“Office is now closed.”
I should have thought of that. Some things close here in the heat of the day. Only shops that cater to tourists are busy now. Everyone else goes in search of shade and a quiet place until later in the afternoon.
“It’s important. I need to see Mr. Botha. The commissioner?” I stand up tall, trying to look important, imperious, the way Mother would if she wanted something here. This guard won’t ask me questions if I act like my mother.
He frowns. “Mr. Botha is not here. The commissioner is Mr. Pieter Drak now. Mr. Botha, he is gone. Retired. Sorry.” The guard’s lips turn down, as if he really is sad that he can’t make the commissioner—the old commissioner—appear. “Perhaps Mr. Drak, he can help you. Later?”
I shake my head. A new commissioner wouldn’t know.
How could Mr. Botha retire? He has an unsolved case. In the United States, the police don’t give up. They keep cold cases going for years. I hear about them all the time, the unsolved cases closed with the discovery of only a small bit of evidence. Maybe something as small as a chip of blue paint.
The guard hands me a card. “Here, here is the number. If you change your mind.” I pocket Mr. Drak’s card.
“How about Dr. Bindas? Do you know him?” If the guard knows Dr. Bindas, then he might know the cousin who works in the government.
Again, he shakes his head. “No.”
Disappointed, I find Kammi outside on the stairs in the shade thrown by the building across the street. She’s sitting with her back to me.
I plop down beside her.
“Did you find out something?” she asks.
“Nothing.”
“What were you going to ask? Is it about the letter your mother got?”
“Yes,” I say. “It’s about my father.”
Kammi opens her mouth and then closes it again, as if she’s thought better of asking a question she might not want to know the answer to. Dad wasn’t part of the reason she came here. After all, Dad is gone. Her father is moving into the picture.
I squint at the clock tower across the street. “Come on. Jinco will be here soon.”
Near the cruise-ship dock, we buy cold drinks and sit on a bench underneath a tree. I watch a pair of lizards chase each other along the wall. Sunburned tourists, laden with shopping bags, head back to the ship like lemmings.
When Jinco shows up, he makes a big show, driving a huge circle around us and doubling back, crossing in front of three small cars, all missing something: a bumper, a radio antenna, a side mirror. Men drinking at the café bar wave noisily, yipping their appreciation. At his driving, or at Kammi. Or maybe both. She and I spill into the back seat. As he takes the curve again to more hoots of pleasure, we slosh into each other like waves.
Kammi leans over to me. “Is he drunk?”
I look at Jinco’s eyes in the rearview mirror.
“No. He’s just showing off.” At that, Jinco settles back into being Jinco the taxi driver for expats and tourists, the safe driver, one a mother would be comfortable leaving her daughter and daughter-to-be with for an afternoon.
“Why don’t you drive us to Santa Catarina? To the ostrich farm? We have time.”
Jinco takes his foot of the gas. A minibus rattles past, nearly running a Jeep of the road coming the other way. Jinco ignores the traffic. “Go there now? Martia, she pay me for roundtrip to Willemstad. That’s all she pay.”
I take bills from my pocket. “I’ll pay extra.” I’m in no rush to go home, to see if Mother has recovered from her headache. Though I don’t want to make Martia wait, we have time enough to drive by and feed the ostriches. In the early years that Dad came, he liked to take me to feed them. He watched the birds, their blinking eyes and long eyelashes. “Intelligent birds,” he said. “You can see it in their eyes.” Mother never came, claimed she was allergic to feathers. One year, Dad bought me a hollowed ostrich egg, the blue color just for me, he said. Some of the eggs were sold with painted designs on them, but I liked the plain ones. Holding them up to the light, I could see the pale inner wall, how the blue color bleeds through to the creamy underside.
Jinco nods curtly. He’s made up his mind. He brakes, then yanks the wheel and heads back to the cutoff. He makes a hard right turn and we’re off, speeding past a bus and a truck sagging with water bottles.
By the time we get there, Kammi has her face pressed to the window, watching the fields for ostriches. Jinco stops the car at the entrance.
“I wait here,” he says, motioning to a tree where a minibus is pulling away. The shady spots are so few in this area, he needs to stake out one for himself. Tour buses have lined up farther along the gate and driveway. He points at his car clock. “Thirty minutes. Then we go. My day, it is finish.”