The Corpse with the Emerald Thumb Read online

  It’s the woman who screamed when she saw Bud. She’s wearing loose white capri pants, flip-flops, and a royal blue tee. The color looks good against her tanned skin. Her long, dark hair is pulled up, hanging loosely in a ponytail. She must be about thirty, is slim, and moves as though she’s in good shape. Lithe. She’s speaking to the person inside the spa, and she’s holding . . . what is it? It’s a cake box. I can’t imagine this woman eats a lot of cake. She’s too slim to indulge in that sort of thing often. Just as she turns away from the spa, I see Bud go into the bodega. The sunlight flashes on the glass door as he pulls it open. A seagull cries above me, and I glance up. The woman in the capris calls to someone on the same side of the street as our complex. I cannot see the person, I do not look down, but the woman in the capris is beckoning to them with her free hand, and smiling. She’s got a kind face, I suppose, and I shouldn’t judge her too harshly for having the willpower to stay slim. I can see that she’s starting to cross the road toward our condo.

  As I pull my head back into the apartment to go into the bedroom, I catch a flash of something out of the corner of my right eye. It’s a flash of white and glinting gold, popping out from beyond the gleaming white-painted end wall of the building. I don’t know what it is, but it’s human height, and moving. Now I know it must have been one of the policemen in their fancy outfits. Yes, gold braid, white feathers in their hats . . . that must be it. That’s where the police car emerged from.

  Now I am moving to the bedroom. I see my suitcase on the floor and I lift it, awkwardly, onto the bed. Good grief, it’s heavy, but I’ve hardly brought anything at all! I try to not make the bedcover dirty. The bedroom and bathroom are small, as is the entire condo, but I don’t care. Bud and I are going to have a wonderful time. No students or papers to grade for me, and a total break from familiar surroundings, all of which are saturated with memories of his dead wife. After nine months of dating, we’re finally going to have some time alone together, where I won’t be hemmed in by things and places that remind us of Jan . . . though I wish we could have brought Marty on the trip.

  I am opening my suitcase as I am thinking this. I am not really looking at what I am doing. When I do look down, I realize how dark the bedroom is with the shutters closed, and that it’s stuffy, with a smell of fresh linens, but aging potpourri. I leave the suitcase, pull open the second set of French doors, and begin to wiggle at the fastenings on the wooden shutters, which are as difficult to open as those in the main room. With fingers that have learned a new skill, I open these more quickly. As I fiddle, in my mind’s eye I am seeing Marty, Bud’s gentle amber-eyed black Lab, as he jumps and gambols when we run him on the beach. He loves to run in the surf. Oh, but all that sand that sticks to him! He’s staying with Jack on his acreage in Hatzic while we’re away: Marty loves that too—three German short-haired pointers to play with, and new toys into the bargain.

  The bedroom shutters fly open, and again I am dazzled. Once more I look across the road, and now I see Bud leaving the bodega, a red-and-white-striped carrier bag in one hand—it looks bulky. He holds open the glass door for the woman carrying the cake. A man has joined her. The man is taller than Bud, so the older guy must be about six feet tall. He’s thin and wiry and is wearing shorts, a golf shirt, socks with his sandals—oh dear!—and a sun hat. It looks like a Tilley hat, so maybe he’s Canadian? Once the man and the woman have entered the bodega, Bud lets go of the glass door. He’s smiling as he walks the few steps to the next store, adjusts his baseball cap to shade his eyes from the sun, and then pulls open the door to the florist shop. How romantic, I think. Men have never bought me flowers. I’m just not that type.

  My eyes wander back to the sea beyond the buildings, and I notice again the ominous clouds bubbling on the horizon. The air feels more humid than it did just moments ago. As I scan back to the road from the sea, I see a man in the lane between the two parallel buildings. He’s leaning against the back wall of the building that faces the sea. It, too, is long and low; the back wall is entirely white stucco. He’s noticeable because he’s wearing a vivid red, double-breasted shirt with black pants. He’s standing beside a door that’s in two halves, like a stable door: the top half is open wide, the bottom half is ajar. Inside, the building is a big, black cavern, but I can see a glimpse of daylight on the floor . . . the building must open to the sea view. Nice spot. He’s holding something: a glass of water and two sticks. Why do I think they are chopsticks? Ah, I understand. I can just make out a white chef’s hat pushed back on his head—I almost didn’t notice it against the snowy white of the stucco. So he’s a chef. Taking a break from a hot kitchen? I can’t smell any food on the sea breeze.

  I take one last look at the horizon, wishing the clouds away, then turn my attention to my suitcase and the Ziploc bags full of toiletries. As I pull out the carefully packed plastic bags, I hear a bell. Twelve distant, almost mournful, chimes. I imagine they are coming from the gold-coroneted tower of the Church of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Puerto Vallarta, but then reason it’s probably too far away for me to hear across the bay and the bell must be sounding at a local clock. I feel the stress of having taught an intersessional semester—which has all the work of a full-length semester squashed into half the time—lift from my shoulders. I had a particularly tough group for the Deviant Criminal Behavior: Background and Insights course, and there’d been a few temper tantrums when students had seen their grades. Now, with Bud buying beers and flowers—perfect—and me able to forget about students and grades, the next week will be wonderful. I know it.

  I have just balanced a second can of hairspray on the edge of the bathroom counter when I hear a scream. It’s a long howling scream. I immediately rush the few steps out of the ensuite bathroom, past the bed to the window, and look to the street below. The woman in the capris and the blue tee is holding open the door to the florist shop with her left hand; her right is raised above her head, its fingers splayed wide, as though to catch a large ball. She is looking down and away from me, but the noise that she is making fills the midday air.

  At first, I cannot see what she is looking at. My eyes are adjusting to the stark contrast between the sunlight and the comparative gloom inside the store. I have a clear line of vision, and I quickly make out a figure, lying on the floor, its arms wide. The floor is shiny and black. The splayed-out arms seem thin and pale. I cannot see the whole body, because there’s a bulk kneeling over it, their hands around the victim’s throat. The chin of the person on the floor hides the hands from me, but I know they must be there because I can see the kneeling person’s arms. Now the kneeling person raises their face to the screaming woman, and I see their mouth open: a big O, then teeth bared in an E shape. I realize it’s Bud’s mouth and face.

  A truck roars along the road between the condo and the stores. It’s a blue pickup, battered, old, with a roaring exhaust. The driver’s window is open and I see an elbow. That’s it. The tires spit up dirt and stones as the truck heads toward the road that leads from the resort. These two things happen simultaneously. My eyes are on the face of the man I love; the truck is in the lower periphery of my field of vision. Have I missed something? Is the truck important?

  My eyes haven’t left Bud’s face, but then the screaming woman in the white capri pants loses her grip on the door and it swings shut, obliterating my view of Bud. As the door to the florist’s closes, the double doors to the bodega swing out into the street, one person pushing open each door. I know now, thanks to Jack’s local know­ledge, that these are policemen, that the tall one is called Al—which strikes me as a pretty odd name for a Mexican policeman—and the short one, Miguel.

  Miguel rushes to catch the woman in the capris just as she’s about to collapse. She’s flailing, grabbing the air; he supports her as she falls, helping her to rest against the stucco wall. Simultaneously, the tall cop, Big Al, as I now think of him, draws his weapon and shouts at the door. He pulls the door open and points his gun down toward the body, then
at Bud, who I can see once more. Big Al holds the door open with his left foot; he has both hands on the gun. He’s shouting—I can tell by the way his shoulders are heaving—and he’s waggling the gun at Bud, indicating that Bud should stand.

  Bud is shaking his head. His body language says . . . defeat. He is beaten. Giving up. He removes his hands from the throat of the body on the floor and holds them above his head, showing the cop he has nothing in them. First he puts his right foot flat on the floor, and then he pushes himself up from a kneeling position to a standing one, his hands still above his head. Now I realize his hands aren’t in shadow; they are dark with blood. Big Al pulls a set of handcuffs from beneath the royal blue tunic bedecked with gold epaulets that’s just a little too tight on him. Clearly a dress uniform.

  The surreal vision of a blood-soaked Bud being handcuffed by a man with gold-tasseled shoulders, wearing a tall antique-style, white-feathered hat, will, of course, always be with me. But it will never be as bittersweet as it is at this moment . . . because it is now that I recall, for the first time, the look in Bud’s eyes as he casts them toward our condo. He sees me standing in the window, I realize now. For a second, he looks right into my eyes, and I can see his expression: love and dread. Oh Bud!

  Having checked the body on the floor, Big Al pushes Bud out of the store. Bud blinks in the sunlight. The tall cop speaks sharply to the short one, Miguel, who pats the capris woman on the hand and abandons her, leaving her propped against the wall. He heads toward the spa. He doesn’t exactly run, but he walks smartly with an odd skip and a stuttering gallop thrown in—the way unfit people, like myself, move when they’re trying to hurry along but can’t really make that much of a sustained effort. I see him disappear around the far corner of the building out of the corner of my eye. I only see him in this way because I am still looking at Bud. Now in broad daylight, I see that the front of his favorite blue and white squiggly-patterned shirt is covered in blood. Ruined! I can just about see his bloodied forearms pulled behind his back, and I know his hands are in the same state. His knees below his khaki cargo shorts are dripping with blood. Poor Bud.

  A white saloon car, marked clearly as a police vehicle, squeals around the building and pulls up in front of Bud and Big Al. Miguel jumps out of the driver’s seat and draws his weapon, quite unnecessarily! Big Al, who’s about six feet, with a spare, athletic frame, grabs Bud by the shoulders from behind and begins to steer him toward the rear door of the car. Bud stands up straight, pushes out his chest, preventing Big Al from moving him farther forward, and turns his head to face the sky. Bud doesn’t want the cops to know he’s shouting to me. Of course!

  “Jack . . . Jack . . . Petrov . . . Cartagena . . .” The effort of making his voice carry as far as possible means his breast heaves with each word. Big Al regains momentum and shoves Bud, head first, into the back of the cop car—Miguel is holding the door open, his gun pointed at Bud’s back. That is my last glimpse of Bud. I cannot see him inside the car. It’s as though someone has switched off a light in my life.

  Big Al moves to the driver’s side of the vehicle, talking and waving his arms at Miguel, who is nodding and trying, somewhat unsuccessfully, to re-holster his weapon. He doesn’t use that gun very often—he’s not comfortable with it at all. He’s fat, sweaty, and unfit; he’s all dressed up like something out of a musical-comedy movie from the 1930s; and he’s been pointing a weapon he’s unfamiliar with at the man I love! Big Al is throwing his jacket and ridiculous hat into the trunk of the car. He slams the trunk shut. He’s angry. Very angry. He’s still shouting at Miguel and gesticulating as he jumps into the driver’s seat, starts up the engine, and accelerates. Dust and small stones shoot from the tires. Miguel flaps his hands in front of his face, waving the dust away. I can imagine how the grit will stick to the sweat trickling along the folds of his flabby face.

  With Bud gone, I breathe. My eyes follow the police car along the road, until it’s out of sight. Its siren is piercing, without any musical tone; it lashes into the humidity of the afternoon and bounces off the moist air, a dead and mournful sound. By the time I look back down to the street, more people are on the scene. The man with the Tilley hat is helping the woman in the capris to her feet. He’s being helped by another woman. This is the first time I’ve seen her: she’s short and round, wearing a floor-length traditional dress. She’s about sixty, dark skinned, with black-but-graying hair pulled into a bun on top of her head. She’s offering the woman in the capris a glass of water, and I suspect she’s something to do with Bob’s Bodega, because, together with a dark-skinned man, also in his sixties, she is helping the woman into the bodega in a solicitous manner.

  The skinny, pale-skinned man in the Tilley hat is now being joined by two other women, who are rushing from the spa. One is as tall as he is, so she must be about six feet, and I’m guessing she weighs about three hundred pounds, though it’s difficult to tell because she’s wearing a full-length bright orange, voluminous dress, topped with a matching broad-brimmed orange sunhat. I can’t judge her age at all. Beside her is a shorter, trimmer woman, maybe in her fifties or sixties. She’s blond and smartly dressed—preppy. She seems to be with the tall, thin Tilley man—their body language screams “couple” when she greets him. The large orange-clad woman clearly knows them both. Everyone seems to know everyone else.

  Just as the women join the thin man, they are met by the chef I’d seen in the lane between the buildings. He comes from the end of the building that houses the bodega. It is clear that he knows Miguel, who is waving everyone away from the florist’s store, but is, apparently, keen to share information. There is a great deal of breast clutching and head shaking. The women hold their hands to their mouths in horror. The chef shakes a fist at the heavens. Another woman rushes around the bodega end of the building: she’s very short, very thin, dressed as though for tennis, and her complexion suggests she’s of African descent. She might be in her fifties or sixties. She makes for the short, blond woman. They embrace. They share shock and horror. The large woman in the orange robe waves her arms about, the chef in the red shirt beckons to everyone, and gradually, with Miguel encouraging them, they all go inside the bodega. Just as I decide that I need to think about what it is that Bud called out, I see a tall, overweight man of African descent, wearing a vivid Hawaiian shirt, come barreling around the spa end of the building. He’s smiling broadly and opens his arms toward Miguel in a welcoming manner. Miguel speaks to him rapidly, and the big man rushes into the bodega, a look of concern clouding his face.

  That’s when I call Jack. While we are on the phone I hear a distant siren—probably the vehicle sent to collect the corpse. And that’s it. That’s all I can recall that might help Bud.

  I opened my eyes, adjusted my sunglasses, and lit another cigarette. I realized I’d managed to catch quite a bit of sun on my nose: it was a little tender. So, other than getting sunburned, what had I achieved? I gave my recollections some analytical thought.

  Between the time I saw Bud enter the flower shop and the moment I heard the woman scream about three minutes must have elapsed, that’s all.

  Had Bud fought someone off inside the store? Had he had to kill to save his own life in there? Who lay dead on the floor? How had they died? When had they died? Was there maybe even more than one body in there? And why did Bud have his hands around the person’s throat when he was discovered? What had he said to the screaming woman? Would he really not say a word to the police?

  Damn and blast! Questions . . . more and more questions!

  I looked at my watch. The flight from Vancouver was due to land soon, so I grappled with the luggage again and made my way toward the entrance of the airport. It was busy. I managed to push my way inside—always more difficult when you’re trying to get in to the arrivals area—then I hung about, waiting until I could see the pale, stressed faces of Canadians looking forward to a week of sun and margaritas begin to appear. I took my cue, managed to grab a cab without too many pr
oblems, made sure the driver knew where I was going, and we set off. This was my third trip along the Jalisco/Carretera Federal Highway 200 that day, and I was beginning to get the lay of the land. Unfortunately, this was by far the most rapid version of the trip, so I buckled up, tried to hang on, and hoped the cabbie would at least slow down a bit when we came to the Punta de Mita exit. He didn’t. The reddish-brown hills covered in scrubby green and the fields of blue-green agave planted in rows streaked past in a blur beneath the clear blue sky. The air rushing into the cab smelled of dust, exhaust fumes, and just a little of the sea. I missed Bud’s smell. I missed Bud. And I was terrified by my imaginings of what might be happening to him.

  Start All Over Again

  BY THE TIME WE ARRIVED at the Hacienda Soleado, I was glad to get out of the cab. Bud says I’m a hopeless passenger because I’m a control freak—maybe he has a point. I wrestled with my conscience about a tip—“Drive slower!” didn’t seem appropriate—then I balanced the two suitcases and my carry-on tote as close as possible to the doors of the delightfully rustic adobe building that Jack had told me to look out for. The sign beside the door announced AMIGOS DEL TEQUILA. I pushed open one of the heavy wooden double doors and felt the tingle of air conditioning on my damp skin. Lovely!