why was he grinning? She saw the series of beer cans lined up on the dresser and thought she had her answer.

“You shoulda seen it. Cops and animal people and everything.”

“Did you see Leo?”

“Just for a second when he went by. Travis and the Russian guy were there, but I didn’t say anything to them either, you know.”

“What did he look like?”

“Okay, I guess. I don’t know, Leo’s Leo. The lion was, like, huge. I mean it was like a half a ton or something.”

“Not a half of a ton. Lions don’t weigh a thousand pounds. Maybe five hundred, though.”

“Yeah, well, this dude was humongous. They had him on this tarp and were getting ready to put him in the back of this truck when I left. Where’s my purse? I want to call Desiree and tell her. She’ll flip.” She found the bag and began rooting around in it. “What happened to my cell? I always keep it in here.”

Bobby busied himself with reading the label on his beer can. “Hey, did you know they brew this stuff right here? It’s called, like, Saint Louis beer and has a steamboat on the label, but they make it here.”

“What did you expect, they call Mr. Budweiser to ship them their beer? You seen my phone? I’m sure I had it this morning.”

“There isn’t a Mr. Budweiser, you’re thinking about that Coors guy, and you were yakking with your slutty friend Desiree at breakfast. Maybe you left you phone on the table.”

“Desiree is not a slut. On the table? I don’t think so. Shit, where is it? Give me your phone. I’ll call my number and follow the ring if it’s, like, in the room. If it isn’t and someone found it, maybe they’ll answer.”

Bobby passed her the phone. “So the lion didn’t, like eat Leo?”

“Leo? Why would he eat Leo? Leo wasn’t the dead guy.”

“What? I thought they said Leo was killed. That fat police guy said he was killed. Then he said the lion got him.”

“No, dummy,
you
said it was Leo. The police said ‘one of our party’ and you said Leo. Why did you jump on Leo being the dead guy, anyway?”

“It wasn’t Leo? Who was it?”

“That stuffed shirt, Henry Farrah. What’s the difference? And again, why’d you go for Leo.”

“It couldn’t be Farrah. I saw…”

“Saw what, Bobby. You saw what?”

“Nothing. I just remembered something, like…maybe I thought I saw him at breakfast or something.”

Brenda knew men, and Brenda knew Bobby. He was lying like a rug. She’d need to press this. Maybe after a matinee or in the shower later, she’d get him to talk. She punched in her cell phone number and listened for it to ring. Nothing. No ring, no answer.

“This is definitely not a Kodak moment. This is a WTF moment.”

She tossed the phone back to Bobby. It hit him on the forehead. He didn’t even see it coming. He was in, like, a daze. Weird.

***

The gray monkey had managed to flip the phone open. Someone once suggested that if you put an infinite number of monkeys working at typewriters and waited long enough, eventually they’d recreate all of the world’s classics. Whether that would include advertising copy and genre fiction was not specified. This monkey acted alone. The beeping sound the buttons made when he pushed them delighted him so that he kept up a steady stream of notes. Would the same infinite number of monkeys playing keyboards recreate all of the world’s great music?

A single monkey with a cell phone?

Unlikely.

He spent the better part of an hour admiring his reflection in the phone’s shiny surface. He poked and scratched and managed to initiate the phone’s picture memory. Brenda had saved stills and some short videos. The latter were not the sharpest pictures possible, but they did move. A sequence of images showing a family of lions popped up on the phone’s tiny screen. They were moving but he didn’t hear any sound. When they stopped he poked at the screen again hoping to prod them back into action. They didn’t move. He had yet to acquire the concept of replay.

He was busy chittering his low opinion of predators in general and lions in particular when the phone vibrated. Startled, he leaped back on the branch and the phone slipped from his grasp. It fell, bounced off a tree limb, hit the riverbank, and plopped into the Chobe. A nearby crocodile who’d been watching the monkey, in hopes he would soon be thirsty and visit the river, watched disinterestedly as the bright silver object splashed into the river and settled in to mud.

It would remain visible for less than five minutes.

Chapter 41

The sun had already set when Sanderson dropped Rra Kaleke off at his home and she pulled up in front of hers. Exhausted, all she wanted for was a bite of dinner and a bed. She would not be so lucky. The lights were on and music poured through the windows and doors.

She opened the door. “What is this noise?” David Mmusi, had his MP3 player attached to speakers and he and Mpitle were dancing in the main room. Michael sat slightly askew and propped up in a chair in the corner, smiling, and nodding his head to the music’s beat.

“Mpitle, David Mmusi, how is this?” The young couple jumped apart as if they’d been prodded with a sharp stick like the men use to move their cattle.

“Mma, I have dinner for you,” the young girl said and hurried to the stove.

“Good evening Mrs. Sanderson.” This from David.

“How was your day?” She could hardly hear Michael over the din.

“Turn that music off, please. It is harming my ears. So, you are here again, David? Does your mother know you are here?”

“I was just going, Missus.”

“Sit down, sit down, David. You can stay. I am only worrying about your parents. If they are okay with this situation, then I am also.”

She flopped down in the best chair and kicked off her shoes. “What a day. We have a dead man, a dead lion, and a very thick policeman.”

Mpitle carried a bowl of stew to her. She placed it on the small table and returned to the cooking area for utensils and tea. When she returned, Sanderson noticed her scarf.

“Where did you come by that scarf? I am thinking it cost some pula.”

Mpitle’s complexion darkened. “It is a gift from David.”

“David, have you a rich uncle, perhaps, that has died and left you a fortune? Does the Safari Lodge pay you so much you can afford…” She turned the edge of the scarf over to read the maker’s label, “a Dolce and Gabbana scarf? I do not know about these things but I am pretty sure this one cost more pula than I can earn in a month.”

“I did not buy it, Mrs. Sanderson, I found it. I wish I could have bought it. Someday I will buy many wonderful things for Mpitle.”

“Of course you will. Where did you find it?”

“On my way to the bar this morning when I went to work. Just on the path near where there are tree limbs that hang over. I think one of those limbs must have pulled it free.”

“If it was at the lodge, you must return it. Some guest there will be looking for it. It is expensive, not a thing they will dismiss.”

Mpitle looked distressed. The beautiful leopard pattern showed off her dark skin. Sanderson’s heart went out to her. She had so few beautiful things. She remembered the Americans at the scene earlier and their careless, dismissive attitude. She sighed.

“David, tomorrow, you must go to the manager and ask if anyone has inquired about a missing scarf. Mpitle, you take that thing off and fold it away very carefully. We will say that if no one has asked for it in the next week, you can keep it.”

Mpitle’s smile lit up the room brighter than the dim bulb suspended from the ceiling.

“And you, Mr. David Mmusi, what do you mean by showering such expensive things on my daughter? What are your intentions, young man?”

David looked apprehensively at Sanderson, saw her smile and returned it, relieved.

“One hundred percent honorable, Mma Michael.”

“Hah,” said Michael. They all laughed.

“You can resume that music, but softer please.”

The strains of American pop music again filled the room but at a significantly lower volume. Sanderson spooned her stew and wondered about the scarf. If David found it at dawn, it must have been dropped very late at night, or else whoever lost it would have returned to find it. Or…or what? Or it might have been lost during the struggle that happened when that man was stabbed. Sanderson insisted, in spite of Superintendant Mwambe’s refusal to listen, that the man did not fall on a stick. She fingered the spear point in her patch pocket, the weapon she’d retrieved from the dust bin. What if…? Sanderson grimaced and spooned another bite. She was a game ranger, not a detective. It did not fall to her to think about these things.

“What of your lion and dead man, Mma?” Michael had not forgotten even if the young people had. They, like their generation, she thought, were focused almost exclusively on themselves and in the moment. Michael had developed a more philosophical attitude since…

“Was the lion the same one you have been hunting with Rra Kaleke and Mr. Naledi?”

“Ah, that is a puzzle. This man from the lodge met with Sekoa. Do you remember me telling you of the pride that has a range out near Natanga?” Michael nodded. “Well, this lion was pushed out by another, younger male and he found himself near the lodge. I do not know why; that is a mystery. He must have been running from something or been very hungry to come so close.”

“Then it was not the lion you and Rra Kaleke were hunting?”

“No, no, that one is far away by now. No, this is another lion, much bigger. That first lion was young. Anyway he is lying there with his big head on the man’s chest, like he is taking a nap, you know, asleep, only both he and the man are dead.”

“This lion killed the man then?”

The two dancers stopped to hear the story. “No, that was the part that Mwambe refused to hear. The man was dead when the lion found him. The only wound he had were teeth marks in the shoulder where he was picked up and carried.”

“Perhaps the shoulder biting was enough to kill him. It could be. I think I would just die if a lion grabbed me by the shoulder.” Mpitle’s eyes were as large as saucers.

“No, I do not think that is the case. There was almost no blood in that wound. That man’s heart had stopped beating before Sekoa picked him up, I am thinking.”

“So what do you believe happened?”

“Some one wearing a scarf and having a spear point stabbed that man and left him for dead. He…or she—I think the scarf makes us say it is a she—did not know about the lion, or they would not have been out there looking to murder somebody. No person with a working brain would do that.”

The idea of a lady murderer brought the music and dancing to a dead stop. Murder is not unknown in Botswana, just rare, and this close to home, unique.

Chapter 42

As it happened, Brenda spent the afternoon alone. Her efforts to seduce her husband and wheedle information from him fizzled. Her invitation to a couple’s shower failed. She stripped and stood under the hot water for fifteen minutes. He never showed up. She dried off, wrapped a towel around her waist and stepped back in the room. No Bobby. No note, no goodbye, nothing. The draperies to the deck were not drawn and she looked out toward the trees and the river beyond. A gray monkey sat on the deck staring at her.

“See anything you like?” she asked, dropped the towel, and gave it a very professional grind and bump. The monkey put a finger in his nose. Brenda knew nothing at all about monkey communication but she was pretty sure it did not intend the gesture as a compliment. She gave him a one-fingered salute. The monkey returned it.

She spent the remainder of the afternoon shifting through her clothes and packing some of them. Rose Hayward messaged they would be flying out in two days. Brenda sorted and packed things she knew she’d not be wearing again. She held up a simple black dress, her jacquard Dina Bar-el with a scoop neckline. She couldn’t remember why she packed it. It had been on sale for five hundred dollars, and she thought she heard they might meet the President? Something like that.

The missing items still rankled. What happened to her cell phone? She used the land line and tried to call it again. The local phone system could not connect to her cell. And what happened to her other glove? Then she realized her Dolce and Gabbana scarf had gone missing as well. The thing cost over three hundred dollars. Bobby had flipped when he’d seen the bill. The clothing, she guessed, might have been left in Travis’ room, but the cell phone?

Then she got it. Bobby, the master dolt. He’d taken it so she couldn’t call anybody. He did that once before when he got angry about something she did. What now? Travis probably, but with Bobby, you could never tell. She’d get even when he came back. She’d freaking lay into him like the time when he’d skipped the hit and run.

The sun set and still no Bobby. Probably drinking in the bar. Too bad the lion died. She’d like to feed him to it.

***

Leo, Travis, and Greshenko spent the afternoon looking at properties. They stopped for lunch at the Old House Restaurant. Travis thought it was a mess, although the food tasted good and the size of the steak seemed gargantuan.

“This country produces some of the finest beef in the world,” Greshenko said. “They ship most of it to Europe, where it is sold as Scotch beef. Apparently the French and Germans think only Scotland or the British Isles can breed cattle up to their standards, and certainly nothing this good could possibly come from Africa. That attitude is the sad residue of colonial bigotry, by the way. They came to this continent, exploited its people, its natural resources, obliterated its history, and practiced genocide in places. Yet, even now, they think of this part of the world as backward and benighted.”

“Does anybody have it right?”

“America, a little, Russia, maybe more so, and the Chinese, Japanese, absolutely. Asians understand how it feels to be discounted by white people. Europeans and Americans have always missed the Asian genius. And now they, we, will pay for our stupidity. China and Japan will own this continent if they want to.”

“Little strong there, Yuri.” Leo had heard all this before. His contacts with the State Department prior to their visit had included a thorough briefing, at which the poobahs had admitted some of their past errors but still maintained the US had not been tarred with the same brush as the former colonial powers. He hoped they were correct. He, for one, wanted to invest in the country in a modest way.

“It’s just that I have such wonderful memories of this country. You should have seen it. Gaborone was barely a village. What you see of the capital has all been built since the early sixties. Sir Seretse Khama, who would become the country’s first president, was knighted by the British, and independence was brand-new. It used to be called Bechuanaland before, and Lobatse was no more than a collection of rondevals, lots of them.” Greshenko’s focus shifted to long distance, back in time. “The changes that have occurred in the years since the Brits left are nothing short of phenomenal. You Americans think you define the cutting edge of nearly everything, but you are beginning to look and act more and more like tired Europeans. You want to see the future? Look no farther than this country.”

“Perhaps you’d like to immigrate?”

“If I could, I would.” Greshenko looked wistful.

“Greshenko, how did you come to your present…ah, occupation?”

“When the USSR, as you called us then, became just R and F, Russia and friends, so to speak, it created an economic cataclysm. You cannot go from state socialism to capitalism in a period of months or even years. The whole infrastructure my generation had come to accept and rely on collapsed before our eyes. Before, we had employment, housing, all of the necessities. Not in abundance or necessarily the in the manner we might have wished, but all preordained and certain for most of us. Party loyalty produced security. Then, nothing. As a…government functionary…”

“You mean out-of-work spy.”

“That would be an oversimplification, but yes, I suppose that would be one way to put it. I had no, how do you say, marketable skills. I tried many things, and one day I came to a fork in the road. I chose one way. Perhaps I should have gone the other. Who knows? Sometimes the choices we make have consequences we cannot predict until it is too late.”

Greshenko shrugged and changed the subject. “So, Travis, tell me about the gas reserves and mineral possibilities here. You understand, I hope, that if your company were to come into Botswana to exploit the minerals or gas, the government would be a major stakeholder in the enterprise?”

“What? Why?”

“They believe that the minerals, the diamonds, this country’s wealth, you could say, belong to the country and to its people. The profits from the exploitation or sale must benefit the owners, not the exploiters.”

“That’s crazy.”

“As I said, if you want to see the future? Look no farther than this country.”

They spent the rest of the afternoon discussing extraction of minerals and the outside possibility of franchising the Old House in both Botswana and in the States.

Toward evening they parted, each to his own room. Leo let himself in and reached for his pills. His indigestion had not improved; his headache had started up again, and he had cold sweats to go with the belly ache and angina. Great. His supply of nitroglycerine tablets down to three. He’d have the pilot bring some from the states when he flew in to pick them up in two days. He popped several pain killers and antacids. Getting as bad as Farrah…no, not Farrah, Farrah had had a blind date with a lion. Poor Henry.

He stretched out on the bed and closed his eyes. When he was a child, his grandmother would put a damp washcloth on his forehead. That would have been nice, but he hadn’t the energy or inclination to fetch one for himself.

As he relaxed, he had his epiphany. Not a near-death experience, although that’s what he thought at first. To have a near-death experience, the logic goes, you have to be near death. And he was not going there. Not yet. Not today. But he did realize that he’d made the correct move setting Travis in place. He needed to step back. Lucille had been after him to slow down since his last coronary. He guessed he should. He could function as the chairman of the board and use what time he had left to travel and play at his real estate speculation. Maybe he should join Greshenko and move here. That assumed the Russian could separate himself from his masters. He wondered if Lucille would like to live in Botswana. Probably not.

Before he slipped into unconsciousness, in that no-man’s-land between waking and sleeping, an image flitted through his mind. He, not the lion, lay flat on the grass, his head resting on Henry’s chest. The image cased him to groan. Then he drifted off to sleep. A sleep so complete that he did not hear someone knocking at his door or an attempt to open the slider to the deck. He had double-locked it after the monkey nonsense.