The Matador's Crown (8 page)

With that, she was removed from the office. Annja felt as though the police escort to the patrol car was a bit much. Clearly, they wanted her out of town.

Her hackles rose. Something was not right in Cádiz.

But now was no time to make a break. She slid into the back of the patrol car and closed her eyes while she was “escorted” to the museum. She made a big show of going inside, but couldn’t find James Harlow. An assistant said he’d gone home an hour earlier. She had all her photos on the laptop. All she required now was a few notes on the coins, things the camera might not pick up. Which would take longer than the half hour the officer had allowed her.

Not a problem. She’d do that tomorrow.

Back in the patrol car, she was escorted to Jerez de la Frontera, a long, quiet drive Annja used to doze. After being dropped off outside the small airport, she waved to the officer behind the wheel, who nodded politely to her—then did not drive away.

She lingered inside the airport, certain she was being watched, and then decided to approach the counter and ask about exchanging the ticket she had for another a few days from now. By the time she turned back, the patrol car had left.

Annja dashed outside to hail a taxi.

9

Once back in Cádiz, Annja directed the cabdriver to pull around behind the back of the Hotel Blanca. She wasn’t going to take the chance of being seen. She hadn’t thought she’d been followed from the airport, but she had learned to always keep one eye over her shoulder.

Tipping the cabbie and thanking him for the ride, she entered through the hotel’s kitchen door, which was propped open to cool the place down after an evening of hot ovens. She walked with purpose through the dark kitchen, lit by a single fluorescent strip over the grill that reeked of something burned. No workers in sight this late at night, but someone had to be around. Probably out on a cigarette break. She’d lucked out, and leaving the kitchen, she quickly found the hall to the guest rooms.

Landing in her room, the short yet comfy bed called to her. She dropped her backpack at the door, walked up to the bed and fell forward, and didn’t rise until sunlight burned across her eyelids.

* * *

R
OOM
SERVICE
DROPPED
off a plate of fried eggs, fresh sausage, strawberries and some pale yellow juice that didn’t look like fresh-squeezed oranges and had the thick, sweet taste of bananas, or perhaps plantains. After a shower, Annja sat on the bed, powered up her laptop and logged on to archaeology.net to scan for anything similar to the bull statue. It would help to be able to match it to others of similar design, yet she already knew where it came from.

That wasn’t true. She knew where it had been dug up, but not the country of origin. It could have been brought to the dig site from anywhere. A museum was her best bet. So she did a search on robberies and entered the names of the museums in the Andalusian area.

The statue wasn’t the key to this mystery regarding the dead man carrying stolen artifacts, but it was a starting point. The real mystery was what had been in the crate, because that had been valuable enough to commit murder.

The eggs were rubbery, but the savory sausage made up for them. Lying on her side and clicking through the Photos section on the vast online forum, she did find a few pictures close to what she’d found at the dig site and transferred them to her online cloud storage files.

Primarily a fertility god, when shown in human form, she was surprised to see Baal associated with the Illuminati. That was a new one to her, but then again, the Illuminists tended to lay claim to any number of symbols, including the Star of David.

The statue she had unearthed bore a remarkable resemblance to an Iron Age bronze statue, but without the actual artifact in hand again, she couldn’t date it.

Then she found a hit. In 1920 a cache of artifacts had been stolen from the Cádiz museum. It had been a brazen, daytime heist involving two patrons who simply walked off with a bag stuffed with artifacts, including a silver platter believed to have been a gift to Isabella of Castile from the French King, Louis XI, and various gold pieces.

“Wonder why James Harlow didn’t know about that.”

It was a brief article and Annja didn’t expect a twenty-first-century employee to know the history of the museum, though an unsolved robbery may be something talked about over the years. But now she had an answer that didn’t really move her ahead. They’d already suspected the items stolen. That’s what had landed the pieces in the ground in Puerto Real. But who had stolen them recently?

She looked up Jonathan Crockett, but his credentials all checked out. She knew that already, having checked him out before working with him last week. He hadn’t officially headed any digs since the 1990s, but she’d guessed that about him after an afternoon of chatter at the dig site. This was now a hobby for him, and he snatched up any digs he could, which were mostly small projects others couldn’t be bothered to even acknowledge or to get funding for.

She couldn’t find any criminal files attached to his name, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t done the very bad something he’d offhandedly confessed to. A man usually had a good reason to avoid the police.
She
now had good reason to avoid the Cádiz police. The look on
Soto’s face when she’d described yet another dead body had been priceless.

Giving up on the eggs, she pushed the plate aside and traced her finger through the sausage grease before licking it off. Woman did not function by healthy eating alone. Protein must never be overlooked, even the rich, fatty stuff buried under gravy that tasted so good her ears hurt.

Checking her watch, she saw that it was still only 7:00 a.m. Too early to venture out to shop for a change of clothing. She wanted to wait until the streets were filled with tourists.

César Soto made her itchy for reasons she couldn’t pinpoint. Annja knew that familiar itchy feeling never boded well for her future.

It made sense the local police would have no need of her expertise. There were many professors at the university who could help them with the archaeological details of the case. And the museum was filled with experts who far outranked her in degrees of knowledge.

Typing in
Diego Montera
on Google, she decided the search would be too broad, so added
guitarist
after his name. The search engine brought up more than sixty entries, so she went back and also added
Cádiz,
which narrowed it down to eight.

The first two entries were for men far older than the man she had seen lying facedown on the hotel bed. Mid-twenties had been her guess.

The third entry brought up the Gato Negra club in the old city, which placed it dead center in the original part of town. The link opened onto a photo of the nightclub, which featured a black door nestled unassumingly in a brick wall, no neon, no fancy signs. Looked as if you had to know the secret password to enter.

She clicked on the Performers page. Pictures of half a dozen guitarists were listed with short bios beside each. Diego’s picture was last, and since the names were not alphabetical, she guessed talent or tenure ranked them. Bright blue eyes beamed at her from the laptop, and his curly dark hair had been tugged loosely behind his head. Handsome and vulnerable in a manner that struck her.

His bio read “Diego Montera, 24, is a guitar prodigy who has been playing since he could hold the instrument. His family is the famous Granada Monteras of toreros.”

“Too young to die. Poor guy.” And his family was into bullfighting? She wondered what had compelled Diego to study music instead. “Couldn’t have been easy,” she said, thinking to herself the family traditions in this neck of the woods ran deep through their culture like a vein of marble.

She suspected a guitar player in a city filled with guitarists didn’t command a high income, and if he had no help from family it was possible he’d been lured to criminal activity. And if the operation was small-time, they could hire out young and naive liaisons to transport stolen goods to buyers. Use the liaison a few times, pay him cash, then ditch him before the guy got too smart and nosy or attracted police attention.

And if the police were involved? Even more reason to use average Joes who needed to pick up a few extra bucks and who could be controlled by threat.

But what had been in the wooden crate?

The Cádiz police were probably working the same angle, checking the guitarist’s background and following his leads.

Bookmarking the page, she then clicked through to read about the flamenco club. There were dozens of clubs like it in the city, commonly dark, cavelike respites for aficionados to slip away for a drink of strong whiskey and some music, song and dance. The origins of flamenco traced back to the caves that pocketed the mountains of Spain. To this day, Annja was aware Gypsies still lived in the caves. As well, they’d become tourist features, offering
casas-cueva
as hotels, and with amenities like electricity and water.

Clicking on the Gato Negra’s Dancers page, she found three listed. There was a picture of the first, Marguerita Esperanza. She was probably in her forties and the photographer had captured her in a spin, her elegant red
bata de cola
dress splayed about her ankles in blurred motion.

Two additional dancers, Anastasia Samaritan and Ava Vital were also listed. An ornamental capital
A
served as place marker in lieu of a photo for Anastasia. And for Ava Vital an interesting symbol provided her placeholder.

Annja clicked on the symbol to enlarge it, though the one click only brought up a low-resolution, pixilated version of the picture. It looked familiar. A wing curled to a decorative ball on the longest feathered tip. It resembled the symbol she’d seen on the dancer-cum-sniper’s wrist last night. She was sure of it.

“Really?” She sat up, staring at the symbol and cautioning her active imagination from drawing conclusions.

Ava Vital had a tie to Diego Montera, dancing at the same club where he played. That didn’t mean anything. They could merely be coworkers who had no relationship beyond the club. Or they could be friends. Perhaps he played while she danced. They could know each other very well simply by sharing the music.

Would the man’s murder be enough for a woman to go vigilante and attempt to shoot another man? And why? Maybe they had a bad relationship and someone had an affair? Didn’t make sense. That only worked provided that Ava had had an affair with Manuel. Or hell, it could be the other pairing. Annja had no gaydar whatsoever. She doubted it, though. Didn’t feel right. And Ava had said she was going after a murderer.

No. The two working in the same place had to be a coincidence.

Could Diego Montera possibly be connected to Manuel Bravo? Montera’s family were toreros. But Spain was filled with bullfighters. Didn’t mean they all knew one another. Though they would know the more popular names, and all matadors traveled, so those from Granada would know others from all over the country.

“Are you who I think you are?” Annja said to the symbol on the screen, wishing there’d been a picture of Ava to verify her guess. “I need to talk to you.”

Typing in
Manuel Bravo
and
Diego Montera
brought up no links. She searched
Montera
and found the names of his brothers. None appeared to have risen in the torero ranks to fame, and she could connect none to
Bravo’s name.

Her cell phone buzzed and she turned over on the bed to grab it from the nightstand. Garin’s voice greeted her and asked where she’d disappeared to last night.

“After returning to the stadium, I found I was invited to another date at the police station. Seems they enjoy my company here in Cádiz and can’t resist inviting me over whenever they have opportunity.”

“You’ve become such a social climber, Annja.”

She laughed. “I managed to track down the sniper and thought it would be helpful if I gave the authorities her description.”

“You tracked her down…and then let her go?”

“Not on purpose.”

“Ah, so she got the better of you. Annja.” The tutting sound he made was very unlike Garin Braden.

“She got lucky.” With the help of some mischievous children and a laundry line. “Anyway, while I was being interrogated I helped the sketch artist to complete a perfect rendition of the mysterious sniper who may also be a flamenco dancer.”

A flamenco-dancing sniper? How weird was that? Actually, it was kind of cool.

“I suppose you mentioned the body at the dig?”

“Had an ethical obligation to do so.”

“I bet the Cádiz police have a file an inch thick on you by now, Annja.”

“Pretty close. They don’t like me much. I was given a police escort to the airport—do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars. The police wanted me out of town, Garin.”

“I’m reading from your tone you take that as strange. Yet I’m aware that you have been escorted from various places many times. Hell, happens to me all the time. But you’re still here, so you take the forced escort about as seriously as I tend to.”

“Yes, but why don’t they want me here? I didn’t give any indication I had a desire to meddle in the case.”

“Yet you did, and you will continue to do so.”

He didn’t get points for the obvious. “I also provided a good likeness of the suspect.”

“Maybe someone recognized her?”

“I did mention Crockett’s suggestion that the police had murdered Simon.”

“You didn’t.” He paused. “And?”

“No comment from the officer. He pretty much shoved me out the station following that.”

“You think the police are covering up something?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. I’m not investigating a murder—I’m trying to track stolen antiquities to their dealer. I don’t think the sniper is a connection, either, but it’s interesting enough that I can’t set it aside. I still can’t place how she would be connected to the bullfighter. She said something about going after a murderer. That can only be Bravo, but don’t you think that’s pushing the whole protest thing a bit far?”

Garin sighed over the phone line. “Why don’t you let me swing by and pick you up for a leisurely day at Manuel’s villa? He expressed concern over your absence last night.”

“Leisurely does sound tempting, but I’ve got to head over to the museum this morning to complete my work with the medieval coins. Despite the distractions, I do take my work seriously. Give me the directions to Manuel’s home and I’ll get there this afternoon. I wouldn’t miss an opportunity to learn more about him.”

“That sounds strangely investigative. He’s a good friend, Annja. I’ll warn you to be respectful.”

“I will.”

He gave her directions and Annja headed off to the museum.

* * *

A
FTER
A
FEW
HOURS
of taking notes on the coins and assuring herself there was nothing else she could do with the materials, Annja thanked James Harlow as he escorted her outside to the shady Plaza de Mina that fronted the museum.

“No luck on the investigation?” he prompted.

“A sniper has been added to the mix.”

“Really? How does that tie in with stolen artifacts?”

“I’m not sure it does. It’s an interesting added sideshow. And yet, I tracked the stolen bull back to this museum.”