Cry in the Night (13 page)

Chapter 12

The gate to the Ortega drive was a work of art. In the soft light of afternoon, the bars gleamed a rich bronze. As my cab pulled away, I touched the button to activate the intercom system and spoke my name firmly. As the gates slid open and I stepped inside, I still felt confident of my course. It was only as I heard the sharp click behind me as the gate inexorably closed that I felt once again the breathlessness of that first night when I had looked back over my shoulder and watched them shut.

Trapped.

Nonsense. If I wanted to, I could turn around and call on the intercom and walk free into the street. I looked up the drive as it began to curve, at lush greenery crowding close to each side of the pink stone drive, and battled my fear.

I forced myself to move forward. I was committed. I might well be able to discover the truth and save a national treasure. It didn’t appear we were going to be able to find out much in New York, though Jerry made every effort. After returning to the pier, Jerry led me out of the park in a circuitous fashion and then by cab and subway we reached his apartment. It was my idea that we call Dr. Rodriguez and ask him directly about the letter from El Viejito.

The call was a disappointment. The connection was poor, but finally we understood: Dr. Rodriguez wasn’t in and would not be back for two weeks.

I had to decide quickly whether to try to talk to anyone else on the staff. Reluctantly, I decided not to chance it. I might talk to the very person who had used me as a decoy.

There would be no help from New York. It was up to me.

I continued up the drive toward the house, deep in thought. I took one steady step after another. Pick ’em up and put ’em down—that’s all I had to do. And come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly, come right ahead, walk up this way and I’ll be waiting. One step, another. The sudden thud of running steps startled me and then the twins erupted around the curve.

“. . . said you were here and . . .”

“. . . been waiting all day. Will you swim with us?”

“Please, please?”

I wondered at their urgency, and then with the artlessness of children, Rita said, “No one’s here at all. We can’t swim alone and grouchy old Manuel said he’s too busy to watch us.”

“The water’s heated,” Francesca added. “You’ll like it. Please, Miss Ramsay?”

I said yes, and not with any ulterior motive. I liked the twins, liked them a lot, and whatever strange shadow hung over the Ortegas, it couldn’t be a good thing for them. It would be better, surely, if the person who had killed Raúl was discovered. If someone kills once, they are forever a danger to any near them.

The pool was heated and it was fun. We played keep-away with a soccer ball until I was panting and clinging to the side, crying, “Too much, too much.”

We each tipped ourselves up onto huge inflatable floating chairs and I took the first step on a road that would lead to terror on a star-spangled night.

“Is your grandfather well enough for me to visit with him for a few minutes?”

Their silence was absolute and revealing. Before my question, their laughter and the splash of water as they kicked and paddled in their floating chairs had muted all other sounds. In the sudden quiet, the water from the fountain fell into the pool and each drop sounded as it struck.

Rita said not a word. One twin is always the strongest. It was Francesca who asked, her face guarded, “I did not know you were the friend of my grandfather?” Her formality reflected her fear.

I looked at her gravely. “I would like to be his friend, Francesca, but you are right, I have not met him yet. He is the good friend, though, of a man who works at my museum in New York, Dr. Rodriguez.”

Her small brown face, so like Tony’s, relaxed a little, but she was still puzzled and suspicious. “But grandfather cried when—”

Rita interrupted then, speaking in Spanish.

Francesca listened, but before she answered, I took a chance.

“Girls.” I spoke in a low, soft voice that caught their attention immediately. “Please, I know you don’t understand, but tell your grandfather that I am on his side. Tell him that. Then, if he wishes, I would be very happy to talk with him.”

They stared at me solemnly, wanting to trust me, afraid to.

My heart ached for them. “That’s all we’ll say about it. Don’t worry. If he doesn’t want to talk to me, that’s all right, too.”

We had a race then, but their hearts weren’t in it. The fun was gone. I wished I could bring the happiness back to their faces.

I worried later, as I bathed and dressed for dinner, that I had put too heavy a burden on them. But surely I had not put them in danger. After all, Señor Herrera had not been harmed, so the twins should be safe enough.

The twins were not at dinner that evening. I almost asked after them, but decided against it. There was one other empty chair. Señor Ortega had flown to Veracruz to bid on some coffee. So Tony, Juan, Gerda, and I sat down to dinner.

Midway through the meal, I took my second step on the doom-fated road.

Gerda asked how I like the pyramids.

I didn’t answer at once. It happened that every face turned toward me and there was a lull in the conversation. Everyone waited for me to answer.

If I had thought about it, estimated what effect my words might have, I might have answered differently. Instead, I felt a flicker of anger. I looked around the table. “Someone shot at me.”

Each face reflected shock in a different way.

Tony stared at me. “What do you mean?”

“I was walking up the Avenue of the Dead. I was alone. No one was near me. Someone shot at me. Three times.”

He didn’t accuse me of lying, but his disbelief was obvious. “Did you call the guards, ask for help?”

I described my frantic scramble for safety, how I stumbled into the lot where Manuel waited, and my decision not to tell anyone.

“Why not?” Tony demanded, darkly frowning, his hand tight on the stem of his crystal wine glass.

It was utterly quiet as they waited for my answer. Gerda scarcely breathed. Her lovely face, always pale, seemed paler yet. Juan leaned across the table. His dark eyes glistened. Was it excitement, pleasure, or something darker, harder to define?

“I should have told someone,” I admitted. “I wanted to tell someone. But I knew what would happen.”

“What?” Tony again, his voice hard, cold.

My lips trembled, but I managed to speak steadily. “No one would believe me. But it happened.”

Tony put everyone’s question into words. “Why would anyone shoot at you?”

Now it was I who sat silent. What could I say? Someone here in your house, your father, your brother, your stepmother, one of them has connived to put me in danger, has used me as a decoy to flush out treasure seekers.

I looked down the table at Tony’s face, heavier, older in the flickering light of the candle, and wondered with a sad painful catch,
One of them or 
. . .
oh Tony, was it you?

Finally, tiredly, my voice drained, I answered. “I don’t know.”

No one, of course, believed that.

Certainly not Tony. His face was as closed as it was that night after he picked up the obsidian knife near the mutilated doll.

I excused myself immediately after dinner. I could not gather with them in the luxurious living room and hold a cup of coffee in my hand and idly chat. I said good night. As I reached the hall, I heard a swift murmur of Spanish from Juan. Tony made an angry reply. I was sure the exchange concerned me.

I walked so quickly I almost ran. Footsteps came after me, but I didn’t slow. I was almost to my door when Tony’s voice stopped me.

“Sheila.”

I turned to face him.

The hall was dimly lit. What little light there was came from behind him. His face was in shadow. He was only a few feet from me but he seemed far away. “Sheila, I went to Tlaxcala today.” He spoke very tiredly.

I wished that he had not followed me up the hall, that he had not told me. I hadn’t wanted to know. I looked at him, but I could scarcely see through a mist of tears.

He lifted his hand, stretched it out toward me, then shook his head and let it fall.

“Please go back to New York. Go back.” He turned and was gone.

Once in my room, I closed the door behind me and leaned against the hard panel. I had my answer now. There could no longer be any doubt.

Feeling numb and empty, I slipped on my gown, brushed my teeth, and made ready for bed. Tomorrow, I would leave the Casa Ortega. I lay in that high strange bed and ticked off in my mind the things I must do: make my excuses to the Ortegas, exchange my plane tickets, pack. I would go home to New York and be free of fear and safe.

Safe? In New York? If I went back, reported to my boss all that had happened here, I would not be safe. It wasn’t going to be that easy. I couldn’t just walk away.

But I could not, would not bring trouble to Tony.

No matter what he had done?

A small, still voice answered,
No matter what.

Still, I didn’t dare go home unless I knew from whom to expect danger.

The danger lay in the Mesoamerican Department; that seemed almost certain. The first week in January, Dr. Herrera had alerted Mexican authorities to expect a smuggling attempt. Just before that, he wrote to Dr. Rodriguez but received no answer. In January there were six members of the Mesoamerican section: Dr. Rodriguez, Cecilia Edwards, J. Thomas Wood, Michael Taylor, Karl Freidheim, and Timothy Simmons.

Cecilia Edwards and J. Thomas Wood were in Peru in January, directing an expedition.

That left four.

I was sitting up in bed now. I reached out and pulled on the light. In only a moment, I had retrieved a notebook and was propped up in bed and writing.

Dr. Rodriguez. Michael Taylor, Karl Freidheim. Timothy Simmons.

I stared at those four names. One of them. It had to be.

Michael Taylor. A small, dark, spare man. Black hair streaked with gray, horn-rim glasses, head usually bent in thought.

Freidheim. That bastard Freidheim, Timothy had called him. He was vice chairman of the department. He had been furious that the Ortegas had requested the return of the Sanchez manuscript. Had Dr. Freidheim’s anger been clever camouflage? Who could have been in a better position to suggest to one of the Ortegas (say it, Sheila, say Tony) that the manuscript be recalled, providing a reason to send an innocent museum employee to Mexico City, thereby attracting any official attention plus, as it turned out, decoying another treasure seeker?

Last of all, Timothy Simmons. My friend Timothy. I remembered Timothy without any false shadings. I didn’t trust Timothy. There was little I’d put past him. But could he possibly have the stroke for this kind of caper? Timothy, after all, was as new to the museum as I was. It was his first job and he, like I, was at the bottom of the heap.

I shook my head. I didn’t see how it could be Timothy. Whoever was coming to Mexico (or perhaps was already here) had to be someone with a measure of importance at the museum, someone who had wangled the necessary money (and a million or so takes a little talent to find) either from a museum patron or from the board.

Of course, it was always possible that the seller was going to be cheated by the buyer, somehow, someway. Perhaps the crime was a venture independent of the museum.

I looked up from my notepad, drew in a quick breath. I hadn’t locked my door. The handle was moving, slowly, so slowly. The door began to open. . . 

Chapter 13

The twins slipped into my room, fingers to their lips, brown eyes huge in their pretty rounded faces, their cotton gowns a cheerful pink.

“Shh, don’t make any noise,” Rita instructed in a feather-soft whisper.

“Grandfather will see you now,” Francesca explained. “But we must be very quiet.”

Rita nodded. “Juan isn’t home yet, so it should be safe enough.”

The reality of life at the Casa Ortega slipped into sharper, harder focus. They were afraid of Juan. Juan. I was afraid of Juan myself.

I put on my dressing gown, doused my light, and followed them into the hall. They led me down the main hall toward the living room but stopped short of it to take me down a narrow, twisting staircase that opened out into an equally narrow hall to the kitchen. We slipped through an immaculate kitchen to a door that opened onto the patio near the breakfast table.

The patio lights were on, glowing softly, making pools of pastel color on the terrace and down into the garden. Francesca led me into the shadows along a wall that ran along this side of the patio. Midway the length of the wall, she guided me out into the garden and we paused in the shadow of a hibiscus. I saw that she intended to lead us the long way around the garden, from one dark shadow to another, to the colonnaded wing.

We were almost at the end of the garden, still avoiding pools of soft light, when Francesca clutched my arm, jerking me to a stop. I heard voices the same instant. Rita stumbled into us. The three of us stood rigid.

We were near wooden steps that led down a sharp incline to a hidden level of the property and the garages. The figures came up the steps, quarreling in low angry voices. Gerda was pleading. They stopped at the top of the stairs. They were well hidden from the house by the hump of the vine-covered trellis. They felt safe from view. They could not be seen or heard from the house. They would scarcely expect anyone to be out in the lower garden at this late hour.

Gerda was facing us, moonlight full on her face. He stood with his back to us. She clung to his arm, all soft femininity. In the sharp white light of the moon, her hair shone like silver.

I looked down at Francesca and wished for her sake and for Rita’s that they were not here beside me. There was no surprise on the twins’ brown expressionless faces. No surprise at all.

Gerda said something more. He shook his head and started to turn, pulling away from her hand.

My heart stood still. I knew that head, the shape of it. The man standing there wasn’t Tony.

“Juan.” Her voice was imploring.

Juan swung around, his face hard, angular, dangerous. His mouth twisted contemptuously.

Of course the man was Juan, not Tony. One brother’s voice can certainly sound like another’s. Juan’s lips had closed on Gerda’s. Not Tony’s. Never Tony’s.

Gerda clung to Juan’s arm.

He said something in a mocking tone.

Gerda moved closer to him, pressed against him, slipped her hands up and around his neck. He hesitated for an instant, shrugged, murmured something, and bent his head to hers.

It was dreadful how glad I was. I didn’t at that moment care at all that they were lovers. At least, not until I looked at the girls again. I hated for them to see this passionate encounter. It seemed hours before that embrace ended.

When Gerda and Juan had gone, when it was utterly quiet in the garden again, Francesca gently touched my arm. We moved on. None of us said anything. I didn’t know what I could say. Perhaps they knew better than I that there was nothing to say.

They led me to the door that had opened so briefly my first night. It was this door that Tony entered last night. He had been there while Juan and Gerda were whispering in the vine-covered bower.

The twins tapped on the door softly. Maria answered. She hurried us inside and latched the door after us.

This room did not match the rest of the house. There was no hint of luxury here. Instead there was simplicity and dignity and a sense of place. It was an austere room furnished with a narrow, dark wooden bed, a chest of drawers, a rolltop desk, two leather chairs. The crucifix above the bed dominated the room. Christ in his agony was here.

Señor Herrera was propped up in the bed. He held out his hand and I hurried to take it. I was shocked at its lack of substance. He was very old, his hair a wispy white, his creased and wrinkled face a faded khaki color. His black eyes were vivid and alive and fearful.

“You have come”—and his voice was a faint as the faraway murmur of wind chimes—“from Vicente?”

I realized after an instant’s pause that he meant Dr. Rodriguez. I hesitated.

He saw that hesitation and struggled up on one elbow. “If you did not come from Vicente, how can you be here to help me? Did the girls make a mistake, misunderstand?”

I smiled reassuringly. “I am here to help. There is no mistake. I will help you if I can.”

He rested back on his pillow and listened. I explained how I had come to Casa Ortega to return the Sanchez manuscript.

He interrupted me. “Why did you bring it back?”

“The Ortega family requested the return of the manuscript.”

His weak voice was emphatic. “That is not right, not right at all. The manuscript is mine. I loaned it. I did not ask for its return.”

So the return of the manuscript had been an excuse to decoy a member of the museum staff to the Ortega house. Since Señor Herrera had not asked for the manuscript, he suspected the worst when I arrived. It had been he who cried out in the night upon learning of my arrival.

I told him how he had not been alone in suspecting me, of the warning thrust on me at the airport and of the torn-apart doll.

Maria interrupted here to say something in Spanish. He listened and nodded, then urged me to continue. His dark eyes were shocked when I described the shooting on the Avenue of the Dead. I told him of Jerry Elliot and the concern by the Department of Antiquities and he seemed both elated and at the same time grieved.

He looked past me to speak to Maria. “I put everything in God’s hands. I wrote out the message, asking for help. I thought I had done my duty.”

I wished I had not had to tell the tale I told, obviously implicating a member of his family. It was intolerable to him that the antiquities he had spent his life studying should be spirited out of Mexico. But that he should bring disgrace upon some member of his family was intolerable, too. I understood his dilemma. I squeezed his hand gently.

“I wasn’t sure,” he said sadly. “But I was afraid.”

Here was the heart of it. Now I would learn what had prompted him to write Dr. Rodriguez, what had forged the chain of death that linked New York and Tlaxcala.

His story was a simple one. Maria had come to him in early winter and told him of Raúl’s death and of the whispers of gold and treasure and how Raúl had boasted the evening before he died of gold that would make him richer than a king.

He dismissed the tales as gossip and nothing more. He didn’t connect rumors of gold with his grandson Juan’s visit to his room the next week. He was pleased, excited Juan had come to see him.

“It had been since midsummer since I had seen him,” the old man said apologetically.

The visit had been such a pleasant one. Somehow the conversation had turned to the antiquities trade and museums reputed to buy stolen goods. He and Juan spoke of my museum, one of the worst offenders.

“I see,” I said tiredly. I did. I saw more than the old gentleman could imagine. The sequence was clear now. A treasure, a fabulous treasure, discovered by an unscrupulous young man. What then? Chests of gold can’t be hawked on the street corner. A little discreet investigation, a letter to the museum, perhaps describing the treasure well enough that the recipient knew that here was the find of the century.

“Did you mention a particular person at the museum?” I asked tensely.

He shook his head gently.

The letter had gone blind to the museum. It would have been received in the main office, that same office where I saw the fateful notice on the bulletin board. The secretary there would open and forward it to the appropriate section. The letter must, of course, have been guarded, but some hint must have been made about gold—that and the letter’s origin in Mexico would be enough to direct it to the Mesoamerican section. Received there, it would be part of the nut mail and with that section’s egalitarian system the letter went to the next staff member in line to answer nut mail.

Who had read that letter and sensed its authenticity?

Dr. Rodriguez? Michael Taylor? Karl Freidheim? Timothy Simmons?

One of them.

Dr. Herrera, of course, knew none of this. He didn’t think at all about his conversation with Juan. At least, not until his son-in-law, Tony and Juan’s father, spent an evening with him in early December.

Señor Ortega often came in the evenings to play a game of chess and share a glass of wine with his first wife’s father. They talked of family and the hacienda, of the grandchildren’s plans. Toward the end of this particular evening, Dr. Herrera remembered the moment perfectly, his son-in-law asked if he had started a new project, a paper perhaps for a scholarly magazine?

Señor Herrera was puzzled. It had been several years since he had worked. He had ideas, yes, but he no longer had strength. His son-in-law knew this so Señor Herrera was surprised and asked, “Why did you think I was writing again?”

His son-in-law told him how pleased he had been when he paid his telephone bill for the month to see three calls to New York. To the museum.

Señor Ortega told of the calls tactfully for he knew the old gentleman, El Viejito, sometimes forgot things.

The old man knew that sometimes he did forget so he didn’t make an issue of the phone calls. The conversation moved on to other things. Days passed but Señor Herrera worried about the calls, felt uneasy. He had Maria get a copy of the bill. He checked the number. The calls were to the museum, to the extension that belonged to the Mesoamerican Department.

A warning bell clamored in his mind. Gold in Tlaxcala. Juan’s visit. The museum in New York, a museum that in the past had not been too fastidious in the sources of its treasures. But surely his old friend Vicente Rodriguez would not permit the finest of Mexico’s art to be stolen.

On the one hand, the old man feared the loss of a great treasure from its homeland. On the other, he dreaded the discovery that one of his daughter’s children was conniving to smuggle away his heritage.

Señor Herrera lay very still when he had finished, his hand limp in mine. I feared for a moment that the strain had been too great on his heart. Maria was frightened, too, for she pushed in beside me and took that limp, shadow-light hand in her own and called to him.

He opened his eyes after a moment and smiled up at her and murmured something in Spanish.

She answered him soothingly, then turned to me. “Enough. He has spoken enough.”

“I know,” I said quickly. I looked down once again for that aged hand was plucking at mine. He was tired, very tired now, but still he whispered, “I am so sorry.”

I held his hand in mine. “You have no reason to be sorry, señor.”

He nodded. “Last night, Tony came and he was so worried. I told him everything, but I told him you were here to take the treasure away. You must tell him I was wrong.” His voice faded away.

I held his hand and my heart sang. That was why Tony had gone to Tlaxcala; that was why he had urged me to go back to New York.

Not because he was guilty.

“Please,” Maria urged. “You must go now. El Viejito must rest.”

“Thank you, Maria. I will go. Reassure him that I will protect the treasure.” I looked down at his shadowed face. “Tell him not to worry.” Then I said, and the words were out before I weighed them, “tell him Tony and I will see to everything.”

Her face softened a little, warmed to me. “He has been so afraid.”

“We will make sure the treasure is saved.”

But was it a promise I could keep?

All the way back to my room, the girls and I slipping from the safety of one dark shadow to another, I tried to decide what to do. There was no question in my mind that I must do something. Up to now, I had been buffeted this way and that by events. Now I had committed myself to act. The strain had eased in the old man’s face at my promise. It was time I made things happen.

Once at my room, I beckoned the girls inside.

“Francesca”—and I made no excuse for my question—“what did Juan and Gerda say to each other?”

“In the garden?”

I nodded.

She frowned. “I couldn’t hear all of it. When they came up the steps, she was asking him to”—Rita paused, then said carefully and slowly, and I knew she was trying to remember the exact words—“to ‘move it tonight,’ my stepmother said. ‘Please, Juan. Do it for me.’ Juan said something I didn’t hear, and then she kissed him and I didn’t hear the rest.”

Move it tonight.

Move what tonight?

My heart gave a funny little leap. Was she asking Juan to go out in the cold light of the moon and swoop over a mountain road, covering in an hour or so the hard, rugged country that had taken Cortés’s soldiers four days to cross when they fled Tenochtitlán? Could Juan hurry to a hidden cache and gather up gold that had been lost for four hundred and fifty years?