Look What the Wind Blew In (3 page)

Speaking of chickens … Quint snorted. Was this today’s lunch special at the village’s only hotel? Maybe he should rescue one and ship it home to his niece. Her pet chicken ruled the roost, which made his sister growl and grumble.

He checked the time. His ride was a half-hour late. A drop of sweat splattered onto the face of his watch. He blew out a breath, frustrated with more than this stifling pit stop that had liquefied his deodorant five minutes after he had put it on. His shirt was ringed with sweat, his jeans damp at the waistline. So much for giving a good first impression to the highly esteemed archaeology professor from the University of Arizona.

He leaned back against the stucco-covered wall of the
tienda
, the only grocery store around for miles and miles of thick forest. Unscrewing the lid of the water he’d bought inside, he watched as a brown chicken feather escaped the cage, caught sail in a light breeze, and floated toward the grassy plaza on the other side of the parking lot.

What would Dr. Juan García be like in person? Quint sipped some lukewarm water, pondering. So far he’d only spoken to Dr. García on the phone. Their conversations had been short, polite, professional. But he’d read plenty about the professor and his work on this particular site and learned even more about his accomplishments, including his many accolades and grants awarded over the years.

A movement near his boots drew Quint’s gaze. A gecko zipped in front of him, zigzagging across the parking lot toward the Poultry Express wagon. He capped his water.

From out of nowhere, a wind whipped up, swaying tree limbs as it grew in strength, churning closer. Dust eddied across the dirt lot, coating the chickens and Maya woman in a layer of powder.

He grimaced on her behalf.

Instead of ebbing, the wind intensified, sucking up more dirt into a whirling dance. In the midst of the sudden squall, the Radio Flyer tipped over. The cage of chickens crashed to the ground and the door popped open.

For a moment, there was only the whistle of the wind in Quint’s ears, then an uproar of squawking filled the air.

Dirt swirled faster, the vortex doubling in size. It reminded him of the dust devils he’d seen a few months ago in the Nevada desert while writing a piece on the old ghost town of Goldwash.

The whirlwind surrounded the Maya woman and her freed flock. Feathers filled the air.

The distinct rumble of a diesel engine made Quint’s chest tighten. A tour bus turned into the parking lot. The driver was looking down at something, not paying attention, the bus moving too fast toward the cloud of dirt.

Quint pushed away from the stucco wall. “Hey!” he yelled, stepping out into the late morning sunshine waving his arms. The bus driver didn’t look up, didn’t veer, didn’t even slow.

“Hey! Stop!” Quint tried again, and then raced into the churning dust cloud. He had seconds to drag the Maya woman out of the way before the dust devil and loose chickens became the least of her problems. Dirt peppered his face and arms. He stepped on one chicken and stumbled over another. Inside the whistling, swirling mix of dust and feathers, he found the old lady. She was clutching two chickens to her chest while she searched the ground for more.

He grabbed her arm, trying to pull her toward safety, but she slapped at his hand, pushing him away.

The screech of brakes and grating sound of tires sliding over the hardpan made him cringe; the blare of a horn nearly blasted his heart out of his chest cavity. He reached for the woman, dodging out of the way right before a huge chrome grill shoved into the thick cloud. The Maya woman screamed next to his ear; her chickens squawked and fluttered out of the way.

Crap! That had been a close one. Too close.

Over the bedlam, Quint heard the shouts of the bus driver. He was leaning out the window, shaking his fist.

“
Lo siento,
” he apologized to the driver, trying to smooth things over now that a fatality had been avoided. He coughed from the dust and the pungent odor of burning brake pads.

Another gust of wind blew Quint’s hat off, sending it tumbling, rolling out of the dusty chaos. With one last check on the chicken lady, who was busy stuffing hens back into the cage, he jogged after his hat.

Escaping from the swirling dust devil’s clutches, he found his hat resting against the back tire of a tandem bicycle. Standing next to the handle bars was a man probably in his mid-sixties, wearing a straw hat, a green sweat-soaked T-shirt, blue jeans, and leather sandals. His heavy eyelids and large earlobes gave away his Maya heritage.

The cyclist held a piece of cardboard with a name scrawled on it—Quint’s name.

“Howdy,” he shouted to the bike rider over the rattle of the bus engine. Quint bent and grabbed his hat, brushing off the dust. He slammed it on his head and nodded at the sign. “That’s me.”

The man’s forehead wrinkled. “
Señor
Parker?”

Nodding, he held out his hand. “Call me Quint.”

The biker gave him a thorough onceover. Then he crossed himself as Catholics tended to do, muttered something undecipherable under his breath, and spit over his left shoulder.

Quint cocked his head to the side. That was a new ending to the centuries old ritual.

The bike rider grasped his outstretched hand and gave it two hard shakes. “Teodoro Cruz,” he said, squinting up at Quint. Then in a blink, he smiled coat-hanger wide.

Quint smiled back, glad to see a friendly face after staring down a bug-splattered bus grill.

“We go now?” Teodoro asked.

“I’m ready when you are.” The sooner he made it to the dig site, the sooner he could get started on his reason for returning to this overgrown, godforsaken sweat lodge. “Let me grab my backpack.” He walked over to the store’s stucco wall and collected his things.

Teodoro took Quint’s pack from him and secured the bulky bag to the metal shelf over the back tire.

Meanwhile, Quint tried to swipe the dust from his clothes, smearing it across the sweat-soaked cotton. He gave up on his clothes and shook the dust from his hair. Every nook and cranny of his skin felt gritty, damn it. When he looked up, Teodoro waited on the bike’s front seat. He motioned for Quint to take the seat behind him.

With a chuckle, Quint climbed on. He hadn’t figured his first trip to the dig site would be by two-seater bike. Hell, nothing had gone as planned since he’d agreed to take this trip to the Yucatán to solve a twenty-year-old mystery.

As Teodoro steered past the bus, Quint squirmed on the rock-hard seat while he pedaled. He’d had rougher rides in his line of work, but sitting too long on this bike was going to impair his ability to have kids someday.

“Do you usually take a bike to and from the dig site?” he asked.

Teodoro glanced back. “Curse got our motorcycle.”

He stopped squirming. “Did you say
curse
?”

“
Sí
.”

No shit? This must be his lucky day. Not for the first time since he’d stepped off the plane, he wondered if he should turn around and fly back to the States.

Teodoro steered them onto the raised white
sacbe
.

Quint remembered the limestone-coated, ancient Maya roadway from the last time he had been at the dig site. As he peddled along behind Teodoro into the shadow-filled jungle, several other memories surfaced, including Dr. Hughes’ love of solving puzzles from the past.

And who could forget that son of a bitch, Jared Steel?

* * *

Angélica waited for the last of her crew to leave the mess tent after lunch before facing off with her father. “Dad, I swear,” she shook her spoon at him, “if I hear one more word about this stupid, damned nonexistent curse, I’m throwing you in the nearest
cenote
.”

“It’s not my fault. You’re the one who read that glyph.”

She tossed her spoon onto the table. “Well, the least you could do is support me on dispelling all of this superstitious bullshit, especially in front of my men.”

“You need to stop swearing so much,
gatita
. You’re beginning to sound like your mother.”

“Quit trying to change the subject.”

“Fine. You don’t believe in the curse.” Juan picked up her spoon and used it to scrape the remains of her lunch onto his plate. “But your crew does. If you want to quell all of the whispers and fears, you need to come up with a believable explanation for what happened to Francisco, Lorenzo, and Rafael.”

“What? They got sick.”

“You know it’s more than that. It’s not normal for three young men to come down with severe stomachaches at the same time. And don’t blame María’s cooking either, because we all shared the same meal.”

“It was a twenty-four-hour flu. Period. End of story.”

He lifted his coffee, glancing over her head at the entrance to the mess tent. “You don’t find it odd that all three were working in the
Ik
Temple?”

That was the third time in the last few minutes that she’d noticed him looking at the entrance. Angélica checked behind her and found it empty.

She focused back on her father. “No, I do not find it odd. Just because they were working in a temple named after the god of wind does not mean their sudden illness has anything to do with some kind of superstitious jinx.”

He sipped from his cup, frowning at her over the rim. “A destructive wind did blow after you read that curse.”

“It’s not a curse, Dad.” She pinched the bridge of her nose. How many times did she have to say it for crissake?

Lowering his cup to the table, he shrugged. “Okay.” He didn’t sound convinced though. “So you’re going to stick with the notion that the Temple of the Crow caving in on Fernando and Alonso was just an accident, too?”

“Of course.”

“They could have been killed.”

Angélica held up her hand, counting off on her fingers. “First of all, only a small section of the ceiling crumbled. Second, they merely suffered a few scratches and bruises. Third, you yourself told me at the end of last year’s dig that we might need to shore up the ceiling in that part of the temple.”

“No, the chamber to which I was referring is not the same one that came down on them.”

She stood and stretched her arms upward, thanking this whole curse sham for several new knots in her back. “It’s an old structure, Dad. Don’t you think it’s inevitable something that ancient would periodically succumb to the effects of gravity?”

Juan brushed crumbs from the table as he rose. “Sure. But how do you explain Diego being shoved into the
cenote
this morning while collecting water for María?”

“He slipped.”

“Your crew happens to think he was pushed by
Xtabay
.”

Her crew also believed in malevolent gods and the evil eye. It was no surprise they blamed
Xtabay
rather than something rational.

“And what do you think?” she asked.

“I don’t know. Diego swears he felt her hands on his back, and he’s not usually one for tall tales.” Juan carried their plates to the counter that divided the kitchen from the eating area. “I know you think this is all a bunch of delusory nonsense, and maybe you’re right, but you have to admit that ever since we found that curse, things keep happening that are hard to explain.”

“Not that hard.” She joined him at the counter.

“Maybe not in your logical left brain, but your men don’t always think like scientists.” His brow wrinkled, his brown eyes serious. “You need to keep that in mind when calming them down after the next incident.”

“There isn’t going to be another incident.”

“You can’t control everything, Angélica.”

María slid through a side tent flap at that moment, putting an end to the curse debate. She nodded at Angélica and her father. Angélica waved back, complimenting her in Mayan on the beautiful, handmade white
huilpil
dress she was wearing. With her round face looking more flushed than usual, María thanked her and then gathered up their dishes and waddled into the kitchen.

Angélica stared after her, realizing she hadn’t seen Teodoro at all during lunch, and María’s husband made it a priority to make it to every meal.

“I like how María still wears traditional Maya clothing,” Juan said. “It makes her cooking taste more authentic.”

She turned back to her father. “Have you seen Teodoro?”

Juan looked all around, avoiding her gaze. “No, nope, I … I sure haven’t. Not for a while. He must be busy doing uh … something else.” He nodded as if agreeing with himself and then made a beeline for the exit.

Please, she wasn’t born yesterday.

“Dad.” She caught up with him out in the hot sunshine, grabbing his sleeve. “Where’s Teodoro?”

“He’s probably out gathering more herbs to make another one of his foul potions. You should really rein him in on using those horrible tasting, eye-watering pastes on poor, injured men.” He was still avoiding her.

A pair of jays chased each other across the sunburned landscape, flying from the tree-cresting top of the gray-streaked Temple of the Water Witch to the single-story
Ik
Temple in front of her. The birds’ noisy calls pierced the air, interrupting them for a moment.

“Dad, just answer my quest …” The sound of twigs snapping in the jungle to the side of the mess tent made her look around. Teodoro stepped out of the thick bushes edging the trail to the
sacbe
.

“There he is,” Juan said from behind her.

The brush shivered again and a stranger stepped out, following in Teodoro’s wake. He was tall, dirt-streaked, and uninvited.

Angélica took in the stranger’s wide shoulders and confident gaze. She’d dealt with enough machismo-filled, cocks of the walk in her time to know trouble when it came strutting up to her front door.

“Dad, who’s that?” she spoke under her breath.

“Uh, yeah. Sweetheart, I forgot to mention something about this year’s dig.”

Teodoro pointed at Juan and then he darted into the mess tent. Without hesitation, the stranger headed their way.

Angélica growled. “What have you done?”

“You must be Dr. García,” the stranger said to Juan, sliding a frowning glance her way. He lowered his backpack to the ground and held out his hand toward her dad. “It’s nice to finally meet you in person.”