The Death of a Much Travelled Woman (11 page)

The central square, the zocalo, however, was predominantly Mexican. It had newspaper vendors and people with small carts offering fresh fruit and nuts and candy. On the benches sat men reading papers or in conversation. The arcades on three sides of the square were packed with more vendors, selling the tackier forms of tourist souvenirs—sombreros, T-shirts, and tin jewelry. On the fourth side of the square was a church with a pinkish baroque facade.

I picked up a copy of the Mexico City newspaper,
La Jornada
, as well as the small English-language weekly produced in San Andreas, and chose a cafe down a side street from the zocalo to have a coffee. Unlike some of the other restaurants I’d seen while strolling around, this one didn’t have big signs in Gringlish advertising margaritas and super-big enchiladas. The few tables were arranged around a fountain in a small courtyard. There were plenty of plants, a parrot, a simple menu.

After I’d read
La Jornada
, I turned to the San Andreas paper. It had a chatty local tone, much like any small-town newspaper. The comings and goings of prominent San Andreans were noted, including the departure of Eleanor for Houston. There were a couple of art reviews of recent shows, a discussion of some traffic problems in a certain part of town, and mentions of many upcoming events. Eleanor had been right: There was a lot going on here, from yoga classes, to dance workshops, to readings. San Andreas was one of the Mexican towns where people came to learn Spanish. It had at least half a dozen language schools. Over the years a large expatriate community of mostly Americans, but also some Europeans, had built up. Some were older people who’d retired where their social security and pension dollars went a lot further, but many were artists and writers or would-be artists and writers.

I’m an expatriate myself, but I had never lived any place where sizable numbers of expats of the same nationality gathered together. It had always seemed to me that that would defeat the point, which is to leave your country behind.

I was just about to get up and leave when I noticed my name in the paper. For just a second, I thought that it was another comings and goings tidbit, as in Eleanor leaves and Cassandra and Lucy sublet her place. But then I saw that it was embedded in a small piece about a mystery writer, Colin Michaels, who was giving a reading tonight at the local arts center, El Centro Artistico.

“Long-time San Andreas resident Colin Michaels will read from his new mystery,
The Cassandra Caper
. Featuring his intrepid private investigator, Paul Roger, this new book opens with the dead body of a woman, Cassandra Reilly, washed up on a beach in Baja California. Cassandra was a go-go dancer in the 1970s who had fallen on hard times, and it’s up to Paul Roger to find the murderer in this exciting new thriller. Colin Michaels has written ten previous novels with Paul Roger.”

“Lucy!” I said, when I got back to the house. “Somebody’s trying to kill me!”

“What?” She had gotten up from her nap but hadn’t progressed much further than a prone position on the sofa. It was as if the muscles and tendons that had been holding her upright had suddenly collapsed, all at once. She was reading an Agatha Christie mystery, in Spanish.

I handed her the local paper, and she read the short notice and began to laugh.

“A go-go dancer, hmm? Of course it’s just a coincidence. Reilly’s a common name.”

“But Cassandra’s not! Why do you think I chose it? No, the man must have somehow picked it up from one of the books I’ve translated. Those Gloria de los Angeles novels are everywhere.”

“Well, you can’t do anything now,” Lucy said. “His novel’s been published.”

“I’ll sue! I’ll figure something out. I’ll go to his reading and heckle him at least.”

It was a useful ruse, anyway, to get Lucy out of the house.

We ate dinner before the reading at a small restaurant I’d noticed near Eleanor’s house. We had salads and enchiladas verdes and Tecate beer. Lucy said she could get more authentic food in San Francisco’s Mission District, but she ate it. It gave her small comfort to speak Spanish with the waiter.

“I really don’t feel I should be here,” she said. “It was more wrenching than I imagined to leave the camp. I’d gotten so attached to the people. Cassandra, some of them have been living there for almost ten years, and they have no idea when they’ll be able to get back to their villages in Guatemala. The conditions they’re living in are tolerable, but that’s about all. Just by living in the camps, they’re losing their culture.”

“You did what you could,” I said. Small consolation.

“But I feel so guilty at having left! In three months I did so little. If I didn’t have my job in Oakland to get back to, I would have stayed.”

Two straight couples came into the restaurant and sat down at the next table. They were middle-aged Americans. Georgia’s long letter to Lucy had said, “You’ll love how easy it is to meet people in San Andreas—everybody talks to everybody!”

Apparently this was true, for our neighbors had no problems breaking into our conversation, introducing themselves and telling us more than we ever wanted to know about them. The Nelsons, long-time residents of San Andreas, knew Eleanor well. “Oh yes, she’s been a real force in San Andreas.” They glanced at each other briefly and Mrs. Nelson added brightly, “Without her and Colin, El Centro Artistico never would have gotten off the ground the way it has. People come from everywhere to take classes there.”

“We’ve only been here five years, but we just think it’s the best place on earth!” she went on. “Imagine—we’ve got a maid and a gardener—we’d never be able to afford help in the States, but here we hardly have to pay anything. Bob’s got his golf and I’m a volunteer at the library. One of the things we love about San Andreas is that we hardly have to know any Spanish. We’re trying to persuade Lois and George to move here. Even with the cost of living going up here, they’ll still be able to live so much better than at home.”

“I love it,” said Lois Palmer. “I’ve been taking a ceramics class at the arts center, and a cooking class. I love Mexican food, don’t you? But George isn’t so sure.”

“Got a problem with the old ticker,” said George. “I know there are a couple of clinics, and one is for people like us, but I’m still not convinced. What if I had a heart attack on the street downtown and ended up at the Mexican clinic?”

Lucy was too disgusted to even bother replying. And even if she had, she’d have been met by shocked surprise. “But we love Mexico and the Mexicans,” they would say, puzzled. “They’re such warm people, and their culture is so fascinating.”

I jumped up with the check. “Well, we’re off to a reading tonight,” I said.

“That’s right,” said Mrs. Nelson, “Colin’s reading. Well, you’re in for a treat!”

El Centro Artistico was a small but beautiful colonial-style structure, built around a courtyard landscaped with trees and plants. We went up a marble staircase to the second floor, where the reading was being held. It surprised me how many people were packed in the little room—a good seventy-five. Almost all of them were white, and many looked retirement age, but there were also a number of younger and middle-aged people. Many of them seemed to know each other and were deep in conversations, of which we caught snatches:

“First chapter is really coming along. Couple of good paragraphs today.”

“Did you see what the Wallaces have done to their house? That incredible ceramic work. And they hardly had any trouble with the workmen.”

Several people came up to us to chat, intrigued no doubt by the fact that Lucy was Latina (“We want the local people to always feel welcome at our events!”). For the first time in many years, I felt peculiar about introducing myself and resorted to my given name, Catherine Frances.

“Are you an artist?” a woman with thick glasses and a rayon blouse printed with—yes, suitcases—asked me.

“Not even an amateur,” I replied.

“Are you here to study Spanish?”

“No,” I said reluctantly. No use telling her I made my living as a translator of Spanish literature; that could only lead to a discussion of the books I’d worked on and the revelation of my name. And I couldn’t bear the news to spread so soon around the room, that I had become a fictional character.

“Cassandra—or what had been Cassandra—was a worn-out bundle of varicose veins, needle tracks, and bunions. Her mottled face hung slackly and even under the water you could see that she had a bad dye job.”

Colin Michaels had been reading for about fifteen minutes when I decided to murder him. A short, red-faced man in his sixties, with a silky pompadour of white hair, he wore a short-sleeved Mexican shirt open in a V that showed his tan chest and white chest hair.

His character, Paul Roger, was different. Lanky, tough, laconic. You couldn’t call Colin Michaels laconic by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, I began to think he was never going to shut up.

Finally he finished reading and it was time for questions. In order he got: “Do you use a computer?” “How old were you when you started writing?” “How do you get an agent?” and “Have any of your books been made into films?” and then came one of those long-winded questions that isn’t really a question but more a statement—if only you could figure out about what—on the part of the questioner.

Eventually it was my turn.

“I’m curious about where you came up with the name Cassandra Reilly for your victim.”

“It’s a great name, isn’t it?” he said happily. “I have an Irish background myself so Reilly was obvious, but I think the choice of
Cassandra
was really quite inspired. Cassandra was the daughter of the King of Troy, who had the gift of prophecy, but not of being believed.”

“I
know
who the mythical Cassandra was, thank you,” I interrupted. “But did you realize that Cassandra Reilly is the real name of someone—someone I know quite well actually—yes, a very esteemed translator, the translator of Gloria de los Angeles’s magic realism novels. I’m sure the
real
Cassandra Reilly will be horribly upset when she hears that her name has been
stolen
and appended to the name of some dead go-go dancer!”

I sat down with a thump.

“Well, if I’m any judge of character,” said Colin Michaels with a genial wink, “your friend will be flattered, not offended, to have her name appear in print.”

A wave of mild laughter, meant to support Colin and dismiss me, flowed through the room, and he went on to the next question.

“I’m writing a mystery,” a man said. “And I know I need to know about guns. I’ve read up on them, but I feel like I need to actually see one, to hold one, to fire one…”

“To murder someone…” a voice added and everyone laughed.

“Do you have a gun?” the voice persevered. “Have you used one?”

Colin gave his genial smile. “Haven’t you heard?” he said, “We mystery writers are the least violent people around. We keep it all in our heads!”

Sometime after midnight that night there was a loud banging on the outside gate. Lucy was up and ready for bad news before I’d gotten my bathrobe on. When I finally managed to get downstairs, I saw her leading two uniformed policemen into the house.

“They found Eleanor off the highway to Mexico City,” said Lucy in a flat tone. “In a motel room.”

“What do you mean, they found her?” I stumbled and sat down on a woven footstool. “You mean, she wasn’t really going to Houston at all? She was having a tryst?”

“When they found her she was dead,” said Lucy, still trying to take it in. “Someone shot her through the heart.”

The police grilled us for an hour or two, not because they believed we were particularly guilty of anything, but because we might be able to give them information about Eleanor that would explain her death.

According to the police, the motel was a cheesy but not completely down-and-out place on the outskirts of Mexico City, near the airport, about four hours away from San Andreas. Had Eleanor just gone there to rest before her flight? It seemed likely, because she’d asked the reception clerk to give her a wake-up call at 10 p.m. When she didn’t answer after several attempts, he knocked on the door, and finally, worried, let himself in. She’d been dead for several hours then. Had it been a random murder? A robbery as well? The police were inclined to think so. Her bags had been rifled through; so had the glove compartment of her car. It looked as if some jewelry might be missing. The Mexico City police were questioning all the motel’s employees.

We couldn’t help the police other than to let them look around Eleanor’s house and take her address book. One of them, Officer Delgado, called her son’s house in Houston. He began by speaking English but switched to Spanish in a minute.

When he put down the phone, he said that her relatives would be flying in tomorrow.

“He spoke Spanish to you,” I commented.

“No, her son was away on business,” said Delgado. “That was his wife.”

At seven the next morning, Eleanor’s housekeeper Rosario let herself in. She hadn’t heard the news yet, and had to sit down at first when we told her. “What a terrible death,” she said, making the sign of the cross. Rosario was about Eleanor’s age, perhaps a little younger. She had smooth black hair in a bun, and a sturdy, slow-moving body. We thought she would want to go home, but instead, after a glass of water, she rose and began the work of dusting and straightening, all the while murmuring, “How terrible.”

We watched for a moment, unsure whether she was mourning Eleanor the person or just reacting to the horror of the situation. “I’m not sure you need to do anything now,” Lucy told her gently.

“But people will be coming,” Rosario said. “Her son will finally come back now, and Isabella.”

“Isabella?” I asked. “Is that his wife?”

“Yes,” said Rosario, “She comes from San Andreas.”

Eleanor’s death sent a chill of fear through the expatriate community. In whispered conversations in the expensive restaurants and shops, they told each other that they weren’t surprised. The flip side of their belief that the Mexicans were warm and happy people was their conviction that the whole country seethed with thieves and murderers. That afternoon Colin Michaels called a community meeting at El Centro Artistico, and the room was packed.