Twenty Centavos: A Mystery Set in San Miguel de Allende

by John Scherber

  “Perry said it was a business disagreement. I don’t know what.” I was protecting Marisol now. I didn’t want all the gringo collectors in town descending on her for a refund. From what I had heard, they were generally happy with their purchases. I tried briefly to analyze the ethics of this, but it was not the time; Rodriguez was already moving on.

  “In a different room now we are speaking with Maria Sanchez. Do you know why she would kill Señor Watt?”

  “Of course. As I said, Watt had just shot Cody Williams and he was about to kill me. She had no choice. When I was dead, he would have killed Señora Cross next.”

  “But he did not know then that Señorita Sanchez was there?”

  “No, I told him I was alone.”

  “He did not see her approach?”

  “No. He had just fired the gun at Señor Williams, who pulled down the lamp table as he fell, and the sound was still ringing in the air. Maria Sanchez ran from the staircase nearby. She had been in the house when Perry Watt came in.”

  “She was there already when you came?

  “Yes, assisting Señora Cross with the packing of the clothes.”

  “And she hit him with a valuable antique?”

  “Yes, she must have pulled it earlier from one of the display niches in the great room.” I still had the coins in my pocket. If I had had them from all the victims it would almost be bus fare home. Assuming I was going home.

  “When Sénor Williams is finished with the doctors we will speak with him too. I hope we find that you all tell the same story.”

  “I am sure you will. I think you will also find that testing Perry Watt’s hand will show he fired the gun. Señor Williams had a gun with him, but as you know, or soon will, it was not fired. As for the gun that Perry Watt used, you may be able to trace it. It wouldn’t surprise me if there was more ammunition in his house. Maya Sanchez and Cody Williams both heard what he said. That’s three witnesses.”

  “Why would he want to kill you?” he asked for the third time.

  “As I said, I had been talking to others who had business with Tobey Cross. I was trying to find one who had had a disagreement with him, perhaps over the antiquities. I hadn’t found any problems, but Perry said he felt I was getting too close. That I was messing in his business. When I spoke to him earlier this evening he tried to convince me that the killer was John Schleicher.” I watched his reaction at the name. Perhaps his eyebrows twitched a millimeter, but nothing more. His was a cooler temperament than Delgado’s. “I don’t know whether you have talked to John Schleicher yet,” I couldn’t resist adding. “If you haven’t, maybe you should.”

  There may have been a slight shake of his head as I said this.

  “I think we are finished talking for this evening. Please wait here for a while and I will see what Señorita Sanchez has told the others. Interestingly, there was also one 20 centavo coin in the pocket of Señor Watt.” I thought immediately of the other coins. Perry probably kept rolls of them in his desk. “It is possible that it was merely pocket change. We will probably never know.”

  I sat at the desk for half an hour thinking about the marathon of death we had been through over the past few weeks. No one could have predicted that Maya would kill Perry, but she’s a nervy person and it was a close thing. I surely would have killed Perry myself in the same situation. Cody would have as well, probably with even less hesitation. He’s a nervy guy and it wouldn’t have been the first time he killed someone.

  And what would become of Barbara, the ever delectable, ever available, and now, Widow, Watt? Would she be crushed by all this? She and Perry always seemed great together in public but I knew from my experience painting her that she had her own life, one that didn’t entirely overlap with his. I couldn’t imagine her not coming out of this in good shape. She was too much of a survivor.

  I thought of Maya and wondered how badly they were grilling her. She was tough enough to take it. She probably knew enough about Méxican police to keep her cool. I wanted to go home with her. Maybe we needed a lawyer. I was not up on the nuances of Méxican criminal law. There should be a course in it for the ex-pats here.

  Maya came into the outer office with Licenciado Rodriguez in tow a little after midnight. She was smiling.

  “You are able to go now,” said Rodriguez, “but like they say in the western movies, do not leave the town.” I tried to think what he meant. Was it like ‘Get out of Dodge’? Not exactly, but things can get lost in translation.

  The night was very black in San Miguel as we walked back to Quebrada. No one had offered us a ride and it was a good time for thinking anyway. I held Maya’s hand and her fingers intertwined with mine.

  “You are holding the hand of a killer,” she said.

  “Are you all right? Really?”

  “No, not really. I will have some things to think about. Right now, I wonder if there was another way to save you and Marisol, without killing him. Perhaps I could have hit him less hard. Maybe if the police had come running in they would have done it instead of me.”

  “They wouldn’t have known who to shoot, and besides, he could have just gone ahead and shot us. But in hitting him more lightly you wouldn’t have been sure he’d go down. How hard is just enough? It was all going too fast. In another 10 seconds I would have been dead. No more 60 years of life with you.”

  “No. I was strong with the police, but now I am not.” She looked at me with an expression that invited support.

  “You’re still strong. You will always be strong. Sometimes we question whether we did the right thing, but as you think about it you will find there was no other way. If you had not hit Perry with the statue, how could you have stopped him? And if you had just hidden in the house, then he would have found you and killed you too. We would all be dead. Just ask yourself what other way there could have been. I can’t think of one.”

  “So now I am stronger?”

  “You must be. Think of what the gringos say, ‘What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.’”

  She thought about this for a moment. “It fits,” she said. “I’ll remember that.”

  We were both lost in our own thoughts for a while. I held onto her tightly, except where a power pole in the middle of the sidewalk made me step off into the street. Perry and I were opposite in some respects. His business expertise was something I could only imagine; yet what he valued most was his connoisseurship. When Tobey cheated Perry and then mocked him over it, he sealed his own fate and Perry’s as well. My own expertise in art was much deeper than Perrys, but not as wide. And I didn’t take it as seriously. How strange that Maya, who often informed my life, ended his. Once things settled out for her, and I knew that would be a while, we’d have a few probing conversations about these ironies.

  We stopped on the narrow sidewalk and I hugged her closely. My fingers touched her neck beneath her hair. I could feel her heart beating against my chest. Over her shoulder, the tile on the house facade said 132. In the dim light I could barely make it out. I knew it was one where I had tried the key. She put her head on my shoulder for a moment and then we moved along.

  Chapter 23

  Marisol Cross

  Two days after the death of Perry Watt a uniformed San Miguel cop delivered Tobey Cross’s Dolores Hidalgo computer to Marisol, together with the other records the police had taken from Calle Independencia 132. He also returned the key. It was a quick turn around for México. Within five minutes Marisol had set it up on the huge mahogany desk in the great room and was poring over Tobey’s financial records.

  In addition to sales lists for the entire time he had been in business, she found a bank account in Austin, Texas which held more than $200,000 and an investment account at Fidelity with almost one and a half million dollars in mutual funds. She spent considerable time composing a note to all the customers of Mayan ceramics offering a full refund on any purchases that were x-rayed and showed the presence of a coin in the clay, 20 centavos or not. She also offered t
o reimburse each client for the cost of the procedure no matter what the outcome. Primarily for ethical reasons, but also with an eye to protecting her own business, she didn’t wish to be associated with anything fraudulent.

  Later she called Paul Zacher and offered to exchange the clay figure she had given him for other antiquities of his choice that were legitimate.

  He laughed politely, thanked her, and replied that he was proud to have a piece from the hand of Ramon Xoc, a man he respected as an artist. It would be payment enough for his efforts.

  Three days later she received a call from Barbara Watt, saying she had no need of a refund, and she hoped that Marisol would keep the money in view of Perry’s terrible violence against her husband. She would be happy to keep the six Mayan pieces as a reminder of Perry’s enormous ego. Grieving can sometimes include an anger component.

  Chapter 24

  Galeria Mundo Maya occupies a venerable colonial building on Calle 60 just around the corner from the Plaza in Mérida, the capital of the state of Yucatan. Along the street an arcade runs across the front providing valuable shade for those who wish to stop and look through the gallery window to take in the sight of the nude Maya seated before one of the stoney Mayan gods. That painting summed up the show. Maybe someday I would paint her clothed. From a third floor window sill a long red banner hung limply in the afternoon sun. It said, PAUL ZACHER: GODS AND GODDESSES. It was Friday, June 17 and it was five o’clock. Show time had been a long time in coming.

  The gallery had been closed all day and we had spent most of the afternoon hanging the last of the pictures, straightening edges, mounting titles and prices on the wall, fielding phone calls, and finally, setting out trays of snacks, glasses and the iced champagne. We had put out two stacks of glossy brochures about the show, featuring a partly true biography of the artist toward the back. It gave the usual information about background, education, aims of the show, and other important shows I had been in. It did not mention that I had come within 10 seconds of being murdered by one of my customers in San Miguel, or that the beautiful model in many of the pictures was known by the police to be a killer, although with considerable justification. Don’t mess with Maya. And don’t make inaccurate remarks about her racial background. It’s the basis of class in México. Maybe it was Perry’s insensitivity to cultural nuance that did him in.

  Inside, the gallery was both wide and deep, with a row of arches down the center all the way to the back wall. The long ceiling beams from the outer walls converged on top of the arches, which were alternately filled in to provide additional hanging space. The 18 pictures of the show covered all these spaces and one long outside wall, and part of the back wall as well. The sales desk was in the back on the other side. Near the desk stood an easel with a photo of me standing, palette in hand, looking at an unfinished painting. Maya had taken the picture. I thought my expression seemed to say, “What now?” A truthful image, I still hadn’t decided what to begin next. At the rear of the show side stood the refreshment table.

  People were starting to filter in from the street and I was shaking hands and taking hugs and pretend kisses from customers I had known in the past. Maya and Cody had come down with me, and I know Cody was proud to not be limping any longer. It had taken more time for his gunshot wound to heal than he had expected, but it had also been 15 years since he’d last been shot. Fifty-eight is not 43. Things change.

  We made some sales right away and red dots began to appear at a few of the pictures. I watched this closely because knowing which pictures sold first always told me something about the show. The first one to sell had been the last one I painted. That was about right. Sometimes in doing a series I ended on a high note. Sometimes I just ran out of gas. I called this way of going on too long, “painting beyond the idea.” But this series had legs and I could have gone on if it hadn’t been for the show deadline. And I probably could have finished one more if I hadn’t been set back by the vandalized picture and the time it took to shovel the dead bodies out of my house.

  Maya was working the crowd with her usual skill. Tonight she had her hair up as in the pictures and we had managed to find an orange hibiscus blossom for her just before the show opened. In one of the better shops in San Miguel she had found a pale blue bias-cut dress with suitable cleavage. It came just to her knees and had spaghetti straps. She brought over a glass of champagne for me. “See how well Cody is doing tonight! He doesn’t limp anymore.” His gait was smooth but slower than normal. He had put on a linen sport coat earlier for the show, but quickly discarded it in the heat.

  The room was beginning to fill and there were many new faces. Evenings around the plaza in Mérida are vibrant on any night of the week. Suddenly in the crowd I saw Barbara coming toward us. So did Maya.

  She wheeled around and faced me. The color went out of her face. “Oh my God! It’s the güera! What am I going to do? I killed her esposo!” A woman in the crowd turned sharply to look at her. Not something you hear at every art gallery opening, but that’s one of those special details that make a Paul Zacher opening night unlike any other.

  Barbara reached us before I could respond. “Paul, Maya, the show is beautiful!”

  I knew Maya hadn’t seen her since Perry’s death. She visibly steeled herself and turned to face Barbara. What was the proper etiquette for greeting the widow of a man you had killed? I wasn’t sure Emily Post covered this.

  “Barbara, I’m so sorry for the way it all happened. I didn’t mean to kill Perry, but he was going to shoot Paul and he had already shot Cody,” Maya said.

  Barbara smiled sadly and put her hand on Maya’s shoulder.

  “I know, darlin’, It just had to happen. I would have done the same thing. I don’t blame you at all. He would have killed you too, once he realized you were there. Perry never did anything half way. That was part of his charm, I guess, such as it was.” It seemed like a subtle rotation had occurred in her attitude toward him in the four and a half months since his death.

  Then she hugged Maya. I thought I’d never see it. I left the two of them; they were somehow connecting. Next they’d be borrowing each other’s clothes, although Barbara’s skirts, short as they sometimes were, would have been a bit long on Maya.

  A couple from Wichita introduced themselves to me and said they were vacationing in Mérida and had wandered in on the way to the plaza. They had picked out a picture with one of the local dancers as their souvenir of the trip. After seeing the dancers at work in the plaza the night before, now meeting the artist had made it special for them. The $4,000 sale made it special for me. Francisco Ortiz, the gallery owner, placed a red dot next to it.

  I looked at the first picture in the series, which had been done with a Yucatecan girl wearing a folk dancer’s white dress with the colorful embroidery, and compared it with the final one, which used Maya nude, seen from the waist up with her hands extended. I had saved a lot on costumes. She looked boldly into the eye of the viewer. I liked them both, but there had definitely been progress. The god behind Maya faced left and his hands were extended beyond hers. Barbara touched my shoulder and her fingers brushed my neck.

  “I hope you’re not redoing them in your mind.” She and Maya were finished bonding. “They’re perfect as they are.”

  “Thank you. I thought you’d be in mourning.”

  She leaned closer to my ear. “I’m still mourning inside, and I’ve got a very fetching bustier if you’re into black.” I found I was picturing it in spite of myself.

  “How are you doing, really?”

  “I’m OK, now. At first I was in shock at the idea that the man I married was capable of killing people who got in his way. I knew he had done things in business that were harsh and probably illegal from time to time. That’s just part of being a wealthy man in the oil business. None of them are boy scouts. Then later, I was angry, humiliated that I could be associated with that. Not that I ever cared much about what people think. I went over all the people in San Miguel that
we knew. Could I ever throw a party again? Would anybody come? Of course, you would.”

  “I know you can take rejection. Besides, they’d come just to see you.”

  “Oh that? I never felt rejected by you. I’ve always known you wanted me at least as much as I want you. I can see it in your eyes, even now. You just have a different agenda. I always respected you for it.”

  “Would you have respected me if I’d slept with you?”

  “You mean, in the morning?”

  “Something like that.”

  “I’m sure I would have respected you in a different way. And then suggested that we do it again.”

  “Let’s talk about the show.”

  “OK.” She paused as if gathering her thoughts, and looked around. “It’s beautiful work, Paul, I mean it. It’s impressive to see them all together. It’s so coherent. Seeing them like this, I can understand your vision. The old and the new, both emerging from the jungle.”

  “Thank you.” I wasn’t sure I would have articulated it in that way, but then I never felt any need to articulate it at all. It was a visual thing. For me it didn’t need words. “You look like a million tonight.”

  For a moment I thought she blushed. “Forty million, actually. I had to split it three ways with Perry’s two kids by his first wife, but I’ll get by.”

  “I bet you will. I’m glad you came.”

  “Well, life goes on. Perry would have wanted me to come.”

  “Really? I thought he wanted me dead.”

  “That was not Perry’s best instinct, or his smartest. It must have made him a little crazy to think he’d been made a fool of. It’s not so easy when your family comes from nowhere and then ends up with all that money. He was always careful to distance himself from his roots. But he was a true collector at heart and he loved the things he had. I plan to continue that tradition. I came down here to buy one of these pictures. I know I could have bought one up in San Miguel, but I wanted to see them all together, hung as a group. You know, they’ll never be seen like this again.”