I couldn’t believe the notion that was dawning on me. “Don’t tell me he had something going on the side?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“Frank?”
“Yes.”
“Por Dios, who on earth would-” I stopped. No sense speaking like that to Vic, who had been Frank’s friend. Maybe there were women who liked sloppy, overweight little men. After all, my mother had said Rosa De Palma was once a beauty. If he’d managed to win her, it was conceivable… “Vic, if he often stayed away all night, why did they worry this morning?”
“He always got back in time to have breakfast with the kids.”
“But why didn’t they call the museum, to see if he was here?”
“They did, but got no answer. Then they started calling… elsewhere.” Vic looked extremely uncomfortable now.
I decided not to pursue it. “How’s the family taking it?”
“Badly.”
“Do you want to go over there?”
“The cops said not to leave.”
“Well, once they’re done, we’ll close for the day. I’ll have to call a meeting of the board, decide about the press conference. Do you know where Carlos Bautista is staying in Acapulco?”
“The number should be somewhere on Frank’s desk.”
“Good. We need to notify him. We need to…”
Lieutenant Kirk came in. He looked a shade grimmer than before. “May I speak with you, Miss Oliverez?”
“Certainly.”
“We’ll be removing the body shortly. Have you cleared the museum of reporters?”‘
“They should be gone by now.”
“Good. As soon as we’re through in there”-he motioned toward the galleries with his thumb-“I want to meet with each employee individually.”
“Why?”
“I want to reconstruct when they last saw the deceased.”
“Why should that matter?”
He ignored the question. “Please instruct them-and the volunteers-not to leave the premises for any reason.”
“But why?”
Again he ignored me. “Since you found the body, I’ll begin with you.”
“I don’t understand all this.”
He looked at me, his face unreadable. “This is not merely a routine investigation, Miss Oliverez.”
“Why!”
“Because Frank De Palma wasn’t killed by accident. He was murdered.”
five
I couldn’t believe it. Even after I had talked to Lieutenant Kirk-giving him a detailed statement on everything that had happened from the time I got to work the day before to the time I picked up the phone and called the police-I still couldn’t believe it.
Frank, the lieutenant told me, had been hit on the head with a heavy object. The police hadn’t yet found out what it was. The tree of life had then been pushed over onto his body in a clumsy attempt to cover up the crime.
I had turned over my office to Lieutenant Kirk, so he could talk to each of us in private. As I left, Vic entered, giving me a comforting glance that somehow didn’t come off. I wandered out of the office wing. In the folk art gallery, the lab technicians were finishing up. Frank’s body had been removed, but there were chalk marks on the floor and the arbol de la vida and nearby display cases were covered with what I assumed was fingerprint powder. Mechanically I looked around the gallery to see if anything other than the tree had been damaged. The other displays looked all right, but I sensed something wrong. What? I couldn’t put my finger on it. What…?
Isabel came up behind me. “Elena?”
“Yes?”
“The phones are ringing constantly. Reporters. I don’t know what to tell them.”
“Just what I did-that we’ll call a press conference later. I have to talk to Carlos, and I’d better do that now.” We left the gallery and went back across the courtyard. “You take care of the phones,” I told Isabel and went into Frank’s office.
It was exactly as it had been the afternoon before. Sunlight slanted through the window, throwing the shadow of the iron bars across the clean desk. A tidy desk, in Frank’s case, had been no virtue. It was always like that and, more often than not, the padded leather chair was unoccupied.
I sat down and opened the center drawer of the desk. Nothing there but pens and pencils. The pencils were all pointed and sharp. In a side drawer I found the budget sheets Frank had said he was going to work on last night. I doubted that story; Vic prepared the budget, and Frank took his advice. He’d merely said that so I would think he was doing something.
I flipped through the ledger sheets. They were covered with Vic’s neat figures. The last one, however, was scrawled in Frank’s bolder hand. Maybe he had done some work after all. I scanned the sheet.
It was a list of names with numbers opposite them. The names were unfamiliar to me, and the numbers were much too large to have anything to do with the museum budget: $50,000; $61,500. If only we had that many grants of that amount!
So it must be a personal ledger sheet. What did it mean? Prices of houses Frank was looking at? He’d been talking about moving recently. No, they were much too low for Santa Barbara’s real estate. Debts? Surely Frank hadn’t been that far in the red. Gambling debts? Maybe he’d had a secret vice. The thought pleased me, but I shrugged and replaced the ledger sheets. It wasn’t my business, especially now that he was dead. Flipping through the desk calendar, I finally found the number of Carlos Bautista’s hotel in Acapulco and reached for the phone.
One of the buttons was lit and another flashing. Isabel was obviously having trouble keeping up with the calls. I punched the flashing button and said, “Museum of‘ Mexican Arts.”
“Elena? Is that you?” It was Susana Ibarra, Tony’s teen-aged bride. With a start, I remembered Tony hadn’t put in an appearance that morning.
“Yes, Susana.”
“What are you doing answering the phone?”
“Maria’s not here.”
“Is she sick?”
Impatiently, I tapped my fingers on the desk blotter. Susana was a silly girl, the perfect teenage vamp. She wore her skirts too short, her makeup too heavy, and her long dark hair extravagantly teased. She chewed gum constantly and, if given the opportunity, would babble on for hours, punctuating her conversation with shrill giggles. “No, Susana,” I said, “Maria’s not sick.”
“Well, that’s good because there’s something terrible going around. First I had it and now Tony. That is why I’m calling, to say Tony won’t be in to work today.”
That was nothing new. She frequently called in with excuses for Tony. He didn’t appear sickly, but he was out at least five days of every month.
“You haven’t heard the news, then,” I said.
“News?”
“Frank’s dead. Somebody murdered him in the folk art gallery.”
There was a gasp, then silence.
“Susana, are you there?”
“I am… here.”
“Maybe I better talk to Tony.”‘
“No! You can’t.”
“Why not? He is there, isn’t he?”
“Yes…he is… but he can’t come to the phone. He’s sick. That is, he’s throwing up and he can’t… I will have him call back.” She hung up.
I stared at the receiver for a moment, then replaced it. For the first time ever, something I had said had gotten through to Susana. I only hoped she’d be able to communicate it to Tony before she went off into babbling hysterics. I sighed, then direct-dialed Carlos Bautista’s hotel in Mexico.
Carlos, an amiable, shrewd-minded man who had made a fortune in oil, was shocked but calm. He told me to refer the press to the police for information; he would cut his vacation short and return tonight; we would hold a board meeting as soon as he arrived. “In the meantime,” he added, “I’m appointing you acting director. You can hold your press conference and tell them that, no more.”
“Me? Acting director?”‘
“Yes, you. Why not? You’re the only one there who appears to be doing anything.”