“He described you. In a general way, of course.”
But now Fiona wondered if Day Star, anticipating they might look for a psychic in Santa Fe, had coached several of them to give out misinformation. No, that was truly paranoid. It was more likely that someone from Day Star would follow them, go in afterward, and demand to know what he had told them. What if they tortured or even killed him?
She whirled around and saw no one behind them. Get a grip.
But the thought of putting someone else’s life in danger made her think about Egypt.
She had been there for two weeks when the instructor who had taken her hang gliding offered her an expedition by moonlight to the pyramids in Giza. The monuments were closed to tourists at night; they would be beautiful and deserted. Fiona had agreed right away and cajoled a French photojournalist from her hotel, Marcelle Delame, into coming along and taking pictures.
There was a reason for that. A newspaper travel editor had been questioning whether her Eccentric Traveler blogs were—uh—exaggerating just a little, and Fiona wanted the photographs to show him. The truth was that, once in a while, she veered into what might have happened.
“It will be awesome,” Fiona promised Marcelle.
Three men had driven them the sixteen miles from Cairo in a jeep and then walked them in by flashlight for the last half mile. When they reached the Great Pyramid, Marcelle, excited, had decided to climb to the top to take photos. The moon was full, casting its magic. One of the Egyptian men had accompanied Marcelle—to protect her, Fiona assumed.
She stayed at the bottom herself, making notes on her iPhone. She needed to climb to the top as well, but wanted to detail the atmosphere first.
She had been describing the light on the sand when a voice cried out in protest, and Fiona jerked her head up to look. Marcelle was not at the summit yet, but the man had his arms around her and they were struggling.
“What’s he doing?” Fiona cried to the men beside her.
But instead of answering, the younger of the two had grabbed her roughly around the waist from behind, and in a moment was pushing on top of her in the sand. Too late she realized how foolhardy she had been. He had her skirt up and was clawing at her underpants while trying to hold her down with his other forearm. She fought him bitterly, finally getting close enough to bite his shoulder through his shirt.
It wasn’t his surprised outrage that saved her, but the scream that came from above them as Marcelle lost her footing and plunged to the lowest stones with a thud that echoed in the desert air.
The men had run then, dropping the flashlight on the sand as they raced toward the jeep. Fiona ran to Marcelle, gasping as she saw blood pulsing from the wound in her forehead. She grabbed her wrist for a pulse, then put her face down next to Marcelle’s, her hand on her chest. She was not breathing. The pyramid was several stories high but recessed enough so that she should not have reached the bottom. Unless she had been pushed . . .
Fiona had taken the flashlight and fought her way through the sand, wondering if the men were lying in wait to kill her for what she had seen. But when she reached the parking area, the jeep was gone. She had finally been able to get a phone signal and dial 122 for the police. When she was connected to someone who spoke English, she reported that there had been an accident at the Great Pyramid in Giza, that a woman had fallen. Instinctively she had not identified herself. When they demanded her name, she broke the connection.
What happened next haunted Fiona months later. She waited for the police, sitting shakily on a low metal guardrail while she agonized over what to do. Could she find those men again and have them arrested? Would the police turn it around and blame her, like Amanda Knox? At the least they would arrest her for trespassing. Even in the best case, it could take weeks. When she heard the sirens, she hid in the brush. Then, dazed, she limped back to civilization and took a taxi to her hotel.
The next morning, she confronted the hang-glide instructor.
To her shock, he denied knowing the men or what she was talking about, denied making any arrangements for her to go to Giza. “You Americans are crazy,” he’d said firmly. “No one will believe here what you say. They will put you in jail for a long time!”
So she had fled. Bruised, terrified, she had flown out of Cairo that night and not looked back.
The Eccentric Traveler disappeared.
Chapter Thirty-Four
AS ROSA UNFASTENED the gate lock, Fiona looked down the road again. She could not see anyone else on the street or the headlights of any cars. They had found the house by the number on its enameled tiles, but there were no business signs anywhere.
The man who came to the front door was charm itself. He was wearing a white silk shirt with billowing sleeves that emphasized his Mediterranean darkness and made his hips in black pants look even smaller. He could have been a tango dancer, but for the large wooden cross around his neck covered with tiny silver body parts: arms, legs, eyes, hearts, even a kneeling woman. Milagros, Fiona knew. People afflicted in those areas bought them and left them in church as prayers for relief.
She recognized the fluttering in her stomach as hope. Could this man tell her where Lee was? But psychics weren’t real.
“Let’s sit outside,” he suggested.
They followed him around to a small patio, its slatted top covered by vines. Torch lights illuminated the area and showed tubs of evening primrose. Since the landscape itself was so arid, any flowers seemed to be in pots where they could be watered. Fiona settled herself into a white metal chair and identified the strongest scent as gardenias. The place seemed mysterious and magical, but she was too anxious to enjoy it.
“Juice?” Paolo Recchia asked.
Fiona shook her head.
“I’d love some!” Rosa said flirtatiously, tilting her head up to look at him. Fiona remembered the piano player; at Rosa’s age, was it all innocent again?
Fiona capitulated. “Oh, I’ll take some too. What kind is it?”
“My own blend.”
As soon as he left, Rosa leaned over and whispered, “He seems very down to earth.”
Fiona nodded.
Paolo Recchia came back holding a tray with three cut-glass tumblers filled with an apricot-colored liquid. After setting the glasses down in front of the women, he took a sip from his own. Fiona noticed that he had put on round, rimless glasses, giving him the look of a scholar. She had no idea how old he was.
“You’ve come a long way to get here,” he observed.
You’ll have to do better than that.
He must have read her expression, because he added, “But you’re not here on vacation. You have a darker mission.”
“You can tell that?” Rosa gasped.
He laughed and waved a hand toward Fiona’s forehead. “Anybody could. The lines between her eyebrows are very deep. And you were insistent about seeing me tonight.”
“That’s true. But I’m insistent about everything.”
He smiled at them both. “How can I help you?”
Fiona looked to Rosa, but the older woman gestured at her to talk. “We need to find out more about something that happened last Sunday.” When she finished telling him the story, she added, “We brought a map of the area. And things belonging to the missing people.” That had been Rosa’s idea. They had borrowed a New Mexico-Colorado map from her hotel and then pooled whatever personal items they could find.
“That’s good.” But instead of putting out his hand to take the objects, he sat back in his chair and studied the women.
Was he waiting for them to feed him more information? Perversely, Fiona kept quiet. Then she remembered her vision of Lee in the library that first afternoon. Should she ask him about that?
Rosa was fishing around in her Guatemalan bag. “Don’t you want to see?” Her voice shook a little.
“If you want,” he said gently.
She brought out an envelope and a wallet-sized photograph and laid them side by side on the glass
table. The envelope was from Dimitri to Greg, with his P.O. box address in the corner. Fiona had looked inside, but Greg had taken out the letter. The photograph showed a girl with long brown hair and lush features. She had an energetic, turned-up nose and full rosy lips. Wide blue eyes. Dominick’s eyes, though his were brown.
Fiona reached in her purse and extracted a small earring shaped like a shell. It was one of the pair that Lee had given her after they’d flown to Nantucket on a whim. She placed it on the table with the other object, making certain it did not roll.
Paolo picked up the earring first. It disappeared into his fist.
“My friend—the man I’m in love with—gave it to me about a month ago. I don’t know if it still counts.”
He picked up the photograph and studied it, looked at the envelope. “These people are together.”
“They are?” Fiona felt as shocked as if he had reached across the table and shoved her. “But where? Or are you talking about their spirits?”
He gave a small wave to show that he did not believe in the artificial boundaries between life and death. “They may still be as you knew them.”
May. She clung to that. “But where are they?” Her voice was a croak.
You don’t believe in psychics, remember?
Rosa dug into her bag again and brought out the map. “Show us where!”
“It is not where they are. There is something larger that you must find.” He rested his elbows on the table and looked beyond Fiona. “The mountains, yes, but also sand.”
“Sand?” He must be picking up that they were from Long Island. Or maybe it was the shell-shaped earring.
“But what town is this large thing near?” Rosa cried.
“There is no town. A green sign, a signpost, but not a place. Mountains with snow and roads, but—” He slumped in his chair and looked at Fiona. “You should not go on with this. There is great danger.”
Rosa gave him a smile. “Oh, we’re pretty tough.”
But Paolo would not be drawn in. “This is not a game to play. I don’t mean a game, it is not just something for you to find out. It is dark, darker than you know.”
“But we have to find these people!” Fiona insisted. Tell me where Lee is!
He sighed. “You may.” He handed her back the earring, then rubbed his hands together, his wide sleeves moving like wings in the darkness. “A young man will help you,” he murmured. “A young woman has betrayed you.”
They waited, but he did not say anything else. To give him time, Fiona picked up her glass of juice and took a sip. She put it down, shocked. She had been expecting something like nectar, perhaps an apricot blend. Instead it was tangy, not sweet at all, some kind of vegetable drink.
“What do we owe you?” Rosa asked finally, bringing her woven bag back up to her lap. She slipped the envelope and the photograph back inside.
“I have no set fee. I want my gift to be helpful. People leave what they think it is worth to them. But I implore you to think about it, to retreat from a dangerous quest is not shameful.”
“But how dangerous is it, really?” Rosa’s question seemed to echo in the dark, fragrant garden. “I mean, is it life threatening?”
“Dangerous means life threatening.” There was reproof in his voice.
“Well, we’ll certainly take care, won’t we, Fiona?”
“Yes.” Her body felt too heavy to move. She was sorry now they had come.
“Here.” Rosa took out her wallet, removed several bills, and left them under her empty juice glass. “And thank you for seeing us on such short notice!”
Before he could say anything, before Fiona could push to her feet, Rosa was down the path and out the gate.
As Fiona finally stood up, the psychic touched her shoulder. “Take care of your friends,” he pleaded.
“They’re really in danger?”
“And especially yourself.”
“What’s going to happen?”
But he was closing the garden gate.
When Fiona caught up with her on Canyon Road, Rosa apologized. “Sorry I ran out; he was giving me the willies.”
“He hinted at a lot of things.”
“They love to talk in riddles! All that stuff about dark men.”
“Young men. Maybe he was the young man who would help us.” Maybe he said that to everyone.
Rosa stopped walking under a streetlight. “No, that sounded as if it was in the future. The young woman who betrays us was in the past.”
“Probably Mandy Muffin. She’ll do everything to keep Jackson away from us. Or maybe it was the young woman in Taos who gave Day Star my car rental information. Speaking of young women, let me try Maggie again.”
She took out her phone and retrieved Maggie’s number. She pressed it in, expecting to hear the usual ringing. But this time it was answered immediately.
“Yes?”
“Maggie, it’s Fiona.”
“Fiona! Thank God. Thank God, thank God! It must be telepathy.”
“I’ve been trying all day.”
“I was at the hospital with my father.”
Fiona felt Maggie’s anxiety as an electric shock, whipping through her own body. “Is he okay?”
“He died!” It came out as a wail.
“What? How?”
“It’s still so unreal. Last night after dinner he started coughing up blood. Then this morning he was very disoriented, more than usual, and he couldn’t move his arm. So I got him to the hospital and—” She couldn’t go on.
Fiona palmed her phone. “Her father died.”
“My Lord!” Rosa reared back, steadying herself against the lamppost.
“They saw him right away; they admitted him and said he was bleeding internally.” Maggie’s voice was ragged in her ear. “They tried to do what they could, but tonight he just stopped breathing.”
“Oh, God. I’m so sorry. What was he bleeding from?”
“They’re not sure; they’re doing an autopsy. But in a man his age they said something probably ulcerated in his stomach or bowel.”
“Maybe the plane stopped suddenly and he was thrown against his seat belt.”
“I don’t think it was anything with the plane. It’s so hard on the kids; they can’t understand. But you know what? I’m really glad they sent him here, even this way. It gave us a chance to say good-bye. And he was slipping away—his mind, I mean. But lying there in the hospital he looked so bewildered, as if he just didn’t understand what was happening to him—my poor daddy.” She was sobbing now.
Fiona felt herself start to cry.
Rosa reached over and took the phone out of her hand. “Maggie,” she said briskly. “Do you need anything? Any help with the arrangements? Anything at all?” She listened for a while, then said, “Well, we’ll be home in a day or two. And we’ll call you tomorrow.”
She turned to Fiona, who had finished wiping her face. “He’ll be cremated there and she’ll fly out when she can with the ashes. Her mother’s buried out here.”
“What about the kids?”
“Her ex-husband will take them.”
“Oh.” So he hadn’t died in the car crash after all. It was the marriage that had not survived.
Chapter Thirty-Five
THEY MOVED QUICKLY down Canyon Road. The windows of the shops along the road were dark, the signs on the doors turned around to “Closed.” A Mexican gallery on the left was deceptively lit, its spotlight focusing on rain sticks and hand-dyed silk scarves, but a carved wooden plaque on the door announced “Shut.”
Where were all the people who had been here before? It didn’t feel safe to be walking there alone. “Do you think he was just trying to scare us off?” Fiona asked in a low voice.
“No. Do you?”
“No.”
They walked even faster, and Fiona was cheered to finally see the lights of a restaurant ahead with people at tables on the patio. Thank God!
Yet once they had passed El Farol, the road grew dark ag
ain. On the way up, she had not noticed how closed off the buildings were, protected by stone walls or iron gates. A long white-picket fence glowed eerily ahead of them like a false trail. The road twisted just enough so she could not see very far ahead of them—or behind them.
Without discussing it, they had stepped up their pace nearly to a run. “You okay?” Fiona asked as Rosa’s panting increased.
“Hanging in. Look how menacing that animal seems now.”
Fiona looked. The huge carved, painted cat’s head above a shop, an animal that had seemed whimsical when they were going up Canyon Road, now stared at them like a malevolent deity.
“We should have called a cab,” Rosa gasped. “But the woman at your inn said they were hopeless here. We’d probably still be waiting.”
“I haven’t seen any driving around,” Fiona agreed.
IT SEEMED MIRACULOUS to finally come upon Rosa’s hotel. “I need to stop for a moment,” she said, and Fiona followed her obediently in.
As they approached the bank of elevators, Fiona could hear “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” from the piano lounge. Rosa gave the entryway a quick, wistful glance, and Fiona supposed she would be there later on, cradling a piña colada and singing.
Indeed, when she came back downstairs, Rosa almost succumbed. “How about a quick one? My nerves are shot. This has been a terrible day.”
“I think we have to talk to the others first. Make plans.” Yet as she said it, she remembered Paolo Recchia’s caution. Rosa was the one he had seemed most worried about. “Or maybe not. You deserve a drink. I’ll go back and tell them what we found out.”
Rosa gave her a knowing smile, creating pathways around her mouth. “If we’re making plans, I need to be there.”
“Well—some of us should leave for Denver tonight. To see if we can see anything large in the mountains and talk to the airport.”
“You mean you and Mr. Charming?”
“I think I’d feel better if Dominick was along.”
“Ah. Everybody but me. Is it my age—or my unfiltered cigarettes?”
“You aren’t looking for Susan anymore.”
“And if you find something important, you’ll come back for me?”
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