“I assume this is pretty expensive housing,” he said to Nabila.
She nodded. “There is parking behind and underneath the building with an armed guard at all times. We do our best to make foreigners feel safe here, whether native Egyptians or whomever.” She was quite expressionless as she said this, and Hauck could only guess at her feelings. But he found himself thinking that, considering the income disparity between the average Egyptian and the students who could afford to study abroad, having an armed guard watch over the vehicles was simply a wise precaution.
Nabila talked to the doorman in rapid Egyptian. The man then made a phone call and nodded.
“The roommates are home and say we can come up,” Nabila said.
“I’m not sure what good my going up there will do.” Harper huddled, thin and tense, against her brother. “They’re all alive.”
Hauck stifled a laugh. “Maybe you should come up because you’re Stephanie’s age. You might be more tuned into her roommates than I’ll be.”
Harper’s eyes narrowed. She seemed to suspect she was being cozened into the expedition.
“All right,” she said grudgingly, and they entered an elevator.
At the third floor they exited into a hall that was clean and wide, but not elaborately decorated. Stephanie’s door was to the right at the end of the corridor. In answer to Nabila’s knock a short girl with permed red hair swung open the door and stepped back to admit them. Hauck figured she was in her upper twenties, and she was wearing clothes that looked expensive. Could be knockoffs, though, like Nabila’s sunglasses. Hauck was no style expert.
“This is Jerri Sanderson,” Nabila said, then she pointed to each of her companions and introduced them.
“Come sit down,” Jerri said. “Can I get you something to drink?”
They all declined, then took seats in the small common living area.
“Have you found out anything new?” Jerri asked.
“Nothing,” Nabila said. “Where is your other roommate?”
“Tina’s on her way. She got held up at the university.”
“Do you attend there as well?” Hauck asked.
Based on nothing all that tangible, he was not an immediate fan of Jerri Sanderson.
“No. I’m a working girl,” Jerri said. An edge of anger had entered her voice. “I’m here as a gofer for an interior designer. He does places for Westerners. So they’ll feel . . . comfortable.”
The door opened and a tall girl, no more than twenty, hurried inside, dropping a load of books on the dining table.
“Sorry I’m late,” she said. “I’m Tina Peek.”
She threw herself in a basket chair and looked at them expectantly. After introductions were done—again—Tina said, “I’m sure Stephanie is on a yacht somewhere with one of the millionaires.”
Hauck was taken aback. “One of the millionaires?”
Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Harper sit straight.
Then she rose from her chair and began wandering around the room.
“You know all kinds of rich Egyptians come here to go to the beach,” Tina said. “Are you at the Four Seasons? That’s prime stomping grounds. But Stephanie was a magnet for that kind of guy.” She spread her hands, as if to say, Go figure.
Jerri looked away scowling.
“Can you give us a name?” Nabila asked. “And why do you think Stephanie in particular was a magnet? You didn’t mention that theory when we were here last time.”
“I can’t give you a specific name. But there are sheiks and princes and whatnot vacationing here all the time. Stephanie was blond and cute. Just their type.”
Hauck noted that Tina was neither of those things.
“She had guys after her all the time. But who did she actually take up with? That loser at the bar.”
“Ivo? He says he only hooked up with Stephanie one night,” Hauck said.
Tina gave a snort of laughter. “Really?”
Jerri tossed Tina a surprised look. “It may be true. I don’t know that Stephanie was meeting up with Ivo every night she went out. I think she was doing something else.”
“Why do you think that?” he asked.
In the kitchen area, Harper bent over and picked something up from a tiny space between the stove and the counter.
Jerri and Tina had their backs to her.
“She didn’t dress up,” Jerri said.
Harper wandered back into the conversation. “What did she wear? If she wasn’t dressing up for a date?”
“Washed-out jeans and Tshirts that had gotten stained from the cleaning solvents at the museum,” Jerri said.
Tina laughed again. “You’re imagining that, Jerri,” she said. “Just because she didn’t wear a lot of perfume and a skimpy skirt.”
This was clearly a dart that hit its target.
Jerri flushed and pressed her lips together.
“Can we look at her room?” Harper said.
“You can, but it’s empty. Her family cleared out most of her stuff. Her rental car is still in the parking garage, but they looked through that too. We’ll be glad when we can get a new roommate, but no one is exactly panting to live here now,” Jerri said.
They took a look anyway.
Blank walls and empty shelves. A few cheap art prints and a tchotchke or two that didn’t seem worth carting home.
“What’s that?”
Harper pointed to an odd Egyptian statuette on the dresser. It had the body of a man, but the head of a bird with a pointy, curved beak.
“That’s Anti,” Jerri said. “The Falcon God. I guess he ferried the pharaohs to the afterlife or something. They left it though. Steph was obsessed with it. Anti, Ivo, Razi. She was obsessed with a lot of things.”
Hauck looked at Harper, who shook her head in futility. But she looked as though there was something else on her mind. She seemed to be holding something she had found, and he noticed her slip it into her pocket.
When they were back in the car and on their way to their next destination, the museum, he asked, “What did you think of the two roomies?”
He expected to hear Nabila’s opinion, and she’d opened her mouth to respond, when Harper cut her off.
“One of them was lying.”
“How do you figure?” He was curious about her reasoning.
“Either Jerri was telling the truth and Stephanie was dressed for work, hard work. Or Tina was telling the truth and Stephanie was dressed for a date.”
“It has to be an either/or?” he said.
“Both things can’t be true. Especially since they don’t like each other.” Harper was observant, he’d give her that. Of course, if she was a con woman that would be part of the tricks of her trade. “Where were they the night she went missing?”
Nabila said, “Jerri Sanderson said she was out of town until late the next day, and we partially confirmed that with her employer. She was with him until eight at night, and she was there at nine the next morning. In between, who knows? Tina Peek said she was partying until two in the morning, and Stephanie was not in the apartment when she came home.”
“They don’t like each other, it’s true,” Nabila went on.