“Please be seated. I will be with you in a few moments.” She went down a short corridor off to the right. Ahead I could see through a pass-through arch into a white shiny kitchen.
I slowly let my breath out and said to Meyer, “Is that the most unusually beautiful woman you have ever seen?”
“Very unusual,” he said.
When she finally came back out, I hopped up. She wore a long toga affair in a crude rough weave, in an oatmeal color, sleeveless, tied at the waist with a thick gold cord. She wore gold sandals. Her gleaming black hair was brushed long. She had a suggestion of a look I had seen on drawings of old Mayan carvings, the slant of forehead, imperial nose, firm lips, the very slightly recessive chin, the neck as long as the ancient Egyptians‘. Her eyes were a large almond slant, the color of oiled anthracite. Her hair was long, coarse, black, and lustrous.
“Please be seated, Mr. McGee. May I get you gentlemen a drink?”
I said a beer would be fine if she had one. I didn’t really want it. I just wanted to watch her move around. She seemed to glide. It was the color and texture of her skin that was so unusual, and so complimentary to the rest of her, to her features, her slenderness, her polite dignity. It was a flat dusky tan, all the same even shade, not a suntan but a natural tone, without flaw, with the look of silk.
She brought the beer to us in mugs, on a tray. She said she was having her third glass of iced tea. The air conditioning had broken in the offices of the Camino Real, and she was dehydrated. All she could think of, riding the bus home, was a long cool shower.
“You are from Canada?” Meyer asked.
She smiled at him. “You are very good with accents, I think. I was educated in Canada, Mr. Meyer. But I was born in a little village to the south of here called Noh-Bec. It’s a Mayan village.”
“So you are Mayan?” Meyer said.
“I suppose. If there are any true Mayans left. The Mayans were a quiet peace-loving people. Long ago the Toltecs, war-like Indians, came over from Mexico and conquered the Mayans and interbred with them. I would suppose there would be some Spanish blood as well. That is the rumor in my family.”
“It’s a long way from Noh-Bec to Canada,” Meyer said.
She smiled again. “A leading comment? Why not. My father and mother went down to Chetumal when I was three. They worked in the home of a man named McKenzie. The McKenzie daughter and I became inseparable. We were the same age. When we were eight years old, with my father’s permission, Mr. McKenzie sent the two of us up to Toronto to live with his aunt and go to school there. Eliza McKenzie is still my best friend. She’s married and lives in Toronto and has two children.”
“I lectured in Toronto in June,” Meyer said, ignoring my glance of warning.
“How nice. Is it still beautiful?”
“Very.”
“What did you lecture on?”
“Economics, to economists. Dry stuff.”
She stared down into her glass for a moment and then lifted her head to stare directly at me. The impact of that look was astonishing.
“I do not know where William is. I do not know where he has gone or why he went.”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“Neither do I. I don’t know what to think. His clothing is here. His papers and credit cards. We were happy here together. We were talking about marriage. We quarreled, of course. I think everyone does. I thought he was wasting his abilities on these time-share projects. It is not really completely honest work. One has to promise more than can be delivered, and then try not to come upon the angry buyers later on. He is really a charming man, and quite intelligent, and with a lot of energy. But he was making a lot of money. He said that when he had enough, we would go back to Houston and he would go into another kind of work. But when I asked him how much was enough, he could not name a figure.”
“Where is the money?”
“In the Banco Peninsular. All of it. Earning big interest in a peso account. He was buying peso C.D.s, and he told me he would cash in before the next devaluation. Then we would leave.” Her eyes filled. “I am so terribly worried,” she said. “I saw him last on the sixth day of July, almost one month ago. It was a day like any other. I go to work first. When I came to the kitchen, he was in here talking on the telephone. I asked what it was and he said he had to go see someone, so on that day he left exactly when I did, and he drove me to the Camino Real. He kissed me good-by and said we would have some fish for dinner. Our car is a gray Volkswagen. I have not seen that either. They say he tired of me and drove back to your country. I can tell you that is a lie. I am so terribly worried.”
“Do you remember a man who worked with him called Evan Lawrence?”
“Of course. Why?”
“How long did he work with him?” I asked.
She frowned. “From Christmas last year. Maybe three months, maybe less. I told William it was against the law to have somebody working for you, a foreigner without papers. He said to me, ‘Who will find out? Will you tell them? Will Evan? Will I? He is a very good salesman. He has made us a lot of money. He is very good selling to the rich widows, promising them nobody can ever be lonely in Cancun.’ I just hoped he would go away, and he did. He met a woman, not very pretty, working for Pemex looking for oil, and he followed her back to Texas. I was glad.”
She frowned, pausing for a moment. “Nora? A name like that.”
“Norma,” I said.
“He must have followed her back and married her, because the newspapers from Florida said that he and his wife and another person had died in a boating accident, an explosion, in Florida. Perhaps they were on their wedding trip. Everyone here who had worked with him selling the time sharing was talking about it.”
She looked at me with doubt and speculation. “How did you know her name? What do you really want?” She straightened in her chair and looked sternly at me and then at Meyer. “You will please tell, me what my William, your great friend, looks like. Every detail, please.”
I smiled. “A nice man. Tall. Well built.”
“Yes?”
“Dark hair.”
She stood up quickly. “Dark hair? Dark hair? He has hair so red that the people here call him El Rojo, the red one. And his face and arms and shoulders are entirely freckled. So tell me why you are here or get out at once.”
“We mean you no harm, Barbara,” Meyer said. “Please believe us. We need your help. And maybe you need ours.”
“I do not want soft soothing talk, Mr. Meyer.”
“Norma was my niece. She died as you say, in that explosion on July fifth. The boat had a bomb aboard. Norma was a successful woman. She had quite a lot of money she had saved. It is all missing. Everyone was supposed to think that Evan Lawrence died when Norma did. But he didn’t. He wasn’t aboard. That’s why we’re here.”
Her face was expressive. I could almost track the patterns of her mind from the changing expressions.
“But he seemed so very nice!” she said. “He made us all laugh.”
Meyer said, “I don’t want to be brutal, Barbara. I don’t want to add to your pain. But it now looks as though William Doyle was the only person in Cancun who knew that Evan Lawrence lives down here, under another name and identity. I don’t think the man you knew as Evan Lawrence could take that kind of risk. I think he did what he had to do, to protect his identity. That’s who the phone call was from. That’s where he went.”
Her lovely face twisted and then went vacant. She was standing. She put her hands forward, as though to brace herself, and then began to crumple. I reached her in two strides before she fell, picked her up, and took her to the couch, surprised at the warm sturdy heft of her under the coarse fabric.