Twenty Centavos: A Mystery Set in San Miguel de Allende

by John Scherber

  I had just refilled our coffee cups when my cell phone rang. I looked at my watch; ten o’clock. It was Maya, her voice low and edged with panic.

  “Paul, there’s someone in the house! Marisol thinks it might be John Schleicher. Can you come now? Fast, and bring Cody if he’s still there.”

  “We’re leaving now. Call the police and tell them we’re coming. We’ll probably get there first and I don’t want to get shot.”

  Chapter 22

  We were running the two long blocks down Quebrada to Galeria Cruz. It was a toss-up; the artmobile was faster, but then we’d have to park, and there was no guarantee how close we would get. Cody was keeping up admirably for someone of his weight and age. Especially considering that the sidewalk was 18 inches wide and made up of stones the size of eggs. I could hear his shoulder bouncing off door jambs as we passed and I was wondering whether we were about to encounter the Glock Nine we had seen in John Schleicher’s desk. We had stopped to collect our own guns in the car on the way.

  “Why did she think it was Schleicher?” he gasped.

  “Maya told me that Marisol let him into the gallery once, months ago. She thought he was scary.”

  “Shrewd judge of character.”

  We flew around the corner and stopped at the entry. The lamp over the door was not lit. Cody pulled out his penlight and examined the lock after he tried the knob. It was locked.

  “It’s a good one,” he said. “Fairly new.”

  “I don’t think this house is more than eight years old. I remember when it was a ruin behind a half-fallen wall. An American couple built this place on spec.”

  “Hold the light for me. It may take a minute.” He was still wheezing from the run and his hands were unsteady.

  “How would Schleicher get through it?” I asked.

  “He must have the same tools I have.”

  As he fiddled with the lock the seconds ticked by and I wondered what was going on inside.

  “What’s it like in there?” he asked, sliding slender shafts into the lock one after the other.

  “This whole street wall is not part of the house itself. You come into an entry that opens immediately into the garden, which is roughly square. Several paths cross it, one on the right follows the other street wall, where there’s a fountain. There’s a ring of ficus trees in the center. On the left the path goes toward the kitchen. The main path in the center, looping around the trees, leads right up to the loggia, which is as long as the great room behind it. From there you can go into one of three sets of French doors or you can go left into the kitchen, which has its own entrance. Behind the kitchen is the dining room, which also gives access to the great room.”

  “Staircase?”

  “Behind the great room fireplace. One up and one down.”

  “Marisol has a basement? I never heard of that in San Miguel.”

  “Like I said, this house is not old. I don’t know what’s down there.”

  “OK. I’ll go through the kitchen and you go along the fountain wall and then through the French doors and maybe we can come at Mr. Schleicher from two sides. Have your gun ready. If you see me having to pick the door lock at the kitchen, wait for me to get through it before you go in.”

  The lock yielded quietly and we opened the door a crack. I pushed it open a bit further and when there was no response we went in. I closed the door quickly and hugged the wall of the entry. In the garden, low-wattage ground lights dimly lit the paths. The kitchen was dark, as was the loggia, but through the open French doors I could see dim light in the great room, possibly coming from the openings at the bedroom level above. Cody moved off to the left. The evening was comfortable, not especially warm, but my hand was sweating on the grip of the .38. No sound came from the house, or any sign of movement.

  There was going to be a problem at the wall fountain, because the lighting at that point rose from the ground and bathed the upper structure in light, a bronze figure of vaguely hermaphroditic tendencies pouring water from an elegant urn into a half circular base. No water came from the urn now. Approaching it I dropped to my knees and crawled 20 feet under the cover of gigantic elephant ears until I was comfortably in semidarkness again. When I reached the loggia Cody was already at the kitchen door. He didn’t have to pause going in.

  As I threaded my way through the outdoor furniture and moved toward the French doors I picked up the murmur of conversation, not nearby, but where it was I couldn’t tell. I flattened myself against the wall next to the center pair of doors, pulling the gun out of my belt.

  “Tobey always said you were a fool with more money than sense. What can you prove now?” It was Marisol’s voice. “It was for this that you killed him?”

  “Well, darlin,’ he made the same comment to me, and that’s what cost him his life. Do you think I cared about the money?” It was Perry Watt’s voice! “I would have killed him for a tenth as much. Everybody thinks I’m all about money, but that’s not it. It’s only a means to own what I don’t have time to create myself. Not that I couldn’t. And then to have Tobey laugh at me. I didn’t plan to kill him; any man with money in México needs to carry a gun when he goes about, but he was so goddamned condescending!”

  “I think you must be crazy. Those pieces are not fakes. You have done all this for nothing. Now you think you need to kill me too.”

  I had no idea where Cody might be at this point, but I knew if I didn’t act soon Perry would probably kill her. And where was Maya? Surely not standing there silently with Marisol. That would have been beyond her. The thought crossed my mind that Perry had already killed her, and I forcibly put it aside. Marisol wouldn’t have been as composed if he had. I slipped out of my shoes and began moving into the great room in the direction of the voices. There was lamplight coming through the portals on the second floor. Within the vaults of the ceiling I could make out the frescoed angels. Silently I moved across the front of the fireplace. Suddenly I could see the back of Marisol’s shoulder. They were standing at the base of the stairs that ran upward behind the fireplace on the left.

  I dropped to a crouch and moved quickly into view.

  “Drop the gun, Perry!”

  Before I could fire he spun Marisol around and got behind her.

  “I think it’s your turn,” he said.

  There was no way I could fire past Marisol. Perry was not that big and she screened him easily. I let the gun fall to the floor. Now, as he focused on me, Cody would have a chance to come at him.

  “In fact, I’m glad you came. Let’s get out here a bit so we can talk.” We moved toward the front of the fireplace. “This gives me a chance to bring this whole thing to an end. You’ve been messing in my business too long, Paul. I just can’t have that. When I saw how you looked at the Rolodex I knew you had seen the other one at the party. It was my damn fool mistake. And it must have been you in the powder room when I came back upstairs the night of the party. You must know by now that I had Xoc killed too. When were you going to spring that on me? I tried so hard to sell you Schleicher. Why couldn’t you see that? He makes so much more sense than I do.” He was shaking his head. “It’s just character.”

  “And you cut my picture too, then?”

  “Oh no, Paul, you misjudge me. I’m a collector. I respect your painting. I’d never damage a work of art. It goes against everything I believe in.” The argument from principle. Where the hell was Cody? Of course. Then it was Delgado. He would have been able to get into my house. DO MORE PICTURES. He had said it again when I talked to him at the police station and I hadn’t caught it.

  “How did you know the ceramics were fakes?” I asked. If I was going to die I might as well die well informed.

  “I dropped one downstairs the week before the party. We were moving them up to the study to get them out of harm’s way. Can you believe it? I dropped it myself. The great collector. Marble floors. I looked at the fragments. I guess I was hoping it could be glued back together. There was a coin in the debris.
Twenty centavos. I saw it right away. Xoc had put a coin in every one, it gave him deniability. He admitted it to me later when he came to sell me more. I don’t think he ever realized Tobey was selling them as the real thing. Xoc could never be accused of making fakes. All you had to do was put them in front of an X-ray machine. But Tobey had to have known. I went to see him. He denied it all. Said if they were fakes it was not his doing. I made him an offer. He could give me back the nearly three hundred grand and I’d return the fakes and not say anything. He could go on with business as usual. He laughed in that damned elegant way he had. Then he said I was just a businessman.

  “After I killed Tobey I thought it was finished. But Xoc called me two days later and said he had more of the ceramics for sale. He said he knew I had bought many in the past, and he could make a much better price than I had been paying Tobey. He only wanted to continue the business. I just couldn’t let him. I asked him not to call the others because I wanted the first choice. He said he’d already called Tom Alwyn but that he didn’t want to buy any more. I really thought by dumping his body at your house you’d get the message to leave it alone.”

  “You were only a victim, Perry,” I said. “Just like the others. Can’t you end this now? Take a plane back to Houston?” Where was Cody? I hoped to God he was hearing this.

  “I don’t do victim very well, Paul. You have to realize that. No one makes a fool of Perry Watt. I just can’t allow it.” He cocked his head and listened for a moment. “Are you alone tonight?” He spoke slowly, as if listening through his own words.

  “Of course. I was just coming to give Marisol a progress report.”

  “I don’t want you to think I’m a bad guy, Paul.”

  “Of course not.” His personal ethics were legendary. Was Cody wandering around lost? Marisol was eyeing me with an unhopeful look, like why didn’t I do something?

  “I’m just in this too far,” Perry went on. “I’ve taken care of Delgado. He’ll be lucky if they let him be a garbage collector when he gets out of prison. But I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll buy one of the Maya pictures from your estate once you’re gone. Hell, I might even look in on that lil’ brown gal of yours; you know, see if she needs anything.” He smiled now, for the first time.

  “She might be a little too sassy for you, Perry.” Marisol said nothing, but her eyebrows went up at the brown gal comment.

  “I’m used to sassy. I’ve even gotten to like it.”

  “What brought you back tonight?”

  He pushed Marisol in my direction so he could cover both of us and reached into his pocket.

  “I left something behind that night,” he said. In his palm were a spent bullet casing and a bright brass coin.

  “The shell casing.”

  “Exactly. I won’t say I was rattled that day, but I was just a bit upset and I had to leave sooner than I intended. I have a young friend in the police who kept me posted on the investigation. A few pesos go a long way here. I knew they didn’t have the shell, but when you told me about the upcoming auction, and moving all the furniture, I knew they’d find it.”

  “And the coin?”

  “That was going to be for Marisol, if she caught me searching. But now it can be for you.”

  His hand rose and the coin sailed through the air toward me. I caught it. I didn’t have to look at it to know it was 20 centavos.

  “Should I put it in my mouth?” I asked, trying to sound much calmer than I felt.

  There was a loud pounding on the entry door and the bell began to ring. Perry whirled toward the loggia, and took a step forward. Cody moved rapidly out of the dining room in our direction, but Perry saw him too, from the corner of his eye, and fired off a shot before Cody could get into a position to shoot past Marisol. Cody went down on a side table that held a large onyx lamp with a fringed shade, taking it with him, then slid thrashing to the floor. Suddenly, before the sound of the gunshot had died away, Maya emerged from the basement stairs at the right of the fireplace and in her raised arms was one of the Mayan figures from the wall niches. There was a mighty look of concentration on her face as she brought the statue down on the side of Perry’s head. Perry was still looking over the settling rubble of Cody and the lamp table, trying to decide whether to fire again. It was the last thing he saw on earth.

  “Lil brown gal?” she said. Perry now lay at the same spot on the floor where Marisol had said that Tobey died.

  With my toe I moved his gun away, then knelt beside him. His eyes were still open but he wasn’t moving. My fingers found no pulse in his neck, but I was no expert. His head was misshapen from the impact. As I looked at him for a moment, a rush of contradictory feelings went through me, and I knew I’d have to sort them out later. I leaned over Perry’s body and sifted through the ceramic fragments on the tile. There it was, the newly minted coin. I picked it up and put it in my pocket with the one that had been meant for my mouth. Now I had 40 centavos. This didn’t even pay as well as painting. Then I remembered Cody. The door was still pounding, now with more urgency.

  “Let them in,” I said to Marisol. “It’s the police.”

  Cody was trying to get to his feet but the best he could do was sit up.

  “Damn it to hell,” he said. “And I thought I was done getting shot. This must be three; or is it four? Is Perry down?”

  “Very down,” I said. “Maya got him. I think he said something she didn’t like, even more than announcing he was going to shoot me.”

  Blood flowed through his fingers over a hole in his pants leg. I pulled the table and the lamp away. I could hear the police coming through the garden.

  “Are you hurt very much?” Maya asked.

  “I’ve had worse. At least it’s a small caliber, I think, if it’s the same gun that did the others. It didn’t go through.” He was holding his thigh with both hands, applying pressure. “So it was all Perry. Not Schleicher.”

  A lanky man in a suit and tie came running in with two uniformed cops. His gun wavered as if he wasn’t sure who to point it at.

  “It’s over,” I said. “That’s the shooter on the floor by the fireplace.” The only blood was a trickle from Perry’s ear. The cop knelt beside him, examining the massive head injury and placing two fingers on his neck. “This man is dead,” he said.

  “We’ve got another man shot here,” I said, pointing to Cody. The cop pulled out his cell phone and called for two ambulances and the forensics man.

  “I am Licenciado Rodriguez. And you are Paul Zacher?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you tell me how this happened?” Maya appeared at my side. “Please wait in the dining room,” Rodriguez said to her. The other cop led her off. My heart rate was coming down a bit. Closer to a 150 than 200. I gave him a brief account of what had happened. One of the other cops took Marisol into the kitchen to take a statement.

  When the ambulances arrived it took both medical techs and two policemen to lift Cody onto a stretcher and get him out to the ambulance. Fortunately they had one of those carts to roll it on most of the way. The forensics tech arrived on their heels and began recording the scene.

  “I will need both you and Señora Zacher to come with me to the station. We will ride separately,” said Rodriguez.

  “Sanchez,” I said. “Señorita Maria Sanchez.”

  “But just now you called her Maya, I think?”

  “Yes. I only call her that.”

  “But she does not look Mayan?”

  “No. She is from México City.”

  Licenciado Rodriguez knelt on the floor and lifted up Perry’s pistol and the two expended shells--one from Tobey’s murder and the other from Cody’s wound--with a pencil from his shirt pocket.

  “This is most interesting,” he said. “This gun is much the same size as one found earlier tonight on the next block, however, that was a revolver. I begin to understand now why Licenciado Delgado called your house a ‘hot spot.’”

  “I don’t think I follow you.”


  “You are not aware of the accident tonight near that corner? It was somewhat before eight o’clock.”

  “I did see two ambulances, now that you mention it.”

  “A man was hit on Quebrada tonight by a pizza delivery motorcycle. At the hospital he was found to also be carrying a small caliber pistol. He had broken into a white Chevy van similar, I believe, to yours. He was hiding inside when the owner came. When he fled he was hit in the street.”

  “So he was hiding in a Chevy van like mine with a gun?” I wondered how he knew about my van, but maybe he’d been briefed on the case by Delgado as he was led away in chains. Unless Perry had sent him after me--that would explain why Perry was surprised to see me.

  “Exactly, and so from his wallet we found his vehicle nearby, also a van, and in the rear was a large piece of carpet stained with blood and other materials yet to be identified. So now we are remembering the two deaths recently, excluding of course, the one you have just caused here, and how the victims died from small caliber guns much like these. Also in the pocket with the gun was a 20 centavo coin. You will see that we have much to think on from this.”

  They had us sit in separate rooms while the police worked up the scene. They would not let me speak to Maya. It took more than an hour. When we entered the police station it was after 11 o’clock. The fan still turned lazily over Delgado’s former desk, which was piled high with files. I guess they hadn’t replaced him, only given Jésus Rodriguez his work load. Some people are just impossible to replace. We sat at Licenciado Rodriguez’s desk in the corner of the room and I told the story again, this time with all the detail.

  “So Señor Watt admitted to you that he killed Señor Cross and Ramon Xoc?”

  “Yes.”

  “And was it not Ramon Xoc who was the man found last week in your house? You will excuse that I am new on this case, but I must be certain of the details and Licenciado Delgado is not available at this time.”

  “Yes, but I didn’t know Ramon Xoc before that.”

  “Do you know why he was killed?”