Murder in the Medina

While she pulled her suitcase from the upper shelf of the front closet, Finley asked Alexa to call her sister. Whitt, her baby sister by six years, lived in Manila, working in development banking. The two saw each other a couple times a year, or sometimes more when they figured out how to arrange their work assignments so that at least part of their projects were in some proximate parts of the world, and they could wrangle a weekend in a spot between their locations.

Sometimes it was Dubai for a couple hours during a layover, or better still Doha where the stop could give them as much as ten hours to catch up. Last time, it had been a whole three days in Istanbul, a city Whitt loved and knew well. Finley was hoping that Whitt had a trip planned that would take her near enough to Tangier so that they could grab a few days of girl talk.

“’Lo!” came a dusky voice, muffled by sleep.

“Sorry, kid! Hope I didn’t wake you.”

“Nope, it’s only eleven here. I must’ve nodded off.” Whitt yawned into the phone. “Sorry. What’s up?”

Finley explained the Moroccan assignment with Traveler’s Tales and the timing. She had already told Whitt about her need for a career change, the opportunity—however temporary—that Dan had offered, and her concerns, her uncertainty. Whitt was encouraging, assuring her of her ability to make the change and talking about all the places they could travel to together.

“So, you stuck in the office, or are you on the road?” Finley asked.

“I’m off to Tbilisi the week after next for meetings with the Central Bank. When are you heading out?”

“The day after tomorrow. I need to book my flight and hotels today and see if I can set up a few calls for when I land. The person I’m standing in for has done a lot of the grunt work, so I think I’m good to hit the ground running,” Finley ventured hopefully. “You up for a little adventure? A bit out of the way, but still good fun.”

“Let me see what I can do.” Whitt answered, sounding wide awake. She was up for the challenge. It would mean that she would have to do all the preparations for her trip to Georgia as well as book a flight to Tangier in the next day or so. Her meetings weren’t for another ten days, so she could use some of her vacation rollover that was accumulating. It would be great to see her sister after five months apart. More importantly, it would assure her that Finley was doing okay and that her decision to leave consulting was a good one.

“I’ll shoot you a message with my flight info. I think it’ll work,” Whitt relayed before dropping off the call and pulling up Expedia. “This is going to be fun.”