Free Mummy Dearest by Joan Hess Page B

although with only the faintest flicker of smugness, that Wallace had not been entirely inaccurate.
    “How—how dare you!” she gasped.
    Alexander cleared his throat. “I do think a glass of tea sounds like a jolly good idea. Claire, Peter, will you join me under the canopy?”
    “Nabil, fetch tea,” said Magritta. “Jess, grab a brush and come back down with me. I need to get a better look at a shard before we extract it from the wall. Hasham, Hany, close your mouths and get to work. We only have a few hours left today.”
    Shannon realized that a half-dozen tourists who’d paused on the opposite side of the yellow rope had overheard the distasteful conversation. Her face was flushed as she turned her back on them and began to scribble on her clipboard. After a moment, she went over to the truck and got into the cab.
    “Perhaps we should leave,” I said as Peter and I sat down with the girls.
    “Because of that spat?” Alexander chuckled maliciously. “It happens almost every day, and would in the evenings as well if Magritta were staying at the Winter Palace. She has a long-standing agreement with an Egyptian landlord to let a flat for six or seven months each year. I’ve never been invited there, but I expect it’s lacking in amenities. My father offered to put her up in an adequate hotel. He has a sense of noblesse when it comes to his employees. The butler was given a week’s leave to attend his mother’s funeral in Cardiff, and one of the upstairs maids was not sacked after she had complications from an emergency appendectomy and was bedridden for several weeks during the hunting season.”
    “A true humanitarian,” Peter said.
    I took a sip of the hot, sweet tea, then put down the glass. “I’d really prefer to go now. There’s really not much to see here. We can come back another day and go into some of the tombs.”
    Caron and Inez avoided looking at each other as we all rose. Alexander stopped at the edge of the hole and called down that we were leaving. The heat from the sun overhead was noticeable as we walked down the road to the entrance. When we reached the van, Bakr seemed to realize that we were not inclined to chatter and mutely opened the doors for us. Alexander got in the front seat, relegating the girls to the seat in the back. I found a handkerchief in my purse and did what I could to wipe the dusty perspiration off my face.
    After we were back on the highway, Alexander suggested that we stop for lunch at the restaurant he’d mentioned earlier. No one objected. The parking lot in front of the squattybuilding was almost empty, but it was well into the afternoon and the tour buses had already rounded up their inmates and headed onward.
    We walked down a sidewalk alongside the restaurant and found a large table under an arbor. Alexander offered to order for all of us and dealt briskly with a waiter in a reasonably clean apron. Beers and sodas were brought to the table. I was beginning to find the silence more oppressive than the heat, but no one seemed willing to offer so much as an idle observation.
    I was about to blurt out some inane comment when Alexander said, “I guess you’re wondering about Oskar.”
    I hadn’t been, but the topic was more promising than the weather. “He’s deceased, I gather.”
    “Yes, he died about four months ago—at the excavation site. The local police investigated and deemed it an accident. I think he was murdered.”

CHAPTER 4
    “No, sir, you are wrong,” said Bakr, having reluctantly joined us at my insistence. “It was not murder. Chief Inspector el-Habachi was in charge of the investigation. He is a very smart man, and thorough. I myself accompanied him when he interrogated the guards on duty, who were most certain that Oskar Vonder–something, I cannot recall his exact name, was alone that night. His wife said he had been drinking, and this was confirmed during the autopsy. Chief Inspector el-Habachi examined all the evidence before he