Drowning Pool (Miss Henry Mysteries) (9 page)

“Very nice.”

Obviously he did not know wisteria from milkweed, but he apparently found her explanation for wandering satisfactory and that was all that mattered. To enforce this idea, she began asking about the walls in the garden and telling him about the peach orchards of Paris. Juliet had not needed to chatter for a long time and found it exhausting to play stupid again.

Von Hayek smiled
a little with his mouth abut not his eyes. He seemed truly unable to create the usual facial configurations and she wondered what had happened to him—a stroke? Bell’s palsy? Too much Botox?

Von Hayek
checked his watch when she paused for breath.

“We are about to have lunch. Would you care to accompany me to the dining room?
You can tell me more about Paris while we walk.”

Juliet didn’t think it was a request.

“Do I have time to do another quick sketch of the pissed-off god?”

“A very quick one.
As it is we will be fashionably late.”

Juliet wasted no time. She didn’t actually want any reminders of the nasty
-looking godling who guarded the well she would like a better look at, but to keep her cover intact she had better pretend to be interested in all the vile carvings around the temple.

“There,” she said, closing her notebook and slipping
it back into her capacious pocket. She forced a laugh. “I was going to say that he has been immortalized, but that would be redundant. After all, if he is a god he is already immortal.”

“Very
true.” He was getting bored with her chatter, or so she hoped. “Let us go this way. It is the quickest route and I believe there are some more flowers just beginning to blossom.”

“
You know, I’m glad you found me. I’m afraid I’ve gotten a little lost and I’ll probably never find this spot again,” Juliet lied without compunction. “I’ve tried to keep the wall to my right but there are so many gaps and somehow it is all very confusing.”
If you had the brain of an ameba
.

“Yes, it can be
very confusing. And dangerous. Feel free to ask Mr. Smythe for a guide if you go out again. We would hate to lose you down a well or in a dungeon. And the temple is really quite unstable in places. You shouldn’t visit it alone.”

Juliet didn’t bother to repress a shiver. His tone was not the slightest bit threatening but the words were a warning whether he intended them that way or not.

“Do you really have a dungeon?” she asked.
Who the hell needed a dungeon?

“Yes, certainly. Would you like to see it?”
His slight smile seemed nasty.

“Maybe.”
No, not ever
. “Would Raphael be able to reach it?”

“Alas, no. The passages are too narrow
for his wheelchair.”

“Oh, well, maybe some other time.”
Like the twelfth of Never
. “As I said, I prefer animals and flowers and there is so much to see in your gardens.”

“And you still want to visit the lilies in the poza
, of course?”

“Very much.” As long as it wasn’t with von Hayek. Her flesh was beginning to creep just being near him. It was a relief to finally reach the inhabited part of the castle and see people around
, even if some of them had guns. “And the turtles too. They sound really cute.”

“Then I shall arrange it. Perhaps Mr. James would like to see them
as well. A jeep could easily accommodate his chair.”

Which probably meant that there wasn’t anything out there that they shouldn’t see. Juliet repressed a sigh at the
thought of the wasted time. Visiting the lakes would be pleasant enough and Rose would want to hear about the lilies and the turtles when they got back home, but Juliet was on a short clock.

But then there was that well and the other lilies she had seen painted into the decaying plaster. And something about von Hayek’s words about the connecting aquifers was nibbling at the back of her brain.
Hadn’t she read about a well being used as a treasure trove during some war or other?

“I’ll ask
Raphael,” Juliet said. “Wildlife isn’t his usual cup of tea, but your lakes are very special and this is a once in a lifetime chance to see them.”

Back out in the open where air could reach her, the warm current rubbed against her like an affectionate cat, stropping her skin through the linen of her pants. Given that it was almost hot, there was no reason that she should have goose
bumps on her arms, but she did—a lot of them.

The meal was another long one and the guests were grumpy for having been kept waiting. Juliet didn’t bother to try conversing with anyone. Instead she slipped bits of food to the black and white cat under the table that patted her ankles whenever he was feeling neglected. Juliet hoped that he—because it was definitely a
he
—did not have fleas.

Juliet did her best to be discre
et about feeding the cat her unwanted lunch, but Raphael, who was sitting across from her, noticed what she doing and also her look of surprise when the feline decided to hop into her lap and began kneading with its sharp claws.

The cat apparently could count courses and when they were down to the dessert, some kind of
dulce de leche
, the cat excused itself and slipped out of the dining room. It exited down the hallway that led to the kitchens where she expected it was supposed to remain while keeping mice out of the pantry.

Guda Stoss had been careful to avoid Juliet since their exchange the previous night, but
her gaze was full of frustrated malice whenever she looked her way. Juliet, who had dealt with truly scary people, let her gaze express her contempt for the sculptor’s bad manners. Juliet, being at least temporarily above attack, didn’t mean that Guda had given up being rude to others, so it didn’t surprise Juliet when Judith and Guda ended up having hard words over the fish course. It concerned Judith’s fur. In this, Juliet was on Guda’s side but she stayed out of it. The exchange lasted through the dessert and coffee. Both women were sneering but looked satisfied with the encounter.

After lunch she pulled Raphael aside and asked if he would like to go with her to see the pozas. Henrik von Hayek
, who was standing nearby, overheard her and offered to arrange a jeep at once if that was what she wanted. Raphael studied her for a moment and they agreed that he would very much like to see the poza. This was a lie since he usually rested in the late afternoon, and it was unpleasantly hot outside, but Raphael knew that she was after something and needed, or at least wanted, his help.

Bertram
Fröndenberger and Oscar Dandie were also standing with their host and
Juliet was relieved when no one else invited themselves along on their expedition. She wanted to enjoy the experience without interruption of her thoughts and even old
Fröndenberger
would be a distraction. He would also impede frank conversation which they could have once away from the castle.

Juliet
still had her sketchpad and flashlight with her and she led the way to the garage, making sure to choose a route that would accommodate Raphael’s chair.

“You have made good use of your time,” was Raphael’s only comment
at her obvious familiarity with the castle’s layout.

“I have not been dallying,” she murmured.
“And I can usually find my way about anyway.”

“You do have a certain porosity when it comes to things like this,” he admitted.
“Your sense of direction is useful while slipping between the cracks.”

“Sorry I came along?”

“Not yet. Ask me again tomorrow.” But he smiled when he said this.

At the garage they ran into Smy
the, whose presence she suspected was far from random. Though a guard had been detailed to serve as driver, Juliet insisted politely on driving a jeep herself. When Smythe suggested that she might get lost she laughed at him, but then told him a version of the truth, hoping to avoid any more conversational jujitsu. It was getting late and she didn’t want to be out after dark.

“I’m going there to work and I don’t like strangers around
when I am drawing. Raphael has the gift of being still so I don’t mind him, but anyone else will ruin it. The ghosts won’t come if there are too many people around.”

“Ghosts?”
he asked.

“Of course.
How can you doubt it? This whole place is creepy.”

Smythe considered her for a moment
and then ordered one of the guards to fetch the keys to a jeep. Juliet was betting that they had tracking devices on the vehicle and made note that if she had to borrow a vehicle in an emergency exit from the castle that she would have to check it for a LoJack.

Aware that the jeep might also be bugged, Juliet said little on the short drive. Taking a cue from her, Raphael stayed quiet too.

The little ponds were not far from the castle and not large enough to be impressive someplace like Minnesota. But in a land of perpetual thirst where even short exposure to the sun made one lightheaded, the water was miraculous. She could understand why they might have been a place of worship to those who lived in the wasteland. And why terrible legends of angry gods might have sprung up if the water—or what lived in the water—started making people sick.

One of the four lakes was slightly larger than the others and at one end
it was several shades darker, suggesting that it was deeper at one end. It was there they disembarked. They had to park a little way from the edge of the pozas, but there was a trail of hard earth through the shoulder-high grass which Raphael could negotiate without undue difficulty. The path was about two feet wide and the grass had been prostrated by some animal—perhaps a human. But the trail sometimes narrowed and the chair would occasionally flatten the strong stalks, and the broken stems filled the air with a slightly musky odor that smelled almost animal.

There was no wind
, so no whispers in the dry sward, and the water, which was fed by underground springs, was also still. The place both repelled and intrigued Juliet in equal measure. It was something of a relief when a lone bird hidden in the grass broke the silence with a short, drowsy song. At least they knew that they were not the only corporeal creatures at the poza.

“This p
lace would be eerie enough without the legends of the water ghosts,” Juliet said softly as the melancholy atmosphere wound its way through her brain and brushed against her heart.

“But with them?” Raphael shook his head. “I
am not superstitious but I feel an intruder here.”

“That’s because we are. This is a place of
apparitions.”

“Yet you needed to come.”
This was an invitation for her open up about what she was thinking.

“I think so.
Though not to call on the dead. My story last night was just window dressing. Von Hayek said something and I want to puzzle it for a while and see if it makes sense. If you don’t mind?”

“Not at all.
I think I will nap.”

“I’ll tell you one thing, We are seeing this place in transition. Klaus and the Renaissance are on the way out and Henrik and modern art are taking charge. And Henrik doesn’t like
Quatros Cienegas
.”

Juliet found a flat stone and they sat in silence while the sun shifted over. Juliet finally remembered to
pull out her sketchbook and drew a few of the flowers in case anyone examined her book while she was away from her room at dinner. She had already removed the maps and hidden them in the secret compartment of her purse. To get a more complete view of the poza, she climbed to the top of a boulder and looked down at the darkening water. It spoke to her morbid state that she half expected to see some Mexican Ophelia—maybe her Cora—floating in the pond.

The lilies were pale
though instead of red, help up on stiff stems where they floated above the green pads, and in the light they looked almost metallic and gleamed in the sunlight which had netted the flowers in wisps of ephemeral gold that would soon be gone. They made Juliet think of a stained glass window in a cathedral. Here and there bits of tarnished gold darted among the living, emerald tiles that almost paved the pond in places, and she noticed a few tiny turtles enjoying the last of the sun around the edge of the pond.