Murder in the Tea Leaves by Carter Fielding

Author:Carter Fielding [Fielding, Carter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781647044947
Publisher: Carter Fielding Press
Published: 2022-02-21T13:23:16+00:00

11

Morning came too soon. The driver and guide that were to take them to Yala arrived at 4:30 a.m. Whitt had added David and Max’s name to the tour list the night before, but it didn’t really matter since they had rented a private car for the trip.

The guide endeared himself to Finley and Whitt by offering them a mug of strong coffee laced with condensed milk. While Finley normally took her coffee black, she knew that the shot of glucose would keep her running at least until they were on the road to Yala. Shortly after Koggala, where they saw the stilt fishermen, Max had leaned his head back for a nap with Finley stretched out near him, her head in his lap. In the seat behind, David and Whitt had curled up, his arm around her, her head on his shoulder.

When they arrived at Yala some two and a half hours later, the sun was up, and the damp chill was gone. The guide explained that in Sri Lanka, “the big five” was made up of leopards, elephants, sloth bears, sperm whales, and blue whales. The group would only be seeing three of the five today, in addition to indigenous deer, monkeys, crocodiles, and myriad birds.

Yala, as Finley had rightly remembered, was a photographer’s paradise. She had brought extra cameras, and a bag full of other equipment. Max had been gracious enough to carry the extra satchel, so that she didn’t have to make choices about which lenses, filters, and tripods to bring. He liked to see her work, watching her brow furrow and her eyes narrow with concentration as she zeroed in on a subject.

They were in the park no more than three minutes when the camera shutter started clicking. Finley had spotted a leafless tree on a small mound in one of the watering holes that had reflected its image back into the water. The shot she composed was of upper and lower pools of blue, cut by a sliver of dark earth, into which the tree and its reflection, like hands, reached into the sky above and the water below. Stark, spare, and breathtaking.

As they moved deeper into the park, the wildlife seemed to come alive. Elephants lifted their trunks through the brush to get a better grasp on upper leaves, several with calves by their sides or under their legs. Groups of water buffalo and sambar, a deer indigenous to Sri Lanka, were scattered about the flats, sharing space in the wetlands with crocodiles of monstrous size.

“If I were that deer, I would take a step back,” Whitt said, observing a group of spotted deer inching dangerously close to what looked like a submerged log, but in reality was a large croc.

Near Elephant Rock, the guide pointed out a cluster of trees that were covered with langurs, a type of white-bearded leaf monkey. They were perched precariously on branches, even at the topmost parts of the trees.

“How do they do that?” Max had seized

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