"Come," he said to the boy, who hovered nervously nearby. "Come and talk to me."
T HE NEXT ITEM to go missing was Marlene's Swiss Army knife, followed closely by a rather large sum of money, large by my standards anyway--about seven hundred dollars, that Jimmy was carrying around with him.
"At home we leave the back door unlocked all the time," he said. "This country is full of thieves. A man can't leave his belongings in a hotel like this, even for a minute."
I wanted to tell him that Tunisia, while it had its share of the problems every country has, was a relatively safe place, but there didn't seem to be any point. His mind was made up. And certainly, on the face of it, it appeared he was right: two serious thefts in the first few days. The truth of the matter was that he had been very careless. He'd taken the money with him when he'd gone to the pool, and had left it with his towel while he went for a swim. Then, still in his bathing suit, he'd left the pool to watch a croquet match his wife was playing in. Hardly just a minute--more like fifteen or twenty, during which time just about everybody had passed through the pool area. Inattentive though he might have been, however, the thefts simply had to stop for any number of reasons, not the least of which was that we had a reporter on the scene. Kristi Ellingham said she wanted to interview me for the article she was writing on the tour. I was dreading a question or comment about the theft, but she never mentioned the subject, and her questions surprised me.
"It's rather unusual to be in business with your ex-husband, isn't it?" she began, pen poised over her notebook, and a cigarette in her left hand.
I was taken aback, but rallied. "It works for us," I said. In a fashion, I thought.
"Clive was telling me that the two of you were in business together before, then sold the store when you divorced."
"Yes," I said. The less said about that, the better, as far as I was concerned. Clive should learn to keep his mouth shut. I'd had to sell the store to give him half the proceeds, even though I'd started the business alone, long before he and I even met.
"But now you're back in business again," Kristi said.
"That's right," I replied. "How about you? How long have you been writing for First Class?"
"I'm interviewing you, remember?" she said, but she smiled to take the edge off the remark. "About ten years," she added.
Then, sensing I wasn't about to be more forthcoming on the subject of Clive and me, she switched gears. "You have quite a diverse group of people on this tour, don't you? They come from all over the place, and have such varied interests and occupations."
"I think most people are interested in seeing different cultures, and of course, the focus of this tour on antiques and archaeology makes it unusual." I hoped Clive would be pleased with my response here, although I couldn't believe these words were coming out of my mouth. It certainly sounded like PR talk to me.
"Emile, for example," she went on. "He sounds French. Is he from France?"
"Yes," I replied.
"Very charming, isn't he?" she said in a tone that implied she was confiding in me. "What does he do?"
"He's a numismatist. A coin dealer. He has a company called ESL Numismatics, very influential in the field of ancient coinage."
"How interesting," she said, taking a sip of her gin and tonic. If there was fault to be found with Kristi, it was her fondness for gin. She was on her third drink since we'd sat down together, charging each of them to her room. Tunisia being a predominantly Muslim country, alcoholic beverages are generally served only in tourist establishments, and even there, are prohibitively expensive. A rather unexceptional gin and tonic can run as high as $8 or $10, and Kristi managed to consume several every day. As Ms. Ellingham's host, the bills came to me every morning from either Sylvie or Chantal, who clucked sympathetically as they handed them over, while I swore Clive's marketing initiative was going to bankrupt us. Still she was pleasant enough, and if we got some positive press, presumably Clive would think it was worth it. Praise be for my film star's ten-bedroom house. It was going to save the day, financially speaking.
"And that fellow Rick. He must be involved in the stock market some way." She laughed, and I did, too. It was impossible not to know that about Rick. "Where's he from?"
"Montreal," I replied.
"What company is he with?" I told her. We went through the list of everyone on the tour, where they were from, and what I knew about them, which frankly wasn't much.
"Aziza and Curtis I know, of course," she concluded. "I'm surprised they're here, but you're lucky to have them along. They have lots of influential friends."
"They're lovely people," I said, tactfully. When, I wondered, were we going to get around to the trip itself?
She asked some questions about the next few days' itinerary. I waxed poetic about the Roman ruins in the desert, the mosque at Kairouan, and so on, and that was it. It was a strange interview, I thought, but then First Class was a peculiar magazine. I hoped this wouldn't end up being a gossipy piece, but with First Class that was always a risk.
But it was done, and I didn't have time to worry about it. After the first flurry of buying, I was not making as much progress as I'd hoped to on furnishing the Rosedale house. I'd found lots of carpets, some lovely ones, and furniture, too, but I really wanted to find unusual decorative elements that would pull it all together, and so far I hadn't seen anything that seemed just right. Furthermore, I didn't have as much time to do it as I'd thought I would. My idea of just turning the group over to someone else once we got there, and from time to time dispensing sage advice on antiques, had essentially been wishful thinking.
In the first place, whether I liked it or not, there was a tour to be run, people's needs and desires to be met: Ben's insatiable appetite had to be assuaged, Marlene's and Catherine's nervousness about foreign lands needed soothing. And Curtis, with his jealous nature, had to be kept away from Emile, who had the bad habit of flirting without realizing he was doing it. And Jimmy with his prejudices had to be kept away from Ed, who had taken to countering Jimmy's remarks with some inflammatory ones of his own. My ally in this last challenge, although we'd never discussed the subject, was Jimmy's wife, Betty.
And then there was teenaged Chastity, in a category all her own. Everything was "tragic" to Chastity. "I'm bored," she was always saying. "I'm tired. I want to go back to the hotel. I'm hot." It was like dealing with a squalling baby, and I didn't know how her mother could stand it, or why she let her get away with it.
To be fair, there were some easy people on the trip. Cliff was a pleasant fellow, although a bit forgetful, and Nora, despite her overly protective manner toward him, was no trouble whatsoever. Susie, too, seemed happy with just about anything. I sometimes wondered why she bothered to travel at all, when she was more interested in the people on the trip than the sights themselves, but I suppose it was meeting new people that made it all worthwhile for her. Aziza seemed to enjoy herself, and despite what I'd heard of her prima donna tendencies on the fashion runway, there was no evidence of them here.
But the person who was most cutting into my buying time was Rick. Leaving aside his insatiable need for a telephone, and my herculean efforts to find him one in the most obscure places, his cell phone not working as well as he expected it to out in the Sahel, there was what I, on admittedly scant evidence, presumed to be a nasty tendency to theft. I decided I would dog his every footstep, and if I caught him at it, he'd be on the first plane out. I stayed as close to him as possible, trying not to be obvious about it, but never leaving him completely alone for long. If he went to the bathroom during dinner, I made some excuse, and more or less followed him, watching until he went into his room, and then again until he returned to the table.