Orange Blossoms & Mayhem (Fantascapes) by Blair Bancroft

closer to forty than fifty, her short dark hair topping a figure I’d be grateful to have when I hit her age.
    I made Fantascapes’ apologies and followed with Dad’s discount offer. Max and Hildy accepted the apology, refused the discount in perfect counterpoint. Peruvian red tape was not our fault. And look how I’d come all the way to Cuzco just to straighten things out. And, besides, they were having a great time. Glitches just added a bit of spice.
    I smiled sweetly and decided I could cross the Arendsens off the list of people who might have hired someone to bean me with a bolas .
    Max was also delighted to eat the teeny tiny octopus in my seviche . He ate Hildy’s too. Our main course was less startling, though tasty. While we waited for dessert, Hildy gave me the ladies’ room high sign. Oh-oh. Maybe nothing—simple good manners dictated she include me. Or maybe . . . ? Excusing myself to Max, I followed her from the dining room.
    Hildy took her time drying her hands on one of the individual thick white towels provided in the ladies’ room. Her shoulders were tense, her head down. I knew it, I just knew it. There was a problem.
    “ Laine . . . I know you’re going to think me foolish,” she said, clutching the towel like a talisman, “but tomorrow we’re going to hop on a train to nowhere. I mean, Karen did a great job of briefing us—the whole idea of the Inca Trail is the grand adventure of being so far from civilization. Of seeing the Andes up close and personal. ‘On the rim of the world’, she called it. But . . . honey, I’ve got to tell you, more and more I’m seeing it as a hike with a bunch of men in the middle of nowhere. I mean, I know there’re no trees that high, so where do I pee? Are there boulders to hide behind? Do the men just turn their backs? You got to help me here, Laine. I told myself I’m not going to spoil Max’s fun, but I’m shaking in my boots.”
    “ Hildy”—I blinked, took a deep breath—“You didn’t call Inca Explorations to cancel the trip, did you?”
    “ Me?” she squeaked. “I’d never do that to Max.”
    Of course she wouldn’t. As for finding a private place to pee on a hike with all men . . . oh, yeah, I knew the feeling, and it was downright squirmy. “Hildy, would you like to stay in Cuzco and take the train up to Machu Picchu to meet Max?”
    Slowly, she shook her head. “The truth is . . . I really want to do the hike. Your mom sold me on the glory of it, but I don’t want to be the only girl. Would you go with us, Laine? Please? Pretty please.”
    And that wasn’t my last surprise of the day.
    After a fast trip to a trekking outfitter—my expenses this trip were going to send Grady into meltdown!—I called Dad to report the change in plans. He agreed I had no choice but to go. I was about to tell him about the bolas —really I was—when he hit me with the news back in Golden Beach. A body had washed up at Paw Park, just south of the fishing pier. Scared the hell out of the playful poodles, he said, and even had the pit bulls on the run.
    “ Viktor’s mugger?”
    “ Who knows,” Dad drawled, “but he had a fish-knife sticking out of his chest.”
     

 
     
    Chapter Four
     
    For the third time in fifteen minutes the train to Machu Picchu—the “local,” filled with natives and a few determined backpackers like us—shuddered to a stop. A pause while a switch was thrown and our train reversed, shuddering “bass-akwards”(as my Grampa Blaine used to say) up the next zig-zag switchback in its complex climb up to the rim of the bowl in which Cuzco is built. We were already high enough up that a sea of red tile roofs stretched out below, their color dulled by the gray light of predawn.
    Early mornings are high on my hate list, and the local train to Kilometer 88 set out in what I considered the middle of the night. Yet here I was, if with but one eye open, because abandoning Hildy Arendsen to her all-male escort was unthinkable.