Carolyn G. Hart_Henrie O_05 Read online

  “Find the gold.” Now was time to offer a carrot or the closest equivalent I had. “I think there’s a way I can find the gold and no one will ever know.” I didn’t owe Detective Borroel a damn thing. Saving Manuel came first. I’d worry about the gold later. And there might possibly be a way to achieve it all, though I didn’t intend to spell it out for Rick. The scramble had begun.

  twelve

  WEDNESDAY morning I drove south on Alamo to St. Mary’s, turned left and found a Pig Stand restaurant, so old-fashioned I could have been on a road journey across America in the 1950s. I wanted breakfast and privacy. The restaurant was almost full, but I could be certain no one from La Mariposa or Tesoros was there. Most of the customers were working people en route to jobs. The conversation level was loud, a jukebox played Mexicali Rose, the coffee was hot and fresh, the pig in a blanket tasty. I had a booth near the jukebox, but that was fine. I didn’t want to talk. I wanted to study the slim folder that had been pushed beneath the door of my room at shortly after six that morning.

  The pale blue folder had no identifying tabs. I knew the source. I riffled through the pages. Rick may not have wanted to cooperate, but my quick scan told me he’d done everything I asked. And even more. Way to go, son. Maybe, just maybe we could pull off a scam right on the level of the original theft.

  I unfolded a double sheet and spread it out, taking care to stay free of the sticky maple syrup container. I supposed the drawing had been made by Rick, a precise floor-by-floor rendering of both Tesoros and La Mariposa. The showroom and back offices of Tesoros were on the River Walk level. Also on the River Walk level was a closed portion of the building that ran beneath La Mariposa. This area served as a basement, containing heating and cooling units, a laundry, and supply closets. The lobby of La Mariposa, the meeting rooms, and the wing with rooms one through six were on the ground floor that opened to the street. Maria Elena’s apartment was also on the ground floor. Her apartment was above Tesoros. The second floor was devoted entirely to La Mariposa. Tony and Susana’s apartment was on the third floor.

  I looked especially closely at the access to the circular staircase. There were three doors on that landing: one led to the stairs up to the second floor of La Mariposa and to Tony and Susana’s third-floor apartment, the second opened into the serene room where I first spoke with Maria Elena, the third provided access to the ground-floor hallway of La Mariposa. Maria Elena could also leave her apartment from that first room by stepping into the main lobby.

  As I had asked, Rick had marked the location of the bedrooms—Maria Elena’s on the street side of that apartment, Manuel’s on the River Walk side. I tried to picture Manuel’s descent on Monday night. His room was indeed over part of the main showroom of Tesoros. Yet the building which housed Tesoros and La Mariposa was very old, with foot-thick walls to keep out heat and cool. I suspected it would take a great deal of noise to rouse Manuel. Yet, the quarrel between Schmidt and his murderer, no matter how intense and violent, surely was not loud enough to permeate those walls. But there could be a heating register, some alteration in the original structure where sound might pass through. If only Manuel could speak.

  I sipped coffee, studied the drawings. Manuel found Schmidt’s body on the River Walk…I sipped my coffee. What if Manuel had been awake late Monday night? Maria Elena said he often wandered about the apartment at night. Certainly it was possible that he might sometimes stand on his balcony, looking out into the magic of the night, watching the play of moonlight on the still water, taking pleasure in the passage of the occasional solitary pedestrian, smiling as the nocturnal creatures—cats, raccoons, possums—took possession of the River Walk. If he was on his balcony on Monday night, then at the very least he saw Schmidt enter Tesoros. Manuel lived in a restricted world, a world of definite order. He would know the pulse of the night. He would know the door opening into Tesoros at night was wrong. Yes, that’s how it must have happened. He either saw Schmidt enter or he saw the murderer dragging out the body.

  If he saw Schmidt enter, he might dress and go downstairs. But if that was so, the timing would likely be that Manuel would have arrived soon after the murder and while the murderer was moving the body. It was equally possible that Manuel looked down from his balcony and saw the body. In fact, Manuel “said” that he saw the body on the River Walk. But he had not been asked if he had seen anyone. Would his swift-moving hands then picture an opening door, a moving figure?

  I tried to recreate the night. Schmidt entered Tesoros, there was a quarrel, the attack. The murderer turned off the lights and pulled the body out onto the River Walk, intending to push Schmidt into the river, then clean up the store.

  And here came Manuel.

  Yes, that was my guess. Manuel saw someone pulling a body from the store. This would have been a scene played out in darkness, the figures dimly seen, unrecognizable. But Manuel was disturbed enough to go downstairs. Moving slowly as he always did, Manuel dressed and went down the circular staircase. But, and this was the critical point, it was Manuel who turned on the lights, the golden swath that spilled out of the open front door, revealing blood and death.

  Where was the murderer then? Likely, on the River Walk. The sudden harsh brightness must have been an ugly, heart-stopping shock. The murderer darted away from that merciless revealing stream, probably hiding in the shadows beneath the stairway to La Mariposa. When Manuel turned back into Tesoros, going for the mop and pail, the murderer escaped, either slipping back through the store, carefully avoiding Manuel, then up the circular stairway if the murderer was Tony or Susana, or, in the case of Frank or Isabel or Celestina, melting into the night and returning home.

  But when did the murderer go to the apartment house and set the fire? The murder must have occurred before the fire. There simply wasn’t time enough for the quarrel, the murder, and the removal of the body to have occurred after the fire. It didn’t take Rick and Iris and me that long to reach Tesoros, and when we found Manuel he’d already mopped his way out to the River Walk.

  That had to mean that Schmidt’s body had remained inside Tesoros when the murderer hurried across the river to set the fake fire. Once the gold was retrieved from Iris, the murderer returned to Tesoros to move the body out onto the River Walk. It was then that Manuel looked down from his balcony.

  I shook my head, uncertain. Manuel worked at a slow pace. He had mopped from the pottery-bank display island to the front door by the time Rick and Iris and I arrived at Tesoros.

  I wished I could better estimate how long we took after we first found Iris. First, we consoled Iris, then we talked. It was I who finally urged the return to Tesoros.

  Manuel would be no help in determining how long he had mopped. I was sure of that.

  But if Manuel was attracted downstairs by what he had seen from his balcony, could he tell us who the murderer was? No. The body was moved in darkness. All Manuel would have seen was a figure.

  I finished my coffee, refilled the cup from the plastic carafe. It was helpful to have a clearer view of what happened Monday night. I wondered if Borroel would listen to me, then pushed the thought aside. I wasn’t counting on Borroel. I had my own agenda, one he would never approve.

  I hunched over the floor plan of La Mariposa. I knew the layout, of course: the stairs from the River Walk to the lobby, the door into the lobby from street level, the big archway leading from the lobby to the meeting rooms now set up for Thursday morning’s auction, the hallway behind the chili-cart desk leading to the rooms on my floor, the stairs just past the chili cart leading up to the second floor.

  I smiled at the neat precision of the drawing. On the street level floor, there were rooms on either side of my corridor. There were twice as many rooms on the second floor because the space included the area devoted to the lobby and the meeting rooms on the street floor.

  I counted the rooms, six on my floor, twelve on the second floor, making La Mariposa more of a small hotel than an actual bed and breakfast. Three rooms we
re occupied on my floor, four on the second. An asterisk marked one room. I glanced at the legend below. The asterisk was followed in neat printing by: “Not Attending Auction.”

  Rick had listened well. I had no interest in the Wallaces from Canton, Ohio, in room 9. But I had a great deal of interest in the other guests, the Harrisons in room 2, Cara Kendall in room 4, Bud Morgan in room 8, Joshua Chandler in room 12, and Kenny King in room 14, all invited guests to the annual Tesoros auction.

  If Borroel had given me a chance, I would have laid it out for him. The grand exhibition of ancient gold at the Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City was a stellar event in the world of antiquities, running throughout the summer. The robbery could have occurred at any time during that period. I was sure Ed Schmidt had been in the district several times since summer began. So why did the theft occur when it did? Because the quicker the thief disposed of the gold, the shorter the period he would have it in his possession and the less danger of exposure he faced. Therefore, the sale of the gold had already been arranged. That was the only smart way to set it up. Who has the money or the lust for possession to buy that kind of treasure? Very, very rich collectors. Where did a handful of such collectors turn up every year? At the annual auction at Tesoros. Yes, I felt certain that the entire transaction had been planned long in advance, the date selected for the theft, the gold brought to Tesoros and hidden in the wardrobe to await the arrival of its purchaser.

  All would have gone according to plan if it weren’t for a young woman’s curiosity. For want of a nail…

  But I was confident that once the murderer had retrieved the gold from Iris, the rest of the plan went into effect. I knew that because Maria Elena had permitted a police search of Tesoros and the searchers found nothing. To me, that meant the transfer had been made, gold for money. I tapped the rooms of the auction guests. Yes, I was certain the antique gold was still close at hand, hidden in the room of one of the guests, guests who would be at La Mariposa until noon tomorrow, when the auction ended.

  I had to figure out which one had the gold. I had to do that today. I had to narrow down my search this morning because the only chance I would ever have to find the gold was this afternoon. The guests would be engaged from one to three at a preview of the auction items. By tonight, if the pieces all clicked into place, I would be equipped to trap a killer. No, I had no idea how that could be accomplished. That was definitely the next challenge on a slippery slope that could end in disaster at any moment. But first, I had to find the gold.

  I slipped the drawings to the bottom of the folder, lifted up six sheets of paper.

  The guests, rich, powerful, sophisticated, imbued with the status that wealth creates, they were now my quarries.

  The first sheet was handwritten in obvious haste, the writing deeply impressed on the page:

  Mrs. Collins—The material contained in the following pages is highly confidential. Should it be revealed that this information was made available to you, the damage to Tesoros would be incalculable, irreparable. I have to depend upon your sense of honor never to tell anyone about this betrayal of client confidentiality. As you will see, we go to great lengths to obtain personal information about our highly valued customers. Maria Elena has always made the point that the more you know about a client, the more you can sell to that client. There is no intent to take advantage of a client. The hope is always to be prepared to respond to that client’s needs and interests. Maria Elena began the program of obtaining personal information about prized customers after an incident early in her career which always saddened her. The client was an elderly woman who collected straw mosaics. Maria Elena had obtained a mosaic picturing the Boy Heroes jumping from the cliff rather than surrender to the Americans. The woman looked at the mosaic, broke into tears. Her only son had died in a firefight in the South Pacific, his valor credited with saving the lives of most of his platoon. Maria Elena realized that sparing clients pain or embarrassment for whatever reason was essential. The most positive result of understanding the circumstances of a client’s life is the ability to provide that client with artworks that will have a genuinely personal importance. There are many instances in the history of Tesoros when this kind of information has been invaluable. The invitations to the annual auction are a result of this gathering of information. These are not only customers who buy heavily through the year, these are customers who approach collecting with passion, lifting it to a level of artistry. It is my hope that however you intend to use this information, it will remain confidential.

  The scrawled letter was unsigned. Its stiff tenor revealed, as perhaps nothing else could, the despair I’d engendered in Rick. But he’d seen himself with no option. If he didn’t produce what I demanded, I would destroy the efforts he had made to protect Tesoros and Maria Elena from a scandal that would explode in the world of art.

  I put his note aside, picked up the typewritten sheets:

  WILEY AND JOLENE HARRISON, ABILENE, TEXAS

  Fifth-generation Texas cattle ranchers. Wiley Harrison’s great-grandfather, Jasper, rode into Texas in the 1850s with a sackful of nuggets from the Gold Rush. He bought a head of cattle and from that sprang the great Harrison empire. Wiley’s grandfather, Claud, went east to Harvard and met a young heiress from Philadelphia. When she came to Texas, she brought with her a love for fine art and the Harrison family has spearheaded the promotion of arts in central Texas ever since. Wiley’s great enthusiasms are rodeoing and ranching. His taste in art is eclectic and the Harrison personal collection includes native artworks from around the world. Jolene searches only for gold, loves to say she and Jasper are soul mates. She prefers unusual pieces, especially crosses and brooches. Last year paid fifty thousand dollars for a brooch with gold in three different hues shaped in a filigree of roses and leaves, with three drops of wreathed leaves centered with rose petals. Wiley is tenacious as a collector, willing to overpay if he wants an object, ready to ignore import/export laws. Wiley has left the running of the ranch to his son-in-law. He and Jolene spend most of their time traveling in search of art objects. Wiley is in his sixties, has high blood pressure, is easily angered. Jolene pampers him and he never refuses to buy her anything, no matter the cost. Jolene is vivacious and outgoing, an excellent golfer, and as a young woman excelled in barrel racing. Their daughter, Amanda, is a gracious and lovely woman very active in supporting local charities, not a major collector. However, Amanda adores antique dolls and the Harrisons are always eager to add to her collection.

  I’d met Jolene Harrison, bony face, bony body, eyes like tar, a resounding raspy voice. Susana had described Wiley as whip-thin and moving like a giraffe with his head poked forward.

  JOSHUA CHANDLER, SCOTTSDALE, ARIZONA

  Grew up in Charleston, South Carolina. Graduate Wake Forest. Professional golfer, has finished fourth at the Masters, seventh at the U.S. Open. As a golfer, respected but not liked. Never speaks during a round. No personal friends on the tour. Twice divorced. Rumored to have paid huge settlements to avoid messy court battles. Has no apparent interests other than golf and art. Collects widely from American Southwest and Mexico. Interested in Tlaquepaque-style pottery, especially glazed, petatillo works attributed to the artist known as the Yellow Brick Road because of the yellow roads on many pieces. Chandler is in his mid-thirties, remains expressionless at most times, especially when negotiating over price. Refuses to pay more than he deems a piece worth on the market. Stubborn, determined, utterly ruthless when attempting to get a good price. If he can take advantage of a seller, he will.

  Susana described Chandler as a man who looked more like a college professor than a professional golfer.

  CARA KENDALL, FORT WORTH, TEXAS

  Fourth wife of a very old man who owns enough banks and oil wells to start his own third world country. He runs his businesses very much like a third world despot and is reputed to have all the charm of a granite mausoleum. Cara was his secretary. Cara is probably forty-five, admits to thirty-two. Fort Worth
society treats her politely but distantly. Cara, however, has achieved stature as a collector. Her collection of wooden puppets created by Alejandro Aguierre was recently featured at a local Fort Worth museum and was widely acclaimed as extraordinary. Cara’s infatuation with puppets is extreme. She will talk to a puppet when deciding whether to buy it, ignoring the seller. She is only interested in very rare pieces. She has also amassed a remarkable collection of clay figures created by the renowned Pantaleon Panduro and possesses almost all of his famous bullfighters, a collection without peer and beyond price. She is bad-tempered, irritable, and probably emotionally unstable. Needs constant reassurance of her perspicacity as a collector. Succumbs to flattery. Rarity is the trump card with Kendall.

  I recalled the stretched-face, cherry-lipped blonde without pleasure. She’d been obviously bored by the company at the tea Monday and in the lobby Tuesday she was petulant and demanding. Not, I would think, a fun customer. But clearly a valued one.

  WALTER (BUD) MORGAN, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

  Morgan runs his own investment company. His financial newsletter is considered one of the best in the country and has a hefty subscription price of five thousand dollars a year. A bachelor, Morgan spends every free moment collecting. One of his proudest accomplishments is a room in his Winnetka home which contains almost fifty table-ros, scenes made up of Talavera tiles from Pueblo with their magnificent cobalt blue backgrounds and rich green and yellow colors. An entire wall is decorated with pictorial tiles that picture Mexicans in everyday life in the early nineteen hundreds. In his forties, Morgan is genial, a raconteur, smokes Cuban cigars bought in Mexico, fond of unusual beers including a strawberry beer from England, and a gourmet. Tesoros sends him gift packages occasionally. He especially enjoys unusual salsas. When vacationing in Hawaii, Frank and Isabel found a mango salsa which they sent to him.