Death on the Patagonian Express Page 7

  “Enough.” Todd rolled his eyes, exasperated rather than amused. “Trippy, get your mother under control. This is not how you want to run your business.”

  “Mother!”

  Fanny wasn’t listening. “We should go over and see. Can we do that?”

  Nicolas took a moment to confer with Oscar in Spanish. “Oscar wants to know why,” he said in English.

  “Because it’s nature. And this is a nature excursion.” Fanny was nearly shivering with anticipation. “Let’s go.”

  “It is not as close as it looks,” said Nicolas. He translated for Oscar, who shook his head.

  Amy tried to reach out for Fanny’s reins. “You may have had too much maté.”

  “Maybe.” Fanny glanced down, videoing her own trembling hands. “Or maybe it’s something worth seeing. Being at the right place? Isn’t that what Trippy’s about?”

  “Can you go into withdrawal from maté?” Amy asked everyone. She had almost grabbed her mother’s reins when Fanny saw her and instinctively pulled away. The jolt startled Fanny’s horse, who raised his head with a frightened neigh. Fanny reacted with a neigh sound of her own.

  Amy was not quite sure how it happened, whether Fanny started the gallop on her own or the horse started it. Perhaps it was both—Fanny and the horse combining their wills to rebel against the group. Whatever the cause, the horse neighed again, twisting its head in panic. Then it took off, tore across the last hundred yards of plateau, and stumbled down into the wooded valley. Everyone else just sat there, stunned.

  “Mother!” shouted Amy into the dust. “Don’t be an idiot. Come back.” But Fanny was already out of sight and out of earshot.

  “Did she do that on purpose?” asked Alicia Lindborn.

  Oscar was the first to recover. Not speaking English, he’d taken longer than the others to understand that this wasn’t something planned. But he was a gaucho, used to emergencies. He said a few fast words to Nicolas, pointed to the two-way radio clipped to his vest, and kicked his horse in the haunches. Man and horse followed the previous trail of dust over the rocks and down into the valley.

  “What do we do?” asked Amy, the fear rising in her voice. “Do we follow?”

  “I don’t know,” said Nicolas. “Will your mother come back?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “She might get herself lost,” said Edgar, a statement that didn’t help anyone’s state of mind. “I mean, she might.”

  “We will find her,” said Nicolas. And then he pulled his own two-way radio from its clips, turned it on, and pressed a large button. “Senor O’Bannion? Mr. O’Bannion. Hello, sir. I am afraid we have a situation.” He said all this in English, perhaps in an effort to keep Amy feeling calm and in the loop.

  It wasn’t working.

  CHAPTER 9

  It was the gaucho who took control. Spanish speaking, nearly silent Oscar. He had returned no more than five minutes after galloping off—without Fanny, looking frustrated but calm. The woman’s horse was experienced, he told them. It would return to the stable. The only danger would be if the small lady had been thrown and was lying hidden and injured somewhere. The search would be better with all of them, he said. They would divide into two groups, one of Spanish speakers, headed by Oscar; the other of English speakers, headed by Nicolas. Jorge O’Bannion would wait by the stables and contact them if the horse returned.

  The Furies seemed totally unfazed. They scowled no more than before, chattered no more or less than before, and willingly followed Oscar down the plateau and to the north side of the valley.

  Nicolas led his group of four—Amy, Alicia, Edgar, and Todd—down the same path, then branched out to the east. Each party would swing around the plain, each rider staying within shouting distance as they called out Fanny’s name and checked every ravine along the way. Both groups would swing around to the spot where a few condors were still visible in the sky.

  “I apologize,” said Todd Drucker, just before he broke off to the right of Amy and her horse. Amy was about to accept his apology when he finished his thought. “I had no idea your mother was so unstable.”

  “She’s not unstable. You rattled her, and her horse bolted.” But by the time she got the words out, the smug little publisher was already trotting down another trail.

  Amy did exactly as she was told. This was always her reaction in emergencies. If you did what you were told, then it was not your fault. You were to proceed methodically, keep your eyes moving between near and mid-distance, alert for any color or movement. You kept shouting the name, kept aware of the rider to your left and the one to your right. Except that this was her mother’s life at stake, and “fault” didn’t matter. All that mattered was finding Fanny and hoping she was all right. Any second, Amy thought, the news would squawk through Nicolas’s radio, and everything would be fine.

  But the call didn’t come. And as much as Amy tried to concentrate on the task, she couldn’t help glancing up at the condor or two still there. Were they hovering over the same place as before? Did they have anything new and fresh suddenly within their sights? She didn’t even want to think about that.

  When the two-way radio finally squawked, Amy reined in Hortense and listened through the breeze. Seconds later a message was shouted from one rider to another. “They found her horse,” Nicolas said, then passed the news down the chain. “They found her horse.”

  “But not her?” Amy shouted.

  “But not her.” Nicolas waved a bandanna, gathering the other four to his side. “Oscar says the horse came to them. Uninjured. By itself,” he added. “We’re changing our course farther north. If we don’t locate her by the time we meet up with the others . . .”

  “Then what?” asked Amy.

  “Then we circle back to the estancia and call the rescue and the carabineros. That’s what Mr. O’Bannion tells me.”

  Amy was too numb to argue. She simply did as she was told: moving her eyes, keeping the right distance, shouting the name. Not her fault. Every few minutes she would wrap the reins around her saddle horn and use both hands to wipe the dust from her glasses.

  The scrub was getting thicker now, making it harder to see ahead or to the sides. Maybe fifteen minutes later, she caught sight of movement in the northern distance, not far off. Then the sound of voices. Shouting voices. Were they happy shouting voices? Amy made pretend that they were. Getting closer now. Nicolas was on his radio again. They really sounded like happy shouting voices. They did.

  And they were.

  Amy and the searchers from the east converged on a clearing of brush and grass. The five from the north had already dismounted, gathered around a rock outcropping. Oscar had just unbuckled his canteen and was unscrewing the lid. Amy dismounted without giving it a thought, pushed through the search party, and saw her mother seated on the rock, her sweater torn, her face dirty, maybe bruised, looking distracted and exhausted. But alive. Amy knelt down, flooded with relief. She hugged her mother and felt her wince under the grip.

  “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” she said and almost instantly let go. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” Fanny said, then took a few gulps from the canteen Oscar had just handed her. “Sore. Nothing broken, I think.”

  “What the hell were you doing?” Amy asked as nicely as possible given the circumstances. “I was worried sick. You see what I meant about not bringing you along? Sorry. I didn’t mean that. I’m just so glad you’re safe.”

  “It wasn’t on purpose,” said Fanny. “The horse took off. By the time it stopped, I was down in the valley and all turned around. I couldn’t see the ridge. I tried a few times. But the only landmark I could see was the condors.”

  “What are you saying? You followed the condors?”

  “It was the only thing. Plus, I was curious. Weren’t you curious?”

  “No, Mom. I was worried sick.”

  “Well, I followed the condors, and I found them. You’ll never guess what they were eating. Hopping around
and pecking. It was horrible.”

  “A skunk?”

  “A dead woman. I threw my canteen at them, but they just came back. They’re not as majestic close up, believe me.”

  “Did you say woman?”

  “There were three or four condors and some little ratty . . . I think foxes. I tried to get a closer look, but my horse got spooked and took me away. At some point I fell off.”

  Had Amy heard right? “You found a body?”

  “Isn’t that wild? I tell you, Toad Drucker is going to poop himself when he sees.”

  Amy took a deep breath and looked her mother straight in the eyes. “You’re sure? A human body?”

  “Of course I’m sure. It’s all right here.” And with that, Fanny reached up to her Peruvian Batman hat. “Oh, no!”

  * * *

  The tour was at a standstill. Fanny had taken another few gulps of water and had repeated her story for the English-speaking public. Nicolas had translated it for Oscar and the Furies, then had got on the radio to Jorge O’Bannion, still in Spanish mode. The guide’s expression remained neutral as he relayed the news, but Amy had a feeling that he was nearly as skeptical as Todd Drucker.

  For his part, Todd seemed both amused and outraged. “You chased down condors, found a murdered woman. . . .”

  “I didn’t say murdered,” Fanny countered. “Dead.”

  “And you just happened to lose your camera, so there’s not any proof. I’m new to the TrippyGirl experience. Is this the usual way? Disrupting everyone’s hard-earned vacations? Exaggerating little hiccups? Finding corpses no one else can find?”

  “You can find it,” snarled Fanny. “We’ll all find it. It can’t be far.”

  Edgar Wolowitz agreed. “If there is a body, then it’s our duty.”

  “That’s true,” said Nicolas. He had just gotten off the radio with O’Bannion.

  “If I may . . .” Alicia Lindborn was the oldest member of the party, half a decade or more north of Fanny. To the untrained eye, she might have seemed pampered. But good eating habits, a strong will, and lots of Pilates gave her a kind of steely energy that Amy herself was lacking right at the moment. “If the animals are eating the body, then we need to find it.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Todd. “Before it disappears like a mirage.”

  “It’s not a mirage,” said Fanny.

  Alicia looked to the sky, shielding her eyes with a manicured hand. “The sun won’t be setting for a few more hours, so I suggest we get back on our horses and do the right thing.”

  Nicolas returned to his radio. “Mr. O’Bannion says no,” he reported a minute or so later. “I mean, he strongly advises that we go back to the estancia. He has already called the authorities. Oscar?” A few rapid-fire exchanges with Oscar in Spanish. Then . . . “Oscar knows where the condors were. He can show the carabineros when they come.”

  “Oscar knows the spot where they were?” asked Fanny.

  “Absolutely,” Nicolas assured her. “He was watching the whole time.”

  “Good.” Fanny clapped her hands. “He can take us there now.”

  “No,” said Nicolas. “That’s for the carabineros.”

  “But we’re just a few minutes away,” said Alicia. “I think we owe this to the poor woman, whoever she was.”

  “Or wasn’t,” muttered Todd.

  “Excuse me.” Nicolas went back into Spanish, speaking into the radio, then to Oscar privately, back and forth, then to the Furies. When he lapsed into English, it was in a deliberate, patient tone that indicated how little patience he had. “You are right. Please drink your water. I will pass around some nuts for anyone who is hungry. Then let us all remount and find her.”

  No one was in the mood for a snack. A few took slugs from their canteens. Oscar ran his hands over the flanks of Fanny’s horse, checking it for injuries and scrapes, then gently murmured into the animal’s muzzle. He turned to say something to Nicolas.

  “Oscar will ride your horse,” the guide said, translating for Fanny. “Do not worry. His horse is very nice also.”

  “Why?” asked Fanny. “Is he asking the horse where to go?”

  Nicolas shrugged. “That wouldn’t be the strangest thing today.”

  The guide and the ranch hand helped the women and Todd Drucker into their saddles. The constant breeze had picked up. Now it gently howled, more noise than wind, like a sleep machine on a bedside table. And following Oscar’s lead, with Nicolas in second positon and the witness, Fanny, in third, the parade rode out of the clearing and back into the brush.

  Amy believed her mother, of course. More or less. But she couldn’t shake a certain unease. She pulled Hortense up alongside Fanny’s horse, close enough to whisper. “Is there anything you’re not telling me?”

  Amy was accustomed to Fanny’s hurt expression but could never tell, even after a lifetime, if it was fake or real. “My own daughter!”

  “Yes, I am,” said Amy and left it at that.

  Silent Oscar did whatever magic he had to do. A compass appeared from a pocket of his woolen vest and disappeared back inside. The late afternoon sky was consulted, even though there were no longer any condors cutting through the blue expanse. Brambles and branches were checked. Twice during the ride, Oscar got off his horse, Fanny’s old horse, to examine some faint lines on the ground. When he remounted the second time, he said something over his shoulder to Nicolas.

  “Did you cross a river?” Nicolas asked, translating. Fanny had not even seen a river and relayed the information back up the line.

  After a few more minutes . . . “This looks very familiar,” Fanny called excitedly back to her daughter. But to Amy it all looked the same.

  After Oscar led the way into a broad, long clearing near the foot of a sandy cliff, he dismounted for the third time and tied his reins to a tree. The wind was stronger now, creating eddies of dust around the horses’ hooves, like tiny tornadoes. Oscar looked around slowly, revolving 360 degrees and nodding to himself. “Aquí estamos.”

  Fanny knew what he meant. “This isn’t the place. It can’t be.”

  “Why?” asked Todd, standing painfully up in his stirrups and using his left hand to massage the left side of his buttocks. “Because there’s no corpse? What a surprise.”

  “Yes, because there’s no corpse. She was here. I mean there.”

  The response was a general groan from the other riders, an upwelling of irritation. It was impossible for Amy to pinpoint the primary source of the groan since she’d been part of it herself.

  “This can’t be the place,” Fanny shouted.

  Nicolas was off his horse, too, walking at Oscar’s side as the ranch hand took a branch from the ground and poked through the brush and grunted in a steady, soft monologue. “Condors were here,” Nicolas repeated in English. “Their droppings and feathers. Foxes too.”

  “Maybe you saw a dead animal and thought it was a woman,” Alicia suggested.

  “It was a woman,” said Fanny. “A real woman in a red top and black trousers. We have to keep looking.”

  Nicolas conveyed her objections to Oscar. The gaucho remained unimpressed. He continued to forage with his branch, enlarging the concentric circles of his search, overturning small rocks, and separating the thickly knit branches of the firetrees.

  “She’s not under a rock,” Fanny growled.

  Oscar continued. And soon enough, his branch hit something. Something not rock or earth, but metallic. He bent down and, by using his shoe and his branch, managed to spread a prickly yellow bush enough to reach inside. What he brought out glinted in the late-day sun.

  “It’s a canteen,” said Nicolas. Everyone could see it was a canteen. “Mrs. Abel, you said you threw your canteen at the condors, yes?”

  “That could be anybody’s canteen,” said Fanny. “A rancher’s or a backpacker’s. Maybe it looks like the canteen I threw, but . . .”

  Oscar handed the aluminum container to Nicolas, who brushed his hand over something engraved on the
side. He held it up. “It says ‘The New Patagonian Express.’”

  CHAPTER 10

  The next morning they were off in the Land Rovers, Nicolas and Oscar and six of the eight guests. According to the itinerary, there would be breathtaking panoramic views and a hike along the rim of a pristine glacier. At the end of the hike they would be greeted with a gourmet picnic lunch, laid out in a meadow of blossoming wildflowers. Amy was disappointed about missing this, of course. But the worst would be when they returned for their afternoon rests and she would be forced to listen to the competitive travelers waxing rhapsodic about this transformative experience and debating how it compared to other transformative experiences that Amy had undoubtedly also missed in her lifetime.

  She could have gone with them. Technically. But that would have meant abandoning her mother to the sergeant, which would not have been fair to the sergeant. The man and his two officers had arrived late last night, after driving for hours from the nearest settlement with a police outpost. Today they’d been up since dawn, with Oscar, investigating the scene at the foot of the sandy cliff. Now the sergeant was back at the estancia and, after all he’d been through, didn’t deserve to face Fanny alone.

  Their meeting was in Jorge O’Bannion’s office, a log cabin a hundred yards or so behind the main building, on a rise nestled in the apple orchard. O’Bannion had been very understanding about the whole thing. It was certainly not Fanny’s fault if she’d seen or thought she’d seen a body. Finding the spot again was the right thing to do. His only regret, he said, was that Mrs. and Ms. Abel would be missing out on the morning excursion.

  O’Bannion retreated into the front room, the cabin’s outer office, leaving Amy and Fanny alone with Sergeant Ramirez in the larger living-room space. The man wore a brown uniform with a beige shirt and a brown tie under a bomber-style jacket ladened with patches, epaulets, and a name tag. He was perhaps a few years younger than O’Bannion but with less hair to show for it, just a few wisps of fluffy white around the temples. His roundish face held a permanent expression of wary sympathy, probably standard-issue equipment.