The Moai Murders

11

THERE WAS NO KISSING going on in the Fairweather household. In fact, Gordon and Victoria were in the midst of a rather heated discussion, by which I mean a rip-roaring argument, part of which I witnessed before they noticed me lurking on the porch outside their living room.

"I insist, Victoria," Gordon was saying as I walked up the steps. I was not eavesdropping. You could hear him in Alaska.

"I am staying here with you," she replied.

"Have I ever insisted on anything in our relationship?" he demanded. "I am asking now just once, please."

"I don't believe I'm in the habit of insisting either, Gordon," she said. "But I am now. I will not pack Edith up and take her to Melbourne. I will not leave Gabriela in hospital. That's that. When Gabriela's well and you can go to Melbourne, we'll all go to Melbourne. Not a minute before!"

"You must go," he said.

"This is my house, Gordon, my home. Have you forgotten? We live in my house here, your house in Melbourne. I will not leave my home."

"Victoria!" he said. "If I could leave this island, I would. I can't, so you must." My eye was caught by some movement over to one side of the room. It was Edith. She was sucking on her fist, and tears were running down her face. I don't think her parents realized she was there.

"I will not leave without you," Victoria said.

"Victoria, please," he said again. It was an anguished cry. "I am trying to tell you that you and Edith and Gabriela are not safe with me. You are both in danger as long as you are with me. We cannot stay together."

I stood rooted to the floor of the deck. He knows, I thought. He knows the same way that Seth did, that Dave did, maybe even Jasper. He knows where the danger lies, maybe not the specifics, but he knows what this is about. It wasn't about Gabriela. It was about him. That realization hit me so hard, I think I spoke aloud. The room inside went silent, and Gordon turned on the light and came to the door.

"It's you," he said.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I didn't mean to interrupt."

"We'll call this round a draw, shall we, Gordon?" Victoria said. "I think you want to speak to my husband, Lara. I'm not sure how much you heard, but we have a difference of opinion here. Gordon wants me to take Edith and go to Australia. I don't want to go until we get this mess straightened out. I'm going to check on Edith, and then I'm going to see how Gabriela is doing, Gordon. You talk to Lara."

"Edith was watching," I said.

"Oh, no!" Gordon said. He slumped into a chair as Victoria went to find and comfort the little girl.

I waited until he'd composed himself, and then I asked about the rongorongo tablet. "I hear that you had it," I said.

"Yes," he said.

"You got it from Jasper," I said.

"Yes," he said.

"Did you steal it from him?"

"No," he said.

"Look, Gordon, my friend Moira spent all day in jail I cause she was caught trying to get the rongorongo tablet out of Rory's place. I could use a little more than yes and no.'

"Jasper asked me to take a look at it, to see if it was what he thought it was. I said I'd need to take it home with r and he agreed. It's as simple as that. I had a look at it, a then I asked Rory to also look at it. I'm not entirely sure what happened to it after that. If you will recall, I was hiding out in a cave."

"So is it authentic?"

"Yes, it is," he said. "It just isn't from Chile, that's all.

"So where was it from?"

"Here, of course. Despite what Jasper tried to show, t is the only place you find rongorongo. If he'd thought about it, he'd have known that, too."

"Did Rory agree?"

"He thought it would need more testing," he said.

"You didn't?"

"No," he said. "It's real."

"How could you say that, just by looking at it?"

"I just know that it is," he replied.

"And you aren't going to tell me why," I said.

"No, I'm not," he said.

"I'm sitting here wondering why Jasper would consult you on this, Gordon. It seemed to me you weren't the best of friends."

"He had his reasons," Gordon said.

"Are you going to tell me what this is about, Gordon? said softly. He shook his head. At this moment Victoria arrived with a sobbing Edith. Gordon gathered the little girl up in his arms and sat down in a rocking chair, wincing as she grabbed his sore arm. "Go and see Gabriela, Victoria," he said quietly. "I'll stay here with Edith. We'll talk later. If you don't mind, Lara, I would like to spend some time alone with my daughter."

I turned back on the darkened porch and looked at him. He was sitting with his head back, eyes closed, stroking Edith's hair, and swaying slightly. Edith had wrapped her arms around his neck and was already falling asleep. I thought then how much I liked these people, Gordon and Victoria, but also Dave and Seth. I thought of the evening I'd spent with Seth while he told me all about rongorongo, how his enthusiasm for his subject had fired my imagination. Poor Dave had the social skills of a gnat, but he had a good heart, and I had liked him, too. Even Jasper, while I hadn't known him, had earned my grudging admiration for the way he had defied the established way of thinking and done some groundbreaking work. Somewhere out there, someone was destroying them. They were going down, one at a time, without uttering a word. Worse yet, they were taking others, like Gabriela, and even in some respects, Moira, with them.

So now I knew it was about the four men, Gordon, Jasper, Dave, and Seth. They must have had something in common, something they weren't talking about, something that had come to haunt them. What had Seth said? We should never have come back. If they had come back, when had they been here before? It was a question I realized I should have asked myself much sooner, but events, and a certain skepticism on my part where Seth's seemingly incoherent ramblings were concerned, had gotten in the way.

I thought it might be difficult, but it wasn't—just a few hours staring at a computer screen in a little Internet cafe in Hanga Roa the next day. Jasper was particularly easy to find. He had a very impressive Web site, music and all, had I been able to listen to it where I was. I chose the low-tech version from the home page and clicked on something that said All about Jasper.

Jasper's resume went on and on about his great prowess, his huge discoveries, the immense contribution he'd made to our understanding of the history of the Americas, and so on. It was all a bit over the top. By contrast, the section on his education was a little sparse, as I suppose Gordon Fairweather could have told me. Indeed, he'd made the point rather loudly up at Rano Raraku. Jasper's resume did say he attended college, but the word graduate did not come into it. It said he'd studied anthropology at Veritas College in Wisconsin. At least he hadn't faked a degree.

I then googled Gordon Fairweather and found he was listed on the faculty at the University of Melbourne in Australia. It took a little fiddling around, but I did find his CV as well—Ph.D. in archaeology from the University of Southern California in 1982, as well as his Master's degree in 1977. His undergraduate degree came from something called Veritas College in Wisconsin in 1975. My, my, Jasper and Fairweather did go back a long way, thirty years in fact.

I couldn't find anything about Dave Maddox specifically, but I did find his construction business in Orlando. I emailed them to say I was writing an article about him for the local Rapa Nui newspaper and wondered if they would mind sending me a copy of his CV. I could find nothing about Seth Connelly.

By late afternoon I was back at the Internet cafe, and lo and behold there was a lovely email from someone by the name of Dolores, who said they were all devastated by Dave's death, and she was happy to hear that someone was going to write something about him. She said he'd only rated a three-line obituary in Orlando, as well as a news squib about how a local man had died in the Easter Islands.

I didn't bother telling her there was only one lonely Easter Island in this part of the world.

Dave's CV listed at length all the projects he'd accomplished in his building days. The last line said he had a BA from Veritas College in Wisconsin in—wouldn't you know?—1975.

It seemed almost unnecessary at this point, but just to make sure, I turned my attention back to Seth. First, I tried rongorongo. There were a mere 9,270 entries on that subject, a rather daunting prospect, but then I keyed in his alias, "Rongoreader," and lo and behold, there he was. Rongoreader explains rongorongo, the brief description provided said. On the site itself there was a great deal of information, photographs and drawings of the script and so on. At the end there was a little blurb on the mysterious Rongoreader. I've been interested in rongorongo for thirty years, ever since I visited Rapa Nui as a student in my junior year at college in Wisconsin, the biography said. There was more, but that was all I needed to know.

Something had happened on Rapa Nui in 1975 when four men had been here as students. The problem was that three of them were dead, and the fourth wasn't talking. I tried a few more searches on archaeology on Easter Island. There was lots of material but nothing useful. I thought long and hard about how to get closer to this event, whatever it was, and also to narrow my search. Rapa Nui was a small island under normal circumstances, but it seemed rather large now.

I was back at the hotel, staring at the ocean and worrying this problem to death, when I realized I was looking at a potential solution—literally. Felipe Tepano, the man Rory said had been a key feature at archaeological projects for almost forty years, was working away on the grounds about fifteen yards from where I sat. I waited until he was finished and had packed up his truck, and then I followed him home.

Home for Felipe Tepano was a guest house on the far side of Hanga Roa, out past the museum. It was, I knew, Rory Carlyle's home while he worked there. I parked down the street and walked up to his door.

"Mr. Tepano," I said. "My name is Lara McClintoch."

"I know," he said. He didn't seem even remotely surprised to see me, but here was a man who evidently foresaw the future. I hoped he liked the look of mine.

"I would really like to talk to you," I said. He gesture toward a chair on the patio, and we sat looking at the sunset. His wife, a plump woman with a lovely smile that h introduced as Maria, brought us some fresh juice and sat down with us.

"This is Sefiora McClintoch," Felipe told his wife. "She helped Gordon Fairweather."

Maria smiled warmly. "I have heard about you, from Victoria and Rory and also my husband. I have also met you friend Moira when she was here with Rory."

Were they comparing tattoos? Now I had something else to fret about, but it would have to wait until later. "You’ve been working with Gordon and other archaeologists for many years, haven't you?" I said.

"Yes," he said. "Many years."

"Thirty-seven," his wife said proudly. "Gordon told m that we wouldn't know nearly as much about Rapa Nui a we do if it were not for Felipe."

"Mr. Tepano, I don't know a gentle way of putting this: What I want you to tell me is what happened here I 1975."

"A lot of things happened in 1975," Felipe said, choosing his words carefully. "Wasn't that the year we got electricky?" he said, turning to his wife.

"I think so," she said. "About then. You might have to narrow this down a bit," she said with what I took to be an encouraging smile.

"What happened at the Veritas College archaeological project here in 1975?" I said. "In fact, what happened at Anakena in 1975?" It had to be that, didn't it?

Felipe Tepano rocked back and forth in his chair. "I know of nothing like that," he said finally. His wife shifted in her chair.

"Do you like Gordon Fairweather, Mr. Tepano?" I said.

"Yes," he replied. "Very much."

"I do, too," I said. I waited.

"Felipe," his wife said. He shook his head.

"Three people are already dead," I said. "I presume you have heard what happened to Gabriela as well."

Maria almost sobbed when I mentioned Gabriela's name. "Please, Felipe," she said.

"I gave my word," he said. "I will not break my pledge."

"Do you know who is killing these people?" I said.

He hesitated. "No, I do not," he said. "If I did, that I would tell you."

We chatted for a few minutes longer, but I knew it was hopeless. I thanked Maria for the juice and went back to my car, completely discouraged. I had to do a u-turn to go back because the only way I'd find my way to the hotel was to retrace my steps, and when I took the first corner on my way back to town, Maria was at the side of the road waving at me. She must have gone out the back door and across a neighbor's yard to get there.

As I pulled up beside her, she thrust an envelope into my hand. "I have made no such pledge," she said. "My husband has forbidden me to speak of it, but you look at this." In a second, she was gone.

I stared for a very long time at the envelope's contents. It was getting too dark to see properly, but I'd seen enough. I went back to the hotel and showed it to Moira. "This is something you need to see," I told her.

The colors of the photograph had deteriorated rather badly, leaving the sky an unpleasant greenish yellow. Bu you could see the people—a tall, thin, distinguished man in shorts and a whitish shirt open at the collar, maybe fifty o so; a younger woman with reddish hair in a sun dress, cu straight across the top with wide straps and a big skirt and sandals. She was holding the hand of a little girl in a similar sun dress, with blonde, almost white, hair. There was some thing about the way the woman stood, a certain rigidity to her stance perhaps, and some anxiety in her expression, that made me think she was very tense. Beside them was a man of about forty in work boots and trousers, his chest bare Five young people, late teens, early twenties, I'd say, clustered behind these four. The older man was holding some thing, and they were all smiling at the camera.

"Isn't this adorable? That has to be Jasper, and this one I almost certainly Dave. He looks the same only a bi younger. The tall one with all the hair must be Gordon, but I'm not sure about the rest of them, although the one wit! his head down looks familiar," she said.

"Seth Connelly," I said. "He often stood with his head like that. The man in the work boots is Felipe Tepano. don't recognize these other two people, do you? I assume this is a couple with the child, even if there is a considerable difference in their ages. They look as if they belong together. I don't recognize this other young person. Is that man or a woman?"

"Hard to say," she said. "It looks like a man, but the features are rather effeminate. I don't know the couple at al However…" She peered at the photograph, then went t get something out of her bag. "I'm afraid I'm beginning t need this from time to time," she said, holding up a little magnifying glass. "This or longer arms."

"Alas, I know that very well," I said. "What are you peering at?"

"Ibelieve I'mlooking atthe SanPedro rongorong

tablet," she said after a pause in which she pressed the magnifying glass to the photograph.

"Are you sure?" I said.

"No, but I think it is. I've only seen one rongorongo tablet, and I think this is the one I've seen. As you know, I had a pretty good look at it yesterday."

"You recognize the rongorongo?" I said.

"No, I recognize this," she said, pointing to one end of the tablet. "The one I had in my hands was rotted away a bit on one end, just like this one. You see, it's kind of a V-shaped cut into this end, where it's broken off."

"I see," I said. "And you're saying that the San Pedro had the same cut."

"That is exactly what I'm saying," she said.

"That's what Gordon meant," I said.

"Are you going to explain this?" Moira said.

"Gordon said the San Pedro tablet was authentic. He was absolutely definitive about it, even though he admitted Rory wanted to do some testing on it. Gordon also said that it was not from Chile. It was from Rapa Nui. I asked him how he knew and he wouldn't say. If this tablet in the photo and the one Jasper presented at his talk are one and the same, then Gordon knew it was authentic because he was here when it was found. Isn't that what this photograph looks like to you? They're all having their photo taken because it's a special occasion, and obviously the tablet is front and center here. This picture is to mark the discovery of the tablet."

"That's what it looks like. When and where was this picture taken?" Moira asked.

"According to the note on the back, August 10, 1975. You know where it was taken. You've been there."

She peered at it. "It's Rory's guest house, Maria and Felipe Tepano's place. Where did you get this?"

"Maria gave it to me. I'm not sure her husband knows this, so if you're back there, mum's the word, okay?"

"Okay," she said. "What does this mean? If this is the same tablet, then Jasper was presenting something as coming from Chile, when it actually came from here."

"Yes," I said.

"Did he know he was doing that, or did someone play a trick on him? I mean who are these other people?"

I told her my fears, my belief that the deaths were tied to something that happened the summer the four men were here as students. I told her how I'd gone to see Felipe Tepano in hopes he would tell me, but that he wouldn't and that his wife had given me this photograph as a result of her husband's refusal. "She's trying to tell me something without disobeying her husband directly," I said.

"I have a feeling this photograph explains everything, if only I could understand it. I am also wondering if the missing photograph, the one Dave kept in his safety deposit box, is similar, maybe even a duplicate."

"There are two photographs?" she said. I told her about Seth's ramblings, at least that's what I'd thought they were at the time. "So Seth said he'd have destroyed the photograph and assumed someone else had?" she asked.

"Right," I said. "Is it too far-fetched to assume we may be looking at a copy of it? Maybe they all got one."

"I don't know," Moira said. "But it's all there is. Why don't I ask Rory if he knows anything? I'll go back and see if they'll let me see him again."

"Let's leave it until tomorrow," I said. "I want to think about this some more. You know what bothers me most about this? It is that whoever is doing this is prepared to kill someone like Gabriela, who could not possibly have anything to do with 1975. She wasn't even born then."

"That may mean this is about something else entirely," Moira said.

"Then why won't anyone tell me about the summer of 1975?" I said.

"Good point," she said.

The next morning, Moira headed for the police station to see Rory, and I went back to the Internet cafe. Being the technologically backward person that I am, I had to get help, but within a reasonable period of time I had scanned the photograph Maria had given me and had it on a CD. This I took back to my friend, Brian Murphy. "Can I see this on the screen, bigger, I mean?" I asked him.

"Sure," he said. "An old photograph, I see. Is that Jasper Robinson?"

"I think it is," I said.

"Could that be Dave Maddox?" he asked.

"Yes, and that would be Seth, and that would be Gordon Fairweather."

"No kidding," he said. "They knew each other a long time."

"They did," I agreed.

"Who are these other people? Is it a man or a woman?"

"Now that I'm able to see the picture better," I said, putting my nose right up to the screen. "I believe it is Muriel Jones."

"I don't know her," he said.

Actually you do, I thought, but I kept that thought to myself.

"Here I am again, Cassandra, or Muriel, or whatever your name is," I said, approaching Cassandra a few minutes later.

"Leave me alone," she said.

"Not going to happen, Muriel," I said. "I want you to tell me about the summer of 1975."

"I don't know what you're talking about," she said.

"How about you have a look at this photograph?" I said. "I can show it to you blown up on Brian's computer screen if you like, in case you don't recognize yourself as a guy."

If Cassandra had gone green the last time we'd talked, I don't know how you'd describe the color he or she was now.

Her hands were trembling badly, and there was a little tick throbbing near one eye. "Are we going somewhere private?" she said.

"Okay. Let's go sit under that umbrella and look at the sunset," I said.

"You're going to kill me out there in front of everyone in the dining room?" she said.

"I don't kill people," I said. "I just want to talk to you."

"You can't tell anyone," she whispered.

"I can understand your concern. If someone recognized you, you might end up dead like the rest of them."

The gypsy slumped in her chair. "Please, don't," she said. "Let's go outside."

"Cassandra, Muriel, what is your name, anyway?" I said.

"Andrew Jones," he said.

"Okay, Andrew," I said. "Tell me what—"

"Please," he said. "Call me Cassandra."

"Cassandra, if you don't tell me what I want to know, right now, I'm going to make an announcement at dinner about who you really are."

"Why are you doing this to me?" he said.

"People are dying, in case you hadn't noticed. Other people's lives are at risk. Gordon Fairweather won't tell me, Felipe Tepano won't tell me, but believe me, you are going to."

"We should never have come back here," he said. "I don't know why we did."

"Would it surprise you to know that is exactly what Seth said before he died?"

"Please!" he said. "I didn't think anybody would recognize me. The more outrageous you look, the less people look at you. I know that, believe me. Can we go to my room so I can take this wig off? My head aches."

"No," I said. "Start talking. No one can hear you out here by the water."

"I can't," he said.

"Okay, then, it's back to the dining room for my announcement. I think just about everybody was in there, weren't they? Anakena would have to be there."

He groaned. I waited. "Do you know the story of Ana o Keke?" he said at last.

"I know it's a cave," I said. "Something to do with virgins. One of your Moaimaniac pals uses the name."

"Cave of the White Virgins is what a lot of people call it," he said. "But do you know what happened there in the 1860s?"

"No," I said. What the 1860s had to do with all this, I didn't know. It was 1975 I was interested in.

"The cave was used as part of the bird man rituals, tangata manu. Young girls, virgins, were highly valued, and they were sent to Ana o Keke for weeks, if not months, before the birds came. The cave is several yards down from the top of the cliff out on Poike. It is a rather hazardous place to get to and a very long way to fall. It would have been crowded, too, but it was a great honor to be chosen. The idea was that the girls were to become pale and fat. Their fathers brought them their food."

"Okay," I said. I could feel my impatience growing. "Is there a point to this?"

"In 1862 slavers came to Rapa Nui," he said, ignoring me. "The islanders came to the beach to greet the ship. The slavers threw trinkets down on the sand, and everyone scrambled around to get them. While they were down on the ground, the slavers grabbed as many able-bodied men as they could, tied them up, and took them away. They were taken to work the guano mines in the Chincha Islands. The conditions there were terrible, and many of them died. But then—"

"I know this," I said."Your old friend Gordon Fairweather told me. The bishop of Tahiti intervened and insisted they all be sent back. They were, but they brought smallpox with them."

"Did he tell you about the girls?" he said.

"No," I said.

"I guess he wouldn't," he said. "Cuts a little too close to the bone."

"So, what happened to the girls?" I said.

"Almost everyone on the island came down with smallpox," he said. "Most of them died. There was no one to bring the little girls food and water."

"They starved!" I gasped.

"They did," he said.

"Tell me this is just a fable," I said.

"It may be, but the people here believe it to be true," he said. He turned his head away from me, and spoke so quietly I could barely hear him. "I don't imagine she'd starve in three days," he said. "Dehydration, though, or maybe just exposure."

I had this sense of impending disaster, a kind of tightening in my chest, and an intense desire to run away, not to listen to the rest of this. "Are we talking now about the 1860s?" I said, very quietly.

"No," he said, and a tiny rivulet of wet mascara ran down his cheek. "We are talking about little Flora Pedersen."

Please don't tell me a little girl died in a cave, I thought. Please don't tell me that.

He took a few moments to compose himself. "We came out from Valparaiso on a Chilean supply ship," he said, finally. "Five of us, all classmates at Veritas College—Gordon Fairweather, Dave Maddox, Jasper Robinson, Seth Connelly, and me. We'd all studied anthropology together, hung out together all semester, and when one of our professors was looking for students to assist with his work here, we volunteered. I was trying very hard to be one of the boys in those days, as futile as that may have been. I hadn't quite figured out why I felt the way I did.

"Jasper was especially keen on the trip. He'd read all of Thor Heyerdahl's books, and to go to the site of one of them was something he just had to do. The supply ship anchored off Anakena Beach, and we were taken in on a small boat with our sleeping bags and the rest of our gear. Jasper was over the moon, because Anakena was where Heyerdahl set up camp. Gordon and Jasper were the serious ones. For Dave and Seth and me, it was all a bit of a lark. While our classmates were waiting tables at resorts in Michigan, or something, we were on Rapa Nui looking for treasure.

"I don't mean we didn't take our work seriously. We did. Professor Pedersen worked us very hard, and we had some tremendous success. We found a cave on Poike and excavated there. There were some ritual carvings in it, a skeleton, too, and best of all, a rongorongo tablet. Those things are scarce as hen's teeth, but we found one."

"That wouldn't be the one that is now being called the San Pedro rongorongo tablet, would it?" I said.

"How would you know that?" he said. I pointed to the photograph. "I think they were one and the same. Seth and Dave did, too. In any event, we worked very hard, much harder than most of us expected, I think. Except Gordon, of course. He was really into it. We had fun, too. We drank ourselves silly every night, The others found themselves Rapa girlfriends. Pedersen and his wife kind of adopted us, made sure we ate, that sort of thing. We stayed in the same guest house they did. They lived in the main house, and the four of us shared a bunkie out the back. Mrs. Pedersen was really very kind. I'm sure she had a first name, but we called her Mrs. Pedersen, even though she wasn't that much older than we were. She was very much younger than her husband. These were more formal times. But then," he said and stopped.

"Then," I said.

"Something terrible happened," he said finally. "The Pedersens had a little girl. Her name was Flora, but the native workmen called her Tavake. Tavake is the name of a little bird on Rapa Nui, and she flitted around like one, I suppose. The name kind of stuck."

It would have had to be a little bird, wouldn't it?

"I think it was Felipe Tepano who actually gave her that name. He was the foreman on the project. I notice he's still around, but now he's making predictions of impending doom."

"True predictions," I said.

"Apparently."

"I take it you really don't believe in tarot cards and Lemuria?"

"Yes and no. It's all part of the act, literally. We should never have come back you know. Never. But at least I knew enough to come back as someone else. Do you know what I do for a living? I have a cabaret act that I perform in bars, the sort of place I don't expect you frequent. Men dressed up as women. It's a transvestite act. Queen Mu is the name I use. I'm very good at it."

"I can see that," I said. "But maybe you should stick to answering my question."

"We had Sundays off. The workmen all went to Mass, and we just hung out, usually drinking a whole lot of beer, and carousing with the girlfriends, those of us who had them. On that particular Sunday the Pedersens asked us if we would watch Tavake while they went to visit some people they'd met. We said yes, of course, but after a beer or two, we decided we wanted to go to the beach. We debated about it, but the Pedersens had said they wouldn't be back until dinner time, and we figured we'd be back by then, too. We took Tavake with us."

"By beach, you mean Anakena?" I said.

"Yes," he said. "The day went wrong, right from the start. We were drinking a lot of beer. We'd taken two trucks because we had Tavake with us. Dave took one and loaded up on beer. We drank all afternoon. Jasper and Gordon had a huge blowup. Gordon thought Jasper was sloppy and was going for the glory instead of doing the methodical work that we needed to do. He was right, of course, but Jasper has always been like that. He was then, and he is, or was, right up until the day he died. They never really got along, the two of them. Two strong personalities, I guess. Gordon was really meticulous about the work we were doing, and Jasper just wanted to go for the big find. You can't be slapdash in archaeology you know and Jasper may well have been. Gordon took the keys to one of the trucks and left in a huff.

"I had so much to drink that I did the unthinkable. I made a pass at Jasper. It was an eye-opener for both of us. Jasper was absolutely disgusted, and Dave and Seth were appalled, too, I know. These were the 1970s, and this was unheard of in his circles. He yelled at me, threw sand in my face, and told me to stay away from him. I was devastated. I didn't know why I had done it in the first place, of course. I remember I went and threw up. Jasper demanded that we go back.

"I don't know how it happened," he said. "Maybe we thought Gordon had taken Tavake with him, I don't know. I guess we had too much beer, but we just forgot about Tavake, all of us. One minute she was flitting around, the next she wasn't."

He stopped talking for at least a minute. I should have pressed him, but part of me didn't want to hear what he had to say.

"We forgot her," he said at last. There was a catch in his voice. "We packed up and were halfway back to the guest house before we remembered her. We went back, of course, and searched and searched, calling her name over and over.

Finally we realized we'd have to go to town for help, then, it was dark. A search party was formed immediately and the whole town came out, I swear, to look for her. T couldn't find her that night, nor the next day. The poor little thing had crawled into a cave, you know. I guess she frightened, she must have been terrified of being alone in dark. She was only four. They'd already looked in that cave but she had crawled down a shaft they didn't see at first.

"Maybe she was playing hide and seek, you know, loved that, and we always went along with it. We would pretend we couldn't see her behind the tree, and go look for her while she giggled loud enough for us to hear They didn't find her for almost three days!" he said. "Three days!" He was almost shouting. "She was dead!" He be to weep uncontrollably.

"We were sent home," he said, finally, dabbing his eyes with the tissue I'd handed him. "Gordon was the only who stayed in the field. He went to another university to complete his studies. I heard he was working in Peru, here. But I guess eventually the siren call of Rapa Nui him. Seth became a history teacher, Dave a builder, Jasper, who dropped out of college before he graduated made a fortune as a stockbroker before he retired to become an adventurer. My own career path, I've told you.

"I still dream about her, cold and frightened and abandoned in that cave. I've often wondered if that was Jasper and Seth and Dave never had kids and why all my relationships end so badly. Dave got married, you know, he never wanted kids. Seth didn't marry at all, and Jasper married every woman he slept with, as near as I can tell, he never had kids either. We should never have come back.”

"And why did you?" I said.

"I don't know, except that we were invited. No, I'm being honest here. I came because I wanted to see Jasper again. Despite the way he treated me, there is still such feeling there. Dave and Seth had stayed in touch, although not regularly. I had stayed in touch in a way, I suppose, through the Internet, although I never identified myself to them that way. I never told them about my, well, you know. I told them I was an actor, which is true, after all. Seth and I talked maybe once every couple of years. Maybe not even that often. We stayed interested in Rapa Nui over all the years. You can laugh about Lemuria, but it is possible there is a sunken continent in the Pacific. Dave and Seth should have stayed in the field, too. They were good at it, especially Seth. Rongorongo, I mean. He told me he just kept working at it in his spare time. He set up an office in his garage. A terrible waste, really. Dave was the same. He told you, many times, no doubt," he said, with the hint of a smile, "how he was watching a TV show and an idea about how to move and raise the moai just came to him. Rapa Nui drew us, you know. We were still in its thrall.

"Dave emailed Seth and me to say he'd received an invitation to this Moai Congress. I had, too. We talked on the phone a couple of times. Dave thought maybe if we went we'd exorcize a few demons, you know. He said Jasper had emailed him and asked him to come, so maybe it was time we got together again. He said he'd persuaded Seth to go as well. They'd emailed Gordon, but he said he was too busy. He didn't suggest they come and visit or anything. Bad feelings still, I guess, between him and Jasper. That and the ghost of little Tavake.

"I told them I couldn't come, that I was in a show and couldn't leave it. At the last minute, though, I changed my mind. I came incognito. Seth recognized me, but respected my request for anonymity. The others didn't know me at all. I suppose that is what saved me. Dave brought Jasper's rongorongo tablet with him, as Jasper asked him to, and Dave and Seth both had a look at it. Dave must have suspected it was the one we'd found years ago, because he'd called Seth at home and asked him to bring a copy of the photograph of the group of us from that summer if he could find it, which Seth did. Dave wanted to compare the tablet in the old photo with Jasper's tablet. I think Dave and Seth were almost certain they were one and the same. They tried to persuade themselves otherwise, but I don't think they could.

"Seth said the tablet was a sign, a warning of what was to come. Whoever is doing this wanted us to know. Jasper, being the kind of person he is, didn't seem to notice. He was so intent on his big find in Chile that proved what he wanted to prove that he didn't see the resemblance. Dave was going to talk to him, to warn him, but I'm not sure he did. He may have been killed before he could. Dave also planned to tell everyone at the congress that it wasn't from Chile. He thought that was a travesty, for Jasper to say such a thing. If he did manage to talk to Jasper, then Jasper didn't believe him or he wouldn't have gone on to make that big announcement in front of everybody.

"In a way we got what we deserved, you know. We were unbelievably self-absorbed, terribly careless. As a result, a little girl died. If you make that announcement in the dining room, tell everyone who I really am, then maybe I'll pay the price, too. Maybe this is as it should be."

"But not for Gabriela," I said. "She has done nothing to deserve this."

"But her father has, hasn't her* He may be the least culpable. He left the beach first. But he is still paying, isn't he? The rest of us have no children. It is Gordon who is to learn what it is like to lose one.

"It was thirty years ago that it happened. Thirty years ago! Life held such promise then. There was nothing we couldn't do. It ruined our lives, I think. It ruined many lives. The Pedersens divorced, I heard. As far as I know, Professor Pedersen never remarried. I don't know what happened to Tavake's mother, but I am sure she never completely got over it. How could she?

"For me, at times over that thirty years, days would go by when I wouldn't even think about it. But it was there, and when I came back here, it was as if it had just happened. I imagine the others felt the same."

"So who is Anakena?" I said.

"I don't know," he replied. "I'm just pathetically grateful it isn't you."