I slid into bed and closed my eyes.
Another exhausting, in a good way, day over.
Another day of vacation completed.
Another day closer to going home.
Another day of me not finding the killer.
Charlotte closed the mosquito netting and got into bed. “Good night,” she said before shutting off the light.
“You ever wonder what the staff’s lodgings are like?” I asked.
“You couldn’t just say good night, could you?”
“You don’t wonder?”
“Well, I hadn’t.” She paused. “I’m sure it’s fine.”
“Aren’t you curious what it looks like?”
“No.”
“Don’t you want to go and check it out?”
“No.”
I gave her a minute to consider it. Maybe tomorrow we could go. I’d rather go now. Check it out after hours. See what they did when their guard was down. When they were off duty. But even I knew that was crazy.
They had scared me the first night when they scolded me for going to the bar by myself. That was only a short walk, on a path I knew exactly where to go to. I couldn’t imagine trying to find the staff’s quarters, at night. Plus, I would need a flashlight. Although I bet Charlotte had one. That was probably on the provided packing list.
Would hyenas attack if there were no blood? I didn’t know. I didn’t want to find out.
And if I did another trek without an escort someone may wonder if I was responsible for Dr. Higgins’ death. If I chanced walking to the bar by myself, a short jaunt to the neighboring room would be nothing.
No, not tonight. Maybe tomorrow.
“So not interested at all?” I asked Charlotte again.
“No, Naomi! This isn’t Dirty Dancing. We’re not going to find a big party going on in their living quarters and join in.”
“That’s really not what I pictured.” I didn’t admit it to Charlotte, but now I wanted to go even more!
“Please, give the staff a break. Don’t bother them. All they want to do is work, get some tips, and go home.”
“But maybe it was one of them?”
“One of them what?” She knew the answer the moment the question left her mouth. “Please don’t say anything about Dr. Higgins.”
I remained silent. They had means, access to the rooms’ keys, easy access to the kitchen for knives. Ray and Sonny probably carried knives regularly for their workday.
“One of the staffers would not have killed him.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because these people live off their tips. Their families live off their tips. They see Dr. Higgins, and you and me, as their wages.”
“Did Dr. Higgins look like a good tipper to you?”
“No, he looked like a fastidious guy. A by-the-books kind of guy. If he’s told to tip, he’d tip the recommended amount. I bet he had all the tips, in local currency, in labeled envelopes.”
I laughed. What did she know. “I didn’t find them in his room,” I told her. Of course, if he did have said envelopes, he wasn’t likely to leave them lying around. They’d be in the safe, which I couldn’t get into.
“When were you in his room?” she asked. “Wait…cancel that…I do not want to know anything about you being in his room.”
“Don’t make it sound so lascivious!”
Exasperated, she yelled, “I wasn’t! I’m telling you. None of those workers had a reason to kill him.”
Someone had a reason to kill him.
And I had to find it.
I woke up mid-scream. Or more accurately, mid-attempt to scream. The lack of ability to vocalize—to call for help—may have been the most frightening part of the dream. I rolled onto my side hoping to go back to sleep, to a less scary dream. Or even better, dreamless sleep.
But I was wide awake. My heart was still racing and my throat was dry. I slid out of bed and went to the fridge for water. I tiptoed over, not wanting to wake up my sister. I opened the fridge gently and grabbed a water bottle. I sat on the couch and opened the water bottle. “Shoot,” I mumbled as the carbonated water fizzed out. Half asleep, I had grabbed sparkling water and not the spring water.
“Naomi?” Charlotte called out from bed.
“Yes,” I answered.
“What’s wrong?”
“Just a bad dream. Go back to sleep.”
She rolled onto her side, toward me. “You sure?”
“Yep. I’m fine.”
“You’re not prone to bad dreams.”
“We haven’t slept in the same room, never mind the same bed, since we were children, Charlotte.”
She got out of bed toward the couch and sat across from me.
“What’s the matter?” she asked.
“Bad dream.”
“About?”
“Hyenas chasing me.” I took a long sip of the fizzy water. “I don’t need a psychology book to decipher the source of that dream.”
“Lots of people have vivid dreams when under stress or in a new environment,” she explained. “Some people will even sleepwalk in times of great stress.”
I took another sip of the water. Vacation was not supposed to be a time of great stress. “You think someone could have sleepwalked over to Dr. Higgins’ suite and killed him?”
“I doubt it.”
I nodded agreement. It did sound unlikely. “But a few years ago, didn’t someone use that as a legal defense? They killed someone while sleepwalking.”
She considered it. “Sounds familiar. But I’m pretty sure it failed.”
I thought she was right.
She yawned, as large as the hippo’s yawn we’d seen yesterday.
“You’re tired. Go back to sleep, Charlotte. I’m okay.”
She didn’t disagree and returned to bed.
I looked out the large windows onto the moonlit landscape, trying to keep the dream’s images from my mind. The hyenas were all I could see—their bared teeth as they chased me.
Within a few minutes, I could hear Charlotte’s regular breathing. She’d fallen back to sleep quickly.
I doubted I’d sleep again tonight.