Kwei Quartey - Murder at Cape Three Points

“I wish you the best. I imagine you’ll be very successful.”

“Thank you.”

His mbira, which was resting in the corner by the window, had caught her attention. “Do you play?”

“A little.”

“May I see it?”

He gave it to her and sat down again while she examined it.

“It’s wonderful,” she said, looking up at him. “I love mbiras. Where did you get this one? From the Northern Region?”

“No, I made it.”

She looked at him half disbelievingly. “Really?”

“I’ve been making them since I was a boy.”

“Oh my. Intelligent and talented.” She laughed playfully, and he recognized she was behaving differently toward him. She was more open, less guarded, and she was being flirtatious. He felt a disturbing twinge of excitement and made himself look away from her lovely face, framed by the soft lighting in the lodge.

She held the mbira out to him. “Play something, maestro.”

He smiled. “Okay.”

He played a lively piece with a recurring rhythmic theme. She sat forward, watching and listening intently, and applauding when he was done.

“Now I’ll play something with a different mood,” he said. “It’s an old tune I learned when I was a kid.”

This piece was more melodious, the notes blending with less of the traditional mbira discordance. For a while, he was lost in the composition. When he looked up again, tears were streaming down Dr. Smith-Aidoo’s face. He stopped playing.

“Are you okay, Doctor?”

She covered her face with her hands and began to weep. Dawson kneeled beside her, touching her arm.

“What’s wrong?”

“I can’t stop seeing it…”

“Is it the canoe?”

She nodded, trying to say something but choking on the words. Her body leaned toward him, and he supported her as her arms went around his shoulders.

“Something about the melody brought back memories.” She was sobbing. “I miss them. I miss them so much.”

She held on to him tightly, and he waited for her weeping to run its course.

“Better?”

“Thank you,” she whispered.

“It’s okay.” He made a slight movement to separate, but she wasn’t letting go. Instead, she allowed her full weight to push against him. He tried to shift his position but lost his balance and sank to the floor with her on top of him.

Then he didn’t know what was happening. He was on his back, and she was frantically kissing his neck and his face, her sweet breath coming fast. Her hand was in his shirt feeling the curve of his pectorals and stroking his abdominal muscles. She opened his shirt, kissed his chest. He thought he heard her whisper, “Please, I need it.”

She straddled him so he felt the heat and softness of her crotch against his rigidity.

She unbuttoned her blouse and unsnapped her bra, exposing her round breasts, succulent yet firm with large, dark areolas that were in shocking contrast with her fair skin. She was unforgivably lovely. Maybe he touched her breasts, maybe he didn’t, but he turned his head away and covered his eyes as she opened undid his belt, and unzipped him. He felt like he was watching himself in a dream from a perch high up on the wall. His head was swirling. She tucked her fingertips in his waistband and gave a gentle tug. He lifted his hips slowly, and she eased his trousers and briefs down. She wrapped her fingers around his stiff shaft and gently stroked up to the tip. It responded, surging up to strike her palm and bouncing back to his belly with a soft thud.

Dawson opened his eyes with a vision of Christine standing across the room.

He gasped. What am I doing?

“No.”

Pushing Fiona off to the side, he scrambled up frantically, hastily stuffing himself back in and zipping his trousers.

“Sorry,” he muttered. “Sorry. I can’t.”

She was lying on the floor, staring up at him in bewilderment.

“I can’t,” he stammered. “Sorry. Please go, Doctor. Sorry.”

He left her, went into the bedroom, and shut the door. He sat on the edge of the bed with his head between his hands. He was hyperventilating and his chest was tight. What are you doing? A wave of nausea went through him.

He held his breath, listening for her. Was she still there? For a terrifying instant, he was afraid she would come into the bedroom. Finally, he heard the front door close as she left.

Had he touched her? He might have, but only her breasts. She had made him hard, and he had let her. Was that adultery?

You don’t get involved with anyone in a murder case.

He sprang up with a sudden desire to take a shower, but as he began to remove his clothes, he heard knocking on the door. No, he thought. Was she back? He stood where he was, paralyzed. His phone rang. It was Chikata.

“Dawson, are you there? I’m outside your door.”

What a relief. “Okay, I’m coming.”

He opened up the kitchen door and Chikata came in. “What’s going on?”

“What do you mean?”

“I just saw a woman leaving in tears.”

“Oh,” Dawson said, avoiding Chikata’s eye. “That’s Dr. Smith-Aidoo. We were talking about the case, and she got sad thinking about her aunt and uncle.”

“I see,” Chikata said, regarding him with some curiosity. “She’s beautiful.”

Dawson’s face was burning as he turned away abruptly. “Let’s talk about the case.”

“Sure, but first, how was the underwater training?”

Dawson laughed with relief. “I passed.”

He gave a blow-by-blow account to exclamations of amazement from Chikata.

“So you’re now qualified to visit the rig?”

“Yes,” Dawson said. “I’ll be going in a couple of days.”

They occupied their usual spots at the sitting room table.

“First,” Chikata said, “I went to Axim with Baah to meet this Quashie Quarshie. It took us almost two hours to find him. How this guy could have anything physically to do with the Smith-Aidoos’ murder is hard to imagine. He’s a very small man who had polio as a child. One leg is much shorter than the other, and sometimes he has to use a wheelchair because he’s in pain.”

“What about his personality?”

“He’s very passionate about the organization’s mission statement of sustainable living and protecting the coast from oil pollution and all that, and he says he’s also a pacifist.”

“What about his associates?”

“I thought it was a big organization, but it’s only him and his wife and a part-time accountant, and they work out of a very small office. Quarshie says money is hard to come by these days. The wife was there, but not the accountant. I have his phone number, so I can get in touch with him. They meet once a month-sometimes it’s well attended by fishermen and environmentalists, but other times they have only a few people coming in.”

“Could any of the fishermen or the other attendees have a motive to kill the Smith-Aidoos?” Dawson asked.

“I asked Quarshie that question-I phrased it a little differently-and he said he’s witnessed a lot of anger from some fishermen, but he had contact information for only a few. I can try to track them down tomorrow.”

“Okay, good work. Did you get to Kweku Bonsa, the fetish priest?”

“Yes, but I didn’t talk to him. He was having one of his ceremonies-dancing to the beat of drums, spinning around in a trance while his assistants were sprinkling him with chalk powder. It was going on for hours, and I was told that Bonsa would be too weak afterward to talk to me. They told me to come back tomorrow.”

AFTER A LITTLE more discussion, Chikata left and Dawson hurried to the bathroom to finish what he had been about to do before the interruption. He pulled off his clothes and took a shower. He lathered and rinsed three times, trying to wash the sin away.