Carolyn G. Hart_Henrie O_05 (4 page)
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Authors: Death on the River Walk
“Let me know if that doesn't work out. Upstairs from the store.” Her voice was thoughtful, her blue eyes interested. “Why so near? The guy?”
Yes, Rick Reyes worked downstairs in Tesoros and Rick was Iris's latest love, except not according to him. But that wasn't my prime reason. “Yes, I want to know more about Rick. But most of all, I want to know why Iris left her job without a word to anyone. Was she ill? Frightened? What happened at the store?”
Detective Hess shrugged. “Maybe nothing. Maybe she just decided to split. If you find out, call me.” She slipped her pad into her pocket. “I'll be in touch.” She turned and walked with a swift, confident stride toward the manager's office.
A crow burst from the magnolia. In the light beaming down from the corners of the apartment house, the crow's shadow was a sudden dark streak across the courtyard, a quick, quickly gone picture, quite similar to the shadow against the wall created by the swift hands of the silent window washer at the elegant River Walk art gallery.
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The oversize wooden doors must have been carved a hundred years ago. Even in a city that often surprises with glimpses of a long ago world, the doors to La Mariposa were spectacular. I grasped a heavy bronze ring and pulled. I stepped into another century.
Large lacquerware trays, some painted, some inlaid, decorated the ocher walls. The reddish brown walls glowed like sunrise on adobe, providing a perfect backdrop. Each tray was distinctive: one with red and yellow flowers, a second with gold and cream, a third with orange and pink. The trays echoed the vivid glory of flower markets and fields of wildflowers. Bright blue tiles framed a huge fireplace. Muted paintings of saints hung above the fireplace. Antique wooden chairs surrounded a massive table that quite likely had once graced a mission refectory.
My shoes clicked on the red tile floor. At the sound, a huge black cat with glistening green eyes lifted his head to watch me. He stretched half the length of the rustic wooden cart that served as a desk. Barely decipherable against the cart's yellowed canvas awning were faded red letters proclaiming “Chili.”
I touched the bell. The cat yawned. His ears pricked as the door behind the cart opened.
“Hello.” The tall young man in a sports shirt and slacks beamed a welcome. “Bienvenida a La Mariposa. I'm Tom Garza.”
He looked quite a bit like Rick Reyes. I wondered if they were cousins. I liked his welcoming smile. I wasn't sure how long the welcome would last.
I smiled in return. “I don't have a reservation. Do you have a single available?”
“Yes, ma'am. We're fully booked beginning Friday evening. Will that work out for you?”
I certainly hoped so.
I gave him my charge card, explained I'd left my luggage in the car, parked in a nearby lot, and inquired about restaurants. I smiled when he handed me a key that was at least five inches long.
He grinned in return. “Old doors. Seriously old. But actually, the locks work very well. And we have good security at night. Because of the store.”
“Tesoros. It's very lovely.”
“So you've already visited it.”
“Oh, yes. A young friend of mine, Iris Chavez, works there. She's told me a lot about it.”
“Is she back?” He looked surprised.
“No. Actually, I'm looking for her. Do you know Iris?”
“Sure.” He held out a brochure with a floor plan. “She's dating my cousin.”
So my guess was right. This place teemed with sons and daughters, aunts and uncles, sisters and brothers.
“Or she was. Rick saidâ” His eyes dropped and he said quickly, “Your room is the last one down the hall on this floor. Number six. Through that door.” He pointed to his right, just past the end of the cart.
“What did Rick say?” My tone was unemphatic.
“Oh, I don't know exactly. Something about Iris going to Padre with”âa careful pauseâ“with some friends. Anyway, it must have come up suddenly. But that's life, isn't it?” His grin was ebullient. “One day everything's great, the next it all blows up in your face. That's what I told Rick.”
“So she and Rick had quarreled?”
“Hey, I don't know that. But Rick and Iris didn't come to our cousin Rosa Herrera's quinceañera Friday night. I figured then that something was up. That's a big party to miss.” He glanced at me.
I nodded. Many Hispanic families continue the old tradition of la quinceañera to celebrate a daughter's fifteenth birthday. This is a major family occasion, when a young girl is presented first to God in thanksgiving and then to society as her life as a young woman begins.
“That wasâwell, Rick should've come. And then he told me later that Iris didn't show up for work Friday and Aunt Susana was furious. So, I guess Iris has moved on.” He shrugged. His bright smile dismissed Iris. “If I can get anything for you, please let me know.” He stepped from behind the cart, held open the door to a wide corridor.
Light glowed from golden-globed wall sconces next to each door. Bright red numbers glistened above the lintels. A painted butterfly, wings outspread in glory, decorated each door.
Butterflies have to be one of God's loveliest creatures. I never see a butterfly without thinking of my husband and my son. The year before Bobby died, he and his father created a scrapbook with pictures they'd taken in Chapultepec Park. Bobby had carefully printed the names beneath each photograph. “Hey, Mom, look at this oneâhe's as big as a bat! Isn't he terrific?”
The artist at La Mariposa obviously agreed. The butterfly on each door flew with joy, every iridescent color sparkling as if viewed in a sun that never set. I recognized the butterflies as I walked up the hallâyellow sulphur, black swallowtail, pearl crescent, painted lady, spring azure.
At the end of the hall I stood a long moment, clutching the key, looking at the magnificent monarch on my own door. The fall before Bobby was killed in a car wreck, Richard and I and Bobby and our daughter Emily had hiked up the torturous trail on a remote mountain in Mexico to see the nesting place of the monarchs. Our legs aching, gasping for breath in the thin dry air, we'd come to the top of a rugged hillock and looked out into a wonderlandâmillions of monarchs clinging to the trees, obscuring the trees, their brownish-orange wings a surfeit of beauty. Just for an instant, I was there, my own special circle of love unbroken, Richard and Bobby and Emily and I. Then the image dissolved, and I looked at a butterfly painted on a door.
The big key turned the lock smoothly. I closed the door behind me, leaned against it, suddenly too weary to appreciate the spare beauty of the room, buffeted by my own sense of never quite accepted loss and by the uneasy sense of danger that had moved with me ever since I first saw Iris's littered apartment.
I pushed away from the door. I had much to do before tomorrow.
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I nibbled on pumpkin candy, dulce de calabaza. The grainy sweetness reminded me it takes as much sugar as pumpkin to make the crystallized candy. After a wonderful dinner of tostadas de pollo topped by a creamy avocado dressing and corn fritters, I was fortified for work with the aid of the candy and steaming coffee made in the small pot on a marble-topped table in my room.
Not too surprisingly, my room at La Mariposa had no telephone. But I could use my cell phone. I called my daughter. Emily and her husband own and run a small-town newspaper in east Texas. They are both seasoned reporters and I knew Emily could find out anything about anyone.
“Mother! Any luck with Iris?”
The fatigue vanished and in its place spread the warm glow of delight that her voice always brings me. She has a lovely, lilting tone full of gaiety and vigor. It was as if she stood beside me, glossy ebony hair, vivid aquamarine eyes, a vibrant, eager face.
“No, and I need help.” Emily, too, is a good listener. When I finished, she said confidently, “I'll have it all to you first thing in the morning. I'll find a copy shop where you can pick up a fax. Check with me in the morning.”
“Thanks, Emily. As always.”
“Mother,” she spoke swiftly, “you know I'd come and help if I could.”
I knew that. But Emily and Warren were truly a mom-and-pop operation and it took every moment they had to run their small newspaper. Moreover, they were doubling up on duties. Their wire editor, no
spring chicken, had broken her hip in a fall in mid-August and was now in rehabilitation. I'd come at Emily's call and enjoyed being on the desk, once again a part of the pulse of news. But it was not only fun, it was protecting my investment. I'd used an unexpected (and unwelcome) bequest to help them buy the newspaper. Emily hadn't wished to take the money. I'd insisted. It was, more than she would ever know, money to which she had every right. I occasionally thought of the testator, Chase Prescott. I could not remember Chase with pleasure, but I knew this use of his money would please him.
“Mother”ânow her tone was firmâ“will it do any good to ask you to be careful?”
“I'm always careful.” It sounded a little disingenuous even to me.
“Oh, Mother. Okay. If not careful, then cautious. Okay?”
“Sure.”
I smiled as I clicked off the call. Emily's buoyant voice gone, fatigue struck. As I plunged into sleep, I thought of the questions Emily couldn't answer for me, the questions I would try to answer tomorrow. Why was Iris hired at Tesoros? Where did Iris get the small painting that she was copying? What was Rick Reyes trying to hide?
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One of the joys of stopping at a bed and breakfast is, reasonably enough, breakfast. La Mariposa didn't disappoint. I was served eggs scrambled with green chilies and fresh corn tortillas that had a spongy texture and were faintly sweet, like a fine white cake. The orange juice was just squeezed and the coffee a rich, dark Colombian. But I wasn't on a holiday. I ate swiftly. Back in my room, I talked to Emily and got
the address of the copy shop. I called the copy shop for directions. Fifteen minutes later I was on my way, the map on the passenger seat, heading northeast. I knew I was going in the right direction when I passed the public library. The copy shop clerk had said, “You can't miss it. We call it the Big Red Enchilada.” He was right. A huge multihued building, predominantly golden red, catches the eye, as the architect no doubt intended. But libraries should stand up and shout; they are America's greatest bargain.
Three more blocks and I pulled into a strip shopping center. The material was waiting for me, faxed by Emily. Twenty minutes later, I was back on the River Walk at the sidewalk café opposite Tesoros. I glanced across the river.
It was so early that few people wandered along the River Walk. An occasional jogger loped past. It was so quiet I could hear the swish of the window washer's squeegee. He worked slowly, methodically. The window glistened in the sun like a new-minted penny.
I ordered coffee and picked up Emily's report. There was a brief heading:
Compiled from Newspaper Archives
Maria Elena Herrera Garza created Tesoros, now one of the River Walk's premier art galleries, in 1960. It was a dream that grew out of her father's heartbreak. Her father, Manuel, was a streetcar conductor who saved every penny, hoping to open a small store downtown that would offer lovely artworks from Mexico. Her mother, Rose, was a wonderful cook who worked for a family that lived in the King William district. The Herreras saved for years and finally opened a
tiny store on Crockett Street ten years before their youngest child, Maria Elena, was born. The 1921 flood destroyed that store. Growing up, Maria Elena heard so much about the wonderful store, the store that could have made their fortune, the store that her father was never able to open again. “It was not only stories about the store that captured my imagination. There was The Family Trip. That's how we always remembered it because it was the only trip we ever made and, as I look back, I am surprised my mother and father used money needed for so many other purposes for that one glorious, unforgettable journey. It was in 1933. We allâmy parents, my brothers Julio and Pablo and Ramon and Iâcrammed into our old rattletrap car and went to Mexico. We traveled through the central highlands and into the states of Puebla and Morelos. We visited old churches, saw pre-Columbian sculptures, but, most of all, we went from marketplace to marketplace and at each there was color and excitement and, always, wonderful art. We didn't buy, but we looked and admired and my father would tell us, âOh, that is a wonderful piece. We would have put that at the front of the store.' I was only eight years old but I've never forgotten some of the things we saw: a glazed pottery pitcher for pulque that was shaped like a woman's boot, a brilliant orange-red-lacquered wood chest for some young woman's dowry, wooden carvings of plumed dancers bright with scraps of shiny rayon and brocade, miniatures of a bullfight, another pulque jar with a leaping lizard for the handle, a wooden stool shaped like an armadillo, a walking
stick formed like a tangle of snakes. For years I dreamed of those things. I could see them so clearly and always I pictured them in a store window.” In 1935, her father died from influenza. Maria Elena married Juan Garza in 1946 and became a homemaker. But even in the most modest of circumstances, she always taught her children about art and music and told stories of their grandfather's wonderful store. Her husband taught school. He died in 1958. Left a widow with five children, Maria Elena took her savings, almost three thousand dollars, and bought a dilapidated old building on the River Walk. The River Walk had opened in 1941 with grand expectations of becoming America's Venice. But the River Walk in 1960 was a decaying, after-dark dangerous, pale reflection of Robert Hugman's glorious dream. It was not a choice place when Maria Elena bought, but she could afford that particular building and she was determined to have a store. Call it luck, call it prescience, call it fate, she purchased property that would be in the heart of the River Walk when its glory days finally arrived after the refurbishing for the 1968 HemisFair. Even when the River Walk was still shabby and spurned by most shops, Tesoros was attracting collectors. Maria Elena's unerring choice of superior artwork attracted a clientele that stretched from Corpus Christi to Dallas. Word spread about the quality of her offerings and, eventually, the breadth of arts she displayed. Maria Elena lived above the shop with her five children, Francisco, Antonio, Manuel, Magda, and Celestina
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Maria Elena, now in her seventies, is still at
the helm of her own commercial destiny, although she has relinquished the everyday running of the shop to her second son Antonio. A daughter, Magda Reyes, buys the merchandise. Another daughter, Celestina, creates the catalogs and directs the advertising. Her oldest son, Francisco, oversees the operation of La Mariposa, considered one of the premier bed-and-breakfasts in the southwest. La Mariposa had accidental beginnings. Occasionally, collectors from far away would schedule visits to San Antonio during Fiesta Week. Hotel rooms sell out months in advance of the ten-day April extravaganza with its famous Parade of the Flowers and Nights in Old San Antonio. When this happened, Maria Elena, of course, invited the visitors to stay in her home. Her hospitality was already legendary, a true reflection of the Spanish welcome, “Mi casa es su casa.” Gradually, a portion of the old building was set aside for a two-story, twelve-room inn. Maria Elena also introduced the concept of a private auction to San Antonio art circles. Once a year, the store's most prized customers are invited to a one-day auction offering the artworks Maria Elena herself has chosen as masterpieces of the year
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The business is now estimated to exceed two million dollars a year in gross receipts. It can only be an estimate because Maria Elena refuses to discuss publicly the success of her family-owned store and she still continues to live modestly above the store with her son Manuel. Her other grown children also live quietly. Frank and his wife, Isabel, own an older home in the King William district. Tony and his wife, Susana, have
their own apartment on the third floor of La Mariposa. Celestina Garza has a downtown apartment, as does Maria Elena's widowed daughter, Magda Reyes. Magda is often out of town, as she is the principal buyer for the store, a role Maria Elena reluctantly relinquished a decade ago
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