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The self-appointed head of the party, Francois Clique, said, "We are sorry for
the family, friends and whoever else may still care about this woman but really,
what can one do? She's gone and we are going fast, so ta ta to her and the search."
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It was impossible to get all of the living members of the search party together
in the same room. The group is strewn across Paris and most of them are not
fond of one another.
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"I told Clique," said Monet, "that we may have found at least a wing of
Earhart's plane if he hadn't drawn every search map in dots. And I always got
dizzy looking at him when he wore those shirts with dots all over them."
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Boulier commented about LuPonte by saying, "He always wanted to search near
Lisbon. What the hell did that mean? Lisbon was no place to look for Earhart.
But everything with LuPonte was Lisbon. He liked the restaurants, the clothing
shops. It was Lisbon this and Lisbon that and Earhart probably crashed near
Lisbon. Nuts."
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Clique also despised LuPonte. "We were searching off the coast of Scotland once
and Brian said to me, 'Did Amelia have long hair?' and I asked 'Why?' and he
said, 'Because maybe her hair got into her eyes and she couldn't see where she
was flying.' I had no idea what that had to do with where she might have crashed."
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I told each of the surviving search-party members that a report recently claimed
that the legendary aviatrix probably died on an uninhabited tropical island in
the southwestern Pacific republic of Kiribati.
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"I never heard of that place," said LuPonte. "Besides, it can't be anywhere near
as great as Lisbon."
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"We looked there," said Monet, "or at least we looked in a place that sounded
like that place and found nothing."
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"That can't be," said Clique, "because there is no landing strip on that island.
At least none that have lights and we all know you can't land in one piece at
night without a landing strip that has lights."
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"Who told you that?" said Boulier. "Was it Stenchford? Because he lies like a rug."
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"Roland Stenchford," said Monet, "is the only member of the original search
party to have died before we stopped searching. He was a Brit and he quit the
crew because after two search trips he figured Earhart was really a man and that
he landed somewhere and just started a new life, that the whole pilot thing was
a hoax and he just did it to set up a getaway."
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Boulier said, "Stenchford died - and this is strange - in Lisbon. What does that
tell you?"
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LuPonte said, "Is Boulier claiming I had something to do with Stenchford's
death? Well, did he tell you that someone stole Stenchford's body from where
they buried him?"
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