The Moai Murders

3

ORONGO—This is none of my business, I told myself. / am on vacation. It has nothing to do with me. Dave Maddox could read whatever he liked. After all, had I not read The Art Forger's Handbook? Yes, indeed, I had. It was actually very useful for someone in my line of work to understand how forgeries are made. I had trouble coming up with reasons it would be useful for a builder or even someone interested in how the moai of Rapa Nui were transported and raised, but there was no reason why he couldn't read it if he wanted to. Mind you, when I read it, I sat there bold as brass with the cover hanging out for anyone to see. I didn't try to disguise it as the latest Grisham, nor the work of a Pulitzer prize winner, either. The cover business was a bit peculiar, it had to be said, although I suppose now that I thought about it, a customer or two might have had second thoughts about buying something from an antique dealer who was reading a book about forgery. Perhaps Dave thought reading such a thing at an academic conference would be frowned upon. There would be nothing here he could forge, would there? Carve a twenty-five-foot moai and make it look to be six hundred years old? What would be the benefit of that, even if he could do it? Fake a petroglyph or two? Not much point in that either. Even if that were what he intended, though, it had nothing to do with me. / am on vacation. This is none of my business. That would be my mantra.

I was having more trouble with Cassandra. She was a flake, obviously, all that talk about alien beings populating a lost continent in the Pacific. I'm not saying there isn't a lost continent. But aliens? Still, she could think whatever she wanted. What she couldn't do was terrorize the wait staff at the hotel, in particular a pleasant young woman who just wanted to get a university education.

This has nothing to do with you, Lara, I told myself over and over again. Here I was at one of the most interesting places on Rapa Nui, the center of the bird man cult at Orongo, and I was watching my fellow delegates rather than enjoying the site. This was unfortunate, because the place is spectacular, perched high on a cliff above the sea, with a wonderful view of three tiny islets, one of which, Motu Nui, featured prominently in the rituals centered on the bird man, tangata manu, rituals that replaced the worship of ancestors as represented by the moai. The site, near the crater at Rano Kao, is embellished with hundreds of petroglyphs, many of them depicting birds or the bird man. Along with the petroglyphs are the remains of a sacred village, made up of distinctive boat-shaped houses called hare paenga, used during the ceremony.

Rory had chosen to accompany us that morning. What he said was that he wanted to make sure we were getting the right information about what we were seeing. I thought it had more to do with Moira. I tried to listen while he explained about the arrival of the birds and the competition between four powerful individuals and their representatives, called hopi manu, to find the first egg. The stakes were high, rather like the competition for Tapati queen: in the latter case, a university education, and in the former, the right to rule the island for the next year. But always, out of the corner of my eye, I was watching the others.

Cassandra, in an even more outrageous getup than the previous day, kept putting her hands on the petroglyphs, closing her eyes, and moaning slightly as if being visited by the spirit of the stone, or something. It was, in my opinion, unconvincing, if not just plain nauseating, but Yvonne seemed to be quite taken with it all.

"What are you sensing?" she kept saying.

"The forces are gathering," Cassandra said.

"Spooky," Yvonne said. I thought what was really spooky was that Yvonne hadn't broken her ankle yet, given she was wearing even more inappropriate shoes than the day before. The other person who seemed in imminent danger of breaking something was Enrique, who kept his nose in his guidebook rather than eyes on the rocky ground as we went along.

Edwina Rasmussen, the Rosa Klebb look-alike, was there, umbrella up for protection from the sun. She was unusually quiet, given that Rory's credentials were impeccable, and she therefore had no one to criticize.

Dave Maddox, too, was very subdued. He tended to wander off by himself rather than harangue the group, and he kept taking pieces of paper out of his pocket and reading them as he walked. Considering how high up we were and how rough the terrain, I thought this a very bad idea. I went over to talk to him.

"Did you finish the Grisham?" I asked and then wished I hadn't. I couldn't seem to hold to a resolution for more than two minutes.

"What?" he said, looking startled."Oh, no I didn't. Went straight to bed and slept like a baby. Probably get back to it tomorrow night, after my presentation is done. I can relax a bit then."

"Are you rehearsing?" I asked. "I notice you keep looking at some notes."

"I am. I seem to have a bad case of stage fright," Maddox said. "I'm kind of wondering why I got invited here."

"Why not?" I said.

"I don't know. All I did was post my theories on the Internet, and lo and behold I got the invitation. Jasper himself invited me. Well, not exactly Jasper, I suppose. Brenda Butters, the registrar. But she said Jasper had asked her to get in touch with me. I was pretty excited, as you can probably imagine."

"You'll be great," I said. I had no idea whether he would be or not, but he looked kind of pathetic. For all his bombast, he was just a regular guy. "There'd be something the matter with you if you weren't a bit nervous ahead of time."

"I suppose," he said. "But there are all these people with so much more experience than me. I've always been interested in these moai, and I was watching a documentary on television that showed a bunch of guys trying to raise one. I thought they were going about it all wrong. I suddenly had an idea about how it could have been done, using poles and rope, both of which would have been available at the time, and a system of wooden levers. It was a theoretical model only, you understand, untested. Since then, though, I have read about all the people who actually came here and tried o move them out of the quarry and then raise them on the ahu—people like Heyerdahl, Mulloy, Jo Anne Van Tilberg and Charles Love, and that Czech engineer, Pavel Pavel, I think his name is. These people are huge! I mean what am I, Dave Maddox, a small developer from Orlando, doing here?"

"Perhaps you're here because you have an idea that Jasper thinks is different and will work," I said. "Jasper, after all, is hardly one to insist upon academic credentials, is he? Why don't you go and talk to him? I'll bet you'll feel a lot better after you do."

"Maybe," he said. "You will come tomorrow, won't you?"

"Of course I will," I said, patting his arm. "Moira will, too."

"You girls are terrific," he said, smiling rather wanly.

The team from Kent Clarke Films was there, too—Kent Clarke herself and Mike and Danny Boy. Kent ignored all of us, but the other two were definitely more accessible. When I inadvertently interrupted them, they told me not to worry. They were just scouting out the location.

"Speaking of interruptions," I said. "That was one big one yesterday at Rano Raraku."

"It was deadly," Danny Boy said.

"In case you can't understand the lingo," Mike said. "Deadly is good. Danny Boy has a touch of the Irish in him."

"I prefer Daniel," the younger man said. "I'm Daniel Striker, and my pal here is the director, Mike Sheppard. It is the great J. R. who started this Danny Boy business."

"I got the distinct impression that you filmed the interruption, Daniel," I said.

"That could be true," he said.

"Might add a little drama to an otherwise profoundly boring documentary," Mike said.

"Is it boring? The people attending the congress seem to think it's the most exciting event in decades."

"No accounting for tastes," Mike said. "Hard to make speeches look interesting. But we're waiting for the great man himself to make some pronouncement at the end."

"Did you come out just for this?" I asked.

"I did," Mike said. "I do work for Kent Clarke Films from time to time. I flew in from Australia where I just finished another gig. Danny, that is Daniel, lives here."

"Half the year. I came out originally to be the assistant to the assistant to the assistant camera guy when they filmed Rapa Nui here," Daniel said. "The one produced by Kevin Costner."

"You shouldn't be telling people that," Mike intervened. "That was one dog of a film."

Daniel laughed. "It was a job, which I needed given I'd dropped out of school and had been thrown out of my home, and it got me into the film business. It also brought me here, for which I'm grateful. Met my wife here. She's a Rapa. We're working on our third kid. Two girls already and maybe a boy on the way."

"He's hoping one of his girls will be Tapati queen in a few years," Mike said. "Take a little pressure off her dad with the prize."

Vying to be Tapati queen was not necessarily a wonderful experience, as we found out when we got back to the hotel. A tearful Gabriela was sitting with the woman who'd talked to us at the Tapati rehearsal, and when she saw us coming, she got up and ran away.

"Iorana," the woman said, rather wanly. I had decided that iorana was hello in rapanui.

"What's wrong?" Moira said.

"I'm not sure," the woman said. "Are you staying here?"

"We are," Moira said, introducing us both. "We talked at the rehearsal in town."

"Yes, I remember. I'm Victoria Pakarati," the woman said. "Are you at this Moai Congress by any chance?"

"We are, but only by chance," I said. "It was on when we got here, so we signed up."

"So you're not presenting or anything?"

"Hardly," Moira said. "Everything we know about RapaNui we've learned since we got here. But what is wrong with Gabriela?"

"I don't know, but she has told her mother that she is withdrawing from the competition for queen of Tapati. The family is terribly disappointed and asked me to talk to her. They think it's just a case of jitters. I think it's worse than that, that something has happened, but I don't know what it is, and I can't deal with it if she won't tell me. She is such a lovely young person, a good student, a devoted daughter. She is one of ten children and a tremendous help with the younger ones. She works in her spare time at the hotel to make some money to help out the family. I just don't know what this can be about."

"I may have some idea," I said and related what I had overheard the previous evening.

"That awful woman hit her!" Moira exclaimed.

"I'm afraid so," I said.

"Who is this woman?" Victoria said. "Is she the one that goes on about the Lemurians?"

"Yes, indeed," Moira said.

"But who is she really?" Victoria asked. "Cassandra de Santiago can't be her real name, can it?"

"I have no idea. In fact, I have no idea who any of these people are," I said. "This is the oddest conference I've ever attended."

"Gordon says it's a complete sham, that it's all a big publicity stunt for Jasper Robinson, that none of the experts one would normally associate with the study of Rapa Nui, the people with established reputations in the field, are here, nor were they invited. Instead we have the Cassandra de Santiagos of the world. I know Gordon is biased, but he may have a point. What I don't understand is why anyone would bother setting this whole thing up, sham or otherwise. Just do the documentary and be done with it."

"Gordon?" Moira said.

"Sorry. Gordon is my husband, Gordon Fairweather."

"Dr. Fairweather," Moira said.

"Yes. Do you know him?"

"Not exactly," Moira said. "We saw him up at the quarry yesterday."

"Oh, dear," she said. "Gordon says he made a complete ass of himself up there."

"He expressed strong opinions," I said. "I had a fair amount of sympathy for him. Robinson did use the opportunity that presented itself to make fun of the Rapa Nui workmen."

"That's what Gordon said. His language was considerably stronger than that. Look, I know I'm biased, and Gordon does have a temper, but he is a lovely man."

"What are we going to do about Gabriela?" I said. "If it would help, I'll tell her I saw that odious woman attacking her and how inappropriate I thought it was. Maybe if she knows I was a witness, she will talk about it. Did I mention that before she hit her, Cassandra actually had Gabriela by the shoulders and was shaking her?"

"Good grief!" Moira said. "I vote we leave Gabriela out of it and just confront Cassandra, three to one. That's what you do to bullies. You bully them back."

Victoria smiled. "I knew you were good people the minute I saw you in town. Why don't we start with Gabriela and take it from there. I'd appreciate it, Lara, if you would tell her what you saw and how awful you think it was."

But Gabriela wasn't talking. When I related my tale, she just sat there sobbing, but she didn't open her mouth.

"That's it, then," Moira said. "You stay here with Gabriela, Victoria. Lara, you come with me." Gabriela shook her head vehemently, but Moira and I were not to be deterred.

Cassandra de Santiago was just taking her seat for the start of the day's first presentation when Moira and I suggested she might like to join us outside. When we were out of earshot, I told Cassandra what I'd seen.

"I don't know what you are talking about," the woman said.

"I saw you," I said.

"When and where was this incident supposed to have occurred?" she said. She was very angry, but then so was I.

I told her—about ten the previous evening on the back lawn off the terrace.

"It just so happens I was with Kent Clarke last evening. Go ahead and ask her." As if on cue, the producer herself hove into view. "Tell these extremely unpleasant women where I was last night," she said.

"You were with me, of course," Clarke said. "Being interviewed for the documentary. Why?"

"I'm being accused of intimidating one of the staff here," she said. "I am going to see to it that that young woman is fired." Ouch, I thought.

"But why?" she said.

"Ask them," Cassandra said, as she flounced off. "I have no idea."

Clarke peered at us over the top of her snazzy sunglasses. "Ladies?"

"I guess there has been some mistake," Moira said. I was speechless. I knew what I had seen.

"If you have come to make trouble here, ladies, then I suggest you just leave. This conference was by invitation only, and I don't recall seeing your names on Jasper's list."

"How did one get an invitation to this thing?" I said. Clarke just walked away.

"You're sure, are you?" Moira asked when Kent was out of earshot. "No, don't answer that. What kind of friend am I? Of course, you're sure. The woman is a liar. And that makes Kent Clarke a liar, too."

"I'm thinking for the life list that 'I will never interfere in someone else's business again' would be good," I said. I dreaded going back to Victoria Pakarati to tell her what had transpired. I needn't have worried. When we got to the lounge, both she and Gabriela were gone. A waiter gave us a message to the effect that Gabriela wasn't feeling well and that Victoria had taken her home. Victoria would be in touch later, the waiter said.

"Now what?" Moira said.

"I think we should get away from here for a while," I said. "Rent a vehicle of some sort and just go exploring. Confronting Cassandra was a bad idea, and maybe we should disappear for a while."

"I think you're right," Moira said. "I hate to think of that awful women hitting Gabriela. I mean, that is just so tacky. But we did our best. Even if she lied through her teeth, it might give her pause to know you saw her, and maybe she won't do it again. So, yes, let's go exploring. That's what we came to do."

That's what we did. We rented a four-wheel-drive Suzuki and spent the whole afternoon exploring. I will not say it's impossible to get lost on Rapa Nui, as I was to find out soon enough, but there are not a lot of roads. The only paved one hugs the coast for a good part of the island, only cutting inland at Poike. We explored ahu after ahu, the huge moai all toppled, most of them face down. It seemed inconceivable to me that people would go to such extraordinary lengths to both carve and the transport these huge stone creatures and then topple them all. Even toppled, though, they dominated the landscape. Rapa Nui, the island, belonged to them.

"Sad, isn't it?" Moira said. "Rory said they continued to bury their dead in the ahu for a long time after. I wonder if there are bodies in these platforms?"

"Probably long since removed," I said, as we moved on.

We ended our island tour at Anakena Beach where Hotu Matu'a was supposed to have first landed and where Thor Heyerdahl had set up camp fifty years ago. There was an ahu there, too: Ahu Nau Nau with seven moai, four with red topknots, and another single moai on the slope of a hill, dedicated to Heyerdahl. It was a rather splendid sand beach, lined with the only palm trees of any size I'd seen on the island, and given we'd taken our bathing suits at Moira's suggestion, we went to swim in the surf.

"You're right, Moira," I said. "This is what we came to do, not to watch crazy people at a conference."

"Exactly," she said.

"Life list: I will take a vacation somewhere splendid every year," I said. "How's that for the positive statement?"

"For you, unprecedented," she said. "Finally, you are getting into the spirit of things. You do realize most people take a vacation of some sort every year?"

"I believe you and others have mentioned that before," I said.

"Remember it this time. I'm thinking we're not going back to the congress until late, either. We'll have dinner in town again."

We did, but somehow the tentacles of the Moai Congress reached out to find us, this time in the form of Gordon Fair-weather and his family. We were sitting on the deck of a very pleasant restaurant when Fairweather, Victoria, and a sweet little girl of seven or eight that they introduced as their daughter, Edith, came in, along with a young man Fairweather introduced as his right hand, Christian Hotus, and Victoria's mother, Isabella. The family took the table next to ours.

"These are the lovely people who are trying to help me with Gabriela," Victoria said. She was casually dressed, as pretty well everyone was on the island, in a sarong and short cotton top that showed off a little turtle tattoo around her navel.

"Have we met?" Fairweather said. "You look familiar."

"You're not going to like the answer to that question," Victoria said. "You saw them up at the quarry yesterday. Furthermore, I'm afraid they saw you."

Fairweather groaned and hid his face in his hands. "I will never apologize to Robinson, but I would like to apologize to you," Fairweather said. "You were just visiting the quarry, and I'm sure you found it all very uncomfortable."

"It's okay," we both said.

"I told you they were nice," Victoria said.

"You may not think so when I tell you what happened when we talked to Cassandra," I said. I related the whole sordid affair, and then I said, "I don't care what she thinks about me, but she said she'd have Gabriela fired. I am terribly afraid I've made matters worse."

"No worry on that score," Fairweather said. "I'm afraid Gabriela has quit her job."

"We've asked her to sleep on her decision to withdraw from Tapati Rapa Nui, and she's agreed, I think, to wait until tomorrow. But she is quite adamant about it, and she will not explain why, even to her mother," Victoria said. "If you had no success talking to that woman and Gabriela won't tell us anything, I just can't think what else we can do. Let's not talk about it anymore," she said with a shake of her head.

We chatted about the island and what we'd seen at Orongo that day. We both said we'd been blown away by the site, which we had, even if I'd spent a good part of the time bucking up Dave Maddox.

"Gordon thinks Orongo is a terribly sad place," Victoria said.

"And it is, if you know the history well," he said.

"But the Tapati," Moira said. "Doesn't it take place at Orongo, at least part of it? Isn't it a happy kind of festival?"

"Sure, it is. And someday our daughter is going to be Tapati queen," he said, giving Edith a little squeeze. "I love this island and the people. I think the women are particularly attractive." Victoria laughed. "I'm on sabbatical this year finishing a book I'm writing about it," he continued, "but usually we live here part of the year and part of the year in Australia where I now teach. As much as I like Rapa Nui, I can't ignore the fact that it has a very tragic history. You may not realize it, but thirty thousand years ago this was a lush tropical paradise. There was all kinds of vegetation, palm trees eighty feet high. Even fifteen hundred years ago, when man first arrived here, it was relatively fertile, if not as much so as other Pacific islands."

"What happened?" Moira said.

"The island became deforested over several centuries of man's habitation here. First of all, it is a very small island. The population grew. Wood was needed to build boats and houses, keep warm, and for several centuries a great deal of it, we believe, was needed to move the moai from the quarry down to the respective ahu. There were other problems as well—rats that fed on the palm nuts, for instance.

"So here were the finest mariners the ancient world produced, and they had no wood to build boats. They couldn't leave, even if they wanted to. The population grew to the point that the island could not sustain it. Starvation ensued. Warfare broke out between the tribes and individual clans, probably over resources. That is when the moai were toppled. There is some evidence of cannibalism, although I'm not one who is completely convinced on that subject. The world of the moai builders essentially came to an end."

"But it was replaced by the bird man cult, wasn't it?" Moira said. "Isn't that what I heard this morning?"

"It was, but think about it. These rituals were timed to coincide with the arrival of the birds. It is true that birds and their eggs are good food sources. But more importantly, the birds arrive at the same time as the large tuna in the deep water way off the coast. Now a good catch of tuna would feed a lot of people. But no wood. No boats. No tuna. I have a feeling that those who participated in the bird man rituals must have heard the old stories about the arrival of the tuna. The people here have a very rich storytelling tradition. So here they are, stuck on an island with no resources, and they know that once upon a time, they could have got out to the tuna."

"That's terrible," Moira said.

"And it gets worse," Christian interjected. "Care to guess why?"

"I'm betting we showed up," I said.

"Exactly," Fairweather said. "The arrival of the Europeans. That essentially destroyed Rapa Nui culture virtually overnight. The first documented visit by a European was that of the Dutchman Josef Roggeveen. He arrived in 1722, at Easter, hence the name. At that time the moai were still standing on the ahu. The Spanish claimed the island in 1770, Cook visited after that, then the French. By the time a Russian arrived in 1804, there were only about twenty ahu still standing.

"After that it was a free-for-all. Various people took over the island for commercial reasons, and slavers were constantly raiding it. One particularly terrible event took place in 1862. All the able men of the island, including the priests and even the ariki mau, were kidnapped and taken to work the guano fields in Peru, where many died from the terrible conditions. While Christianity had not yet been brought to Rapa Nui—the priests didn't arrive until 1864 and didn't stay until 1866—the Bishop of Tahiti heard of their plight and insisted the islanders be sent home. Very few made it, but those who did brought smallpox with them. Within a very short time, the population of the island was down to exactly 110 people, where there had been thousands, some say as many as ten to fifteen thousand, before.

"It is a terrible story in many ways," Fairweather said. "The horrendous treatment and deaths of the people from smallpox, of course, but think also of all that was lost with them—the family stories, the folk tales, the myths they valued, and the secrets these families shared. Even their written language, rongorongo, was lost."

"How depressing," Moira said. "So are you going to accept Robinson's invitation to his presentation tomorrow night?"

"Haven't decided," he said. "A colleague of mine, Rory Carlyle, will be there. We drew lots and he lost, so he had to attend on behalf of a few of us who are working here."

"We met him," I said. "He refers to the congress as the lunatic fringe."

Fairweather laughed. "Trust Rory, he always has an interesting turn of phrase. He's filling in for me at the University of Melbourne while I'm on sabbatical."

"Isn't he working up on Poike, too?" Moira said.

"He is," Christian said. "We all are."

"Speaking of Rory, there was a man at the hotel the night before last by the name of Felipe Tepano," I said. "He predicted to Rory that someone was going to die on a particular spot."

Victoria Pakarati looked startled, then perturbed. "I don't like the sound of that," she said, looking over at Christian, who frowned. We'd been speaking English, which had left Victoria's mother out of the conversation, but now Victoria translated for her mother. The older woman shifted uneasily.

"Come now, all of you," Fairweather said. "It's nonsense."

"I'm not sure," Victoria said. "There have been other times."

"The motorcycle accident," Christian said.

"Yes." She turned to us. "I don't want to alarm you, but strange things happen here from time to time. Someone else made a similar prediction about a particular place on a road, and that very night, two young people on a motorcycle lost control, and died on the very spot."

"Coincidence," Fairweather said. "A good Catholic like you shouldn't be telling tales like that."

"I'm not a Catholic," she said.

"Then why is it you haven't missed the nine o'clock Mass on Sunday morning in the five years we've been together?" he said, smiling.

"I'm a Rapa Nui Catholic," she said. "That's different."

"We saw the church yesterday," I said. "I think I understand what you're saying."

"Come to Mass on Sunday," she said. "You'll understand even better. But I wouldn't discount what Felipe Tepano says."

"He's a very powerful man in his family—the patriarch, I think you'd call him," Christian said. "I'm related to the Tepanos on my mother's side, and I can tell you people think he does have some spiritual power."

"Gordon laughs about Rapa Nui Catholics," Victoria said. "Men like Felipe Tepano go to Mass every single day, but when they leave, they also do prayers to the spirits of the island and to their family aku-aku. We don't see anything contradictory in that, do we, Christian?"

"No, we don't," the young man said. "At least the older generation doesn't."

Edith was starting to get restless, so it was obviously time to go. Victoria had the last word. "If Gordon decides to go tomorrow, I'm counting on you to keep him in his seat and quiet," she said.

"Tough job," Christian said, laughing.

When we got back to the hotel, some of the congress delegates were sitting either in the dining room finishing their dinners, or out on the terrace or around the pool having a drink. Dave was deep in conversation with Kent Clarke, and he didn't seem any too happy about it. Jasper Robinson was nowhere to be seen, but then Yvonne wasn't either, a fact that was remarked upon by more than one person.

Daniel and Mike were holding up one end of the bar, a spot they seemed to have staked out for the duration of the congress, and we went to join them. "I hear you filmed an interview with Cassandra de Santiago last night," I said. "That must have been entertaining for you, Mike." Moira, who would have no trouble guessing what I was up to— which is to say, checking out an alibi—was no doubt doing some mental eye rolling, but she said nothing.

"Entertaining? That's a good word for it," Mike said.

"A bit of a nutter if you ask me," Daniel said.

"Why have a nutter on a documentary?" I asked.

"Like the film Rapa Nui, this one's a dog." Mike said

"It is that," Daniel said. "I should know."

"Kind of eats into your drinking time, doesn't it, filming it in the evening?" I said. "Are you on call twenty-four hours?"

"Kent thought the nutter would be better at night, you know, kind of dark and creepy," Mike said, as Daniel rocked with laughter.

"Who's the bored-looking young woman who hangs around while you're filming and straightens Jasper's collar and stuff?" Moira said.

"Kent's daughter, don't you know. A bit of nepotism in the film business," Daniel said. "Or is it necrophilia? The girl can barely speak. Is she alive?"

"You're bad," Mike said. "But she just hangs about, that's for certain. Her name is Brittany."

"I'm surprised a woman named Kent Clarke wouldn't call her daughter something more masculine, Sydney or something," Moira said.

"Lois," Daniel said. "As in Lois Lane. That's what I would have done. Anyway, I'm heading home. Thanks for the brew, Mike."

"I'm turning in, too," Mike said. "Long day tomorrow, and I've got to have a look at what we got today and get tomorrow organized."

"The logistics man," Daniel said. "He worries about the detail. All I have to do is point the camera where he tells me."

"And make everything look nice," Mike said. He stumbled slightly as he stood up.

"Nice," Daniel agreed, reaching out a steadying hand.

I was thinking Moira and I would also turn in for the night, but Rory showed up at this point and came over the minute he saw us. We told him we'd met Fairweather and his family.

"Great guy," Rory said. "I heard about the set-to up at Rano Raraku. He does have a temper, but basically he's one of the good ones. Couldn't talk him into joining me here at the congress, though."

"He may come tomorrow evening," Moira said. "Robinson invited him."

"They may have to tie him down," Rory laughed.

"Actually his wife gave us the responsibility of keeping him still and quiet," I said.

"Not an assignment I'd relish," Rory said. He signaled the waiter. "The usual? Pisco sours?" he asked.

"I think I'm going to pass," I said. I'd been keeping an eagle eye out for Cassandra, given she was the last person I wanted to see that evening, and I had just caught a glimpse of her heading for the terrace.

Avoiding Cassandra, however, was more difficult than I had thought. As I walked through the lounge, I saw to my dismay that she had changed direction and we were now on a collision course if I continued on my chosen route to the room. Furthermore, she stopped to talk to Mike on the walk between my current position and my goal. Fortunately, the lounge was empty except for Seth Connelly, who was reading in the armchair that had been occupied by Dave Maddox the night before. He greeted me in a most friendly fashion, so I didn't feel I could just turn around and walk out the way I had come.

"I've the better part of a bottle of wine, here," he said. "Come and have a glass with me." I chose a chair where I hoped Cassandra would not see me if she decided to go out to the terrace through this room.

Seth was very entertaining, as it turned out. He hadn't had much to say at the congress, but when I asked him about rongorongo, he was positively effusive. "It's a writing system," he said. "One of the most amazing ever. There is no precedent for it in ancient Polynesia. The old Polynesian cultures could neither read nor write. Rapa Nui was the same until the arrival of the Spanish in 1770. That year, the Spanish claimed the island. The Spanish insisted the ariki, the leaders, sign a document ceding the island to the Spanish crown. The Rapa Nui put little marks on the page, symbols of importance to them. What is amazing is that they obviously figured out that the Spanish symbols on the document represented spoken language, and after the Spanish left, the Rapanui came up with their own written language. Don't you think that's amazing? I don't think there has ever been anything like this in the entire history of literacy."

"Amazing," I agreed. "And is it still used?"

"I'm afraid not," he said. "Not everyone would have been able to read and write it in the first place. There would be wise men, called maori rongorongo, who specialized in it. Now nobody can. Progress has been made in deciphering it, but there isn't much to work with. While rongorongo was occasionally written on stone, it was usually carved on wood tablets, and a lot of these have just disintegrated in this climate. There are only fourteen tablets—twenty-eight if you count fragments—known worldwide. A rongorongo tablet is a very rare find."

"So this is your area of expertise?"

"I just work at it for my personal satisfaction. I teach history for a living. I came out here in the hope of seeing Gordon Fairweather again. Pity he's not at the conference."

"He may come tomorrow night," I said.

"Indeed! I hope so. Misery loves company."

"I take it you are not keen on Jasper Robinson?"

"I think Robinson has had some extraordinary discoveries."

"But?" I said.

"But I can't stand him," Seth said. "If the story about what happened at the quarry is true, if I'd been there instead of Fairweather, I'd have said a lot worse than 'horse manure.' " That sounded a lot like braggadocio to me. Seth was shy, almost painfully so.

We went on talking until I'd finished my glass of wine. Seth's enthusiasm was infectious, and I'd spent a very pleasant and enlightening half hour or so with him. I had completely forgotten about Cassandra, but she was nowhere to be seen, so I decided to make a run for it, leaving Seth to his book.

I wanted to go to sleep, but I couldn't, at least not right away. I had been of two minds about leaving Rory and Moira alone together. In fact, if I hadn't seen Cassandra heading my way, I'd almost certainly have stayed. I wasn't sure how I felt about the budding relationship between them. I did know I felt a pang as I watched the two of them, their heads bent close to each other, perhaps to be heard above the din, but more likely because they preferred it that way.

I know I criticize Clive a lot. He has a rather superficial glibness that lends itself to ridicule. But in my heart of hearts, I do not delude myself into thinking our marriage fell apart entirely because of his faults and foibles. I am not the easiest person in the world to get along with. I'm stubborn and judgmental and occasionally just plain cranky. I am also a workaholic. There, I've said it.

I thought Moira and Clive, no matter how painful it had been for me when they got together, had a really good relationship. They were both the better for it, and I found myself hoping that Moira would not stray. The question was, to which of them did I owe the most loyalty? I had been married to Clive. That aside, we were in business together. If he found out about any straying and discovered that I knew and didn't tell him, our shop might go down the drain. On the other hand, Moira and I also went back a long way, and we were very good friends. I was the one she asked to come to Rapa Nui with her, the number one spot on her life list.

I also lay there thinking about Cassandra. I went back over the nasty little scene of the previous evening again and again. The truth was I had not seen her face. I saw Gabriela's and the terror in it, and I had seen the back of Cassandra and heard her bracelets jangling away. Cassandra's choice of apparel was very distinctive, to be sure. I hadn't seen another gypsy on the island. She was a big woman, though, and wore loose clothing. It was possible, if not probable, that someone else had put on her clothes. It could even have been a man, given her stature.

That's ridiculous, I thought. Even if I didn't see her face, I heard her voice. But maybe that wasn't exactly the case, either. The person in the gypsy garb had not spoken clearly. Rather she had hissed at Gabriela, a hoarse whisper, in fact. Could I swear the voice I had heard was Cassandra's? I decided I could not, although I remained convinced that it was.

All of this was giving me a headache. I decided I didn't want to talk to Moira about any of it and that I would turn out the light, pretending to be asleep when she came in.

I didn't have to pretend, though, because despite all the drama, I was out like a light and came to only briefly when Moira came in. "Did you have fun?" I managed to say. I believe she said yes and something to the effect that Rory was a lovely guy and they'd gone for a walk together.

I awoke again in the middle of the night and lay there for what seemed to be an eternity, unable to sleep, listening to Moira's breathing. I couldn't see my watch, but there was a crack in the curtains on the sliding door that led out to a tiny patio outside our room, and through it I could see the moon, a slim crescent. The wind had picked up, and something was banging outside. It was one of those sounds, a creak and then a thunk at irregular intervals, that gets under your skin.

As quietly as I could, I pulled my jeans and a sweater on over my nightgown, then slid into my sandals. Moira murmured in her sleep, but didn't wake, as I carefully pried open the door wide enough to slip out.

It was absolutely beautiful outside, warm and windy. The dark sky was filled with more stars than I had ever seen in my life, testament to the remoteness of the island, and for a few minutes I stood, head back, looking at them. I could see the outline of the cliff behind the hotel. Somewhere I heard a horse neigh, and there was a shuffling sound nearby, an animal perhaps, rooting about.

The banging was coming from something a few yards away, near the dining room, so I walked quietly toward it. The lights of the hotel had been dimmed, but there was a slight glow from inside.

It didn't take long to find the source of the sound. It was the gate near the edge of the cliff and Felipe Tepano's pile of dirt. Perhaps the wind had loosened the catch. I can remember having only two coherent thoughts as I reached over to close it. One was that Felipe Tepano was right. The second was that Dave Maddox wasn't going to make it to his perfectly timed session later that day.