Aaron Elkins: Curses!

But, really, it hadn't been a wildly difficult deduction once it occurred to him that the frequent, strong thrusting forward of the lower jaw might be connected to something other than eating. Playing a woodwind, for example. Perhaps there were also other possible causes for the tubercles, but he had yet to find one.

Marmolejo took this with better grace and more credulity than Gideon had expected. “All right,” he conceded, “who am I to argue with the Skeleton Detective?” He made a clicking sound, tongue against teeth. “But where are our fine theories now? Who killed Ard, if Dr. Bennett didn't? Who attacked you?” He paused and laid his hand on Gideon's arm. “I don't want anyone on the crew to know this. Let them think we still believe it's Avelino Canul."

"That makes sense."

"And I'm afraid it would be inadvisable for anyone to leave after all,” Marmolejo added to himself. “Mr. Partridge's permission will have to be revoked. I hope he's not too disturbed about it."

Worthy would never trust another small person, Gideon thought.

Marmolejo stood for a while, peering down at the earth-stained skull. “Howard Bennett,” he said quietly. “Here all this time with his precious codex, killed trying to remove it by a cave-in he himself caused. I think the gods, of Tlaloc must be laughing."

"Oh, I'm sure they're laughing,” Gideon said, then pulled his last rabbit out of the hat. “But it wasn't the cave-in that killed him. He was already dead when the roof came down."

Marmolejo turned slowly to Gideon. “Murdered?"

"Murdered."

"How could you tell?” Julie asked. “Was he shot? With that Smith amp; Wesson?"

"No,” Gideon said, “clubbed. Probably with the sledgehammer. The left side of his head was knocked in."

"But all that rubble caved in on him. How do you know that isn't what did it?"

"Because he was on his left side, and the damage to the rest of his body shows the debris landed on his right side. In other words, he was already lying there, in that position, when it hit."

"Oh.” She pulled the toothpick from a quarter of the chicken-salad sandwich before her and thoughtfully sucked the pickled onion from it.

They were on their balcony. Neither of them had been particularly hungry when he had gotten back from the site, and they had had sandwiches and milk sent up. Abe and the rest of the crew were in the restaurant, celebrating the finding of the codex with a champagne dinner insisted on and paid for by Dr. Villanueva, who had arrived at the Chichen Itza airstrip with several other Institute officials about an hour earlier. In the morning there would be a group breakfast, with speeches and congratulations, and then the codex would be borne in pomp to Mexico City for years of study and an eventual place of honor in the Museum of Anthropology.

"Now wait a minute,” Julie said, having thought the matter through. “Who's to say the cave-in happened all at once? Maybe he was knocked down by a few falling pieces, and fractured his skull when his head hit the ground-and then the rest of it all fell on him. What's wrong with that?"

"Nothing, but he didn't just fracture it. It wasn't cracked, it was caved in-a depressed fracture. There was a hole in his skull, and some of the bone fragments were actually inside.” No doubt driven into the brain to provide the immediate cause of death, he might have added, but why spoil her appetite? Or his.

"And a fall couldn't do that?"

"Nope. It's an axiom of the trade: When a moving head hits a fixed object hard enough, you get a crack; when a moving object hits a fixed head you get a depressed fracture. No, first he was slugged, then he fell, and then the place came down on him."

He took a bite of his ham sandwich. “Marmolejo thinks the cave-in was an accident; that Howard came on somebody trying to take the codex and got himself killed for his trouble."

"No, how could that be? If Howard was the one with the gun and the crowbar, how come he's the one who wound up dead?"

Gideon shrugged. “I doubt if he would have shot a crew member or even pointed the gun at him. Not unless he found him right in the act of taking the codex. He would have assumed there was some other reason for him to be there. It was outsiders he was worried about."

Julie shook her head. “It's so hard to believe. How could a member of the crew bring himself-"

"For two million dollars? People can bring themselves to do a lot of things for that."

He took a long swallow of milk. “Anyway, Marmolejo figures that whoever was on the other end of the sledge hit one of the props without meaning to. Howard and the codex fell down the steps, and five tons of rubble landed on top of them. That's his theory."

"And what's yours?"

"I think he's right. An eight-pound sledge can get away from you when you're using it in a fight, and with the supports already weakened it wouldn't have taken much to bring the whole place down."

He tossed a sandwich end onto his plate. “You know what I keep wondering about? That ‘return to the scene of the crime’ in Stan Ard's notebook. What was he talking about? Whose return?"

"Howard's, obviously."

"You think whoever's behind this had Ard fooled too?"

"Sure.” She put down her sandwich and leaned forward. “To tell the truth, I never did put much faith in Inspector Marmolejo's idea about the killer just passing by and casually shooting him. Did Stan strike you as the kind of person who'd be outside working at seven in the morning? My guess is the killer made an appointment with him to lure him out there-” She smiled crookedly. “Gideon, is this what your cases sound like when you're working on them? As if you're reading lines, in a particularly dumb movie?"

"Yup. Go ahead. “To lure him out there…"

"…so that he could shoot Stan, but first get him to write something that would seem to incriminate Howard."

"Like what?"

"Like what he did write. It worked, didn't it? Maybe he out-and-out told Stan that Howard had been seen around, hoping he'd write that- which would really have confused us. But-"

"But Stan, who never passed up the opportunity for a cliche, came up with ‘return to the scene of the crime.’ And I suppose the killer thought he'd better settle for that, shot him, and got out of there.” Gideon nodded slowly. “You just might be right, Julie."

He put his feet up on the low table, crossed his legs at the ankles, and stared out at the twilit foliage. “Ah, that poor bastard Howard; he dies saving the codex, and the whole world winds up blaming him for stealing it. Thanks to someone who went to a lot of trouble to make us think just that."

"But why? That's what bugs me. I mean, I understand why somebody would do that in 1982: if everyone thought the codex was gone, nobody would bother to dig for it, and the killer could come back later on and get it. Fine. But why now?"

"Why what now?"

"Why bother to make it look as if Howard were still alive almost six years later? Especially in the middle of a dig that was bound to turn up his body sooner or later? And the codex too."

Gideon held up his hand. “Julie, Marmolejo and I went round and round for over an hour on this stuff, and we didn't get anywhere."

Julie brushed this aside. “Well, of course not. You didn't have the benefit of my brilliant insights. After all, who was the one who said all along that the codex was down there?"

"The same person,” Gideon pointed out, “who said all along that Howard Bennett was behind everything that was going on."

"That,” Julie said, “was unworthy of you.” She rubbed her hands together. “Come on, Skeleton Detective, let's order up some brandy and get this thing figured out. We're on a roll here."

Gideon smiled and got up to go to the telephone.