Skull Duggery

EIGHTEEN

They were on the terrace again early the following morning, taking in the cool, fresh air and just finishing working their way through one of Dorotea’s breakfasts-hibiscus juice, cubed melon and papaya, a tender, perfectly cooked vegetable frittata, and toast, jam, and coffee-when Tony appeared, rumpled, yawning, and scratching at the stubble on his cheeks.

“Okay if I join you?” he asked, having already plopped heavily into a spare chair.

“Sure,” Julie said. “Where’s Preciosa?”

Tony snorted. “Preciosa’s not exactly what you’d call a morning person. Hey, mamacita,” he called in Spanish toward the open window of the kitchen, “the big boss is here and he’s hungry. How about some breakfast?”

“I see you, I see you,” was the mumbled reply. “It’s coming, it’s coming.”

“Coffee first.”

“You’ll get it when you get it.”

“What a sweetheart,” he said, grinning. “Not a grouchy bone in her body. So, Gideon, you like it here? Having a good time?”

“A great time, Tony, and the Hacienda’s beautiful.”

“Yeah, but are you finding anything to do for fun, aside from looking at bones? It’s not like there’re a million things to do around here.”

“Well, true, but that’s not such a bad thing. This morning I was thinking about spending some time at one of the archaeological sites.”

“Oh yeah? Gonna go up to Monte Alban?”

“No, I’ve been there before, and anyway, I didn’t want to make a long drive. I thought I’d just go down to Yagul. It’s the closest one.”

“Yagul? You know, it’s funny. It’s like fifteen miles down the road, but even though I grew up right here where we’re sitting, I’ve never been there myself. When I was a kid, I wasn’t interested, and after I came back… well, I just never got around to it. It’s like how New Yorkers are always telling you they never got around to going to the Statue of Liberty. But one of these days…”

“Well, why don’t you come with me? I don’t expect to stay very long, maybe a couple of hours. We’d be back by noon at the latest.”

Tony looked as if he was considering it, but then he shook his head. “No, I better not. I got all kinds of stuff to do around the place. If I don’t finish finally rewiring the meeting room on this trip…” He rolled his eyes, signifying Gideon knew not what. “What the hell. Ah, hey Maribel, that’s my girl,” he said with a grin as one of Dorotea’s young nieces came out with a full breakfast on a tray and set it out on the table for him. A slight movement of Tony’s hand along with an incipient little flinch and a stifled giggle from Maribel suggested that a slap on the bottom would have been administered had Julie not been there.

“So, Julie,” he said after a swallow of coffee, a fond look after Maribel, and a sigh of pleasure over either or both, “what about you? How’s it going? They’re not working you too hard, are they?”

“Not at all, Tony. It’s been fun. I have some things to finish up with Jamie this morning, and I think that’ll be it. At noon I’m going into Oaxaca with Gideon.”

“Oh yeah, to look at an old skull, huh? Whoa, that sure sounds like a ton of fun.”

“Well, I have a hunch I might get a good meal out of him too, if I play my cards right.”

Tony arranged his plates to his liking with surprisingly meticulous care: juice and melon on the left, frittata in the center, coffee and toast on the right; plates then nudged until they were all equally spaced. Then he was ready to eat. “Hey, Gideon, tell me something,” he said as he buttered the toast. “I’ve been thinking about that skull. I’ve been trying to figure it out, and I don’t get it. What’s the point of looking at it? Where’s it gonna get you?”

Gideon was fresher this morning, and it was something he didn’t mind talking about, especially since it was only to Tony and not to Carl and the others. “It was something Julie said yesterday. She was wondering if it might be Manolo.”

Tony’s eyebrows went up. “Manolo? The guy Blaze…? You think somebody killed them both? Jesus Christ, where did that come from?”

“It was just a thought,” Julie said. “Nobody ever did find out for sure what happened to him, and there was a lot of money involved.

Down here, it would have been a fortune. I couldn’t help wondering if maybe somebody killed the two of them for it.”

“Yeah, but… look,” he said, slathering jam on the toast, “let’s say for the sake of argument somebody really did kill them both. How would you know it’s him? Wouldn’t you need to know what he looked like?”

“It’d help, but it’s not strictly necessary.”

“I suppose you could ask Carl or Jamie; they’d probably remember, but don’t forget, it’s been thirty years. Me, I can’t help you out there, I never even saw the guy. Missed him by a couple of days.”

“I don’t really need to know what he looked like, Tony.”

Chewing away at his frittata, Tony frowned. “So how…?”

“Easy. I just look for maxillomandibular fixation paraphernalia.”

The chewing stopped. “Maxillo…?”

“I look to see if his face is held together with pins and wires and plates.”

“ Ohhh, I get you. Yeah, good point. Carl busted his jaw for him, didn’t he?”

“Right. And since he was never seen again, he was probably killed-if he was killed-within a few days of having it fixed, so they wouldn’t have taken out the wiring yet.”

“But wait a minute, Gideon,” Julie said, her brow wrinkling. “The Zapotecs wouldn’t have known how to wire broken jaws, would they?”

“I doubt it. As far as I know, that’s a nineteenth-century invention.”

“That’s what I thought. So if they saw wires in this skeleton’s jaw, wouldn’t they have known right away that it couldn’t be ancient?”

“Not necessarily. The Aztecs, Mixtecs, Mayans, and the rest of them may not have known how to work with a living skull, but they sure knew how to work with a dead one. There are mosaicked skulls, and turquoise-decorated skulls, and skulls ornamented with loads of silver or polished pyrite… and skulls that actually have the mandible reattached. It’s possible that that’s what they assumed this was.” He shrugged. “I figure it’s worth a look anyway.”

“Okay, yeah, I can see all that,” Tony said, “but even so, even if it is him, where does it get you? The cops can’t do anything, can they? It’s over fourteen years.” He shook his head. “Stupid law.”

“You’re right,” Gideon said. “They can’t.”

“So what’s the point?”

Julie finished the last of her coffee and put down the cup. “The point,” she said, “is that Gideon has never met a skeleton he didn’t want to know better.”

Tony laughed his gravel-on-a-tin-drum laugh. “Well, what the hell, chacun a son gout,” he said surprisingly: French for each to his own .