The next opportunity I had, I made sure to question Ray. I approached him for a drink, but I really wanted answers. Truthfully, I wanted the drink, and some answers. He handed me a white wine.
“Beautiful night, isn’t it?” I asked.
“Always is out here. Far away from the cities.”
“True,” I answered. Before this trip, I would have never dreamed of living away from a city. Now I understood the appeal. I watched the sun begin to set. The last orange rays streamed out from under the horizon.
“Was it this beautiful where you used to work?”
“Yes. It’s beautiful everywhere out here in the bush.”
“Where did you say you worked again?” I asked him.
“Tonfi Lodge.”
I paused, pretending to think. I knew exactly what I was going to ask next but wanted it to appear as if it had just entered my mind. It had popped into my head during the night. Sometime around two in the morning, after waking from another hyena-filled dream. “That place sounds so familiar.” I paused again, for effect. “Wait? Isn’t that where Dr. Higgins said he had stayed?”
“Who?”
“Dr. Higgins?” I replied. I didn’t want to say “the dead guy.” But as Ray’s face made no hint of recognition, I thought I was going to be forced to. I lowered my voice. “The guy who died.”
“Oh, oh, Dr. Higgins.” He lowered his head, as if in prayer.
I realized how fleeting the guests were in the staffers’ lives. Dr. Higgins, only dead a few days, would forever be remembered as the man who had died on vacation to them. Would I be remembered after the new guests arrived? Doubtful.
He shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t remember him saying that.”
“So you never saw him there?”
“We had a lot of guests. I may have. I don’t remember him, though.”
“I think you’d remember him.”
He laughed. “True.”
I always remembered the particularly difficult customers. I remembered them by some oddity—their request, their complaint, their look. But I, too, didn’t remember their names.
“So, you didn’t have any run-ins with him there?”
He shook his head. “Oh no.”
I believed him. I think we all would have known if they had a previous run-in together. Dr. Higgins would have let us know that first day. He would have made a scene. He would have refused to have Ray be his tracker. But I also wondered if Dr. Higgins would remember every peon he ever had a confrontation with. I doubted every angry customer would remember me. I needed to confirm it and I had.
But I still wondered. “Why’d the other lodge ask you to leave?”
“They had their reasons.” He fiddled with his pocket and I remembered the photo that had fallen out of it.
“Anything to do with the photo you keep in your pocket?”
He smiled. “Yes.”
He took it out and showed it to me. It was a beautiful photo of him, a young woman, and a baby.
“Love?” I asked. “They transferred you because of love?”
“Yes, Robina and I met at the lodge.”
The baby was beautiful. Her smile was as big as Ray’s.
“We are lucky. The family is good to us. We just cannot work together. It is alright. They still let us live together.”
“So you go back to the other lodge every night?”
“Yes. Sonny drives me over every night and picks me up every morning. I don’t even have a place to sleep at this lodge.”
My job accomplished, I walked away from Ray, white wine in hand, to observe the sunset.
I felt I could eliminate him from the suspect pool. I joined my fellow guests, at the edge of the roadway, to toast the beautiful day.
There were plenty more people to be suspicious of and I was running out of vacation.