Free Death on Tour by Janice Hamrick

suddenly remembered I still had her blue WorldPal bag inside my room and felt very guilty and a little afraid. What if the police searched my room and found it? The red notebook had Millie’s name on the front page. And they’d think I’d stolen it and all those other things as well. How would I possibly explain it? I felt a little panicky.
    “How do you know all this?” Kyla was asking.
    For some reason, Alan did not take his eyes from my face. “I stopped at the front desk on my way here and saw the police arriving, so I asked Mohammad.”
    I pictured myself running back to my room and tossing the bag in the nearest garbage can. Going back to my room right now would be the most suspicious thing I could possibly do. I was just going to have to brave it and hope that they either didn’t notice it or didn’t search the rooms.
    “I thought Millie broke her neck?” Kyla was nothing if not persistent.
    “They think that she was stabbed in the back of the neck. She died so quickly there was no blood to speak of.”
    I gave a little shiver, picturing again the way Millie sprawled in the sand.
    Kyla shook her head in disbelief. “My God, it could have been any of us then. Anyone who got separated from the crowd for a few minutes. Did the bastards steal her purse?”
    “No. Her purse was under her body. It didn’t appear to be touched, so it doesn’t look like it was a robbery.”
    “But then why kill her?” I asked.
    Alan shrugged. “That’s what the police are trying to learn.”
    “Well, it’s very tragic and all, especially for Millie, but I don’t see what the police are doing here at the hotel,” said Kyla with a touch of asperity. “Tempting though it might have been, it’s not like any of us stabbed her.”
    Appalled, I checked the level of her glass. Sure enough, she was halfway through that second gin and tonic and apparently the first one had kicked in.
    Alan looked bemused. “Tempting?”
    “Oh, come on. She was a first-class pill. You’ve been here the whole trip, don’t pretend you don’t know what I mean. The nonstop talking, the snooping, the unending string of complaints about every single thing. I don’t see why we should pretend we liked her just because she’s dead.” Kyla took another sip and another breath. “And I’ll tell you something else…”
    I cut her off before she could. “So what are the police going to do?”
    He shrugged. “As far as I can tell, they’re here to collect her things from her room and they want to ask us all once more if we saw anything. Mohammad was trying to dissuade them from interrupting our dinner. He seemed to think they’d already covered all that on site.”
    “Which they certainly did,” agreed Kyla. “That took forever. I know we didn’t get as much time at Saqqara as we should have.”
    And there was more. Kyla gets talkative when she’s drinking. “I imagine they want to keep this as quiet as possible. It’s the last thing the Egyptians need—a tourist murdered at the pyramids. If you want to know what I think,” she went on, merging seamlessly into what I could tell was going to be a long rant.
    I was so relieved the police weren’t going to search all our rooms that I didn’t even try to stop her. But if they were here to collect Millie’s things, that meant there was no way I was going to be able to return the bag. I was sure Anni or Achmed the driver searched the bus pretty thoroughly after we got off each day, but maybe I could find a way to stuff it down between a couple of seats. But what if someone saw me? Maybe I should just dump it in the trash somewhere. After all, the items had already been stolen and so were already lost to their owners. But no, that was just being weasely. I suddenly became aware that Kyla and Alan were both staring at me. I could feel my face turning red.
    “What in the world are you thinking about?” asked Kyla, grinning. “You look so miserable.”
    “Nothing. Well, no, not really. I was