Sleuth on Safari Page 18

  I reached down and my hand froze on the fan as I heard a hiss. My eyes bulged.

  A slender, long snake lay a foot away. It’s pale greenish upper head was heavily speckled with brown and black.

  “I think it’s a twig snake,” Sonny told me.

  “That…that doesn’t sound so bad.”

  “Well, it’s not for me. I’m far enough away.”

  “And for me?”

  “It is. Bad. Very bad. A twig snake is highly venomous. And there is no—”

  “Now is not the time for a nature lesson, Sonny.”

  “Agreed. I need you to get up very slowly.” He was very nice and did not mention that I had failed, badly, at my first attempt at this. “These types of snakes usually don’t attack unless provoked.”

  I slowly stood, with my insect repellant fan in my hand, and its eyes followed me. And then its head as well. Its neck inflated, displaying its bright skin between its scales.

  “Uh-oh,” Sonny said. Even I knew its movement was not a good sign. “It feels threatened.”

  “Threatened? I’m the one who feels threatened!” I said through clenched teeth.

  Its bright tongue flickered in a wavy motion and it lunged. And so did I.

  “RUN!” Sonny and I yelled in unison.

  We took off and, I’m not proud of this—even though I would have thought the field guide would be in better shape than the customer service representative who sat all day—I overtook Sonny and beat him back to my suite and to the front door.

  “Did it get me?” I yelled. I whipped off my shoes and my socks. I didn’t feel anything but adrenaline. All I felt was my heart thumping in my chest. Was that the first sign of the venom working its death on me?

  I stripped off my pants and shirt. Standing in a sports bra and boy shorts, I yelled at Sonny. “Check me! Did it get me!”

  “Stop moving! Let me look.”

  “Or should you go get whatever you have to? Anti…anti—something!” I struggled to find the word. Was that the first sign that the venom was working?

  “Anti-venom,” Sonny said, while bent over trying to inspect my lower half, which I could not keep still. “There is no anti-venom.”

  “There’s no anti-venom here?” I asked. “Or anywhere?”

  “Nowhere. It doesn’t exist. Now stop moving! Movement only gets the venom through your system faster.”

  “Oh no,” I mumbled. It had bit me. This was it. I was going to die on vacation. Like Dr. Higgins. I was going to die, and my obituary would read that I died searching for my baseball hat. I didn’t even know what team the hat represented!

  “How long will it take?” I asked, resigned to my fate.

  “Symptoms appear in twenty-four to forty-eight hours.” He paused and looked up. “I think. Again, Ray really knows this best.” He started to get up. “Maybe I should go get him.”

  “No! Just show me where it got me,” I ordered him and he squatted back down. My breathing and heart rate were slowing. I willed myself to stop moving and my body obeyed.

  “I haven’t found any sign of a bite…yet. Bites are very rare, Naomi.”

  I plotted out what I’d tell Charlotte to do with my belongings and what to do about funeral arrangements. I wondered if my travel insurance covered the cost of shipping my body home. How would they ship home my body? A cargo plane? Does UPS do that kind of shipping? Or just a regular airline? Did it cost more than first class? Who cares? I wasn’t going to have to pay.

  Sonny got up, after completing a third scan of my body, and smiled. “Nope, you’re good. No bites.”

  “Really? Are you sure?” I looked down at both legs and saw no red marks. I ran my hands up and down my legs. All smooth. I was glad I had borrowed Charlotte’s razor. No evidence of fangs infecting me with its toxic venom.

  “I looked real close. Nothing. I’ll see you for the game drive.” He checked his watch. “See you in thirty.” He walked away as if we’d had a normal trek through the woods. My heart still raced, the remnants of our adventure not gone yet.

  Charlotte swung open the door. “Geri just called. Some kind of commotion outside her room.” She appraised me, standing outside our room in my underwear. “I’m thinking that was you.”

  “Fair to say it was.”

  Afternoon Game Drive

  I took a long hot shower after my traumatic hike. And I checked my skin again (and again) for signs of a snake bite. Fortunately, my subsequent searches were the same as my first. And the same for Charlotte’s searches. As she inspected my legs, she mumbled some unflattering things about my mind, but fortunately made no comments about the cellulite on my thighs.

  I arrived outside the lodge just as Sonny arrived at the cruiser. Ray was already waiting, putting the sundowner supplies in the vehicle.

  “Man, did you miss it!” Sonny yelled as he greeted Ray.

  “What?” he asked.

  Sonny pulled out his phone, tapped it a few times and showed it to Ray. “This! Tell me what that is.”

  “Wow!” He used his fingers to zoom in on the photo for closer examination. “That’s a Thelotornis capensis, commonly known as a twig snake.”

  Sonny looked pleased with himself. “I told you, Naomi.”

  “You took a photo of it?” I asked. He showed me his phone. “You took a good photo of it!” I looked up at him. “When were you able to take a photo of it? Why did you take a photo of it when we should have been fleeing the scene?”

  “I saw it when you knelt down to tie your shoe. I thought it would just go away and I wanted Ray to tell me what it was.”

  “Umm…I wonder if the click of the photo antagonized it?” Ray pondered.

  Sonny nodded and agreed. “It did inch closer after I took the photo.”

  “I…I didn’t hear the photo. Wait, snakes don’t have ears, do they?”

  “True,” Ray answered. “But they feel vibrations and may hear low frequency noises.”

  “So the photo was a bad idea?” I asked, staring at Sonny. His tip was declining by the second.

  “Oh no, it was a good one,” Ray answered.

  “I thought it was,” Sonny assured me.

  “Really, it was,” Ray tried to assure me.

  “Because if you identified the snake, you could locate an anti-venom?” I asked.

  “Well, yes, if there were an anti-venom.” Ray looked at the photo again. “But no anti-venom for this one.” Ray handed Sonny back his phone. “Geez, where did you see this? Where were you guys?”

  “Below the suites.”

  “Uhh…makes sense. That’s where they live. Moist. Lowland. In the shrubs and trees. I’ve never been down there. I don’t think anyone goes down there.” He looked from Sonny to me. “Why were you down there?”

  “Naomi lost her hat off the deck.” Sonny pointed to the hat sitting on my head.

  Other guests started to arrive for our afternoon game drive. Sonny went over to show them his photo and recall our adventure.

  Geri pulled out the lodge’s Safari Journal. She flipped to the animal checklist section.

  “Twig snake?” she asked. Sonny leaned over her shoulder and pointed midway down a page. “Yep, it’s on here.” She held her pen over the journal. “Does it count if I see a picture of it?” she asked aloud. “I heard you see it. So, I’m checking it off.” She marked the journal before placing it back in her satchel. “This is very exciting!” she declared before touching Sonny and then Ray on their arms.

  The photos even brought the family back together. “Zaden, you have to see this!” Zonah yelled out. Sabrina and Zaden ran over and commented on the photos.

  Ray looked at my hat. “Is this baseball hat that important that you?” he asked.

  “In hindsight, no,” I admitted.

  “You need to send me that photo,” Charlotte told Sonny as she climbed into the cruiser.

  “Oh, there’s more than one,” Sonny told her.

  “Nice,” I told him. “Our mother will be thrilled tha
t you chronicled my near-death experience on your phone.”

  “Those are some great photos!” Charlotte said, as I sat next to her in the first row. “I think that has a great shot at making it into the Christmas letter this year.”

  Morning

  My near-life experience behind me, I devised a new plan. A normal person would have seen the snake experience as a good reason, a very good reason, to stop the investigation into the possible murder of someone you didn’t know (and didn’t particularly like). But I was not a normal person. The experience spurred me on. It reminded me life was precious and no one had the right to extinguish it.

  “I need to look at the security video,” I announced to the room.

  “And why are you telling me?” Charlotte asked, the only other person in the room.

  “Just needed to talk about it out loud. Come up with a plan to get it.”

  “What, like maybe Zonah can hack into it?”

  “Really?” I hesitated. He was a suspect. I couldn’t ask for his help. “No,” I answered.

  Hacking wouldn’t help me. With no Wi-Fi, I couldn’t get access to the video. I needed the memory card, if it had one.

  She laughed. “I was kidding.” She shook her head at me. “Really, you have to let this go.” She returned to applying sunblock. “How do plan to do get the video?”

  “I’m glad you asked!”

  “Oh no. I am not calling Leticia again so you can get on her computer and she can think I’m crazy.”

  “That wouldn’t do me any good. Her computer wouldn’t be any help. I just need a few minutes alone in the common area so I can get the camera’s memory card.”

  “How do you even know it has one?”

  “I don’t know for sure but the camera looks like the ones we have at work and the ones at work have a memory card.”

  A security guard had pilfered a few items at the store once. As he watched the cameras’ live stream regularly as part of his job, he thought if he disabled the internet connection, there would be no record of the crime. He had been wrong. The memory card kept recording. Maybe the killer had thought the same thing.

  If there was a memory card in the camera, he (or she) would be seen headed toward the suites. That’s how the security guard got caught. He brazenly walked around after he disabled the internet connection, stole what he had planned to—over $10,000 in designer handbags—and returned to his office to restart the internet connection. It was an easy case to solve. Even our dimwitted manager was able to do it.

  My task was a little more difficult, as I would have to get the memory card without being seen. In an ideal world, I’d sneak out at night, grab it, review it, and return it. However, the threat of hyenas and other wildlife was far too real, so even I knew that wasn’t a good idea.

  “It’s usually slow this time of day,” I explained.

  “How do you know that?”

  “Just normal surveillance.”

  “No one does ‘normal surveillance’ on vacation.”

  “Advice is in the back stocking up drinks for the day. The waitstaff is finished cleaning up breakfast. Coral is in the back housekeeping the suites and doing laundry. Leticia is in her office, doing what she does. The only problem is the gift shop.”

  “And you think the gift shop can be my problem?”

  “I think you’ve never met a gift shop you didn’t like.”

  “True…”

  “And I was thinking you have a birthday coming up…”

  “True…”

  “And your big sister would like to get you a birthday gift.”

  “Does she now…”

  “She does. And she thinks it’ll take you ten minutes to consider your gift options, then leave.”

  “But not buy it?”

  “No, I’ll need another distraction later to put the memory card back. You can buy it then.”

  She paused, considering it. I knew she could be bought and she agreed. “I did see a scarf in there I’d like.”

  “Let me go first. I’ll sit on the couch for a while, make sure the coast is clear. I’ll give you a sign to abort if necessary.”

  “I look forward to it.” She did nothing to hide the mocking in her tone.

  “Give me five minutes.” I looked down at my watch. “So…you should leave in—”

  “I’ll leave in about five minutes.” She mumbled something. I started to ask what it was but figured I didn’t want to know. I also didn’t want to annoy her anymore. I couldn’t get the memory card without her.

  I left the room and looked both ways at the end of our path. I headed to the common area, walking in what I hoped would be considered a leisurely stroll. I sat on the couch, with my back to the surveillance camera, and monitored the area.

  The bar was empty. The outside dining area was empty. The gift shop was empty, except for the cashier, who looked bored. She would welcome the distraction of Charlotte’s browsing. Charlotte walked into the common area. She acted normal—she ignored me. She window-hopped for a few minutes and then went into the store. She gave a big greeting to the clerk and pointed her to an item in the far corner. Charlotte deftly positioned herself so the clerk would have her back to me.

  I got up and made as if I was heading to the front desk. To ask about the status of the internet if anyone asked.

  I quickly looked around. Everything was still quiet. I pulled over a chair to below the camera.

  I pulled out my iPhone, my excuse for my positioning—better angle for photos!—if anyone asked. With one hand, I held my iPhone, snapping a few photos. With the iPhone hand blocking the view of my other hand, I reached for the camera. Without looking, I felt around for where I expected the card to be. Nothing. There was only so long the area would be empty. I looked up and felt around again. I looked to the left and found a small slot, I opened it. Success!

  I grabbed the card, took a few more photos, and slid my iPhone and the memory card into my pocket.

  I climbed off the chair, trying to hide a smile. I felt like a child who had climbed onto the kitchen counter for a cookie without mom catching her. Charlotte was trying on another scarf and modeling it.

  “What are you doing?” Leticia asked, as I carried the chair back to its original spot.

  I startled at the surprise arrival. I kept myself calm and went with my usual excuse—the internet. “Searching for a better signal.”

  “It is temporary. We’re working on it. It’ll be fixed shortly.”

  “Oh, thanks,” I answered, as if it were the first time someone had said that to me.

  I put the chair back and fixed the pillow while she watched me. I put on a big smile, waved goodbye, and joined Charlotte in the gift shop.

  “Looks like you’re having a successful excursion.”

  “Should I buy it?” Charlotte asked, as she viewed her reflection. She twirled the tan scarf, with brown markings, around her, taking it in from all angles.

  “Maybe you should think about it,” I recommended.

  She nodded and handed the scarf back to the clerk. “Thank you, Bayode. I’ll be back.”

  We headed back to our suite.

  I ran to my computer and placed the memory card in a slot. I leaned in and eagerly waited for the screen to fill with the image of our lodge.

  “This should be entertaining,” she said. She grabbed her book and headed outside.

  “Really?” I had missed her sarcasm. I could be moments away from identifying the killer. This was riveting!

  The icon for the memory card appeared. I opened the application and pressed play. A time display appeared on the screen, showing the day we arrived, a few hours before check-in.

  A handsome man appeared on screen, pulling a large suitcase. I guessed he was in the group before us, checking out. Wish we had been in his group. Then a woman appeared and kissed him on the mouth. Isn’t that always the way? The handsome man was attached.

  I doubted many single men went on safari. The only bachelor on our trip di
ed before we got to know him. Unless you counted Zonah, or Zaden, which I couldn’t.

  I fast-forwarded to our arrival and watched everyone. I hoped to see something I missed. Some interaction between Dr. Higgins and a fellow guest or staffer that I had not noticed. Some furtive glance. Some angry glare. Just something.

  Our first full day passed with nothing eventful and then it was on to our second dinner. Dr. Higgins’ last meal.

  Without volume, Jack’s confrontation with Dr. Higgins was less threatening. Dr. Higgins sat alone and ate dinner. He looked comfortable. I didn’t think I would be if I were alone on vacation. I would have taken my meal in my room. Or asked if I could have joined one of the other groups. But not Dr. Higgins. He sat alone enjoying his steak.

  Jack paid him no attention to him during his meal and neither did Geri. No furtive glances. No signs that they were plotting his murder.

  Charlotte and I left after dinner. I was exhausted and had gone immediately to bed. So did Charlotte. Of course, we were escorted to our room. The staffer who took us was off screen only a few minutes.

  When he returned, he was with the Vankeys. Colin was carrying an overnight bag. Sonny appeared on screen and the Vankeys headed to their ride to the treehouse.

  Geri and Jack finished their dinner about that same time. A staffer, the same one who had taken us, escorted Geri back to her room and Jack headed for a nightcap (or two) at the bar. Again, the staffer reappeared within a few minutes.

  Dr. Higgins finished dinner and remained at his table after they cleared his dishes. His table was the closest to the bar and Advice brought him over a glass, with what I guessed was his nightcap of brandy. It was served in a sifter. He did what I expected the pretentious Dr. Higgins to do with an after-dinner drink. He looked at it, he swirled it, and he sniffed it before he sipped it. He savored the beverage. And he lingered at the table, reading a book and enjoying his brandy.

  The trio was the last to finish dinner. Someone brought Zaden an extra dessert and he was thrilled. Zonah and Sabrina looked content as he finished it.

  No one looked to be in a murderous mood.