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."