A Masquerade of Muertos (Wisteria Tearoom Mysteries Book 5) Read online

  The card was plain white stock. It bore no type, only a hand-drawn image of a skull and crossbones.

  I picked it up, looking at the back side. Nothing. The edge felt rough, as though it had been hand-cut. When the older gentleman left, I caught Kris’s attention.

  “Who left this?”

  She took the card, looked at the blank back, and shrugged. “I don’t know. Some baby bat, maybe.”

  She dropped it back on the pile, dismissing it.

  “What’s a baby bat?”

  “A baby Goth. They do silly things at first, until they learn the culture.”

  I touched the card with a fingernail, drawing it away from the others. “Are pirates part of Goth culture?”

  “Not really.”

  The skull and crossbones had other meanings. One that leapt to mind was a warning against poison.

  “Kris—”

  Her attention was back on Gabriel. His head was bowed over Cherie’s map, and Cherie leaned in to see what he was writing. Just for a moment, I saw a crease on Kris’s brow.

  “Think I’ll check out the next aisle,” I said. “Want to come with?”

  Kris shook her head and turned to straighten the cards in the rack, which were already straight. There was nothing more I could do.

  Shelly and Loren followed me to the neighboring booth. We admired some photographs of wildflowers—lovely and quite safe—and a display of beautiful pottery with sumptuous glazes that shaded from sand to green. Farther down the aisle I spotted Gwyneth, talking to two men in what had to be Roberto’s booth. She wore a floor-length beaded dress of creamy gauze, rather formal for the setting, but it set off her slender figure charmingly.

  As I approached, Roberto slid from a tall stool and gave me a nod. “Nice to see you, Ellen. Thank you for coming.”

  He wore a dark green vest over a black shirt and jeans, with a stunning bolo tie: a single pale green turquoise stone, wedge-shaped and over two inches long, in a classic, silver shadowbox setting. His hair was caught tightly back from his face in a clubbed braid adorned with a sandcast silver lizard.

  “I’m glad to have a chance to see your work,” I said.

  Where Gabriel’s paintings were stark, Roberto’s came close to being florid. Gwyneth was a frequent model here, too, but in Roberto’s work she was never threatened; she was revered. The settings were lush and tended to woodland themes. Gwyneth was Titania, Galadriel, and Morgan le Fay. Against the dark greens and browns of the backgrounds, she glowed.

  “These are splendid,” I told Roberto, and meant it. His skill was excellent, and if his work was intellectually less demanding than Gabriel’s, well, that was something of a relief.

  Shelly seemed to think so. She stared raptly at Titania, and her brother watched with an amused expression. I sidled over to Loren.

  He nodded, glancing at Roberto. “I gather the artists know each other?”

  “Yes.” I stopped myself from saying they were friends. Upon reflection, I wasn’t sure it was true.

  Some of the smaller paintings in Roberto’s booth were darker. None of these featured Gwyneth. Instead they depicted soldiers with swords—either medievalish or Romanesque—and bits of hacked-up bodies. Nothing too gruesome, but more what I would have expected from an artist who identified himself as a Goth.

  But even these pieces were less challenging than Gabriel’s. Roberto was talented, and his work was beautifully executed, but none of it was breathtaking.

  The two men Gwyneth had been talking to departed, and she came over to me, smiling, holding out both hands as if I was an old friend. “You made it!”

  “Yes. Gwyneth, I’d like you to meet Loren Jackson. Loren, this is Gwyneth Bancroft.”

  “And the fair Titania, yes?” said Loren gallantly.

  Gwyneth giggled, plainly pleased. Roberto joined us, and I performed more introductions. Shelly gushed a bit at both Roberto and Gwyneth. They launched into a discussion of Gwyneth’s costumes in the paintings. After a few minutes my interest waned, but the subject was by no means exhausted, so I drifted away toward the next booth, which was filled with beautiful woven shawls and scarves in a luscious rainbow of colors.

  I ran my hand along a rack of shawls, reveling in the caress of chenille. From the dozens I found two that sang to me more than the rest: a shawl in shades of blue and green that reminded me of the sea, and a violet-lavender-fuchsia scarf. With one in each hand, I stood rapt, fantasizing just for a moment that I could actually afford to buy one.

  “The purple one is more your colors, right?”

  Loren stood on the other side of the rack, grinning at me. I lifted my chin.

  “I love the colors on both. If the shawl were the colors of the scarf, I’d be in serious trouble.”

  Loren began to look through the rack. “Maybe we can find one like that.”

  “Oh, I hope not.”

  Reluctantly, I hung the two pieces where I’d found them and moved on to the next booth. Whimsical statues of animals, very colorful. Fun, but nothing I’d want in my home.

  Loren tagged along, and with a glance back toward Roberto’s booth, said, “So who was she with first?”

  I considered pretending I had no idea what he meant. It would have been the polite thing to do, but since I was puzzled about Gwyneth and the two artists, I answered. “Gabriel, I think. I don’t know why she switched.”

  “Roberto is safer,” Loren said.

  “Safer?”

  “He’s got her on a pedestal. He’d never hurt her.”

  “Gabriel wouldn’t either. That is...” I picked up a millefiori giraffe and rubbed a thumb along its lacquered surface. “I don’t think he’d hurt her.”

  Truth was, I didn’t know. They were Goths, and I’d heard some scary things about Goths. They liked darkness, were obsessed with death. While I’d never seen or heard of Kris doing anything destructive, it was possible that some of her friends were into dangerous pursuits.

  Not wanting to think about that, I decided to put more physical distance between myself and Kris’s friends. My map was my guide as I left Loren patiently waiting for his sister. The booths that Gabriel had recommended all contained artwork at least as disturbing as his—more so, in a couple of cases. Giving up on his recommendations, I began going up and down the rows, glancing into each booth and stopping at the ones that caught my interest.

  I soon found myself back in the land of Titania. Roberto was talking to a woman with ash blond hair and big, round sunglasses, bundled in sheepskin and alpaca as though it was the middle of winter. For a second she reminded me of Willow Lane, except that I didn’t think Willow would ever wear shaggy boots.

  Gwyneth hovered near them, vibrating like a moth, her attention glued to the furry woman. Roberto glanced at me, but didn’t acknowledge me. Something was up.

  To give them space, I stepped away toward the paintings that featured Titania. Now that I had leisure to examine them closely, I saw more details. Titania stood in the middle of a glade surrounded by her fairy court, a handful of white blossoms in her hands. She was bending to smell them, her eyelids gracefully drooping. Both she and the flowers glimmered, the brightest things in the scene.

  Four smaller, separate paintings surrounded Titania, all thematically related. The next largest, about a quarter of the size of the main painting, was titled “Oberon.” It was a self-portrait: very shadowed, very dark, but unmistakably Roberto, crowned in leaves, gazing directly at Titania across the gap in canvas.

  Below this were a small pair of portraits, both fairies: “Mustardseed,” impish in gold and green, took me a moment to pin as Margo; “Cobweb” seemed to be a young man in a silver-gray tunic with wispy wings, but a closer look revealed it as Cherie. To the right of the main painting was “Puck,” a very well-done portrait in earth-tones of Dale Whittier, looking remarkably at home in the shape of a satyr.

  I paused to consider that for a moment. Puck was Oberon’s servant. Did this mean that Dale was a follower of Roberto
’s?

  More likely Dale happened to match what Roberto had in mind for the painting. They were friends; all of the models were part of Roberto’s circle. Put it out of mind, I told myself, which would be easier said than done. Now I had a potential employee whose image in the guise of a satyr was burned into my brain.

  Below “Puck,” the smallest canvas was titled “Nick Bottom,” a horizontal image of the ill-fated mortal in his ass’s-head guise, asleep on the forest floor. He held one of Titania’s glowing flowers—now purple with white edges, but still glimmering—clasped to his chest. Something about the long lines of his limbs rang a bell for me. I crouched to look closer, and noticed a honey-colored shock of hair forming Bottom’s “mane.”

  With a small gasp, I straightened up. It was meant to be Gabriel, I was certain.

  I was equally certain that Gabriel would not have posed for such a painting.

  6

  Stepping back, I gazed at the whole group of Midsummer Night’s Dream paintings, a little dismayed. What was going on with these people?

  I glanced at the title cards, looking for dates. The paintings had all been done in the current year.

  Activity drew my attention back to Roberto in time to see him shake the furry woman’s hand. Gwyneth said something to her with a glittering smile. The woman returned a slight nod and departed. Undimmed, Gwyneth turned to Roberto, who was holding a business card.

  I went over to join them. “Was that someone important?”

  “Cecilia Brough,” Roberto said.

  “She owns a gallery!” added Gwyneth, beaming with delight.

  “And I gather she’s interested in your work?” I said to Roberto. “Congratulations!”

  “Thanks. Nothing’s settled, but she wants to come to my studio.”

  “That sounds pretty serious,” I said. “What gallery is it?”

  “Zafarano.”

  “I haven’t heard of it. Is it on Canyon Road?”

  Roberto’s jaw tightened. “No. Galisteo Street.”

  “It’s a very important gallery,” Gwyneth said, watching Roberto with a tiny frown.

  “Yes, near the Plaza,” I nodded. “Very prestigious.”

  Though not, we all knew, as prestigious as Canyon Road.

  “Oh, there you are!” Shelly’s voice rang out from nearby.

  I turned to see her hastening toward us. Loren followed with a lumpy package in his arms.

  “What did you get?” I asked.

  “A frog,” Shelly said. “He’s so cute! Let me show you.”

  She pulled back the paper and bubble wrap to expose the multicolored head of a frog that had come from the booth I’d seen earlier. I made admiring noises, then added, “Would you mind if we headed to lunch? I’m getting peckish.”

  Loren shot me a grateful look. Shelly looked up from re-wrapping the frog.

  “Can we get back in after? I haven’t seen everything yet.”

  I assured her that we could, and after saying goodbye to Roberto and Gwyneth, we headed off to deposit the frog in Loren’s car before walking to lunch. There were many options; French, Italian, Indian, a zillion sandwich places and New Mexican cafés. We settled on Indian.

  The sun was out, and the streets were less sloppy, though still wet. A bank of dark clouds hovered atop the Sangre de Cristos, and I silently resolved to be home by three-thirty. It wasn’t monsoon season, when one could almost set one’s watch by the rain that arrived right at tea-time, but the look of the sky made me cautious.

  Soon we were sipping hot chai and enjoying the exotic smells of our upcoming lunch. I fell into musing about Roberto’s gallery opportunity. He should have been thrilled, but there’d been an undercurrent of frustration in his manner. Disappointment that it wasn’t Canyon Road, no doubt.

  Gabriel was showing on Canyon Road. Roberto had cast Gabriel as Nick Bottom, the clownish human who suffers abuse at the hands of Shakespeare’s fairies. Nick Bottom, whom Puck gave the head of an ass, and whom Titania loved, but only under the influence of a love potion.

  And Titania was Gwyneth.

  “Ellen?”

  I looked up into Loren’s kind eyes. “Sorry. Wool-gathering.”

  “That’s OK. I just wondered if you had visited those booths that Gabriel recommended.”

  “A few. They’re not my style.”

  He nodded. “Challenging.”

  “You said it.”

  “And he’s close to Kris, I gather.”

  “At the moment, apparently.”

  “He’s dating her?” Shelly said, and I had to stifle a smile. Her disappointment was not hard to deduce.

  Note to self: do not wear heart on sleeve.

  Loren picked up his chai and sipped. I found myself watching the fine lines of his face, wondering what he was thinking. Had he drawn the same conclusions I had? He had less to go on, but Roberto’s Midsummer Night’s Dream paintings were not exactly subtle.

  He noticed me watching him and looked up with a smile. “So, I heard about the ghost tours. How are they doing?”

  “Gangbusters,” I said.

  “Should I take one?”

  “I don’t know. How do you feel about ghosts?”

  “Skeptical, I admit, but I’m willing to be convinced. Can the tour guide do that?”

  “Willow? I wouldn’t be surprised. She takes it very seriously.”

  “Does she do seances?” Shelly asked, brightening a little.

  “Not that I know of,” I said.

  We talked about Willow and the tearoom for the rest of the meal. After lunch, I decided to walk around town a bit while Loren escorted Shelly back to the art show. I had seen enough, I realized, and I still needed to decompress after the wedding.

  The sky was a patchwork of turquoise and white. No rain, but the smell of it was there, enticing with its promise of more moisture for a thirsty land. I walked toward the Plaza, then turned east, strolling up Palace Avenue toward the St. Francis Cathedral. (Basilica, rather. It’s still the cathedral to me.)

  The long portal along the front of the historic adobe buildings hid my view of potential rain. These were some of Santa Fe’s earliest houses, a couple of centuries older than my mere Victorian. They were all connected—easier to defend that way—and many of them were organized hacienda-style around a central plazuela.

  I glanced through the zaguan passage that led to the Shed, a favorite restaurant. It was closed on Sundays or I’d have suggested it for lunch. The small plazuela was empty and quiet, a state that was rarely to be found when the Shed was open for business. Moisture glistened on the leaves of the trumpet vines, and a few valiant petunias still bloomed in the planters.

  Moving along, I saw a glint of light farther down the portal and wondered what it was. More leftover wet from the rain? But it was both dry and dark beneath the roof of the covered walkway.

  The light had gone as quickly as I had seen it. I continued to where I thought it had appeared, and looked around for something shiny. Nothing obvious that could have caused it.

  To the left, a narrower zaguan opened onto Hidalgo Plaza. I looked through, and followed an urge to step in.

  Hidalgo Plaza was much larger than the little courtyard that housed the Shed and a handful of other businesses—about fifty feet square. The Hidalgos had been among the earliest Spanish settlers in Santa Fe, and the family had remained influential. A wisp of sadness brushed through me as I thought of Maria Hidalgo, with whom I was certain Captain Dusenberry had been in love. I needed to get back to my research about them. Nat’s wedding had taken up all my spare time lately, but I was still determined to figure out who had murdered the captain when he had lived in my house.

  I gazed around the plaza, trying to picture how it had looked when Maria had lived there. A second story had been added, almost certainly in the twentieth century. In which side of the compound had Maria’s bedroom been, I wondered?

  The plazuela was probably dirt, then, or perhaps a corner had been reserved for a kitc
hen garden while the rest was given over to stables and storage. Now a very expensive restaurant that served nouveau Southwestern cuisine had spread patio tables over a third of the space, and the rest was mostly garden, with tall trees, flowering shrubs, flagstone paths winding between beds of flowers and herbs, and even a little pergola draped in wisteria. I drew a deep breath scented with rain and green and let it out in a contented sigh.

  From the corner of my eye another glimpse of light snagged my attention. It was gone by the time I turned my head to look. The way it appeared and disappeared was familiar.

  Frowning, I walked slowly to the center of the garden, again looking for anything metal or glass that could have produced such a light. There were no fireflies in New Mexico, except in very rare places up in the mountains, and in any case the light didn’t look like a firefly. It looked like sunlight, reflected from...what?

  I had seen it before, I knew. But not here. The memory teased at the edge of my awareness, just out of reach.

  I stood at the crossing of two paths and turned in a slow circle, surrounded by rosebushes and peonies, with a riot of thyme, mustard, and sage at their feet. The nearest shiny surface was a one of the patio tables, at least five yards away. It wasn’t reflecting anything.

  There wasn’t much to reflect.

  Looking up, I saw the sky was quickly filling. The puffy white clouds I’d seen minutes before had gone gray and ominous. A distant rumble growled among the peaks, warning of the storm to come. Time to go home and curl up with a cup of tea.

  One final look around, turning in a circle again, this time focusing on the building. What had been the Hidalgo hacienda now housed more than a dozen shops. The garden was lush and romantic, and seemed almost to be trying to climb to the sky. Vines of honeysuckle twined around the pillars of the interior portals, and big baskets of flowers hung from the second story addition.

  It was wrong for the period, that change, but it had been done so long ago that it was now a part of the place. Like so much of Santa Fe, Hidalgo Plaza had been reinvented, probably more than once. The upper floor fit, even though it was odd. A lot of it was private, but on the west side it housed shops, with stairs accessing it at either end made of big, heavy beams of wood, stained the ubiquitous dark brown of all the exposed wooden pillars and beams.