Bill Pronzini - Beyond the Grave

John Quincannon had solved one murder, back in the 1890s. I'd discovered another, here in the 1980s. And now I was about to make the biggest discovery of all. I was about to find the long-lost Velasquez artifacts….

Sam turned and glared at me. I was standing no more than a foot behind him. I gestured apologetically and went to sit next to the sheriffs man on the charred roof beam, annoyed that my back injury prevented me from helping. This was going much too slowly. Wasn't demolition supposed to be easy? Shouldn't that old wall just fall…?

There was a cracking sound. Arturo shouted, and Sam grabbed his arm and pulled him away from the wall. Adobe bricks rained down, one chunk landing on Sam's foot. He began hopping up and down, his hand grasping Arturo for balance. The officer and I both jumped up and ran over there. I peered through the gaping hole in the wall of the apse.

Inside, the space between it and the outer wall was dark. The air was dry and musty. I put my hands on the waist-high opening and hoisted myself up, ignoring a dull throbbing that told me I was doing further damage to my back. My eyes quickly accustomed themselves to the darkness, and I was able to make out a number of lumpy shapes on the ground below.

“Elena?” Sam said. “Are they-”

“I think so.” I let go of the opening and dropped back to the ground. “We've got to pull the rest of this wall down.”

Sam and Arturo attacked it with renewed energy. Even the policeman helped. Now that an opening had been made, the rest of the bricks pulled apart easily. Of course this false wall would not have been built as sturdily as those of the rest of the church; there had not been time. But it still had stood for a hundred and forty years, miraculously spared from cannonballs, fire, and vandalism.

When they had made the opening large enough for me to reach through, the three men stepped back almost ceremoniously. I looked at them, suddenly reluctant to step forward, feeling like a child who has lain awake all night in anticipation of Christmas morning and now can't believe it is really here. They seemed to share the feeling, because they remained silent, staring at the opening.

I shook myself, laughed nervously, then knelt beside the jagged hole in the wall. Extending my arm through it, I felt around until my fingers touched a slender piece of metal. Pulling it out, I saw it was a gold crucifix; the metal gleamed dully, and the jewels at the tips of the crosspieces shone with a deep red fire. Fibers of fabric clung to it, as if it had once been wrapped in cloth that had now rotted away.

My lips parted, but I couldn't speak. I held the crucifix up for the others to see.

Arturo said softly, “Jesus Cristo!”

I smiled at the aptness of the exclamation.

Sam said, “You were right.”

“Yes.”

“But how did you know?” I'd outlined the entire story of the Velasquez treasure on the way here-including the first part for Arturo's benefit-but time hadn't permitted me to explain why I thought the artifacts had been walled into the apse.

I said, “It was in the letter Tomas Cordova wrote to his wife.”

“But according to Quincannon,” Sam said, “the last page was never recovered.”

“That's true. And that was why he couldn't interpret it properly.”

Arturo said, “But if this detective couldn't, why could you?”

“Because I'm Catholic, and Quincannon wasn't. The words on the fragment he found in Luis Cordova's hand were ‘mas alia del sepulcro’ and ‘donde Maria.’ Beyond the grave, where Mary something-or-other. Quincannon and Felipe interpreted the grave to be that of Maria Alcazar, Don Esteban's first wife. But its location had been obliterated in the destruction of the pueblo.”

“And you found it?” Sam asked.

“I found a grave. Or actually, Quincannon found it.” I pointed to the slab of stone in the church floor that I'd uncovered earlier. “It's the grave of Julio del Prado, the first padre of this church. And seeing it made me wonder: What if the grave mentioned in the letter wasn't Maria Alcazar's? What if it was really this one-the most distinctive one in the pueblo? And what if Maria referred to someone else?”

Arturo said, “Who, then?”

“The Virgin Mary.”

Arturo began to smile, nodding in understanding. Sam and the policeman both frowned. Sam said, “I don't get it.”

“That's because, like Quincannon, you're not Catholic. If you were, you would know that the statue of the Virgin Mary customarily stands in this apse, to this side of the altar.”

Now understanding began to come into Sam's eyes, too.

“‘ Mas alia del sepulcro ’ actually meant beyond Padre del Prado's grave,” I said. “And on the next page of the letter, the phrase ‘donde Maria’ was probably completed with something like the word ‘stands.’”

Sam wasn't quite convinced, though. He said, “That's all very logical, but why didn't Felipe Velasquez realize it? After all, he was Catholic.”

It was the one point that had originally troubled me and made me doubt my reasoning; but while the sheriffs men had been following their routine at the grave of Georgia Hollis, I'd had plenty of time to consider the tragic events that had befallen the Velasquez family, and I thought I had the answer. I said, “Felipe was fixated on ‘Maria’ meaning the grave of Don Esteban's first wife; he never considered the Virgin Mary or Padre del Prado's grave. He had probably forgotten all about the padre. He seldom came here in his last years-Quincannon made that plain-and even when he did, he had no reason to go inside the ruins. Besides, the marker was half-hidden by weeds and grass even then.”

Sam's desire for historical accuracy was not yet satisfied, however. He said, “But why, in all the family's searches for the artifacts, didn't anyone notice that this apse had a false wall?”

That was another question I'd had to consider, and again I was reasonably sure of the answer. “For one thing,” I said, “the workmanship on the false wall was very good. Even though there wasn't time to do a perfect job, it resembles the other walls closely. And during the siege by Fremont's troops, the other apse was destroyed; the size difference between the two wasn't as obvious as it might have been had they both been standing. There was nothing left to compare this one with.”

Sam nodded, apparently accepting my explanation.

I turned back to the opening in the wall. The past had been dealt with; now I had a responsibility to the present, and-being a curator at heart-to these artifacts. They had lain protected in the wall for one hundred and forty years, but now the space was open to the elements, and a rainstorm was threatening.

“Come and help me,” I said to the three men. “Let's get these things out of here before it rains.” To Sam and Arturo, I added, “Later we'll go to Sam's house and call Sofia Manuela and tell her her family treasure has been found.”

“So,” I said to Mama, “Mrs. Manuela told me she wants to donate the artifacts to the museum. She wants nothing to do with them, since they caused such tragedy in her family, and she has no heirs. Some of them are very valuable; there's even a small El Greco that survived undamaged. Imagine us with an El Greco!”

Mama smiled, looking pleased for me. She looked pleased with everything this morning, sitting on the edge of her hospital bed in a cheerful yellow dress and sweater, all ready to go home. Nick had gone downstairs to take care of the final paperwork, and once the nurse arrived with a wheelchair, we would be on our way.

I was about to tell her of my plans for an exhibit of the artifacts when she said, “Are you sure your back will be all right? Did you have Dr. George look at it?”