“It’s been done. I suppose she would have had access to a lot of people who could have made the substitutes.”
“Oh, yes. I’ve sent her to some of the shows and exhibitions when I couldn’t attend because of my wife’s illness. And, of course, she often dealt with salesmen who came by the store here, not the ones selling gemstone quality, but the trinkets we must stock. And many of those, of course, have the skill and equipment necessary to duplicate our best diamond items, as well as they were duplicated.”
“No leads?”
“What? Oh, I would imagine the police checked out every name we could come up with, and I would have been told, I think, if they learned anything.”
“And she asked for her vacation after she knew you were not going to be in on Friday.”
“And we were closed Saturday. Yes, that’s right. She was usually less impulsive about taking time off, but I told her it would be all right. She asked the Monday before her vacation began.”
“The summary they sent me said that you were in Chicago on business that Friday.”
“Yes. At an auction. A large yellow diamond was coming on the market again after being in a private collection for thirty years. A local collector whose name I am not at liberty to mention, sent me up to place his bid and also verify the description of the stone. Very beautiful. Marvelous color. It went for forty thousand over my client’s top limit. I flew back Saturday afternoon.”
“Did Anne Farley ever say she’d like to go to Mexico?”
His eyebrows shot up. “Mexico! Is that where she went?”
“I don’t know. It’s possible.”
He frowned. “I do remember one thing about Mexico. She was fascinated by ancient ruins. Mayan, Aztec, Toltec, that sort of thing. I suppose there is a lot of that there.”
“Yucatán has more than its share?”
“Yes. Yucatán.” He made a face and shook his head. “But you see, that presupposes that she acted of her own free will out of self-interest, and I can’t believe that.”
“Maybe it’s the Kepone.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Gets in the fatty tissues. Gets into the fat in your brain. Tells you to go steal stuff, or write protest songs, or turn Mayan. I’ll send you a card from Yucatán.”
After a full hour’s delay, half of it waiting in line with the other birds, my Mexicana flight number 308 took off into the flat, silver light of a rainy day in Miami. It was a 727, and the pilot yanked it up quickly, turning takeoff into an irritable and impatient gesture. It was a single-class flight, less than half full in this May off-season.
The flight attendants were slim, tense, and limber ladies, oppressed by their obligation to serve everyone a hot meal during the hour-and-fifteen-minute flight. I wondered how they could possibly manage it during the three months when their flights would be full.
I had gone to Miami almost empty-handed and spent some money in the airport shops acquiring a tourist costume composed of a lightweight, chino leisure suit with twice as many pockets as necessary, a white denim hat with big brass grommets around the ventilation holes, a couple of rainbow-colored rayon shirts, big blue shades, sandals, and a brand-new, shiny, cheap flight bag advertising the Orient Express. And I smiled a lot. This is called professional invisibility. Indians wearing buffalo skins used to be able to sidle right into the herd and select their dinner.
Dusk was beginning to catch up with us when we landed. The concrete apron had stored sun heat all day and radiated it back up at us as we filed into the modern little airport building, into air conditioning from the steaming heat outside. All the tourists were sorted out by hotels, and after the usual confusions of luggage, we were taken off in blue-and-white vans. I was loaded in with a shy, silent woman and a stately old couple, all three dressed in canary yellow. We were the ones going to the Garza Blanca.
Cancún is a contrived resort. The government planners picked an empty area of small keys and Caribbean beaches, then bridged the keys, put in an elegant highway with sodium-vapor lights, and aided the hotel people in finding the money to put up the hotels. The hotels mark out the narrow keys and causeways — Villas Tacul, Dos Playas, Playa Tortugas, El Presidente, Camino Real, Chac Mool, Cancúm Caribe, and the Garza Blanca, the last one of all, except for the formidable isolation of the Club Mediterranee at the far end, Punta Nizuc, fourteen miles from the mainland.
The van had either a broken muffler or no muffler, and the driver played his tape deck at maximum volume to drown out the muffler noise. Conversation would have been impossible even if anyone had felt like it. I smiled a lot.
We went up a very steep curve of cobblestone driveway to the impressive entrance. No doors. A vast lobby, dimly lit, open at the far side as well, looking out from a height across the tropic sea.
The dark girl at the desk took care of me last, and with cold-eyed indifference said they could let me have a room for seven hundred pesos a night, not on the beach of course. “It is always better, of course,” she said, “to make a reservation, Meester Road-ace.” The key she gave me was brass, fastened to an oval hunk of wood six inches long and an inch thick, stained dark.
I followed a small, stocky Yucatecan who carried my shiny bag across the lobby, down the curved stairs at the far end, past the pool, empty and wind-riffled, where the day’s litter of towels, empty plates, glasses, and trash had not yet been cleaned up and the sun chaises had not been realigned. We went between a row of two-story buildings separated by a cobbled lane. The ones on my left were built on the bluff facing the sea. My building was on the right, my room at the top of an exterior staircase. The fellow turned on low-wattage bulbs, started the grinding roar of an air-conditioner set into the plaster wall, shrugged as he pocketed his dollar tip, and went on out, sandals slapping the tile floor.
I stripped to the waist and stood in front of the chilled air until I dried off. I put my other bright shirt on and went out in search of a cold beer, wondering if Anne Farley had liked the Garza Blanca, the beach, the tropic sun that maybe melted her rigidities, her scruples, her reserve. Was the wig for here too? Do blonds have more fun? Or merely seem to be having-more.
The next morning, after my breakfast of huevos rancheros and papaya, I encountered total frustration at the big front desk. The manager was away. He would be back maybe next week, maybe next month. The assistant manager, he has gone to the bank in the city. In what city? In Merida, señor. There were three of them behind the desk, a dark, surly girl; a tall dark, surly fellow; and a round, chubby man full of false cheer. There are well-run hotels with efficient desks. There are badly run hotels with infuriating front desk service. And then there is the Garza Blanca.
“Please listen. Very carefully. OK?”
“I listen, señor.”
“I have written a name on this piece of paper. I have printed it. Mr. Dan Barley. Mr. and Mrs. Dan Barley. They made a reservation in November. Last year. Were they here?”
“I was not here, sir.”
“Are there no records?”
“Records?”
“Don’t you keep track of reservations?”
“Me, señor? I am a clerk. The manager is...”
“There must be a file of...”
“Excuse me, señor. Yes, madam, I may help you?”
Then when he turned back to me, I had to start all over again. Finally I said, “Suppose I walk in and say I have a reservation. What do you do?”
“I give you one card to sign.”
“You don’t care whether I have a reservation or not?”
“Don’t care? Oh, but yes. I look in the book, señor.”
“Ah, the reservation book!”