Kwei Quartey - Wife of the Gods

“Yes,” Gyamfi said. “The last evening Gladys was seen alive, Adzima had had a quarrel with her-you know that already. Now, after he got angry with his wives and started to beat them up, a cousin of his comes to Bedome and asks him why he’s making so much trouble and tells him to come to Ketanu to drink beer.”

“Who is the cousin? Do you know him?”

“Now I do. The cousin brought him to Jesus My Soul Chop Bar, and they ate chinchinga and drank beer and got drunk.”

Dawson’s heart was sinking again. “He was with the cousin all the time?”

“Yes. And that cousin has some friends who sat and drank with them also, and I found one of them and the stories agree. They drank till late, and then Adzima went back to Bedome drunk.”

Just as with Timothy Sowah, the chance that Adzima had killed Gladys was dwindling quickly.

“What about the bracelet?” Dawson asked, without enthusiasm. It didn’t make much difference at this point.

“That I had a little more trouble with,” Gyamfi said. “I told Togbe that some boys from Ketanu got to the body first after Efia had left, and that when they heard Togbe coming, they ran and hid and saw him steal the bracelet. He denied and denied it until I told him Inspector Fiti and I would take him to Ho Central Prison. Then he confessed.”

“What did he do with the bracelet? Does he still have it?”

“No, he sold it to a trader in Ho. I will try to get it back.”

“Thank you, Gyamfi.”

Dawson clasped the constable’s hands, and their eyes met warmly.

A UNTIE OSEWA’S MEAL THATnight was rice and grilled tilapia spiced with ginger and hot pepper, with slivers of ripe plantain fried in palm oil until crispy. They ate outside by lantern light and talked. Alifoe was quite the comedian. As Dawson recovered from a stitch in his side from laughing, Uncle Kweku turned to his wife. “Darko sounds so much like his mother when he laughs,” he said to her.

“Really?” Dawson said. “No one has ever told me that.”

“I always thought the same thing,” Osewa said quietly. “But I didn’t want to say so in case it brought sadness to you, Darko.”

“No,” he said. “On the contrary.”

“What happened to Auntie Beatrice?” Alifoe asked.

“Alifoe,” Osewa said sharply.

“It’s okay,” Dawson said. “No one knows what happened, Alifoe. I was twelve years old, and you were a baby, of course. After you were born, she came twice to visit. The second time, she stayed a few days and then she said she was going back to Accra. She never arrived home.”

“What could have happened? Maybe the tro-tro had an accident?”

Dawson shook his head. “That was checked by the detective assigned to the case. There were no accidents between Ketanu and Accra that day.”

Alifoe looked perplexed. “Then she must have got off somewhere on the way.”

“That we don’t know,” Dawson said. “But why would she do that?”

“Are we even sure she got on ?” Alifoe persisted.

“Of course we’re sure,” Auntie Osewa said, sounding irritated. “How many times do I have to tell people that it was me who went with her to the tro-tro stop to see her off?”

“I’m sorry, Mama,” Alifoe said. “I didn’t know that.”

“Tell us about it, Auntie Osewa,” Dawson said. Now was as good a time as any.

“It was before noontime,” she began. “She wanted to get home a little early, so she didn’t want to wait until the afternoon to start out for Accra. Do you remember that, Kweku?”

He nodded in agreement.

“So anyway,” Auntie Osewa continued, “we walked to the bus stop talking and laughing. She seemed so happy. Even when she talked about Cairo she was cheerful. Both of us were happy together, and we agreed I should visit Accra and bring Alifoe when he got a little older. When we got to the stop, I wanted to be certain she got a tro-tro that was safe, so I let the first one go on because it was a broken-down old boneshaker, but the second one was all right. I made sure she got a good seat at the front near the driver, and then we kissed good-bye.”

“And that was the last you saw of her?” Alifoe asked.

“Yes,” Auntie Osewa said sadly.

Dawson had stopped eating. He felt sick.

“Darko?” Auntie Osewa said. “Are you okay?”

He looked at her without seeing all her face. Had he heard her right?

“You said Mama sat at the front of the tro-tro?” he asked. His voice sounded distant and small.

Auntie Osewa looked quizzically at him, hesitating. “Yes, that’s right. Why are you asking me that?”

Dawson’s blood turned chilly. What his aunt had just said could not have been. She must have had a false memory of what had happened.

Or she was lying.

Mama had always been scared to death of sitting in the front section of a tro-tro. She wouldn’t do it. What did she always say? If there’s an accident, I don’t want you flying through the windscreen. Nor me .

They went to bed late. Dawson lay on his back in Alifoe’s room with one arm crooked under his head as he stared up in the darkness and his thoughts roamed. Nothing felt right to him. What Auntie had said was twisting in his mind like a fish on a hook. A good seat at the front of the tro-tro… at the front… at the front . That phrase over and over. Memories of his boyhood visit to Ketanu flooded back. Something had been wrong back then too.

Sitting at that table in Auntie Osewa’s house and eating her delicious meal while the grownups chatted about things that bored Darko and his brother stiff… and then suddenly, Mr. Kutu’s fleeting look at Mama. Dawson remembered it clearly. Mama’s eyes had met Kutu’s in a snatched instant so brief that no one would have expected it to bear a message. But it did, and Auntie Osewa had read it and understood. In turn, Darko had seen everything. One, two, three stolen glances whose meaning disturbed him without his quite knowing why.

What about later that evening, as they played oware? Auntie Osewa had disappeared for a while. To set the rabbit traps , she had said, and the quality of her voice had felt so strange to Dawson that he had looked at her in surprise.

“Cousin Darko?”

Dawson lifted his head in surprise. He had thought Alifoe was asleep.

“Yes?”

“You’re not sleepy?”

“I never sleep well.”

“Oh.”

“Something wrong?”

“No, nothing.”

Dawson waited. He knew there was more.

“Cousin Darko, have you ever kept something inside you that you wished you could tell someone but you didn’t know whom to trust?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“And when you find someone you trust, you feel like telling him?”

“Whom do you trust?”

“You.”

“Thank you.”

“What would you do… I mean, how would you feel if you knew your mother and father didn’t love each other?”

“Mine didn’t.”

“Really?” Alifoe sat up in the dark. “It’s the same with Mama and Papa. I want to see them love each other, but it never happens.”

“And you can’t make it happen either. That’s what you mustn’t forget. If they fell out of love at one time, only they can get themselves back in.”

“Do you think I shouldn’t care so much about it?”

“You can care as much as you want, but don’t let it stop your life.”

Alifoe lay down again.

“Do you feel any better?” Dawson said.

“Yes, I do. Thank you, Darko.”

As soon as the first cock crowed in the morning, Dawson’s eyes popped open. He had been dreaming he was forcing his mother into the front seat of a tro-tro and she was screaming at him to let her go.