Death at the Voyager Hotel (12 page)

“Let me ask you
something else,” she said. “When you went to the back of the hotel at ten
o’clock in the night, were the lights on around the pool?”

He nodded. “Yes
please.”

“And I know
they normally stay on all night. I wish at least
some
one had looked out
of his or her hotel window that night. Maybe they might have seen something.”

“But, madam, I think
the lights went out sometime during the night. Or someone turn them off.”

Paula looked at
him sharply. “Why do you say that?”

“When I first see
the pool that morning, the lights already turn off. By that time, it was four
minutes before six. Normally they go off at six, automatic.”

“How could
someone turn off the lights?”

“The inverter.
You can use the on-off switch, or if you like, you can push the reset button
and the lights will come on again automatic at the next cycle.”

“You know how
to do that?”

“Yes. Mr.
Edward teach me.”

“Oh,” she said.
“Besides you and Mr. Edward, do you think anyone else at the hotel knows how to
turn off the inverter?”

“No. Mr. Edward,
he don’t like too much people to know, so only him and the night security guard.”

“I see.” She
reflected on that a moment. “Amadu, thank you.”

She had guessed
he was from northern Ghana, so she thanked him in her rudimentary Hausa, which made
him smile broadly in appreciation.

“Listen,” she
said, going into her purse, “you’ve really helped me and been very patient. I
know you’ve lost your job and things are hard. Let me give you a little
something to help you in return, okay?”

“Thank you, madam.
May Allah bless you.”

“And you.”

As Paula walked
back to the street to pick up a taxi, she thought deeply about her conversation
with Amadu. She liked him, but more than that, she
believed
him, and he
had given her a couple jewels of valuable information. A serious question now
arose: Was Edward, a man she and Thelo had known and trusted for years, having
a secret affair with Heather? Had the affair gone bad? Or had he lusted after
her, only to be spurned? Had he turned off the pool lights that night, and if
so, why? The underlying question was critical: could Edward have killed
Heather?

By the time Paula made it back to the mall, Stephan and
Stephanie were more than ready to eat at the food court. Paula firmly refused
their request to dine at the new McDonald’s.

“We ate at the
one on Oxford Street only last week,” she said sternly. “That’s enough to last
you for months. We didn’t have all this cheeseburger stuff when I was your age.”

“Did they have
Oxford Street when you were our age?” Stephan piped up brightly.

“Yes, we did,
as a matter of fact,” Paula said with some indignation. “I’m not
that
old.”

Stephan nudged
his sister and they both began to giggle.

“Oh, it’s
funny?” Paula said in mock outrage.

“It’s Sunday,”
Thelo scowled at her. “Why not treat them to McDonald’s?”

“Don’t you
start, Mr. Cholesterol,” she said. “You need to take off some weight yourself.”

He rolled his
eyes, but didn’t argue. Paula thought he
might
be thawing out a little
toward her, but there was some way to go. They agreed to eat at
Papaye
, a
wildly popular and always crowded restaurant that served a delicious variety of
roasted chicken, savory rice and coleslaw.

While Thelo
helped the twins with their choices, Paula excused herself and walked quickly down
the mall promenade, which was packed with youngsters flirting or sitting around
texting—or both. She was looking for the shop where Oliver had bought Heather her
swimsuit as part of his effort to cheer her up on the last day of her life.

Paula found it—a
store called “Sun and Sand,” which obviously catered more to expatriates than
Ghanaians, who aren’t much into swimwear, she reflected. A couple of bored young
assistants were inside the otherwise empty store and seemed relieved to have
something to do as Paula went in and introduced herself. She asked if they
remembered a slim, young white woman and a Ghanaian man coming in on the
previous Sunday to buy a tangerine-colored swimming costume, as Oliver had
described it, but neither of the assistants had worked that day.

“Do you think you
still have that outfit?” Paula asked.

“I think so,”
one said. She went to one of the carousels and looked through the hangers.
“Maybe this one?”

She held it up
and handed it to Paula. It fitted the description and the quality was excellent,
although it was a little too bright for Paula’s taste and clearly made for
women with much trimmer hips than hers.

“Will you like
to try your size?” the girl asked.

“No,” Paula
said, suppressing a laugh. “I just wanted to see what my friend said she bought
last week. Thank you.”

 On her way back
to the restaurant, Paula called Gale. “Come into work a little early,” she told
her. “I’ve just been talking to Amadu, the watchman on duty that night. He told
me some interesting things we need to discuss.”

That night, it was Paula’s turn to put Stephan and Stephanie
to bed. They chose one of their favorite
Ananse
stories and leaned
against her on either side as she read. By now, she could almost recite the
thing by heart. As she was tucking Stephanie into bed, the little girl suddenly
asked, “Mummy, are you and Daddy angry at each other?”

Oh, dear, Paula
thought. Nothing escaped the notice of her sensitive daughter. “Why do you ask,
sweetie?”

She shrugged.
“I don’t know. I just thought you were.”

“Well, sometimes,
even though Mummy and Daddy love each other a lot, they have disagreements. But
everything will work out fine, okay? Don’t worry.”

“Okay, Mummy.”

Paula kissed
her daughter on the forehead.

“It’s just like
when Stephanie makes me angry in the nighttime but then I like her again in the
morning,” Stephan declared in a muffled voice from somewhere underneath his bed.

“Stephan!”
Paula exclaimed. “What are you doing under there?”

“I lost a Lego,
Mummy.”

“You can look
for it tomorrow,” she said sternly. “You just had your bath and now you’re
crawling around on the floor? You’re going to get dirty.”

“Found it!” he yelled
triumphantly, his little hand shooting out from under the bed with the recaptured
fugitive piece of Lego.

Thelo was in his study working at his laptop. He didn’t look
up as Paula came in and sat down in the chair near his desk.

She eyed him
for a moment. “Stephanie just asked me about what’s going on between you and
me.”

 “Mm-hm. And?”

“I responded
that we were having a little disagreement but that we’d soon get over it.”

“Okay.”

“Okay, so can
we talk about it now?”

He looked away
from the computer, but still not directly at her.

“I know you felt
I excluded you when I went to see Edward,” she said, “and for that, I’m sorry.”

“But then you
went and talked to Amadu today after my advising against it,” Thelo pointed
out. “You asked me to call someone at CID to see if the case could be looked at
again. I thought about it and decided you were right, so I contacted Dr. Biney,
because although he’s not a CID employee as such, his work is highly respected
and he’s very influential. Everyone listens to him. But after our long discussion
in which he promised to try and help next week, you go right ahead and do what you
had been planning to do in the first place. So what was the point of the whole
exercise? Why did I even bother?”

“It’s still of
value,” she insisted, “and I really appreciate that you called him. We could do
with his assistance. But there are questions that bother me
personally,
and
I can’t rest until I get the answers—questions that men may not be so sensitive
about—like why Heather was naked in that pool.”

“I see. So I
suppose now that you’ve spoken to Mr. Amadu, you have the answer?”

“Well, no, I don’t.
But he had some interesting information I would like to discuss with you.”

“Go ahead,” he
said in a supercilious tone she loathed but forced herself to ignore. “I’m
listening.”

She swallowed. “For
one thing, he thinks the only reason Edward sacked him is because Heather was
very friendly toward him.”

“Toward Amadu?”

“Yes. He says
Edward was jealous of him.”

“I would expect
Amadu to say something like that,” Thelo said, snorting with contempt. “Obviously
the boy is bitter about his dismissal and is trying to cast aspersions on
Edward.”

“Could be,”
Paula said, but doubtfully. “Also, it appears the pool lights were off for some
period overnight and only Amadu and Edward knew how to switch them off.
Furthermore, I learned from Amadu that Edward was at the hotel very late Sunday
till around midnight.”

“I hope you’re
not suggesting Edward had something to do with Heather’s death,” Thelo said,
frowning. “If anything, I would consider Amadu the prime suspect.”

Paula
hesitated.

“You’re telling
me you’d take the word of some low-class, illiterate watchman over that of a trusted
friend of ours?” Thelo asked in disbelief. “If Edward were jealous of Heather’s
friendliness with Amadu, he would have sacked the boy long before her death.
It’s clearly because Amadu messed up on his job that he was sacked. Don’t
believe people just because they seem honest and earnest. They are some of the
worst liars.”

Paula saw an
opportunity to turn this conflict around. “That’s why I need you, Thelo. To
show me the pitfalls. Can you help? If you’re behind me, I can’t go wrong.”

He let out his breath
sharply in frustration. “Paula, the point is that it’s not our job. I’m not a
detective anymore. I run a business. You’re not a detective either. I can’t
back you up on something for which you’re not trained and that could, at least
in theory, involve dangerous criminal elements. The very best we can do is what
we’ve already done: ask for help from an expert, Dr. Biney.”

They were
silent for a while, the hum of the air conditioner the only sound in the room.

“At this point,”
Thelo took up again, “I don’t trust you, and I tell you, it’s not a good
feeling. I’m even afraid you’re going to do something disgraceful like go to Edward
and accuse him to his face of foul play.”

“I’m not going
to do that.”

“Oh, I’m so relieved
to hear that, Detective Paula.”

That was the
last straw. She stood up to leave the room. “I’m tired of your sarcasm.” At the
door, she stopped. “I feel you think I’m somehow undermining your authority.
That isn’t my intention at all, but you should know that I’m not done asking
questions. I can’t stop now.”

He ran his hand
over his bald head and down his face, a gesture of exasperation that Paula knew
well. The wall between her and her husband was now frozen solid.

Early the next morning, Paula told an eager Gale about her meeting
with Amadu.

Gale drew in
her breath. “Is he sure it was eleven thirty? Oliver said he left at
eight
thirty.”

“Amadu is
positive, and I don’t think he’s lying, either.”

“So let me get
the timeline right,” Gale said, “Amadu came to work at nine that night.”

“Yes.”

“He went to the
back area of the hotel at ten and did a patrol, and that was the only time he
did that for the whole night.”

“Correct,”
Paula said. “Let’s say he got back to the front of the hotel—the lobby or the
sentry box—ten to fifteen minutes later.”

“A little more
than hour after that, at eleven thirty,” Gale continued, “Oliver comes out of
the hotel and goes home. Did Amadu see Heather around anywhere at that time?”

“I asked him
that too. No.”

Gale leaned
against the wall and hugged herself with her arms crossed. “Why would Oliver
say eight thirty if he really left at eleven thirty? What if this Amadu is
mistaken, or even lying? Do you trust him more than Oliver?”

“Amadu has no
reason to lie.”

“He does if
he
killed Heather.”

Paula pressed
her lips together. “That’s exactly what Thelo suggested.
And he’s furious with me for turning my suspicion
on Edward Laryea.”

“Edward
Laryea!” Gale exclaimed in surprise. “You’re suspicious of
him
now?”