Old Poison (19 page)

“Don’t say such things. Every out-of-work
actor in Hollywood will be in here looking for a gig.”

I was still spellbound. “No, you are
wonderful. Face, body, voice, accent, you’re perfect.”

“You certainly are,” said Richard wistfully.
There was something so obvious in his voice that I realized he was
hopelessly in love with this creation of his. Shades of Pygmalion.
But of course, he would be. Rick of Rick’s Coiffeurs Americain
finally finds his Ilsa. There was an awkward silence because all
three of us had heard that telltale note in Richard’s voice.

“OK, girls, I suppose you expect lunch too.
Demanding, demanding, all the time. I never get a moment to myself.
I just happen to have a quiet table for three reserved. Come
along.”

I looked at the old woman in the mirror.
“You’re not really going to take me out in public looking like this
are you?” In fact, what I was really wondering was if there was any
chance that either Camas or Walsom might happen into the restaurant
and yell, “Seize that woman!”

“Well, of course I am. It will be a good
chance for you to practice your Aunt Tillie walk and your
Midwestern drawl. And Diana, if you’re going to fit that polyester
jacket properly for the role, lose the bra.”

The staff at Musso and Frank’s is just about
immune to the dizzying luster of stardom. They have seen them all,
the stars, directors, writers, and musicians; but none the less,
the appearance of a young and beautiful Ingrid Bergman turned every
head in the place. It was almost like stop-motion photography. All
conversation and all eating stopped as gawking diners and waiters
followed our procession to a secluded wooden booth at the back. I
really didn’t need to worry about my appearance. Next to Ilsa, I
might as well have been invisible.

As we ate, I got to know the real woman,
Sophia Hamerstat, and found her every bit as fascinating as the
character she was hired to impersonate. Sophia’s husband had been a
famous, if somewhat unorthodox, archeologist, and she had traveled
with him to the ends of the Earth. Though she avoided discussing
personal information, it was obvious that their marriage had been
more than a romance and more than a professional partnership. She
and her late husband had been soul mates who shared their passion
for archeology and for each other. My heart went out to Richard. I
could understand why he would fall in love with this woman who
possessed such a strange combination of strength, joy, and sadness,
but how could he possibly hope to take the place of the idealized
ghost she still loved?

The real surprise, however, came when her
comments added a new mystery to my current case and made the hair
stand up on my arms.

On hearing that I was going to Costa Rica,
she said. “Ah, you go to the land where the night frog sings. Paul
and I went there.” Then she studied me like she was reading my mind
and said, “You must go to the Diquis to see the mystery spheres.
They are granite balls cut so perfectly spherical that even with
today’s technology it would be hard to replicate. There is not one
culture in the known history of the area that would have been
capable of making them, yet thousands of them have been found. The
indigenous population conquered by the Spaniards in the fifteen
hundreds said the Old Ones had made them and that their purpose had
something to do with the sky. My husband believed they were once
arranged to chart the heavens and teach astronomy, navigation, and
mathematics to a great seafaring culture, now forgotten in
time.”

Her description of the spheres and their
purpose sounded so much like those in Antia’s last diary entry that
astonishment registered on my face. Sophia misinterpreted my
expression as disbelief and a controlled anger seeped into her
voice. “But then he believed a lot of things that brought ridicule
from his colleagues.”

“No, Sophia, I have read somewhere of such a
university, a place with granite spheres where they taught
astronomy and navigation. Did your husband write a book on this
idea? Is his theory something someone else could have read and
picked up on?”

When she realized I was not ridiculing her
husband’s work, the defensive tone relaxed and was replaced with
one of sadness and regret. “No, no book. He wrote a paper, but no
scholarly journal in his field would publish it. With a choice of
publishing in a magazine of doubtful scholarship or not publishing,
he chose not to publish. To read it, one would have to check out
the single copy of his graduate thesis from the University of Costa
Rica library. Others, however, are now giving some credence to the
idea, so I am not surprised you have read of it.”

For the rest of our lunch I allowed Richard
and Sophia to carry the conversation while I considered what the
chances were that Evelyn had found Paul Hamerstat’s thesis. She had
lived four years in Costa Rica and had taught at the university in
San Jose. It was possible. Did that prove the
Martian Diary
was her creation? If so, who were the Caretakers watching Nate?
Were they also Evelyn’s creation? More unanswerable questions.
Perhaps I would find the answers in Costa Rica.

* * * * *

I walked through the echoing concrete
building, appraising the dirty walls and following the signs to
what appeared to be the Customs desk and the lone Customs
inspector. After eight hours on the plane, it wasn’t hard to move
with the stiff-jointed old lady walk I had been practicing. I
actually appreciated leaning on the cane. It wasn’t necessary to
worry about my disguise for Customs, however, for the man at the
desk never even looked directly at me. When I hesitated at his
post, he impatiently waved me and my bags toward the open
doorway.

Once outside, I stood blinking in the bright
sunlight. My first steps onto Costa Rican soil were not what my
travel handbook had led me to expect. Though I knew that coffee and
banana fincas and great parks of protected tropical forests were
out there somewhere, my first view of CR was a small alley,
surrounded by concrete walls, filled with yellow taxis and terrible
tailpipe exhaust.

I walked toward the line of cabs, my
breathing becoming shallow as I tried not to inhale the noxious
fumes. I paused involuntarily at a shiny new yellow cab that was
like the rest with one exception. Emblazoned on the side in letters
of forest green was the name
The Green Machine
. The moment I
hesitated, the driver was out of his car, smiling and reaching for
my bags.

“Buenas, Senora. You go to San Jose?”

I held tight to the bags, and he stopped and
met my eyes. He looked to be in his early thirties, brown hair,
blue eyes, and a serious demeanor hidden beneath a charming smile.
“Los Yoses,” I responded. “Why do you call this bright yellow taxi
the Green Machine?”

“The taxi is yellow but the machine is
green. Catalytic converter, unleaded gas, low emissions, and great
gas mileage.” He smiled and patted the fender. “It is all new and
all mine.”

He reached for the bags again. I held on and
asked, “How much to Los Yoses?”

“Twenty U.S.”

“I thought is was a ten-dollar ride into
town.”

“To San Jose in a pollutions machine, yes.
To Los Yoses is more far. And with me, you get a driver who speak
English and give you a clean, green ride.”

I liked this guy. I handed him my bags and
climbed in. As he shoved his Green Machine in gear, he looked at me
in the rear-view mirror. “Where you want to go in Los Yoses?”

“Just a second,” I said as I dug into my bag
for my note with the directions. Sam and I had decided that renting
an apartment from a private party in a suburb would be safer than
staying in a hotel in the city, and would help preserve my cover.
On the Internet, I had contacted a woman named Maria Campos who had
advertised an apartment in the
Tico Times
newspaper. We made
a deal and I asked her for a street address, only to receive a
cyber laugh as she typed “LOL”. She wrote back, “No one in Costa
Rica uses a street address. In fact most people don’t even know the
name of the street they live on. Locations are given in terms of
how many meters they are from known landmarks. She had then typed
me very specific instructions to give the cab driver. Hesitantly I
asked, “Do you know the
Mas X Menos
market?”

“Sure. But you say, ‘
Mas por Menos
.’
It mean more for less.”

“English, Green Machine, and Spanish
lessons. Such a deal.”

He checked the mirror to see if I was joking
or complaining. Reassured by my smile, he beamed me his boyish
grin. “My name is Roberto. Hire my taxi by the day and I also give
you a very good price.”

“Thanks, Roberto.” I handed him Maria’s
directions to her home. “My name is Matilda, but most people call
me Aunt Tillie.”

“
Tia Tillie, muy bien
.”

The ride from the airport took us by freeway
to downtown San Jose, then by narrow, crowded streets through the
city to the suburb of Los Yoses. The car exhaust was near
asphyxiation levels, and I hadn’t had a ride quite like it since
age nine when an aunt took me on Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride at
Disneyland. Stopping at red lights and stop signs seemed to be
optional, and the right of way went to the guy who was pushiest and
fastest. Roberto squeezed his little Green Machine through tight
knots of traffic where I was sure we had no more than two inches of
clearance. He also placed a great deal more faith in his fellow
drivers than my defensive driving methods allowed for. By the time
we arrived at our destination, I realized that everyone here drove
the same way and that Roberto was quite skilled at the local sport.
With this realization, I decided against renting a car.

Maria was waiting outside her home and waved
us down to make sure we didn’t miss the house. As Roberto got my
bags, Maria and I traded introductions. Like every place I had seen
on the drive here, Maria’s property was surrounded by a high wall,
which was crowned with three rows of barbed wire. This was another
first impression that belied the guidebook assurances that Costa
Rica has a very low crime rate. If crime was so low, why was every
home and business fortified?

She led us through the wooden gate to her
inner courtyard. Stepping into her yard was like leaving a black
and white Kansas and entering the Technicolor land of Oz. The walls
were covered in three colors of bougainvillea, red, magenta, and
light orange. The patio was effusively planted in various types of
hibiscus, small palms, banana plants as well as other shrubs and
trees I was at a loss to identify. Two trees were festooned with
dozens of bromeliads and tilanzias clinging to the trunks and limbs
like brightly colored sconces. Scattered about the yard was an
assortment of pots filled with multicolored orchids ranging in size
from a half an inch long to five inches across. As the profusion of
color and sweet fragrance delighted my senses and nurtured my soul,
the eight sleepless hours on the plane and the exhaust-filled
fright-ride from the airport slipped into the almost forgotten
past. A huge blue and gold macaw sat on a perch in the middle of
the garden and let out a mighty screech as we walked by.

“Oh, you have a guacamaya.”

Maria looked embarrassed. “I’m sorry. Quiet,
Sammy.”

“Sammy pretty bird,” replied the macaw.

I laughed at him and he preened. “Oh, not a
problem. We had guacs in Venezuela when I was a kid. I’m delighted
with him.”

We climbed the flagstone stairs to the
apartment on the second floor of Maria’s house and Roberto
deposited my bags. As I paid him, I asked if he was available the
next day and made a deal with him on an all-day rate.

Maria showed me around the apartment,
checking me out on all the appliances and making sure I had
everything I would need to be comfortable. She had even stocked the
refrigerator with a pitcher of lemonade and a casserole dinner in
case I got in too late to shop.

Once they were both gone, I poured a glass
of lemonade, went out on the balcony and sat down on the rattan
couch. The view was lovely and the weather was glorious, about 72
degrees, a few scattered clouds, and a cool, gentle breeze. I was
asleep in sixty seconds.

* * * * *

I sat back in the patio chair at Café
Ruisenior and drained the last sweet drop of my second coffee. I
had Roberto pick me up early so we could start our day with
breakfast and had asked him to recommend a place where I could get
a good cup of espresso coffee. Surprisingly, espresso in not
popular in this coffee producing country, and a latte is hard to
find. During breakfast we had chatted and I had learned that he had
a wife and a fourteen year old son who was both an outstanding
soccer player and a straight-A student. This small family was
obviously his joy and the thing that grounded him.

Roberto beamed me his charming and slightly
flirtatious smile.

“Well, Tia Tillie, how was your latte?”

“Perfect, and the bakery goodies are
wonderful. I will spend many of my mornings here.”

“I’m glad you like it, but I don’t know how
you can drink that stuff. It’s too strong. You should try a nice
cup of Costa Rican coffee, not so dark and strong.”

“Maybe next time,” I answered, but I was
thinking of the cup of Costa Rican coffee that Evelyn had served
me. The memory of her sad, pail face as she rode off in the taxi
caused a wave of sadness and distracted me momentarily.

Roberto stood and handed me my cane, his
action pulling me back to the present. I pushed back from the table
and gathered up my computer and purse and he led the way to his
cab. Putting my equipment in the back, I climbed in front with
Roberto. We made a stop at the Mas por Menos grocery store so I
could get a bottle of scotch and a few vitals for the apartment,
then a stop for me to buy a local cell phone. After that we headed
toward downtown.