by Hy Conrad
“Why do you say that?” Amy asked.
“I’m just thinking about your fans. And the book deal. If your publisher sees Fanny making up some supernatural stuff, they may have second thoughts.”
“Have you been talking to Sabrina?”
Marcus paused a beat too long. “No. I’m just saying that Fanny’s exaggerations can go too far, especially now that you have real journalists hanging around. I wish I was there.”
“I wish someone was here. In other countries I had the local police. In New York there was Lieutenant Rawlings. I never thought I’d say it, but he was actually better than nothing. And you, of course.” She was suddenly feeling a little vulnerable. Taking a moment, she removed her glasses and cleaned them with one of the lens wipes she always carried in every pocket.
“How can I help?” Marcus asked. “There must be something.”
Amy put her glasses back on, then took a sip of Campari. “I don’t know what more I can do, to be honest. The tour moves on tomorrow. Plus I’m facing a language barrier. Plus the Wi-Fi is terrible. I don’t know how detectives found out anything before the Internet.”
“You want me to check on some things.” A statement, not a question. It was at times like this, Amy realized, that they were most in sync with each other. “Gabriela Garcia? The woman who lied?”
“If you can find out about her . . . See what the connection is between her and Lola. Also their late husbands.”
Marcus nodded.
“Thanks.” Amy put her hand to her heart. “E-mail me whatever you get. No attachments. That’ll just gum things up.”
“Oops. I sent you an e-mail with six attachments.”
“I got it, but I couldn’t open it. Something about the apartment search?”
“A few photos, nothing crucial. We’ll talk about it later.”
“Good.” Amy cracked a smile. It was good to think about something else, even for a moment. “You’ve been looking? In Manhattan, I hope. I can’t wait to see. I can’t wait to get home and for us to move in together.”
“I found some great possibilities,” Marcus assured her. “Meanwhile, I’ll work on Gabriela and Lola . . . try to find a motive.”
“I’ll check my e-mail when I can, but I don’t want to spend hundreds on roaming charges. There’s a limit to my civic nature.”
“There’s no limit at all to your nature,” said Marcus, “whatever that means. Anyone else on your hit list?”
“My hit list?” Amy glanced over at the lounge bar. Nicolas was alone now, taking the last swig from his bottle of Quilmes. “Yes, a nature guide named Nicolas. I think he lied about being from Chile.”
“Why would he do that? Where’s he from? Is this important?”
“All good questions. Damn, I don’t even know his last name. I’ll call you back in five.” The screen froze again, just as Amy was about to blurt out, “I love you,” and she felt both cheated and a little relieved at having lost the moment to a glitch. Before she could reconsider, she instinctively pressed the red phone icon and ended the call. Then she crossed over to the bar.
“Ms. Abel, good evening.” Nicolas abandoned his bottle to the bartender. He had turned over one of the cocktail menus and was now sketching on the blank reverse. Amy had seen him doing this fairly frequently in his off-hours, the ex-art student indulging in his old passion. He put down his pen. “Have you also come to complain about the sheep?”
“Tomorrow will be easier,” she promised. “The Patagonian Express will be on its way, one more night. Then Puerto Natales and the end.”
“The end,” he echoed. “Except that everyone is complaining about missing the monastery at Monte Carmelo. I think they only want to go because now we can’t.”
Amy replied with a thin, sympathetic grin. “Dealing with us must be tough. We expect so much. Sometimes we treat you like servants instead of people just doing their jobs.”
Nicolas thin-grinned her back. “Beware. You are talking like a socialist.”
“No, just a fellow human being. For example . . .” She pretended to think. “Names. You obviously knew the name of everyone as soon as we met. And yet Todd Drucker forgets your name half the time. Even I don’t know your last name. What is it?”
“It’s not important.”
“Weren’t you the one who criticized the rich tourists who have no idea about your lives? How do you expect us to know your lives if you won’t even share your name?”
“It could be anything. What difference? Why do you want to know my name?”
“I want to get to know you. As a person.”
“As a person?” The guide seemed flattered but wary. He had already shared bits of his story on that magical night under the stars: of his schooling at the conservatory, his love of art. But now... “I must be honest with you, Ms. Abel. I have a girlfriend.”
Amy kept her composure. She had actually seen this coming. “In Santiago? Where you live?”
“Yes, in Santiago. Not that I find you unbeautiful.”
“Don’t worry, Nicolas. I have a boyfriend of my own. I just think you’re an interesting person.” Her eyes fell on the reversed menu. “And an excellent artist. Someday I’ll see your work in a gallery or a museum, and I won’t even know it’s you. May I look?”
Nicolas pushed the paper across the bar. It was a simple sketch, much different from his whimsical man in the moon. Done in ballpoint on white, it was the portrait, shoulders and up, of an older, heavyset man. The style was mostly angles, even the roundness of the head, nearly bald, was done in sharp little angles. The man’s features were thick, a bulbous nose and heavy lids above squinty, ratlike eyes. A scowling, angry face, almost cartoonish in its intensity. An average comic book villain. And yet somehow recognizable. Where had she seen this face before?
“Is this someone famous?” she had to ask.
“Famous? No. It’s just imagination.” Nicolas gently pulled the menu back across the bar. “If you want, I can draw you. May I?” He pointed to a second cocktail menu lying by his pen.
Amy took one last glimpse of the nightmarish face. “I’m not sure I want to see how you see me.”
The corners of Nicolas’s mouth turned up, just the corners. “This is not how I see you.”
“Good. But I’m still going to pass.”
“Are you sure? I’m a good artist.”
“You’re very good. But years from now, when I see your work in a museum, I won’t know it’s you, will I? Nicolas what?” She made the question sound casual.
“True.” He studied her face closely as he considered the request. “Blanco,” he replied.
“Nicolas Blanco.” She would call Marcus. She knew that Blanco meant white, and that it was a common enough surname. It could be real. But she couldn’t help thinking of the English word blank, that the name he’d given her was a blank and that Marcus would have no luck finding anything at all.
When she got back to the room, Fanny was already in bed and snoring. Amy knew there would be no point in waking her. Fanny would deny snoring, then would fall back asleep, and it would be even worse. On most nights, she tried to get to bed before her mother, hoping that she could nod off first. More often than not it worked. But tonight? The idea of lying there, trying to relax, trying not to listen as the noisy breaths grew promisingly softer or annoyingly louder, or halted for a blessed minute, only to start up again . . . She wasn’t in the mood.
Amy used the bathroom, took a white bathrobe off the hook, then found her bottle of sleeping pills. These she reserved for intense jet lag or similar emergencies, and she washed one down with half a glass of water. The little balcony under the dormer on her side of the room would give her a pleasant place to sit while the medication took effect. She carried the smallest chair in the room, a tiny armchair, outside, wrapped herself in the pashmina shawl she’d bought in Buenos Aires, and settled in under the sliver of a new moon.
With the door open, she could still hear Fanny’s performance. She tried to
think of it as waves crashing on an unseen shore. The sound of waves had always been very soothing. Why should waves be soothing and her mother be annoying? She didn’t know. Maybe another sleeping pill. She had just decided to get up and indulge in a second dose when a movement caught her eye below her on the gravel drive.
It was Nicolas. Nicolas Blanco? His light blue jacket was unmistakable, much too city-like in tone and prone to showing dirt. Amy watched from her perch, straining to get a better view, as the young guide treaded lightly over the gravel, heading past the white stables to the white garage. The sound of an engine momentarily drowned out Fanny’s snoring. A good thirty seconds later, when no one had emerged from the estancia to question the sound, one of the Land Cruisers poked its hood out, no headlights, and began to make its way around the back side of the garage and onto the dirt road.
Amy continued to watch, even as the vehicle grew smaller in the distance. Following Nicolas would have been stupid, she told herself. He would be long gone, and she would have a sedative coursing through her system. Not that the pill was doing much good. Behind her, in the room, Fanny’s decibel level was going into overdrive. Maybe she just needed another sleeping pill. Maybe that would do the trick.
CHAPTER 21
If she could have chosen a night in which to drug herself into oblivion, it probably wouldn’t have been this one, despite her mother’s provocation. When Amy woke the following day, she had missed both the early breakfast and the latest accident to befall the New Patagonian Express.
At some point during the night, the precarious chimney of the Torre Vista whistle-stop had collapsed. When the engineer and his crew had arrived at the station shortly after dawn to provision the train for its next journey, they found that a few tons of stone had fallen across the first carriage, Jorge O’Bannion’s pride and joy, his personal sleeping car.
Amy was in the lounge, still swatting away the cobwebs with coffee and a Danish, as Todd Drucker breathlessly filled her in. “They’re guessing it happened around three a.m., when the winds picked up. Luckily, it didn’t hit the engine. Imagine having to get a new engine all the way out here. We’d be stuck for days.” They were across from each other in the leather armchairs, facing the picture window framing the Torre del Paine peaks.
“Are they sure it was an accident?” Amy regretted the question almost before it left her lips.
“Interesting.” Todd topped off her coffee with the last drops from the carafe. “A few days ago I would have ridiculed that. Over-the-top TrippyGirl creating chaos out of a coincidence. But I have to hand it to you, Trippy. We did find a body. I should keep an open mind.”
“No, you shouldn’t keep an open mind. Forget I said anything.”
“You suspect someone of destroying O’Bannion’s carriage? Who would want to do that?”
“No one,” she emphasized. “It’s a ridiculous idea.”
The travel writer’s mouth curled, and his eyebrows pulled together. “I get it. Protecting your secrets. Is that partly because I’m a suspect? Because I don’t mind being a suspect.” He leaned across. “As long as you get all your facts straight. When it comes to my reputation, please note, I can be litigious.”
Amy spent a few seconds trying to come up with a snappy comeback. But it didn’t matter. One of the vehicles had just pulled up and was letting off its passengers. Edgar and Fanny got out of the two back doors and hurried up the steps.
“We’re going to the monastery,” Fanny announced. “It’s back on.”
“I’ll go tell the others,” Edgar said and marched his way through the lounge.
“You mean today?” The first thing that came to Amy’s mind was the donkey ride part and how it would aggravate her cobwebs.
“As soon as we can pull everyone together.” Fanny and Edgar had been at the whistle-stop, getting a firsthand look at the damage. Amy was sure there were pictures and probably video.
“What about the train?” Todd asked.
Fanny plopped herself down on the arm of Amy’s chair. “Well, Jorge’s beside himself, poor man. His car may take months to repair. But once they clear it from the track and get rid of the rocks, we’ll be on our way. Tomorrow morning, if all goes well. He can rough it in another car.”
“Does it look like an accident?” asked Todd.
Fanny looked at her daughter, then at Todd, then back again. “They’re calling it an accident,” she said carefully. “Is there something else I should know?”
“No,” Amy told her with excess conviction. “We should all get ready for the trip.”
Jorge O’Bannion returned a few minutes later, doing his best to put a positive spin on exactly the same news. The tour would be extended one more day, nine days of wonderful wonder instead of eight. All the connecting flights out of the tiny airport of Puerto Natales would be adjusted free of charge. He was dealing with them right now and would sit down with everyone individually and work out the details. Meanwhile, his honored guests would have the unique pleasure of seeing the mosaics of Monte Carmelo, the legendary Carmelite monastery.
Amy thought of her own connections. One day less in Valparaiso before their flight to New York. Yes, that would work out fine.
The estancia became the hub to a sudden flurry of activity. The staff prepared box lunches. The guests put on their most suitable clothes and filled their souvenir canteens. Jorge made an impassioned call to his cousin the abbot on the one landline connecting Monte Carmelo to the rest of civilization. The monastery’s fleet of donkeys would be waiting for them halfway up the mountain.
Jorge O’Bannion talked as he drove one of the Land Cruisers up the winding hill, turning back to face his audience more than Amy would have liked. “There are monasteries of service who run hospitals and do good deeds. But Monte Carmelo is one of contemplation. For much of the day the brothers don’t speak. They pray, sing hymns, study the scriptures, and tend the vegetables and other things they need to live.”
“Got it,” said Fanny. “And what’s the point?” She was beside him, in the front passenger seat. Amy and Alicia shared the back, keeping their eyes on the road even when their driver wasn’t.
“The point?” Jorge seemed confused. “Prayer and contemplation are good for the world. The church has always known this. Here in South America there are few such orders. But God still calls men to be hermits, to separate themselves and pray for all His children.”
“And no one ever visits them?” asked Amy.
Fanny snorted. “Yes. Because they don’t talk.”
“Pay no attention to my mother. We’re honored to be part of this.”
“My mother’s sister’s son was very gracious.” Jorge puffed his chest with pride. “The first time in fifty years that an outsider is allowed past the courtyard. And the first time ever for a woman.”
All six of the women had worn skirts or dresses. Amy’s choice was a black skirt and her all-purpose Liz Claiborne top with the high neckline. Her new pashmina shawl would cover her shoulders and also her head, if that was required.
As promised, the donkey ride began halfway up, at the twenty-foot-tall gates and the stone wall that surrounded the monks’ property, separating it from the rest of the mountain. Nicolas volunteered to help out Fanny, taking the steep path on foot and leading her stubborn donkey by the reins.
Amy’s skirt was slightly too long and too tight for any comfortable donkey ride, but she hitched it up a little and made it work. It was actually a nice introduction, she felt, leaving behind all their twenty-first-century machines and approaching the stone fortress just as other pilgrims—all men—must have done for the past hundred years. Slow paced and silent, except for the hooves and the wind. Her only cheat was the camera phone, which Fanny had insisted she bring, hidden in one of her skirt pockets.
It came into view piecemeal above the trees, a stone turret here, a stone and slate cupola there. It reminded Amy of the Cloisters in Manhattan, a storybook monastery, but this one flanked by vegetable gardens and sma
ll wooden outbuildings. Jorge’s cousin met them in front of the vaulted entryway.
The cousins were similar in age and appearance, although—and this might just have been Amy’s imagination—the father abbot didn’t look quite as stooped by the cares of the world. He didn’t particularly seem to welcome the presence of women, but he didn’t object. The Furies all had their heads covered, but not the North Americans. Amy decided she would remain uncovered until told differently.
“Bienvenidos, mis hermanos en Cristo.” A welcome to brothers, not to sisters. The man’s voice was soft, barely audible, befitting someone who didn’t get a lot of vocal exercise. Jorge did the translation. The abbot was humbly proud of his island of devotion to Our Lady of Mount Carmel, the patron saint of Chile. His brothers currently included twenty-two monks, he said, men who came from all backgrounds, giving up their old identities to pray and study and work. By granting his guests a glimpse into their world, he hoped he might inspire them to lead more contemplative lives of their own. Then he motioned them through the carved oak doors.
In its basics, the tour was like a hundred other castle or monastery tours Amy had been on, except that this was no museum. The medieval-looking kitchen looked more deadly than most, with mallets and cleavers and foot-long knives, but it was a working kitchen. The sleeping cells were the brothers’ real living spaces. The chapel and cloister were filled with real monks, performing their devotions and paying little heed to their visitors from the future. The father abbot saved the best for last, the crypt below the cloister, illuminated only by candlelight, where a century’s worth of brotherly graves were covered over with bright mosaics, laid out in playful depictions of the birth of Jesus and his youth. A haloed baby. A child on his mother’s knee. Playing with sheep. Learning carpentry from Joseph. It was the cheeriest crypt Amy had ever seen.
After the tour, the father abbot, in a generous gesture, gave them free rein. In twenty minutes, the bells would ring and the brothers would gather for their afternoon prayers in the chapel. Until then, the guests were free to roam the grounds and do their own meditations. His only request was that they didn’t disturb the monks or talk to them.