The Xibalba Murders

by Lyn Hamilton

  “She doesn’t look like her father, does she?” I said, thinking of the rather unattractive man in the Ek Balam.

  “No, she takes after her mother, Innocentia, who died when Montserrat was very young. Her mother’s picture is all over the house.” Sheila looked as if she were going to start sobbing in an alcoholic haze.

  “Tell me about your husband’s businesses,” I said, trying to drag her back from the brink of self-pity. “He owns a hotel, obviously.”

  “Yes. His original business, the one that made him rich, though, is water.”

  “Water, as in—”

  “As in the stuff they make ice for martinis out of.” She giggled again. “Well, have you seen much in the way of fresh water around here? The water for this city comes from the aquifer beneath the city.”

  “The windmills!” I said, remembering this significant feature of the city when I had first come here as a young girl.

  “Right. All of Merida’s water used to be brought to the surface by the windmills you saw everywhere. That’s why it was sometimes called the City of Windmills. Diego’s father died when Diego was quite young, and I guess his mother didn’t feel an education was important for the youngest in the family. Diego is essentially self-taught. He recognized that the water supply here is always a problem, so he learned all about soil mechanics, the underground rivers and everything, and invented a more efficient windmill—sort of like building a better mousetrap—and the rest, as they say, is history. When Merida switched to a city water system, Diego bought up the old windmills for a song, converted them, and sold them for a premium in the countryside.”

  “How does he feel about the theft of the statue from the bar?” I asked.

  “He is devastated. It was one of his favorite pieces. Actually, Diego and Don Hernan had an argument over that very statue one night at dinner.”

  I waited while she took another sip of her martini.

  “There is one thing you need to know about Diego to understand him. It is not enough for him to admire rare or beautiful things. He must possess them. And the rarer they are, or the harder to obtain, the more he wants them.

  “You must have noticed this house. Rather different from the neighbors‘, wouldn’t you say? He saw this little manor house on a country estate in England. The owner, some English earl or something, said it had been in the family for centuries and there was no way he would sell.

  “But Diego managed it—found out something about the earl—one would rather not know what—that convinced him to sell.

  “Then Diego moved the building, stone by stone, to his property here, and had it reassembled. Fortunately he also owns a small shipping company!” She laughed.

  “And then there’s me. We met at an official dinner at the governor’s residence back home. Diego was a guest of the governor. I was married at the time, but that didn’t stop Diego. He pursued me with an enthusiasm that was very flattering. Now I am one of his possessions.”

  “And Itzamna, the statue?”

  “Apparently it was really very old, and a very sacred relic for the Maya. Don Hernan had always felt objects of such antiquity belong in museums, not private collections. After several visits to U.S. museums, he was also coming around to the view that something he called comanagement—sharing ownership of and responsibility for an artifact between an institution like the museo and the people to whom it had originally belonged—was the way of the future.

  “Anyway, Don Hernan had heard about the Itzamna and had mentioned it to Diego. Both men went after it, for the reasons I’ve told you, and Diego got to it first.

  “It was the beginning of the end of the friendship, and a very sad day for me.”

  Sheila looked at her empty martini glass and rang the bell for the maid. But instead of the maid, Montserrat appeared. “I believe you’ve had enough, Sheila,” she said.

  Sheila looked cowed. Montserrat nodded in my general direction and left the room again.

  “Perhaps it’s time I left,” I said, stating the obvious. “Thank you for your hospitality.”

  “I don’t suppose you’d come again,” she said rather wistfully.

  “I’d like to,” I said, momentarily forgetting I was under house arrest.

  “Where would I find you?”

  “Casa de las Buganvillas.”

  “Where Don Hernan lived. I’ve heard it’s lovely.”

  We shook hands and I headed back down the drive and then toward the hotel. I did not have to ask why Sheila had let a total stranger into the house late at night. This was one very sad and lonely woman.

  But there was something about our conversation that was nagging at me as I drove back to the hotel. I was about halfway back when I realized that she had spoken about Don Hernan in the past tense the whole time.

  And I remembered where I had seen Montserrat. On television, in the crowd at Luis Vallespino’s funeral.

  I parked the Mercedes on a side street, crept stealthily along the sidewalk, climbed the wall into the tree, and then slipped through the window onto the chair in the bathtub.

  It was then I noticed the light shining in under the bathroom door from my room. I opened the door with real apprehension.

  Isa was sitting on my bed, her eyes red from crying.

  “Don Hernan is dead,” she said.

  MANIK

  Don Hernan had been found by the cleaning staff, seated on the floor of his little office at the museo. Knees drawn up, his torso and head twisted to face the doorway, and held there by the rigor of death, his body was a human caricature of the Chac Mool that guards the Temple of the Warriors at Chichen Itza.

  He had been stabbed through the heart. There was very little blood in his office, and the murder weapon was not to be found.

  Santiago Ortiz Menendez, as one of Don Hernan’s oldest friends, was given the unenviable task of identifying the body the next morning. Isa and I accompanied him, my presence permitted, and shall we say even encouraged, by Major Martinez himself. Francesca remained at the inn to break the sad news to the other permanent guests.

  It was Manik, day of the deer, day of the hunt, and the day, to force an analogy, that it became very clear to me that Don Hernan’s search, the hunt for whatever the elusive rabbit might write, was no whimsical diversion of an elderly man, but like the game in the ball court at Chichen Itza, a deadly serious contest in which the loser paid with his life.

  We took the Ortiz family van, outfitted to accommodate Don Santiago’s wheelchair, to the morgue.

  Major Martinez was waiting for us when we arrived. In anticipation of just this eventuality, Don Santiago had suggested in the van that I give him—Don Santiago— ten pesos and ask to hire his services. He had trained as a lawyer before joining the diplomatic corps, and although his chosen field was international law, we all agreed that should Martinez regularly feel the need to interview me, it might be well to have Don Santiago along.

  Martinez led us down sterile corridors and stairs to the basement, and then to a window marked recepcion, behind which sat a young man energetically eating tacos filled with pork, if my sense of smell was functioning properly in this place, which I couldn’t swear to. A reddish-brown liquid dribbled down his chin and spattered onto a sheet of wax paper on the desk. Apparently working in a morgue does not put everyone off their food.

  Martinez flashed his badge, we all signed in, and the young man used a greasy finger to push a button that unlatched the door beside him. We passed into the heart of the morgue.

  With Martinez leading, we came into a room with a row of body lockers against one wall. The place felt cold and clammy to me, and I could see Isa shiver. Whether or not it actually was cold, I couldn’t tell.

  The drawer containing the remains of Don Hernan was pulled out by a young woman in a lab coat, and his face exposed for Don Santiago’s perusal.

  I suppose all those of us confronted by this moment hope against hope that a mistake has been made, that a total stranger will be uncovered when t
he drawer slides out.

  But it was not to be. Santiago nodded mutely, and we were led quickly away. Santiago’s hands shook as he rearranged the light blanket that covered his emaciated legs. Isa kept one hand on his shoulder as we made our way back to the young man with the tacos. He in turn looked mildly annoyed at having his meal interrupted a second time, but condescended to hand a box over to Martinez. We were then escorted to a small room with a table and a couple of chairs and asked to inspect the contents of the box.

  It contained everything that had been found on Don Hernan’s body. His watch, an elegant late-nineteenth-century timepiece and chain that had belonged to his mother and contained a picture of his late wife, his clothes, an absolutely empty billfold, a few loose pesos. Only one object looked out of place, and this was a small green jade bead. The young woman in the lab coat, who had accompanied us, saw me looking at it.

  “Found it in his mouth,” she said. “It was put there with some difficulty several hours after he died.”

  “When did he die?” I asked.

  “Very early yesterday, I would estimate,” she said, ignoring the warning stare coming her way from Martinez. Clearly the major was not king of the morgue.

  While Martinez asked Santiago whether or not he could recall these belongings as Don Hernan’s, I touched the cream-colored shoes. While it was difficult to tell just looking at them, they were covered in the light dust so pervasive outside the city. The trouser cuffs were also dusty.

  Perhaps the question I should have asked was where did he die, not when.

  “Who has done such a thing?” Santiago asked, almost in a whisper.

  “Robbery, apparently,” Martinez replied. “Empty wallet,” he added as Santiago looked up at him. “Every effort will, of course, be made to apprehend the perpetrator or perpetrators.”

  “Of course,” we all agreed.

  “However, there are many robberies here every day. It will take some time to conduct this investigation.”

  “Where was he killed?” I asked Martinez.

  “We are still conducting tests, but in the meantime we assume it was in his office in which he was found,” he replied. The young woman in the lab coat looked dubious, but said nothing.

  I didn’t believe this, but also said nothing. Isa and I asked Martinez when the police would finish their work on the body, and were told it would probably be later that day or early the next.

  “I think we can safely assume that what we have here is a case of death at the hands of person or persons unknown,” he concluded.

  As we left the building, Don Santiago pulled himself together and addressed Martinez in his new capacity as my lawyer.

  “I have been retained by Senora McClintoch in this matter,” he began.

  “Have you indeed?” Martinez interrupted. “Now, why might the senora feel she has need of a lawyer?”

  “Because of your unconscionable move of confiscating her passport, and confining her to the hotel, I am sure you will agree that since it was information on Dr. Castillo’s whereabouts that you were looking for, and since his present location is well known, there is no longer any need to restrict her activities.

  “And since she could not be implicated in Dr. Castillo’s death—she has been, if you recall, under house arrest for the last few days, and several of us can attest to that—no doubt you will also be returning her passport shortly.”

  “If Senora McClintoch does not feel the need for our protection, then that is up to her,” the policeman said smoothly. “As far as the passport is concerned, you will understand that we are now investigating two murders, and we will have to have extensive discussions with our superiors to determine whether we can allow her to leave the country before our investigations are complete.”

  So it was a standoff, one for him, one for me. It would be a relief to be able to leave the hotel at will, and by the door rather than the window. I’d work on the passport later.

  We were a silent group as we made our way back to the van and returned to the hotel. It was Isa who broke the silence partway home.

  “Seeing his belongings in a box was so sad,” she said. “It seemed like such a small amount of stuff for such a big man—and I mean that not just in terms of his physique, but his personality. He always seemed larger than life to me. It just seemed too little.”

  “It really was too little,” I said slowly.

  Both Isa and Don Santiago looked at me.

  “No glasses. No cane.”

  A pause.

  “So you’re saying he wasn’t murdered in his office, or both those things would be there. He couldn’t go anywhere without his glasses, and hardly anywhere without his cane. Maybe they are still in his office,” Isa said.

  Maybe not, I thought. But I knew I would find out.

  Back at the Casa de las Buganvillas, Francesca and her daughter-in-law, Manuela, were ministering to the permanent residents of the hotel.

  Most of them elderly like Don Hernan, their shock and disbelief were almost palpable. Theories were exchanged, tears flowed, each in their own way trying to come to terms with this most awful of crimes.

  Dona Josefina, she of the mantilla, sat like a broken doll, all lace and wobbly gestures, in a chair suddenly way too big for her. Manuela sat beside her, trying to get her to drink hot lemon tea.

  I felt very sorry for her. She was what I used to refer to in the shop as a high-maintenance customer, and she did expect to be attended to rather more than most.

  But Don Hernan, I’d heard, had a way of dealing with her. Courtly, patient, he had been able to make her smile.

  It was even rumored in that little community that she had set her sights on him—the younger man as her second husband.

  Into this room awash with fear and loneliness strode Jonathan, with Lucas May shadowing him once more. Catching the mood in the room at once and seeing the two bright pink spots on Dona Josefina’s cheeks, he called for a restorative, Xtabentun, the Mexican anise liqueur, and Manuela was quick to comply.

  Soon everyone was sipping the fiery liquid as Jonathan moved about the room talking quietly to each in turn. Within a few minutes they were exchanging their favorite stories about Don Hernan. Lucas placed himself beside Dona Josefina and sat quietly holding her hand.

  Suddenly Josefina roused herself.

  “He was onto something very important,” she said, her voice carrying across the room.

  “Very important,” she repeated. “And I know what it was.”

  All eyes in the room turned to her. But that was all she said. A look of fear crossed her face, as if for the first time she had realized that this very important thing, whatever it might be, might be sufficient motive for murder.

  Lucas whispered something to her, and then Jonathan crossed the room and asked her what she meant.

  But she shook her head, her lips compressed into a thin line.

  I should have spoken to her right then, of course, tried to cajole the information out of her, but at this particular point in time, it looked as if the Ortiz family had everything under control. I knew I needed to talk to Dona Josefina, but not in this public place, and there was something I wanted to do first.

  Jonathan and Lucas left the sitting room with me, and Jonathan asked me where I was heading.

  “Back to the morgue,” I said. He looked startled, but gamely offered to accompany me.

  We took the Jeep, and parked just down the street from the dreaded building. Much to my surprise, it was not difficult to get inside. I retraced our steps of earlier that day and soon found myself at the reception window.

  The young man with the greasy tacos had been replaced by a thin young woman doing her nails.

  “Excuse me,” I said. “I was here earlier today to assist in the identification of a body.”

  She nodded as if this was a perfectly normal occurrence.

  “There was a very nice woman, she was wearing a lab coat, and she was very helpful. I left without thanking her for her kind
ness, and would like to do so if she is here now.”

  Jonathan looked slightly skeptical, but kept his opinion to himself.

  “She’s left for the day.”

  “Would she be in again tomorrow?” I asked. The young woman sighed, got out of her chair, holding her hands carefully so as not to damage her manicure, and too vain to wear her glasses, peered at a large scheduling chart.

  “Not back for four days,” she said. “Flextime,” she added. I thought all time in Mexico was flextime, but I kept that opinion to myself.

  But I had a name. Eulalia Gonzales. There was only one woman on the chart who had been in today, and wouldn’t be back for four days.