The Xibalba Murders

MULUC

That Hernan Castillo was held in great esteem was evident from the crowds and tributes at his funeral.

The cathedral was packed. Representatives from universities and museums as far away as Europe were there, as were many public personages. It was even rumored that the president of Mexico might attend. If he was there, I didn’t see him.

Perhaps he had other things on his mind. The peso was in a free fall and allegations of wrongdoing in his government had extended to members of his immediate family. It was politics as usual in Mexico City.

Jonathan was there, though. He’d have come to keep me company in any event, he told me, but Cambridge University had asked him to be its official representative and he was sitting with the official delegation. I saw no sign of Lucas.

The funeral was held in the main cathedral on the Plaza Grande. I suppose there was a certain resonance in this, considering Don Hernan’s interest in the Maya. It had taken hundreds of Maya laborers some thirty-six years to build the place, with stone torn from their own ravaged city.

It is a rather stolid, gloomy place. Cathedrals of those times also often had to serve as fortresses, the Maya not yet entirely subdued, and this was clearly the case here. Instead of the huge stained-glass windows we North Americans have come to associate with cathedrals, this one has gunnery slits instead. The facade is very plain, as is the interior, which has, as its one spot of light, brightly embroidered altar cloths, done in the Maya style.

For those for whom such things matter, it is the oldest cathedral on the North American mainland, and the cross above the main altar is supposed to be the second largest in the world. Probably at some time it would have been decorated in gold, but most gold disappeared from churches during the Revolution.

As the crowds began to file in I found myself thinking about the conversation I had had earlier in the morning with Dona Francesca. I’d been helping as best I could in the kitchen, carrying trays of coffee and pastries to the guests, many of whom were bordering on hysteria because of the last few days’ events.

Francesca suggested that I take a coffee break after several of these trips, and I was grateful. As we both sat sipping cafe con leche I talked to her about the Empress.

“I thought you were remarkably patient with her,” I began. “She cannot have been an easy person to please.”

“On the contrary, I thought she was the remarkable one,” Dona Francesca said.

She paused for a moment. “She had a difficult life. She was actually born in England, you know. I imagine her name was Josephine, originally. I have no idea what her surname was. I gather from certain references that her family was very poor, and she saved her money for years before she was able to book passage on a ship bound for North America.

“She had wanted to go to New York, of course. Doesn’t everyone? But the fare for Merida was cheaper—I think she said she had come on a freighter.”

“When would this have been?”

“A long time ago. She said she was very young. In the late twenties, I would think.”

“That must have been considered very daring in those days, for a young woman,” I said.

“Oh yes, I think it was. But in her case, I think it was more desperation than daring.

“In any event, she told me she worked as a nanny for a wealthy Mexican family. She was occasionally allowed to join their guests at dinner parties, and it was there she met the love of her life.

“He was a married man, and a legal union was never in the picture. She became pregnant shortly after they met, and for four years he supported her and the child. Both she and her lover doted on the boy. For her he was everything. And I guess for her lover too, judging by what happened.

“One day she returned from a shopping trip to find her son gone. The woman who looked after him had been pushed into a closet, and trapped there. She did not recognize the men who had taken the child.

“Josefina has a very good idea who had been responsible, however. She ran to the home of her lover, but found it empty. The family had gone abroad, she was told. She searched the docks for a ship leaving for Europe; she waited day and night at the house. But she never saw her son again. She stayed in Merida, waiting for the family to return, hoping in the end to hear some word, or even to catch a glimpse of her child.

“To support herself, she did the only thing she could think of. Having lived in a fine family’s home for a few years in her early days in Merida, her manners were impeccable. She was not well educated, perhaps, but she had borrowed books from the family’s library, and she was a quick study.

“She became what I guess you would politely call a courtesan. She always referred to herself as a widow, and I guess in some ways she was.

“I know some people saw her as difficult. I always felt that it was real strength of character that saw her through.”

I could feel my throat constricting as Francesca told me the story of this woman I had found somewhat laughable, and now I could feel the tears burning in my eyes as I sat in the cathedral. She of the aristocratic name, who had held constant for fifty years waiting to see her son, engaging men’s attentions, if not their hearts, while she waited. A prayer for Dona Josefina would be in order that day, too.

As the lights over the main altar came on, and the service began, I began to have a strange sensation: a mental disorientation more than dizziness. I tried to concentrate on the words of the sermon, and to take comfort from them, but I could not.

The pastor was talking about Christ as a fisherman, a fisher of men, and I remembered that today was Muluc, the day in the Maya calendar associated with water and fish. Suddenly the dark contradictions in this city, the melding of the Western world with that of the Maya this cathedral embodied, seemed ominous and threatening.

I found myself longing for coolness and darkness. Somewhere in my mind, a rational being was telling me that this was a result of the shock and pain of the last few days, but the rational voice was losing. I felt an overwhelming need to find a dark corner, away from the light. Rising from my seat, I disturbed my neighbors as I made my way to the side of the church.

To the left of the main altar is a small chapel with what is called the Cristo de las Ampollas, the Christ of the Blisters, supposedly carved in the 1500s from the wood of a tree that was engulfed in flames all night, but was not charred. When the church in which it was originally housed was also burned, it is said both the church and the statue were covered in blisters.

Hugging the walls of the darkened side aisles of the cathedral, I was transfixed as I saw kneeling before the Cristo, lighting a votive candle in prayer, a fair-haired woman in a black dress, black gloves, and a black mantilla.

For a moment I was convinced it was Dona Josefina, fully recovered. Then the woman rose and turned in my direction. It was Sheila Stratton Gomez.

As she saw me, she gave me a wan smile. Her eyes were red from crying. I thought how many similarities there might be between her and Josefina, both pale foreigners, lonely, if for very different reasons, both victims in a way, of ruthless men.

She must have recognized the shock on my face, because she quickly took my arm and pulled me to a seat on the side. While we sat there she quietly opened her purse and gestured at the contents. I saw only two things. A platinum credit card and a small silver flask.

Using a handkerchief for cover, she quickly took a swig, then passed the flask to me. I took a sip. It was a very chilled martini. Horrified though I was, I have to admit it helped.

We sat there side by side, her arm through mine, while the service continued, and then we followed the coffin procession, led by Santiago and his wheelchair, Norberto and Alejandro among the pallbearers.

Both Sheila and I put on sunglasses as we emerged from the church and followed the procession to the cemetery. The cemetery in Merida, like others in Mexico, seems so much brighter and more extravagant than those I am accustomed to, the monuments in cobalt blue, coral, green, and white, many of them with pictures of the deceased surrounded by garlands of flowers. The colors of the flowers are extraordinary: lilies, carnations, roses, and marguerites, sold by Maya women from little stalls set up under awnings on the main road of the cemetery. The monuments themselves, everything from simple crosses to little chapels decorated like wedding cakes in white marble, testify to the obsession Mexicans have with death.

It was almost like a festival as we made our way to Don Hernan’s family crypt, where he was to be buried next to his wife and near his ancestors. There was one jarring note, however: large numbers of federal police near the perimeter of the crowd. Partially hidden by a large chapel, a policeman was busy videotaping the crowd at the cemetery.

Major Martinez was there, and I was convinced he had his eyes on me virtually all the time. But perhaps it was my hyperactive imagination. It was an impressive display of police might all right, perfect for the media covering the event. But what it meant, and how close Martinez was to an arrest, I couldn’t imagine.

At the end of the interment ceremony, a sleek black limousine with very dark windows pulled up at the entrance to the cemetery. “Do you feel all right now?” Sheila asked, glancing toward the limo. “I could give you a lift back to the inn.”

I told her that I would stay with the Ortiz family, but thanked her for her kindness.

She gave me that sad smile again. “I really meant it when I said I hoped you would come to the house again. I’d like you to meet my husband. Perhaps dinner later this week?”

I wondered how often Gomez Arias was actually home for dinner, but I told her I would love to come. After all, he was on my personal suspect list, and I did want to meet him.

She disappeared quickly into the limo and it pulled away.

Close friends of Don Hernan had been invited back to the Casa de las Buganvillas for tea. Much to my surprise, Antonio Valesquez was there. He looked totally out of his element, except when browsing through the books in Santiago’s collection in the sitting room.

“So it is indeed true that you and I are—were—both friends of Don Hernan,” he said as I brought him a cup of tea. I nodded.

“Perhaps you could tell me how you know him,” he said.

In the volubility that sometimes accompanies shock, I told this strange little man about my long friendship with the Ortiz family, and how I had met Don Hernan through them. I told him about my beloved business, its loss, the failure of my marriage, the call that had brought me to the Yucatan, and the clue about the rabbit. Not once during the conversation did the rational interior voice ask me if this was a good idea or whether someone else might be listening.

“Now it’s your turn,” I said conversationally, having exhausted my story, and my voice.

“I live with my mother,” he said in an apparent non sequitur. “About what you would expect from a man who finds reality only in books, wouldn’t you say?” he asked with an ironic smile.

“My mother became very ill about three years ago. She required very expensive medical treatment that I could not afford. When I was about to take her out of the hospital because I could no longer afford it, I found that the bills had all been paid.”

“Don Hernan,” I said, finally grasping the point.

“For a long time I did not know it was he. At the hospital they would not tell me. For a while I thought it might be Diego Maria Gomez Arias. He could surely afford it. One day I saw Don Hernan in the business office of the hospital. I confronted him, and with some reluctance he admitted it. He told me not to worry about my mother. He would see to it that she was taken care of.

“Until that time I had always regarded him with some awe, as some distant personage. After all, he was the executive director of the museo for much of my tenure as librarian. I certainly had always found him pleasant, and he had defended my little acquisitions budget every year when the time came to submit estimates for the next year, but to do such a thing! I will be forever grateful.”

I would have liked to talk to Valesquez longer, but I noticed that many of the guests had begun to drift away, so I excused myself and began helping with wraps and canes. Francesca and Santiago both looked exhausted, and Isa soon bundled them off to their quarters at the back of the hotel.

She and I cleaned up, and Manuela, her two little children racing around the kitchen, began the preparations for cena that evening while Norberto set up the dining room. In the hotel business, the work never stops, even for murders and funerals.

“About time you got down to some honest work,” the English voice said. It was Jonathan, of course.

“Maybe you could stop digging around in the dirt and do some honest work yourself,” I said, handing him a vegetable peeler and pointing at a pile of potatoes.

Good-humoredly, he pitched in, although when the young woman who assisted Francesca and Manuela in the kitchen in the evenings arrived, he was quick to hand her the peeler.

“I’ve come to make a firm date,” he said. “Dinner, a late-night swim, perhaps?”

We made a date for three days hence, and I walked him to the front steps of the inn. As I leaned over to take in the fragrance of some flowers near the steps, I felt his lips brush the back of my neck. Neither of us said anything. I simply watched as he got into the Jeep and pulled away with a brief wave of his hand.

I helped Isa and Manuela as best I could for the remainder of the evening and then shared a light supper with them in the kitchen. Isa told me that Don Hernan’s solicitor had called to say that the family was expected at the reading of the will at his offices the next afternoon, and that I, too, was invited.

Late in the evening, as I began to ascend the stairs to my room, Alejandro, who was staffing the front desk, signaled that I had a phone call.

I took the call in the little sitting room behind the front desk. It was Antonio Valesquez.

“I’ve found it! The rabbit that writes. Can you meet me at the museo tomorrow at nine a.m.? As you know, it’s closed. I’ll meet you at the back door to let you in.”

“I’ll be there,” I said, neglecting to mention that getting into the museo was no problem for me, unless someone had got smart after two murders and changed the locks.

Good old Antonio Valesquez. The nervous little man with a large debt to Don Hernan. He must have gone straight to the museo after leaving the inn, and applied his considerable research skills to the problem.

When I got into bed, I was exhausted to the bone. This time I dreamed I was chasing a rabbit, a kind of Alice-Through-the-Looking-Glass rabbit that walked on its hind legs.

I followed it through the museo. Just as I was about to catch it, a hole opened up beneath me, and once again I was falling through black space, a babble of voices around me.

I sat up, awakened by my own cry, I think. It was a while before I could get back to sleep.

As I drifted off again I found myself praying that Valesquez would stay alive long enough to show me the rabbit. Knowing about writing rabbits would appear to shorten one’s life span. Once I knew about it, I’d have to remember that myself.