Aaron Elkins - Curses!

Abe was muttering too. “Whoever did it, I can't make it add up. All right, Emma, or Ard, or someone, wants it to look like the curse is coming true. Fine. But where does the threatening note come into it? Tell me what the point of that's supposed to be."

"What's the point of the whole thing supposed to be?” Gideon asked. “Why try to kill me if it was only my soul that was supposed to get pounded?"

"Pummeled,” Julie said. “And why use something like a pipe wrench if you're trying to make it look like a Mayan curse? It's so, so…"

"Anachronistic,” Abe supplied. “And what about the digging? What's that all about?"

There were plenty of questions. There weren't many answers. They were already on the hotel grounds when Julie thought of one more. “What's next?"

"Next?” Abe echoed, deep in his own reflections again.

"In the curse. Setting our entrails on fire was third. What's fourth."

"Something about Xecotcavach,” Gideon said grimly. “I don't think it was very pleasant."

It wasn't. “Fourth,” said the copy they examined in Abe's bungalow, “the one called Xecotcavach will pierce their skulls so that their brains spill onto the earth."

They stood looking at it for a long time. Julie moved closer to Gideon, her shoulder warm against his chest.

"I think,” Abe said, “I'll give Marmolejo that call right now."

Just before dinner Gideon went down to the hotel gift shop to buy some stamps. Leo was there, browsing among the postcards.

"Leo,” Gideon said forthrightly, “let me ask you something. What are you doing here?"

The question seemed to startle him. He straightened up from the revolving postcard rack. “Doing here?"

"At the dig. Why do you come to these things? To tell the truth, I can't say you really strike me as someone who's that interested in Mayan archaeology."

"Mayan archaeology?” Leo's happy honk of a laugh bounced off the walls of the little shop. “Who gives a shit about Mayan archaeology? I come to these things, because it's a great way to meet buyers, people who can afford to buy what I sell. What else?"

Gideon blinked. “And do they?"

"You better believe it. Harvey's gonna fly down to the Salton Sea with me next month to have a look-see. Hell, I've been on cruises down the Amazon, I've been turtle-watching in the Galapagos, I've been on a dig in Turkey, and I've never yet failed to make a sale. And it's all tax-deductible. You can't beat it. That's why I come.

"Oh,” Gideon said. “Well, I just wondered."

He lay on his back watching the ceiling fan revolve slowly in the moonglow. Julie was on her side, facing away from him, her warm, naked bottom against his hip. She was breathing steadily and quietly, but he knew she wasn't sleeping.

"Julie?"

"Hm?"

"I've been thinking."

She turned onto her other side to face him, making rustly, comfortable nighttime sounds. Her fingers found his arm and slid down it to gently encircle his wrist. She waited for him to speak.

"Well, I was just thinking that if you want us to pack up and get out of here, we can. If someone's got it in for us-for me in particular-maybe it doesn't make sense to stay. There's no reason why another physical anthropologist can't take over. Marmolejo's going to increase security tomorrow, so I don't think there's any real danger, but who knows? I was the one who said that threat wouldn't amount to anything."

Her head came up, silhouetted against the louvered windows. “Get out of here?” she repeated, obviously surprised. “Because some miserable rodent is going around slipping vile notes under doors and sneaking around with a pipe wrench? To quote one of the eminent G. P. Oliver's more penetrating statements, “'You have to live your own life. You can't let the creeps and cruds of the world run it for you.’”

He laughed and stroked the soft, moist line of her jaw, first with his fingertips and then with the back of his hand. Her black, ringleted hair gleamed in the dim light, stirring in the faint breeze from the fan.

"Besides,” she said, “I've been married to you for over two years now, and I've gotten used to a certain amount of, uh, adventure in my life."

"Good,” he said. He'd known what her answer would be, but she deserved a say. His hand drifted to her throat, to the silky, tender side of her breast, beneath her arm. “Are you having trouble sleeping too?” he said.

"A little.” She snuggled down again and draped a leg over his. “Got any suggestions?"

"I don't suppose you packed any Ovaltine?"

"Uh-uh.” Her leg slid slowly up and down his thighs.

"Well, then,” he said, and pulled her all the way onto him, “I suggest we discuss the matter."

Marmolejo's increased security came too late. And it wasn't Gideon who needed it.

He and Julie were almost out the door, on their way to breakfast, when the telephone rang. Gideon picked it up.

"Dr. Oliver?” The voice was tentative, urgent. “Er, this is Dr. Plumm speaking. Perhaps you remember me?"

"Of course. Is something wrong?"

Plumm was the house physician, a gentle, unpresuming Englishman of sixty-five with baby-smooth skin and an immaculately groomed little white mustache. He had retired from practice in Portsmouth, lost his wife to cancer less than a year later, and come to Mexico hoping that a change of locale might help him cope with his grief. He had never gone back. Now he lived an expatriate's lonely life at the Mayaland, providing his services in exchange for a room-a superannuated old Brit, as he called himself.

He was something of a crime buff in his ample spare time. He subscribed to the Journal of Forensic Sciences and was familiar with a series of papers that Gideon had written on cause-of-death determination from skeletal remains. He had looked Gideon over the night of the attack and had been transparently delighted to find out the name of his patient. He had been eager to discuss some of the points in Gideon's articles, and they had spent a pleasant hour over coffee the next evening.

"Yes,” he said, “I'm afraid something is very much wrong, and your help would be invaluable. Would it inconvenience you to come downstairs? It's in your line of work, and I'm sure you'll find of interest."

What was wrong was Stan Ard. He lay sprawled on one of the more distant and isolated jungly paths that wound through the hotel grounds, some hundred yards from the main building, near the chain-link fence that separated the Mayaland property from Chichen Itza. He was half-in, half-out of one of the white plastic lawn chairs that were placed along the paths. The chair had been tipped over onto its right side, apparently with Ard in it. His body had twisted sideways, so that he'd landed on his back, his bare, fat, hairy legs akimbo. His left knee had wound up hooked awkwardly on the armrest. He was wearing a blue guayabera, tan Bermuda shorts, and tennis sneakers without socks. The left sneaker had come loose and hung from his big toe.

His head was a bloody mess.

"A jogger found him half an hour ago,” Plumm said. “It's the reporter, isn't it?"

"Yes. Stan Ard.” Not that it was easy to tell. Tight-lipped, Gideon forced himself to look down at the shattered head. There was nothing enigmatic about this, no veiled meanings, no obscure nuances. This was the end of the cigar, brutal and unequivocal.

Fourth, the one called Xecotcavach will pierce their skulls so that their brains spill onto the earth.

Standing guard was a jumpy young policeman in a tan uniform and a brown baseball-style cap. He was resolutely looking anywhere but at the body.

"No toque," he said curtly when Gideon approached it.

He needn't have worried. Gideon wasn't about to touch it, for Dr. Plumm was very wrong-this was definitely not in his line of work, and he didn't find it of interest at all; not in the way the physician had meant. Yes, Gideon did forensic consulting and, yes, he frequently enjoyed his work for the FBI. But he was an anthropologist, a bone man, and the older and the browner the bones were, the better. Body fluids, brain tissue, and torn flesh were things he was constitutionally averse to, and the farther he could stay away from them the better.