Death on the Patagonian Express

by Hy Conrad

  Also by Hy Conrad

  Dearly Departed

  Toured to Death

  Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation

  Death on the PATAGONIAN EXPRESS

  HY CONRAD

  KENSINGTON BOOKS

  http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Also by

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  AUTHOR’S NOTES

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  EPILOGUE

  KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2017 by Hy Conrad

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  Library of Congress Catalogue Number. 2016955135

  Kensington and the K logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

  ISBN: 978-1-6177-3686-5

  First Kensington Hardcover Edition: January 2017

  eISBN-13: 978-1-61773-689-6

  eISBN-10: 1-61773-689-9

  Kensington Electronic Edition: January 2017

  AUTHOR’S NOTES

  Alas, there is no actual railway connecting Argentina and Chile, although there should be. There is also no Carmelite monastery in the shadows of Torres del Paine. My goal in setting a mystery in Patagonia was not to replicate every detail of this wild, fascinating corner of the world, but to try to give a true sense of the place—and to tell a good story.

  In all other ways, I’ve tried my best to get things right—the food, the people, the wind, and the solitude. The credit for whatever accuracy I’ve achieved should go to my guides, Pablo and Nicolas, who spent a total of three weeks with me, showing off their own private Patagonia. Both were incredibly generous and patient, especially when my questions included ones like, “What animals around here would eat a human corpse?”

  As long as I’m veering into the realm of acknowledgments, I feel that I have to acknowledge Jeffrey Johnson, my husband and traveling companion for the past thirty-seven years. He has put up with much more than Pablo and Nicolas ever did, and he never even got a character named after him.

  PROLOGUE

  TrippyGirl was not prepared to die in Patagonia.

  The first fall had broken my left leg. The second fall wasn’t technically a fall. It was a deliberate, painful leap from the cliff onto my saddle, which Milly, the horse underneath the saddle, didn’t seem to appreciate. As I lay on the hard, dusty ground and touched my side, I could feel the freshly broken ribs from where Milly had landed a kick right before abandoning me here on the windy, arid plain. Enough adrenaline was coursing through my system, to keep most of the agony at bay. But it would come. The worst pain I felt at the moment, more than from the ribs and the broken leg, was from looking at my black Lafonts, my favorite frames, which had been all but destroyed in my attempt to escape this cold-blooded killer.

  Fanny pushed herself back from the keyboard, picked up the earthenware gourd, and sipped through the metallic straw. She refused to acknowledge the presence of the woman right behind her, who was reading over her shoulder.

  “Mom, that’s not how it happened.”

  Fanny mashed the herbal mixture, took one more sip, then turned to face her. “Your leg is in a cast,” she said, pointing to the cast. “You have two broken ribs. Your left eye is all black. You have more cuts and scrapes than a creature in a horror film. . . .”

  Amy’s hand went to her face. “Is it that bad?”

  “Not quite. The sunburn gives you a nice healthy glow. But . . .” She pointed to a pair of black Lafont frames on the kitchen counter, the two sides loosely held together with electrical tape. “Those were your favorite glasses, if I’m not mistaken.”

  “Yes, but I can get them repaired.”

  “Okay, I’ll change it. Not destroyed.”

  “That’s not what I meant. Everything you write is an exaggeration.”

  “Excuse me for trying to liven up the truth.”

  “It doesn’t need livening up.”

  An impartial observer, someone just walking into the living room of the Greenwich Village town house, would probably have sided with the younger Ms. Abel. Amy was in her early thirties; relatively tall at five-ten; with brown, shoulder-length hair; brown eyes; and pleasant, unremarkable features. She was indeed decked out in a leg cast, with bandages holding her ribs in place, and various bruises decorating the rest of her body, including a sunburned face. The truth, whatever it was, probably didn’t need livening up.

  Her mother’s appearance was tamer by comparison. Fanny was a good eight inches shorter than Amy, shaped like a curvy fireplug crowned in a henna-dyed pageboy. At the moment, the pageboy was covered by a Peruvian wool cap with a red pompom on top and a silver Batman insignia, like a mirror, adorning the front.

  “Everything needs livening up,” said Fanny. And she punctuated this statement with a long slurp from the earthenware gourd.

  CHAPTER 1

  Two months earlier . . .

  Amy gazed out at the lazy, uncommitted snowflakes, then reluctantly returned her focus to the overheated confines of the Village Gastropub.

  For as long as she could remember, since her kindergarten days, when she’d first learned to order from a menu, this space had belonged to Tony & Bill’s, a dusty Italian eatery revered for its unchallenging menu and unchanging prices. Now it had been turned into a trendy, faux casual café, with burnished redbrick walls and a polished bar and featuring Kobe beef burgers and white truffle mac and cheese.

  She was sitting alone at a window table for three—not physically alone, since her mother was seated just opposite her. But for all practical purposes. “You’re like a teenager,” she complained and got no reaction. “Hello?”

  Fanny readjusted her reading glasses but did not look up from her phone. “Just doing some tweeting. My public expects it of me.”

  “Since when do you have a public?”

  “Aren’t you being a tad jealous of Trippy? You shouldn’t. I love both my girls equally.”

  It was a joke. But Amy couldn’t help seeing the truth underneath.

  She had never been impetuous, unlike Trippy. She had always thought too much about what could go wrong. She had just begun to overcome this trait, one that she’d inherited from her calm and passive father, when the violent death of her fiancé, Eddie, plunged her back into her quiet, unadventurous existence.

  This had been three years ago, and Fanny had tried everything to bring her daughter back into the world of the living. The eventual solution was to start a business together, a travel agency focusing on exotic, action-filled vacations. Amy would be forced to face people and proble
ms again and would be rewarded by going around the world. Travel had been her and Eddie’s mutual passion. And Amy’s Travel, a cute little storefront on Hudson Street, was founded as a living tribute to their life together, the life they’d almost had together.

  In retrospect, it wasn’t the best business plan. The Internet had nearly destroyed the brick-and-mortar agencies. And the fact that Amy’s Travel periodically showed up in the news in conjunction with murders and arrests worldwide didn’t make things any easier.

  The saving grace had turned out to be TrippyGirl, a modest blog that Fanny had come up with on her own, featuring the fun-loving, carefree girl that Amy wasn’t. Almost without knowing it, the Abels had a viral smash, allowing them to sell ad space and drive traffic to a myriad of other travel sites. In some ways, Trippy had become an alter ego, the fearless daughter that Fanny could approve of without hesitation. Without the daily fights over everything that actual mothers and daughters fought about.

  Fanny returned to her tweets, thumbs flying. Amy retaliated by taking out her own phone and pressing the Facebook icon. She scrolled down through the array of cat videos and political calls to action and selfies featuring people she barely knew. “Oh, my!” she exclaimed a few seconds later. Her tone was shocked and sad and genuine enough to make Fanny look up.

  “Oh, your what?”

  “You remember Danny D’Angelo from high school?”

  “Of course. Danny Angel. You had a crush on him.”

  “No, Mother, you had a crush on him.”

  “Well, the boy was adorable, and he knew it. A very high opinion of himself. What’s he doing? Starring in a movie?”

  “Danny D’Angelo died,” Amy said, scrolling farther, trying to piece together more information from the Facebook comment section.

  “Oh, that’s horrible,” said Fanny, hand to her heart. “The poor family.”

  “He was on a vacation somewhere.” Amy read the next part twice and even then paused before saying it. “Apparently, Danny was killed by a mirror.”

  “By a mirror? That’s ironic. Mirrors were always his friends.”

  “Must be an AutoCorrect error.”

  “Did he like younger women? Maybe he was killed by a minor.”

  Amy was still scrolling when the last person in their party arrived. “Sorry I’m late,” she said. “So great to finally meet you.” What looked like a sixteen-year-old girl stood there, smiling anxiously as she whipped off her plaid Eskimo parka and her knit winter cap. She was dark and short, rather waiflike, with curly hair and shining teeth that seemed a size too big.

  “Great to finally meet you,” echoed Amy. Both Abels rose for the obligatory hugs and air kisses and general assurances that everyone looked wonderful. During all of this, Amy slipped her phone off the table and glared until Fanny did the same with hers.

  It was odd that they’d never met Sabrina before. But that was the way it was. You could communicate a dozen times a day, gush over their children or fiancés, and donate money to their next 5K run without ever physically meeting. You could find out how they reacted to a midnight e-mail sent after you’d had one too many glasses of chardonnay. As far as Amy had been able to tell, Sabrina Marx was quite a nice person—energetic, personable, willing to share, even by Fanny’s intrusive standards. But, surprisingly, just a kid.

  Book editors were getting younger, Amy knew, a result of low pay and the changing dynamics of publishing. But still. It was hard to look at this youngster and not ask what subject she was majoring in.

  “Banyan Press is so excited about TrippyGirl’s World,” Sabrina assured them. “We’ve got contracts lined up with Audible and the Literary Guild. We even have some top-notch travel writers wanting to review it. The crossover potential is going to be super.”

  “Real travel writers?” Amy asked, trying to sound more excited than frightened at the prospect.

  “For real. Todd Drucker from TD Travel.”

  “You mean the magazine’s owner and editor? That Todd Drucker?” Amy knew of him, of course. This was the man who had, in the past decade, taken the world of travel writing up a good five notches, the single biggest force in making exotic travel part of the mainstream. And, according to all reports, not a very nice or forgiving guy.

  Sabrina grinned at her coup. “Uh-huh. As soon as we did our first press release, he was all over us about a review copy.” She dumped her coat into a nearby chair, settled in, and raised a hand to catch the waiter’s eye.

  “Imagine that,” Fanny gushed. “A big-time writer reviewing a book made of my little blogs.”

  The personal pronoun (singular) hung in the air as their waiter stepped up, introduced himself (Bradley), and took their orders for three iced teas, passion fruit and mango. Amy tried to secure a plain iced tea, but passion fruit and mango was as close as the Village Gastropub was willing to go.

  Last year, when the publishers first started calling, Amy had emphasized that the TrippyGirl blogs were a collaboration, with her mother taking Amy’s real-life escapades and embellishing them. They had labeled the work faction, like a nonfiction novel, which in hindsight was probably being generous. For example, the blogs about the Taj Majal murder were largely true, while the ones sent from the Trans-Siberian Express were entirely made up. The editors had to understand that TrippyGirl was not Amy Abel, and this was not a memoir. After hearing this disclaimer, several publishers had lost interest, but not Banyan. Or maybe Banyan just hadn’t wanted to hear. All they’d heard was that Amy and Fanny had a blog with an avid readership of over a million and growing.

  Sabrina waited until the waiter had recited the lunch specials and retreated. “You write the blogs together?” she said, phrasing it as a question.

  “Of course,” said Fanny.

  “Actually, no,” Amy said, clarifying. “I read the drafts and make suggestions, but Mom does the writing. It’s her style that everybody loves.”

  “I understand,” said Sabrina in a tone that said she didn’t. “But photos of you are on the site, Amy. That leads people to believe you’re at least a coauthor.”

  “But I’m not TrippyGirl. No one is.”

  “I understand,” Sabrina repeated. “But when you post a photo of yourself on a train in the snow . . .”

  “That was a PATH train in New Jersey during that December blizzard.”

  “That was some blizzard,” Fanny recalled. “I couldn’t get out of the house.”

  “But you used it to illustrate a blog set in Siberia, if I’m not mistaken.” Sabrina stopped a moment to think. “Why didn’t you use a photo from your trip to Siberia?”

  “Her camera was stolen,” said Fanny.

  “I was never in Siberia,” Amy said, clarifying some more. “That part of the book is more fiction than the rest. Again, we don’t claim that the blog is real, and everyone seems fine with it.”

  “I understand, too. But when you show yourself in these settings, that’s what people imagine. What I imagine. No one wants to find out that Trippy is—no offense—some older, stay-at-home mom who’s making it all up. That’s not your image.”

  “Ooh, boy,” muttered Amy.

  Sabrina must have heard. “No offense,” she repeated with an anxious smile. “I mean, if it was Amy exaggerating the facts . . . well, that’s one thing. Kind of an irreverent, young thing.”

  “Upper end of young,” Fanny pointed out.

  “And,” continued Sabrina, “Amy is this world traveler who’s known for getting into weird scrapes.”

  “Right. So what am I?” demanded Fanny. She kept her gaze steady, straight in the eyes, and her voice low. “Some troll under a bridge? Some deformed, old Rumplestiltskin who sits in a dark corner and spins the worthless straw into gold?”

  “No, no, no.” The young editor almost physically backtracked, holding out her hands as if to brake Fanny’s momentum. “I’m so sorry. Please. Fanny, you’re wonderful. I love your style. And you’re not a rumple . . . whatever.” She made a helpless, childlike face
. “What is that, exactly?”

  “Rumplestiltskin?” Amy couldn’t believe it. “A fairy-tale character. You never heard of Rumplestiltskin?”

  “I don’t see many Disney movies,” Sabrina admitted.

  “Not all fairy tales are made into Disney movies,” Amy said. “Didn’t your parents ever read to you?”

  “Not about Rumplestiltskins.”

  “It’s a classic. How could you not know . . .”

  “I think you’re missing the bigger picture,” snarled Fanny through clenched teeth. “The bigger picture is that you’re embarrassed by me, aren’t you? You are. I’m the real TrippyGirl, and my own editor is embarrassed.”

  “Amy and I are not embarrassed,” pleaded Sabrina. “But public perception is everything.”

  “I’m not embarrassed at all,” said Amy. Sabrina didn’t have to go home and live with this. “Let’s change the subject, okay?”

  Somehow, they made their way through their hour plus at the gastropub intact. Amy, Fanny, and Sabrina all managed to call a truce and order their salads from Bradley. Like a mother at a bedside, Fanny informed their child editor of the whole Rumplestiltskin fable, and they all could agree that (a) the king was a jerk for wanting a wife who could spin straw into gold, (b) the peasant girl was irresponsible for agreeing to give up her firstborn child to some trollish dwarf named Rumplestiltskin, and (c) being saddled with that last name alone would wreak havoc on any child’s self-esteem, not to mention being given up by your mother and raised by a dwarf in a cave, which luckily never happened. And if the peasant girl hadn’t lucked out and guessed the dwarf’s name, how the hell was she planning to explain the whole thing to the baby’s father, the king? All in all, a very unsatisfying, un-Disney tale.

  The lazy snowflakes had stopped by the time mother and daughter stepped out onto Bank Street and headed toward the Barrow Street house. Neither said anything during the six-block walk, and Fanny did not do any TrippyGirl tweeting along the way, which was probably a good idea, Amy thought, given her almost combustible state of mind.