Exasperated, she said, “I’ll keep trying.”
When October turned to November, tall clouds started to gather in the late afternoons. For days the rains only threatened, but then, at last, the sky opened up and poured out such a torrent that the streets swam with mud and refuse. The advent of the rainy season had a paradoxical effect, darkening the sun but brightening faces—including Zoe’s—that had grown weary of the sweltering air. Overnight, the parched plains broke into bloom. It was Zoe’s favorite time in Africa, when all things tired and worn became new again.
She settled easily into the routine of living with the Prentices. They treated her more like a neighbor than a guest, yet every evening she found her laundry cleaned and her bed made. Their housekeeper, Rosa, was exacting, scrupulous, and a genius in the kitchen. Carol Prentice sang her praises and trusted her implicitly. On workdays, Joseph escorted Zoe home to ensure she wasn’t followed. Often he stayed for dinner, and the Prentices grew fond of him.
On Sunday afternoons, Zoe visited Kuyeya. Her affection for the girl deepened with each meeting. Though slow at first, Kuyeya’s therapy with Dr. Mbao began to bear fruit. The psychiatrist probed the girl’s memory for stories she learned from her mother and used them to piece together details about her past. Kuyeya’s favorite tale involved a bee-eater who made friends with a hippopotamus. Whenever she said “bee-eater,” she burst into a fit of laughter.
In the middle of November, Zoe at last conceded that her strategy to flush out the housekeeper had been an abysmal failure. She considered staking out the residence without telling Joseph, but the memory of Dunstan Sisilu and the black mamba tempered her enthusiasm. One morning when she sat down to breakfast, she heard Rosa washing dishes in the kitchen, and an idea came to her. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t thought of it before.
“Do you have a minute?” she asked Rosa.
“Of course,” the woman replied, drying her hands on a towel.
Zoe gave her a sketch of the case and told her about the search for the Nyambos’ housekeeper. “If you were trying to find her, what would you do?”
Rosa thought for a moment. “Does her mistress wear chitenge or Western clothes?”
Zoe searched her memory for details about Patricia Nyambo. She had only seen her once—at the Subordinate Court on the day of the arraignment. Had she been wearing a business suit? In a flash Zoe remembered. She had been wearing a dress made of green chitenge.
When she told Rosa this, the woman asked, “Is the cloth expensive? Is the color rich and the pattern fine?”
“I think so,” Zoe guessed, figuring Patricia Nyambo would settle for nothing less.
Rosa nodded. “There is a woman at the City Market who sells the finest chitenge in Lusaka. She keeps a stall on Saturday only. My last mistress often sent me there. I saw many other women like me.”
“It’s worth a shot,” Zoe said, and asked Rosa how to find the stall.
Early on Saturday morning, Joseph and Zoe drove downtown. The largest of Lusaka’s markets, the City Market, sat on a parcel of land wedged between the Cairo Road commercial center and the more pedestrian Soweto Market. The nicest stalls were housed in an enclosed arcade with tributaries branching off the main hall like side streets in an urban grid. Zoe had visited the market only once in her year in Lusaka, but most Zambians she knew were frequent customers.
On any given day, downtown Lusaka was a bustling place. On Saturdays, however, the commercial district had a festival atmosphere. The streets were jammed with traffic, and the sidewalks were crawling with shoppers hungry for a deal. They parked beside a salaula stand brimming with secondhand clothing from the West. Joseph took Zoe’s hand and navigated the labyrinth, sidestepping moving bodies and merchandise laid out along the roadside.
They slipped into the covered arcade and joined the stream of customers shuffling through the main hall. The diversity of goods on display beggared imagination –shoes, boots, leather, bags, textiles, chitenge fabric, rugs, woodcarvings, jewelry and clothing. All around customers haggled with vendors. The noise and commotion made Zoe’s head spin.
“Rosa said the stall is on a side aisle halfway down,” she said. “The woman’s name is Chiwoyu. She said we should expect a crowd.”
They found the stall exactly as Rosa had described. The fabrics were beautiful and the queue extended down the aisle. Most of the customers were Zambian women over fifty—many no doubt employees of the elite. Zoe searched their faces but didn’t see the housekeeper.
“Where should we wait?” Zoe asked.