"How could I? This from the person who helped you know who get to you know where and then brought this same person food and water? You believed in him, and I believe in Rory. The difference is I got caught, and you didn't. When we saw all the police cars pull up at the guest house where he's staying, he had just shown me the tablet. It was right there. So I tried to get it out of the house because I thought it would look bad for him to have it."
"It does look bad for him to have it," I said.
"He says that Jasper agreed that in exchange for doing an interview for the documentary that was more positive than not, Rory could have it for a few hours to have a closer look. Rory did the interview, saying something reasonably nice, thinking that if he found that it was fake, then he would simply retract what he had said. But then he couldn't find Jasper in the morning to return it, and when Jasper ended up dead and obviously murdered, he didn't know what to do with it, and really in all the confusion, he simply forgot about it."
"I see," I said, pulling pen and paper out of my bag as I did so. That is the official version, I wrote, careful to shield the paper as I did so. Where did he really get it?
"You don't want to know," she murmured, looking toward the guard on the door.
"Yes, I do," I murmured back.
She took the pen. Gordon F. she wrote.
"I don't believe it," I said.
"I told you," she said. "You know what else?" She took the pen and paper again. Rory thinks it's real, she wrote.
"No kidding?" I said.
"No kidding," she said. "Here we are, right in the middle of this mess. I want to go home, Lara."
"Okay," I said. "I'm on this. I'll go talk to Gordon's lawyer and see if he'll take your case. Just hang in there. You don't look well."
"I'm fine," she said, but I knew she wasn't. I had this vision of all the times I'd seen her taking pills of some sort— sleeping pills, pills she told me were vitamins, but now I wasn't sure, pills for headache; pills for stomach upset. I suddenly realized, with absolute certainty, that Moira had not been entirely truthful about the state of her health. And now she was in police custody very far from home.
Up until now I had tried to keep telling myself that this was all none of my business. I'd let myself get drawn into it when, acting more on instinct than good sense, I'd helped Gordon get out the back door of his place, which I suppose was exactly what Moira had been trying to do for Rory. Once Gordon had his lawyer and was out of the cave, though, I'd gone back to my none-of-my-business mantra, however imperfectly. Now Moira was going to be spending a lot of time in Chile if it was found that Rory was guilty of murder. This was now very much my business.
I didn't think Rory had killed two people and tried to kill his friend Gordon's daughter. Nor had I changed my mind about Gordon, despite this latest revelation. Clearly what I had to do was find someone who had ties to all three, make that four, victims. I had to assume that Seth's suicide was tied into all of this. He'd said he was sorry, that he wanted to make amends. He obviously knew Dave and had told me Dave and Jasper went back a long way.
I could think of many people who had reason to hate Jasper and perhaps even be capable of killing him. Dave was more difficult, because the only person I could think of who could want to silence him was Jasper himself. There had to be something else going on here.
I went back to the hotel with a lot on my mind grabbed a couple of things Moira wanted and dropped them off at the carabineros headquarters before going into town. I had decided there were several areas where my lack of knowledge was a serious impediment to figuring this all out. I made a list of them, and I gave myself twenty-four hours to find out what I had to do to get Moira out of jail.
At the top of the list was the small matter of the rongorongo tablet and Gordon's having had it in his possession, according to Rory. Second was the question of Gordon and Gabriela's relationship and where Gabriela had been found. I needed to talk to Victoria or Gordon about a lawyer for Moira, anyway, so I decided I could kill two birds with one stone by paying the Fairweather household a visit.
"It's simple, in a kind of complicated way," Victoria said, after I'd phoned the lawyer—who was unfortunately back in Santiago—and convinced him he needed to help Moira now. "Gordon and my sister were together for a number of years and had two daughters, Gabriela and Edith. Edith was born just about the time my sister and Gordon split up. I'm not able to have children and desperately wanted a child. This will sound very strange to you, but my mother insisted Edith be given to me when she was born. I was single, and I suppose I still am. Gordon is still legally married to my sister. No doubt this all sounds very incestuous to you. I hope you'll let me explain. My sister has many children. She had six before she married Gordon, two with him, and she has had two more since with her current partner. The women in this society are very strong. The men may head the families theoretically and hold public office like mayor, but believe me, the women make the major decisions for the families. My mother made the decision and insisted Edith be given to me. I love her as my own daughter.
"Gordon and I got together about five years ago, and while my mother does not entirely approve of the arrangement, I think he and I will be together forever, and she approves enough that she lives part of the time with us. And now he has one of his daughters with him. Gabriela chose to stay with her mother. She was old enough to make that decision. Before this horrible poison business happened, though, she was at our place all the time."
"The serum is on its way," I said.
"I pray every minute that it gets here on time," she said. "I do not understand this, Lara. Why do this to a child? The carabineros say that whoever it was drugged her and then started to tattoo her. They think that someone interrupted the murderer before the tattoo was finished. Are the tattoos all little birds?"
"Yes, they are," I said.
"I wonder why," she said.
"Where was Gabriela found?" I said. "At her home?"
"At the hotel," she said. "We assumed she had gone back to see her friends there, or to pick up something she'd left. As I told you, she'd quit her job there. The manager was doing a walk around the property before he left the hotel, around midnight I think. He found her on the edge of the garden."
"Did he hear anything, or see anything?" I said.
"We never thought to ask," Victoria said. "Why would we? Who could even imagine something like this happening?"
"Maybe I'll talk to the manager," I said.
"Let us know what you find out and if we can help. Gordon hasn't heard yet about Rory. I'm sorry about Moira. We seem to keep drawing the two of you into this mess."
"Did Gordon know Rory had the San Pedro tablet?" I asked.
"If he did, he didn't mention it to me," she said.
"Where is Gordon now?" I said.
"Back up on Poike," she said. "With his students. He'll be back before dark."
I wasn't going to attempt to retrace the route to Poike by myself, and I decided I had many other things to do while I waited for Gordon to come back. It was difficult seeing where Gabriela fit into all of this, even if she was Gordon's daughter, and even if he was the one who'd stolen the rongorongo tablet. I had a feeling that if I could find her relationship to the others, I would have the answers to all my questions. With all the horrible events that had taken place since, I had forgotten about Gabriela's nasty engagement with Cassandra. It was not all that long after that that Gabriela had been found unconscious. I decided it was time to reopen that unpleasant subject.