Death on the Patagonian Express

by Hy Conrad

  “What?” Amy shouted, her voice echoing off the cliff walls. “What is it?”

  When Fanny lowered the phone to eye level, there was a new map on the screen, barely a map, since there were no details except a tiny compass and quadrants of vertical and horizontal lines. A little red dot pulsed not far from a little black X. “I can’t believe it.” There was awe in her voice.

  Amy peered over her shoulder. “Are we the X?”

  “I didn’t get around to all the instructions. But the dot must be the camera.” Fanny pressed the plus sign in the bottom right. The view zoomed in, and the symbols grew farther apart. “I think if we walk this direction . . .” They left the vehicle and headed farther along the bottom edge of the cliff, almost tripping over the rocks and roots, their eyes still glued to the screen.

  “We’re getting closer,” Amy said.

  It certainly seemed to be true. The X was moving with each correction of the screen, coming closer and closer to the pulsing dot. They were almost on top of it now. Amy started scouring their surroundings, alert for the little black box of a camera. When Fanny checked the phone again, maybe fifty feet farther along the path, her face grew confused. She blinked, then pressed the plus sign again and squinted. The screen corrected. “Um, I think we just passed it.”

  “How could we pass it?” Amy asked. She grabbed the phone and checked for herself. “How could we pass it?” she repeated, then pressed the plus sign again until it hit the maximum close-up setting. She crossed back and forth over the same few dozen yards. “Mom, take the phone and stand here. I’ll look around.”

  “Why do you get to look around?”

  “Because I’m younger and my eyes are better.”

  “You wear glasses.”

  “And you wear contacts. Just do it, okay?”

  Reluctantly, Fanny did as she was told, acting as a pivot point while her daughter walked in larger and larger semicircles from the cliff face outward, her eyes alert to any smooth man-made object, pressing her boots into thick, prickly bushes and focusing on little holes in the dirt.

  “Do they have groundhogs here?” Amy wondered out loud. “Maybe a groundhog came and buried it.” She retraced her steps and started again. When she returned to her maternal pivot point, Amy’s hands were empty.

  “Are you done now, Miss Eagle Eye?” asked Fanny, looking up from the display. There was a familiar smugness in her tone. “’Cause if you are, you should check this out.”

  While Amy had been searching, Fanny had changed screens. The red dot and the X were still there, practically on top of each other. But the on-screen compass was larger, and there were numbers across the bottom, followed by ft. “We’re thirty-five feet away,” Amy deduced. “Does it say which direction? Because I’ve looked farther than thirty-five feet.”

  “It doesn’t say the direction.” Fanny was still smug. “We’re right on top of it, and yet it’s thirty-five feet away.” And with that, she turned dramatically toward the butte and pointed straight up. “There.”

  The cliff above them was craggy and worn. Thousands of years of wind and rain had created crevices in the stratified stone wall, some mere indentations, some of them large enough to resemble caves.

  “Up there?” Amy asked. “How did it get up there?”

  “I don’t know. I certainly wasn’t riding up there.”

  Amy stood, hands on her hips, and tried to make sense of it. “How tall is that cliff?” she asked.

  Fanny snorted. “What am I? Some sort of nature expert?”

  “How tall of a building?”

  “Oh, when you put it that way . . .” Fanny craned her neck and adjusted her thinking. “Five stories at least.”

  “Fifty-something feet. And yet our app says the camera’s thirty-five feet away.”

  “So the app is malfunctioning?”

  “Or the camera’s in one of those openings.”

  Fanny bit her lower lip. “Do you think a hermit found it and brought it back to his cave?”

  “I’m not sure they have hermits here—or anywhere these days.” Amy situated herself under one of the cave-like crevices and saw that the GPS distance was the shortest here. Straight up, thirty feet. “Come on,” she said. “There’s a little ledge in front of it. I think we can get up there.”

  “Up to the cave? How?”

  “Give me a minute, would you?”

  There didn’t seem to be any direct path up to the ledge or the crevice. But Amy remembered walking past a break in the wall, a natural fault line where millions of years ago the sandy sedimentary rock had been pushed up at an angle to form part of the cliff, jutting up at a not impossible angle and worn almost into a path by the millennia of rainy runoff. If a climber were to hug the wall and go sideways . . . if the climber was lucky and sure-footed enough . . . Amy kept one eye on the crevice as she walked back, seeing if and how it would line up with the fault.

  They were almost back to the Land Rover when she saw that the ledges did line up, both part of the same stratum of prehistoric soil turned into rock. It was like a long, narrow, distressed ramp. And it wouldn’t be all that far.

  “I think I can do it,” she called back to her mother, who was lagging behind, as always.

  “We can both do it,” Fanny said, waddling to catch up.

  Amy didn’t waste her time arguing. “Go in front, where I can keep my eye on you.”

  Fanny stopped and took a glance at the precarious ledge. “Really? You’re going to let me risk my life?”

  “Mom. We don’t have time for games. Yes or no?”

  The answer was yes, of course. Amy bent over and linked her fingers. Fanny grunted as she lifted a leg and stepped into her daughter’s hand. She straightened her knee into a precarious stand. And then somehow Amy managed to straighten her own knees. The ledge was just low enough to allow Fanny to step onto it and hug the rock face.

  Amy watched her mother take a few side steps up the angled ledge. When she was satisfied with Fanny’s footing, she followed, using her greater height and agility to clamber up without any assistance.

  “All right,” she mumbled, her mouth pressed into the rock. “Step by step. And don’t look down.”

  CHAPTER 30

  The climb took longer than Amy had expected but wasn’t nearly as terrifying. Several yards from their starting point, the natural ledge actually widened under their feet and the feeling of imminent disaster faded into an excruciatingly slow but careful crab walk as the two women felt for a foothold with every step. Fanny was doing well, Amy marveled to herself. Her mother wasn’t being impatient or reckless, two of her more distinctive traits. She was taking her time. And while a fall from this height probably wouldn’t kill either of them, it would definitely be unpleasant.

  They were only a few steps away from the crevice, the black hole they’d pinpointed from the ground, thirty or so feet up, the spot where, according to the app on Fanny’s phone, the VITA Pro Action was waiting for them, as improbable as that seemed.

  Two more steps and Fanny grabbed the lip of the crevice.

  “Good job,” Amy muttered into the rock face. She took a second to smile in her mother’s direction but had to look away. “Augh.” The mirrorlike Batman insignia on the Peruvian wool cap was catching the sunlight and causing her to see spots.

  The hole in the rock face was maybe six feet in diameter, wide enough and deep enough to accommodate them both. Fanny was just about to pull herself off the ledge and into the blackness when something in the cave erupted.

  Fanny screamed but held on. Her grip was loosening, and she had no choice but to pull herself into the now empty hole. Amy screamed, too, and teetered on a loose spot of gravel on the ledge, her fingers trying to grasp the stone.

  The eruption had been a huge gray swirl of movement and air, like a ghost, flying out of the darkness of the crevice and spreading its wings. Amy steadied herself first, then turned her head and watched as the Andean condor sailed down, flapping its long, jagged wings
and catching just enough wind to lift it into the cloudless blue.

  “Mom? Are you okay? Mom?” Amy took a half dozen quick baby steps, grabbed the lip, and followed her mother into the mouth of the cave. It took her eyes a moment to adjust.

  “I think we disturbed its nest,” Fanny’s voice announced calmly from the shadows. “See?” She was pointing.

  Amy had never seen a condor’s nest before. It was larger than she’d imagined, not that she’d ever imagined a condor’s nest. It sat less than two feet back into the chamber; was about the same size and shape as a truck tire; and was constructed of twigs, bits of brownish moss, and a few little strings of bright red fabric. Fanny was staring down into it. Reaching down into it.

  “Don’t touch the eggs,” Amy shouted.

  “There are no eggs,” Fanny shouted back. Then she straightened up and displayed the stringy remains of a frayed red strap, with a small black camera hanging from the end. “But there is this.”

  Amy laughed. “A condor stole your camera?” She felt almost giddy. They were no longer balancing on a ledge, no longer facing a wild, meat-eating bird, and suddenly, amazingly, in possession of their goal. “It must have liked the strap.”

  “I can’t believe this actually worked,” Fanny said. Then she took the camera to the lip of the cave, where a patch of sun gave her enough light to see the buttons. Neither one said a word as the little machine whirred to life. There seemed to be enough juice left to power up the rectangular display on the rear. Fanny pressed a few buttons, reversing and fast-forwarding. Reversing and fast-forwarding, with a few grunts along the way. “Ooh, remember our tour of La Boca? That was fun.”

  “It was after that.”

  “Of course it was. Give me a minute.” A few more fast-forwards and reverses. And then . . . “I got her,” Fanny said. She pressed PAUSE and held out the display.

  Amy tried to look at the frozen image but was once again blinded by the Batman mirror on Fanny’s forehead. “Jeez, Mom, can you please take that off?”

  “Take what off? Oh! I think we have more important things to do than discuss fashion.”

  Amy moved the camera out of the direct sunlight to check for herself. “It’s her,” she confirmed, taking off her glasses and squinting. “I think so.”

  She had met the real, living Lola Pisano only once, in a dim tango hall in Buenos Aires. But the face—bloody, perhaps from a fall or a wound, damaged by a few condor pecks—matched the face in her memory, mole and all. And it perfectly matched that of the much more damaged, bloated corpse they’d found in the Rio Serrano.

  “Yes, definitely her.”

  “Then we got him,” Fanny crowed as she took back the camera and kissed it on the lens. “Our charmingly smug cold-blooded killer. All we have to do is find our way back to the ranch, behave like nothing happened, take the next whatever to Santiago or wherever the real police are, and show them.” Fanny’s celebration was interrupted by a flapping shadow, the sound of beating wings, and a guttural hiss echoing off the rock. “But first we should get out of here.” Just for good measure, she walked back into the sunlight and started waving her arms. “Shoo!”

  Amy joined her mother at the mouth of the shallow cave. Off in the distance, but not far enough off for their comfort, were two condors now, circling on the thermals in a tight little pattern. They had retreated from their approach but were starting to circle closer. “I think they want their cave back.”

  “That’s reasonable,” Fanny agreed. “Want me to go first? It should be easier going down.” She wound what was left of the red strap tightly around her wrist, letting the camera dangle and keeping her hands free, and took a first tentative step out to the ledge.

  “Mom, wait.” Amy put a hand on her mother’s shoulder and pulled her back. Out on the Patagonian plain, below and beyond the condors, they could see a moving column of dust. It was approaching on the same dirt trail that they themselves had just used. “You think it’s Jorge?”

  Reverberating up from the stubbled plain came the soft but distinctive sound of a truck engine. Fanny shrugged. “Well, he was bound to notice we were gone. Should we hurry down and drive off?”

  Amy shook her head. “He’s going to see our dust, like we’re seeing his. It’ll look like we’re running away.”

  “We don’t even know he’s coming this way.”

  “My guess is he followed our tracks.”

  “Maybe it’s not him.”

  “Really? Who else?”

  The Abels went back and forth like this, arguing the pros and cons of going down or staying or meeting Jorge halfway, waiting for him on the ledge or waiting for him by the truck, until it just didn’t matter anymore. The dust column was coming straight for them, growing into a Land Rover like their own. Amy pulled her mother back into the crevice, and they watched as it slowed and stopped, parking maybe a dozen yards away from their abandoned vehicle.

  Jorge emerged from the passenger side, and a few seconds later, Oscar, the gaucho, emerged from the driver’s. The men approached the other Land Rover, one on each side, and looked through the tinted windows, talking back and forth.

  “We should let them know we’re here,” Amy whispered.

  “Why?” Fanny whispered back.

  “Because . . .” Amy sighed. “Because I left the keys in the ignition.”

  “You did what? Well, that was irresponsible. What if they take it?”

  “You know, that possibility didn’t really occur to me.”

  “Mrs. Abel?” a voice echoed up. Jorge O’Bannion was turning in a circle, hands cupped to his mouth. “Fanny? Amy? Where are you?” He turned toward the cliff, his eyes drawn to the top directly above him and not fifty yards farther along and halfway up the rock face. “Fanny? Amy?” They stood perfectly still, becoming just another pair of irregularly shaped shadows in one of the multiple weatherworn openings. “Where are you?”

  “We should answer,” Amy hissed into her mother’s ear.

  “What do we say?”

  “Well, we don’t tell him about the camera in the condor’s nest.”

  “But what do we tell him?” Fanny asked. “That we took up rock climbing?”

  “It’s better than saying nothing and getting abandoned.”

  “I suppose.” Fanny stepped six inches forward into the sunlight, staring at Jorge and mulling over their options. The choice didn’t remain theirs for long. The aristocratic man in his jeans and sheepskin jacket noticed something on the ground under his feet, a moving bright spot shaped roughly like a rectangle. He bent at the waist for a closer look, then reached down, as if to touch it. When he straightened, he was already facing in their direction, a hand shielding his eyes. Jorge O’Bannion was staring directly at them.

  Amy was the first to realize. “Mom, it’s your hat!”

  “Don’t start in about my hat.”

  “No, the reflection.”

  It took Fanny a moment to see that the mirrored Batman logo on her Peruvian wool cap had acted as an unintended bat signal. She snatched it off her head and threw it into the condor’s nest.

  “Fanny?” Jorge O’Bannion was walking toward them now, squinting up at the cliff face. “What in the world are you doing there?”

  Amy’s gut reaction was to retreat as far as the shallow cave would let her, but it was too late. “We came up here for the view,” she said, improvising.

  “The view of what?” Jorge asked, glancing back at the flat expanse of scrub. The man had a point.

  “We got lost,” Amy said. “We were hoping we could get a view of the estancia.”

  “The estancia? It’s too far. And you could hurt yourself climbing like this.” There was concern in his words but not in his tone. His tone was full of suspicion. “Well, now you are found. Lucky for you, Oscar is a professional tracker.”

  “Yes, very lucky,” said Amy. “We can get down by ourselves. Don’t worry.”

  “Good. Oscar will drive you to Puerto Natales. But you have to come no
w. Enough is enough.”

  “We need to talk to you first,” Fanny said.

  “Talk?” Jorge threw his hands in the air. “No. No, I am very busy. And this foolhardy excursion has made my schedule worse. Oscar will help you down and drive you. Meanwhile, I’m leaving. I have been more than patient.”

  “All the same, we need to talk,” Fanny insisted.

  “We do not need to talk.” O’Bannion was near enough to speak in an almost normal voice, but he was shouting. “We are through with talking, Senora Abel. You crazy women stole my property and worried me and wasted hours of my morning. I never want to talk to either of you again. Is that clear? Good-bye.” He was about to retreat to the spot where Oscar stood now, arms crossed, between the two trucks.

  “We know you killed Lola Pisano,” Fanny shouted back.

  “Mother?” The word came out as an elongated moan. “What the hell?”

  O’Bannion stiffened. Then he returned to the foot of the cliff, three stories below. “What do you know, Senora Abel?”

  Fanny smiled a thin, nasty smile and squared her shoulders. “We know you dumped her in the river and she floated downstream. We know you hired some woman to impersonate her.”

  “Interesting.” Jorge choked out a laugh. “And how do you know this?”

  “We figured it out,” Fanny answered, “after that night in Valparaiso. We saw you and the woman together. Did you hire her for your masquerade? Or is she your lady friend? Your coconspirator? Not that it matters.”

  “Is that it?” O’Bannion looked relieved. “Seeing her? So you are just guessing.”

  “It’s more than guessing,” Fanny said. “When we tell the police what we know, they’ll talk to your Valparaiso friends and they’ll track her down. I think she’ll confess.”

  O’Bannion laughed. “I doubt that very much.”

  “What do you doubt? That they can track her down or that she’ll confess?”

  Amy had been struck dumb by her mother’s reckless antagonism. Her one consolation was that Fanny wasn’t stupid. Impetuous and willful, but not stupid. Annoying and unfocused, but not stupid. Amy kept her mouth shut and tried to think it through. What was the point of all this? What could possibly be the point? And why was her mother standing stiffly like that and off centered, with her weight on her left side?