Yaziz offered the straw bag to the American, but she did not take it. She did not even seem to see it, her own missing bag.
Her voice rose to a shriek. “Oh, detective! It’s you! Did you find her? Where is she?”
He shrugged off the spectacle of her disturbance. “It was just a boy. He was hiding behind some rugs when I found him, going through your bag. But he ran off, the little thief. You should be more careful.” He nudged her with the bag, and this time she noticed it.
“You found my purse?” She grabbed it from his hands, flung open its lid, and dug into its basket shape. “How fortunate for me that you happened to be passing by at the right moment.”
“Yes. Fortunate.” Yaziz watched her claw faster through her bag, rattling items one by one. The hairs rose at the nape of his neck as he realized he was standing next to the embassy man, Hayati Orhon, a sorry example of a Turk. “Tell me what happened,” Yaziz said to Miss Riddle.
Her face, a chalky bronze through his lenses, paled another degree as she shook her bag, searching for something that was not there. Perhaps the white of the salt lake of Tuz Gölü was her natural skin color. The woman was full of surprises. He intended to uncover every one of them.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, instead of assisting him in his investigation.
“Doing my duty, Miss Riddle.”
Orhon the embassy man moved closer to her, as if his allegiance lay more with the Americans.
Miss Riddle did not appear to notice. “You and also the man you assigned to watch my house,” she said. “Did you know that he followed me to the bazaar today? Yes, of course you know. That’s why you’re here, because he phoned you to report where I am.”
Yaziz frowned, careful not to betray his inability to soothe her rising hysteria. “It is a police matter. Someone will please explain what happened here.”
Orhon spoke up. “The embassy sent me along to accompany Miss Riddle, and—”
She dropped the bag with a yelp and examined her trembling hand. A puzzle ring decorated one finger, and she twisted it off. “I only tried it on,” she said, swooping down to place it in one of the opened trays of jewelry that littered the carpeted floor. Yaziz also recognized her bundled-up purchases from the slipper shop.
Nearby, a brass candelabrum lay on its side.
“Ozturk Bey was showing me these rings,” she continued, even though he was not interested in the rings, “when someone suddenly ran into the shop and hit me over the head. It must’ve happened while the boy distracted us with coffee. Or maybe it was the boy himself. I don’t know.”
“Where did this come from?” Yaziz pulled his handkerchief from a pocket and used it to pick up the ornate piece of brass, heavy enough to damage anyone’s head. “Does Ozturk Bey sell brass items in this shop?” He looked around at the glass evil eyes, dangling from the rafters on strings, at the stacks of jewelry trays, and a glass counter displaying meerschaum pipes and cigarette holders.
“Not here,” Orhon said, “but he does sell brass only next door.”
“You are familiar with this merchant’s set-up?” Yaziz already knew it too, but he had his routine.
“We at the embassy refer the Americans here, to these shops.”
“A convenient arrangement for Ozturk Bey,” Yaziz said. “Surely he cannot manage both shops by himself.”
“It is true,” said Orhon. “There are helpers that he employs. Ozturk Bey is a wealthy man, thanks to his increasing popularity with the Americans. They like to buy their copper and brass from him.”
Yaziz carried the weapon to a spot under the single electric light bulb illuminating the shop. He thought he saw a smudge of blood along the carved side of one of the three shafts designed for holding a pair of candles each. Perhaps the lab could lift fingerprints, although he was fairly sure there would be no records to match their owner.
“How is your head after that blow?” Yaziz asked, laying down the weapon on a piece of tissue paper. Then he glanced up at the woman, who still frowned. She rubbed the crown of her head. Hair coiled there in a thick, black rope the Americans called a “braid,” and a wet cloth balanced atop the whole thing. The overall effect was that of a turban, and he couldn’t help smiling.
“It hurts.”
“You need to see the doctor,” Orhon said.
Miss Riddle turned to the embassy man and said, “You were starting to tell the detective what you saw, when I interrupted.”
“You saw what happened?” Yaziz asked Orhon.
“No. I was just arriving when Ozturk Bey suddenly cried out for help.”
“You saw nothing unusual on the street?”
“Someone running. It must’ve been the boy, but I didn’t know then that she’d been attacked.” He smiled shyly at Miss Riddle, and Yaziz felt his skin prickle again at the back of his neck.
“What about the copper and brass shop?” Yaziz said with a cough. “Did you see anything unusual there?”
Orhon’s downturned face told Yaziz that he had noticed nothing.
“You’ll have to ask that nice young man who minds that store,” Miss Riddle said, interrupting the interview. “But you already know about him, don’t you? He works for the police sometimes as your photographer. He told me his name is Emin Kirpat.”
Yaziz covered his embarrassment from the assault of the American’s forthrightness by pulling out a small notebook from his pocket. He flipped through its pages until he found the notes that his assistant, Suleyman, had given him. They confirmed Miss Riddle’s information.
“And where is he now?” Yaziz said.
“Ozturk Bey sent him out to chase the thief. He should have returned by now.” Orhon glanced at Miss Riddle’s stolen bag, returned now.
“Detective,” Miss Riddle said, “didn’t you find my niece on your way here?”
“The little miss is here?”
“Well...not here, as you can see. She’s out there. With Ozturk Bey. They must be looking for the thief, too. You must’ve seen Priscilla, since you found my purse. Where is she?”
Yaziz shrugged rather than admit that he’d lost them all. Even if he wanted to tell her the truth, he couldn’t, since that would reveal that he’d been following the woman and child ever since they’d climbed into the taxi at the Burkhardt house on Yeşilyurt Sokak earlier that day.
“Don’t worry,” said Orhon, stepping closer to Miss Riddle. “She is safe with Ozturk Bey, I promise.”
But the American woman’s face twisted in consternation.
“Is something missing?” Yaziz asked, nodding at the bag at her feet.
She hesitated a moment too long for such a simple question. “My money is still here, and so is my identification card that Henry’s office gave me. How did you know...where to find me?”
“What do you think the thief wanted in your bag?” Yaziz asked, instead of confessing.
“Why don’t you tell me? You probably have a much better idea of these things.”
He shrugged again. “It’s usually money they want. Are you in the habit of carrying something else, something valuable, perhaps?” The thing, Yaziz thought, that she was going to pass to Umit Alekci before he’d inconveniently been murdered. He’d been wrong about Erkmen, and he could just as easily be wrong about the letter serving as a signal.
“Of course not.”
The theft of the bag was a ruse, Yaziz decided, for passing the information he’d known all along that she would pass to her contact. He hadn’t found anything suspicious when he examined the contents of the bag back in the rug shop. He’d missed the transaction after all. Thanks to the incident of the woman’s purse.
But the wound to the head puzzled him. He didn’t think she would have gone so far as to arrange an injury to herself.
“I’ll tell you something that would have interested a thief,” Orhon said, rippling his fingers through the unwrapped bundles of jewelry scattered on the floor. “Harem rings. I know Ozturk Bey sells them because the Americans from the embassy always want them. Those rings are worth a lot of money with their rubies, sapphires, and emeralds.”
“Who are some of the American customers?”
“Miss Fran Lafferty has recently placed an order.”
Yaziz lifted his notepad, but his pencil remained poised in mid-air. His attention had been caught by the movement of red curly hair, a flicker he’d glimpsed beyond the wall of hanging evil eyes, out on the street. He was about to tell the woman, whose back was turned toward the street, that she could stop worrying. Her niece was returning. Then the red-haired one stopped before the display of brass and copper pots and trays next door.
Ozturk Bey stepped out of the crowds and ducked beside Priscilla. He lifted the lid of a brass brazier and withdrew a small bundle about the size of his hand. It was wrapped in newspaper and tied by string. While Yaziz watched, the old Turk passed the package to the American child.
The detective glanced at Miss Riddle. Perhaps he’d been wrong about her. It wasn’t Miss Riddle who worked with Henry Burkhardt but the Burkhardt child herself.
But Yaziz refused to believe such abomination was possible. He would find the explanation, for surely another one existed.