One Grave Less (30 page)

“Benjamin Constant,” said Maria, looking out over the town nestled on the edge of the Amazon River.

“’Mos Eisley spaceport: You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious.’ ” Rosetta’s voice was solemn. Maria laughed and Rosetta giggled.

They stood at the railing of a tourist boat taking them down the Amazon River, breathing in the wind in their face. The smells were different from the lush rain-forest smells. People made a difference to the ambient aroma, and not in the best way. But Maria wasn’t going to complain.

“I take it you and your mother saw
Star Wars
,” said Maria.

“A lot,” said Rosetta.

Maria realized that Rosetta must constantly review her memories of her time with her mother. Her recollections of all the happy times were so clear.

They had gotten lucky on their trip through the forest toward Benjamin Constant. They had trekked as close to the river as they dared, hoping to catch sight of a tour boat. They were both tired. Maria kept Rosetta behind her, to protect her from being hit by the limbs and brush Maria was pushing out of their way. She forced her way through a thick section of growth, wishing she had a machete, and came face-to-face with a tall young blond male holding a camera and wearing Rail Riders clothing.

Maria stopped, ready to fight.

“
Você está perdido?
” he said. It sounded like Portuguese with a faint Swedish accent.

Rosetta peeked out from behind Maria.

“Sort of lost,” Rosetta said.
“Você fala Inglês?”

“Yes, I speak English,” he said. “Do you need help?” His Swedish accent was more evident in English, or at least, Maria thought it was. Of course, her Portuguese was nonexistent, so she couldn’t really judge.

When she was over being shocked, Maria wanted to run up and hug him. She was never so glad to hear those four words. She was never so glad to see someone who not only spoke her language, but who possibly didn’t want to kill her.

“Yes, we do. I’m Maria . . . Maria West,” she supplied, sticking with a plan she had made of how she was going to get the two of them home across several borders. “This is my daughter, Rosetta West. Can you help us get to Benjamin Constant?”

“
Ja
,” he said. “We’re going to Benjamin Constant.”

The “we” was a tourist boat like the one she’d seen at a distance on the river. This close to a large town, river and land traffic were bound to increase. She had been counting on running across someone with faster means of transport than feet. She was afraid it might be a logging truck. She was overjoyed it was a boat, not a canoe, but a large boat with many people, having a good time without guns.

She related the story that she and Rosetta had worked out as they trekked through the forest. Maria was a doctoral student in archaeology. Rosetta was her daughter. They were visiting archaeology sites, having fun, when someone tried to kidnap them. They got away but became lost in the jungle. However, they were experienced hikers and had a map, and they were on their way to Benjamin Constant.

“Of course we didn’t have that far to go,” she told Patrik Tillstrom and his fellow student, Hanna Vik. The two Swedish students had talked the boat pilot into stopping along the way so they could take some jungle pictures. That was why the two were in the forest. They were meeting up with friends in Benjamin Constant and taking a longer trip through the Amazon on foot. They were very excited. Maria would have been too, had she not already taken a trip through the Amazon.

Patrik and Hanna introduced them to some of the other people on the tour boat. It felt so normal. Maria felt safe for the first time in a long time. Still, she kept Rosetta close to her.

Maria told Rosetta she should speak English most of the time, as if it were her first language. She taught her several American idioms and common popular speech inflections. “It’s all in giving people an impression. You talk like an American kid, they are less likely to think I’m stealing you from the country.” Rosetta understood, being a master plotter herself.

“But I don’t really look like you,” she said, worried.

“We are in luck there,” Maria told her. “John West, my boyfriend, is an American Indian.”

“Really? He’s a real live Indian?” said Rosetta, wide-eyed.

“So are you,” said Maria.

“Pretend, I know, but . . . ,” said Rosetta.

“Not pretend. You are a real Indian. You are a South American Indian. You can trust me on this. I’m an anthropologist,” she said, and Rosetta grinned.

They stood on the top deck of the tour boat and looked at Benjamin Constant. It was a rough, ragged-looking town. Maria imagined it was hard to keep things sparkling on the edge of the rain forest. They had to wait to dock; the pier was crowded with boats. When they disembarked, they walked down a street that looked like a normal beach tourist strip that hadn’t been kept up for about a hundred years. The street was filled with potholes; the asphalt was worn or nonexistent, with motor bikes and old VW buses and similar beat-up cars traveling along the streets at a slow pace. Leaning telephone poles lined the sides of the street. Also lining the sides were open-front shops constructed of wood and tin, carrying T-shirts, blue jeans, magazines, sunglasses, tobacco, toiletries, all the things you would expect from a touristy logging community.

With much deliberation and mental hand wringing, Maria ditched all but one of the guns in the river. The gun she kept was the one she took from the woman. She hadn’t shot anyone with it. It seemed safer. She would ditch it soon too, when they were safely on their way home. She had transferred some of their acquired money from the lining of her clothes to her bra. Now it was time to shop. The idea was to buy a few items and go to a hotel recommended by some of the people she met on the boat.

She bought a new shirt and jeans for each of them, a pair of sunglasses each, two baseball caps, toiletries, a towel each, socks, a magazine in English, a shoulder bag, and a doll. Maria wanted to look more like the student she said she was. Right now they both looked like they’d spent the last week crawling through the jungle. Not far from wrong.

Maria tied her hair back and each donned their caps and sunglasses. Rosetta grinned. Clearly she liked shopping.

“What do you say we go find a hotel room and a telephone?” said Maria.

Rosetta nodded vigorously. She clutched her Raggedy Ann-like doll as closely as she had the backpack all the way through the jungle. On the way, they passed an open market where they purchased bananas and another kind of fruit with a red skin that Rosetta said was good.

They started to cross one of the main streets when something on a telephone pole caught Maria’s eye. Perhaps it was the new, unweathered look of the yellow piece of paper . . . More likely, the drawing. She and Rosetta walked closer and looked.

“That looks like you,” whispered Rosetta.

The eight-by-ten flyer had a drawing that looked very much like Maria, with her muddy dreadlocks and bandanna on her head that she had cut from the fabric. It was a copy of a drawing and suffered from being too dark, but a sharp eye would certainly be suspicious. The writing was in Portuguese. Even with her poor understanding of the language, she knew what it probably said. The word for
homicide
stuck out.

There was a paragraph of smaller print near the bottom. The only good thing was that Maria didn’t know who the heck Linda Hall was.

“What does it say exactly?” asked Diane.

“Can you pronounce it for me? I can read English pretty good—sort of—but I can’t read Portuguese,” said Rosetta.

“Sure,” said Maria. She smiled inwardly at herself. She had thought of Rosetta as Superkid for so long that she was surprised there was something she couldn’t do.

Maria pronounced the words as best she could. She had to do it a couple of times before Rosetta understood. Rosetta repeated the words after Maria said them.

“Wanted for murder and kidnapping, Diane Fallon, also known as Linda Hall. Extremely dangerous.”

Maria read the paragraph at the end. She was a little better this time.

“It says you kidnapped a child named Rosetta Medina. I guess that’s me. The Medinas were the people I was working for in the village where we met.”

“Who is Linda Hall, I wonder?” asked Maria.

“Didn’t that guy Kyle call you Linda?” said Rosetta.

“Yes, and he was the only one to see me in the bandanna. At least we know the little weasel didn’t die. He’s a pretty good artist. He should have stuck to that,” Maria muttered. “But what is the Hall? What is Portuguese for hall?”

“
Sala?
” said Rosetta. “It also means room.”

“Okay, which is another word for chamber. He called me Linda Chambers. Something got lost in the translation. So there is good news and bad news.”

“I should have used another name besides Rosetta,” said the little girl. She looked close to tears.

Maria hugged her. “Rosetta is a common name. Many girls have it. Besides, it may work in our favor if anyone asks us about it. If I kidnapped you, wouldn’t I change your first name?” Maria smiled at her. “You’ve done great. Don’t lose faith in yourself now.”

“I think the person who wrote it was a Spanish speaker,” said Rosetta. “It’s put together like Spanish and some of the words are really Spanish.”

“Okay, I’m impressed. That’s useful information for us. See, you’re a great kid, so keep the faith.”

Rosetta smiled back, but Maria could still see the fear in her eyes. They were getting so close and Ariel wanted her mother so badly.
It will happen
. Maria would make it happen.

“Let’s go check into the hotel and get cleaned up. If I can get the mud out of my hair and get rid of the dreads, I’ll look less like the drawing.”

They crossed the street and followed verbal directions they had been given to the hotel. The fear that had been in the pit of Maria’s stomach since the ordeal began, and that had started to recede, was returning. Damn it, she was not going to accept only a few hours of peace. They needed to get comfortable and clean and she could think this through.

The thing that worried her, though, was the scope of the search for her. Yes, it was low-tech. Couldn’t get much lower than paper flyers on a telephone pole. But it covered hundreds of miles, and whoever it was had access to an army of people from all over to call on. What did they want with Diane Fallon? Was Diane safe where she was?

Diane stood in the doorway of the living room watching across the small slate-tiled foyer as Frank, Gregory, and Star made temporary repairs to the door so they could secure it for the night. Actually, Frank and Gregory worked on the door. Star supervised and entertained.

“So, Marguerite tells me you want to be a lawyer,” Gregory said to Star as he held the door while Frank settled it on its hinges.

The door was patched with lumber Frank had in the garage. Tomorrow he would get a new door—probably have workmen come out and replace the wood doorframe with steel.

“Yes,” answered Frank, before Star could say anything. “It will be a partnership. Diane and I will put them away, and Star will get them out.”

The three of them laughed. Diane smiled at them having such fun repairing a door knocked down by predators. The fact that the predators were after her wasn’t lost on her.

“I was lucky,” said Star. “I had Uncle Frank and Diane when I was accused. A lot of people don’t have anyone.”

Frank looked up at Diane and smiled, as if he’d sensed her presence.

“You look like the cat who’s discovered how to open the refrigerator,” said Frank.

“I know what’s going on. I know what Oliver was concerned about and what Simone was investigating . . . just not the
who
,” said Diane.

Gregory almost dropped the door. Star moved quickly to help him catch it.

“What? How did you find out?” he said. “You discovered this since we got here?”

“I called Martine,” she said.

Frank and Gregory slipped the door firmly on the hinge. Gregory and Star stepped away so Frank could check the drag. He moved the door back and forth.

“She spoke with you?” asked Gregory.

“I’ll go make us some hot chocolate and we’ll talk,” said Diane.

As she turned, her left shoulder burned at the same time a loud report filled the room with startling noise. Diane fell back against a small table, going down with it and several of Star’s porcelain figurines she had brought back from Paris.

Frank had been behind the door, adjusting the hinges. He slammed it closed at the sound. Gregory was pushing Star back from the door and to the floor, shielding her with his body.

“Star! Diane!” shouted Frank.

“I’m all right,” shouted Star.

Gregory shoved her away from the front wall of the house and she crawled to an inner wall and sat with her back to it, drawing up her legs, making herself small. She had her cell phone out, punching 911.

Frank hurried in a half crouch toward Diane.

“High-powered,” Gregory said. “Stay away from the front wall, everybody.”

“Diane,” said Frank.

“I’m okay,” she said. “Just really pissed off and, shit, I burned my shoulder on something.”

“Damn,” said Frank. “You’re shot. Don’t move.”

Diane put a hand on her deltoid and came away with blood on it.

“I’m all right,” she said. “I may have cut myself on the glass.”

Frank reached around her and helped her off with her jacket and pulled back her blouse.

“You’ve been creased by a bullet,” he said. “Gregory, look after her. I’m getting my gun.”

“I’m really all right,” said Diane.