Fiesta Moon

by Linda Windsor

  “Pues, if you ask …” Soledad broke off, cocking her head to one side. “Did you hear that?”

  Mark came in from the patio. “What?”

  “I heard something … like someone moving bricks,” the wide-eyed housekeeper whispered. She pointed to the salon.

  Or sliding tile? Recalling the sound from the night the ghost appeared, Mark took Soledad by the arm and guided her out to the patio. “Go to the orphanage and call the police.”

  “But what will you do?”

  “I’m going to sneak inside, wait, and watch.” And if he caught the so-and-so, he was going to give the man a headache like he wouldn’t believe.

  Soledad hesitated, clearly torn between abandoning Mark to the ghost and remaining with him to confront it.

  “I’m just going to watch,” Mark insisted, giving her a little prod. “Go get help.”

  “I can build on that?” she asked.

  Mark nodded. “You can build on it. Now, hurry … and keep in the cover of the lumber and stone stacks.”

  Reaching inside the door, Mark turned the outside lantern off. The moon provided all the illumination Soledad would need to reach the gate and beyond while he clung to the shadows.

  Heart pounding against his chest at the prospect of catching their ghost in action, he grabbed up a scrap of two-by-four and backed against the front of the house, listening. He hadn’t actually heard Soledad’s noise, but he trusted her ears above the CIA’s best high-tech listening device.

  He wiped the cold sweat from his forehead, mind racing. Dare he slip inside and make for Corinne’s room? From there he could keep an eye on the house from the front to the back through the utility-bath. But that meant slipping through the glow of candlelight from his room—the only room with brick or tile, not to mention the place where their ghost had vanished into thin air.

  Something clattered to the floor. It sounded as though it came from the far end of the house. Peering around the front doorjamb, Mark scanned the empty hallway. Nothing there, but a flash of light from the upstairs ballroom balcony entrance. Someone was in the house—in the ballroom.

  The length of lumber firm in his hand, Mark slipped into the hall and hustled toward the dark cover of Corinne’s room, when he sensed a presence behind him. Before he could bring his weapon to bear, pain exploded against the side of his face, knocking him to the floor. Through the white blast dazing his vision, he made out someone approaching from the back of the house.

  Two ghosts. The thought swam round and round the whirlpool drawing him deeper and deeper into a gray-black funnel where hands pulled and tugged at him, lifting, dropping, hauling, shoving.

  He heard Toto squeal. Were they killing the pig? Mark tried to open his eyes, but the room moved, the motion slamming his eyelids shut with such force that his stomach heaved in warning. It was safer to listen.

  “Sergio, you fool, tie his feet as well.”

  Who was Sergio? Mark didn’t know any Sergio. But he did know the smell of gasoline. He tried once again to open his eyes, but they were so heavy, only a slit of light came through.

  Someone was working around him. Was he in a chair? Mark pulled at the invisible bonds holding him immobile. Wood creaked beneath him.

  “He awakens, Lorenzo.”

  Lorenzo? As in Lorenzo Pozas? The name registered with a chilling clarity, nipping at the daze fogging his brain. Clenching his teeth, Mark forced his eyes open. The room shifted left to right in a semicircle and back before stopping. Where is Pozas?

  “In the back,” a young voice replied, alerting Mark to the fact that he’d voiced his thoughts.

  Mark struggled to turn and look behind him in the direction of his captor, but ropes bit into his wrists, chest, and feet. “Who … who are you?”

  “I am called Sergio.” Satisfied that the ropes held, Sergio walked around so that Mark could see him. “Much pleasure.”

  Much pleasure? What, was the guy simple?

  “Why did you tie me up, Sergio?”

  “Because Lorenzo said to.”

  “What’s the gasoline for?” As if Mark didn’t suspect.

  “To burn down the hacienda, cómo no?”

  Oh, God. Mark’s prayer dart faded with the welling of nausea. Would Soledad make it back with the police in time? He worked at the ropes binding his wrists when the press of a cold cloth against his right temple added its sting to his misery. Jerking away, Mark saw Sergio holding a bloodstained washcloth, his round face a mirror of concern.

  “You bleed, señor.”

  The man had to be mentally deficient to worry about bleeding when he was about to set the house on fire with Mark in it. Had Sergio been the crayon witch?

  The sound of footsteps in the hall drew Mark’s attention to the door, where his worst nightmare appeared with a fuel can in hand.

  “Ahora—” Lorenzo Pozas stopped short upon meeting Mark’s gaze. “So, the big engineer is awake. ‘I was just wondering if there were any caracoles around here,’” he said, mimicking Mark’s question in the market.

  “So there are valuable snail fossils in the ground under Hacienda Ortiz,” Mark stated.

  “Enough to make me a rich man.” Lorenzo walked away, pouring the accelerant around the hall, soaking the area in front of Mark’s room. “And you a dead man.”

  “Soledad knows you are here. She’s gone to call the police.”

  “No one will listen to that foolish busybody,” Pozas responded. “Especially Don Rafael and Capitán Nolla.”

  Mark’s bravado faltered. He’d suspected as much, but hearing it didn’t make him feel any better. “But the government will listen to my brother. He’s already contacted the federal authorities to investigate the ammonite fossils in this area, as well as your colleagues. And he has your name.”

  Pozas turned, his scowl almost inhuman in its darkness. “So you say.”

  “So I know,” Mark replied. “I told him how you killed your brother and his wife—”

  “They were witched.”

  “—by arranging a gas leak. And how you shot Enrique and left him to the animals. He will be dug up, and the authorities will find out the truth about his death.”

  “You know nothing about the boy.” Pozas gave the can a toss toward the curtains, but only a little fuel came out. With an oath of disbelief, he shook the can and glared at Sergio. “Did you fill it like I told you, estúpido?”

  The young man nodded. “It was all I could carry.”

  “To the brim?”

  Sergio frowned. “If I fill it so, I cannot carry it.”

  Pozas raised his hand to strike his assistant, but Sergio scampered out of reach and out of the periphery of Mark’s vision. “Run, you little idiot. You will get yours, that I promise you.”

  Run? Run where? Mark shifted his weight, turning the chair a little, but he couldn’t see where the retreating noise that Sergio made had come from. The strike of a match drew his attention back to Pozas. In its glow, a yellow-stained smile spread on the assassin’s face.

  “The secret passage to the mines made my job easy,” Pozas said, walking with deliberation toward the gas-soaked hall.

  Mark was too distracted by the flickering death in the man’s dirt-smudged fingers to dwell on how the ghost came and went.

  “It is said that Don Diego Ortiz built this in the days of the banditos, when no one who had money was safe from them.” With his free hand, Pozas pulled the sliding pocket doors to the hall almost shut. “But unlike him, you will not escape so.”

  With a flick of his fingers, Pozas tossed the match and closed the doors. The whoosh of igniting gas on the other side rattled them. Ignoring the retreating man and his taunts, Mark watched the only thing that held the flames spreading through the hacienda from him.

  “Die well, amigo,” the murderer called from behind. The familiar sound of stone scraping stone followed.

  Mark’s mind raced. He had one chance. If he could break the chair, he might be able to free himself before the
smoke pouring under the door overcame him. Bracing, he prayed, Heavenly Father, help me now, and shoved sideways with all his might.

  But Violeta’s chair was well made, and the ropes would not give. At floor level, Mark watched the black fumes snake their way into the room. The varnish on the doors bubbled and ran from the heat that scorched his cheeks even from the short distance away. Sweat poured from his brow into his eyes, already stinging—or had he reopened his head wound?

  He made a valiant attempt to wriggle as far away from the hall as he could between ragged breaths, but the exertion provoked an agonizing cramp in one of his bound legs. Realizing that his efforts were futile, all the squandered times of his life flooded his mind … only to be chased away by memories of times when he had been in the right place at the right time … in Sunday school, where he’d memorized his mother’s favorite psalm for Mother’s Day.

  Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death …

  Above him, Soledad’s votives still burned, but given his ability to reach them, they might as well be on the altar in the village church. All the candles in the world burning could not help him now.

  I will fear no evil …

  His only hope was the fourth man in the picture of the three Hebrew men in the fiery furnace.

  For thou art with me.

  With the faith that he had had when he’d read that Bible picture book, Mark mouthed His name.

  Jesus.

  CHAPTER 28

  Dawn broke, casting first light upon the smoking remains of Hacienda Ortiz. Numb with shock and exhaustion, Corinne stared beyond them at the serrated horizon—dark blue-gray peaks jutting into a summer sky. Mark was gone. No one had seen him since Soledad left the hacienda to report that the ghost had reappeared. By the time the call was routed to Cantina Roja, where Mexicalli’s police force of one hung out, the fire alarm sounded at the church. In less than an hour, the roof caved in. Still there was no sign of Mark, which led everyone—with the exception of Corinne—to one conclusion.

  Wrapped in a blanket inside Capitán Nolla’s police car, she’d cried like the psalmist in the wilderness from night into day for God’s help in finding him anywhere but beneath the smoldering rubble.

  God would not do that to her or Mark. God would answer the prayers that began the moment she and the others were summoned by the frantic ringing of the church bell to the street in front of her grandmother’s house as Mexicalli’s old pumper passed them, loaded with volunteers. Corinne’s stomach turned to stone upon following its direction up the hill with her gaze. Hacienda Ortiz had looked like a giant torch contained in the cup of its courtyard wall.

  Icy fear coursing through her veins, she and Diego had left Doña Violeta to await the hitching of Chiquita to her cart and joined the rallying villagers in an uphill race to what became a nightmare of incompetence, despite everyone’s best efforts.

  The tanker truck, an antique affair that held just enough water to make the fire laugh, raced back and forth to the lake to refill, while men, women, and children formed a ragtag bucket brigade between the fire and the orphanage, the next nearest source of water. As the tanker left for its third refill, the roof caved in, scattering anyone near the blaze and ending any further efforts.

  In the village below, the church bell tolled the morning prayer hour, its gongs single and solemn as Corinne’s heartbeat. Villagers, looking like moving miniature dolls in the distance, made their way to the small stone house of worship, which had remained open all night for those wishing to pray for the fate of their Señor del Cerdito.

  Already the grounds outside the blackened courtyard walls were ablaze with color, although Corinne had hardly noticed the Indios paying their homage. Her attention remained on the smoking hovel where Capitán Nolla and some men picked at the roof, trying to pull it away from the massive central chimney on the theory that if Mark’s body was in the rubble …

  Doubt nipped at her spirit with ugly fangs, but Corinne backed it down with resolve. God didn’t open her heart to Mark for this. He had to be alive, because the place that his spirit had filled in Corinne’s heart did not feel empty. It was cold with alarm, but not empty. Besides, Soledad had said that Mark had been outside the hacienda when she left to call the police. Outside, Corinne thought, scanning with a weary but obstinate gaze the area that she and others had searched with flashlights the night before.

  The gun of an engine drew Corinne’s attention to where Diego Quintana backed a silver SUV toward them. Her cousin had stayed with her most of the night and, unable to convince Corinne to abandon the scene, left just before dawn for a shower, change of clothes, and some food for the workers.

  Diego opened the back of his vehicle, revealing a large thermal container of coffee, a sleeve of Styrofoam cups, and white bags of bakery goods.

  “If it isn’t Don Dulce,” Corinne teased, walking over to the tailgate.

  “You are in better spirits than when I left earlier. Anything new?”

  “No. It’s not new that God is good and answers prayer. I’m just waiting to see how.”

  The scent of fresh baked confections triggered her appetite. She’d been finishing the dessert of their late Mexican supper when the alarm sounded, so she joined the workmen in the refreshments, taking time to thank each one for their efforts.

  A little while after the work was resumed, Juan Miguel, having learned about the disaster that morning, arrived to join his brother Juan Pablo. Their brother, Electric Juan, as Mark had dubbed him, had helped fight the fire until the roof fell in. Juan Pablo explained to Corinne that Juan Pedro left for the Cantina Roja, overcome with remorse that he might have made a mistake in the wiring, causing the fire.

  “Corina, Tía Violeta wishes you to stay with her. You cannot remain here until …” Diego broke off at the warning flash of Corinne’s eyes. “Until the search is over. It will take at least the remainder of the day just to clear the salon.”

  She wouldn’t allow the worst to be said in her presence. “Then I’ll stay here the remainder of the day.” She took a sip of the black coffee. “How is Grandmother?”

  Having caught up with them in her cart just before the roof caved in, Violeta became so upset that Dr. Flynn insisted she return home with Gaspar, lest the smoke and distress take their toll on her health. Don Rafael had accompanied them with the promise to return. Except he hadn’t.

  Corinne turned to Diego. “Where is your father?” Usually when Nolla was on duty, the alcalde wasn’t far from view.

  Diego shrugged. “Perhaps resting, since there is nothing he can do here … which is what you should be doing.” When she declined to answer, he jerked his finger toward the side of the gutted hacienda frame. “You are as stubborn as that pig. The firemen say that it has been circling the debris and nosing in each time they turn over a section of wall or roof.”

  Emerging from the rear of the house, smeared in soot and dirt, Toto was almost unrecognizable as Soledad’s pristine white pride.

  “Poor baby, he’s going to burn himself.”

  “Corina,” Diego called after her as she hurried up to where Toto nosed the debris.

  But she didn’t listen. She wanted to hug the little critter that shared her affinity for her precious prodigal. Granted, Toto was just a pig, but right now, he was something warm, breathing, and positive to cling to.

  “Toto,” she cooed, nudging the animal back from some glowing debris. “Let me see your feet.” To her horror, the flesh around the pig’s hooves was black and tender. “Diego, go to the farmacia and get some aloe vera gel … what the tourists use for sunburn.”

  “For a pig?”

  Corinne gave him a sharp look. “For a dear pet.”

  If Soledad had not been reduced to hysteria and needed sedation, the housekeeper would have taken Toto into her care. As it was, she was with her sister at the parsonage.

  “And get some triple-antibiotic cream … and some cabbage from the market section.”

  “You will n
ot come to Grandmother’s house?”

  Corinne shook her head stubbornly. “Come on, Toto,” she cajoled, drawing the pig away with a handful of grass. The pig ignored the grass, but turned from the ruins and walked at her feet toward the pen at the back of the yard.

  “I will return with food and supplies for the pig and my stubborn cousin,” Diego called after her.

  “That would be wonderful, thank you.” As he turned away, Corinne raised her voice. “Diego?”

  He stopped, his wavy raven hair catching the brilliance of the sun in shades of black and blue as he tilted his head in question.

  “Thank you. I’m glad you’re my cousin.”

  A smile tugged at the corner of his lips as he answered in kind. “El gusto es mío, querida.”

  Before Diego returned, a twenty-first-century cavalry of Federales arrived, led by a white vehicle with the lettering of the Mineral Resources Council. Recalling that Mark had phoned Blaine about the latest developments regarding the possibility of valuable ammonites being behind the “witching,” Corinne watched them with heaviness in her chest.

  Too late, she thought, dragging to her feet from the seclusion of the trellis-covered bench near the orange grove.

  Capitán Nolla met the men who spilled from the vehicles as she reached the front of the house. Among the smart-suited and uniformed entourage was Don Rafael. Heavy circles from lack of sleep accentuated the darkness of his gaze, which he cast down upon seeing her.

  Alarm slowly set in as Corinne realized that he was accompanied by guards. Accompanied or escorted?

  “Don Rafael?”

  “Corina, I pray that you will forgive this undeserving man.” Misery glazed the man’s eyes. “I am too late to save your Mark, but—”

  “Mark is alive,” Corinne interrupted. “I know it.”

  “Señorita Diaz,” said a man clad in a tailored natural linen suit. “I am Carlos Aquino, a friend and colleague of Señor Blaine Madison, and this is my second cousin, Vincente.”

  “M-Mark was supposed to be in the house, but—” But what? What, God?

  “Señorita, the authorities will do everything within their power to find him,” Carlos Aquino assured her.