One Grave Less

by Beverly Connor

  Frank rushed past him into the house.

  “Uh, we haven’t cleared the house yet,” the policeman said.

  The safe room’s outer door was a bookcase in the corner of the living room. Frank opened a small door that concealed a keypad. He punched in his code and the door opened.

  Star stuck her head out. Her black hair was cut in a smooth bob with bangs. It was all one color, which Diane thought was an improvement over fuchsia and chartreuse. She was dressed in black slacks elaborately decorated with swirls of metal studs near the bottom of the pleated leg. With it she wore an ice-blue satin blouse and jacket.

  “Uncle Frank!” She came running to his arms. “The safe room works. I heard someone around the house trying to break in and I ran to the room and locked myself in and called nine-one-one. But I have to tell you, we need a PA system in there so I can fuss at the guys while they are in the house, like, ‘What part of this house is protected by a security service don’t you understand?’ And I need a gun.”

  “Star.” Diane hugged her. “You’re safe, thank God.” Diane had Star’s face between her hands. “You did good.”

  “It really worked. I felt like Jodie Foster and that vampire chick in that movie.”

  Diane had to flip through her memories of popular culture to figure out what Star was talking about. Frank hugged Star again and kissed the top of her head.

  “I’m proud of you. You’re not getting a gun,” he said.

  The rest of the evening went by in a blur. Diane called Neva and the two of them worked the house as a crime scene. Frank and the policemen searched the house from attic to basement, assisted by Gregory, who was unable to just stand around while everyone was whirling about him. The other policemen searched the grounds.

  Garnett drove up thirty minutes later. He told them that, even with all the mess, Izzy wasn’t finding anything useful in Diane’s old apartment. Diane and Neva weren’t finding anything either. The intruders knew how to not leave much behind.

  The policemen searching did find where the perps had parked their vehicle. Diane took as many measurements as she could of the ill-defined tire marks. They weren’t even real tire tracks, just impressions in the leaf detritus. Still, she got a rough idea of the distance between the wheels. She might be able to narrow down the type of vehicle they used.

  It was past midnight before they had the house back. Gregory helped Frank repair the door. Neva had to take Gregory’s fingerprints to add to the exemplars. A terrible way to treat a guest. Gregory took it with a lot of humor, like this was just his life. Diane was dead tired. Fear about Star had drained away a lot of her energy.

  Frank and Gregory were finishing up the door, Diane was wiping down the fingerprint powders left on the surfaces. She stood looking at the clock on the mantle. She had to find a way to get some answers. All of the brain power they had dedicated to crime, and they had nothing. Diane needed to talk to some of the others. Martine Leveque knew Simone Brooks and Oliver Hill best. Damn it, she was just going to have to talk to them.

  Diane went into the room she had made into her private home office and sat down in front of the laptop on the desk, called up her address book, and looked for the number she had for Martine. She calculated the time difference between here and Paris—six hours. Martine would already be up, having her cup of coffee, looking out the window. That was her habit in South America. Diane dialed her number.

  “Oui,” came the answer. Diane recognized her voice.

  “Martine, this is Diane Fallon. I know you prefer not to talk with me, but I really need to speak with you. Please.”

  There was a long pause. Diane thought she may have hung up, or simply left the phone.

  “I told Gregory, I don’t want to maintain our friendships. It’s not personal. You understand,” she said.

  “I do. Simone has been attacked. She may die. I’m trying to find out why.” Diane thought she heard a slight intake of breath.

  “Simone?” she said.

  “She’s in a coma.” Diane hurriedly explained what happened.

  “She is saying one of us caused that terrible thing? I don’t believe it,” Martine said.

  “Neither does Steven. He’s here, suffering from the same rumormongering that I am—and that Gregory and David are,” said Diane.

  “My life here is very calm. I teach children to paint, I arrange flowers, I garden, I ride my horse, I surround myself with beautiful things. But I will try to help you. What do you want to know?”

  “Simone was investigating something—we don’t know what—that Oliver Hill had discovered before his death. Something she only recently found among his things. She decided to take it on as her own project. I think it is what got her hurt. Do you remember Oliver saying anything about an investigation he was doing? Or something bad going on at the mission? Anything he might have said, no matter how odd.”

  “Odd? You know—knew Oliver. He was the definition of odd. No, nothing stands out. He was always melancholy, except when he was around Simone. What a pair those two were, like two injured birds. If something was going on, you would expect David to be tuned in to it. But I guess we all have our blind spots. Even dear paranoid David.” She paused.

  “Birds. There was one thing Oliver said that was odd. I don’t think it means anything, but . . . He was sitting out in the garden with me drinking coffee one morning, watching the birds. You remember the colorful macaws that came up. Wasn’t your little Ariel always trying to get them to talk?”

  “Yes, I remember,” said Diane.

  “Oliver asked me if I knew how the first child abuse prevention societies began. He said they were connected to cruelty to animals. That children were considered the property of their parents, which meant that parents could do anything they wanted to them. It was when someone convinced a judge that a child being abused was a little animal that the child got relief. He said that was the beginning. He thought it odd that animals and children were so often lumped together. I thought the whole conversation was strange and sad.”

  Diane’s mind cast back to the bag that Simone hid in the museum—animal parts and the bone of a human child.

  “Why would one of us betray the rest of us?” asked Martine.

  “Money would be the only reason I can think of,” said Diane. “A lot of it. It’s almost always money.”

  “Perhaps you are right. How are you doing?” Martine asked abruptly.

  “I’m good. I’m director of a museum here in the United States. I’m getting married in a couple of weeks,” said Diane.

  “Married? Oh, wonderful. Is he a good man?”

  “He’s rational, loving, smart, honest. Yes, he’s a good man.”

  “All that? Are you sure he is a man?” said Martine.

  Diane laughed. “Thank you for talking with me, Martine.”

  “I’ll give you my e-mail. Let me know about Simone. I’m glad you direct a museum. That’s good. Surround yourself with beauty. It’s the only thing that helps.” She rang off after giving Diane her e-mail address.

  Diane sat in the chair thinking for a long time. She listened to the hammering in the other room. Listened to Star kibitzing.

  She called up Google on the computer and typed in parrot feathers and South America and some of the other keywords describing things that were in Simone’s bag. As the hits came up, Diane was rather startled by what she found.

  Chapter 43

  “Benjamin Constant,” said Maria, looking out over the town nestled on the edge of the Amazon River.

  “’Mos Eisley spaceport: You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious.’ ” Rosetta’s voice was solemn. Maria laughed and Rosetta giggled.

  They stood at the railing of a tourist boat taking them down the Amazon River, breathing in the wind in their face. The smells were different from the lush rain-forest smells. People made a difference to the ambient aroma, and not in the best way. But Maria wasn’t going to complain.

  �
�I take it you and your mother saw Star Wars,” said Maria.

  “A lot,” said Rosetta.

  Maria realized that Rosetta must constantly review her memories of her time with her mother. Her recollections of all the happy times were so clear.

  They had gotten lucky on their trip through the forest toward Benjamin Constant. They had trekked as close to the river as they dared, hoping to catch sight of a tour boat. They were both tired. Maria kept Rosetta behind her, to protect her from being hit by the limbs and brush Maria was pushing out of their way. She forced her way through a thick section of growth, wishing she had a machete, and came face-to-face with a tall young blond male holding a camera and wearing Rail Riders clothing.

  Maria stopped, ready to fight.

  “Você está perdido?” he said. It sounded like Portuguese with a faint Swedish accent.

  Rosetta peeked out from behind Maria.

  “Sort of lost,” Rosetta said. “Você fala Inglês?”

  “Yes, I speak English,” he said. “Do you need help?” His Swedish accent was more evident in English, or at least, Maria thought it was. Of course, her Portuguese was nonexistent, so she couldn’t really judge.

  When she was over being shocked, Maria wanted to run up and hug him. She was never so glad to hear those four words. She was never so glad to see someone who not only spoke her language, but who possibly didn’t want to kill her.

  “Yes, we do. I’m Maria . . . Maria West,” she supplied, sticking with a plan she had made of how she was going to get the two of them home across several borders. “This is my daughter, Rosetta West. Can you help us get to Benjamin Constant?”

  “Ja,” he said. “We’re going to Benjamin Constant.”

  The “we” was a tourist boat like the one she’d seen at a distance on the river. This close to a large town, river and land traffic were bound to increase. She had been counting on running across someone with faster means of transport than feet. She was afraid it might be a logging truck. She was overjoyed it was a boat, not a canoe, but a large boat with many people, having a good time without guns.

  She related the story that she and Rosetta had worked out as they trekked through the forest. Maria was a doctoral student in archaeology. Rosetta was her daughter. They were visiting archaeology sites, having fun, when someone tried to kidnap them. They got away but became lost in the jungle. However, they were experienced hikers and had a map, and they were on their way to Benjamin Constant.

  “Of course we didn’t have that far to go,” she told Patrik Tillstrom and his fellow student, Hanna Vik. The two Swedish students had talked the boat pilot into stopping along the way so they could take some jungle pictures. That was why the two were in the forest. They were meeting up with friends in Benjamin Constant and taking a longer trip through the Amazon on foot. They were very excited. Maria would have been too, had she not already taken a trip through the Amazon.

  Patrik and Hanna introduced them to some of the other people on the tour boat. It felt so normal. Maria felt safe for the first time in a long time. Still, she kept Rosetta close to her.

  Maria told Rosetta she should speak English most of the time, as if it were her first language. She taught her several American idioms and common popular speech inflections. “It’s all in giving people an impression. You talk like an American kid, they are less likely to think I’m stealing you from the country.” Rosetta understood, being a master plotter herself.

  “But I don’t really look like you,” she said, worried.

  “We are in luck there,” Maria told her. “John West, my boyfriend, is an American Indian.”

  “Really? He’s a real live Indian?” said Rosetta, wide-eyed.

  “So are you,” said Maria.

  “Pretend, I know, but . . . ,” said Rosetta.

  “Not pretend. You are a real Indian. You are a South American Indian. You can trust me on this. I’m an anthropologist,” she said, and Rosetta grinned.

  They stood on the top deck of the tour boat and looked at Benjamin Constant. It was a rough, ragged-looking town. Maria imagined it was hard to keep things sparkling on the edge of the rain forest. They had to wait to dock; the pier was crowded with boats. When they disembarked, they walked down a street that looked like a normal beach tourist strip that hadn’t been kept up for about a hundred years. The street was filled with potholes; the asphalt was worn or nonexistent, with motor bikes and old VW buses and similar beat-up cars traveling along the streets at a slow pace. Leaning telephone poles lined the sides of the street. Also lining the sides were open-front shops constructed of wood and tin, carrying T-shirts, blue jeans, magazines, sunglasses, tobacco, toiletries, all the things you would expect from a touristy logging community.

  With much deliberation and mental hand wringing, Maria ditched all but one of the guns in the river. The gun she kept was the one she took from the woman. She hadn’t shot anyone with it. It seemed safer. She would ditch it soon too, when they were safely on their way home. She had transferred some of their acquired money from the lining of her clothes to her bra. Now it was time to shop. The idea was to buy a few items and go to a hotel recommended by some of the people she met on the boat.

  She bought a new shirt and jeans for each of them, a pair of sunglasses each, two baseball caps, toiletries, a towel each, socks, a magazine in English, a shoulder bag, and a doll. Maria wanted to look more like the student she said she was. Right now they both looked like they’d spent the last week crawling through the jungle. Not far from wrong.

  Maria tied her hair back and each donned their caps and sunglasses. Rosetta grinned. Clearly she liked shopping.

  “What do you say we go find a hotel room and a telephone?” said Maria.

  Rosetta nodded vigorously. She clutched her Raggedy Ann-like doll as closely as she had the backpack all the way through the jungle. On the way, they passed an open market where they purchased bananas and another kind of fruit with a red skin that Rosetta said was good.

  They started to cross one of the main streets when something on a telephone pole caught Maria’s eye. Perhaps it was the new, unweathered look of the yellow piece of paper . . . More likely, the drawing. She and Rosetta walked closer and looked.

  “That looks like you,” whispered Rosetta.

  The eight-by-ten flyer had a drawing that looked very much like Maria, with her muddy dreadlocks and bandanna on her head that she had cut from the fabric. It was a copy of a drawing and suffered from being too dark, but a sharp eye would certainly be suspicious. The writing was in Portuguese. Even with her poor understanding of the language, she knew what it probably said. The word for homicide stuck out.

  Procurado por homicídio e abdução

  Diane Fallon también conocido como Linda Hall

  Extremamente perigoso

  There was a paragraph of smaller print near the bottom. The only good thing was that Maria didn’t know who the heck Linda Hall was.

  “What does it say exactly?” asked Diane.

  “Can you pronounce it for me? I can read English pretty good—sort of—but I can’t read Portuguese,” said Rosetta.

  “Sure,” said Maria. She smiled inwardly at herself. She had thought of Rosetta as Superkid for so long that she was surprised there was something she couldn’t do.

  Maria pronounced the words as best she could. She had to do it a couple of times before Rosetta understood. Rosetta repeated the words after Maria said them.

  “Wanted for murder and kidnapping, Diane Fallon, also known as Linda Hall. Extremely dangerous.”

  Maria read the paragraph at the end. She was a little better this time.

  “It says you kidnapped a child named Rosetta Medina. I guess that’s me. The Medinas were the people I was working for in the village where we met.”

  “Who is Linda Hall, I wonder?” asked Maria.

  “Didn’t that guy Kyle call you Linda?” said Rosetta.

  “Yes, and he was the only one to see me in the bandanna. At least we know the li
ttle weasel didn’t die. He’s a pretty good artist. He should have stuck to that,” Maria muttered. “But what is the Hall? What is Portuguese for hall?”

  “Sala?” said Rosetta. “It also means room.”

  “Okay, which is another word for chamber. He called me Linda Chambers. Something got lost in the translation. So there is good news and bad news.”

  “I should have used another name besides Rosetta,” said the little girl. She looked close to tears.

  Maria hugged her. “Rosetta is a common name. Many girls have it. Besides, it may work in our favor if anyone asks us about it. If I kidnapped you, wouldn’t I change your first name?” Maria smiled at her. “You’ve done great. Don’t lose faith in yourself now.”

  “I think the person who wrote it was a Spanish speaker,” said Rosetta. “It’s put together like Spanish and some of the words are really Spanish.”

  “Okay, I’m impressed. That’s useful information for us. See, you’re a great kid, so keep the faith.”

  Rosetta smiled back, but Maria could still see the fear in her eyes. They were getting so close and Ariel wanted her mother so badly. It will happen. Maria would make it happen.

  “Let’s go check into the hotel and get cleaned up. If I can get the mud out of my hair and get rid of the dreads, I’ll look less like the drawing.”

  They crossed the street and followed verbal directions they had been given to the hotel. The fear that had been in the pit of Maria’s stomach since the ordeal began, and that had started to recede, was returning. Damn it, she was not going to accept only a few hours of peace. They needed to get comfortable and clean and she could think this through.

  The thing that worried her, though, was the scope of the search for her. Yes, it was low-tech. Couldn’t get much lower than paper flyers on a telephone pole. But it covered hundreds of miles, and whoever it was had access to an army of people from all over to call on. What did they want with Diane Fallon? Was Diane safe where she was?