Spy in a Little Black Dress - By Maxine Kenneth Page 0,90
was standing to one side and carefully brushing away the dirt from the top of what appeared to be a wooden lid. He moved more dirt aside, and from the shape of the lid, it was obvious to Jackie that Emiliano was standing on top of a coffin.
“Should I open it?” he asked Jackie.
“It’s the only way we’ll find out for sure.”
Emiliano used the tip of the shovel to pry up one corner of the coffin lid. The wood was visibly rotting, and the nail heads that held the lid down were rusting, so it took little effort to force the coffin into giving up its secrets.
Jackie waited with bated breath to see what the coffin held. Emiliano pushed the lid to one side so that they could get a better look at its contents. She shined the flashlight on the coffin’s interior and caught a glimpse of ivory and deep blue. What she saw caused Jackie to drop the flashlight in horror.
The ivory was the color of human bones picked clean by the effects of time, and the deep blue belonged to the shards of what was once the clothing in which Hidalgo Walter had been buried.
Jackie was so sickened at the sight of the desecration that she turned away from the grave. The flashlight beam skittered across the ground between headstones. She was frozen in place, unable to retrieve it. She stood there wondering about the life and death of the peculiarly named Hidalgo Walter and hoped that, wherever his spirit now resided, he took no offense at having his final resting place disturbed.
Several minutes later, Jackie was joined by Emiliano as he climbed out of the hole, having first reaffixed the lid to the coffin as best he could. He picked up the flashlight and handed it to her. “I guess it was the wrong grave after all,” he said simply, then went to work refilling the hole with the dirt piled up next to it.
When he was finished, they stood over the grave. Jackie looked down and said, “Rest in peace, Hidalgo Walter.”
Emiliano returned the shovel to the rucksack and placed the bag back on his shoulder. Silently, after checking the remaining graves and drawing a blank, he and Jackie followed their steps back across the abandoned grounds of the leprosarium and through the gate to the jeep. They remained silent until Emiliano started the jeep’s ignition and turned on the headlights.
“I was so sure it would be here,” Jackie said, almost in tears.
“You have nothing to feel bad about, Jacqueline,” Emiliano said in a vain attempt to mollify her. “You did the best you could with the information you had. Professional treasure hunters spend years searching for the objects of their obsessions. I guess it was unrealistic to think you would find what you were looking for on your very first attempt.”
“But professional treasure hunters don’t have the lives of others depending on them.”
He put his hand over hers in a comforting gesture. “I know. We will just have to think of some other way to rescue them. Maybe when we go back to the camp, Fidel will have some ideas.”
As they drove away, Jackie turned back for a final look and caught one last glimpse of the sign over the gate. The name San Judas Tadeo seemed to be mocking her. Feeling chastised by the patron saint of lost causes, she quickly faced forward again as the jeep raced through the night.
They were hungry and stopped for something to eat at a small cantina that was about to close, but the cook took pity on them and stayed open long enough to feed them. “Cantina” was too grand a word for what was basically just an open-air kitchen with a scattering of rough wooden tables and chairs inside a small courtyard. The cook wore a grease-stained apron, but his cooking smelled delicious, and it wasn’t long before he placed two overflowing bowls of ropa vieja on the table in front of Jackie and Emiliano, who dug in with the true gusto of those whose recent labor had caused them to work up an appetite.
As they ate, the cook remained at their table and tried to make polite conversation in Spanish.
“And what brings you to these parts, if you don’t mind my asking?”
Jackie thought about what to say before finally settling on an approximation of the truth. “We came here to explore the remains of that old leper colony.”