"One little tattoo will do that?" I said. "Maybe I should reconsider." She laughed. "I guess I'll go to Ahu Akivi with the gang," I said. "We missed it on our island tour. Then I may go into Hanga Roa to shop for souvenirs. What I'd really like to do, if it is in any way possible, is see that tablet of Jasper's," I added. "I spent some time talking to Seth Connelly about rongorongo, and he made it all seem very exciting. It's a better story if the people of Rapa Nui invented the language virtually overnight and all by themselves, but either way, I'd like to see it. I'm sorry I missed the opportunity. I wonder where it is. I assume Jasper wouldn't just have it lying around his hotel room, would he? It's got to be priceless."
"That's a good question," she said. "Maybe the museum in town has it in safekeeping, or something."
"Another question, now that I think about it, is how did he get it here without anyone knowing about it? I sure wouldn't want to put it in my checked luggage, given the number of times airlines have lost my bags," I said. "He must have had a lot of help from somebody. When I see Jasper, though, I might ask if I could have a quick peek at it," I said. "If I suck up to him the way you did to…" I stopped. "That was tasteless of me. I was going to say Dave Maddox, of course. He seems to have just disappeared, don't you think? Even I, who found him dead, was going to joke about the way you had him wrapped around your little finger that first night."
"It seems like a very long time ago, doesn't it?" Moira said. "I think poor old Dave probably has gotten lost in the frenzy to discuss Jasper Robinson's startling discovery. Now that you mention it, I didn't hear his name much at all yesterday and certainly not at all so far today. He was kind of sad, wasn't he, the way he was so overly jolly all the time. All that stuff about coming to his session. He must have said that to me ten thousand times in the two days I knew him. I think it just put people off. I made fun of him a lot, though, and I regret it now. If it would make you feel any better, when the time came for his session, Susie, Yvonne, and Brian went for a drink and toasted his memory. You were under the influence of the sleeping pill I gave you at the time."
"I suppose that's something," I said. In fact, though, not everyone had been able to delete Dave from their memory file. Brenda Butters came up to our table only minutes later. "I have a favor to ask," she said in a voice so low I could hardly hear her. "I'm wondering, er, the hotel wants us to clear out Dave Maddox's room. He was due out today anyway. He was going to Tahiti for a week's vacation. The flight from Santiago will be in later this afternoon, and the hotel is full. They need the room. Given I'm the registrar for this event and the person who has been dealing with the hotel on all the arrangements, they've come to me."
"You'd like our help clearing his stuff out," Moira said. "I'm not sure Lara is feeling up to this. She had a terrible migraine last night. I actually had to get a doctor in to see her." She gave me a look that indicated she was trying to find us a way out of this.
"Is it okay with the carabineros?" I said.
"Yes," she replied. "The hotel called them, and that man who investigated the accident, Fuentes I think he said his name was, came over to say it was okay. I'm just not terribly comfortable doing this by myself, not because he's dead or anything, but because of valuables. I would just like a witness or two while I'm doing this."
"All right, then," I said. "I'll help. How long can it take? It's not as if it's his house or an office he's used for years. He's only been here a few days. Let's just get it done fast."
Moira looked surprised and none too pleased. I, of course, was curious to see what other surprises Dave had in store, even dead. It did not take us long to find out. Essentially, Dave had barely unpacked, just kept everything in his suitcase, which was a mess. I just put his suitcase on the bed and in the guise of repacking had a quick look through his stuff. There was nothing out of the ordinary. Moira packed up the bathroom toiletries and put them in the bag. Brenda went through the drawers.
The book with the Grisham dust cover was on the bedside table, but when I checked the contents quickly, it was indeed a book by Grisham. That meant that The Art Forger's Handbook had to be somewhere else, but I couldn't see it. The other item that was distinguished by its absence was the paper Dave was due to give the day he died. It was possible the paper had been folded up in the pocket of the clothes he'd been wearing when I found him. Needless to say, it was not something I'd thought to look for at the time. The book, however, was too big for that.
Moira caught my attention. She was holding an empty bottle of pisco. "Found it on the floor under the desk," she said, with a knowing look.
When we were done, I said I was going to do one last check and pulled open all the drawers, checked the cupboard and the bathroom, and even looked under the bed. Moira looked at me with some amusement. "Shoes and socks," I said.
Neither the paper, nor The Art Forger's Handbook were anywhere to be found. I had one last thought and checked the back of the closet. "The safe," I said. "It's locked, so there must be something in it."
"Oh dear," Brenda said. "There's a fifty dollar deposit on the keys for those things. We'd better go through his pockets to find it or the congress will be stuck with paying for it."
We unpacked the suitcase. The key was not there. The only key, in fact, was one for the suitcase itself. "I suppose it might have fallen out when, you know, he tried riding that horse," Moira said.
"I guess I'll just have to 'fess up about the key and eat the fifty dollars," Brenda said. "I'll phone and get the hotel's." But the phone in the room didn't work, so she went off to Reception to get it. I continued to look around the room.
"I don't think it's here," Moira said.
"What?" I said.
"The key. That's what you're looking for, isn't it? Or is it?"
I told her I didn't think Dave's death was an accident. I told her about my dreams about horses.
"I hate to say it, but I think that migraine has damaged some brain cells," she said. "I'm sure it's only temporary. Why would anyone kill Dave? You think that someone got ticked off because he got their name wrong for the hundredth time, lost it completely, bashed in his head, and then rode a horse over him?"
"It's true that if I killed everyone who called me Laura, the streets of most urban centers would be piled high with corpses," I said. "But something else was going on." I told her about the book.
"I wouldn't want anyone at this conference knowing I was reading a forger's textbook," she said. "Isn't it as simple as that?"
"Let's just see what's in the safe," I said, as Brenda returned, key in hand. But there was nothing. The safe was absolutely empty.
"I wonder why he bothered locking it," Brenda said. "This is very irritating about the key. And the hotel is going to charge us storage for his stuff, until his family makes some arrangements."
"He has family?" Moira said.
"A brother, apparently," Brenda said. "Who didn't sound too cut up when I called him to give him the news. I don't think they were close. He's suggesting Dave just be buried here. He said he'd send money."
"Poor Dave," Moira said. "He did seem to be something of a klutz. Maybe he locked it accidentally. The key could be on the floor of the cupboard."
But it wasn't. "Maybe the cleaning staff swept it up by accident," Brenda said.
I thought it was much more likely that someone had been in Dave's room just before or after he died, had found the key, emptied the safe, and left, locking it to slow people like me down. I went over to the sliding door and with one pull opened it. "This door is unlocked," I said.
"The police, maybe?" Moira said. Maybe, I thought.