Murder in the Medina

They headed out of the hotel and up the hill toward the Bab Kasbah, one of the many ancient stone arches that surrounded the old part of the city. Built during Tangier’s medieval period, the gates had protected the labyrinth of alleyways that housed residents and shops that had plied trade through the times of the Romans to modern day. The bright white walls of the medina had survived the Phoenicians, the Romans, the Greeks, the Vandals, the Portuguese, the Spanish, the Brits, and the French.

Sometime during this rich history, Morocco refined the art of both tea and coffee. While mint tea was what was customarily drunk, Finley knew that Moroccans could also brew one hell of a cup of Turkish coffee. It had been one of the things she and Max had always looked for wherever they went—a café that served good coffee. They had found Cafe Baba by chance, discovering only later that it had been the haven of such greats as the Rolling Stones and Jack Kerouac, who visited the café to drink coffee or mint tea and smoke kief, a drug that has since been banned.

Finley and Whitt climbed the steep stairs to the café entrance and ordered their coffee. What they really wanted was a to-go cup so they could keep walking while they talked, but that was clearly a foreign concept here. So, the two sat at a small table that gave glimpses of the sea, heads together, trying to review what they knew. First, they knew that it was not an accident, but a murder. They also knew that Julien and Ross had had a falling out over something. While Julien claimed it was a philosophical difference, Peter suggested at breakfast that it had been a knock-down, drag-out fight between the two of them, indicating that it wasn’t a minor difference.

Beyond that, they could only speculate