Unbarring the front door, he walked out onto the porch. Midway along the path to the gate, the family shrine stood among well-tended trees and flower beds offering a riot of color. Like the house, the building and surrounding garden looked a product of constant care and loving attention.
He plunged down the stairs, hurried along the path to the shrine, and climbed the four steps to the columned entryway. Inside stood the ancestor bust, sitting atop the limestone plinth. Like most such images, the inscription down the front contained no name. Before the bust, blue lilies floated in a low, wide-mouthed bronze bowl, their scent delicate, evasive in the light breeze.
Someone-Amonhotep, Bak thought-had told him that Nebmose had died leaving no living relatives and Djehuty had taken the villa in the name of their sovereign Maatkare Hatshepsut. If no one remained, who was tending this shrine with such devotion? A distant relative, one who should have inherited the property upon Nebmose's death? A forgotten concubine or lover? Or merely a faithful servant?
If a relative had surfaced, he would have had every right to resent Djehuty's grasping the property as his own. The land and the dwelling, located in crowded Abu, would have been a legacy well worth slaying for, as would the farmland north of the city. Amethu would know. As steward of Djehuty's household, he was responsible for all transactions conducted by the governor. As a long-time resident of Abu, he would have been acquainted with Nebmose and his family.
A sudden thought dampened Bak's enthusiasm for the theory. A long-forgotten relative of Nebmose might slay Djehuty to regain his property, but would he slay five innocent people? Also, what were the odds that those five people would all be bound together by a deadly sandstorm?
He muttered an oath. Nothing ever seemed to fit in a nice, neat package. As he had told Psuro and Kasaya that very morning, something was missing, a crucial fact he had yet to discover.
He eyed the bust, wishing it could speak. It stared back, enigmatic. He had to smile. Whatever secrets it held, it fully intended to keep them to itself.
Bak tracked Amethu down at the mansion of the lord Khnum. He found the steward in the outer, colonnade court, kneeling before the blocky stone image of a nobleman seated with his knees beneath his chin, a scroll spread across them, displaying through eternity his ability to read and write. A long-dead official of Abu, Bak assumed, one of many whose statues occupied the court, left in the expectation that the deceased would forever be remembered and honored. Food, drink, and other good things offered to the lord Khnurn were reoffered to these lesser images before the priests took possession for their own use.
Fairly certain the prayer would be brief, Bak backed away, allowing privacy, and left the temple to wait in the shade of the willow trees outside the pylon gate.
Amethu must have seen him in the court, for he soon bustled out, looking to his right and left. "Ah, there you are." Reaching the leafy shelter, he eyed the officer's bandaged upper body and arm, his bruised neck. "I must say, Lieutenant, you don't look at all well."
Bak gave him a wry smile. "So I've been told." "The one you fought is dead, I hear." "Unfortunate but true."
Amethu gestured toward a mudbrick bench under the drooping branches. "Do you mind if we talk out here? I can't bear to return so soon to the governor's villa. We've done with the inventory-I thank the lord Khnum-but the atmosphere inside those walls is so oppressive it's hard to breathe."
"The privacy suits me, and the quiet."
The steward brushed leaves off the bench, hiked up his ankle-length kilt, and plopped down. "Ahhhh. Good, clean air, with no stench of fear."
Bak sat down beside him. "I've much compassion for Lieutenant Amonhotep and mistress Khawet, but those in the household banned from the governor's private rooms appear to be functioning in a reasonably normal manner."
"You've made it clear you believe Djehuty's the target of this madman, and it's obvious he agrees. The guards are jumpy-as they should be. The servants, while spending an excess of time whispering among themselves and peering over their shoulders, are carrying on quite well, all things considered. They'd feel better with you and your men in the house, but they know of Khawet's ban."
Bak's voice turned flinty. "Ban or not, we'll be there on the crucial tenth day. I'll not let Djehuty die to satisfy the whim of a dictatorial woman."
Amethu chuckled. "Best you don't call her a tyrant to her face. She prides herself on her kind and considerate manner."
"Don't get me wrong. She has every right to be shorttempered. But at times she seems as irrational as her fatherand as stubborn."
"I've never known her to be this difficult." The steward brushed a fly off his bald head. "I've urged her to allow a servant to care for Djehuty while he's ill. She refuses, insisting that no one else can satisfy him. And I've selected a capable and responsible woman who could easily step into Hatnofer's sandals, performing the duties of housekeeper. Again Khawet has refused."
Bak gave him a sympathetic smile. "Perhaps when I lay hands on the slayer, your load will be lighter and so will hers."
"I pray you're right." Amethu gave him a sharp look. "Are you closing on him?"
"Sometimes I feel I'm so close I can almost smell him. At other times, I doubt I'll ever lay hands on him."
"In other words, you haven't the slightest idea who he is."
Nettled by so bald an assessment, Bak glared at the river flowing along the base of the terrace. Three small boats raced upstream, their sails swollen with the morning breeze. Across the channel, near where Nenu had died, four women knelt at the water's edge, washing linen and spreading the objects over the bushes to dry.
"Four of the five deaths occurred before I came to Abu," he said, waving off a yellow butterfly. "Can you remember where you were at the time those lives were taken?"
The steward's head snapped around. "I resent the insinuation, Lieutenant!"
Bak formed the most amiable smile he could manage. "I've more or less admitted I'm desperate. Will you not humor me?"
"Humph!" Amethu searched his face. Evidently convinced Bak fully intended to get what he sought, he offered a tight smile. "Oh, all right! I was in the governor's villa, where I spend all my days. I've no special memory of what I was doing or who I was with except…" He hesitated, cleared a throat that did not need clearing. "Well, except for the time Lieutenant Dedi was slain. But let me assure you: I've taken no lives."
"If all were slain by a single man, as I believe, the one accounting will do."
The steward's eyes fell away; he made a pleat in the skirt of his kilt and another and another, busying himself with minutiae. "This isn't the easiest tale to tell. You see, in a sense I'm responsible for that young officer's death."
"You?" Bak asked, not sure he understood.
"That morning, I summoned the servant who tends the animals. His accounts were chaotic-his mathematical skills are close to nonexistent-and we spent several hours going over them, sorting them out. When he returned to the stable, he found the young man dead. If I'd not kept him so long… Well, you can imagine how I felt. How I still feel."
"Lieutenant Dedi was meant to die, Amethu." Bak laid a sympathetic hand on the steward's wrist. "If you hadn't eased the slayer's path, he'd've found another way."
"So I've told myself."
Bak let the matter rest, aware that words alone could heal no open sore. If Amethu was the man he thought he was, time and a will to forget would soothe his conscience. "What can you tell me of Nebmose, the man who dwelt in the villa next to Djehuty's?"