Twenty Centavos: A Mystery Set in San Miguel de Allende

by John Scherber

  In 1993 I was one of those Americans who filtered down to San Miguel, although the GI Bill was history at that point. After I finished my degree at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio I came for a few more art classes in an exotic setting and never got beyond it. Not that I tried very hard. At first I rented a bedroom with a studio and tiny kitchen and that was about as much as I could afford. When my grandmother died in 1996 she left me the money to buy this house on Quebrada and put a new roof on it. The rest of the renovation I’ve done piece by piece, room by room, when I’ve had the money. One of the first things I did after the roof was tight was convert the largest bedroom for my studio, adding first the north glass and then the south shortly after, when I discovered that in June the sun was far enough to the north to shine directly in. The quality of that light (every painter says this), and also the quality of the people, and the lush colors of the culture have kept me here. At 35 it seems to me like the best place in the world to live.

  Less obvious, although I was aware of it, was the way it had gotten under my skin. Whatever I had been driven to do when I came down here had been driven away. I still worked hard, but without ever feeling I had to. I found time to hang out in the Jardin, to watch the sunsets with Maya and to sit and talk. After six or seven years I could no longer remember what I had been, and I didn’t care. I didn’t quite feel like Gauguin in Tahiti, but I understood why he stayed.

  Eventually I made friends with Ramon Rivera, who owned Galeria Uno on Calle Jésus, and began to show there. It was toward the middle of 1997 that I had my first successful one man show in San Miguel and from the proceeds I acquired a big round table with six chairs to put out in my loggia, the outdoor covered living room facing the garden.

  One night, at a gallery opening just before Christmas of 1999, I saw Maya. I didn’t call her Maya yet; it turned out her name was Maria Sanchez. I was not unaware of the Méxican girls around me at that point, but my Spanish was not yet fluent and how to make contact was not always clear.

  There are many art galleries and thus many opening nights in San Miguel, and I don’t go to all of them. Many of the modern things don’t appeal to me; I had embraced the return to representational painting after it began in the eighties. But on this particular Friday evening was a collage show and I am clueless about collage, I mean conceptually. I do know about clear acrylic medium and things. This show was a knockout. Who knew collage could be a powerhouse of color, shadow and texture? Many of these had a depth of four or five inches, so the shadows changed every time you shifted your viewpoint. They were like a combination of painting and sculpture. They made me think hard about what I was doing, which is what I look for in any show.

  I was mumbling to myself when someone touched my elbow.

  “Are you all right?” I turned and looked into the face of a Méxican girl with a wide mouth that seemed ready to laugh, and large black eyes. When she smiled her upper lip dipped slightly in the center. Her thick glossy hair touched her shoulders, and her teeth were perfect. Her English was close to perfect. “You have a passion,” she said. I looked for a moment at her fine skin and the shape of her eyebrows, and the line of her jaw and how it related to her neck.

  “Yes, well I never have really seen collage like this. I’m practically speechless.” I had even tried this in Spanish.

  She was wearing snug jeans and a teal blue sleeveless top. On her left wrist was one of those micro-beaded Huichol bracelets that you could find in a few shops in San Miguel. Instantly she made me think about doing figure painting again. I missed it.

  “Are you an artist?” she asked.

  “Yes, are you?”

  “I’m a historian. Do you know that right next door to this gallery was the home of Don Ignacio Allende? I came here to write a book about his youth.” Allende was the local hero of the 1810 War of Independence.

  “You have a passion too.”

  “I do. I can almost feel his presence here. What do you paint?”

  “I’ll paint anything, I guess. Right now I’m doing still lifes, mostly ordinary things. I just finished a stack of tennis hats. I also do some figure work, the occasional portrait, now and then some landscapes.”

  “Do you ever paint girls?”

  “I’ve painted a few girls.”

  “How many?”

  “Lots, actually. Not too many lately,” I said.

  “Are you very good?”

  “Very. I could capture you, if you’re willing to pose.”

  There was something irreverent about her, and that’s how it began. Much later she confessed to me that she had picked me up at the gallery because she thought I had an erotic response to the collages. Although she had a master’s degree in history from the Autonomous University of México in México City and had never taken an art class, she turned out to have a good eye and quickly became an eager critic of my work.

  We began to see each other often and she showed me places near San Miguel that were good for landscape painting. I did a small oil of the reservoir above town and gave it to her as a birthday gift. She was touched although she later gave me back the frame. She had replaced it with something much more elegant, and I had to admit it did more for the picture than my frame had. She would disappear from my life for days at a time, immersed in her book, I assumed. I connected with this because I got involved in painting the same way. As time passed I didn’t try to deny to myself that I was falling in love with her.

  It wasn’t long before she began to pose for me and I had to instruct her in the protocol of the painter’s model. Instead of just dropping her clothes in front of the easel I asked her to change behind the screen in my studio, put on a robe, and then come out and take the robe off when we set up the pose.

  “Why is this?” she asked with a startled look.

  “Because for you to undress in front of the painter is a sexual invitation. The model tries to avoid that.”

  “I thought you liked to sleep with me?” She placed her hands on her hips.

  “Of course I do. But painting is painting and our love life is something else. That’s all. Besides, I don’t want to get paint on you.”

  After that she changed behind the screen.

  She moved in with me in September of 2000. I felt like a college kid with his first serious girlfriend when she pulled up in her Volkswagen beetle with all of her things. She took her laptop computer out first and then gave me a big hug and a kiss and said, “I am here now.” And she has been ever since.

  * * *

  Our lives settled into a sweet spot that lasted more than four years. Sitting across from her at the Santa Monica that night I could see no reason why it should ever change. We had finished dinner and she took my hand, leaning forward across the table.

  “What are you thinking about?” she said.

  “You, art, life, the usual. What are you thinking about?”

  “You. What’s the best thing about you?” she asked. The waiter took away our plates and brought coffee. Maya was studying my face as if she already knew the answer. I wasn’t sure I did. She liked to do these little checks now and then, as if to see whether we were still on track. I thought if we weren’t we’d know it without checking, but I always went along.

  “I’m a good painter. It’s taken me a while, but I know I’m there. If I’m not any good at anything else I’ll always have that.”

  “I know that.”

  I wondered what more she was looking for. As a painter I deal in surfaces, that’s my comfort zone. Even in a portrait, where the viewer may think there’s depth and character in the subject, it’s most likely only the spaces within the mosaic of color she’s seeing. It’s never anything more than illusion. I sensed Maya was looking for more.

  “Well, I’m a fraction over six feet tall, a hundred and seventy-five pounds, thirty-five years old, and I still have all my hair. Even some of the curl.”

  “Besides that.”

  “I still take chances. I’m not afraid to fall on my face. You l
ose that, and you start to repeat yourself.”

  “Did you take a chance on me?”

  “That was about the smallest chance I ever took.”

  I still wasn’t sure where she was going, but I’ll always recall the look on her face as I said this, because at that moment her cell phone rang and that statement became the final words of the first part of our lives.

  Immediately I could hear the caller’s high pitched Spanish, mingled with wailing that seemed tiny and far away because of the phone. “Que paso, que paso?” Maya was sobbing. She covered the receiver. “It’s Marisol Cross. Tobey was murdered this afternoon!” I signaled for the check as she resumed her rapid Spanish.

  Marisol was an old friend of Maya’s who had married an American named Tobey Cross, an elegant man in his forties who had a gallery specializing in colonial and pre-Columbian antiques. It was a by appointment-only kind of business, set up in the great room of their home. I had seen him a few times at gatherings in Los Balcones and Atascadero, expatriate neighborhoods up on the hill at the eastern end of San Miguel.

  After a few moments Maya hung up. Tears ran down her cheeks leaving tracks edged with her eye makeup. She pulled out a tissue.

  “The police just left. Someone shot Tobey in the head at the gallery. Marisol found him when she returned from the market about five o’clock. When the police put him on the stretcher to take him away a coin fell out of his mouth. Twenty centavos.”

  * * *

  I don’t sprint well after dinner and a margarita or two, but we headed across the corner of Juarez Park to Diezmo Viejo, upsetting a flock of egrets that had just settled down above us in the trees. Then up Tenerias and as we approached Umaran we started to slow. She wasn’t breathing hard but I was. Why were we in such a hurry? I wasn’t unsympathetic to Tobey Cross but it seemed like he’d still be dead when we got there.

  “Twenty centavos? In his mouth?” I wheezed, thinking of the phone call. It immediately seemed like a stupid thing to say. Like it should have been ten, or fifty.

  “Marisol wants you to look around. You know, to see if you can tell what happened.”

  “Why me? I mean, I’m happy to go over there with you, but what would I be able to do?”

  “Because you are a painter she says you will see things differently than the police. Maybe in the detail, I don’t know. Find a notebook. Write things down. If nothing else, maybe it will make Marisol feel better. Anyway, nobody trusts the police here, you know that.”

  I was about to protest that, having no experience in such things, I was not likely to see anything the police had not seen, trustworthy or not, but everything seemed to be decided.

  Twenty centavos is a change coin, one of no significance. One that doesn’t appear much in circulation anymore. Less than two American cents, using it in the murder might suggest the victim was of no significance either, a cypher. As time passed would the murder of Tobey Cross still evoke the usual comments reserved for people who did matter, such as “deeply shocked, saddened, untimely loss,” and so on? Would the writer for Atencion, our local bi-lingual newspaper, refer to Tobey’s roots in the expatriate community, his charitable contributions, his support for the arts? Of course there would be a brief profile of Marisol, his widow, and of his antiques business, Galeria Cruz. Maybe the writer would speculate about whether anyone could take his place. Probably he wouldn’t make any reference to Tobey’s personal warmth.

  The truth was that while Tobey Cross was not overtly enigmatic or veiled, neither was he a person most people knew well, even his customers. His usual manner expressed an elegant reserve and I didn’t know anyone who was close to him, other than Marisol. He usually kept his suit jacket buttoned, and the few times I saw him it was hard to imagine him being anything but unruffled. I wondered if his killer had ruffled him at the end.

  What Maya and I didn’t anticipate on that night of January 21 was how everything would change for us, the way our life would be subtly divided into before and after this event, and how it would force us into roles which were sometimes neither comfortable or even appropriate.

  Chapter 2

  Winter evenings in San Miguel are rarely threatening; it felt like the temperature was still in the mid fifties as we hurried over the rough stone sidewalks toward Umaran. Traffic was light and as usual, the facades of the houses gave little away. In the historic center of this town it is forbidden to alter anything visible from the street, and each house front is nothing but a long wall joining its neighbors in a mute, anonymous procession. The colors change from one to the next, the intent does not. The facades may have several grilled and shuttered windows or none at all; some have a wider door to admit a car or a carriage, dating from before the design controls, some have only an entrance for the occupants. The state of repair of these walls tells you nothing. Sometimes a deteriorating front masks magnificence inside, and I’ve always thought the owners take a perverse pleasure in surprising people when they walk through the door. These houses unfold into their gardens. All is inward looking, private. Easily private enough to conceal a murder.

  At the corner of Umaran and Quebrada we turned and stopped at Marisol’s door. The facade was wider than most and painted a deep ultramarine that would have raised eyebrows in the States, but here it read as elegant and cool, like Tobey. A light gray marble tablet beside the entry announced Galeria Cruz in gilt letters, lit from above by a crisp modern fixture recessed into the stucco. Maya rang the bell. I heard nothing from inside and then the door swung open and Maya and Marisol were wrapped in each other’s arms. Twelve years I had lived in Mexico and their Spanish was still too rapid for me. I waited for them to separate, not comfortable with what my role was going to be. After a few moments Marisol’s wailing eased and she took my hand.

  “Thank you for coming to help me. I hope you can.”

  “I’m sorry about Tobey,” I said. “I’ll do anything I can.”

  We stood in a small reception room opening into a deep garden. In the center was a cluster of eight ficus trees trimmed into cylinders. It had a formality that ours did not. Across the garden from the entry was the loggia, a long outdoor room also open toward the foliage from the opposite side and roofed in tile. At one end of it, past a group of wicker sofas and chairs, stood a massive cantera stone fireplace. Crossing the garden, we went through one of the three pairs of French doors into the great room beyond. Frescoed angels blew trumpets in greeting on the double-height vaulted ceiling. At the second floor level, openings let in light from what must have been bedrooms. I had never been up there. On our left an archway with recessed doors led to the dining room. Opposite a tall fireplace projected into the room. Behind it, stairs descended to the lower level at the right and upstairs on the left.

  Marisol led us to the middle of the room, her footsteps soft and soundless on the tile. “When I found Tobey I still had the broccoli and lettuce in my arms.” Details like this would be engraved on her recollection of the murder scene for the rest of her life. Her chest began to heave again and Maya put her arms around her.

  “Marisol,” I began, after a while, “If I’m to help I’d like to ask you some questions, things about Tobey’s business, his friends, anything that will help me understand this. But wouldn’t it be easier for you if we did this tomorrow?”

  “No, please. Now is good. I already talked to the police and it’s better if I can try to help you now. I don’t want to be alone yet.”

  “Show me, then, where he was when you came in.”

  She walked to the main fireplace. Like the one on the loggia, it was ornately carved cantera stone in the manner of the seventeenth century. With courses of columns and pilasters, it reached almost to the two story ceiling.

  Marisol stood at the edge of the hearth. “It was just here. He was partly turned with one leg over the other and one arm was stretched out ahead, so. The police said he was shot one time.” She turned away.

  The stone had been cleaned of blood and was still damp in places.
/>
  “Where was the coin?” Maya asked.

  I wondered why this mattered, but she was searching for a way to approach this too.

  “Just here.” Marisol pointed. “His face was toward the fireplace. The police took many pictures and then they set next to him the stretcher and turned him onto it, on his back. His mouth was open and the coin came out. It rolled on the floor.”

  This was evidence of a sort, but I was trying not to picture it. “I’d like to look through his desk,” I said. I was supposed to be seeing what the police had missed but I was mainly seeing what a stretch this was going to be if I was any help at all.

  “Please. Whatever you need to do.” I felt her eyes on my back as I turned toward the desk. She was wearing a midnight blue jogging suit that looked like velour, although I knew from Maya that she never exercised. The top was unzipped to reveal a pink tee shirt that said, I (heart) Charleston. Well, we all hearted Charleston, I thought, and while the pink and the midnight blue were OK with each other, the pink did not suit her skin tones. Many Mexican women and girls wore pink as if it always worked. I realized my mind was wandering.

  There was a quality of thorough exhaustion about her. Drooping at the shoulders, her arms hung limp at her sides as if waiting for instructions that didn’t come. I thought of her as the same height as Maya, but now she seemed shorter. She had always been attractive, but today it was starting to blur. I realized I was looking at her as a painter looks at his subject, and a wave of sympathy came over me. Cut her some slack, I said to myself, she didn’t dress this morning to lose her husband, she thought she was only going to the vegetable market.