Twenty Centavos: A Mystery Set in San Miguel de Allende

by John Scherber

  Frost looked out over the garden as if trying to remember something, then he shook his head.

  “So anyway, Needleman did the schmoozing very well, but at that time a guy named Bob Ehrmann really ran the firm day to day. Tobey was just a kid when he came into it, but with strong educational credentials and very keen on the business. I used to have lunch with him now and then when I came down from Toronto. I think he mostly wanted to pick my brain; he was very interested in the underwriting side. I didn’t mind. It’s good to be looked up to; that all stops when you retire, of course. People forget you ever knew anything.”

  I said nothing because I didn’t want to stop the flow.

  “When we weren’t talking securities he would get going on antiques. He was doing a little dealing on the side even then. At one time he had a line on an eighteenth century French paneled library from a chateau near Toulouse that he thought I should install in my house in Toronto. He could bring it in knocked down in sections and all I had to do was add a room to my house that had the right dimensions. I looked into it but the cost was so fierce I ended up not doing it. Besides, the contractor said he couldn’t exactly match the brick on my house any more, which was built in the twenties, and that was worrisome. I guess in the end I couldn’t see myself as a French marquis. Didn’t have the outfits.” He grinned and took a sip of his drink. “Besides, Toronto tends to favor the English style.”

  “Did you ever buy anything from him here?”

  “I did. I came down here seven years ago and I ran into him working the crowd at one of the house tours. He had left the securities business by then. I guess antiques were his first love after all. I ended up buying a three-footed Mayan bowl from him. Beautiful little thing. It has a repair on one foot that was recent, but done by an expert. Most people couldn’t find it. I’ll show it to you on the way out. I know I can’t ever take it out of here, but I’m hoping to never get out of here myself. As you get older you lose the ability to do the Toronto winters. This place grows on you, eh?”

  I thought about winter in Minneapolis. “You didn’t buy anything else?”

  “No. I’m not really big on collecting. He had a couple of pictures he thought would work here, but they were too somber. I like something livelier on my walls. I should look at what you’re doing. I like that one Perry Watt’s got over his piano. Not sure my wife would, though. Too much skin for her taste. Not that I mind a little skin myself; I’m sure you don’t either, judging from your work.”

  “Skin is good,” I said, nodding slowly.

  “But you should talk to Perry about this. You probably saw what he has in Mayan antiques at the party. Some of it, anyway.”

  “Perry’s on my list. In fact, he was Tobey Cross’s biggest sigle client in San Miguel.” I wondered if I was volunteering too much.

  “I’m not surprised. He’d be the biggest in a lot of categories. Any guy who can hook a wife who looks like that...top off your drink?”

  “No thanks. So you were happy with the bowl?”

  “Oh yes. Bit pricey but I didn’t mind helping the guy out. He was just getting started then, and he had done me a few favors back in his Laine and Needleman days. You never bought anything from him yourself?”

  “He had great things, but they were a bit out of my league, being a painter, you know.”

  “Well, let me show you that Mayan piece.” We went back into the living room and Bill lifted a straight-sided vessel from the mantel. It was about eight inches high, glazed in black, with animal figures cut into the reddish clay beneath. He handed it to me. I compared the incised drawings with my recollection of Perry’s pieces and I could see immediately that it wasn’t by the same hand. Within the limits of what I knew, it certainly looked like the real thing and although I examined it closely, I couldn’t see any difference among the legs. Whoever had done the repair was an artist, or had been. I gave it back to Frost.

  “A lovely piece,” I said. “Anyone would be proud to have it.”

  “Well, you come by again, Paul. If I think of anything that might help I’ll call you.”

  We walked to the entry and I held out my hand. He shook it and said, “Be nice to

  see your house on the tour one of these days. Folks like that kind of thing; art studio, you know. Local color. Maybe have someone posing? Not nude, of course.”

  “Count on it,” I said. “Glad to help out.” I got in the artmobile and drove through the gate. I could not see Bill Frost as a killer, nor had he played with his buttons once and he didn’t wear any glasses to fiddle with. On the other hand, it did not escape me that he’d omitted any reference to Tobey’s legal problems at Laine and Needleman. Was he only being discreet? Or perhaps it was ancient history and not worth bringing up, particularly now that Tobey was dead. Maybe it was something else. It didn’t seem possible to me that he didn’t know, being in the business.

  As I drove down the hill I realized Cody would have asked him straight out.

  Chapter 16

  The next day Cody came down from his condo on the hill above Juarez Park and sat down next to me in our loggia while Maya rubbed his shoulders and his neck. The neck was like the trunk of a small tree, but freckled. “OK, I talked with Anne Harris,” he said with no preamble. Nice woman, late sixties.”

  “She would be the wife of the Dr. James Harris on the list?”

  “Right. His widow, now. Lives here on your street, in fact, just two blocks farther down on Quebrada. Nice house, very substantial, with a well developed garden fronted by the old style arcades. She has a lot of antiques but no old paintings. I asked about that and she said they had done that Venetian plaster thing on the walls when they restored the house, and she didn’t like to gouge it up with picture hangers. But she did have some good silver. Anyway, they moved here six years ago from Milwaukee. She ran the house tour for about two years before her husband died. He was a retired pediatrician.

  “They had always traveled in Central and South America and they wanted to retire in a place that had an active ex-pat community. They had considered Costa Rica, but it was too far from their kids in the States. Plus, they wanted a town with a colonial feeling. Guadalajara has it, but it’s too big, and they didn’t care much for the beach communities. They thought San Miguel was perfect so they settled here, but then the doctor was killed a few years ago in a car accident on the edge of México City. They were on their way to Teotihuacan. Some guy in a pickup crossed the median into them. Anne Harris was hurt, but not badly. She buried him down here in the Pantéon.”

  “I think I remember this, but we didn’t know them, did we?” I asked. Maya shook her head.

  “But I think we have been in her house,” she said. “On the tour. I remember the candle sticks. I thought they were too big for her buffet.”

  “Anyway, she’s got three of the ceramics. She loves them. To her they are the real México, the ancient culture. She’s a little disdainful of the new house construction here, that’s why she’s got an old house in el centro. You should have seen the way she held them and moved her hands over them, like she could communicate with the distant past. Almost like rubbing a magic lamp. She wouldn’t let me touch them; she just rotated each one in her hands as I looked, but they seemed like the things we saw in Dolores Hidalgo. I felt like they might be by Ramon Xoc, but then I don’t have your eye.”

  “How about the condition?”

  “They were great, just a couple of tiny chips here and there to give them credibility. She may have been a bigger force behind the collecting than her husband was, just listening to the way she talks about it. She worshiped Tobey and was eager to help. The only way she’d be a killer is if you went after her stuff, or pounded a nail in her walls.”

  “So, that’s two we can cross off.” I had already told him about my visit to Bill Frost, but mainly about his relationship to Tobey.

  “What did you think about Frost’s bowl?”

  “I don’t know. It might be real, but if it isn’t, I don�
�t think it could be by Ramon. Maybe Tobey had another forger in his source list. But if a forger had made it, would he be likely to break a leg off and flawlessly replace it? It seems like the point of doing a little damage is to suggest visible age, like some of the nicks I saw on Perry’s things and on the ones in Dolores Hidalgo. Or like that figure Marisol gave us with hairline fractures on the arm. But I looked at this bowl closely and I couldn’t see the repair. Maybe Tobey only told Frost the leg was replaced to give it a little history.”

  “But if it’s real,” said Cody, “then Ramon might have replaced the leg. It may have been a transitional piece between Ramon as excavator and Ramon as artist. It could be that replacing the leg suggested he might be capable of greater efforts.”

  “Well, in any case, Bill Frost’s got no problem with it, and he has no plans to try to take it out of the country. That leaves us with 11 to go here in town.”

  “Then I’ve got the Alwyns, Tom and Abby,” he continued. “You don’t have a cold Negra Modelo do you, Maya? A man talks this much he gets thirsty. They live up on the Malanquin on Malaga, the main street. He’s English and she came here from Winnipeg. They actually met here on the house tour 14 years ago, corresponded for a few years, then came back and got married. Very romantic. She has a rather commanding presence and I got the sense that it’s because she has the bulk of the money. Tom probably just likes to spend it.”

  “What’s their place like?”

  “Long and low and unlike a lot of the newer houses here. Aside from the facade, the style is more southwestern US than Méxican colonial, but that’s the Malanquin style. Other than some citrus and boxwood hedges, it’s not much for gardens. The outdoors space is mainly a well-manicured grassy lot that just opens out toward the fairways below the hills. He had quite a few toys around; an expensive golf cart with a lot of money in clubs in the back. A Mercedes sport coupe in the triple garage. She drives an SUV, a Lexus, I think. He showed me around. There’s an entire room off the garage full of exercise equipment. Separate his and hers bathrooms, with a lot of onyx fixtures. Gold plated faucets and towel bars.”

  “You really got the tour.”

  “I just kept oohing and aahing and he kept showing me more. Interesting gun rack in the den. Couple of high-end rifles and three Browning shotguns. No pistols in view. The man has to be comfortable with the hardware, though.”

  “How about art? Any Paul Zachers?”

  “Nothing that classy. Actually, nothing that cheap. They’ve got a Botero over the mantel. At least, I think it’s a Botero. They didn’t seem to be the type to have copies.”

  Maya’s eyebrows went up. “The kind with the nalgas gordas?” she said.

  “If you mean what I think you mean, yes. It’s got the babes with the really generous proportions. Lots of padding.”

  “And the Señora Alwyn, she has them too?”

  “Not at all. She’s trim, very tailored. I’ll bet she shoots a better game of golf than he does.”

  “Any ceramics in view?” I asked.

  “Yes, but they’re different.” His forehead wrinkled, and he shook his head. “Four pieces; all human, or maybe godlike, figures. No vessels. Tom Alwyn said they were either highland Guatemala or Jaina Island; I’m not sure where that is. Tobey told Tom he had bought them at auction from the estate of a professor in México City. I checked that against the vendor list and there’s no record of such a purchase. I can’t say whether they’re real, but they look like nothing we think is from Ramon. That’s not to say they couldn’t be his, but it’s a very different style. The surfaces are much rougher, the glazing is minimal, if it’s there at all. I couldn’t be sure because they didn’t offer to open the case and let me handle them. Some of the Ramon purchase notes in Tobey’s records included terms I don’t understand, but as far as I could see, they don’t mention figures.”

  “Jaina is the great royal burial island off the coast of Campeche in the Yucatan,” said Maya. “It was used for many generations.”

  “Were the Alwyns knowledgeable? Could they talk about the pieces at all?” I asked.

  “If they could, they didn’t. They basically pointed and said, ‘look what we have.’ I had the feeling that owning the figures gave the Alwyns some credibility, like the Mercedes and the Botero. It’s their ticket in. There was one odd thing, though. The case the pieces were in was obviously custom made. It matched their book cases and a china cabinet in the dining room as well. Same light wood, same finish.”

  “Well, you would never find the right case in any store, would you?” asked Maya.

  “No. But this case had room for five or six more pieces. It wasn’t even half full. I asked if they planned to add to their collection and all I got was ‘you never know.’ It seemed like if they went to the trouble of having the case custom made they might have had more specific plans for filling it.”

  “What are you thinking?” said Maya.

  “What if they had it full at one time and then discovered that some of them were fakes and put them away so they weren’t tortured by the sight of them? Just seeing the way the figures were arranged in the case, evenly, with lots of space between them, I felt there had been more at one time and the remainder had been rearranged. That’s all. Nothing conclusive.”

  “Or maybe they had a falling out with Tobey halfway through filling it?” I said.

  “But they mentioned no trouble with him?” asked Maya.

  “The way they talked I think he was someone who validated their good taste. I didn’t detect any dissatisfaction. No tells, in other words.”

  “What a perfect position for him,” I said. “What do the sales records say?”

  “That’s the first thing I checked. They’re inconclusive; they list three pieces, all Jaina figures.”

  “Yet there are four?” asked Maya. “Maybe Tobey’s records are faulty, but that doesn’t seem much like him.”

  “There’s one more thing. Tom said that about three or four days after Tobey was killed he got a call from a man asking whether he might want to purchase more Mayan ceramics.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said he was no longer in the market. The man thanked him and hung up.”

  “Spanish speaker?”

  “Yes. Tom couldn’t remember whether the man had a regional accent or not. He just didn’t want to get involved with any ceramics that close to Tobey’s murder. He seems like a conservative sort.”

  “So if that was Ramon Xoc, and I can’t think who else it would be, and he was moving down the list alphabetically, wouldn’t the Alwyns be his first call?” I asked.

  * * *

  The next name on my part of the list was Clare Mason. Clare had been at Perry and Barbara’s party. I had known him for a few years, well enough to know that his first name was not Clare, but Clarence, and that he preferred not to use it. The gender ambiguity of calling himself Clare didn’t bother him, and people who knew him quickly ceased to think about it.

  The Masons were from Kansas City and had begun by coming to San Miguel so that Sally Mason could take a painting class at the Bellas Artes, one of the two big art schools. She could have taken the same courses in Kansas City, but she preferred the atmosphere of San Miguel. While she attended classes Clare would take the tours around the countryside provided by the ex-pats at the Instituto Allende. The town hooked them like it had so many others and they came down every year after that.

  Clare had owned an insurance agency and when it became clear that his only child preferred playing guitar in a rock band to selling term life, Clare sold out and they retired to San Miguel. At more than six foot one, he was taller than I am, with a spare, lean look and a bushy mustache that matched his salt and pepper hair, still thick and parted in the middle. He had the easy manner of one who has greeted a million strangers for business purposes. His handshake was always quick and vigorous, firm enough but not crippling.

  The Masons had a large, unusual house in the Atascadero neighborhood, an
area that continued along the ridge south of Los Balcones. Atascadero is an area both larger and more diverse than Los Balcones, edging farther down the slope toward centro and stretching onto the plateau behind as well. There are people of substantial means there who are perhaps a touch more bohemian in style than is quite right for Los Balcones, and there are also people who neither covet, nor could afford that area.

  The Masons’ house was not one of the newer ones and had the feeling of two houses joined at some point with less than complete success, an architectural fusion dictated by the need for more space, with coherence and planning coming in a distant second. The surfaces, interior and exterior, had all been well integrated, even expensively so, but the flow of things was wrong and there were odd duplications. The place was quirky enough to charm people who fancied their taste was a little different from most. It had two kitchens; one was explained as being more convenient to the garden, where the Masons ate many of their meals. Floor levels often changed from room to room. You walked three steps up to the dining room, and then crossed a stairway landing and went down two steps to the living room. The garden itself was L-shaped, and in the far corner, tucked into the wall, was a free standing art studio with arches on two sides and a red tile roof with two skylights. This had been claimed by Sally. Unlike most San Miguel gardens, this one was entirely planted with grass. Maybe they played croquet, or bocce ball.

  Also rare in San Miguel was the guest parking spot I found just outside the wall when I drove up in the artmobile. They both met me at the door. Clare wore a loose flower print shirt with shorts and sandals. Sally had on a smock with paint stains on the front. Establishing what she thought might be our common interest, I suppose. I had never owned a smock. That was for movies and wannabes.