Path of the Jaguar

by Vickie Britton

  "Has a maid been in my room?" she asked him.

  Quick, brown eyes flashed to the wall clock. "The third floor is the last to be cleaned. I'll send someone up right away."

  "That's not what I mean. Sid, someone was in my room."

  "The third floor keys haven't left the desk," he said. "Has anything been disturbed?"

  "I was just certain that my door was locked. When I returned, it wasn't."

  Sid seemed relieved. "Humidity often causes our doors to stick. Was anything missing?"

  When she didn't answer at once, he went on. "I didn't think so. The crime rate here in Merida is unbelievably low."

  "I was supposed to meet someone here. I thought she might have shown up and you gave her a key to my room. Delores Camille."

  "Delores Camille!" Sid's eyes brightened in recognition. "If Delores were here, my hotel would be whirling! I had no idea she intended to be down again so soon."

  "She should have been here last night," Lennea said. "Oh, it doesn't pay to worry about Delores. She always calls ahead, reserves the very best, and then arrives two days late." Like Wesley, he shrugged off Delores' absence. But then he didn't know about the money, the stolen suitcase. Lennea hesitated and decided it would be best not to tell him.

  "You seem to know Delores well." A bit of shyness or reticence mixed momentarily with Sid's boldness. "Delores and I were once a major topic. But that's all far behind us now. It's just as well. I got weary of people saying, 'She's much too young for you.' After trying to follow her from club to club, I finally had to admit it."

  Lennea smiled. "I wouldn't think keeping up would be a big problem of yours!"

  "My girl, I'm rapidly approaching fifty. Notice the gray." In the shiny black of his straight hair, very little gray was noticeable. "Fortunately, you still have to look for it. Dad tells me I'll age all at once, like Dorian Gray's picture."

  "Your father hasn't aged yet," Lennea observed.

  "My father is a marvel. Do you know he came to Merida without a dollar, and now will you look at this?" Pride shone in Sid's brown eyes. "We have a Guerrero chain, one in each major city, and another going up in Cancun."

  Lennea walked with Sid over to the lobby desk. "Do you know Delores' friends, the LaTillas?"

  "Of course. They're good friends of mine."

  "They were supposed to take Delores and I out to their home today. I think I'll go on ahead, if I can contact them."

  "I'll call them for you." After a lengthy conversation, Sid told her, "Goldie's sent Frank his way. But the hacienda's a long drive from here." He took her arm and tucked it firmly into his. "That means you'll have time to tour our hotel."

  As they passed the gift shop, Sid stopped to point out some wooden carvings. Lennea could barely see them for the abundance of giftware stacked upon the table—a clutter of ash trays, pottery, and replicas of Maya art. "Frank does those wood carvings by hand. Goldie—that's his wife— brings them here to me to sell because he's so modest. I'm sure you'll love Frank, and Goldie! Wonderful people."

  Sid led her into the pool area. From the open top sunlight streamed across the thick rows of lush green plants that grew in huge clay pots. Great cement walls enclosed the area and made it private. The water looked pleasant, but no one was swimming. "Sit a while," Sid invited, pulling out a wicker chair. "Let me get you a drink."

  "No, thanks." The thatched-grass shade cast shadows across Sid's sharp, narrow face. Lennea was careful to place her big flight bag close beside her. "When was Delores here last?"

  "March. No, let's say April instead."

  During spring break, Lennea reflected. "Wesley wasn't here in April, was he?"

  "No."

  "I thought Delores came here only because of her work."

  Sid laughed. "Welsey Hern's the only one I know who comes here for the sole purpose of working."

  "Does Delores have many friends down here?"

  "Frank and Goldie," he answered promptly. "Calls them family."

  Lennea knew nothing at all about the LaTillas except that Delores had stayed with them before. It now seemed odd to her that someone Delores considered family could have been so briefly mentioned. But then Delores wasn't a person who dwelt upon sentiment. "When Delores gets in, you'll call me right away, won't you?"

  "Certainly. Joseph tells me you're going to be assisting Dr. Hern this summer." Sid leaned across the table, long fingers meeting each other in a precise way. "Now, there's an opportunity! Brilliant man! I carry all of his books down in the lobby. I can't wait to read his new one!"

  Lennea felt warmed by Sid's admiration of Wesley.

  "My mother, Neysa, is a full-blooded Maya, you know. That's why I'm so interested in his work."

  "Neysa seems to be a great lady."

  "If Mother inherits a cow," Sid laughed, "everyone drinks milk. She has absolutely no concept of ownership. She blames Father for corrupting me with this curse of ambition.' Sid smiled again, square-cut ruby ring flashing, "I must admit I like the finer things in life, but—why, will you believe, old Paco's here already! What did you do, Frank? Fly?"

  Sid awaited the approach of a squat, heavyset man in cotton clothing soaked with sweat. Frank LaTilla stood wiping his forehead and saying in a very soft voice, "No, no. I was up at the henequin plant when Goldie called me. Been having some problems out there again. I—I hadn't started back home yet." His words stumbled a little, as if he were slightly intimidated by Sid's presence.

  "Lennea Andrews, Frank LaTilla," Sid introduced. We call him Paco," he added fondly.

  Frank extended, rather awkwardly, his large hand and said, "I'm so very glad to meet you." She noticed that his face was mild and round. The khaki hat set back on his head to reveal sand-colored hair, curled damply and slightly thinning about the forehead. His skin, very white, had a tendency to glow like the face of some simple, innocent boy.

  Lennea had expected someone suave and charming, like Sid, or one of those intellectuals Delores often picked up with, those with more talk than trophies. At any rate, she had naturally assumed the LaTilla name would spell Big Money. Money was Delores' one major requirement in selecting friends, wavered in only isolated cases, as with Lennea.

  "Delores tells me you're quite the authority on the Mayas,"

  Frank ventured politely.

  "Not yet," Lennea replied, "just hoping to become one."

  "Then you've come to the right place." LaTilla's eyes, pale brown and slightly protruding, had to Lennea at first appeared vague, almost dull, but a closer look seemed to call forth a second opinion. So did Lennea's impression that her intrusion into his life would be welcome. She caught him studying her now, and the look in those pale eyes made her uncomfortable. It would be easy, she thought, to misjudge him.

  As they waited for the porter to bring down Lennea's suitcase, Sid continued to recount for them humorous, harmless instances of Delores' unpredictability. All within character. But Delores had surely by now contacted Wesley. Delores thrived on the glory that being a part of Wesley's great books and discoveries brought her. Whatever else she might do, she would never betray her own ambition.

  Sid walked with them to the door, as if regretful over their leaving. Lennea accepted his hand, half-afraid to leave the warmth the Guerrero's offered for the coldness of Frank LaTilla. "Just wait 'til you taste Goldie's cooking," Sid encouraged. "If I could slip away, I'd ride out there with you."

  A surrey pulled by a lone brown horse waited patiently in front of the hotel door. To Lennea, it seemed a symbol of escape, of relaxation and enjoyment. If only she could forget Delores, the missing suitcase, the purse she gripped so tightly. She longed to climb aboard the carriage and imagined that Joseph was smiling at her, extending his hand. Sensing her interest, the driver called to her in Mayan.

  Lennea did not understand what Frank LaTilla answered back to the driver, but recognized with some surprise that his tone had changed to one of curtness and impatience. He tossed her battered suitcase into the back of hi
s jeep. She hesitated before climbing in beside him.

  Frank LaTilla watched the road; she, his profile, the chin that sagged into the fat neck. He seemed to have dropped his anxious, overly-solicitous manner that he had evidently put on for Sid's benefit. "I wish we'd hear from Delores," Lennea said to break the silence.

  "The professor was at our place when Goldie called me. He said he was going to wait for you. He may have some news."

  Relief flooded Lennea. Her mind leapt ahead to meet Wesley. She loved him so much. He surely must love her, too. She was much more than his eager protégé; she thought his thoughts, felt his exhaustion, fully understood his commitment.

  "My farm is over there, my factory ten minutes further," said LaTilla. "Henequen. I raise maize, too." The idea seemed to impress him, "Like the Indians did a long time ago."

  Lennea met his attempt to communicate with a forced friendliness. "You're from the United States, aren't you? How did you happen to get down here?"

  "I'm retired navy." He lifted his sleeve so she could see the tattoo of an anchor on his arm. "Twenty years. I met Goldie on a weekend pass and fell for her like a ton of brick."

  "Your wife Goldie is Mexican, then?"

  "No, she was born in the States. But she was raised in Merida. Her father was in the shipping business".

  "I suppose money goes further down here."

  "You bet it does. I can live like a millionaire here."

  "How did you happen to meet Delores?"

  "I do a little scuba diving. Why, Delores even tried to teach Goldie to dive," Frank chuckled, "but Goldie's scared of the water."

  "Delores is a determined teacher," Lennea exclaimed. "She forced me to learn last summer in California."

  "Cancun is where we first met Delores. There she was! Rising out of the ocean like a beautiful sea goddess!"

  The pale, brown eyes that had shifted to her seemed to take on depth. Lennea wondered if he were in love with Delores and if Delores were using him, as she often did people, for her personal convenience. LaTilla seemed to pick up on her thoughts and directed his remarks toward an answer.

  "Don't get me wrong. Goldie and I both adore the girl!" He nodded his head slightly to the left. "There's the factory I was telling you about."

  Lennea looked toward the long, green stacks of henequin, piled high, waiting to be dried by machines so that the fibers could be used for rope, mats, and other woven goods.

  "Someday I'll take you through." The talk of Delores had made Frank warm up to her until he seemed almost friendly.

  They drove past flat land with scarcely a building or sign of life. Lennea had imagined the Yucatan to be one dense jungle. In this area underbrush alone grew, so thick one would have to slice through it with a knife to walk through, but there was a strange absence of trees.

  During the lull in their talk, Lennea's thoughts leaped ahead. She would be so glad to see Wesley. She had loved Wesley from the moment she had entered his classroom as an undergraduate. Lennea would always treasure that first image of him—leaning against his desk with careless stance, slender to the point of gauntness. He always looked a little pale, as if it were his habit to push himself to the point of exhaustion.

  Lennea closed her eyes now and saw the dreaming depths of his brilliant blue eyes. Such a glorious blue! From endless periods of study, from long hours of glaring light, often Wesley's eyes would become painfully sensitive and he would be forced to shield them with very dark-tinted glasses. The shadowy lenses made him appear vulnerable, with human limits and frailties. It made Lennea feel so tender toward him.

  Her thoughts were jolted back to the present as the jeep turned off the highway to jog along a deeply-rutted dirt road. She could see ahead a sprawling, Spanish-style adobe house and behind it, it's ancient likeness, which might have been a barn.

  "It's beautiful," she said with some surprise.

  Frank LaTilla's round face looked pleased. "Less than half a mile in back of the shed Maya ruins begin. A direct path connects us with Chichen Itza, only a few miles away."

  "What a wonderful location!"

  A great stone archway led into an open patio decorated with bright blue tile, statues, and flowers. A thin, chinless woman of thirty-eight years or so hastened to meet them. She looked as if she should have a huge red flower clipped to the curly, auburn hair, worn loose like a flower-child from the sixties. Frank caught his wife in a great bear hug. "Marigold, Baby, this is Delores' friend, Lennea."

  "But still no Delores?" Goldie turned toward Wesley, who was directly behind her. "We've been so worried."

  Lennea's gaze fell upon Wesley. He looked paler. She noticed first the rimless, dark-tinted glasses and thought anxiously, he's been over-working again.

  Wesley stepped forward. He moved as if he were trying to shake off an edge of annoyance that the long wait and probably the idle chatter of Frank LaTilla's wife had instilled in him.

  Lennea longed to embrace him. Instead she waited shyly for him to speak first.

  "I don't understand all that's going on," Wesley said to her with no greeting at all. "Delores still hasn't contacted me."

  Frank and Goldie, engrossed in each other, had slipped into the house, leaving them on the patio. Their being alone, as it so often did, hung over them awkwardly. Wesley appeared even more distracted than usual. "I can't stay long. A driver's on his way to take me back to the village."

  Lennea tried to bridge the silence that followed. "I'm so afraid something's happened to Delores."

  Wesley frowned, removed his glasses, and ran a lean hand across his eyes. They were so deep, so blue; startling after the obscurity of dark lenses.

  "I'm wondering if we shouldn't call the police."

  Keen blue eyes held hers. "What, Lennea?" The way he pronounced her name was different, like it was part of another language.

  "Maybe someone kidnapped her."

  "Delores would be more likely to kidnap someone."

  "I believe she may have gotten in with some bad company."

  "She's twenty-eight years old, Lennea. Not your little sister."

  "But I'm afraid..." She heard her voice drifting off. How true that was. She was afraid of everyone, for everyone.

  Lennea awkwardly gripped the bulky flight bag with both hands. She took a step toward Wesley, anxious to show him the money, to have him share the responsibility of her plight. Her grasp was tight, her palms sweating. She took another step closer, ready to open the bag and allow Wesley to look inside, but before she could do so, Frank LaTilla re-entered the room.

  Latilla carried with him a huge, wood-hewn statue, which he held out to the professor. Wesley's look of annoyance deepened into absolute irritation.

  "One of your carvings?" Lennea jumped in to salvage their host's feelings. Frank turned the statue toward Lennea so she could see it full view. She guessed it must be a jaguar. Crudely done. Almost hideous. She thought of the magnificent jaguar back at the hotel lobby, so real it looked as if it might spring to life. This "thing" didn't even resemble Maya art. Why, one of Val's children could have done better.

  "Sid told me about your carvings," she remarked. She remembered Frank's artwork in the gift shop; present, yet discreetly hidden from view. "It's so nice to do something like that." Nice—a word that didn't express too much.

  "I did this one especially for you, Professor," Frank said. extending his offering to Wesley. Lennea was surprised to see a kind of shyness, a deference creep over his flabby features. "It's a welcome back. A sort of surprise."

  Lennea, shifting the flight bag back to one hand, wondered if she herself ever looked as pathetic as LaTilla in trying to impress Wesley Hern.

  "If I were you," Wesley advised, using the tone of a teacher to a pupil who displeased him, " I'd give this one to Lennea."

  She saw Frank's boyish face fall into a look of disappointment and bewilderment. Totally shocked at Wesley's rudeness, Lennea acted quickly in her effort to cover up for him. "I would treasure it as my personal w
elcome to the Yucatan."

  Frank brightened a little. "You'd really like to have it?"

  "Of course." Lennea accepted the statue not meant for her and thanked him. If only Frank would leave the room. If she could have a few more minutes alone with Wesley maybe she could make him understand her concern for Delores' safety.

  Lennea's heart sank as she heard a car pull up in the driveway. Wesley began moving away, toward the door. His blue eyes focused upon Lennea. "The best plan as far as Delores is concerned is wait and see."

  "You have to leave, Professor?" Frank's voice, a little hurt, slightly wistful, called after Wesley.

  Wesley paused only to say, "Come out to Tikom tomorrow at eight, Lennea. Frank will drive you to the site." Wesley returned to press a map into her free hand. "We'll talk then, he promised. Long after he was gone she could still feel the warm pressure of his fingers, almost a caress, upon her arm.

  •

  Lennea couldn't continue carrying the money around with her. She couldn't sleep tonight, either, knowing it lay unprotected in her room. Not much place to hide it here. The room Goldie had taken her to—the one she was to have shared with Delores—was immense and sparsely furnished, with whitewashed adobe walls, plain and empty. She preferred the absurdly over-decorated area of the living room or patio. She sank down on one of the twin beds and for an instant wanted to weep.

  The ugly jaguar carving stood on the dresser between the two beds. She looked at it now, at the wide-open mouth with long teeth, more foolish than frightening.