Raine Ashaway
She folded the page in thirds, then sealed the message with a strip of tape from her bag. She addressed it to the professor, then set it to one side with a five-dollar peace offering laid on top.
“A most handsome cup,” observed the stranger, swinging on his stool to face her. “Might I please examine it?” His suntanned fingers were already extended.
Pushy, but she supposed he meant well, and for an icebreaker, it beat the weather. Raine handed the cup over with a smile. “Like it? I understand the artist is local.”
The German inspected it gravely. “It is really quite…charming.” His blue eyes lifted to include her in the compliment. “Might I introduce myself?”
He might. His name was Johann Grunwald, and he insisted on standing Raine to a second beer while they moved casually from names, to observations about Mexican pottery, to their reasons for being there.
Not that Raine told the truth. You never knew when you were going to bump into the competition these days. Even if Grunwald had no interest in paleontology, he might talk, and news spread fast where there was little to gossip about. “I’m just a wandering travel writer. I’ve heard about the Copper Canyons for years. Deeper than the Grand Canyon, with almost three times its area. Thought they might be worth an article.”
That launched Grunwald into an oration on the most spectacular of the canyons; the trails offering the finest panoramas or the best swimming holes. He’d be delighted to show her his favorite spots, since it was so very easy to get lost down there. Beyond the point where the roads played out, the canyon system branched like a gigantic labyrinth. The footpaths vanished or changed with each flash flood or rockslide. The maps were imprecise, GPS reception was abysmal and the natives were hardly helpful.
“But after six months of surveying the terrain, I assure you I know my way around. My men and I study the geological structures and the hydrographics in anticipation that my company—” beaming with pride, he named one of the biggest contractors in the world “—will soon build a dam hereabouts. A most magnificent and enormous dam.”
In that case, the kid could have him. Raine didn’t believe in drowning natural wonders for the convenience of mankind. Even if she had, she’d noticed in her travels that building dams might be a lucrative pastime for politicos and engineers, but it rarely improved the lot of the natives.
But why waste her breath arguing? Her companion wasn’t the type to be shaken in his convictions. Raine dried her cup with the bandanna, preparing to tuck it away.
“That really is a most delightful cup,” Grunwald observed. “I hope you will not be offended, but I have been seeking a gift for my, uh, sister, to send for her birthday. You would not, by any chance, consider selling to me this mug?”
He needed a gift for someone nearer and dearer than a sister, Raine suspected. He didn’t wear a ring; still she’d lay money that he had a wife back in Hamburg. “Sorry, but I’m quite attached to it. And I’m afraid I bought the last one in Creel. The gallery owner said its maker was a new artist, a young Tarahumara she’d never dealt with before. She took only a few of his designs on trial. But perhaps you could buy something from the artist directly,” Raine suggested at Grunwald’s look of chagrin. “The shop owner said that he’s built his kiln at a town called Lagarto.”
Boot heels shuffled on the plank floors and Raine glanced behind to find one of the men from the tables standing at her shoulder with an empty mug. She turned back to the engineer. “In fact, do you know where Lagarto is?” After she located Professor McCord, she meant to track down the artist, ask him where he’d gotten his idea for the turquoise creature.
While the kid drew a refill for her thirsty customer, then exchanged a few rapid words with him in a language that sure wasn’t Spanish, Grunwald explained that Lagarto was a ranchito some sixty miles south, on a branch of the Rio Verde. “It is not a town. Many of the names you will see on your map are ranchitos—just the little farm of some Indio family, no more than that. There will be no stores to buy food or drink, no one to rent you a bed. The Tarahumaras are shy and standoffish, not fond of strangers. You must carry your own supplies down in the canyons, and even so, without a knowledgeable and trustworthy guide…” He patted her fingers reassuringly where they rested on the cool marble.
“I see.” Raine smiled and drew back her hand. She should go. Grunwald was pleasant enough in small doses, but he was starting to lean too close and lick his fleshy lips too often. “I had one other question. Do you happen to know an American hereabouts—a Professor McCord?”
“Anson McCord, the archaeologist? Yes, I’ve run into him down in the canyons once or twice. We share an interest in caves.”
“Ah.” So the professor wasn’t a scholar of history, though she’d not been too far off the mark—ancient man instead of modern. “Do you know where I could—” But she paused at the clatter of several sets of feet on an unseen stairway, then the sound of a body slipping and crashing the rest of the way down.
A burst of drunken hilarity was followed by a man’s bitter cursing in Spanish. Two men staggered through the beaded curtain. The skinny one held a bleeding elbow as he swore, while his hulking companion laughed uproariously. Behind them stalked a dark-haired woman with the seething impatience of a caged panther. With her bed-tossed hair and her kiss-swollen lips, she was surely the giggler from upstairs, but she was amused no longer.
The kid ran to her, stood on tiptoe to hiss in her ear. The woman’s eyes swerved like black lasers to focus on Raine.
“Ah, Magdalena,” said Grunwald under his breath. “Cuidado! She’s in one of her moods.”
“I thought—” Raine glanced at the mynah bird, who’d discovered the rejected beer down the counter, and was dipping its beak.
“That’s Magdalenita, but this one is—How do you say it? The real thing.” Grunwald stood to make a gallant introduction, but Magdalena glared at Raine, ignoring the hand she’d offered across the bar.
“Mucho gusto,” Raine said pleasantly, though it wasn’t. “I was asking Señor Grunwald if he could direct me to el profesor McCord. Or I understand that he collects his mail here. Perhaps you might tell me where to find him?”
“We know of no such man around here!” snapped Magdalena.
“Er, ah, well—” objected Grunwald.
The barkeeper raised her black brows at him. “None of us know such a man, do we?”
The German shut his mouth and sat down.
Wimp. Raine shouldered her bag, then handed Magdalena the note she’d prepared along with the fiver. “Todo el mismo—all the same—should you encounter this man McCord, I’d be grateful if you give him this. I would pay another twenty dollars gladly if by any chance he receives it.” In all likelihood, Magdalena would toss her message, but what else could she do?
She turned to bid Grunwald an ironic farewell, but the German muttered something about using the facilities. He ducked around the bar, then through a door.
Raine dropped bills on the counter, headed for the exit. But threading between the tables, she stopped as a pair of long legs stretched out to block her path. The hulking thug from upstairs smirked up at her, then shaped her a wet kiss.
His skinny pal scooted his chair back to extend the blockade. At the next table, the
