Path of the Jaguar

by Vickie Britton

  "Are you all right?"

  "Thanks to Frank," Goldie answered Lennea's question without taking her eyes from Sid. A frown crossed her pale forehead. "Where did Frank go?"

  Sid's dark eyes darted questioningly to Lennea. "Frank's on his way." He started to reach out for her, but brought his hand back to the arm of his chair. "Don't try to talk. We just want to sit here with you."

  "Don't go away." Goldie's voice seemed to drift. Her skin hue, changed from gray to white, showed some improvement, but the wide eyes were still glazed and vacant.

  "Goldie, do you remember going into my room?"

  "Everything all torn up and broken," she said in a voice so soft that Lennea instinctively moved closer. "Ruined."

  "Did you see anyone?"

  "Someone hit me from behind. Hard. Like they wanted to kill me." A little moan escaped her lips. "Do you think they wanted to kill me? It hurt so bad. It hurts so bad!" Sid," her voice grew weaker, slower. "I feel so..very..weak. Tell Frank to come back in here."

  Sid rose quickly and a moment later reentered the room with Dr. Lopez. After a cursory examination, the doctor spoke, a little impatiently this time, "Mr. Guerrero, she's quite all right. She's had a bad injury and you must expect her to be a little disoriented. Just leave things to us. We take care of everything." When the doctor reached the door, his voice became milder. "If you don't disturb her, I'll let you stay." Lennea left Sid in silent watch beside Goldie's bed and went into the lobby to look for the others. Surely, by now, either Frank or Wesley would have appeared. Or Joseph. Most of all, she wanted to see Joseph! She stopped herself. She mustn't let Sid's admiration of Joseph influence her own thoughts. Joseph or his colleague, the Mayan spy, had certainly been the one trying to search her room for the money, the one who had found Goldie instead.

  She checked her watch. Hours had passed. Why hadn't anyone shown up yet? Surely, Sid's page had reached them by now! Impatient waiting finally took her outside. Lennea raised her face to the sky and felt the calming effect of the dark horizon, still streaked a little with orange. She had made the wrong decision from the beginning. She should never have tried to protect Delores. She should have taken the money to the police at once no matter what trouble it would have caused for Delores or for herself. But it was too late now. Too late for "shoulds" and "maybes."

  She thought of the ruins behind LaTilla's house and of the jaguar stone which concealed the hidden money. The cash was still safe. If she didn't have the nerve to retrieve it alone, she would have to decide to trust someone to go with her.

  From her vantage point on the steps of the rock building she could see the parking lot, vacant and dark in spite of the streetlights. Her gaze swept across the vehicles, and returned to a pick-up carelessly parked in the center of the lot. It could be that battered Ford, the same one driven by Rico and his father.

  As she walked forward to investigate, she saw that someone was inside. Whoever it was didn't move or even look up as she approached. He remained slumped across the steering wheel, so motionless that she became alarmed.

  Lennea recognized the heavy shoulders in khaki shirt, the large hands with the tight wedding band. Of course—the truck must belong to him! "Frank..is that you?"

  Frank's shoulders shook. Sounds of sobbing broke into the silence.

  "Goldie's going to be fine," she comforted, her voice strange and unconvincing.

  Heavy shoulders heaved. Abruptly as it had begun, the sobbing ceased. Lennea knew that tears were streaming down Frank's face, even though he had turned away from the light, and shadows prevented her from seeing them. "I just can't go in!" he cried.

  "Of course you can. She's been asking for you."

  "How could anyone have done this to her?" Another sob cut into his words. "How could anyone do this to me?"

  "She needs to see you, Frank. Come on, you must go inside."

  He shook his head helplessly. "I can't. I can't bear to lose her!"

  •

  Lennea opened the hospital door and came face to face with Joseph. She detested her reaction at seeing him—relief and joy, not any trace of fear or doubt.

  A kindly warmth glowed in his dark eyes. His voice was gentle. "Sid told me everything." As he spoke, he reached out for her as if to transfer to her some of his strength. "You're all right, aren't you?"

  As she looked up she glimpsed her image in the mirrors behind them, her blouse that hung sizes to big, her blonde hair, a damp tangle. She nodded in answer and started to tell him about Frank, but before any words tumbled out, Frank appeared.

  Frank looked much worse in the bright light, worse, even, than Goldie. His clothes were soiled and wrinkled, his wiry hair matted down, stubbornly holding the shape of a hat no longer on his head. The round face was blotched with the same pale pink that rimmed his eyes, and he stared back at them as if unable to speak.

  "I talked with both Sid and the doctor," Joseph said in the same quiet tone. "Goldie is definitely beyond any danger. She's in room 112."

  The stark fear drained a little from Frank's face. Without a word he hurried away.

  "I told Sid I was taking you home."

  "I think I should wait here for Wesley."

  At the mention of Wesley's name, Joseph's eyes flared. "If he were coming, he'd be here by now."

  "Wesley's very hard to find," Lennea defended him. "Even if Hern does decide to come, the drive will take hours. And," he paused to study her, "You're exhausted."

  His close appraisal made her aware of fatigue, aware of a faint shaking in her legs. And now that he was here, he didn't frighten her at all; he was someone to lean on. She would not have to struggle with the rough road and the hard-to-manage jeep during the long miles to the LaTilla's. She would because of Joseph not have to face that empty seat stained with Goldie's blood. "I'm going to LaTilla's. I've got Frank's jeep."

  "Let's take the car I've rented instead."

  As they walked out into the darkness, Lennea said, "They almost killed her." The word they seemed to echo. Once again logic told her that Joseph was deeply involved in whatever was going on. And here she was trusting him, sharing her anguish.

  She was aware of his great height, his reassuring arm around her. She allowed herself to be guided, to be consoled. "You can't imagine how I worry about you," he said.

  The road Lennea had taken from the highway had been straight and direct; the route Joseph was taking was neither. One narrow street turned into another. "Are you lost?"

  Joseph stepped down harder on the gas and skillfully maneuvered the car past a carriage and around another corner. Slightly confused, Lennea watched for some building she would recognize. After another sharp turn, he pulled up in front of the Hotel Guerrero.

  "You were supposed to take me to LaTilla's!"

  "I can't let you go back there. Not tonight." He paused, then his sharp voice rose demanding her attention. "You really don't understand, do you, Lennea? It wasn't Goldie they were after. It was you! I don't know why I ever allowed you to get mixed up in this! When I first met you, if I would have known that I'd put your life in danger..." He stopped quickly.

  I? What was he saying? Joseph's face, protected by shadows, concealed his black eyes, still she could visualize their blazing. She could feel their intensity. "Lennea, you must stay here tonight for me! It's the only way I'll be certain that you are safe."

  * * * * *

  Chapter Thirteen

  The day promised great excitement. At ten o'clock divers would begin their exploratory plunges into the deep, green depths of Wesley's well, or, as everyone had begun to refer to it, "Hern's Pool."

  "Let's get someone to stay with Goldie today," Lennea urged. They had brought her home from the hospital yesterday afternoon. Though still pale and very tired, Frank's wife had spent the morning sitting up in bed, fretting about her choppy haircut. This, Lennea recognized as a definite improvement. She had no doubt that in a couple of days Goldie would be fluttering about the house again as cheerfully as ever. If
only she could convince Frank.

  "I can't leave her." Frank, still seated by the phone, told Lennea the same thing he had told Wesley a short time ago. "I can't trust her to anyone else's' care. Not for a while."

  "But Dr. Lopez said—"

  "I know what he said, but Goldie's not herself yet."

  Lennea knew how much it would mean to Frank to be present today at the diving. She understood how hard it had been for him to turn down a special invitation from Wesley Hern. One final time she tried to persuade him, "Goldie would really enjoy a firsthand account from you."

  "I'm going to stay right here with her," he repeated stubbornly. "I think I'll do a carving for her. She'd like that."

  The house seemed empty and quiet without Goldie's constant chatter. Lennea felt a sense of loneliness as Frank and she gazed at each other.

  Her thoughts of Goldie were interrupted by Frank's question, "Do you really think Delores left here to get married?" Lennea tried to avoid lying to him by framing a question of her own, "Why, don't you think she did?"

  "Something bothers me about it. I think she's still in Merida."

  Lennea could not hide her nervousness. "Why do you think that?"

  "I know Sid so well, that's why. I think Sid knows where Delores is. He wasn't really buying that story about her flying home to get married, and Sid isn't all that worried about her." Frank paused. "That's not like him, is it? If you want my opinion, Sid has Delores hidden somewhere."

  "To protect her, you mean?"

  "I don't know why."

  "If Delores is in the States, the first thing she would do is contact my sister. Shall we call her?"

  Frank put the call through, and Lennea listened dismally as Val, using almost the same words she had used during their last talk, told her Delores still had not contacted them.

  "You see, I'm right." Frank reached for the receiver Lennea had just replaced. "Let's call the airport."

  Lennea waited trying to read into Frank's heavy features the answer the ticket agent was giving him.

  "No one by that name has purchased a ticket or has reserved any flight out." The receiver clicked dully into place. "You know, after what happened to Goldie, I'm really worried about Delores. Something just may have happened to her, too."

  Lennea left the house, much too early, she knew. If she went directly to well, she would have nothing to do except wait for Wesley and the diving crew to appear. She would take this extra time to be alone, to sort out her thoughts.

  She stopped at Chichen Itza. No tourists were around this early in the morning. The great pyramid, stones golden in rays of sunlight, dominated the scene ahead. She remembered the way the huge temple had looked during the Sound and Light Show, with the serpent appearing in a rush of blinding color. Such a glorious structure.

  As she neared the pyramid, she recalled a lecture Wesley had given back in the States. "The carbon-dated wooden beams tell us the year was 1204. One pyramid was built upon another whose date was near 400 AD." Ninety-one steps on each of the four sides, ninety-one to represent the days of each season.

  The gate beneath the front steps of the pyramid was open, but no attendant stood guarding the inside entrance. Because Lennea needed something to occupy her thoughts and because she had always wanted to go inside the pyramid, she entered the narrow tunnel, where endless steps would reach upward toward the center. She knew from Wesley's lectures what she would see at the end of all the steps—two priceless, Mayan relics—one, a chac-mool, very similar in size and weight to the one that rested on the top of the Temple of the Warriors, upon which human sacrifices had for many centuries been made. The other relic would be a jaguar of similar size, painted a bright red and green.

  Lennea began laboriously ascending one steep step after another. It was one experience to climb to the top of a pyramid; another to be deep inside of one. Bulbs spaced along the ceiling lighted the way and caused the rocks to glisten. How airless, how stuffy it must be when the crowds crammed inside—rows of people ahead, rows behind, with barely room to pass in the straight up-and-down passageway. The slippery steps were dangerous, and there was no handrail. Moisture seemed to emanate from the rocks. Lennea's skin, too, seemed wet and clammy.

  The solidity of the inside caused a feeling of total aloneness, a complete separation from the rest of the world. Although closed-in spaces seldom bothered her, she felt her throat tighten up. The walls ahead grew narrow, and she knew the tunnel led to no exit on the other side.

  Lennea hurried. She wanted most of all to see the jaguar, that ruler of darkness and death, entombed for centuries beneath tons of rock.

  The sound of a footstep, far behind, yet loud in the awful stillness, caused her to stop and look back. As far as she could see, the passageway was empty, filled only with shadows cast from the bulbs overhead. Fearfully Lennea wondered why she had ever entered here alone.

  She waited. Again she heard the scrape of foot against rock. It might be only some early visitor, or the attendant, worried that someone had entered in his absence.

  Lennea didn't relish the thought of encountering anyone in this narrow passageway. She began racing toward the top, not sure of what she would find there, but certain she would soon be faced with a dead-end, rock wall.

  She was convinced that someone—that Mayan man—had followed her purposefully. She would be trapped at the top. Defenseless. An image of his dark, broad face appeared to her. She pictured him as he had looked peering thought the tiny window of the hospital door, his face distorted by the thick glass.

  At the top she might find some loose rock to use as a weapon. Here the stones were so tightly set that the tunnel looked as if it had been hewn through solid rock.

  Ahead, just ahead, was a level—perhaps ten feet by four. And for her, the end of the line. Iron bars protected the two, great statues. In her haste, her footsteps slipped. She fell, catching herself by gripping cold stone, groaning a little from the sharp pain where the rock hit her knee.

  Lennea raised her eyes to the buff-colored chac-mool and past it to the crude jaguar. A great, heavy head with four huge teeth protruding from the gaping jaws. Green eyes, ugly, frightening, stared at her through the dimness.

  Lennea scampered to her feet, whirling back, knowing she could do nothing else but meet whoever was behind her face to face.

  The man, when he appeared, looked more terrible to her than the jaguar. His large head set directly on husky shoulders. As many times as she had caught him spying on her, following her, she had not seen him look quite so formidable. The huge, Mayan nose, the jaw, set and humorless, the black eyes, as cold as the blank eyes of the stone jaguar.

  His clothes were dark, as they had been when she had seen him at Hotel Guerrero. Hotel Guerrero, the name kept echoing in her mind.

  "Why are you following me?" Lennea's voice, choked and distant, demanded. "Who are you?

  Slowly, he moved upward until he stood with her on the flat space in front of the relics. No taller than she, but he was stout, immensely strong.

  "What do you want from me?"

  "You don't need to be afraid." His voice was deep, clipped, heavy with accent. "I'm the one most likely to protect you."

  Lennea stepped backward. She could feel the coldness of the iron bars through her thin blouse. "Protect me from what?"

  When he didn't answer, she asked, "Who are you working for?"

  Upon close range his face looked rugged, marred. Deep lines cut across the broad forehead, deep lines slanted downward from the wide, expressionless eyes. A sharp frown caused the lines to tighten. "You are involved in a very dangerous situation."

  "I'm involved in nothing. I'm Wesley Hern's assistant professor. I came here to study." She stopped, gasping a little for breath. "Now, who are you?"

  Ignoring her question, he stated flatly. "I am looking for Delores Camille."

  "What do you want with her?"

  Again, it was as if she had not spoken. "I'm going to ask you outright, where is she?"
/>
  "I—I don't know," Lennea answered truthfully.

  "Don't lie to me. I'm certain you've been communicating with her. And you can be just as certain that I'm going to find her!"

  "You should have been following her then, instead of me."

  "That was my intent. She vanished at Mexico City. And you're the one who's going to lead me to her. Now, where is she?"

  He stepped closer, huge hands reaching out to lock on her arms.

  Lennea reacted to the threat apparent in his sudden movement toward her. She evaded with deft swiftness his grasp, bolted ahead of him toward the only means of escape, the treacherous, downward steps.

  "Wait!" he called. He started to follow her. She could hear the sudden clack of heavy steps hitting stone.

  Panic caused the narrow passageway to blur before her eyes. Her thundering heart, her racing feet, plunged ahead, not seeming to have any connection with the rest of her. Some distortion of mind made it seem to her that she was fleeing from something other than the Mayan man. That horrible jaguar, come to life, seemed to be pouncing after her.

  * * * * *

  Chapter Fourteen

  Because others wore T-shirts, shorts and casual clothing, Lennea spotted Sid first. He stood close to the well, totally caught up in the activity underway. His white shirt, damp with sweat, remained formally intact, as if he were ready to greet sophisticated guests at his hotel. Lennea wondered what about Wesley's work drew Sid away from the demands of his own business and inspired him to assume so solid a place among Wesley's tight little circle of confidants.

  "Hurry over, Lennea!" Sid's eyes darted to her and back to the pool. "Guess who we've got diving? Who do you think won the honors? First man to go in!"