“Credit? I prefer cash to credit, my dear, any day. And this should bring a significant amount of it.”
Light was beginning to dawn. “So is this what you do?” I asked incredulously. “Pretend you are on a legitimate archaeological dig, anguishing in public about how grave robbers have got there ahead of you, when in fact you’ve taken the stuff yourself?”
He merely smiled and gestured toward the box. “Hold it up where we can see the contents,” he ordered. I did so with some difficulty. The box was heavy.
The codex was there all right. For the few moments that I had had it to myself, I had seen the fragile bark paper, the beautifully rendered drawings in black and red, and the fluid hieroglyphic text. It was badly damaged, of course, but what little I could see looked legible.
At that moment I had no doubt that what I had found here were messages that would ring across the ages, that would illuminate the Maya past as never before, and ensure Maya civilization its rightful place among the truly great civilizations of the world.
And these people were going to take it, sell it for profit to someone far from Mexico, far from the people to whom it rightly belonged.
“You will be found out, you know. You can’t keep something as important as this a secret.”
“I think you are the last one, other than us, to know,” Jonathan said. I thought about Antonio, and hoped the proverbial wild horses wouldn’t drag his name out of me.
“You’ll kill me, no doubt, just as you killed Don Hernan”—and then, taking a deep breath, I added— “and Luis Vallespino.”
“Regrettably, yes.”
The figure behind him shifted in an angry movement. Then I knew who it was.
“And Montserrat,” I said. “Does she steal from her own father, or is he part of this, too?”
“Steal his beloved art? I hardly think so. Loves it too much. Prepared to go down the tubes financially, but wouldn’t sell a single one of them. Wouldn’t ask his fancy-pants wife for money either. His shipping company was useful, though, for getting the stuff out of the country. You might as well take off the balaclava, love, she’s figured out who you are,” he said, turning slightly to the figure behind him.
“Fortunately for him, and of course for me, his daughter has no such inhibitions. And she’s good at math, too. Figured out that if she stole the art, her father would collect on the insurance, and she and I could keep the proceeds from the sale. Worked out well for the whole family.”
Montserrat Gomez.
Under different circumstances, I would have found my own stupidity laughable. I had assumed that because so many trails led to the Gomez Arias household, it was he who was the guilty party. It had simply never occurred to me that what applied to him applied equally to her. If he was in trouble financially, then so was she. Wasn’t she a director of all his enterprises, vice-president of the investment company, manager of the hotel?
“Can’t she speak for herself?” I asked bitterly.
“I’m sure she can. What else would you like to know, since it’s not the amount you know, only that you know anything at all about our plans that is problematic under the circumstances?”
“Why didn’t you save yourselves a lot of time and trouble and just steal a Picasso or a Matisse?”
But I knew the answer even as I asked it. A Picasso or a Matisse is easily recognized, and possibly traced. And Jonathan and Montserrat would not have had the unwitting help of their erstwhile accomplices, the self-named and essentially self-deluded Children of the Talking Cross.
“How did she… you,” I said, addressing the retiring figure in the rear, “convince Alejandro Ortiz and Ricardo and Luis Vallespino to get involved in this?”
The figure to the rear whipped off the balaclava, dark hair tumbling across her face.
“Stupid, sentimental children! They never even knew who was directing them. Spent more time deciding on the name of their organization than they did actually accomplishing anything,” she said. “They thought they were stealing these art pieces for the cause, for the revolution. They saw the Zapatistas negotiating with the government and quarreling among themselves, and decided that it was they who were the true champions of the oppressed. But Luis wasn’t part of this.”
“So why did you kill him?”
“Ricardo was stupid enough to boast to his brother about his exploits. Luis headed right for Castillo to tell him about it. He’d heard Castillo give a lecture at the museum about how the museum and the indigenous communities could work together to preserve Maya heritage, thought this might be a better way to go. Castillo wasn’t there, of course, but there was no point in waiting for Luis to come to his senses,” she said very matter-of-factly.
“And Don Hernan? Figured it out, too, did he?”
“Not him. He just figured out about the codex, and was determined to get it before my father did. He was just a silly old man who got in the way. The fact that he knew there was a codex just complicated things for us. He might have figured out that too many things were disappearing from Jonathan’s digs.”
“So you killed him here and shipped his body back to the museo in the artifact crates, hid it in the museum until it closed, then dumped his body in his office.”
“So clever of you to figure it out,” she replied sarcastically.
I realized as she was speaking that I had made an error in thinking she was Jonathan’s assistant in all this. I could tell by the way she was speaking, and the way that he deferred to her, that she was in fact the leader. The aggressive, stubborn Gomez character gone bad.
“And Martinez?”
“Just another corrupt cop on the take. Thought he saw a pattern, got himself assigned to these robberies, and figured a couple of things out. Seemed to think that entitled him to part of the proceeds. No one will miss him, I can assure you.
“I think you’ve covered just about everybody now, Senora McClintoch. Except that Jonathan may have to have another go at smothering that Dona Josefina person if she ever comes to. Take care of her, sweetie, and do it right this time,” she said, tapping her scarlet fingernails on Jonathan’s shoulder and gesturing in my direction.
I looked at this man I was wondering forty-eight hours ago if I was in love with, and said incredulously, “Do you mean to tell me you have killed three people now over a book?”
“Four,” he said, turning to me and cocking the pistol.
I suppose no one knows what they will think in the split second before they die. Some, no doubt will worry about the quality of their underwear; others, more philosophical, will wonder if they hugged their kids enough.
I had this ludicrous image of my parents, Alex, Clive, and the Ortiz family gathered in a cemetery around a headstone that read: LARA MCCLINTOCH, THE WORLD’S WORST JUDGE OF MEN.
It was just too embarrassing!
In a fury I hurled the box and its priceless contents in the general direction of Jonathan and the stream just seconds before he fired. The shot was so loud in these close quarters that it almost deafened me, and I felt a spray of rock fragments as it hit the wall above me.
Time seemed to stand still for a moment, the three of us forming a horrified tableau as the box and the codex hurtled relentlessly toward the ground. It hit the stone floor of the cave with a crack that echoed the sound of the gun. But the box landed upright, its contents still intact. As the other two moved toward it I hurled myself into the water and swam frantically for the cenote outside.
I surfaced and started scrambling up the bank, but it was very slippery and they were faster than I was. They must have climbed up the shaft and made for the edge of the cenote immediately. I felt strong hands pushing my head back under the water and holding me there.