not only an iron grill over it but a steel security shutter, all of which were rolled down. And while the entrance door was probably as old as the building, it had been cross-braced with studded steel bars. A guided missile might have gotten the place open for you, but nothing less.
In front of the building was a small courtyard enclosed by high adobe walls and secured by a head-high gate of ornate metal grillwork, overpainted so many times that the twining leaves and stems and flowers were hardly more than solid globs of black paint. The heavy old padlock on the gate was in the process of being shaken to make sure it was closed, by a small, pale, waspish man in a dark suit and tie.
“We’re closed,” he said to them in dour, unaccented American English. “You’ll have to come back tomorrow.” He was a bit of a dandy, or at least he would have been in 1965, when his threadbare double-breasted jacket and inch-wide tie were still in fashion.
“You’re not open till four?” Julie asked.
“No,” he said, his voice rising as if it were something he had already explained to them a dozen times. “Tuesdays and Thursdays, one until three. Saturdays, one until five. Mondays twelve until three, and Fridays, twelve until two. Look at the sign,” he added irritably, gesturing at a small plaque so darkened by street grime and age that it was next to impossible to read.
“But it’s barely three o’clock now,” Gideon said. “Couldn’t you let us in just for a minute?”
“Impossible.”
“It really is important, and I don’t think it’ll take long. We’ll be glad to pay your admission fees, of course.”
Now the man was insulted. “It’s not a matter of fees. Standards must be maintained.”
“Well, sure, but-”
“I’m sorry. Now really, I must go, I must be on my way. Time is of the essence.” And off he went around the corner, shaking his head.
Julie and Gideon looked at each other. “Now who does he remind me of?” Julie wondered, looking after the scurrying, still muttering figure.
“ Alice in Wonderland?” Gideon guessed. “The Mad Hatter?”
They both laughed. “You might be right,” she said. “Well, what now?”
“I come back tomorrow, I guess. Between twelve and three. Standards must be maintained.”
“No, I meant us-what do you want to do right now? Do you-” The phone in her bag went off and she dug it out. They both went to stand right up against the wall of the building, out of the central flow of foot traffic, which until then had been parting around them and then coming together again, the way a stream does around a boulder. “Oh hello, Javier-” she began brightly, then quickly sobered. “Oh. Did he say anything before… Okay, I see. Yes, I appreciate that. Yes, of course I’ll tell him. Thanks, Javier.”
“Tony’s dead,” Gideon said as she put away the phone.
“Yes. He never regained consciousness.”
“I-” He stopped speaking and shook his head.
Julie looked hard at him. “Gideon, you have nothing to blame yourself for. What else could you do?”
“I know that, Julie, it’s just that…” But it was hard to sort out his feelings, let alone to put them into words. Of course Tony’s death was Tony’s own doing; of course it was inadvertent on Gideon’s part. It had just happened, and Tony alone was to blame. Still, there was no avoiding the simple fact that Tony Gallagher, alive yesterday, was dead today. He would be mourned-and missed-by his family. And the unavoidable truth was that if Gideon Oliver had never come to Oaxaca, he would still be alive.
She squeezed his hand. “It was not your fault,” she said firmly. “And the others aren’t going to blame you, believe me.”
He nodded. “I hope not.” One more shake of his head, this time to clear it.
“I wonder if we’ll ever find out what it was all about now,” Julie said.
“Pretty doubtful. Javier’s probably going to drop the whole thing now. From a legal point of view, there’s nothing to be done. Tony’s dead. There’s nobody to be prosecuted.”
“No, he’s going to keep pursuing it; he made a point of telling me so, and he wanted me to make sure you knew.”
“I’m glad to hear it. I guess he’s gotten intrigued, and he needs to see how all the strands of this thing fit together. That sounds more like the old Marmolejo; none of this ‘statute of limitations’ baloney.”
She nodded. “Anyway… back to what we do now. You want to head on back to the Hacienda?”
“Well, if you want to…”
“But you don’t?”
“Not really, no. Marmolejo’s people are probably out there talking to them right now, so everything’s probably in an uproar. And they’re going to be in a state of shock about Tony-that he’s dead, and how he died. They’ll have a million questions. I just don’t feel up to facing that right now.”
“Okay, I can understand that. Why don’t we do some sightseeing and then have dinner here by ourselves? Then you won’t have to face them until tomorrow, when it’s all sunk in. And we can give ourselves a pleasant afternoon. I’d say we’ve earned it, especially you.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Gideon agreed
They threaded their way through the swarms (all the foot traffic seemed to be against them as workers apparently headed for the bus terminal for transportation out to their villages), back to the Zocalo, bought themselves a guide pamphlet (there wasn’t anything that could properly be called a guide book) at one of the stalls, and spent the next four hours seeing the sights: the grand old Palacio del Gobierno, now a museum; the cathedral; the Museum of Pre-Hispanic Art. When that wore them down, they returned to the now-emptying Zocalo to drink coffee at an outdoor cafe and watch the sinking sun burnish the tops of the laurels and the arched porticoes of the surrounding buildings. Then they walked a couple of blocks to El Naranjo, the other restaurant that Marmolejo had recommended in the event they wanted “someplace quieter, more elegant, with real Oaxacan cuisine and ambience, of which few tourists would even be aware.”
The place lived up to advance billing, a cool, quiet, skylighted interior courtyard in a well-kept colonial building, with Moorish arches, a seventeenth-century floor of green stone tiles, and a trickling stone fountain. And a full-sized orange tree (el naranjo) in the middle. They ate chicken with mole coloradito, drank local beer, and never once talked about murder, or skulls, or Tony Gallagher and his clan.
TWENTY-TWO
The next morning, the Hacienda Encantada itself seemed to be in a state of shock. When they entered the dining room at eight thirty, they found no guests, no food on the buffet table other than a pot of coffee and an opened package of sliced white bread, and no Dorotea. In the nook at the far end of the room, at the table reserved for the Gallaghers, Carl and Annie appeared to be comforting a crying, mumbling Josefa, who, if Gideon remembered correctly, was Tony’s aunt.
At the sight of Gideon, both Carl and Annie jumped up, with a flurry of questions, of expressions of shock and concern over what had happened to him at Yagul, and of contrition on Tony’s behalf.
It was enough to fluster Gideon a little. “Hey… you two don’t owe me any apologies; it wasn’t your fault. I’m just sorry it had to end the way it did.”
On that point, everybody agreed, and Annie went to the buffet table. “Let me get you both some coffee. Sorry, not Dorotea’s magic brew, just plain old straight coffee.”
“Dorotea didn’t come in today?” Julie asked.
“Dorotea didn’t come in today, and Dorotea won’t come in tomorrow, and Dorotea’s not coming in next week. Dorotea quit.”
“Quit?” Gideon asked. “After all these years? Because of Tony?”
“Tony? No, she didn’t give a damn about Tony. She never could stand him. What’d you think, that was an act?”
I sure did, Gideon thought. “Well, then, why-”
“Because of Preciosa.”
