Aaron Elkins: Skull Duggery

Julie and Gideon looked at each other. “Now who does he remind me of?” Julie wondered, looking after the scurrying, still muttering figure.

“ Alice in Wonderland?” Gideon guessed. “The Mad Hatter?”

They both laughed. “You might be right,” she said. “Well, what now?”

“I come back tomorrow, I guess. Between twelve and three. Standards must be maintained.”

“No, I meant us-what do you want to do right now? Do you-” The phone in her bag went off and she dug it out. They both went to stand right up against the wall of the building, out of the central flow of foot traffic, which until then had been parting around them and then coming together again, the way a stream does around a boulder. “Oh hello, Javier-” she began brightly, then quickly sobered. “Oh. Did he say anything before… Okay, I see. Yes, I appreciate that. Yes, of course I’ll tell him. Thanks, Javier.”

“Tony’s dead,” Gideon said as she put away the phone.

“Yes. He never regained consciousness.”

“I-” He stopped speaking and shook his head.

Julie looked hard at him. “Gideon, you have nothing to blame yourself for. What else could you do?”

“I know that, Julie, it’s just that…” But it was hard to sort out his feelings, let alone to put them into words. Of course Tony’s death was Tony’s own doing; of course it was inadvertent on Gideon’s part. It had just happened, and Tony alone was to blame. Still, there was no avoiding the simple fact that Tony Gallagher, alive yesterday, was dead today. He would be mourned-and missed-by his family. And the unavoidable truth was that if Gideon Oliver had never come to Oaxaca, he would still be alive.

She squeezed his hand. “It was not your fault,” she said firmly. “And the others aren’t going to blame you, believe me.”

He nodded. “I hope not.” One more shake of his head, this time to clear it.

“I wonder if we’ll ever find out what it was all about now,” Julie said.

“Pretty doubtful. Javier’s probably going to drop the whole thing now. From a legal point of view, there’s nothing to be done. Tony’s dead. There’s nobody to be prosecuted.”

“No, he’s going to keep pursuing it; he made a point of telling me so, and he wanted me to make sure you knew.”

“I’m glad to hear it. I guess he’s gotten intrigued, and he needs to see how all the strands of this thing fit together. That sounds more like the old Marmolejo; none of this ‘statute of limitations’ baloney.”

She nodded. “Anyway… back to what we do now. You want to head on back to the Hacienda?”

“Well, if you want to…”

“But you don’t?”

“Not really, no. Marmolejo’s people are probably out there talking to them right now, so everything’s probably in an uproar. And they’re going to be in a state of shock about Tony-that he’s dead, and how he died. They’ll have a million questions. I just don’t feel up to facing that right now.”

“Okay, I can understand that. Why don’t we do some sightseeing and then have dinner here by ourselves? Then you won’t have to face them until tomorrow, when it’s all sunk in. And we can give ourselves a pleasant afternoon. I’d say we’ve earned it, especially you.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Gideon agreed

They threaded their way through the swarms (all the foot traffic seemed to be against them as workers apparently headed for the bus terminal for transportation out to their villages), back to the Zocalo, bought themselves a guide pamphlet (there wasn’t anything that could properly be called a guide book) at one of the stalls, and spent the next four hours seeing the sights: the grand old Palacio del Gobierno, now a museum; the cathedral; the Museum of Pre-Hispanic Art. When that wore them down, they returned to the now-emptying Zocalo to drink coffee at an outdoor cafe and watch the sinking sun burnish the tops of the laurels and the arched porticoes of the surrounding buildings. Then they walked a couple of blocks to El Naranjo, the other restaurant that Marmolejo had recommended in the event they wanted “someplace quieter, more elegant, with real Oaxacan cuisine and ambience, of which few tourists would even be aware.”

The place lived up to advance billing, a cool, quiet, skylighted interior courtyard in a well-kept colonial building, with Moorish arches, a seventeenth-century floor of green stone tiles, and a trickling stone fountain. And a full-sized orange tree (el naranjo) in the middle. They ate chicken with mole coloradito, drank local beer, and never once talked about murder, or skulls, or Tony Gallagher and his clan.

The next morning, the Hacienda Encantada itself seemed to be in a state of shock. When they entered the dining room at eight thirty, they found no guests, no food on the buffet table other than a pot of coffee and an opened package of sliced white bread, and no Dorotea. In the nook at the far end of the room, at the table reserved for the Gallaghers, Carl and Annie appeared to be comforting a crying, mumbling Josefa, who, if Gideon remembered correctly, was Tony’s aunt.

At the sight of Gideon, both Carl and Annie jumped up, with a flurry of questions, of expressions of shock and concern over what had happened to him at Yagul, and of contrition on Tony’s behalf.

It was enough to fluster Gideon a little. “Hey… you two don’t owe me any apologies; it wasn’t your fault. I’m just sorry it had to end the way it did.”

On that point, everybody agreed, and Annie went to the buffet table. “Let me get you both some coffee. Sorry, not Dorotea’s magic brew, just plain old straight coffee.”

“Dorotea didn’t come in today?” Julie asked.

“Dorotea didn’t come in today, and Dorotea won’t come in tomorrow, and Dorotea’s not coming in next week. Dorotea quit.”

“Quit?” Gideon asked. “After all these years? Because of Tony?”

“Tony? No, she didn’t give a damn about Tony. She never could stand him. What’d you think, that was an act?”

I sure did, Gideon thought. “Well, then, why-”

“Because of Preciosa.”

“Preciosa?”

“Yes, because-oh God, you don’t even know, do you? Preciosa’s getting the Hacienda. Tony left it to her.”

“Preciosa?” Julie cried.

“I better get back to Josefa,” Carl said, heading back toward the weeping woman.

“Yes, in his will,” Annie said. “At least that’s what Preciosa told us, and why would she lie? Tony’s lawyer is coming from Mexico City to read it to us-Jamie’s at the airport to meet her-so we’ll have the official version before the morning’s out.”

“But why would Dorotea quit?” Julie asked. “The Hacienda will still be functioning, won’t it?”

“Oh sure, but she refuses to work for Preciosa. It’s not just Preciosa herself, either. The Hacienda’s going to be a different place. No more dude ranch angle. She’s already told Pop the horses are going. If he wants to stay on as a general caretaker, he’s welcome.” She looked back at him. “He won’t, of course,” she said sadly. “I’m not sure what he’s going to do.”

“That’s awful,” Julie said. “What about you? What about Jamie?”

“She didn’t say. I guess for the moment, we have our jobs. At this point, I’m not sure we’ll want them. As for poor Josefa, she’s out.

Preciosa told her she’s canned, gave her one week to find someplace else.” Only at this point did Annie’s eyes gleam with tears. “Damn. Now where’s she supposed to go? Who’s going to take her in?”

While talking, they had continued moving slowly toward the table, and now they could hear what Josefa was saying. “Where I’m gonna go? What I’m gonna do?” she was moaning-as usual, not quite directly at Carl, but at some invisible person somewhere in front of or behind him. She mopped at her eyes with a wadded, grungy handkerchief. “Old lady like me.” Carl had her free hand in both of his big ones and was patting it and making impotent masculine sounds of solace.