Skull Duggery Read online

  “Oh, we don’t use keys here,” Annie said pleasantly, “unless you really want them. I’m so sorry you were kept waiting, ladies. If you’ll come with me to the office, I’ll get you set right up. I hope you’ll let me offer you a bottle of wine at dinner tonight to make up for the inconvenience?”

  And off she went with the considerably mollified couple to register them. A twitch of the head brought Julie along too, presumably for some hands-on training. “We’ll see you in a few minutes,” Annie called back to Gideon. “Ask Dorotea to make me a quesadilla too, will you?”

  Carl, still withdrawn and focused inside himself, mumbled something about tending to the horses and withdrew to the corral and stable, which were down the hill a little from the resort buildings via a dusty track. Gideon was left to himself at a table on the broad flagstone terrace of the main building, the Casa Principal. That was fine with him. The morning air was dry and fresh and agreeably warm—in the sixties—and the terrace, overlooking the village, was an altogether pleasant place for a still-sleepy man to be. He slouched happily in a comfortable wicker armchair, legs outstretched, face turned up to the December sun. Dorotea had wordlessly plunked down a steaming mug beside him, and the wonderfully aromatic cinnamon-and-chocolate-scented Mexican coffee slid down his gullet like honey.

  The Hacienda Encantada, sitting as it did atop its own hill, dominated Teotitlán del Valle almost like a baronial castle in France dominated its feudal lands; almost like (this took a little more imagination) the far grander Monte Albán dominated its low-lying surroundings. Seen from where Gideon sat, the tranquil little village was laid out like a scene on an old picture postcard: two main streets, a covered market, and in the center a domed, turreted eighteenth-century church with two ornate bell towers. Red-tiled roofs. Stuccoed walls. Except for a parked yellow school bus and a few taxis in the squares in front of the market—the drivers lolled nearby, smoking and chatting in the shade of a tree—there was nothing to remind one it was 2008 rather than 1908, and not much to remind one that it wasn’t 1808.

  The community was close enough that the sounds of village life drifted up to where he was sitting. Apparently, a morning market was in progress; he could hear the sounds of women’s voices and children’s laughter, along with the occasional dog bark and the cackling of poultry. There were radios playing somewhere too—Mexican pop music—and what sounded like a brass band practicing. And weaving in and out of the narrow streets a truck with a loudspeaker mounted on the cab traveled slowly along, braying its message, too far away for him to make out. Julie had told him that, in the absence of a local newspaper, this was the way the town got its community news. In the parched brown hills behind the Hacienda goats were doing some braying of their own. Interesting, he thought drowsily, so many different sounds floating on the air, and yet such an overall sense of quiet, of remoteness. He could understand why Julie liked the place so much.

  All the same, he could sense the first intimations of restlessness already nibbling away at his contentment. What was he going to do for the next few days? Sitting out here, bathing in warm sunshine in the middle of December, was terrific . . . for an hour or so. And a horseback ride or two into the hills was inviting. And he did want to visit a couple of the nearby Zapotec ruins. Put all those things together and they would account for what, eight hours? Twelve, maybe, if he took his time? Then what? As usual, Julie had been right: he should have brought along some work. What had he been thinking? Why hadn’t he at least—

  “Nice, isn’t it?” Julie said, slipping into a chair beside him and setting a manila folder on the table.

  “I can see why you like it.” He pulled himself up in his chair, smiling. “You look pretty. Did you get the annoyed ladies squared away?”

  “Oh, I think so. They’re part of a group of ten. Comrades-in-arms of yours; fellow professors, here for a workshop.”

  His interest perked up. Maybe things weren’t going to be so bad. “Really? What field?”

  “Various, I guess. The workshop is called . . .” She consulted an index card from the folder. “. . . Surmounting Gender Politics and Phallocentric Norms on Campus: Building a Feminist Agenda to Challenge Heteronormativity in the Academic Workplace.”

  He slunk back down in his chair. “Whoa, I think I better keep a low profile.”

  “I told them you were the chairman of your department and that I knew you’d be glad to join them for a session or two, if they liked.”

  “It’s a good thing I know you’re kidding. . . . Uh, you are kidding?”

  “I’m kidding. Your secret is safe with me. What’s . . .” She consulted the card. “. . . heteronormativity, anyway?”

  “As far as I understand it, it’s a feminist term for the ‘mistaken’ belief that there are two—and only two—sexes, male and female, which results in the marginalization and persecution of—”

  “Never mind. I don’t think I want to go there.”

  You and me both, Gideon thought.

  She looked up, smiling, and jumped out of her chair. “Dorotea, it’s so good to see you!” she cried in Spanish. Julie’s Spanish was better than Gideon’s adequate but limited command. she had learned it during her teenage summers at the Hacienda and had taken two years of it in high school and another in college in the days when she had planned to work there. Dorotea, who had brought out another mug of coffee for her, seemed more annoyed than pleased to see her.

  “They didn’t tell me you was coming until this morning,” she griped in English. “And they sure didn’t tell me you was bringing him.” She wiped her red hands disgustedly on her apron. “If he wants any dinner, I got to send Felix down for another chicken.”

  “I suspect he will want some dinner,” Julie said pleasantly.

  “I figured,” Dorotea said, stomping back to the kitchen.

  “Is it something about me?” Gideon asked, looking after her, “or is she always like that?”

  “Pretty much always,” Julie said.

  “I seem to remember you telling me I’d like her.”

  “I said you’d like her cooking. Those are two different things.”

  “I’ll say. All the same, if you don’t mind, I think I’ll have you taste my food before I try it.”

  “Oh, you’ll get used to her. That’s just the way she is.” She sank back into her chair and inhaled the steam from the mug, “Mm, isn’t this coffee wonderful? I forgot how good it was. Dorotea told me how she does it, but of course it doesn’t taste the same at home.” She smiled to herself and took a couple of long swallows, eyes closed. “Did you notice that Carl got a little upset there in the car?”

  “It was hard not to notice. What did I say wrong, do you know?”

  “You didn’t say anything wrong. It’s my fault for not telling you that Annie’s mother is a touchy subject.”

  “Are you just being charitable here? It’s not just another case of insufficient attention?”

  “I’m just being charitable,” Julie agreed.

  Gideon smiled. “So, tell me again and I promise to pay attention. Was she ‘lost’ as in ‘died’ or ‘lost’ as in ‘divorced’?”

  “Neither. ‘Lost’ as in ‘ran away and never came back.’ ”

  “From her husband and her little baby? Ouch.”

  “Ouch is right. She ran off with one of the hands, abandoning poor little Annie and leaving Carl to take care of her. Annie’s not even sure she has any real memories of her.”

  “Probably doesn’t,” Gideon said. “She probably just remembers stories she heard.” He shook his head. “That’s tough.”

  “Well, from what I can tell, she handles it just fine. But apparently Carl’s never gotten over it, gotten over Blaze. It’s been almost thirty years, but Annie thinks he’s still in love with her. Oh, what’s more, they left with a heck of a nest egg; her boyfriend Manolo robbed the ranch payroll and they took off with it.”

  “Robbed the ranch payroll?” He laughed, but Julie didn’t crack a smile. “You
’re serious? This is starting to sound like Butch Cassidy and the sundance Kid.”

  “Well, you have to remember, this was before the place was a resort. It was an honest-to-God horse ranch, and the hands were paid in cash. And Jamie would drive to the bank in Tlacolula every month—there wasn’t one here in Teotitlán back then—to get the payroll and bring it back. And—well, Manolo robbed him. On the road. At gunpoint. Sixteen thousand dollars. A lot of money in 1979, especially down here.”

  “You ain’t just whistling Dixie, kiddo,” Annie put in, having rejoined them, also armed with a mug of coffee. She sat herself down comfortably. “Filling Gideon in on the family skeletons, eh?”

  Julie was embarrassed. “I was just explaining to Gideon why your father suddenly clammed up in the car.”

  “Yeah, no problem. It’s sad, isn’t it? Almost thirty years and I think he’s still in love with her.”

  She gazed down at the village, the mug held in front of her face in both hands. “I was really little, so I don’t really remember it. Besides, they wouldn’t talk about it in front of me; I mean, Blaze was my mother, right?—but I knew something that wasn’t kosher had happened, and later I learned all about it. Jamie was only a kid himself, fifteen years old, so losing all that money that he was responsible for practically killed him. You know what Jamie’s like, anyway—well, you do, Julie—so you can imagine.” And to Gideon, by way of explanation: “Jamie’s kind of . . . earnest, you know? He takes things to heart.”

  “Jamie’s the worrier in the family,” Julie said, smiling.

  “A good thing too. This family could use a worrier.”

  Annie paused to try her coffee, found it too hot, and blew on it. It had been a while since Gideon had seen an adult do that, but somehow it seemed fitting for Annie. “Anyway, on account of that and some other things, I guess the ranch was on the edge of going bust until Tony conned the mineral people into buying most of it, and turned what was left into . . .” She spread her arms and gestured, palms up, at the complex of buildings, patios, and terrace around them. “Ta-daaa. And the rest is history.” She sighed, settled back, blew some more on her coffee, and sipped thoughtfully at it.

  “Well, I can understand why your dad doesn’t like to talk about it,” Gideon said. “Sorry I opened a can of worms.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Annie said. “It’s just something we don’t mention in front of him. I’m not even sure Pop knows I know the story. What they told me at the time was that my mother had to go to the hospital, and then they just dropped the subject. Pop himself just could never bring it up again, and I knew better than to ask questions. He even put away his pictures of her. I found them when I was about ten, in a crate near where he keeps the horse feed. She was so beautiful. I kept a photo of her standing with Pop, with me in her arms, and put the others back. I don’t think he’s opened that crate even once.”

  “It’s too bad he never remarried,” Julie said.

  “Remarried? Hell, he never even had a girlfriend. Well, a couple of times a year he travels for a week or so on horse business, so who knows, maybe there’s some old flame out there, but I can tell you he never brought one back home. Or made out with any of the guests, either. And you should see the way some of the female guests come on to him. They don’t know I’m his daughter, of course, so they talk about him in front of me.” She grimaced. “It’s disgusting.”

  She leaned forward. “Let me tell you something about my father. He is the most loyal, honest, decent man you will ever meet. What he seems like is exactly what he is like. After Mom took off, he figured his job was to raise me, and that’s just what he did.” She paused for a wry smile. “But I inherited my mother’s genes, I guess—in everything but looks, dammit—because at nineteen I ran off with that miserable shmuck Billy Nicholson, idiot that I was. Why? Because he looked like Robert Redford. And then when I came crawling back here with my tail between my legs? Pop took me in without a word of reproof and got me set up in this job, for which I am eternally grateful. That was eight years ago, and there’s still never been a word of reproof, not a single word. Never even an I told you so, which he had every right to say. That man is something else, let me tell you. My hero.”

  The somewhat awkward silence that followed this soul-baring was broken by Dorotea, who called loudly from the doorway in Spanish that their breakfast was on the buffet table, and in they filed.

  “If this is a ‘late breakfast snack,’ ” Gideon said, “I can hardly wait to see what an actual breakfast looks like.”

  On the table in front of them were the promised quesadillas—seven of them, not the expected three—freshly made tortillas covered with cheese and chiles, folded into half moons, and arranged in a semicircle. But there was also cubed melon and papaya, a bowl of yogurt, biscuits, jam, a pitcher of pink, frothy juice that, on inquiry, turned out to be ginger-spiked hibiscus juice—and, of course, more of the wonderful coffee. The three of them loaded up (“Well, since there are extra quesadillas, I guess I’ll have a couple, after all,” Annie said. “Wouldn’t want them to go to waste.”) and took their food back out to the terrace. The sun had climbed higher by now, and although it wasn’t unpleasantly hot, Gideon put up the umbrella to give them some protection from the glare.

  Gideon and Julie, who hadn’t eaten anything since dinner the night before, were ravenous and the food was marvelous, and for a few minutes their only conversation had to do with how wonderful it was, much of it expressed in appreciative grunts and murmurs of one syllable. Annie took a proprietary pride in Dorotea’s skills, explaining that what made the tortillas so exceptional was not only that they had been made that morning with fresh masa—hand-ground corn flour—but that real, old-fashioned lard had gone into it “by the handful.” This did nothing to take the edge off their appetites, and all of the quesadillas were efficiently demolished, three by Gideon.

  When they were back to drinking coffee and picking at the biscuits and jam, Annie suddenly clapped her hands together. “Damn, I almost forgot! Hey, Gideon, are you interested in helping out our police chief and looking at this skeleton they found?”

  “A skeleton?” Gideon’s world was suddenly flooded with light.

  “I mean, a mummy. I mean, this dead guy they found, a murdered guy, they couldn’t find the bullet—”

  It took a minute or two, but eventually she got the story out, and a beaming Gideon said he’d be pleased to help if he could. Or even if he couldn’t.

  “Okay, let me give Chief Sandoval a call right now.” She got up to go to the office, which was in a separate building. “The body’s in this little room at the cemetery. When do you think you could look at it?”

  “How about now?”

  “Now?” Julie exclaimed. “Gideon, you were on a plane all night. When I came out here fifteen minutes ago you were falling asleep.”

  “Well, I’m wide awake now.” He beat a tattoo on the table to prove it.

  Julie shook her head. “I knew skeletons could do that to him,” she said to Annie. “Now I know mummies can too.”

  “Oh, your room’s ready,” said Annie, who had caught a signal from Josefa in the courtyard behind them. “Why don’t you go get yourself unpacked up there while I call?”

  The Hacienda Encantada consisted of five nicely restored nineteenth-century buildings around a cool, tree-shaded brick courtyard with hammocks and rocking chairs in various pleasant niches. Sombreros and binoculars hung from the walls for the guests to use.

  Other than the Casa Principal with its dining room, kitchen, and terrace, there was the old sisal factory storehouse, the largest structure, with fourteen guest rooms; the old chapel, now cut up into the lodge office and the meeting room; the old factory building itself, the Casa de Máquinas, converted into five upscale guest rooms, one of which was Gideon and Julie’s (the best, according to Julie); and the Casa del Mayordomo, a beautiful old house with a pillared portico, once the estate manager’s home, now divided into five suites for the Galla
ghers and their relations: one for Jamie, one for Annie, one for Carl, the smallest one for Josefa, and the largest one kept available for Tony.

  “Like it?” Julie asked as Gideon pulled open the heavy, studded oak door of their room. “It’s been fifteen years, and as far as I can tell, the whole place looks better than ever.”

  He would have said he loved it in any case because Julie was obviously anxious for him to be pleased, but in fact he liked it a lot. As promised, there was no television set, no telephone, no alarm clock.

  It was a single large space with an eighteen-foot beamed ceiling and smoothed, red-painted concrete flooring. Through a door was a tiled bathroom. The furniture—king-sized bed, nightstands, lamps, round table and chairs, wardrobe, bureau—was all hand-carved in a rustic, squarish, pleasingly simple mission style. All very uncrowded and open. Geometric weavings, finely done and probably local, were on the floor on either side of the bed and in front of the wardrobe. A hammock hung in one corner.

  “This is great. The whole place is great.”

  There was a double tap on the door. “Okay,” Annie said, letting herself in. “Chief Sandoval’s on his way. It’s only a two-minute drive up from the village. He’ll tell you all about it on the way back down. You’ll find his English is pretty good—well, passable.”

  “That’s good. I don’t think my spanish is quite up to ‘passable.’ ”

  Julie was chuckling. “I told him something like this would turn up,” she said to Annie. “It never fails.”

  Gideon hunched his shoulders. “What can I say? Remember what that psychic in Hawaii said? She said it was my aura. skeletons are very attracted to me.”

  “And vice versa,” said Julie.

  SIX

  As mummified remains went, they weren’t that bad.

  The body had been out there long enough, and in an environment that was hot enough and dry enough, so that there was nothing anyone would call a stench—just an earthy, musty smell, like decaying bark on the forest floor. And it had dried out enough that the skin—the hide was more like it, at this point—no longer glistened with exuded fat or other nasty effluvia. It had become a stiff, brown parchment-like object whose appearance had more in common with the mummy of Ramses II than with anybody who’d been walking around on two legs six months earlier.