Death of a Pharaoh Read Free Page B

until she got back. Actually, she looked forward to the short walk. There
would be a nice cool breeze. She picked up the cake and her black purse from
the hook near the door.
    There was no one
in the hallway. She took two steps forward and was about to knock on Herbert's
door when she heard one of his legendary snores. With the racket, she could
barely make out the basketball game on television. How could she disturb him
after telling him to take the night off. She thought of calling Mark again to
ask for an escort but it seemed such a bother. The walk would take all of five
minutes and she’d return long before anyone missed her. It would be her first
stroll alone in months. A shiver of excitement ran down her spine, like a young
teenager sneaking out of her bedroom window at night for a date with a boy she
knew her parents would never accept.
    It was now dusk. A
slight breeze stirred the peonies planted along the walk. There was almost no
traffic and she failed to notice the tall heavyset man who stepped out of the
car parked halfway down the block and partially hidden by a dumpster. There was
no one on the street but she could hear life emanating from all around; a
television tuned too loud, the muted sounds of an earnest conversation on her
right that gave way to a woman humming in Spanish at the kitchen window while
she washed the dishes. They all harmonized to form the chorus of life that
scored the evening.
    She felt safe in
this neighborhood populated with a diverse racial profile and culturally spiced
by the large number of African immigrants that made Cedar Park their home.
Perhaps it was this false sense of security that contributed to the fact that
she never heard the rapid steps approaching from behind. She only reacted when
someone tugged on her purse. She struggled to maintain her grip and spun around
to face the thief. Herbert would be annoyed when he discovered that she had
gone out alone. Defiant, she stared her attacker in the eye and knew instantly
that he did not intend to rob her. She only heard the first shot. Her last
thought was of Nkosana. She prayed that he would forgive her.

    The vision of her assailant was somewhat blurred but clear enough for
Thoth to see his face. With the evil grin of her assassin etched in his memory,
he thought it might be helpful to revisit the reports on the death of Princess
Eshe sixteen years earlier to see if the image in his mind matched the
description of the priest who had caused the fatal accident. If he remembered
correctly, Eshe’s last thoughts exhibited remarkable clarity despite moments of
great pain and anxiety.
    He flipped through
several pages and began to read just as her car headed south along Martin
Luther King Jr. Drive after another of her long chemotherapy sessions at the
private cancer clinic in Philadelphia. She loved this route and had it been
earlier they might have stopped to watch the ducks on the river. She sat in the
right rear with young Nkosana harnessed in an infant safety seat to her left.
She reached over to tickle his fat little chin and smiled as he blew tiny
bubbles in response.
    “My beautiful
miracle baby,” she whispered to him as she so often did. Fourteen months
earlier, her doctors diagnosed leukemia and against their advice she decided to
become pregnant and have a child for fear that the cure would make her sterile.
An heir was more important even than her own health. After his birth, the
medical team gave her barely three weeks to breastfeed him before they insisted
she begin treatment. With the long wait since her diagnosis, the cancer had
spread. The combination of radiation and chemotherapy made most of her hair
fall out and in two months, she would undergo a painful bone marrow transplant.
Her physicians were among the best in the country but the prognosis remained
guarded. She glanced over at Nkosana again and she knew that none of it
mattered with him in her life.
    “Tomorrow, I am
going to take you to see your