“Are you avoiding me?”
“Not at all! Why do you ask?” L kept a nervous eye on her uncle, knowing that as soon as he finished putting away his things he would go out drinking.
“I’ve been waiting to tell your fortune for five days. It’s urgent.”
“What are you talking about?”
“There’s something about it that’s tormenting me. I won’t be able to sleep right until you’ve had your cards read.”
Her uncle left. L almost ran after him but stopped and turned to her friend instead. “All right, I hope you’ve got some good news for me.”
After the tarot reading, L felt both elated and sick at heart. She’d sat through two hours of Isabela’s spiel about her past, present, and future. Many of the anecdotes were familiar, but others were new—and mysterious. L was forced to stop and meditate on the meaning of life and what she wanted to get out of it. The reading had opened a door, but she needed answers to some questions before she dared to pass through it.
“We all have a mission,” Isabela counseled her. “I hope you’ll find yours.”
L thanked her friend, excused herself, and rushed to the town bar where her uncle was drinking with friends. She said she needed to talk to him. They found a table apart from the others.
“Who are we?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Her uncle had finished most of a bottle of wine, and it probably wasn’t the first.
“Where do we come from? Are we really from Scotland?”
“No, L.” Her uncle met her gaze. “We named the circus for Scotland, that’s all. There’s no relation at all.”
“Then”—she thought of her friend’s tarot revelations—“I’ve lived my whole life in this circus, but there must have been something before that. I hear you mention a place sometimes.”
“That’s right. We come from a village in Navarra.”
“And why did we leave?”
“We had to.”
“But why?”
“Hmm. I guess you’re old enough now to hear the story. Put your jacket on and come with me.”
When L got outside, her uncle was there straddling his motorcycle. He upended the wine bottle to drink the dregs. His unshaven chin and leather jacket made him look ruggedly handsome and carefree.
“Let’s go.” He held out a hand and helped her climb on behind him. “The town’s less than two hours away. I’ll show you where we used to live. And I’ll tell you what happened to your mother.”
26
It was already past eight p.m., but Elías phoned Alfredo and arranged to meet with his uncle. He texted Caridad to say he’d be late getting home. He was expecting an angry response but was surprised to see a simple Okay pop up on the screen.
He sat on a bench across from the cathedral, waiting to be summoned. He felt very close to solving a mystery that had languished for many decades, but the promise of satisfaction was overshadowed by the nagging feeling that he’d missed something. His brain was so blurred by fatigue he couldn’t determine what that was. He decided to stretch his legs.
The plaza was full of life. Office workers were making their way home, city dwellers were walking their dogs, friends were sitting together over coffee, tourists were gawking at the cathedral, and unhurried passersby were savoring the city’s evening intimacy. Elías was walking behind an ambling fifty-something woman stuffed into floral tights and a short leather jacket. He shook his head disapprovingly. With all the ugliness already in the world, he hated to see such a pimple on the face of the city.
His cell phone rang, and Elías was inside the bishop’s office two minutes later. The desktop that had been nearly bare that afternoon was now covered with untidy piles of paper.
His uncle didn’t look up. “How is everything going?”
“Very well. I have some news.”
He didn’t seem to be in a hurry to hear it. “And Caridad? How is she?”
“Well, thanks.”
“Glad to hear it.” His uncle finally pushed away the papers and looked up. “One has to dispatch routine tasks in order to concentrate on more pressing matters.”
“Of course, Uncle.”
“All right, tell me. Was your visit to the archives productive?”
“Very. I’m pretty sure I know where the Lignum Crucis is.”
“Excellent! Continue!”
“The cross was stolen on Carnival Night in 1934 by a couple of co-conspirators: the chaplain, Don Ildefonso, and the senior deacon of the Fellowship of the True Cross. They evidently wanted to keep it safe. They planned to return it once the war was over.”
“But it was never returned.”
“Well, in fact, it was. As you know, the chaplain died just two years later. Leaving the deacon in possession of the cross.”
“And he held on to it?”
“Not permanently. He delivered it to the bishop in 1946, just months after Pope Pius XII sent a new fragment for the cathedral to display.”
“Aha. Yes.” His uncle’s face darkened. “And you’ve confirmed this?”
“Yes. The bishop was to return the cross to Caravaca, yet he didn’t sign the order to do so for another nine years, in 1955. I found the order filed among documents from a much later year. As if someone had hidden it. The directive was dated just before the bishop’s death. It appears that his successor decided to ignore the order and not return the cross.”
His uncle’s eyes bore a hole through him. “His successor?”
“Your predecessor.”
“And you went to disturb Don Anselmo?”
Elías was startled.
“No, I didn’t bother him, exactly. At least not more than necessary. After all, what choice did I have? I had a job to do.”
“But it’s not your job. It’s mine.” His uncle leaned forward, suddenly stern, perhaps even threatening. His words were measured, but his voice was vibrant with authority. “You investigate and you report. But I’m the one who makes the decisions. Is that clear?” Elías nodded and was about to add something, but his uncle interrupted. “Where is the cross?”
“I don’t have it in hand yet. I wanted to consult with you about the next step.”
The bishop’s face relaxed into something close to a smile. He leaned back in his desk chair. “That’s better. Tell me more.”
“Don Anselmo claims he delivered it to the nuns of the Madres Carmelitas Descalzas in Caravaca.”
“You mean to tell me Don Anselmo has known where it was all this time?”
“I believe he has.”
“Very well, my son. You’ve done a superb job. We’ll take care of the matter this very night.”
“It’s getting late,” Elías said apologetically. “I was thinking I should go home and rest.”
“Of course!” his uncle said. “Go ahead, go home to your wife; a good wife should never be left to fret. Tomorrow you can send me the bill.”
“But—”
“Is there a problem?”
“I’d been planning to go to the convent tomorrow and speak to the prioress.”
“You’ve already done more than enough for the cause. Go home.”
“I don’t mind. I can drop by tomorrow and ask her about it.”
“Elías, this very delicate matter must be handled with utmost discretion. And that means only by official representatives of the Church. Besides, those nuns are cloistered. What makes you think they’d let you in?”
Elías didn’t argue. When Uncle made a decision, there was no changing his mind.
That was true of his nephew as well.
Elías humbly agreed and wished his uncle good night. Back in the parking lot, he detached Midas’s magnetic tracking device and set it on the dashboard. He gunned his BMW and headed for the river. At the first red light, he stopped close beside another car, rolled down the window, scooped up the tracker, reached out, and pressed its magnetized base against the side of the other vehicle. The light turned green. The other car carried the track
ing beacon across the bridge toward Barrio de Carmen while Elías got on the highway toward Caravaca.
27
L was stunned as she and her uncle rode out of their ancestral village. Something in his story about her mother’s death just didn’t fit. She couldn’t put the pieces together no matter how hard she tried.
They crossed Navarra and part of La Rioja, the landscapes beginning to show the first touches of autumn color. The foliage and fields blurred past like a brilliant, dreamlike painting.
They found the circus grounds deserted upon their return. Police tape sealed off all the doors, and the vehicles had been immobilized with boots. Her uncle ripped the tape off their trailer and went in. L followed. They found a total mess. Dressers and drawers hung open, sheets were wadded on the floor, and mattresses were slashed.
“Pack your things. We have to get out of here!”
“What happened?”
“They must have found that damn woman’s body in the woods. I’m sure everyone’s in jail.”
“But they have no proof!” L protested even as she pictured the necklace she’d planted at the bar. “And even if they did, they’d just go after Doris and Damián. The rest of us had nothing to do with it.”
“They can charge us as accessories.”
“As what?”
“Get your things. The circus is done. We can never come back.”
“The circus is our life! What will we do now?”
“Never mind, we’ll get along. We were kicked out of our village once, and this is no different.”
“You see?” L shouted. “I told you Damián and Doris should pay for their crime! Now, because of your stupid loyalty, we’re all losing everything. Our whole way of life.”
“Shut your mouth, L. I told you already: we of the Scottish Circus never abandon our own. Damián and Doris were going to face our own justice—”
“Sure, in a community meeting like you promised!” L was beside herself. “And how about what happened to my mother? Why did she kill herself?”
“I already told you. Your mother went crazy with love for your father, but he betrayed her. He exploited her and destroyed everything we had. And to make it worse, she was pregnant with you. She couldn’t stand it anymore.”
“Yeah? If she was so devastated, how was she still able to plan every detail of her suicide?”
Her uncle stood there, appalled. He found a bottle of wine and took a hefty swig.
“My mother may have cut her throat, but she did it at the hospital to make sure her unborn baby would survive.”
“What are you implying?”
L pretended to sniff the air. “Something here stinks.”
“What on earth are you doing?”
“Your story reeks to high heaven. If my mother hated that man enough to kill herself, the last thing on her mind would have been making sure the child he’d created lived.”
“She was mortified that the fiend got her pregnant. But she didn’t want to hurt you. None of it was your fault.”
“I don’t buy it. There’s something you’re not telling me.”
“You have no idea how pregnancy affects a woman’s moods.”
L snorted. Then, in a flash, the image snapped into focus. “She didn’t kill herself because he betrayed her, but because all of the rest of you did.” L glared at her uncle until he could no longer hold her gaze. “You turned your backs on her, didn’t you? You blamed her for the whole thing.”
“What the hell were we supposed to do? We lost our village, our homes, everything we had. We were thrown off the land where we’d lived as long as anyone could remember. We’d been happy, and that bastard left us with nothing.”
“And instead of blaming him, you blamed her?”
“He wormed his way in because of her. He learned everything about us—our traditions, our way of life. He ferreted out our weaknesses.”
“Sounds like you let him in just as much as she did. What about all your ‘all for one, one for all’ stuff?”
“Your mother had her trial, and she was banished from the community. That was her punishment.”
“You’re worse than that monster—the lot of you.” Her green eyes burned, and her face contorted with rage. A tear ran down her cheek. “You turned your backs on my mother when she needed you most. You’re murderers, all of you!”
L grabbed her new books and some clothes and stuffed them in a bag. She went toward the door, but her uncle blocked it.
“L, this is no time to fight. They’ve destroyed the circus. We have to support each other more than ever before.”
“Get out of my way.”
“Where are you going?”
“Don’t worry about me.” Steaming with hate and anger, she glared at her uncle. He stepped back, intimidated. “You taught me how to earn a living, remember? From now on, you’ll have only yourself to take care of.”
L pushed past him, leaving the trailer and the circus behind forever.
28
The convent of the barefoot Carmelites stood in the center of Caravaca in the pedestrian zone halfway along Calle Mayor. Elías found parking and took a moment to duck into a clothing shop, where he bought a knit cap and a poncho. He locked his fedora and trench coat in the trunk of the car, put on a backpack, and covered it with the poncho. As he walked up the hill, he checked trash cans until he found a cardboard box. He smeared his face with dirt from a flower pot, flattened out the box, and squatted in a vaulted doorway. Covered by the poncho and squatting on the cardboard, he looked like a beggar. He was desperately uncomfortable, but he had a perfect view of the convent entrance. His uncle had said the matter would be settled that very night, and Elías needed to know how this story was going to turn out.
He checked his watch: nine o’clock. He huddled shivering in his poncho, fighting the urge to fall asleep. He watched the empty street and looked up at the archway that sheltered him. He pretended he was in a cave, one of many in the region where Moorish ghosts guarded their riches and Christian slaves bewailed their fate. This had been a land of mercenaries, a country where battles and epidemics laid waste to the harvests, a frontier where the kings of Castile allied with the Knights Templar and the Order of Santiago to battle the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada. Both Moors and Christians fought to defend their legacies and preserve their ways of life.
Elías had been just a child when history had come alive for him. Their mother had taken them to a children’s play at the Roman amphitheater. Elías had been spellbound by the play and the site, and from that day on, he’d been caught up in the thrilling world of the Romans, the Carthaginians, the Barbary pirates, and the rebels of the region. Before long, he’d become curious about national and then world history. That enthusiasm for the past had led him to study art history, and art appreciation had become his route to truth. He was, above all, a devotee of aesthetics. That was his choice. Chance and circumstance had impressed upon him every other aspect of his identity: faithful Catholic, son, nephew, husband, and detective.
Thirty minutes after his arrival, a black car rolled up the main street and stopped, despite the signs marking the pedestrians-only zone. Two hulking men got out. They wore black suits and matching leather overcoats.
Shit, he thought, Midas’s men. They must have followed him; he hadn’t been careful enough.
He recognized one from the confrontation in Madrid. Elías pulled his poncho up around his face and prayed they wouldn’t notice him. The two thugs knocked at the entrance to the convent.
What are they up to? How did they know I was here to investigate the sisters?
They waited a moment and then started knocking again, hammering on the heavy wooden door and holding down the buzzer. Ten minutes of this racket finally brought someone to the entrance. They went inside.
Elías, thunderstruck, realized what was happening.
We’ll take care of the matter this very night.
The men hadn’t followed him. They’d been sent—by his uncle. But how?
Could it be that his uncle and Midas were in cahoots? Had the bishop taken Elías off the case to give free rein to Midas to . . . settle matters?
Any collaboration between his uncle and Midas seemed absurd. Their roles were adversarial. One represented good, the other evil.
But now Elías recalled Midas’s words captured by the hidden microphone. That snoop is dangerous and, worse, we can’t touch him. The comment had meant nothing to Elías at the time, but now it assumed new significance. As did the other one: That bitch is smart. Why else would she hire the one detective who works for the bishop?
Was that why he was untouchable? His connection to the bishop?
The Midas gang kept turning up, first in Madrid with the painting and now in the case of the cross. It couldn’t be mere coincidence.
A man had sent them here, a supposed defender of virtue and tribune of justice, a revered individual who surely would never employ the instruments of evil in pursuit of his objectives. We’ll take care of the matter this very night.
The words now stabbed Elías’s ears and raked across his mind. He felt betrayed, and he couldn’t fathom why his uncle, a prelate of the Catholic Church, would send a couple of thugs, rather than his own nephew, to recover the True Cross.
Elías asked himself what it meant to be Catholic. He was Catholic because he’d been raised that way, of course, but what did it truly mean to be a Catholic? The retired bishop’s words echoed in his mind: I am proudly Catholic. I embrace that responsibility, and I intend to pass along that inheritance.
The legacy of the Church. An extraordinary man named Jesus had devoted himself to the principles and laws of Judaism, its rituals and celebrations, and he’d transformed and extended that faith. He’d sown the seed, and men of all walks of life had committed themselves to propagating it. Might not some have adapted, distorted, or undermined that legacy as they pursued their own goals? What remained today of the actual words of Jesus? Only the scribblings of a handful of disciples and their followers. Jesus wrote nothing down. What was left of his Gospel?
The Dark Circus Page 16