'What did you pay?'

'Thirty thousand pesos.” Gideon darted a glance at Julie. There was no point in telling Marmolejo they had paid twice that. “But it's a good one; well-woven.'

'Too bad,” Marmolejo said. “I could have gotten you a fine one for half that. Come on, we'll have lunch at the Cafe Expres; I think you'll like it.'

* * * *

Their meal and the ensuing drive consisted of three frustrating hours of trying to comprehend the events of the last eleven days. How were they to apply Abe's Theorem of Interconnected Monkey Business, to which they all subscribed? How to make sense of Ard's murder, of the attack on Gideon, of the threat, the secret digging, and the rest of it—let alone relate them? Halfhearted, half-baked ideas were discarded as quickly as they were produced.

The only thread holding them together seemed to be the serial fulfillment of the curse, and when that subject was raised, Emma came naturally to mind. She had the most at stake, personally and financially, in the curse's sensational fulfillment, and a gory murder was certainly not going to hurt the eventual sales of Beyond Dreaming. But would she really take the terrible step—and the terrible risk—of killing Ard, all for the sake of marketing strategy? Was she that cold-blooded?

In the end, even Julie drew back from the notion. It was simply too fanciful, too preposterous.

Marmolejo approached it from another angle. “What if she's doing it not to sell her book but because Huluc- Canab is instructing her to do it?'

The three of them looked at each other. “That,” Gideon said, “is a horse of another color.'

* * * *

They had gotten back to the hotel after four, too late to do any useful work at the site. While Marmolejo left to talk to some of the hotel staff, Julie and Gideon stayed in their room, Gideon working listlessly away at his monograph, Julie at her quarterly report. The ringing of the telephone at five-twenty was a welcome interruption.

'That'd be Abe,” Julie predicted, “just back from the site, wanting to know how things went with Marmolejo.'

It was. The talk had gone fine, Gideon told him, but not much new had come out of it.

'Well, I got something new for you,” Abe said when Gideon had finished. “Let me wash up, then meet me in the bar in fifteen minutes. You'll order me a Montejo?'

'What have you got, Abe?'

'Ha, wait and see.'

Gideon could practically see the sparkle in his eye.

* * * *

The Lol-Ha Bar, like most of the Mayaland's public rooms, had open-grillwork gates and shutters instead of doors and glassed-in windows, so the occasional whispers of early evening breeze carried in sounds and fragrances from outside. Julie and Gideon sipped their beers and listened to the guitarist on the veranda warm up for his evening's work with a cool, simple version of “Sheep May Safely Graze” that was unexpectedly compatible with the lush tropical plants and purling fountains.

As the last strains of Bach faded away, Abe came striding purposefully out of the foliage along one of the paths. His slender, upright head was well in advance of the rest of him, with his feet churning to catch up. He was clamping a heavy loose-leaf binder to his chest with both arms.

'Something tells me,” Gideon said to Julie, “that we're on the verge of a major breakthrough here.'

Abe sat down, slid the beer to the side to make room, and put the binder on the table, turned so that Gideon and Julie could read the page it was opened to. Next to it he laid a photocopy of the threat that had been slipped under their door the previous week.

'So what do you think? Is there any doubt about it?” He leaned back in his armchair looking keenly satisfied.

The binder contained the daily field catalogue from the first dig. It was open to a page dated June 18, 1982, and signed by Howard.

Julie looked blankly from the page to the brief note. Gideon did the same, wondering what there wasn't supposed to be any doubt about.

Gideon Oliver, leave Yucatan or you will die. This is no joke. The Gods of Tlaloc.

Again, the faint tug of familiarity, the sense of having seen this before, but nothing more. He shook his head. “I don't think...'

'The as,' Abe prompted, and swigged impatiently at his beer.

'The as...' Gideon's head swung from the catalogue entry to the threat and back again. And it finally hit him. “The tilted a! These two were done on the same typewriter!” He leaned excitedly forward. “The missing arm on that w, the nick in the es, they're the same on both sheets!” A glance at a few other pages in the catalogue showed that the same machine had typed them all. “Abe, this is fantastic!'

Abe laughed. “It kept bothering me why it was familiar, and then finally it dawned on me what it was.'

'I'm sure this is all very wonderful,” Julie said, “but I wish somebody would take the trouble to let me know just why we're all congratulating ourselves.'

'Because,” Abe said, “we just figured out—you notice I use the self-deprecating ‘we'—that this friendly little letter to your husband was written by none other than Howard Bennett.” He paused dramatically. “Howard Bennett

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