Deity (6 page)

That’s
where Peet found another priest standing in the deep shadows.

It
took a moment to realize he wasn’t looking at a statue. The scarlet skullcap
and cassock gave the man away, if not the pectoral cross hanging at his
slightly rounded front.

Father
Ruiz bowed respectfully and quickly introduced Peet before turning back to
announce the priest. “Profesor, this is Cardinal Balbás, the archbishop.”

Cardinal
Balbás was not at all what Peet had expected. On his way to the cathedral he
envisioned a pope-like figure, aged and withering in flowing vestments. Instead,
he was surprised to find the archbishop not too many years older than himself,
even younger than Father Ruiz who must have been approaching sixty. Energy
flashed in the archbishop’s dark Hispanic eyes while the slightest touch of
gray flecked his glossy, raven hair.

“Father
Ruiz explains you are antropólogo,” Cardinal Balbás said, stepping forward from
his dim corner. “You excavated the Effigy of Quetzalcoatl, no?”

Peet
nodded. “My student originally located it. I merely supervised the recovery. But
I’ll have to give you credit for the Effigy’s latest recovery.”

The
archbishop smiled. “We have something en común, it seems. It was an altar boy
who discovered your Effigy here, not I.”

“So
this is where the thief left it?”

“The
artifact was not simply left,” Cardinal Balbás said. “It was intentionally
placed.”

Father
Ruiz stepped back. “We found it hanging upon this crucifix.”

Peet
turned to find the elaborate crucifix Father Ruiz was studying. It looked old,
as antique as the chapel itself.

“How
was it hung?” he asked. The Effigy was one solid piece of pure jade with
turquoise adornment. It was heavy and certainly not intended to hang from
anything, much less a fragile-looking relic like the crucifix.

“It
was wrapped with wire in such a way that it could be hung like a picture frame
on a wall,” Father Ruiz said.

“Why?”

The
priest shrugged. “At first we thought it was an anti-Christ statement.”

“Anti-Christ?”

Cardinal
Balbás cleared his throat.
“
En tiempos bíblico, la serpiente fue el el agente de Satanás.”

“We
recognized the Effigy as a physical manifestation of the Feathered Serpent,
Quetzalcoatl,” Father Ruiz explained. “You may recall it was Satan manifested
as a serpent
who
convinced Eve to eat the forbidden
fruit,” Father Ruiz explained. “However, Genesis 3:15 proclaims God’s triumph
over Satan when the serpent is crushed by the heel of Jesus Christ. So to hang
an image of the pagan feathered serpent in Christ’s place upon the cross is
blasphemous.”

Peet
considered the priest’s words a moment. Despite the museum’s evidence, John
would never even consider using the Effigy to violate the chapel this way.

However,
he knew someone who would.

“This
reminds me of a religious experiment that was conducted in Salt Lake City,” Peet said. “Professor Matt
Webb from Brigham
Young University
wanted to expose similarities between religions, so he took items of importance
from different religious communities and scattered them amongst themselves. For
example, he placed a Jewish Torah in a Muslim
mosque,
he put the Book of Mormon in a Baptist sanctuary. He even placed a Catholic
crucifix in a Jewish synagogue.
All to witness the reaction
of each religious sect.”

“What
were the results?” Father Ruiz asked.

“Just what you might expect.
There were a lot of
upset people, to say the least. Instead of bringing the religions together with
their similarities, his experiment merely highlighted their intolerance for
each other. The problem was
,
he went so far as to
place a copy of the Koran in his own Mormon Tabernacle. That move cost him his
job at BYU.”

“So
this profesor could have placed an image of the Quetzalcoatl deity onto our
crucifix?”

Peet
shrugged. “It’s a long shot but there is a possibility. Matt was a professor in
anthropology with a particular interest in the Mayan culture. He spends a lot
of time digging in Yucatan.”

Father
Ruiz shared a glance with Cardinal Balbás.

“So
your friend has contacts among the Maya people, possibly?” Father Ruiz asked.

Peet
frowned, confused. “I don’t know for a fact, but I would assume that he’s worked
with the Maya as he studied their culture.”

“Senor
Peet,” the archbishop said. “I wonder if you might ayúdeme, ah—assist me.”

Peet
was taken aback. “You need my help?”

Cardinal
Balbás swept across the enclosed chapel to a collection of small paintings near
the main altar. “There are reliquias here dating as far back as this chapel’s
construcción in 1615.”

“So
the Effigy was left as a reliquary relic?” Peet asked.

Cardinal
Balbás shook his head. “After the Effigy was returned to the museo, one of the
auxiliary bishops re-sanctified the capilla. It was then that he noticed
something amiss with one of the reliquaries on the predella.”

The
archbishop removed a small painting, revealing a hidden compartment behind it. “This
reliquia is vacant, no? No cruz.”

Despite
the poor lighting, Peet could see that indeed, the small, dark compartment was
empty.

“Could
it be your profesor friend traded the Effigy for the reliquia cross? Maybe he
plans to deposit the cross elsewhere?”

Peet
felt hesitant. “You’re missing a cross and nothing more?”

Again,
the priest caught the archbishop’s eye.
“Nothing more.”

Peet
shrugged. “I suppose its possible Matt may be extending his religious
experiment here, but you must receive a lot of visitors. A tourist could have
just as easily taken your cross as a souvenir.”

The
archbishop shook his head. “Impossible. This is one of the few capillas we do
not allow turistas. It remains locked. Only I have the key.”

“Could
someone have picked the lock?”

“The
engineer,” Father Ruiz interrupted.

Peet
hesitated.
“An engineer?”

“Structural engineer.
Much of Mexico City is built over
a dry lake bed. The catedral rests on an island where the Aztec capitol of Tenochtitlan once stood. But
the ground is soft and the catedral is sinking. Major work has been done to stabilize
the foundation and one week ago, a crew of engineers came to inspect for
weaknesses in the foundation and walls. Under my observation they checked this
chapel. Nothing was taken.”

“And
they didn’t leave the Effigy.”

The
cardinal held up a finger. “Two days ago un ingeniero returned to check a
measurement. We let him go. The capilla was locked, as always, and he took only
minutos.”

“But
long enough to drop off the Effigy and take your reliquary cross, if he had a
key.”

“Sí.
We cannot explain exactly how he got in. But
the
cruz
is most important.”

“Was
the engineer American?”

“No,”
Father Ruiz said. “But he wasn’t Mexican either. He looked very much native.
Possibly Mayan.”

“Wait
a second. Are you suggesting Matt set up one of his Mayan friends to enter this
chapel and make the trade?”

“It
only makes sense, no?”

Peet shook his head. What kind of mess had he gotten
into? First the Effigy,
now a reliquary cross
. In the
middle of it all John Friedman had disappeared and now Matt Webb was vaguely in
the picture, with a native posing as an engineer. It all sounded too
far-fetched and yet, there was a nagging possibility to it all. And only Matt
Webb would find more interest in the Effigy’s religious value than its monetary
value. Any other thief would have sold the Effigy for its riches. But Matt
wasn’t crafty enough to steal John’s security codes to get into the museum,
unless he found another friend to do his dirty work.

A friend like John.

Matt
and John were once close friends—two Mesoamerican anthropologists working out
of two universities that shared the same town. But could Matt really convince
his colleague to rob the museum of the very object that had possessed John for
over a year?

It
may be possible—if John knew the Effigy would be recovered.

“Let
me get this straight,” Peet said. “You want me to track down Matt and get your
reliquary cross back.”

The
archbishop’s eyes sparkled.
“Sí.”

“What
if he doesn’t have it?”

“We
will worry about that when the time comes. There is much reward for you if he
does have it.”

“You
mean, if I can get the cross back.”

“If
you get it back, there will be mucho recompensa.”

The Ladybug

“When
I brought you to Mexico
I didn’t agree to
no
Jesus revival on my plane!”

KC
jerked the tie free from the underside of the Twin Commander’s overhead wing. She
heard Peet step into The Ladybug’s shadow behind her. The warm Mexican sun had
climbed ever higher in the sky, bringing with it a mild temperature inversion
that resulted in wind gusts swirling around them.

“He’s
just one priest,” Peet reasoned.

“Yeah,
and the next thing you know he’ll want to convert us into pious Jesus freaks.” She
unhooked the strap from the anchor loop sunk into the tarmac and threw it over
her shoulder. The heavy metal latch swung around, missing Peet’s face by
inches. “I won’t put up with that. Not on my plane.”

KC
had no love for religion. It was bogus. Worship to a god of any sort was
comparable to a child keeping an invisible friend. Oh, she’d given religion a
try once but it did nothing for her
except
open her
eyes to the hypocrisy of it all. The very advocates of forgiveness, love and
morals were the first to criticize, condemn and justify the laws they
themselves couldn’t follow. Religion, KC discovered, was nothing more than a
feel-good mask to hide the true character inside.

It
reminded her of men.

If
there was anything KC distrusted more than the gods, it was men. The past
twenty years had nothing more to show than a long lineup of disappointments.
So many men unwilling to commit, who loved her until she peeled
away the layers of their own masks and discovered who they truly were.
She’d
dated Navy pilots, bar flies, a rodeo stock contractor, a business executive
and everything in between. She even dated
a golf
pro
once, but every one of them had one thing in common—underlying egos demanding
fulfillment of their own needs and outcompeting KC’s longing desires.

Perhaps
that’s why she felt safest with her last relationship with a Methodist elder
who’d
just moved to town. His stability was intoxicating,
his tenor voice, seductive. He was real and his openness about the Jesus in his
life made him appear vulnerable, and vulnerability implied exposure of the
deeper self.

Little
did KC know that vulnerability itself was a mask that could cover a man’s
mid-life crisis, not to mention the wife and children he left back at home in
Memphis.

That
was nearly two years ago. After that, KC swore off men but she quickly realized
that it was nothing but a mask she had chosen for herself. Deep down inside,
there was still that void longing to be filled by a man, a real man who had
nothing to hide. Despite the hardened facade she’d perfected externally, inside
that yearning was still open to any man who dared look for it.

She
hadn’t realized just how open it was until Anthony Peet came along.

There
was an instant attraction to him. Something primal within her autonomously
reached out for Peet’s subtle masculinity. At first KC tried to ignore it,
annoyed at another opportunity for disappointment. But during the flight to Mexico,
his presence consumed her. There was an awareness of just how small The Ladybug
was and when the anthropologist dared to take a seat in the co-pilot’s chair,
KC’s world constricted to that short space between them. It was as if the cockpit
of the Twin Commander was compressing around them, intensifying the pull from
the man sitting next to her.

Confinement
ten thousand feet in the air had been surprisingly welcome in the company of
Anthony Peet. She felt like a teenager again with a sudden resurrection of
hormones run amuck. KC had been floating on that feeling even after Peet left
her and the Ladybug on the warm Mexican tarmac. She’d just settled in a greasy
maintenance hangar, preparing to disassemble a hitchy gearbox from the left turbo
when Peet called, needing a flight back out of Mexico City. KC knew she was in trouble when
she realized just how much she anticipated a return flight with Peet.