Drowning Pool (Miss Henry Mysteries)

by Melanie Jackson

  “Are you any good? Should I make my son bring your paintings to me?”

  “Painting, singular. And how can I say if it is any good? That is in the eye of the beholder. After all, which of us really knows ourselves in this way?”

  “In other words, does a skunk know that he stinks?” the old man asked.

  “Exactly,” she said, startled into a half smile. “Or does a rose know she is fair? Snakes crawl on their bellies but think themselves kings of their world. You would have to judge my art for yourself.”

  He snorted and that led to some coughing. The sounds were awful, like someone drowning, and Juliet looked to the nurse. There was a nebulizer on the end table that might have helped. The woman was distressed but did not approach the bed. Juliet wondered why she was there. Perhaps just to tell someone when the old man died?

  Eventually the fit subsided. When von Hayek had caught his breath, he put away his stained handkerchief and leaned closer to Juliet. His cloudy eyes seemed suddenly unfocused and his breath smelled of blood.

  “They would smite me, Rosa, but it is too late.” The wheezing noise he made was probably laughter. Amusement or not, it was an unpleasant sound and not one a healthy person would make. “They can’t take what is mine. Not while I am alive.”

  Rosa? Who was she? His wife? Daughter? Ex-lover? And was he speaking about his stolen treasure? Or something else? Maybe his castle built on the temple the locals had not wanted him to have?

  His glee was unpleasant, but Juliet supposed one took comfort where one could. There weren’t too many things left for this man to look forward to. Even a bad man. Maybe especially a bad man.

  He reached out and snatched at her hand. The old man was burning up with fever. Juliet had an impulse to pull away but controlled it. This might be her only chance to get von Hayek alone and question him about the roundel.

  “For myself, I always loved the Renaissance artists,” Juliet said softly, hoping to keep their conversation from the nurse’s ears since she might speak German. The nurse was still sitting across the room in her alcove away from the roaring fire which was beginning to make Juliet sweat and itch. More than ever she longed for dry clothing. “There are no others like them. Michelangelo, da Vinci, Donatello. I think we have that in common, don’t we?”

  “Yes, yes—but they rarely worked in gold.” This seemed to bother him. “Canvas is so fragile and plaster rots. I don’t know why they bothered.”

  “But gold endures, so it is better?” she asked.

  “Yes. It is gold that lasts,” he whispered, tightening the grip on her hand.

  From the corner of her eye she saw a small door hidden by curtains on the other side of the bed open slowly. She did not look up at Henrik von Hayek as he stepped into the room, instead keeping her expression soft and her gaze on Klaus’s face so his son would not see her nervousness and annoyance at the interruption, emotions which were present in equal measure.

  “So who is your favorite then? Cellini?” She picked an artist at random, knowing it would be a bad idea to mention Donatello with Henrik standing there.

  “Yes, yes … Rosa, come closer. I can’t see you.”

  Juliet obligingly slid her chair a few inches closer. Her knees were touching the bed. She didn’t like being hemmed in with Henrik at her back and did her best to breathe shallowly.

  “It’s alright, I’m here. It’s just the fire that is making your eyes tired. It is late. You need to rest.” She was frustrated, but there was nothing more she could do with Henrik there.

  “Yes. Rest. I’ll be doing that soon enough.” After a moment the eyes shut and the grip loosened. More than ever, he looked like a mummy.

  Juliet got up carefully and von Hayek was there to lift the chair away so it didn’t scrape on the floor. She tucked the old man’s hand under the covers, feeling unexpected pity.

  Henrik jerked his head toward the door he came through and Juliet nodded. They went out together. There was a short corridor that opened into a space being used as an office. It looked unused and was without a computer. She suspected that it was Klaus von Hayek’s office and not the one Henrik used daily.

  “I see you found my father.” She couldn’t read his still face. His eyes passed over her, probably noting her change of clothing. He gestured toward a chair on the opposite side of a large desk.

  “Yes, on accident,” she said softly. “But he seemed to want company so I stayed.”

  “You speak German? I didn’t know that.”

  “After a fashion. I have dribs and drabs of several languages.”

  Von Hayek nodded absently.

  “He thought I was someone called Rosa,” Juliet said tentatively, and seeing no tightening of his features she dared to ask, “Was she your mother?”

  “Step-mother. But she was a good woman. I was fond of her.” He did sound particularly fond.

  “And she is gone now? I am sorry. My parents have also passed and I still miss them very much.” This was true, but the loss had sunk so far into the past that their deaths sometimes seemed to belong to someone else. She had lived a whole other life at the NSA since then. And she was living a third life now. Or would, if she wasn’t killed on Merton’s damned assignment.

  “What did you and my father speak of? He seemed … animated.” The eyes weren’t accusing but Juliet knew to tread carefully.

  “Well, at first he understood I was one of the artists here for the show and wanted to know if my work was good enough for him to even bother having my painting brought to his room. You owe me one,” Juliet added as his lips quirked. “I told him no.”

  “And yet, I think perhaps I should arrange this for him. He might very well like the painting as much as I do and he still sees enough to appreciate a large canvas.”

  “You are gallant,” Juliet said. “But I would have said that I am not much in your style. Or your father’s.”

  “No, you are correct. Yet I find myself drawn to the bleakness of the setting. I regret now that I did not ask you to bring more work.”

  Juliet nodded, believing him. This was a man who had a blizzard in his soul. He would respond to the fear and despair with which she had endowed the canvas painted after the murders at Tahoe. The paintings were exorcism on canvas.

  “Truly, you would not like most of what I do. Most of it is … lighter. Happier. Without water.”

  “But I think I would like to see whatever you paint of the pozas. They are also … desolate places, at least I have always found them so.”

  “Yes. Well, I’m working on it,” Juliet said, preparing to rise. “I need to catch a couple hours of sleep. Raphael and I are going back to the pozas this morning. I didn’t have enough light to finish my drawings yesterday. And don’t worry. We will return in plenty of time for the show. Raphael isn’t working so he will watch the clock.”

  Juliet got to her feet and, ever polite, so did von Hayek. It seemed that she would live to paint another day.

  “I will see that a jeep is available for you.”

  “Thank you. That will make it easier for Raphael.”

  Von Hayek inclined his head.

  Chapter 13

  The atmosphere remained uneasy with a high and a low front doing battle for airspace above their heads. Juliet hoped that any pyrotechnics would hold off until she was out of the water.

  Raphael was quiet. The filtered sun bleached out both earth and sky, making the landscape unusually bleak. The path drooped toward the poza, looking more empty and sere than the day before. There wasn’t a single whisper from the dead grass to suggest that there was any living thing in the vicinity.

  In spite of the clouds, the heat was pronounced and Juliet began to shrivel the moment she left the jeep. It was good that they had brought bottled water. The heat also made the idea of slipping into the poza almost attractive, though the stretch of glassy calm water was almost blood temperature near the surface.

  “I just can’t see tourists ever coming here,” she said, breaking
into the silence while taking off the fanny pack that held her sketchbook. She tucked away her sunglasses and squinted against the glare. Ideally she would add a sketch or two of the poza but it would all depend on how long her swim lasted. “Not with their boats and beer and bikinis.”

  “No, this wasn’t a place meant for man. It would take a certain kind of person to appreciate it.” And that someone clearly wasn’t Raphael.

  Juliet had helped herself to some nylon rope in the garage and was looping it around her waist with a care not usually given to fashion accessories. But this was her lifeline and the only way for Raphael to save her if something went wrong down there. Raphael was being equally careful with his end, choosing a tall stone to wrap the rope around. He found one that was smooth and could function as a pulley without cutting the nylon cord.

  She thought about what she was facing. Naturally occurring cenotes happened when a limestone cap gave way over an underground body of water. The cave-in would leave a usually round opening over the water that had been eating away at the limestone basin. Trees thrusting down roots in a quest for water also undermined the frail stone. They were fairly common to the region.

  “You know what else is weird about this place?” she asked suddenly. “There isn’t a food chain. I guess it’s an ecosystem of sorts. There are these little turtles and little brown fish and a couple little frogs—and the lilies, of course. But that’s all. No bigger fish, no birds nesting in the grass, no dragonflies or even horseflies. This whole place is like a terrarium where nothing can get in and nothing can get out.”

  Juliet looked into the clear water. The poza could be any depth from two to twenty feet. She hoped it was closer to two than twenty because though she was a decent swimmer, her ears did not like diving. It was also good that the sun was directly overhead or the well would have been too dark to see anything without a dive light. As it was, she wouldn’t be able to go down that far. Neither her eyes nor her ears would cooperate. She had to hope that if there was anything to see, it would be visible to the unassisted eye.

  She reminded herself that this was not the most difficult task that she had undertaken—not even the top five. But it wasn’t going to be pleasant, and her heart thudded its protest of her plans.

  “You and your intuition,” Raphael said.

  Juliet nodded unhappily. But her intuition was almost never wrong and Raphael knew it.

  “Ready?” Raphael asked, not trying to talk her out of her underwater quest though she knew he wanted to.

  Knowing it would show her nerves, she nevertheless checked the rope a second time. There was sweat along her upper lip and her pulse was knocking behind her eyes. Though she usually dowsed for human anomalies—lies—this time she was after something concrete.

  “Ready as I’ll ever be,” she muttered and then gave him a smile. “Keep an eye out for birds and tell me at once if you see any ravens flying upside down.”

  “I have a rock all ready should ravens appear,” he said. And he did. They had agreed that a small rock tossed into the water was a signal for her to come out at once.

  Juliet made a shallow dive into the poza, being careful not to touch the bottom and stir up the silt. She breast-stroked slowly to the far end of the pond where the dark circle waited. Taking a deep breath, she dove.

  The water was clear with only the trailing stems of lilies and the occasional fish to interrupt her view of the bottom. It made her eyes sting but it wasn’t impossible to endure. There was no sign of any drowned maidens, but about six feet down there was a strata of colder water. It moved sluggishly but there was a definite current pulling toward the cenote and Juliet was suddenly very glad for the rope that tied her to Raphael.

  She went up for air, waved at Raphael, and then dove again. She moved cautiously to the edge of the cenote. The current was stronger but not dangerous. Doing her best to keep out of the light, she eased over the lip of the well, confirming that it was rimmed with close fitting, hand-hewn stones.

  She should not have been surprised to confront the god of the waters since she was in his lake, but she still jerked with surprise when she found herself staring down the shaft at the face of the god of the Smoking Mirror.

  The nasty face was in good shape. The constant current of water had kept away much of the silt that should have settled on it. Some kind of green moss was growing on him like a beard and it gave the horrible face the appearance of movement. A part of her wanted to get closer, but what if the current got suddenly stronger? Maybe affected by levels of ground water or the phases of the moon? Did she want to risk being pulled down on top of the tusk-like teeth and impaled on the knife-like stinger in the god’s giant tongue?

  Juliet went up for air again and gave Raphael another thumbs-up.

  She allowed herself several slow breaths before going back down. She approached less hesitantly this time and leaned out further over the well. The water tugged at her, but not to the point where she worried about being pulled away from the coping stones that edged the opening. She could see that starting three feet down there were niches in the side of the well and that the stone alcoves were filled with statues. The current didn’t do as good a job keeping away silt from the smaller figurines and they were covered to their knees with mud.

  They were made of gold and not by the Renaissance masters of Europe.

  How long had they been there? Four hundred years? Five hundred? More? Could she really be the first person to see them in centuries?

  She wanted to collect one, to take it up where she could see it clearly and share it with Raphael, but mindful of the warning that there could be booby-traps, she restrained herself and headed for the surface.

  She stroked toward Raphael, avoiding the patches of lilies that she had taken an aversion to.

  “It’s there—lots of Aztec statues. At least I think they are Aztecan. Gold. The well is manmade too. There are niches with figurines and a giant carving of Smoking Mirror at the bottom.” She sounded breathless and tried to moderate her breathing.

  “But not the roundel?”

  “No.” She pulled herself up onto a nearby rock and flopped onto her back, letting the sun bake her. The water had not been that cold but fear had drained a lot of her energy. She closed her eyes and watched the changing patterns dancing behind her eyelids. “I wanted to bring a statue up for you to see but I thought about what you said about traps. It’s a shame that I don’t have a camera.”

  “It is good that you did not touch them.” He sounded wistful though and Juliet smiled. She began reaching for the rope at her waist. It was not comfortable to lay on for any length of time, and the way she felt it might be a while before she was ready to move. Terror had drained her and she had not found the roundel. She was running short on time and ideas, but in that moment, nothing mattered but the sun and warming her bones.

  “Juliet, you look like a contented—though damp—cat.”

  “I am very happy to be out of that dreadful pond. It’s unspeakably horrible down there. I didn’t see any bones, but with the current they might well have been sucked away. There is a definite pull down the cenote. That could explain why they aren’t using the old well at the castle. Maybe it has corpse contamination.”

  Before Raphael answered, there was a crack of distant thunder and a thick, hot wind crawled over them. Juliet rolled onto her knees.

  “Damn.” The clouds to the west were lurid and glowed like the billboard at the carnival of the damned. To the east they were a black menace, the kind of sky that gave birth to hurricanes and tornados.

  Sensing what was coming, the water lilies began closing.

  In the space between the speeding clouds a small jet dropped out of the sky. It was followed rather closely by a second small plane. The press and perhaps a buyer had arrived for the party.

  Juliet sighed. There would be no exploring that night. She was out of options and had to switch to plan B.

  “Let’s go. I have no desire to be out in a storm in a me
tal vehicle when we are the tallest objects in sight. It may also take me a while to do something with my hair.”

  “Yes, I am not terribly enchanted with the idea of being here in this chair when the lightning reaches us,” Raphael agreed. “But I think we must count this worth the effort, yes?”

  “Definitely, yes. This gives me the leverage I need to bargain with Henrik von Hayek.”

  “I do not envy you this task.”

  “No. There is nothing to envy here.”

  Chapter 14

  It had rained in an Old Testament manner all the way back, and since they hadn’t wanted to stop in the lightning storm to put up the canvas top they had both been soaked to their undergarments. But at least no one could tell that she had already been wet from swimming in the poza.

  They skipped lunch and had a visit in Raphael’s room after getting dried off. They talked about inconsequential things, and gradually Juliet began to shake off the unease that had followed her from the poza. The fire was nice and Juliet was sorry when it was time to change for the party. Raphael was more enthused about the evening, but for him this was where his work began and he was always diligent. Unlike her.

  Juliet loved her art and figured that there was probably no cure for the need to create. Except death. That tended to cure everything. But she didn’t like all the trappings that came with making it her career. That was where she and Raphael differed. He might not actually enjoy all the celebrity trappings that kept him from working when the mood was upon him, but he had found a way not to resent that side of the business and to even thrive in the limelight.

  Juliet doubted that she ever would.

  Garret called while she was dressing.

  “I think Marley misses you,” he said.

  “Not as much as I miss him. And sharing tuna fish sandwiches,” she added.

  “The food’s no good?” he asked, surprised. “I thought this was a classy operation.”

  “It’s too weird. Pureed. Like baby food with way too much spice. And lots of cold soup. I miss plain cooking.”