The Matador's Crown (2 page)

1

Annja Creed dragged herself out of the narrow, lumpy bed mumbling, “Must find a new place to stay.”

Her regular morning routine found her rising, showering and fitting in a jog before the first glint of sunshine hit the rooftops. But today? Six o’clock was absolutely torturous after spending the night at a hostel populated with more partying teenagers than she could shake a fist at.

But after nearly two months straight of traveling, she teetered close to an edge no one wanted to see her step over. She powered up her laptop and located a hotel by the sea. She was financing this trip to Andalusia herself, so had initially thought to go cheap. She’d been invited by James Harlow, the head of acquisitions and curations at the Museum of Cádiz, to view their recently acquired collection of Greek coins featuring Hercules’s twelve labors, found in Egypt. He must’ve discovered that she was writing an article on coins depicting mythological heroes. She’d jumped at the opportunity. The collection was pristine, and she’d taken some excellent pictures yesterday. Today, she planned to take notes and make pencil rubbings of both the obverse and reverse of each coin.

Two days previously she’d been in Puerto Real, across the Bay of Cádiz, squatting alongside Professor Jonathan Crockett on a small dig she’d learned about while researching the area for hotels. The bay area was made up of tiny villages dotted with small white houses and was rich with Moorish and Roman remains. So she’d planned a few extra days to dig in the dirt. Frankly, it had been months since she’d participated in a dig. She’d been unable to resist.

The Cádiz website featured a list of recommended hotels, most bordering the Atlantic Ocean. Annja made a reservation, hoping for less of a party atmosphere. A touristy hotel was fine with her.

She swept her chestnut hair into a ponytail, stuffed her few articles of clothing and essential tools into her backpack—laptop, flash drives, camera, trowel and dental pick, latex gloves, passports and SPF 30 sunscreen—and headed out to find the Hotel Blanca.

On the sidewalk outside of the hotel, she splashed through a puddle, evidence of an early-morning rain shower. Her sure strides scattered a clowder of feral cats sprawled around the furry remains of what must have been a rat.

Set by the sea, Cádiz was a cosmopolitan Spanish city. Yet being one of the oldest cities in Europe, it clung to its heritage, steeped as it was in Gypsy culture and the art of flamenco dance and music. Farther inland, the province was covered with national parks and mountains. She’d once backpacked through Moorish villages to study an ancient fortress believed to have been Ferdinand II’s stronghold.

Founded by the Phoenicians in or around 1100 BC, Cádiz was interesting to Annja in that no archaeological strata on the site could be dated earlier than the ninth century BC. Historians decided Cádiz, or Gadir as the Spaniards called it, had once been a shipping stop instead of an actual port, which may be reason for the lacking pre-ninth-century archaeological finds.

Nothing of major importance had been found at the dig site until yesterday when she’d turned up a bronze bull statue. Possibly an effigy to Baal, the bull god, she had decided. Baal was associated with thunder and rain, and had been killed annually by Mot, the god of summer heat. Killing Baal stopped the summer rains so Mot could scorch the earth. Baal’s sister, Anath, brought him back in the fall, and he renewed plant life and allowed the earth to once again be plowed.

Annja figured Mot had worked his alchemy this week. The thermometer was rising, and out on the dig, the earth had been hard, which made for easy brushing, but challenging trowel work.

She’d taken photos of the bronze statue in situ and then again after digging it out and placing it on the finds table. After being cataloged, it would be sent to a local university. She’d shown James Harlow at the Cádiz museum the photos, and he’d been fascinated.

Annja dodged as a toddler, chasing a red rubber ball, with no mind for obstacles, zoomed toward her. His parents, exasperated tourists, apologized as they ran past her calling out in what she recognized as German.

A beam of sun glinted in her eye, magnified by the silver waves ridging the sea to her left. The water was clear and the sand on the beach bright and clean-
looking. After a few hours at the museum, she intended to walk down to the shore. A perfect way to end the trip before her flight back home.

Much as she enjoyed travel, she was looking forward to returning to her apartment in Brooklyn and stealing some writing time. Annja had collected notes from digs in Austria and Turkey and wanted to translate them onto the computer and see if she could wrangle a worthy story in the mix. She loved writing, and had published a few books on archaeology, but found writing time spare because, more than pounding away at the keyboard, she loved actual digs, searching for new discoveries. Generally being outdoors. Adventure ran through her veins.

The Hotel Blanca’s white-tiled lobby was filled with potted palm trees, and the overhead latticework created crisscross patterns of sunlight. The elderly receptionist wore a severely tight bun of salt-and-pepper hair and gave Annja a rote welcome to the beautiful city of Cádiz. She looked Annja up and down—taking in the hiking boots sorely in need of new laces, her khaki cargo pants sorely in need of an iron and her T-shirt that featured a fading Women for Women logo—then took her credit-card information and handed her a key.

Annja thanked the receptionist and took the concrete stairs featuring brightly colored paintings along the risers two at a time. Not authentic Spanish design, but the entire city couldn’t be authentic, she figured.

She had always been curious about Spanish culture and artifacts—okay, artifacts from
any
culture and time period. She’d spent two summers interning on digs in Granada during her college years and had fallen in love with this country. The Andalusians were proud of their history, which began with the Phoenicians, and over the centuries incorporated influences from the Visigoths to the Islamic empire. They were most famous for Christopher Columbus’s journeys and Ferdinand and Isabella’s rule. Not to mention their monopoly of the sea trade in the eighteenth century.

Annja found her room, and as she slid the key card through the lock, she noticed the door next to hers at the end of a hallway move inside a few inches, creaking.

With little more than a bend forward, she peered inside and noted the edge of a neatly made bed, and then two booted feet, facing down, hanging off the side.

“Must have partied over at the hostel,” she muttered. “Hello?” she called softly and moved to pull the door shut to give the guy some privacy.

But the sight of an acoustic guitar facedown on the floor instead prompted her to push the door open.

A stale, meaty odor assaulted her senses.

Clenching her fists, Annja stepped around the guitar and looked over the man sprawled on the bed. Blood stained the back of his blue shirt and had soaked the shirt through and puddled on the faded yellow bedspread.

Clasping her hands together to keep from inadvertently touching anything, Annja looked back to the door she’d left open.

“What went on here?” she wondered as she again studied the body of what appeared to be a young man. Long, dark hair covered his face. There were no signs of drug paraphernalia, no needles or spoons.

“Drugs usually don’t result in bleeding out,” she whispered. “He’s been attacked.”

The largest bloodstain was over the left side of his back, directly over his heart. He could have been shot in the back or stabbed. She’d call the reception desk to alert the police immediately.

Just as she was about to leave to do that, her gaze fell onto the bronze statue on the table next to a wooden crate that spilled out brown paper packing strips. A very familiar bronze statue in the shape of a bull, about the size of her fist. She knew that because she had held the statue not a day earlier.

Annja dodged around the dead man’s feet and tugged a pair of latex gloves out of her backpack. She put them on before picking up the bull statue.

“I just dug this out of the ground yesterday.”

It had been coupled with a bent silver platter she and Jonathan Crockett had assumed had been part of thieves’ booty. Probably nineteenth century, to judge from the strata layers where it had been found. Yet the actual statue and platter could possibly date to the eleventh century. That was her guess.

She turned it over now, noting bits of dirt were still embedded in the creases that outlined the bull’s head. It had to be the same statue. Wasn’t every day a person stumbled on something like this, though it certainly wasn’t remarkable. The bull was a symbol and totem used throughout the ages. Baal, the bull god? Maybe. Or perhaps a simple study of a bull.

No matter what it was, she knew without doubt this was the same piece she’d dug up yesterday. How had this gotten into a small seaside hotel in the hands of a dead man in less than twenty-four hours?

The impressions in the paper packing strands of the crate indicated a round object had been inside, about three times the size of the statue, perhaps a ring like a halo. Something else could have been in the crate. Maybe the bull had been set in the center with something bigger around it.

No, it didn’t look as though the packing paper had been disturbed in the center.

Had the man on the bed been transporting stolen artifacts? It made sickening sense. Port-side cities like Cádiz were rife with small operations that trafficked in stolen and looted artifacts. Annja wanted to string them all up and force them to understand they were robbing an entire culture.

“Who was here before me?” she asked the dead man. “And what did he take from the crate?”

She was no forensics expert but could make an educated guess how long the man had been dead. His skin was pink at the bottom of his hands, which were flat on the bed, indicating the blood had settled. That meant six hours after death. He must have been murdered around midnight. It was a guess, though.

Slipping a hand inside her backpack, she drew out a digital camera and took a picture of the statue, flipping it over and getting edge shots of it as well as inner shots, trying to match the previous shots she’d taken while at the dig site. She and Harlow had uploaded those photos to their laptops. Then she snapped shots of the empty wood crate from all angles.

She wouldn’t take a picture of the dead body, but she did take another look at the man’s back to note the exact position of the wound. Set at the base of the neck and to the left of the spinal column, it looked too messy and wide for a bullet, but an exit wound could tear the flesh if the rifle had been high caliber. She adjusted her guess to a knife with a narrow blade.

She had the urge to search the dead man’s pockets for a wallet and identification except that she heard footsteps down the hallway. The door, which she hadn’t pushed closed, crept inside an inch.

Stepping out into the hallway, she spied a maid and grabbed her by the arm and said in her most theatric Spanish, “He’s dead! I was going into my room, and his door was open. Send for the police!”

2

Annja had waited until a pair of officers had arrived at the hotel, and answered their brief questions. They’d asked her to come along to the Cádiz city police station.

She relayed all the information she could to a Maria Alonzo—a female officer Annja decided wasn’t in a high position. She merely nodded and jotted things down and didn’t prompt with leading questions. The officer then said she’d return with Annja’s belongings in a few minutes and left the room.

Having been escorted to an interrogation room upon arrival at the police station hadn’t bothered Annja. Of course they would be thorough. And, having been on the scene, she could understand how she might be construed a suspect. But she wasn’t going to sit patiently for long.

She still had one more day at the museum planned, working alongside James Harlow. The murder mystery she would leave in the capable hands of the Cádiz police. But the question of what had been inside the wooden crate tread on her turf. And whatever it was had been worth murder to someone.

It wasn’t related to the bronze statue, she suspected. Or else wouldn’t the murderer have pocketed that, as well? There was a possibility whatever had been stolen wasn’t even an artifact. But the crate and the packing materials screamed archaeological interest.

She got up from the uncomfortable metal folding chair and stretched her arms over her head. Despite its seaside location, the heat index could rise to blistering before noon and the room didn’t have air-conditioning. She had waited an hour alone in this room before an officer had arrived to get the details from her. She was hungry, yet her system buzzed with nervous adrenaline.

“Señorita Creed?”

A second officer strolled in, favoring his left leg with a slight limp. He set her heavy canvas backpack on the table. He stood back, thumbs hooked into the front pockets of his brown, creased slacks. He wore the force’s green flak jacket with the gold
policia
emblem emblazoned across the back over a yellow-and-blue-striped shirt. Visible under his left arm, a holstered pistol. The big silver buckle of his belt was either a black enameled bucking horse or a bull. Annja couldn’t be sure and didn’t want to look too closely.

“César Soto,” he offered, but didn’t offer his hand. “Chief Inspector, Cádiz PNP.”

He wore a nonissue beige cowboy hat low over his brow, which emphasized his dull, black eyes. He needed a shave, and sweat slicked his cheeks and nose.

“Am I free to leave?” she asked, fingering the backpack strap. “I answered all the other officer’s questions.”

“Just a few more minutes, if you don’t mind, Señorita Creed.” He spoke English well, with only a hint of a Spanish accent. “My assistant is typing up her report, but I wanted to go over a few key points with you that I don’t quite understand.”

He pulled a credit-card-size digital camera out of his jacket pocket and set it on the table. It was her camera. Annja picked it up and turned it on.

“We uploaded and then erased the contents,” Soto said before she could verify that for herself. “Tell me why a woman who happens upon a murder scene moments after renting a room in a hotel takes pictures of the incident.”

“I didn’t photograph the victim.” She winced. As if that made her amateur-photography expedition sound more virtuous. “I’m an archaeologist, Officer Soto. I explained to your assistant, when I arrived at my room the door next to mine was open, and I am, by nature, curious.”

“And apparently quite brave to walk in on a dead man?”

“I’m also accustomed to dead bodies.”

“Is that so? How often do you come across a fresh kill?”

More often than she was willing to reveal.

“Not often,” she offered carefully. “I’ve learned to view the scene with an unemotional eye for detail. I hadn’t expected to see an item on the man’s dresser that I had touched less than twenty-four hours earlier.”

“The bronze bull we’ve taken into evidence?”

“Yes. It’s possibly a statue of Baal, the bull god of thunder and rain. A fertility god.”

“And you dug that up at a dig site near Jerez?”

“Puerto Real, yes. Professor Jonathan Crockett’s dig. I’ve given the officer this information. So, yes, at the time, it felt natural to photograph the evidence.”

“You Americans are a strange breed.” Soto shifted his jaw and a bulge pushed out his cheek. Annja figured he had chewing tobacco and now noticed the leathery scent that surrounded him like a rancid perfume. “You ever work forensics?”

“No. But I’ve worked alongside professionals from the field. I know it sounds odd, but trust me, it was an innate reaction to take out my camera.”

“With a dead body lying feet away. Yes, I’d mark that as odd, for sure. If not suspicious.”

“He was dead before I arrived, Officer Soto. Even without a forensics background I could determine that, as I’m sure your investigating officers also did.”

“You didn’t take any pictures of what had been in the crate?”

“There wasn’t anything in the crate when I arrived.”

“You could have removed evidence.”

“I didn’t take anything. I give you my word.”

His forehead lifted in a dark chevron beneath the hat brim. He didn’t know her from a tourist. Or a thief, for that matter.

“Who was the man, if I can ask?”

Soto studied her with slow calculation. “He was a guitar player from a local club.”

“His name?”

“That’s not public information.”

She nodded. It had been worth a shot.

“Although, you’ll learn soon enough. It has already leaked to the press.” He eyed her as if she’d just spat at him. The tobacco bulge shifted from one cheek to the other. “I hate the press and all forms of media.”

“They have a job to do. I’m sure they can’t all be bad.”

He winced and again shifted the tobacco to the other cheek. “You some kind of movie star?”

The thought process that had generated such a question baffled her. She hadn’t mentioned her work with
Chasing History’s Monsters
to the other officer. Even so, hosting the cable television show hardly qualified her as a movie star. “Why do you ask?”

“I did a search for you on the internet. Something about a monster chaser came up.”

Good old Google.

“It’s a cable television show that explores the facts behind monsters, legends and other myths throughout history,” she explained. “I am one of the hosts. As an archaeologist, I offer a unique perspective. But I am far from what you’d consider a movie star. What does the television show have to do with this case?”

“Just wondering what sort of publicity is going to develop if you start opening your mouth.”

“I—” That had been a clear threat. She could feel his condemning stare penetrate her skull. “I’ve no intention of speaking about this to anyone. I’m hardly in a position to be doling out details on a murder case. In fact, I’m headed out of town soon. I’ve been working with the city museum, looking over a recent acquisition of Greek coins found in Egypt. In another day I’ll have all the notes I need for my project, and then I’ll hop a flight back to New York City.”

“Then I wish you a good journey.” He tipped his hat to her. “Thank you for the information, señorita. Please give your contact phone number and the location you’ll be staying at after leaving Cádiz with my secretary. You are witness to a crime scene, you understand.”

“Of course.” She slung the backpack over her shoulder and offered her hand to Soto, which this time he shook. “Luck with the case.”

After speaking with the secretary and signing the report of the information she’d given, Annja pulled out her cell phone and dialed Roux. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision. The man had connections worldwide. She recalled listening to him and Garin wax over their visits to Spain in the 1950s and how they’d loved the country and the bullfighting. As well, the man was interested in art and antiquities, so she figured he might have some connections.

His phone rang over to an answering machine, which surprised her. Usually the former soldier—fifteenth-century soldier, to be accurate—had a cell phone on him. She had no idea where in the world he could be right now. But if he was at his Paris château, they were in the same time zone.

She tucked her phone away and decided to try back later.

Foregoing a return to her hotel room—surely the police would still have the dead man’s room marked off—she headed toward the Cádiz city museum on the Plaza de Mina. But a block away from the museum, James Harlow waved her down on the sidewalk and redirected her to a nearby tapas bar.

James Harlow was a slender man in his fifties who walked with a cane, due to an injury to his hip he’d never explained to Annja. He dressed in Oxford plaids and bespoke leather shoes, and had a habit of checking his watch with a tap to the crystal face.

Inside the cool bar, with walls painted blue and wicker ceiling fans, Annja ordered lemon water from the waitress. Harlow followed that up by ordering lunch for the two of them. The
tortitas de camarones
sounded delicious.

Harlow hooked the cherrywood cane on the edge of the table and leaned on his elbows toward her. “You’re getting a late start this morning, too, I see.”

“Not by choice. I spent the morning at the police station.”

“The police station? I’ve heard the hostels tend to have some wild parties, but, Annja, what were you up to?”

She liked that he joked with her so easily. No professional rivalries between the two of them.

“I decided sleep was more valuable than partying, so this morning I checked into a place I thought would prove more restful. But in the room next to mine I found a man who had been stabbed to death.”

“Are you serious?” He sat back in his seat and stared at her. “What are the odds of that? You do have a manner of sniffing out intrigue wherever you go.”

He’d confessed to following her adventures on
Chasing History’s Monsters,
but that show was just the tip of the iceberg with Annja Creed. The man couldn’t possibly be aware of all the adventures that had demanded she wield a sword to save innocent lives.

“Must be the young man I heard about on the radio twenty minutes ago,” he said. “A guitar player?”

“Yes. Did they mention his name?”

“Uh, Diego someone. Montera? That could be it. I noted it because I think there’s a family of toreros by that name. It’s also what they call the hat a matador wears in the ring, a
montera.
So, someone didn’t like his music?”

“Well, there was a stab wound in his back, but I won’t make a judgment call on his talent.”

Harlow choked on his beer. He set the mug down on the napkin and, face tight, smoothed the napkin out neatly to each corner before tapping his watch. “I’m so sorry, Annja. Finding a dead body is certainly not the best way to start the day. What the hell happened?”

“Someone killed him for an artifact.”

“Is that so? How do you know?”

“Listen, this is privileged information and the police are handling the case, but…”

“A mystery? Tell me.”

“There was a wooden crate in the room, and whatever had been inside it was gone. I suspect the murderer stole it. I also suspect it was an artifact, though I can’t be sure. I took pictures, but the police erased them from my camera.”

“Bold. On both your parts.”

“You’ve still got the pictures you transferred from my cell phone, right?”

“Of the bronze statue.”

“Great.” She paused. “There was another artifact that wasn’t stolen. One I actually unearthed a day ago.”

“What? You don’t mean…”

She nodded. “The bronze bull statue.”

“But how? You just discovered that on Crockett’s dig.” The man wiped a hand over his face and shook his head. “Damned looters.”

“That has to be the case. Someone looted Crockett’s site and made a quick turnaround, hoping to sell it. But apparently Diego Montera was carrying something of even more interest and value if his killer left the statue behind.”

“Which would give one reason to assume what was stolen was more valuable,” Harlow deduced. “Where’s the Baal statue now?”

“In the police evidence locker room, I’m sure. I handled it, with gloves on, and took pictures, but—”

“You should have slipped it into a pocket, Annja. That piece was an awesome little find.”

She hadn’t thought it so remarkable, but then remembered his interest in bull artifacts.

“It’ll run through the system eventually. You’ll get your hands on it sooner or later, I’m sure.”

“Don’t bet the farm on that one. Police evidence tends to find its way to the University of Cádiz on the mainland. Damned Edmond Rogers, head of acquisitions, will have his hands all over the thing before I will. That they get first dibs at police seizures is such a bloody crock. They don’t even have an archaeological department. Their focus is marine studies.”

“Well, you’ve still got the picture I took on-site.”

He nodded and looked aside, wincing. Disappointed, surely. But what could either of them do? Annja didn’t make it a habit to steal police evidence. Not that she hadn’t done so before; she just wouldn’t call it a habitual thing.

“I’m going to look into it,” she said. “If the site was looted, and the artifacts were turned around in less than a day, that tells me there’s an illicit antiquities operation in town.”

“There are likely many operations in town. This
is
a seaport.”

“True. I’ve got to call Jonathan Crockett. Or rather, I think I’m going to head out there after we’ve eaten.”

“You’ve more work at the museum. You think you have time to do that?”

Annja tilted her head at the man. “Professor, I’m surprised. This reeks of everything I thought you abhorred. I thought the museum took a hard stance against acquiring items without provenance?”

“Damn it,” he said softly. Clasping the mug, he stared out the window at passing tourists. After a few moments, he swung a look at her. “Annja, forgive me. I’m being absolutely rude. You must be in a state to have found a body. Are you okay?”

“Sure. Nothing I haven’t—” She cleared her throat and took a long swig of the cool lemon water. “I’m fine.”