Twenty Centavos: A Mystery Set in San Miguel de Allende

by John Scherber

  She had found eight places to try but turned up no lock that fit the key either and was headed back to our starting point. We stopped for a coffee at Las Terrazas, a small restaurant next to the cathedral, overlooking the Jardin, our main plaza. It looked like another perfect day for everyone but us. Tourists sat in the Jardin and watched the balloon and ice cream sellers. A few were reading Atencion. I was shaking my head as I stirred my coffee.

  “Nothing,” I said. “More nothing.”

  “I had one thing. A man came to the door at one house. I said I’d been given the key by a man I met in a bar. He said he had a bar at the edge of his garden if I wanted to come in for a drink.” She smiled without irony.

  “Did you?”

  “No. I said I was high on life. Then I called again to Marisol. She is going to her mother’s in Guanajuato tomorrow. She needs to be away from the house for a while.”

  “I can see that.”

  “I thought we could visit her before she left. Give her a report on the key search.”

  “Not much to tell,” I said.

  “I think she’d like to see us, to make her feel like something is happening.”

  “OK.”

  “You know, there’s Perry Watt’s party tomorrow night. Are you going to be able to forget about this and have a good time?” Maya was always our social director, even in crisis.

  I thought for a while. “Could it be a locker at the bus station? You know, locker #132? Or are we just blowing smoke here?”

  “You would be seeing Barbara Watt again,” she said. “She always gets you going.”

  Chapter 3

  Perry and Barbara Watt’s house suggested an attraction from a colonial México theme park. The low, dense foliage around the horseshoe drive within the walls masked flood lights that illuminated the facade, throwing the architectural details into deep relief. It might have been the mansion of an eighteenth century silver baron. When the Spaniards settled central México in the mid-sixteenth century San Miguel had grown and prospered as a transfer point for silver from the Guanajuato region, especially the great Valenciana mine.

  From the look the house might also have been a hacienda, except that nothing agricultural had ever happened there. It was less than ten years old. The neighborhood, Los Balcones, was a gringo enclave that ran for half a mile along the northeastern rim of San Miguel and crept slightly down the hill. Similar, but less grand mansions stretched along the crest as well. If the silver barons ever returned, the local builders would be ready for them, better than ever. The old skills don’t die here.

  Maya and I were dwarfed as we walked through a pair of wrought iron gates set in the ten foot high wall. At the house the door must have been ten feet high as well, crafted of thick mahogany planks and studded with more wrought iron. Four scrolling hinges snaked across almost the entire width of it. Going through it felt like entering an important place. The house was two stories high, done in bull’s blood red stucco, and the sills and casings of the windows were all carved from cantera limestone. Two huge wrought iron lanterns flanked the door, and on the left were large bow windows on both floors. Just below the parapet, iron gutters with gargoyle heads projected three or four feet from the house. They reminded me of those on Notre Dame Cathedral, but the Watts probably worshipped something else here, possibly money. Everyone needs religion. Within the main floor window on the left we could see the crowd milling around a grand piano as we rang the bell.

  There is a large group of artists in San Miguel that I don’t hang out with much, but this was not my normal social set either. Maya was a social director with a business head and we had done some shmoozing with this group before. She doesn’t mind working the crowd if there’s a sale to be made. With a little urging, I don’t either, although I don’t toot my own horn as readily as she toots it for me.

  At that moment Barbara Watt opened the door and stepped out.

  “Oh I’m so glad you could come!” She pecked us both on each cheek and took my hand and pulled me in. I hadn’t seen her in some time but I hadn’t forgotten how stunning she was. She was a genuine blonde with milk and rose petal skin, and lips that seemed about to whisper enticing secrets in your ear. Or mine. She was wearing a sheer periwinkle blue dress that clung to her in the right places as she moved with an animal elegance. Barbara was about 27 or 28 to Perry’s 45. It was his second marriage, and although I’d never met his first wife, this time he appeared to have gotten it right.

  “Let me get you a drink. What would you like? Perry’s making mojitos tonight--you heard he snuck off to Cuba again, didn’t you? It’s his new thing. He tried to meet Castro but I guess he’s too old now. Not Perry, Fidel. But he did bring back about a dozen boxes of Monte Cristos too. I know you like those, Paul.” Her fingers touched my cheek as if accidentally.

  “We’ll have mojitos then, right Paul?” said Maya. She was nodding too vigorously which told me she was not fully at ease. Barbara led us toward the bar. Her dress was open to the waist behind and her back was smooth and firm and all one color.

  I spotted Perry behind the bar in the great room. It seemed odd to me that he would be mixing drinks when he had staff, but maybe it was some new expertise for him. Maybe he didn’t trust a Méxican bar tender to mix a Cuban drink. He was immaculate, as usual, with an even tan and smooth, brushed-back hair just going gray at his ears. His jaw was firm and authoritative, and his motions quick and exact. You felt he rarely dropped anything; once something was in his grip it stayed there until he chose to let go of it.

  “Hey Paul, Maya, how about a drink? You’ve got to try these mojitos. Simple syrup, fresh mint, a little club soda, and I brought back the damnedest Cuban rum. Got it up in Santiago, in Oriente Province. Same family been making it since 1820. Fidel drinks it himself.” Standing behind the marble-topped bar Perry began crushing fresh mint into two glasses. Then abruptly he stopped.“Oh my God! Of course you’ve heard about Tobey Cross. You were friends, right? I’m so sorry.”

  He stood with a glass in one hand and his head cocked to the left. Although he was below average height he was dressed in an old fashioned velvet jacket that defied fashion, that said fashion was a concern of people with less money than he had, and had the kind of strong presence that made you see him at the head of a boardroom table. People probably jumped out of his way when he entered a room. “The whole community is just reeling,” he said. I was looking over the crowd. No one appeared to be reeling. Maybe later in the evening, after a few more of his mojitos. At the side of the piano a large woman I had never seen before began to laugh in a voice that must have been audible outside. I wondered who she knew to get in. This was clearly the best ticket in San Miguel that night. Two couples were dancing nearby.

  “I didn’t know Tobey very well, but Marisol and Maya are good friends,” I said. Maya’s eyes were starting to well up. “We spent some time with her today before she went to her mother’s place in Guanajuato.” Perry nodded sympathetically.

  “What are the police saying? Was it a burglary? I know he had some great things there.”

  “It’s hard to tell. Marisol said she never knew much about his antiques business. She didn’t know what he had, or what was valuable and what wasn’t, or even if anything is missing, but nothing was obviously gone. She asked me to take a look at it because she’s not sure how much the police will do, since Tobey was a gringo, and people here don’t trust the police much anyway. She thinks I might see things they might not; you know, being a painter.”

  Perry looked at me speculatively. “Well, I’m sure that’s true.”

  “Oh, it is true in a way, but maybe not the right way. What I usually see are the colors in shadows, the levels of contrast, the relationship of curves to each other.” My eyes came to rest on Barbara, who had a lot of curvy relationships on view. “It’s not so clear that I can see a murderer five hours after he’s left the crime scene, or see a reason for the crime. Tobey had his inventory arranged in that great room just as a colle
ctor would have it. If there were two or even three pieces missing I’m not sure it would be obvious. Plus, Marisol says he never kept any money in the house, not real money anyway.”

  Perry nodded. He must have known what was meant by real money. Probably not the same thing I meant. Three zeros on a check were a lot for me. I thought about the 20 centavo coin in Tobey’s mouth, but I didn’t bring it up. Although I couldn’t get the murder out of my mind, this was a party and I didn’t want to be on duty. I felt like I’d already had too much duty in the last couple of days.

  Perry was still staring off somewhere when he discovered the unfinished drink in his hand. He turned around and pulled a cut glass pitcher out of the Sub-Zero refrigerator. I didn’t know you could get Sub-Zero in México. Most of the ones I had seen here were made by Mabe, which I always pronounced “maybe.” Sometimes they worked, other times they didn’t. It was usually when you had just bought fresh meat that they didn’t. Méxicans thought of this as fate. I turned to look at Maya but she was being led off toward the piano by a slender sixtyish guy I knew from the English Library crowd. This was the group that ran a tour of San Miguel houses every Sunday. The tourists flocked to it at $15 a head. His name was Walt Teller. I took the drinks from Perry and threaded my way through the crowd.

  Maya had recovered her composure now and wore that look of slightly formal cheerfulness she used with the expatriates she didn’t know. She looked better than ever tonight in a black broomstick skirt she had gotten on our last trip to Santa Fe and the finely knit sleeveless turquoise top that set off her form and coloring. Simple things worked best for her. On her right wrist was one of her Huichol bracelets, a rainbow of colors done in superfine glass beads. I think it was the same one she was wearing when we met. A necklace of alternating beads and sea shells in old Méxican silver graced her neck. I passed her the drink. The young piano player was working his way through the Thelonius Monk song book.

  “It’s you, isn’t it! I know it’s you,” Walt Teller was saying to Maya as he pointed to a picture on the wall behind the piano player.

  It was an early full length nude of Maya from about four years ago, not long after we got together. Her hair was shorter then and had some curl, but not a lot, and came just over her shoulders on both sides. She stood with one hip thrust out and both hands meeting over her pubic hair, one over the other. There was a saucy glint in her eye that seemed to say, “Guess what I’ve got for you?” It didn’t require much speculation.

  This picture is a favorite of mine, although I think now I might use less chrome oxide green in the shadows that fell directly on her skin, but that’s the way I painted then. You can’t go back. A picture either stands up over time or it doesn’t. In this case it’s still fun to look at. I wish that were true of all of them. In our house there were pictures I’d kept for years, and the test for each of them is always the same--did you continue to look at it when you walked past? If one started to become invisible, I sent it off for Galeria Uno to sell and hung something else in its place.

  “Of course Perry wishes she had her hands behind her back.” Barbara’s voice came from behind us. I felt her hand on my shoulder. Maya was beaming now, even to Walt. Modesty was never her thing anyway, that’s why she’s such a great model.

  Walt led Maya off to introduce her to someone else and Barbara took my hand. Her palm was warm and dry and her thumb probed the pulse in my wrist, which immediately picked up speed. Her left hand hung at her side, weighed down by the emerald cut diamond on her ring finger.

  “Perry is really concerned about Tobey’s murder. He almost canceled the party, but then I persuaded him it might raise people’s spirits, so he went ahead with it.”

  “He’s a civic-minded guy; he wants to support morale in the gringo community.” I said. I was listening to something in her voice. She was from the deep South, and from the way she spoke, well educated. Even as she held my hand she touched my other arm, then my shoulder. She looked earnestly into my eyes as if I was about to say something important that she couldn’t bear to miss. I couldn’t think what it would be.

  “Alabama,” I said.

  Stopped in mid-stride, she smiled as she paused just an instant, and said, “Montgomery.”

  We passed Maya with a different English Library ex-pat. “So tell me about your book,” he was saying. We paused close enough to listen.

  “Well,” she began. “It’s about Ignacio Allende, one of the revolutionaries of 1810, but it hasn’t been published yet.”

  “Mel,” he said, “It’s Mel.”

  She nodded.

  “OK, Mel, It’s about his early years. Not much has been written about his life before 1810. It took a lot of research and more time than I wanted, but there’s a wonderful archive in Dolores Hidalgo.”

  “Didn’t he end up with his head on the corner of the granary in Guanajuato?”

  “Yes, with three others. It was a short life, but very important to México. Now I’m doing some research for an old professor of mine. He’s working on a book about the role of the Indian groups during the War of Independence.”

  “Are you still posing for Paul?” Mel was already focused back on the picture. He probably didn’t read much history.

  “Oh, yes. He’s doing a whole series set in the Yucatan. He’s having a show in Mérida in June. You’ll have to come.”

  “I’d love to.”

  When Barbara excused herself to greet some newcomers Bob and Sarah O’Brien drifted over toward me. I nodded to them. “Still spending most of your time in México City?”

  “I am,” he said. “But Sarah’s here most of the time.”

  Bob was about five-ten, a couple inches shorter than I am, with a red face and iron gray hair. “How’s the merger going?” I asked.

  He worked for the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad and had spent the last couple of years mainly in México City overseeing a merger with a Méxican line.

  “It’s OK. It’s taken a little more time than I had hoped, but what doesn’t in México? Lot’s of paper work. Greasing the rails here and there.” He waited to see if I’d gotten the pun.

  “How’s your Spanish coming?” I asked.

  “Not coming at all, really. They all speak English anyway. You don’t speak English, you can’t do business here. Right, Sarah?”

  “I guess, Bob.” Sarah had a lot of gray blonde hair that fanned out toward her neck as if each strand was demanding its own space.

  “Still liking México City?” I asked.

  “Love it,” said Bob. “I haven’t been kidnapped or mugged even once. We just bought a house there. I can’t make up my mind whether it’s better there or here. Might as well have two houses. No reason to decide.”

  “Maybe if you factor in the air quality and the traffic,” I suggested.

  Sarah was scanning the crowd, as if looking for someone more important than me to talk to. “I’d like another one of these,” she said to Bob, holding out her glass toward him. Crushed mint leaves clung to the bottom.

  Bob went off toward the bar where Perry was still mixing drinks and I crossed the room in the direction of the terrace. Outside there was a lower level, as well as the upper terrace to the Watts’ house. I went down the broad stairs to a garden full of low palms, none high enough to block the view from the terrace, mixed with bromeliads and split leaf philodendrons. I thought I might be able to use it as background for one of Maya’s Yucatan series. Past the low wall at the edge of the steep slope was the tile roof of the house below, about 20 feet down. Along the side wall was a swimming pool with a pool house that had the same detailing as the main house. Inside the pool house hung a still life of mine, showing a precarious pile of colored canvas tennis hats. I had titled it Stacked.

  Three or four people bobbed in the pool. The surface captured curls of light from the house and the garden lights as the swimmers moved. The sudden violence of Tobey’s death had kept me from getting into a party mood. Besides, Maya and I were not part of th
ese people. We weren’t golf club people and we weren’t gated community people. If the arts community hadn’t been valued in San Miguel more than in most places, we wouldn’t have been invited. We lived with our Méxican neighbors, and they lived with us. We weren’t business movers and shakers, or merger managers. Another mojito and I might be able to figure out which people we were. Painters never quite fit in with this crowd, and Méxican girlfriends were rare among the expatriates. I couldn’t think of a single one besides Maya.

  “Paul, Paul, there you are. Come on up. I want to show you some new things.”

  Perry was standing backlit with three others on the second floor terrace above the garden. I couldn’t see his face but I knew which one he was because he was the shortest of the four. Short in stature, big in business, I thought. Barbara was about five-eight, model material, but Perry was two inches shorter. I wondered how they met.

  Coming up the terrace steps, I passed through the great room and went to the second floor. I heard Perry saying in his soft Houston voice, “So I just have a few more recent things I wanted to show you. Come on in, Paul. You’re going to like this.” Walt was next to me, with two others. One was Bill Frost, who had been an investment banker in Canada, and next to him was a man named Clare Mason. I had met him before and remembered he was from Kansas City.

  “Well,” Perry was going on, “you know how it was in the later days of the Roman empire.” Like we all did. Like we thought about it at night when we couldn’t sleep. “Everybody wanted to get their money out. These coins are aureii from Yugoslavia, or what was until recently called Yugoslavia. Anyway, the Romans had a major town around Split on the Adriatic Coast. These are from a big hoard there. They were excavated just inside the wall of a country estate.”

  Perry pulled a tray from a rosewood cabinet. Three dozen gold coins on a green crushed velvet background bore the effigies of the bullnecked, thick-jawed military emperors of the later empire. They were perfect models for Mussolini macho. The condition was unbelievable for coins 1800 years old, but then they hadn’t circulated much as they waited for their owners to return and dig them up. Perry caught my eye.