The early morning wake-up calls no longer bothered me. I looked forward to hearing Sonny’s cheery voice at five in the morning.
I wondered how he kept his positive attitude through his long days. If I ever had one at work, which was rare, it would be gone after one complaining customer. Of course, I was not surrounded by the natural beauty of Africa. I was surrounded by the artificial beauty of designer clothing and accessories, bought by clients who were enhanced via plastic surgeons.
Most of my fellow travelers also looked like the early mornings had begun to suit them, except for the trio. Zaden looked like any teenager at five in the morning. Tired. Disgruntled. Disheveled.
Sabrina looked alright. Each day she appeared a little closer to the age on her passport. Maybe traveling with your sons did that.
Zonah’s beard became more unkempt by the day. Had he given up on his appearance since giving up on hitting on Charlotte? Or was this his vacation plan all along? Or was he hiding something under that beard?
Maybe he just forgot his razor. It happens.
I’d forgotten mine. Fortunately, Charlotte remembered hers. I’m sure she didn’t mind I borrowed it to shave my legs. I wasn’t one hundred percent sure about that, though, so I didn’t tell her.
I looked up at the surveillance camera and tried again to think of a way to view its footage. Charlotte grabbed my arm and hissed in my ear, “Stop looking at the camera. It’s suspicious.”
“Well, I am suspicious…about everyone here.”
“Your obvious glances in that area make you look guilty. Is that better?”
“No, that is not better,” I said to Charlotte as she walked away.
She ignored me and I followed her out front. We boarded the Land Cruiser and once again sat in a different spot. Each day we had a different view of the intoxicating landscape. With Dr. Higgins gone, we never argued about seating assignments.
From the first row, seated behind Sonny, I felt at times like I was driving. Fortunately, for all, I wasn’t. Also, fortunately, I wasn’t responsible for navigation.
Ray motioned for Sonny to stop. He hopped off his perch in the front of the vehicle. He crouched down and inspected something in the dirt road. He looked around and then spoke to Sonny, “I think here’s good.”
Sonny nodded. “Ray wants to show you some tracks. Get out if you want to see them.”
Everyone but Jack scurried to get out. “Not coming?” I asked.
“Back’s bothering me,” he answered, rubbing his back. “These rough roads.”
I nodded and got out.
The rest of the group circled around Ray, who had returned to his crouching posture, now with a stick in his hand. He used the stick to make a circle in the sandy road.
“I couldn’t show this to you last time. The last leopard was too close for us to safely observe its tracks.” Using the stick, he pointed to the track in the middle of the circle. His “See this?” question was met with nods and yeses. “See the four clear toe pads? And the three lobes in the back, the main pad?” Using the stick, he pointed to the identified areas. He looked up to make sure everyone saw. When each traveler had nodded, he continued, “This is a leopard track.”
“Same one as yesterday?” Hazel asked.
“No telling just from a track, but tracks can tell us a lot about an animal.” He stood up. “It can tell us the direction the animal was going.” He pointed down the road, the way we were headed. “It can tell us about how long ago it passed. This one looks pretty fresh. He went by fairly recently.”
“He?” Charlotte asked.
“Yes, based on the size of the plantar pad, this is most likely a male. They are broader. He was walking around slowly, maybe stalking its prey, like we saw last night.” He walked farther up the road and pointed to a few more tracks. “See. The tracks are close together. If he was running, they’d be farther apart.”
He walked over to the side of the road and made another circle in the dirt. “See this one, this one is older.” We followed Ray and looked in the dirt. “Tracking a leopard is one of the hardest animals to track out here in the bush. And look at all of you. Now you can do it!”
Many in the group laughed. The paw print looked the same as the others to me. I didn’t think I had a future as a tracker. We boarded the cruiser again.
Sonny proceeded down the road, in the direction of the leopard’s tracks. He drove about half a mile until Ray signaled for him stop. Ray jumped off the car again and peered down at the dirt road. He pointed to the left before getting back into his little seat and Sonny took the vehicle off road.
Now in the grasses, Ray could no longer follow tracks. He must have spotted something because he signaled for Sonny to stop.
Then I heard it, the laugh of the hyena. Ray signaled to his left. We drove slowly over the uneven terrain. It sloped up and then evened out. Sonny stopped the cruiser and Ray pointed slightly to the left.
There were murmurings in the group as we tried to find what he had spotted. Colin got out his binoculars and then handed them to me, pointing in the direction of the wildlife. Hyenas were slowly circling around a tree. They often looked up. I looked in that direction. A leopard sat on a branch, eating a recent kill. The leopard paid them no mind.
As a small bit of the leopard’s breakfast fell to the ground, the pack pounced on the morsel. Once again, I saw hyenas take advantage of another animal’s kill.
I handed the binoculars back to Colin. He handed them to Geri, who was in front of us. Her hand lingered on his as she accepted them. “Not as close as yesterday,” he said, “but I guess that’s as close as we can get safely.”
It was as close as I needed to be.
With a full cup of coffee drank, I returned for a refill. Focused on the caffeine refill, I stepped in front of Sabrina, who was also headed to Sonny for a drink.
“Sorry,” I mumbled. Sonny refilled my coffee without being asked and I nodded a thanks. I was getting used to the early mornings but conversation was not on the menu. It was still too early for words. I should have a T-shirt that says don’t talk to me unless I’ve had two cups of coffee or at least until I’ve seen a dead body. That had really woken me up.
“It’s nice you and your sister are traveling together,” Sabrina commented. She didn’t have the same coffee rules as me. Maybe that happened once you had children.
Nice probably wasn’t the word I would use. Tolerable was more like it.
She looked over at her sons, who were standing away from the group. They stood close to each other, but facing in different directions. “I wish my boys enjoyed it as much.” Sabrina got her juice and continued. “Do you guys do that a lot? I can’t imagine me and my sister taking a two-hour car ride together without killing each other.”
“First time without the folks.” They’d divorced fifteen years ago so it had been a very long time since we had traveled together. I wondered if Charlotte even remembered the family trip to Montreal. “Not really in the budget to make it a regular thing.” I took a sip of coffee. “I guess I should thank you for this. If your husband hadn’t backed out, they wouldn’t have been so desperate to fill the room. Desperation means a very good deal.”
She hesitated. I realized my slip and hoped she wasn’t trying to figure out how I knew C.K. Johnson was her husband. She didn’t wear a wedding ring.
“You’re welcome?” she replied.
Normally, at this point in the conversation, I would walk away. But the rules change when you are investigating a murder. “What made him cancel?” I asked.
“Not his thing.”
“A vacation with his lovely family not his thing?”
She looked panicked. “Oh no, I…I didn’t mean that. C.K. loves us. It’s just…” She searched for the right words. “This is too regimented, too planned for him. He’d rather just sit on a beach.”
I nodded and planned my next question. The more I knew about C.K. the more I could learn about the family.
Sabrina quickly changed the subject. “So your sister tells me you didn’t finish college.”
Had I hit a nerve? It seemed like a barbed comment. “Of course she did.”
“Oh no, I didn’t mean it like that.” She quickly apologized. “It’s just that I didn’t finish it my first go either. You can go back.”
I found that hard to believe. The lack of money. The lack of time. The lack of interest. All that was insurmountable.
“Where you’d go?” I asked.
“I started at Sanfri College.”
“Sanfri?” I searched my brain but couldn’t locate the college. “Never heard of it.”
“There are hundreds of colleges around the US you’ve never heard of. I learned that the hard way with Zonah.”
“Zonah wasn’t interested in going to your alma mater?” I asked. Our parents had pushed us to go to theirs. It worked out for Charlotte, not so much for me.
“Sanfri? Oh no, I was there so briefly. I didn’t even declare a major.” She finished her juice. “I know it’s hard to picture now. But you can go back if you want to.” She looked me dead in the eye. “You can do anything you want to if you put your mind to it.”
It seemed unnecessarily intense. Was she a life coach? Or did she see in me a kindred spirit? Zaden interrupted before I could ask.
“Mom!” Zaden yelled over for his mother. She ran off before I could find out her motive for the pep talk.