The Tree of Death

eight

The next morning the paper was full of news about Frank’s murder. The coverage was factual, but there was an undertone of questions. Why had this happened practically on the eve of the museum’s opening? What had the director been doing alone in the galleries after the museum had closed its doors for the day? Was one of the other employees a possible suspect? Could the director somehow have brought this on himself?

I wondered if the questions would have been so thinly veiled had we not been a minority museum. And I also wondered what more publicity of this type would do to us.

As official representative of the museum, I had to pay a condolence call on the De Palmas. I puttered around the house until nearly eleven, then got into the car and drove north through town. Frank’s family lived in a sprawling single-story ranch house on one of the streets that wound high on a bluff above Santa Barbara Point. It wasn’t Montecito, where Isabel lived in lonely splendor in her Spanish-style mansion, but it was not bad for a boy who had come out of the barrio. Twenty years ago, real estate agents would have steered anyone with a surname like De Palma away from this district. Times had changed, however, and Frank’s neighbors were glad to have a citizen of the chic art world right across the fence. I doubted they invited the De Palmas to their parties, though.

Frank’s brother Robert answered the door. His face was dour and jowly, and his hair hung down in greasy-looking strands. His dark suit fit him like a sausage casing. Still, I looked at him with new interest. This was not merely rotund Robert; it was the man who had illicit dealings with his brother, Vic, and Tony. Robert looked back blearily and motioned me into the living room.

It was a large room filled with overstuffed furniture. On the walls were abstract paintings by several of our better-known contemporary painters. I looked at them, as I had at Robert, with renewed interest. Granted, Frank had owned a gallery and had known how to strike bargains, but the paintings could not have been cheap in any case.

Rosa De Palma and Maria were seated on the sectional sofa, both dressed in black. Rosa’s plump but still handsome face was puffed from crying. Maria waved at me, almost gaily, and I caught Robert frowning at her. Rosa made a moaning sound and stood. She rushed across the room and threw her arms around me, sobbing. I patted her on the back and whispered ineffectual expressions of sympathy. It reminded me of the emotional funerals of my childhood, where relatives had howled out their grief-and then come back to our house to stuff themselves at my mother’s buffet two hours later.

Maria made an impatient noise and came over to us. She extricated me from Rosa’s embrace and led her aunt back to the couch. As Rosa sat, Jesse entered through an archway at the rear of the room. He carried a tray with a coffee pot and cups. I stared at him.

Jesse grinned sheepishly and set the tray on the coffee table. “Yeah, they’re domesticating me.”

Rosa blew her nose. “Maria should have done that.”

“Maria does too much.”

“Work is good for the girl.”

Jesse shrugged and began pouring coffee. I sat down on a hassock and accepted a cup. Robert remained over by the fireplace, one elbow on the mantel. When Jesse offered him coffee, he declined by shaking his head.

“So, Elena,” Rosa said, “you are taking over for Frank.”

“I am acting director, yes.”

“It is good of you. The museum must go on. It was my husband’s dream, his inspiracion.”

Por Dios, could the woman really believe that? She was painting her hypocritical little husband as some sort of visionary. I glanced at Jesse, who was studiously staring into his coffee cup. From Maria came the faintest of snorts. Even Robert shifted uneasily from one foot to the other. When I looked back at Rosa, her eyes met mine. They were hard, daring me or anyone else to contradict her.

She knows, I thought. She knows what he was, but she’ll never admit it. Rosa De Palma was made of the stuff that kept Chicano families together, that maintained pride and dignity against all odds. I had to admire-and pity-her.

I turned to Jesse. “I hate to talk business at a time like this, but we’ll need you at the museum today. We want you to set up an additional display of camaleones.”

“Ah, of course.” I’d been afraid he would ask where and, for obvious reasons, I didn’t want to bring up the folk art gallery. But the arbol de la vida had been destroyed, and something had to take its place before the opening. I had decided we might as well promote Jesse and his colorful animals.

“Can you get to it today?” I asked.

He nodded. “I have a few camaleones at my studio that will complement those that are already on display. Perhaps I should get started right away?” He looked relieved to have an excuse to leave the De Palma house.

“Yes, if you would. In case there are any problems, you know.”

Jesse stood. He took Rosa’s hand. She squeezed his and thanked him effusively for all he’d done. Maria got up and accompanied him to the door. As they passed Robert, he nodded curtly at Jesse. The couple went outside and half-closed the door behind them.

Robert left his post at the fireplace and went to sit beside Rosa. His eyes were narrowed. “About time the young punk left,” he muttered.

Rosa patted his hand. “It’s all right, Roberto. She’ll get over him. It is only an infatuacion.”

He grunted.

I said, “I take it you’re not too fond of Jesse.”

Rosa shook her head. “He’s a nice enough boy, but he is not right for Maria. A flighty girl like that needs someone older, more stable.” Again she patted Robert’s hand.

Robert glared at her. “How can you say he’s nice enough, after what he did to my brother?”

“Hush.”

Jesse had done something to Frank? “What happened?”

They exchanged looks. “Ah, well, that’s in the past,” Rosa said.

“Past,”‘ Robert said, “but not forgotten. The punk got in a fight with him. Knocked him around pretty bad. Gave him a black eye. That’s not something you forget so easy.”

“Dios mio! When was this?”

“A couple of months ago. Right before Frank’s vacation. He took off early so he didn’t have to go to work and explain it.”

I remembered Frank calling in sick the Friday before his vacation was due to start. At the time I’d thought it a ploy so the family could leave early for Baja California. This shed new light on his absence and, unfortunately, on Jesse’s relations with our director. Jesse had admitted to quarrels-but a fist fight? Again I thought of the artist’s quick temper. How many quarrels would it have taken to push him over the edge?

Maria entered and slammed the door. She came halfway across the room and stopped, her eyes flashing. “I heard what you were saying about Jesse.”

Rosa sighed. “Maria, Roberto was only telling what happened.”

“He had no right! Why does she”-she gestured at me- “have to know?”

“What does it matter?”

“It makes my fiance look bad.”

Robert sucked in his breath and began to cough.

“Since when,” Rosa said, “is he your fiance?”

“Since yesterday. My uncle is gone. He cannot stop me from marrying now.”

Rosa’s face reddened. “Have you no respect? Don’t you honor the memory of your uncle?”

“Why should I? Did he have respect for me, for my love for Jesse?”

Robert half rose, but Rosa pulled him back down. “Maria,” she said evenly, “the children need you.”

“The children! They always need something.”

“Maria, go see how they are.”

“I am sick and tired of-”

“Go!” The anger in Rosa’s eyes would have sent me running from the room. Maria, however, merely glared at her and ambled insolently through the archway toward the rear of the house. A door slammed back there, and Rosa burst into tears.

Now it was Robert’s turn to pat Rosa’s hand. I shifted uncomfortably on the hassock, glancing at my watch and thinking of an excuse to go. Maria’s display of defiance surprised me; while Frank was alive, she had been sulky and resentful, but had confined her rebellion to snippy asides and glares when he wasn’t looking. His death had unleashed a pent-up fury.

Or had the unleashing of that fury, for whatever reason, caused his death?

“She is ungrateful,” Robert said to Rosa.

Rosa sighed. “Perhaps we have been too hard on her.”

“That kind of girl you have to be hard on. You took her in, didn’t you? You gave her a chance to make up for her mistakes. And now look how she rewards you.”

Her mistakes? I remained silent. “

“Perhaps if she’d stayed in Mazatlan,” Rosa said. “If she’d married the boy, had her baby…”

“The boy didn’t want to marry her. He claimed anyone could have been the father-and Maria admitted that.”

“But to go off and have an abortion!” Rosa crossed herself. “When my sister found out, it almost killed her.”

Suddenly Robert glanced at me; they had been talking as if, for the moment, they’d forgotten I was there. “That’s over and done,” he said firmly. “She came to you and did well in her secretarial course. She has a good job. When she gets over this Jesse nonsense she’ll be fine. In the meantime, she’s probably just upset over Frank’s death, like the rest of us.” His eyes were on me the whole time he spoke.

I said, “Yes, Rosa. You have to realize Maria is very young. We all make mistakes at her age. Why, I remember…”I stopped. I couldn’t think of anything I had done that was major-or that I wanted to air in the De Palma living room.

I stood up, embraced Rosa and went to the door. “Don’t worry about the museum, Rosa. The opening will come off exactly as Frank would have wanted. And when you know about the funeral arrangements, please have someone call us.”

Rosa nodded absently. Robert stood and followed me out. On the front walk, he stopped me, his hand on my shoulder. “You won’t repeat what you heard here, Elena?”

“Of course not.” Not unless it became important in the murder investigation. I slipped out of Robert’s grasp and hurried to my car.

Maria was no angel, I reflected as I drove to the museum. But just because a good Catholic girl messes around with every boy in town and then has an abortion, it doesn’t mean she’s capable of murdering her uncle. Not necessarily, anyway. At any rate, the morning had been enlightening.

When I arrived at the museum Isabel was sitting at Maria’s desk, reading an art dealer’s catalog. She looked up as I came in, her eyes ringed with dark circles. In spite of her obvious fatigue, her hair and white tennis dress were as tidy as ever.

“That Lieutenant Kirk called you, Elena.”

“Oh? What does he want?”

“To see you. He said he would be out for a few hours, but that you’re to come to his office at four this afternoon.”

“Demanding, isn’t he?” I tried to make light of it, but a hunted feeling settled over me. My tone didn’t fool Isabel either. She gave me a sympathetic nod and returned to her catalog.

I looked around the outer office. Through the open door of his cubicle I spotted Tony, sitting with his feet on his desk, his head haloed by clouds of cigarette smoke. This was what wanted to become director of the museum! Well, that certainly wouldn’t happen-not after I found out the purpose of his secret trips to South America. I reached for the Rolodex on Maria’s desk and turned it until I found the card for the travel agency the museum used. I pulled it off the wheel and took it to my office, shutting the door behind me.

The person who answered the phone at the travel agency passed my call along to a Mrs. DeLano, the representative we dealt with. I explained that I was trying to find out which of Mr. Ibarra’s tickets to South America had been paid for and which were outstanding. Mrs. DeLano went to get her file.

“Your statement is up to date, Miss Oliverez. Seven first-class tickets to various South American destinations. We certainly appreciate the business.”

First class! “Mrs. DeLano, can you give me the number of the museum checks the last two tickets were paid for with?”

“Yes. Just a minute.” She rustled through some papers and then read off two sets of digits to me.

“Do you recall if those were both signed by Mr. Leary?”

“I believe so. They usually are.” She paused. “Is there some problem?”

“Nothing that should concern you. Our files are a bit disordered, what with moving and all.”

“Of course. By the way, we were very sorry to hear about Mr. De Palma. Will you still be holding your opening?”

“Yes, we will.” I thanked her for her help and hung up, feeling sad. So they’d all been in on it, whatever it was- Frank, Tony, Robert, and Vic. It was Vic’s involvement that I didn’t want to believe. Vic, the gentle, unhappy man who had treated me like a daughter. I remembered our talk last night and my-at the time-strange reluctance to trust him with the other set of museum keys. That reluctance proved to have been well founded.

What was I going to do about this? I wondered. I could go to the police. But first I should go to Carlos Bautista. Carlos had a bad temper, though, and this was sure to set it off. By the time he was through, the mess would be spread all over the papers. And a scandal so soon after Frank’s murder would ruin us.

What was I going to do?

Ordinarily I would have thought my colleagues stupid for using the museum’s travel agent and checks to finance whatever they were doing in South America. But since they’d all been in on it-possibly even Maria-they’d been reasonably safe in doing so. The board examined the accounts once a year. I never looked at them, didn’t understand them. And the ledgers were kept in the safe, away from prying eyes; I’d seen Vic lock them up only last night. Probably he’d been working late doctoring the books; he knew they’d come under scrutiny now that Frank was dead.

If Frank hadn’t been murdered while Tony was off in Peru, I probably would never have caught on to anything. And neither would the board, because Vic would have fixed all discrepancies.

My mind returned to the matter of the extra keys. Until everything was cleared up, they should be kept in a safe place. I went to Frank’s office. The keys were still there, on their hook. I took them down, brushing at a dirt smudge on the wall with my other hand. We’d been in this building less than a month, and already it was going to seed. Was it merely a reflection of the pettiness and dishonesty of the building’s occupants? I wondered.

Enough of this brooding, Elena, I thought sternly. It was time to see how Jesse was doing in the folk art gallery.

He was stringing wire from which to hang a camaleon. And Vic, the last person I wanted to see, was with him. When they turned, I avoided Vic’s eyes; then, feeling his on me, I looked back at him. His face was more haggard than Isabel’s, his clothes rumpled, and his cardigan sweater buttoned wrong. Like the building, the staff was going to pieces.

Vic apparently didn’t want to see me either. He quickly excused himself, mumbling something about paying some bills. I turned to Jesse.

He lifted a brightly colored camaleon and fastened it to the wire. This one was a sort of Pegasus. Its wings caught the breeze from the ventilation system, and it began to turn as soon as Jesse stepped back. As usual, his eyes held reverence, and suddenly it sickened me. Did he think he was that great an artist? The camaleones were beautiful, but they didn’t make him a Picasso.

Jesse saw my expression, which must have been quite sour. “What’s wrong?”

I shrugged. Why not get it over with? “I heard some nasty talk at the De Palmas’ after you left.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yes. About you. And about Maria.”

“You mean that we’re engaged? An engagement isn’t exactly what I’d call nasty.”

“Not about your engagement, although that came up, too. Let’s talk about the time you gave Frank the black eye.”

His face closed up, and he turned back to the camaleon. “Who brought that up?”

“Robert.”

“He would. He wants to marry Maria, you know.”

“That’s not the point, Jesse. What counts is that your fights with Frank were much more serious than you let on.”

“So?”

“So, if you hit a person once, you might-”

He whirled on me, his shoe-button eyes flat with anger. “Are you trying to say I killed Frank?”

“I’m trying to say how it will look to the police.”

“And how are they going to find out?”

“I did. It’s likely they will, too.”

“Especially if you tell them.”‘

“Did I say I would?”

“You didn’t have to. They suspect you, and you’ll do anything to save your own neck.”

Well, of course I would. “Then there’s the matter of Maria’s rather checkered past. Did you know about that?”

“We have no secrets from one another. Okay, she was wild. She’s the oldest in a big-family. All the others are boys. Her parents ignored her. She wanted some attention.”

“She certainly got it.”

“Look, Elena, why are you coming off so holier-than-thou? You’re not exactly the Virgin Mary yourself. So Maria made a mistake. But if you’re trying to say she had something to do with Frank’s death, forget it. An abortion isn’t murder.”

“Some would say it is.”

The words hung heavily in the quiet room. Jesse and I stared at each other. We were both educated, liberal-minded, and free. I didn’t go to church much anymore. I assumed he didn’t either. But weren’t there vestiges of our strict Catholic upbringing buried deep in our subconscious minds? Apparently so, from this sudden silence.

I didn’t want to argue with him anymore. This wasn’t getting us anywhere. I turned abruptly and left the gallery.

Inwardly I was seething. My teeth were clenched so tightly that my gums ached. My fists were balled, fingernails digging into my palms. This kind of tension wasn’t going to help me- either in bringing off the Cinco de Mayo party or in clearing myself of Frank’s murder. I decided to work it off by going to the cellar and performing some housekeeping tasks.

A museum conservator-and here I was both curator and preserver of our collections-performs many of these chores. They are boring, routine, delicate, and about as much fun as scrubbing the bathroom floor. But there is always a kind of soothing quality to them. When I am removing minute dust particles from a statue or inspecting an old church manuscript for mold, time slows down for me, and I can let my mind rest or wander where it pleases. This was the sort of natural tranquilizer I needed now.

Unfortunately, before I could even get at our artifacts, I would have to perform the duties of a stevedore. Everything was all heaped together, a jumble of cartons and fixtures and even office furniture. The ruins of the arbol de la vida leaned at a crazy angle in the middle of the room. Someone had left a flashlight on a crate near the stairs, and I took it to the front, figuring I’d start in the farthest corner. At least the shelves were clear and clean up there. I could unpack some of the boxes, see where things were.

I had packed only those items in our collections we had planned to display for the opening. A generous donation from a board member had allowed us to hire the moving company that had transported the King Tut exhibit for the rest. The real problem now was that I wasn’t exactly sure how they’d packed things or where those boxes were. I set the flashlight on a shelf so it provided maximum light, then ripped the tape from the top of the nearest carton.

These were our Olmec jadeite figurines. Good. After the opening, when I shifted the pre-Hispanic displays, they’d look good in the large showcase. I placed the figurines-a cross between humans and jaguars, a prevalent theme in that pre-Christian Indian civilization-carefully on the shelf.

The next box wasn’t one of the moving company’s, and I didn’t recognize it. That didn’t surprise me. We were a small museum, but even for us packing had taken many days and become disorganized. I reached in and unwrapped a statue of the Aztec earth goddess Coatlicue.

And stared at it. Turned it over in my hands. Felt it wonderingly.

This statue was not from our collections. I had never seen it before.

Quickly I set it on the shelf and fumbled with the next felt-wrapped shape. It was another Aztec statue, of Xochipilli, god of flowers and music. He looked at me through the paradoxical death mask the deity always wears. The statue was beautiful, valuable, and totally unfamiliar to me.

I began pawing through the other boxes. There were pre-Hispanic figurines, colonial religious paintings, Spanish crosses, and Peruvian gold work. There were silver milagros-votive offerings-like those in my own collection. There were funerary urns, dance masks, and fertility symbols.

I had never seen any of them before in my life.