“Antonio!” Near the front row, the young woman who’d herded the children from the stage reached over and tugged on the tunic of the French general, who had jumped to his feet in excitement.
“Hey, General,” Mark called out. “Come sit back here with me and you won’t block the others’ view.”
With a grin exploding on his face like the Roman candle shooting into the sky, the youngster glanced at the shepherding teacher for permission. At her nod of approval, he scurried to the back row and dropped to his knees on the mat. “Did you ever see such beauty, jefe?”
Mark exchanged a smile with the dark-haired teacher, holding her shy, lingering gaze until Antonio jabbed him with an elbow. In the bright flash of a floral display, she looked to be no more than eighteen. Maybe she was just a helper or one of the older orphans. Regardless, she was too young to bat those long seductive lashes at someone his age.
“It’s muy grande, no?”
“Very grand,” Mark answered.
Someone his age. Suddenly thirty-two seemed ancient as he fixed his attention on the sky exposed through the trees.
A few more pinwheels spurting colored fire that lasted a minute or so, some Roman candles, and a finale of shooting streams with secondary spirals, and the very grand show was over. The air was filled with the scent of the burnt incendiary powder, while clouds of dissipating smoke hovered in the sky over the plaza.
The children were hustled to their feet and lined up for the march back to the orphanage.
“Everyone look to the front and follow María,” Corinne instructed.
So that was her name. There’d been too much confusion before the fireworks for a proper introduction.
As if realizing that she’d been remiss, Corinne turned to him. “Mark, this is María Delgado, a very capable aide as you can see. María, this is Mark Madison, the gentleman who has come to make over the Hacienda Ortiz.”
“Mucho gusto, María,” Mark said across the sea of little heads between them.
Dipping in a polite curtsy, María nodded. “El gusto es mio, Señor Madi—”
She broke off with an apologetic smile to collar the little boy who passed out the napkins earlier. Fascinated by a stray dog begging food from a nearby picnicking family, he’d started to wander off.
“Okay, are we ready?” Corinne said as Paquito was brought back into the line.
She began to sing the familiar tune of “Jesus Loves Me” in Spanish. By the second line, the orphans chimed in, accompanying themselves with the clatter and bang of their instruments. Mark had never thought of the tune as a marching song, but it worked, moving the children through appreciative onlookers who were staying for the music and dance planned afterward.
Cristo me ama,
Cristo me ama,
Cristo me ama,
La Biblia dice así.
The chorus and chaos brought some of the citizens who lived along the steep, winding street to their doorways to wave as the procession moved by. Encouraged, the marchers increased their volume and vigor from block to block until the cobbled street gave way to the paved road leading across open fields to Hogar de los Niños.
While hardly Mark’s scene, it was more entertaining than he’d have expected. Not that he hadn’t been tempted by Diego’s invitation to remain behind for the dancing. A drink would have gone well about now, but oddly enough, he was too tired, not to mention sore. His backside hurt from the jolting ride in the truck, his legs felt the toll of the vertical landscape, and for whatever reason— most likely fatigue—there was an aching void making itself known in his chest. It seemed to grow larger with each line the homeless children sang.
“Cristo me ama,” Antonio sang at the top of his lungs.
The earnestness of his youthful spirit flowed from his hand to Mark’s.
Jesus loves me. Mark’s lips quirked with skepticism. He supposed he might have been Antonio’s age the last time he had sung that song and believed it. But the real world wasn’t a Jesus world. And real love was hard to find.
Aside from what he felt for his mother, Mark wasn’t even certain he knew what real love was. What began as the real thing for him usually wound up being infatuation or desire. He’d seen Victoria’s Secret’s angels, eager to lift him to heavenly heights, turn into vamps intent on draining the life out of him and his bank account.
“Pues, jefe,” Antonio said when they reached the play yard of the orphanage, “remember that I am still available if you need a helper.” The tattered general drew himself up to his tallest and gave Mark a salute.
“Will do, amigo,” Mark replied. He was beginning to see how easily his adopted nephew, Berto, had wormed his way into Blaine’s and Caroline’s hearts.
“I am not afraid of the ghost that stole my brother.”
Jolted, Mark stared at the boy. “Ghost?” He glanced to where Corinne and María were dismissing the children to their respective huts. “What ghost?”
Antonio looked at Mark as if he had the IQ of an amoeba. “The angry miner who killed the first mayor of Mexicalli—the husband to the good Señora Lucinda.”
Come to think of it, Blaine had mentioned something about a ghost. Then the rest of Antonio’s words registered. “Wait, what’s this about your brother being stolen?”
“We think Enrique ran away.” Corinne had stepped over and put an arm around Antonio’s shoulders. “But my little brother in Christ would never think of leaving me, would you, hermanito?”
Antonio’s bravado faded, giving way to a slight tremble of his lower lip. “My brother did not run away. He would never leave me. The ghost took Enrique.”
“There is no such thing as a ghost, Antonio,” Corinne insisted. “And even if there was, I heard it was la Señora Lucinda, who loved children so much.”
“Then maybe she wanted a little boy for her own,” the boy suggested. Antonio drew his arm across his running nose.
That was another problem with kids. Something was always leaking or running. Computers couldn’t hold a candle to the paper waste produced by child care.
Unaffected, Corinne dug a tissue from her skirt pocket and promptly policed the boy’s nose and arm. “Regardless …” she said, kissing the top of his head. “We pray every day for his return, yes?”
“S-sí,” the boy sniffed. “Jesus will bring him back.”
The glaze of dismay in the look Corinne gave Mark over the child’s head prodded him into action.
“And until then, we have lots of work to do, right?” What in the devil was he going to get a kid to do? “That is, if it’s okay with your teachers at the orphanage.”
Before his eyes, Corinne’s dismay turned to gratitude with a smile that stalled his impulse to rescind the invitation.
“I’m certain we can spare Antonio after his lunch and recess. I’ll talk to Father Menasco tomorrow.”
With a loving pat, she sent Antonio toward the doorway where María waited for the last of the strays. Once the door to the large Quonset hut dormitory closed behind them, she faced him, suddenly awkward.
“I know I apologized earlier, but …” She looked away as if the words she sought might be hiding in the lilies growing around the entrance. “That was very good of you to take Antonio under your wing. His brother’s disappearance has made him so unpredictable. I’m afraid he might be tempted to go look for Enrique … . Not even the police have any idea where the boy is.”
“No theories at all?”
“There are a number of possibilities. Sometimes older children are lured off by men who make them beg on the streets to support them. You know, like Fagin in Oliver Twist,” she explained. “Or he could have wandered into the abandoned mines up in the mountains. If he did—” She broke off with a shudder.
“Yeah, I remember Blaine saying the hills were riddled with silver mines.”
“But the ones under Mexicalli’s mountain were depleted in the early twentieth century … and most are sealed.” She heaved a resigned sigh. “There were volunteer se
arch parties of villagers who know this area well, but Enrique wasn’t found.”
“And the murdering ghost?”
She shrugged. “As far as the records show, Diego Ortiz died of natural causes, leaving Lucinda a widow. But the Indios are very superstitious.” She chuckled. “Sometimes it will make you want to tear your hair out. The work ethic is strong, but unpredictable.”
“Like the Three Juans?” he asked.
“Like our Three Juans.” Her laugh was as melodic as her voice. “But at least with local help, you can easily look them up when they don’t show up for work.”
Mark grimaced. “I think I’ll stick to licensed contractors.”
“Suit yourself.”
Something about the riveting twitch of her lips both fascinated Mark and made him wary at the same time.
Crossing her arms, Corinne looked over at the parsonage. Dim light shone from one window. “Well, the morning comes early, and it looks like Father Menasco left the light on in the guest room and turned in early. You know where to go?”
Mark nodded. The parsonage was an L-shaped structure with a courtyard wall closing in the other two sides. Fortunately the guest room opened onto the patio, as did all the rooms. And Mark had already made friends with the priest’s dog, Monty—short for Montezuma.
“So where do you bunk?” he asked, wondering if Corinne slept in the dormitory.
She nodded downhill to where the lake shone like a moon-silvered mirror, surrounded by trees and dwellings. “I have a room at a bed-and-breakfast on the lake—”
“Not on my account, I hope,” he interjected.
The fine, aristocratic lines of her profile against the blue-black backdrop of the night sky reminded him of one of those velvet paintings sold in souvenir shops all over the country—a señorita with dark hair pulled tight from her face into a wild cascade; a faraway look in her luminous eyes; and bronzed shoulders bared just enough by the ruffle of her white embroidered neckline to set the imagination afire.
“No, I just needed the space and … maintenance,” she added, turning to face him. Her smile distracted Mark before he could latch onto the word maintenance. “But I’m hoping that your efforts will soon change that and spare me the expense.”
He’d clearly mistaken faraway for calculating. “How’s that?” He wasn’t going to fall for that Spanish angel-with-a-plan look. Besides, at any moment, the pinch-mouthed shrew could emerge.
“I’m hoping that you’ll get the downstairs plumbing working right, so that I can move my things into the hacienda. It works, but has some strange quirks.”
“You’re not afraid of the ghost … ghosts?” he asked, a half-smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.
“I am cautious, not superstitious.”
The upturned curve of her lips set off warning bells Mark didn’t even know he had, and all of them said Run, do not walk, to the nearest exit. Still, no gentleman would allow a lady to walk alone at night. Besides, with the winding and dipping streets of Mexicalli, it could be five times as far as the crow flew.
“At least let me walk you to your B and B. It’s fiesta and probably not safe for an attractive señorita to be out alone.” He could almost hear his legs telling him it wasn’t safe for him to make promises they had no intention of keeping, but …
“Thanks, but no thanks. I enjoy the quiet retreat alone with God. Helps me unwind after a long day,” she explained, the first sign of her waning energy emerging in a sigh. “Besides, I have a black belt in kickboxing.”
Hello. Nix the angel wings. Add a nunchaku slung over each of those deceptively delicate shoulders. “Well, in that case, I’ll just thank you for acknowledging the possibility of my redemption.” Without forethought, Mark bent down and gave her a chaste kiss on the cheek.
Both of them backed away, equally startled by the impulse. Chaste wasn’t his style, but today had disrupted the status quo big time. Uncertain what to expect, Mark watched disbelief freeze on Corinne’s face. Finally they parted. Instead of erupting with an ear-splitting Bruce Lee heeyah accompanied by a kick below the belt, she spoke.
“You’re welcome.” With yet another backward step, she pivoted and started down a beaten path that Mark had missed earlier in his rush to shower and join the fun at the plaza. “Good night, Mr. Madison. Sleep well.”
Mark swallowed the urge to insist she call him by his given name. He liked living on the edge, not astraddle it.
CHAPTER 4
Morning came, complete with a crowing competition among all the roosters of the village, followed, as if cued in, by a church bell. Mark struggled to keep his eyes shut in the hopes that the noise would subside, but soon someone decided to torture a burro.
The smell of strong coffee brewing cajoled his nose from his pillow. He inhaled deeply, hoping for a vicarious caffeine fix to rouse him from his bed. Instead, it alerted his stomach that the cold plate of black beans and rice he’d been fed by the orphanage cook before he went to the plaza was long gone. She’d called it “Muslims and Christians.” Strange, but then this entire place was strange.
Throwing off the covers that had protected him from the cool mountain night air, he finally rose from the bed. He opened the red shutters covering the rear window of his room and peered out. The meager farmstead adjoining the orphanage property gloried in the sunlight as a young boy frolicked with the loud-mouthed burro, while his little sister, perhaps summoned by the head rooster, scattered feed on the ground for the barnyard fowl.
“Thank God I’m not a country boy,” Mark muttered under his breath. Leaving the window, he surveyed the scattered clothes on the floor with a sigh of resignation. Things weren’t likely to get any quieter. The children sleeping in the dormitory next door would be stirring soon, if they weren’t already. From the few times he’d dated women with young children, he’d noticed that the latter’s eyelids seemed to open in concert with the sun.
Trudging over to a washstand not unlike the antique piece in his mother’s front hallway, he checked the temperature of the water in a painted clay pitcher that was nested in a matching washbowl. The parsonage plumbing was modest at best and concentrated in one section of the house—away from the bedrooms. At least there was running hot and cold water for the kitchen sink and the shower, which was closeted, almost literally, along with a toilet between the kitchen and the dining room. Mark supposed the tiny enclosure had once been a pantry. Washbowls and pitchers served for powder room facilities.
Rubbing a coarse bristle of overnight growth on his chin, he studied the tousled image of the man in the small mirror mounted over the washstand, when he felt something scurry over his foot.
“What in—?”
As he jumped back, a large black beetle dropped off his foot and dashed under the washstand. Along with primitive plumbing, the house also had primitive insect control. Little gauze bags containing some sort of herbs lay in the corners of the room. Obviously the insects he’d heard running around in combat boots on the tile floor during the night simply avoided the corners. Twice he’d pulled the string fastened to his headboard, flipping on the single lightbulb overhead in time to see roaches and beetles scatter. Finally he’d succumbed to sleep and left them to their business— perhaps a soccer game between the two species with some kind of seed for a ball.
Three sharp knocks on the door distracted Mark from his infested reverie. Before he could answer, the housekeeper-cook barged in. Wearing a bright blue blouse and black skirt, she greeted him with a bright, “Buenos días, Señor Madison!” Without so much as a glance at him, she made straight for the other window and threw open the shades. The morning sun flooded the room with just as much enthusiasm.
“The good padre is back soon from the morning prayers, so I am ready to fix your breakfast. So how many eggs is it that you want?”
Mark shielded his eyes until they became accustomed to the sunburst. “Two over well would be nice.”
“Bueno, dos huevos you will have.” The same energy that blew he
r into the room whooshed her back out, drawing the door shut in its wake.
Boy, when this town wakes up, it hits the ground running—and squawking, braying, and cooking.
After a quick shower in the utility room—outfitted with a plastic stall, toilet, and laundry tub—and a shave in his bedroom over the bowl and pitcher, Mark exited onto the patio.
Seated at a table shaded by laurel, the man who’d introduced himself yesterday as Father Menasco read a newspaper. At his elbow was a coffee tray containing a fiesta-red thermal carafe, spare mugs, and, Mark hoped, some of the tempting brew he had smelled earlier. He looked up as Monty left the father’s side for an obligatory pat, tail wagging. As Mark rubbed the part-shepherd, part-who-knew-what dog, the priest motioned him to sit down.
Casually clad in jeans and a collarless shirt, Father Menasco still looked like any other man of God that Mark had ever seen—cheerful, exuding a peace that went beyond Mark’s understanding. And whatever that peace was, it was better for wrinkles than Botox. The guy had some tanned-in crow’s feet and maybe a laugh line or two about his mouth, but that was it.
“Buenos días, Señor Madison. I trust you slept well?”
Mark pulled up a chair and joined him, and Monty settled down beneath the table. “The setting took some getting used to, but all in all, I slept just fine.”
There was something about being in a priest’s company that always put Mark on edge. Perhaps it was due to the number of pinches he’d received from his mother as a boy in church, if he so much as thought about acting up.
Father Menasco’s lips twitched on one side as he folded his paper and put it aside. “The cats keep the mice at bay, but the bugs rule around here,” he said, as if reading Mark’s mind. “Sometimes I think they drum with toothpicks on the tile floor. It takes getting used to.”
Mark gave a short laugh. “I thought it was soccer—the beetles versus the roaches.”
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