CHAPTER 18
“Let me say it again. You did not have a vision.” They were in the leather armchairs in the lounge, side by side, Fanny still in her bathrobe, facing one of the picture windows. The predicted storm had turned the day to night, ricocheting off a half acre of red tile roofs in millions of tiny explosions. Even though the room was empty, Amy kept her voice low.
“It’s the same woman,” Fanny insisted. “Unlike you, I never met Lola before. But the second I saw her, I knew. The mole, the hair, her general build. What was she wearing? When she rode off today, what was she wearing?”
Amy had to think. “I don’t know. A red jacket and black pants? I wasn’t paying attention. And a scarf.”
“Ha!” Fanny looked triumphant. “I didn’t envision a scarf. Maybe she loses it. But my woman was definitely in red and black. That’s what I told the police. It’s engraved in my mind.”
“A lot of people wear red and black. Now, if you’d said chartreuse and pink—”
“Don’t be glib, little girl.” Fanny took a break, adding hot water to her maté gourd and stirring it. This was already her second time draining and refilling the gourd, and the herbal brew wasn’t helping her nerves. “Everyone ridiculed me when the body disappeared. Well, a vision explains that. Right?”
“Mom, there has to be a logical explanation.”
“This is a logical—”
“Another logical explanation. One that’s logical.”
Fanny took another swig. “Four days ago I saw a corpse no one else saw. Then the same woman shows up alive. Then she rides off into the Patagonian wilderness, never to be seen again.”
“Never to be seen? It’s been fifteen minutes.”
“In a thunderstorm. Any living person would have come back.”
“Maybe she’s on her way. Maybe she found a cave or a cottage and is waiting it out.”
Fanny exhaled. “It’s my fault for not warning her. But I don’t speak Spanish, and your friends plied me with wine. We have to go out and find her.”
“Find her where? She could have ridden in a dozen directions.”
“Jorge should be out there. Instead, he’s in the dining room, pouring coffee and talking about monasteries.”
“Which shows how unworried he is.” Amy placed a comforting hand on her mother’s knee. “You take a shower and get dressed. No trousers for the women and something with sleeves. That’s what the itinerary says.”
“They’re telling us how to dress?”
“For the monastery. I guarantee, by the time we pull ourselves together, Lola and her horse will be back.”
“You have no basis for that guarantee,” Fanny said somberly. “But I appreciate your naively positive attitude.”
At Amy’s insistence, they went up to their suite. A few minutes later, while Fanny was in the bathroom and Amy was straightening up, the pounding on the tile roof ceased. The storm was over, and a breeze was starting to clear the skies. Neither of the Abels mentioned the vision again, not until they came down the staircase, properly dressed, and saw the front doors once again wide open.
Outside, they found Jorge O’Bannion, Nicolas, and the estancia’s stable hand off to the right of the main building, by the white-fenced paddock and the adjoining stables. The hand was examining the flanks of the black thoroughbred, checking for cuts or injuries. The horse looked exhausted, its head lowered into a water trough, taking big lapping gulps. The riding blanket and saddle were still in place, but off-kilter, pushed forward and to one side.
“Where’s Lola?” Amy asked as she rushed over to the paddock. Fanny was a few yards behind, refusing to rush. “Is she all right?”
Nicolas was the one to come over and answer. “Everything is fine. Nothing to worry about.”
“Now you have me worried. Is Lola hurt?”
The young guide caught O’Bannion’s eye, and the older man shrugged, his shoulders heavy. It looked like he’d put on ten years in the past ten minutes.
“It came back without her.” It was Fanny speaking, calm in an almost fatalistic way.
“Yes,” said Nicolas. “The horse came back without her.”
* * *
For the second time in four days, the Patagonian Express was put on hold. The excursion to see the monastery’s mosaics was canceled, and everyone began searching for a woman in the wilderness.
The Torre Vista search had several natural advantages over the Glendaval search. They were closer to the Torres del Paine National Park, meaning the police were closer, less than a two-hour drive. A helicopter was also available, a Bell 407, normally used to take wealthy fly fishermen to the remotest rivers and fjords. And, perhaps the biggest advantage, this was a real woman who’d gone missing, the widow of an Argentinean tycoon, seen by three reliable witnesses riding off into a storm and not coming back.
The guests could do only so much to help. Edgar Wolowitz, the youngest and fittest of the men, mounted a horse and joined O’Bannion and the stable hand in riding through the ravines that were inaccessible to most motor vehicles. Todd and Amy joined the tour drivers in the two Land Cruisers, acting as lookouts while their driving partners maneuvered the trails and tried not to get stuck in the brand-new gullies carved out by the downpour. All three teams stayed in radio contact. Back at Torre Vista, Alicia set up a command center on one of the tables in the dining room, keeping people connected and crossing off the searched sections on a map. If they didn’t find her, Alicia would have the map ready for the police, a little head start, when they arrived. The other guests, Fanny, Todd, and the Furies, did their part at the estancia by agreeing to fend for themselves and not complain.
“I feel so helpless.” Gabriela was looking over Alicia’s shoulder. Without her compatriots at her side, she was speaking more and more English. “The red X, is that the estancia?” It was a large topographical map, the one that had been framed and on display in the lounge. Removed from behind its glass, the map was disfigured with a red X almost exactly in the middle, with three multicolored lines expanding from it in different directions.
“That’s us.” Fanny stood over Alicia’s other shoulder, holding a fistful of Magic Markers, ready to hand to Alicia. There was no reason for them to be hovering, but it felt better than doing nothing. “The blue line is vehicle number one, the red is number two, and the green is the horses.”
Gabriela studied the lines. “Only one green line? There are three horses. They should split up.”
Alicia kept focused on the lines, as if expecting them to move on their own. “The horses are on the most rugged trails. The last thing we want is for another rider to get lost or injured.”
Lost or injured, mused Fanny. The fools are not even thinking dead, but that’s how it’s going to wind up.
“What about this area?” Gabriela pointed a pink-lacquered nail at the unlined section just to the north of the estancia.
“There are no trails on that side,” Alicia said. “And she rode the other way. If they don’t find her before the authorities arrive, I’m sure that’ll be next.”
All three continued to stare at the map. Then the two-way radio on the table next to it squawked. “Vehicle one.”
Alicia answered. “Torre Vista. Over.”
“Hello, Torre Vista.” It was Amy’s voice, sounding competent and calm. She said something to her driver in Italian, then translated for Alicia. “We’re crossing the arroyo. Come si dice in inglese?” Slight pause. “I guess arroyo is the same in English. Over.”
“It means ‘a dry gully,’ ” said Alicia. “Which arroyo? Over. There are a few in your area, judging from the topography. Over. And they’re not labeled. Over.” Alicia was still getting used to her “overs.”
“This one is flooded at the moment. But we’re getting across. Dante says we’re just east of the salt ponds. Half a kilometer.” Dante’s Italian had been a lucky discovery this morning, as the teams were getting organized. The Chilean-born son of an Italian mining engineer, he was a nature conservation student in Santiago, working for the summer as a driver. “Over.”
The salt ponds, a haven for orange and pink flamingos, where Dante was supposed to have driven them today, after breakfast, were labeled on the map. “Found it,” said Alicia. Fanny handed her a blue marker, and Alicia extended their line to the south-west, crossing a think line that could have been an arroyo or a stream, depending on the season. “Any sign of her?” She waited for an answer. “Any sign? Over.”
“Dante saw some horse droppings, but he says they’re a week old. She probably didn’t come this way. Has anyone picked up her trail? Over.”
“Not so far. The police are coming soon, so maybe we should have everyone circle back around and come in. I’ll suggest it to Jorge. Over.”
Amy said that it sounded like a good idea. She also sounded discouraged. “Over and out.”
When Fanny looked up from the map, she was surprised to see that Gabriela Garcia had quietly left the room.
The arrival of the Chilean authorities was a disappointment. At least Fanny thought so. The entire force consisted of a Toyota SUV and two officers barely out of high school, both of whom seemed very proud of their neatly pressed uniforms. Alicia and Fanny met them on the porch and did their best to explain. It was an instance in which Gabriela’s language skills would have been helpful. Fanny had asked around the estancia, pantomiming the woman’s description and saying her name, but Gabriela Garcia was nowhere to be found.
Alicia led the boys into the dining room and displayed the map. If they were impressed by the diligence of the searchers, they didn’t let on. If they at all understood what the lines and the X stood for, they also didn’t let on. When Jorge and the other horsemen returned a few minutes later, the language barrier was broken. But it hardly improved matters. The gist of the conversation, which Fanny and everyone else would soon learn, was pretty much as follows.
According to the officers, tourists do die. It is a sad truth, but in the thousands of acres in and around the national park, backpackers and mountain climbers, even horseback riders, go missing, and the rural police who oversee the area do not have the resources to make extensive searches.
Jorge O’Bannion was furious. His agony and frustration were clear. This wasn’t a tourist. It was Senora Lola Pisano, the widow of a powerful Argentine tycoon. But whatever cachet the word tycoon might have brought to O’Bannion’s case, it was undone by the word Argentine. So, the woman was a tourist, after all, the officers said, and not even from the United States but from that socialist-leaning country next door that was always trying to argue over territory and make life difficult for the good people of Chile. “Do you really think our country should spend its limited budget trying to find some Argentine widow who had stupidly ignored an approaching storm?”
The neatly pressed officers did their job. They dutifully looked over Alicia’s map and listened to Jorge and the drivers, one of them a local, describe the territory and the most likely unsearched spots where a rider could have been thrown. After that the officers drove away, supposedly to conduct their own search, then fill out the paperwork. Everyone assumed that they would be back in their homes before sundown, in time to have their wives press their uniforms for the next day.
“So that’s it?” Fanny asked. She and Amy had stepped outside and were walking the gravel path around the stables and the newer garage, built in the same white, barnlike style. “We’re just going to give up?”
Amy wrapped a light gray shawl around her shoulders and kept an eye peeled for horse droppings camouflaged in the dark gravel. “Jorge rented the helicopter for tomorrow morning. But there’s only so far they can look. The woman was on a horse, not a jet plane.”
“But she has to be somewhere.”
“What do you suggest? We can’t stay indefinitely. Poor Jorge has a tour to run. All his time and investment, and Lola’s investment. Todd Drucker is already complaining. He was counting on seeing that monastery.”
To Fanny it still sounded heartless. “Did Jorge talk to her relatives in Buenos Aires?”
“He’s probably hoping he doesn’t have to.”
“Why did the stupid woman ride off in the first place? You were on the scene.”
“I know.” Amy’s sigh was almost a growl. “They were speaking Spanish.”
Fanny rolled her eyes. “I don’t quite get your mental block with that language.”
“Lola and Gabriela were exchanging words.”
“Very observant. In Spanish.”
“In Spanish. I don’t think they knew each other, not personally. There was some animosity about their late husbands. Gabriela wanted to confront her, but Lola just rode off.” Amy could sense her mother’s disappointment. “Why she rode off isn’t important.”
“It is important, dear, if Lola was murdered.”
“Inside voice!” Even though they were outside and no one was in sight, Amy pulled her mother by the arm, edging her around the side of the garage. “How could she be murdered?” she whispered. “First off, Lola’s not officially dead.”
Fanny whispered back, “Visions don’t lie. She’s dead.”
“And second, who could have killed her? From the time she went away, everyone’s been looking for her. In groups.”
“It could have been one of the staff,” Fanny reasoned. “They weren’t in groups. Or a local rancher. Or a drifter.”
“Did you actually say ‘drifter’? How about a hobo? Maybe it was a Patagonian hobo.”
“Remember what your father used to say? ‘You can’t win an argument by making fun of people.’”
“He used to say that to you.”
“Still a valid point.” Fanny pivoted on her heel and was about to start back for the estancia when they heard the approaching car, from around the front of the garage, slowly pulling up from the road onto the noisier gravel.
The sound of a motor vehicle wasn’t unusual. But given the hour, given the fact that the emergency had pretty much brought work to a halt, and given the subject they’d just been discussing—about someone out in the wilderness killing Lola Pisano . . . The Abels inched themselves back against the side wall of the garage and waited.
Someone had just driven inside. From this angle they couldn’t see, although it had sounded like one of the three brand-new Land Cruisers, the mainstays of the Torre Vista motor pool. The engine was switched off. The door opened. If the driver was heading to the estancia, he or she would be walking through their line of sight.
“We’re just being paranoid,” said Amy, barely audible even to herself. Common sense told her it was probably a gaucho who’d been out checking fences or whatever else gauchos did. But this time common sense was wrong.
The driver who emerged from the mouth of the garage was Gabriela Garcia. The Argentine businesswoman checked her surroundings quickly, then moved furtively toward the estancia, gaining confidence in her stride only as she rounded the corner and came into the lights of the long porch.
Amy and Fanny said nothing, not until they had walked into the garage themselves. There were three Land Cruisers lined up in two rows, plus Jorge’s sidecar, looking lonely without its motorcycle partner. Amy went up to the first Land Cruiser, which was still throwing off heat from its run. The keys were in the ignition. She checked. The keys were in the ignition of all the vehicles in the garage.
“When did you last see Gabriela?” she asked.
Fanny was standing guard at the door. “Just now.”
“Before then.”
Fanny scrunched her face into a wrinkled ball. “We were looking at the maps. She asked why no one was out searching the woods north of the ranch. Alicia told her it was because Lola rode off the other way.”
“And that’s the last time you saw her?”
“Yes. Until just now.”