She sat back, kicking off her shoes and tucking her feet under her. “I don’t know Mayan. Gregory knows quite a bit. The Maya used to take two surnames, the father’s and the mother’s. Ek Balam would be someone with a father—or is it a mother?—named Ek and the other parent would be Balam. Come to think of it, I think Gregory had an Ek working on the dig. The old surnames still exist.”
“But the meaning,” I persisted. “What do the words themselves mean?”
She shrugged again. “I don’t know. We’d need a Motul to know that.”
“A what?”
“A Motul dictionary. It’s a sixteenth-century dictionary of Mayan, made by a Franciscan friar. It has most of the words in it.”
“Where can we get one?”
She frowned. “Now?”
“That’s right.”
“Micah, it’s Sunday night. And even if it weren’t, you couldn’t exactly walk into a library and ask for one. Only a few copies exist.”
“There has to be one at Tulane.”
“Sure. In Gregory’s office …” She frowned as she read my intention. “No, Micah. It’s too dangerous.”
“You have the key and the alarm combination, don’t you?”
The campus was black and the lights of cars on St. Charles died away before they reached us. Katherine fumbled with the keys at the bottom door while the Gothic stones loomed over us. I wanted to tell her to hurry, but I knew she was going as fast as she could in the darkness. I heard her swear under her breath and then what I had feared happened: Footsteps emerged from the dense shadows behind us and a flashlight flicked on. I jerked my head back over my shoulder and saw a uniform.
“Oh, it’s you, Mrs. Degas,” the patrolman said. “Do you need some help?” He flashed his light on the lock and she slipped the key into the lock and turned it.
“Thank you, Mr. Aucoin,” Katherine purred. “I was about to give up.”
The policeman tipped his hat. “Any time. Y’all be careful now.” He watched us pass through the doorway and then returned to his rounds.
“Close,” Katherine breathed.
“Very,” I agreed, wishing we’d thought to bring a flashlight. I slid in front of her, against her protests, and started up the first flight of stairs.
The blackness plucked at my body and the air seemed to close around us. The heavy institutional smell of wax permeated the air and our steps echoed off the walls. We came to the first landing and stopped. The pale green of an exit sign glowed somewhere off to the left. Katherine pushed up against me and I heard her breathing. The building seemed deserted. She nudged my elbow to guide me, and I started up the second flight. The blackness closed around us once more and the oppressiveness of the air increased. I felt along with my good hand, keeping it on the guard rail. We came to the second landing and then the third.
I remembered that the last flight was a narrow, ladderlike series that probably had been designed for workmen going into the attic. I looked up the tunnel. The blackness was stygian, but miles above I could see a single dim red bulb burning like a demon eye. Katherine slipped in before me and I crowded behind her. She was the only one who had the key to disarm the alarm.
All at once the memory of an NVA bunker sprang back to clutch me with sweaty fingers of fear. I remembered the fresh earth smell, the faint alcohol scent from the hospital unit I’d found, the sweet-sick smell of blood …
I stopped, sweat soaking my shirt, and reached up to loosen the neck of my shirt. There’d been a code book lying on the table in plain sight, holding down some maps. I reached for it; then, at the last instant, drew away my hand, some protective sixth sense telling me to be careful. When I went back up into the light of day, I told them about the code book and one of my sergeants volunteered to go back down. He was a veteran, and he knew what he was doing.
But the code book didn’t hold a spring detonator. Instead, it was a switch, rigged to charges on the upper level. Later, we dug him out with the bamboo stick still in his hand. The stick and his body were untouched. He’d suffocated.
“Micah, are you all right?”
Her voice brought me back to myself. I took a deep breath.
“I’m fine.”
We came to the top and she turned to me. “After I open it, I have exactly ten seconds to disarm the alarm at the panel inside. If I don’t, every campus cop on duty will be up here inside of three minutes. Then, after I’ve turned it off, I have to call in and identify myself.”
“Is that a problem?”
“No, I’m on the authorized list. And if anybody asks, I’ll say I left something in my desk.”
The keys jangled again, but only for a moment. The darkness above moved and I heard hinges give. I followed her upward, into the hallway of the Institute. She walked quickly to a panel in the wall and inserted her alarm key. The blinking red light went to green.
I sensed ghostly shapes around us, hovering in the entrance of the reconstructed temple, peering from the display cases. Here, the wax smell was overcome by the heavier odor of dust and I had the macabre sensation that it was the dust of decayed bones.
There was no novelty in it for Katherine, however, and she went quickly to a wall switch and flipped it on. The hallway was bathed in diffused light.
“I don’t want to attract a lot of attention,” she explained. “So I just put on the lights at one end.”
We went into the narrow hallway that led between display cases to the director’s inner sanctum. She turned on the lights and lifted the phone. I walked along the bookcases, scanning the titles, while she explained to the alarm clerk that she had left something and would only be here a few minutes.
Then my eyes hit it, a thick volume with a cover the color of dried blood. Diccionário de Motul.
I removed it from the shelf and laid it on the desk, as Katherine hung up the phone and came to look over my shoulder. I opened the book at random and a barrage of unfamiliar words hit my eyes. I glanced down the columns. Some of the letters were familiar, but some, like a reversed c, were not.
“It’s from Mayan to Spanish,” Katherine explained. “There was supposed to be a Spanish-to-Mayan part once, but it’s been lost.”
She started to turn the pages, moving slowly. “Mayan has some sounds that the Spanish didn’t know, like a dz sound, and a ch that you kind of bite off, so the Spanish had to invent some new letters, like the backward c and the ch with a bar through it.”
“For somebody that’s supposed not to know the language, you seem to know a lot,” I commented.
She smiled. “A secretary—and face it, that’s what I am, really, no matter what title he gave me to try to keep me happy—a secretary picks up things. I have to read his correspondence and answer a lot of it. I’d be pretty thick-headed if some of it didn’t sink in.”
She came to the letter b. “Let’s see. Balam. Ah, here it is: of course. Tigre. Tiger. That’s what the Spanish called the jaguar. Now that I think of it, I think I heard that somewhere. Now let’s see what they have for ek.” She flipped through the pages, stopped, and made a sound of disgust.
“Aagg. That’s what’s wrong with Mayan,” she said. “There are so many words that have multiple meanings.” I looked down at the page and saw what she meant: There were no fewer than four meanings for the word ek, followed by what appeared to be a page of idioms. She turned to the preceding page and I saw yet another version of the word.
“Well, let’s start at the beginning. It looks like ek can mean cramps, if my Spanish is right—this sixteenth-century stuff is hard to understand sometimes.” She turned to the next page. “It can mean grease. Ah.” She pointed down. “It says ‘star’ or generic name.”
I straightened. “So the lord of Ek Balam was named Star Jaguar.”
“Yes. At least, that’s what I’d bet. But let’s see what else the word means: Hmmm. Brazilwood. That doesn’t seem to apply. And the last is cosa negra. Something black.”
I watched her close the big book and brough
t the little jade out of my pocket, into the thin light of the office.
I unwrapped it and stared down at the enigmatic features. The face was vaguely familiar and I wondered what I had seen that reminded me of it.
“Katherine, what would you say this face represented?”
She took it from me and screwed up her mouth. “Well, it could be anything. Their art was very stylized. But a lot of it seemed to center around a feline motif. This could be a …”
She looked up at me and I knew where I had seen the face before: It was in one of the art books on Sandy’s shelf.
“A jaguar,” I finished. I rubbed the smooth, dark surface with my finger. “A jaguar made out of dark jade. A black jaguar.”
17
“Ek Balam,” we said together and stared at each other in amazement. She took the little figure from my hand and regarded it with a frown.
“Of course. The Maya loved word plays and hidden meanings. But there has to be something else, something beyond just the name.”
“The glyphs,” I agreed, taking the object from her. “But what can they say that’s so important?”
She shrugged. “There are only five or six glyphic elements here. That’s not much of a text. And if you’re right about who this represents, odds are the glyphs are just the name itself.”
“Maybe.” I rewrapped the jade and put it back into my pocket. “I wonder. Tell me, why would the Maya have buried this to begin with, and why in Temple A?”
“Who knows? Maybe as a kind of dedication offering? Maybe as an offering for good luck?”
“Was the rest of the temple ever excavated?”
“No. Gregory was leaving it for next season. It wasn’t one of the more impressive structures. Just a small stone house on a platform a couple of feet high. Probably the temple of some minor god, or maybe the house of a priest.”
I thought for a moment. Leeds had wanted me to have the jade. And the day before, Astrid Bancroft had appeared at Lavelle’s, looking for me. Suddenly a piece of the puzzle fell into shape.
“Micah, what are you thinking?”
“Leeds may have shown this to the Bancroft girl,” I said. “He had a working knowledge of glyphics, right? Maybe he deciphered it and told her what it means.”
Katherine chewed at her lip. “That makes sense. So what are you suggesting?”
“It’s too late now. But tomorrow, early, maybe you could call her in. Come up with some pretext, like the exhibit, something she won’t be suspicious about. You can show her the glyphs. If she’s seen them before, her face will show it. If she has, hit her hard. Tell her you don’t want any nonsense. Tell her you know she knows the meaning and insist she tell you.”
Katherine smiled slyly. “My no-nonsense schoolmistress role, huh? The one I use on sophomores and first-year graduate students?”
We left quickly and there was no campus policeman waiting when we closed the big front doors. I checked the street as we pulled in at Katherine’s place and was relieved to see that Scott’s car was not there. She made coffee and I called O’Rourke. He told me he’d gotten the Captain.
“He wanted to know who I was and why a lawyer was calling him about something that wasn’t any of my business. When I tried to explain, he wanted to know why you didn’t call yourself.”
There was an apologetic note in his voice and I understood; the Captain could be hard to deal with when he wanted.
“Thanks a lot, John. Is there anything new on the case?”
“Nothing really, unless you want to count Cora Thorpe’s little gesture.”
“What do you mean?”
“She pitched a fit in my office today, claimed I wasn’t doing enough. Told me I was fired, which was a little late, since I’d already quit.”
“Really broken up, eh?”
“I think she was carrying onions in her purse to help her cry. She almost made me feel sorry for Thorpe.”
I replaced the receiver. Cora Thorpe. There was no denying someone had used the Thorpe car to kill Leeds. I thought of the muscular body of Claude St. Romaine, lying on the floor of the cabin, and another piece slid into place. Now, if it would only stay …
I started to call the Captain and then stopped myself. A call could be traced and I didn’t need to leave any record of being at Katherine’s place. Damn. Well, at least he was home, although I had a suspicion it was against medical advice.
“Bad news?” Katherine asked, bringing me a bourbon and water.
“My father’s been having some health problems,” I said. “Nothing much.” I took the glass. Then I told her about Cora.
“I’m not surprised. Do you really think she could have done it?”
“It’s possible. But somehow I don’t think so, though she probably knows a lot.”
“Oh?” She sat down beside me.
“I think she left in Thorpe’s car and met St. Romaine. Then he let the killer use the car.”
“And he was killed because he knew too much?”
“That’s the way it looks to me.”
Her hand reached out, touched my arm. “But Micah, who could it be? This Cuban gangster you talked about?”
“Possibly, though his methods seem more direct.”
“Well, what about Astrid’s beau, Fred Gladney? I know he’s a bit of a wimp, but …”
“He was at Cobbett’s until two A.M.,” I said. “And what could be his motive?”
She stared at me for another second, apparently trying to make up her mind about something. Then she exhaled heavily. “I knew St. Romaine,” she said finally.
“What?”
Her hand dropped back into her lap. “Oh, not well. But I’d met him a few times. He came up a couple of years ago about making a donation to the Institute. He was pretty well off. He asked that it be anonymous. He didn’t want to be bothered by other people asking for money. Technically I broke a confidence by telling you, but what the hell?”
“How much did he give?”
“Two thousand dollars. Peanuts, compared to what he’s supposed to be worth. But, like they say, it’s better than a sharp stick in the eye. And it entitled him to the newsletter, reports of the progress of the excavation, the usual baloney.”
I sat back, holding one more piece of the puzzle. The trouble was that I didn’t know where to fit it.
I made a further call, this one to Sandy. She told me she was fine and to quit worrying. I told her to find out everything she could about St. Romaine and his family and then turned back to Katherine, but the couch was empty.
The plumbing rattled in the upstairs bath and I settled in with my drink, trying to fit the pieces together. I was still sitting there when I heard movement on the stairs and turned around.
Katherine was halfway down the landing. She had changed into a negligee and her hair was down around her shoulders. She hesitated and then, as I watched, came down another step.
I rose, my heart quickening. “Katherine …”
She raised a finger to her lips and I knew that she didn’t want me to spoil the moment by speaking. I went up the steps and halted, inches from her. She reached out timidly and took my hand, then turned around and led me the rest of the way up the steps.
I woke up in the middle of the night, the delicious lethargy of sleep falling away. I had a premonition of disaster. Fragments of dreams raced through my mind. I saw St. Romaine, crumpled on the floor, while Cora Thorpe snored on the sofa. I saw Cobbett cringing in the back of Sandy’s car. I saw a terrified Karl Hahn waving a gun he didn’t know how to handle. But the dream that had linked it all together was irretrievably gone.
I looked down at the woman beside me. Her face was troubled, and even as I watched she shifted position slightly and her lips mouthed a name.
“Gregory …”
It stabbed into me like a knife and I got up and went over to the window. I looked over at my paralyzed left arm. I had come to terms with the injury long ago and usually it did not affect me, but now, for some reason, I
felt lacking.
When I awoke, Katherine was already downstairs, dressed. When I came down she gave me a quick smile and then went about preparing breakfast as if nothing had happened. I could see that she was struggling and so I kept quiet, watching her exert the self-control that had first gained my attention. We sat across from each other, drinking coffee in silence, and when the silence finally seemed ready to shatter, she rose calmly.
“Well. I guess you’d better give me the jade if I’m going to confront Astrid.”
I had known it was coming and I’d prepared my speech. “I’d rather not,” I said evenly and watched the hurt register. I got up and went to her.
“It’s not that. It’s because the damned thing is too dangerous. Two people have been killed. I don’t want a third, especially not you. If Astrid’s seen the thing, and if she and Leeds have examined it, she’ll know what the glyphs mean.”
Katherine hesitated, then nodded. “Of course. You’re right.” She went to the mirror in the hallway and smoothed her blouse, as I traced the glyphic inscription onto a piece of paper. “I’ll call you at about ten or ten-thirty,” she said, taking the paper. “As soon as I find something out.”
I started to kiss her but somehow the iron self-control got in the way. Instead, I watched her go out and sat back down on the sofa, feeling helpless.
I called Sandy but the line was busy. I paced some more and went to the bookcase. Maybe there was something I could read to help me pass the time. I found a book about modern Maya culture and leafed through it.
What had Katherine told me when this had all started? That she served also in an editorial capacity for the MARI series? That meant she had had a hand in producing all the green-bound volumes. I took down another one. It was an abstruse treatise on Mayan settlement patterns. Another was a survey of coastal Yucatán. And one was a book by Gregory Thorpe, on the significance of astronomical alignments to the ancient Maya. I opened it at random and saw a map of a Maya city, showing projected alignments of different celestial bodies from a central observation point. I put the book back and called Sandy again. Once more the line was busy.
The Maya Stone Murders Page 16
