It was a beautiful painting of a wizened old woman, with glowing cheekbones and a strong jaw, her gray hair blowing around her tanned face like a wispy halo of ghosts, her blue eyes wise and knowing. There were ghostly ears of corn floating in the air all around her.
With a note of triumph in his voice, he said, “That’s Pachamama.”
I leaned forward. “Wow. She looks awesome.”
“She is. That’s one way she’s depicted, but she can also look like this…”
He clicked a couple of keys and another picture appeared—a small female figure carved out of white stone, bald and big-eared, with soft rounded shoulders and big voluminous breasts.
I said, “Yeah, Tom. I know. You printed that out for me already.”
He cast me a sidelong glance and raised one eyebrow. “Okay, except Pachamama is still worshipped today in a number of cultures with all kinds of rituals and ceremonial prayers, and guess what’s often sprinkled around her as a devotional offering…”
I said, “No…”
He said, “Yes.”
My eyes must have grown ten times bigger. “Cornmeal?”
He nodded.
I leaned forward to get a closer look, and a shudder trickled down my body. The figurine’s face was crudely carved, with very little detail—just two half-moons for eyes, mounded cheeks, and thin Mona Lisa lips—but the overall effect was stunning. It was a combination of raw, terrible power … tempered with peaceful, unadulterated bliss.
“Her devotees use cornmeal as an offering, like a gift, or a show of respect. Usually they’ll light a couple of candles and say a prayer, and then they sprinkle it on the ground, like in a garden.”
I was speechless. Tom looked at me and said, “You heard me say candles, right?”
I nodded. He closed the picture and opened another article, the title of which was Pachamama and Modern Culture.
He said, “Pachamama’s actually a very interesting lady. It seems no matter what happens to her, she never gives up. She just keeps on going like the force of nature she is. And believe it or not, the people who worship her today? They’re mostly Catholic. They believe Pachamama is actually the Virgin Mary, only hiding her face … behind a disguise.”
I felt my jaw slide forward as my eyeballs tried to jump out of their sockets. I said, “You mean, like she’s wearing a mask?”
He looked up at me. “That’s exactly what I mean.”
It felt like time had slowed to a crawl. I said, “Tom, these people, the ones that worship Pachamama, where do they live?”
He said, “Mostly in the Andes.”
I nodded, fairly certain I already knew the answer to my next question.
“And Tom … where is Peru?”
* * *
I was standing next to the Bronco, just around the corner from the Sea Breeze’s front entrance, with my cell phone pressed up against my ear. I was still out of breath. I don’t think poor Billy Elliot ever had a shorter, more disappointing walk in his entire life, and I’m sure as we were riding back up in the elevator he wondered what the hell he was paying me for, but I promised I’d make it up to him next time with an extra-long walk.
My head was swimming. Those lit candles on the coffee table, the yellow powder sprinkled in the garden, the mask, the statue, Daniela’s cross … and then I remembered Mr. Paxton saying he’d been out of town on a buying trip in the Andes. There were just too many coincidences. That sculpture I’d seen … it had to be real.
It just had to.
After the phone rang about six times, there was a quick beep on the line so I perked up, and then, miraculously, I heard the familiar sound of Mrs. Keller’s voice.
“Hello, this is Linda Keller. Thanks for calling, but Buster and I are indisposed this week. Please leave a message and we’ll get back to you just as soon as we can.”
I took a deep breath, thinking when she heard what I had to say she might never speak to me again. After the beep, I said, “Mrs. Keller, it’s Dixie. Listen, I may have some bad news. Could you please call me right away? Everything’s totally fine with Barney Feldman. He’s doing great and Lizette has been a big help too, but…”
I hesitated. I didn’t want to say anything that might get Mrs. Keller in trouble with her husband, but he’d have to find out sooner or later and I didn’t think I had a choice.
“Mrs. Keller, I know about the urn of cornmeal you bought. I’m really sorry, but I had to open that box—it’s a long story, but I needed to know what was inside it. The thing is … did you also buy an ancient figurine? Because I think somebody may have attacked me with it in your house, and now I think it’s gone. I’m calling the police now, but I need you to call me as soon as you get this.”
I hung up and dialed the sheriff’s office. It probably would have been smarter and faster to just dial 911, but I knew it would’ve been next to impossible to explain the whole thing to an emergency operator. I needed to speak to Deputy Morgan directly.
As it was ringing, I heard a soft crunching, which at first I thought was static on the line, but then I realized it wasn’t coming from the phone at all. It was behind me. There was someone walking by, and just as their shadow passed, I heard a loud crack!—like the sound of a baseball bat hitting a long ball right out of the park.
And then everything went dark.
32
I woke up to a pulsing red blur in the corner of my eyes, fading in and out to the rhythm of my heart. My head throbbed, and my whole body felt like mush, as if it had taken a spin in a blender set to pulverize. I heard a voice in my head whisper, You’re dead … but somehow, in my loopy state of mind, the fact that my ears were ringing seemed proof enough that the voice was wrong.
I could smell bleach and something else, like fresh dirt or clay. I took a few deep breaths to slow my heart down a little, and then the ringing in my ears subsided enough that I could hear muffled voices coming from somewhere nearby. There were men, at least two of them, arguing, and then I heard a woman’s voice.
She said, “And then what? Leave her here?”
I had no idea where “here” was. All I knew was that it was dark and really, really cramped. I was enclosed in some kind of box. My knees were folded up against my chest with my shoulders scrunched up around my ears, and my hands were lying limply on top of my knees. All around me were faint circles of light, like blurry stars coming out at dusk. At first I thought I was just seeing things, but then I reached up with one finger and carefully touched one of the stars. It was a hole, about the size of a penny, and the sides of whatever I was locked in were rigid, not cardboard, but metal or hard plastic.
Of course, my first instinct was to scream like a banshee, but I figured whoever it was that had put me here wouldn’t be too happy if I started making a bunch of noise, so I kept quiet. I figured as long as they thought I was unconscious—or dead—I had an advantage. It wasn’t much, but it was something.
My arms and legs were stone-cold, and as I wiggled my fingers and toes to try to get the blood flowing again, pain shot through my body. I didn’t mind, though. It was just further proof that I was in fact alive.
As slowly as possible, I maneuvered my left shoulder out of the way so I could lean my face closer to one of the holes. It wasn’t easy, but by pushing my shoulder down and craning my neck to one side I was able to get a view to what was beyond my little cell.
About ten feet away was a cinder-block wall, lined floor-to-ceiling with stacks of dusty cardboard boxes and old cans of paint. I moved my eye to another hole and saw a rolling bucket with a mop sticking out of it, and next to that was a big black duffel bag, about six feet long. In the middle of the wall right in front of me was a wide metal door with a frosted square window in the middle, which I realized was where the light was coming from. I could see the silhouette of someone pacing back and forth beyond it.