The Tree of Death

“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.

nine

I sat down on a crate and surveyed what I’d found. Some, like the silver milagros, were from Mexico, but most were from South America. South America, where Tony frequently traveled using museum funds.

Had he smuggled all these artifacts into the United States? No, there would be no need to; most of them didn’t fall into the category of national treasures. Those that did were of the sort that could be sold to a museum, and Tony could prove he was our representative. This cache of artifacts had probably been legitimately purchased- again, I was sure, with museum funds.

The only problem was that J was the one who was supposed to make such acquisitions.

I had struggled to make do with our existing collections. I had spent hours developing innovative and pleasing arrangements for the same old displays. I often dreamed at night of acquiring some really good reform period landscapes. And, in the meantime, Tony had been flying first class to South America on buying trips. Not trips to build up the museum’s collections, however. I knew these artifacts were not intended to appear in our galleries.

I remembered the sheet of ledger paper I’d found in Frank’s desk the day of his murder-the one with the list of names and amounts. Those amounts roughly matched the value I would place on certain of these artifacts, or groups of them. The names were probably those of their buyers. As I sat there, their scheme became clearer and I felt the stirrings of rage.

While the museum foundered, lacking money to print decent catalogs, to hire a security guard, or even to pay the light bill, its director, business manager, and education director had siphoned off badly needed funds into their own money-making scheme. Frank, with his buying expertise, had located sources for artworks. Of course, he couldn’t be gone too often; ineffective as he was, his presence was necessary if he was to keep his job. So he sent Tony, an employee so useless he would hardly be missed, off to South America. Bubble-headed Susana covered for him; no one would suspect anyone that silly of trickery. And Vic-he signed the checks. What about Robert? Probably just along for the ride, cashing in on his brother’s cleverness.

It would be easy for Frank to find buyers for their wares. He’d operated a gallery for a long time. He knew all the local collectors. He might even be using La Galena as a front, letting the new owner sell the stuff and keep a commission. Who was the new owner, anyway? I dimly recalled that Frank had sold out to a woman newly arrived