The Matador's Crown (12 page)

But she did. The woman could cast all the threatening gazes she wanted at Annja—it only confirmed she held some information that might help her piece together the parts.

“And how much is it worth it to you, a seemingly innocent flamenco dancer, to take another man’s life in revenge for one seemingly innocent guitar player? You say you didn’t have a relationship? I’m having trouble believing you in the face of such vengeful emotions against the matador.”

The woman narrowed her eyes. “You don’t know anything, Brooklyn.”

“I found Diego dead on the bed. But the artifact he had with him was still in the room.”

“What was it?”

“A bronze statue of what may be a Baal god.”

“I don’t understand what the hell you just said.”

“A small bronze bull. That statue wasn’t stolen. There was a wood crate in Diego’s room, as well, and that was empty. I don’t believe the statue had been transported in that. You’re sure you have no idea what else he’d been carrying? It could be a means to pin the murder on the matador.”

The woman stretched taller, meeting Annja’s gaze. She tilted back the beer, then stood and nodded to an elderly man who complimented her on her dancing as he passed their table. “Stay out of it, Brooklyn, or you’re going to get hurt.”

Annja also stood and let out a soft chuckle. She put her hand to the woman’s shoulder. Ava roughly pushed it away. “We can get more accomplished if we work together.”

“I don’t think so.
We
are not together. I work alone.”

“As a sniper? You’ve been trained. And your fighting skills are expert. Who are you?”

“Who are you?”

Annja held out her hand and said, “Annja Creed. Want to try this over? You are Ava Vital. Dancer. Sniper. Professional assassin?”

The dancer moved quickly, dragging Annja away from the table and slamming her against the brick wall. She turned up a roundhouse and landed her heel against Annja’s gut. They were only noticed by a couple of men sitting three tables away at the back of the restaurant. The men didn’t move to stop the scuffle.

Not willing to throw a punch and attract more attention, Annja got up from the kick. “You’ve had
martial-arts training,” she said. “Or is the roundhouse kick standard in flamenco dance schools?”

“I’ve always been a dancer. I was born with the rhythm in my blood. It is duende.”

Annja had heard the term before. The natural rhythm born to dancers and musicians.

“The desire to kick ass came later.” Ava slammed her palm to Annja’s shoulder, pinning her to the wall. Annja relaxed, unwilling to cause a scene. “I served in the Special Forces a few years, but I found spying more interesting. I was given more training, but too quickly the entire training program was disbanded. I was left unemployed.” She released Annja and shifted her hips to a more powerful stance, hands fisted at her sides.

“So you’re using your skills to commit murder?”

Through the restaurant’s speakers, a guitarist played a mournful tune and a singer punctuated the song with a low and lingering bellow Annja felt vibrate in her gut.

Ava asked, “Did you enjoy the bullfight?”

She wouldn’t bother to ask how she knew she’d been to a fight.

“It was…a new experience for me. First time I’ve witnessed a live fight.”

“Did you approve?”

“Of the spectacle? To a degree.”

Ava shook her head. “Americans.”

She stood ready to deliver a fist or a kick, but sensed the dancer had used her silly threat and wasn’t going to attack again. “Spaniards,” Annja replied.

That curled the corners of Ava’s lips into a smile.

“I need your help,” Annja said. “I want to find out what was worth killing Diego for. What was in the crate. And who, in fact, stabbed him in the back to get it.”

Ava studied her. Working out the pros and cons of revealing all that she knew, Annja guessed. For someone who had publically attempted to murder a man, it was a wise pause.

By rights, Annja should make a citizen’s arrest and haul her into the police station. But she wasn’t too sure César Soto would arrest Ava or instead slap the handcuffs on Annja. After all, he’d had her escorted from the city and thought she’d be in London right now.

“Have you considered the method of killing yet?” Ava asked with a sly glance to the stage where the dancer marked out the
compas
in alternating steps and claps.

“A stab to the back. Are you aware of that?”

“It was on the local radio,” Ava explained. “I’m wagering Diego’s death is similar to another stabbing here in the city not a month ago. Guy was found on the beach bleeding out, but by the time they got him to the hospital he was dead. The stab wound was made from above the head.”

“That information couldn’t have been relayed on the radio.”

“Rumors have circulated,” Ava said. “If you’re a performer in the old city, you hear things. Do you want me to tell you this, or are you going to continue to question my sources?”

Her hands akimbo, Annja nodded for her to continue.

“The blade was delivered over the head, into the spine at an angle. A method of placing the blade that is very familiar to some in the city. You understand?”

Annja pondered that, trying to figure how or why the murderer would stab in such an awkward manner. To go in over the head, he would have had to approach the man from the front, to allow him to see what was coming, instead of knifing him in the back from behind. It was a bold move, much like…

When it came to her, Annja met Ava’s eyes and the woman nodded in acknowledgment.

“The
estocada?
” The moment of truth during the bullfight when the matador thrusts the
estoque
sword into the bull.

“But is that possible with a human?” she continued. “To sever the aorta from such an angle? The anatomies of a bull and a human are completely different.”

“Does it matter? The act of placing the blade was the same as a torero to the bull. Now do you have to question if it was El Bravo who killed Diego?”

“Of course I do. I have no proof he was in the Hotel Blanca that night. There are any number of matadors in the city. And just because a move associated with the torero was used doesn’t mean the murderer actually was one.”

But truly? A matador had murdered Diego Montera?

“Who told you this?”

“Not important,” Ava said. “Think about it. You look like a smart woman. You’ll put the pieces together.”

The dancer who would be an assassin strode out, grace evident in the swing of her shoulders and the sturdy placement of her steps. A few admirers followed her exit, including Annja.

Ava believed the bullfighter had killed Diego. What motive could he have?

The walls of El Bravo’s villa had been lined with artifacts depicting bulls. He’d said they were gifts. But wouldn’t a man interested in bull paraphernalia have taken the Baal statue from Diego’s room?

And why was Ava so determined to take revenge against him? She had implied she and Diego weren’t close, had no sort of relationship outside of the club. Hardly reason to want revenge against a man she suspected had killed a fellow worker.

On the other hand, Annja should never judge what pushed a person to murder.

She needed to get back to the hotel and check online to see if anyone had replied about the photos she had uploaded.

13

Annja entered her hotel room, opened her laptop and went online. There was an entire page of replies to her uploaded pictures and she scanned through them. Most replies suspected it was an effigy of Baal, but had no proof and hadn’t seen the exact object before. One suggested it was a party favor for one of Hugh Hefner’s blowouts and thought she should try to crack it open to see if a room key fell out.

Not everyone lurking on the loop was helpful or, apparently, sober. Annja had to chuckle at that.

One reply stood out, addressed from Rockford LePlante.

She’d heard that name before. Some kind of Indiana Jones who lived off the land and refused to take money for adventures or movie deals. “Must have a trust fund,” she figured. How else to support a habit of world travel and dangerous adventure?

She read his email.

Miss Creed, it is a pleasure to communicate with you after hearing so much about your adventures, and yes, I admit, I follow your television show whenever I’m near electricity (which isn’t often). The pictures you’ve posted may seem to represent just another bronze statue, but I am especially excited to see an actual photograph of it. So much so, I’d rather not discuss details online. Could you please give me a ring? I’m traveling toward
Pukapuka and will be in and out of cell-phone reception, so do try to make contact today if possible.

The email had been sent six hours earlier. He listed a phone number, which she promptly entered into her cell phone and pushed Send. The call was answered on the second ring with a scatter of static.

“Miss Creed! Wish you would…called…sooner.” Each word was punctuated by horrible static. “—entering dead zone.”

Pukapuka, one of the first islands to be sighted by the Europeans, was a coral atoll in the Pacific Ocean’s Cook Islands. Extremely remote, it was barely more than three kilometers of land area so she wasn’t surprised at the lack of reception.

“Thank you for giving me your number,” she said quickly. “You know about the bronze bull statue I posted online?”

“Ye—” a long buzz indicated he had entered a dead zone, but as quickly sound returned “—won’t believe what’s hidden inside. Or so I believe.”

“Inside the statue? Our connection is awful, Mr. LePlante. Maybe I should call back later?”

“No! —off grid for a month. Take this down. Louis XIII. Austrian princess. Dowry.”

Annja started making notes as his words came through between a scrabble of static. “I got it. Anything else?”

“—idden treasure—uby.”

The line went dead, and she waited but he didn’t return. That was all she would get from Rockford LePlante.

“Have fun in Pukapuka. Wish I was there.” In one of very few places that was still generally untouched by civilization. Though even then the island did have a small air-landing strip.

She tapped the pen on the notepaper. “Louis XIII? And his Austrian princess?” She thought over what she knew about the French king who had ruled in a time when Versailles had been considered the capital of France. The princess Anne of Austria had been daughter of Philip III of Spain. It was a time when Cardinal Richelieu reigned more than the king and musketeers went on daring escapades for the queen.

A hidden treasure? Inside the bronze bull? But what was
uby?

She muttered the nonsense word over and over until it came to her. “Ruby. There’s a ruby inside the statue?”

This case suddenly got very interesting.

She had to look up Louis XIII and Anne of Austria. Somehow the bull statue was related to those two, and that LePlante had said
princess
instead of
queen
indicted they’d not yet been married.

She slid a finger across the mouse pad when a ninja yell erupted outside on her patio. Annja sat upright on the bed.

The patio door slammed open and suddenly two hands clutched her neck, painfully squeezing her carotid artery. The attacker knew what he was doing. He didn’t need to apply too much pressure for more than five or six seconds, before she would pass out.

She swung her backpack up and managed to clock the attacker in the side of the head. It was enough of a surprise to loosen his grip. With an elbow to his ribs, she gained her freedom, lunged forward to land her palms on the end of the bed and pushed back forcefully, spinning around with a roundhouse that connected with his jaw.

He wobbled, but with a shake of his head, grinned and pulled out a nunchaku. The tiny olive-skinned man with a bad case of acne performed a flashy figure eight with the weapon. Tricks were tricks. And Annja wasn’t about to take a hard oak nunchuck to the side of the head.

He backed her toward the bed. She leaped onto it, which caused the laptop to slide off and land on the floor with a crunch. No time to lament the lost technology as she lured him around the side of the bed, then jumped off the opposite side. As she did, she called the leather-hilted sword to her grip.

A nunchuck whooshed by her ear. Annja swung around, cutting the air and a few inches of hair from her attacker’s stick-straight buzz cut. Using his small stature to his advantage, the attacker ducked and swung out the nunchucks, sweeping low so Annja had to leap to avoid taking them to the side of her knee. He came up holding both sticks in one hand and blocked Annja’s sword with one of them. A good, solid blocking weapon, she decided as the blade reverberated back to the hilt in her hand. She wondered if he was aware the weapon had originated as a farming tool to thresh wheat. He probably didn’t care.

“Who sent you? Why are you here?” she demanded. She immediately guessed César Soto, for reasons she couldn’t quite justify.

Her next swing caught him on the shoulder, slicing cleanly through his loose-fitting leather jacket and spattering blood across the pale bedspread.

The man yelped, yet did not drop out of attack mode. He swung and hit the back of Annja’s thigh with the hard wood as she jumped to the floor.

“Get out of Cádiz!” he cried in Spanish.

“Says who?” She swung up the sword, not under his throat, but instead pressing the tip into the gaping slice in his shoulder. “Tell me who sent you.”

The man rammed his shoulder against the blade. It was such an incredible move, Annja dropped her guard. In that second the nunchuck swung around and hit her against the back of the head. The inertia of the blow spangled stars in her vision. She wobbled, but maintained consciousness. She’d been lucky it was the back of the skull and not her nose or jaw. Sweeping the blade blindly, she managed to block another oncoming blow.

Adrenaline coursed through her system, working to eliminate the blackening effects of the intense hit to her skull. On a high, she dodged the next blow and managed an undercut to the man’s rib cage. This time he gripped the wound and stumbled toward the open patio door. He ran out the doors and, with a kamikaze yell, leaped over the balcony.

She raced to the wrought-iron balcony and saw that he’d landed on the back of a trailer stacked with cardboard cartons of melon. Rolling off onto the street in a clutter of broken cantaloupe, he took off running, leaving a trail of blood-spattered melons in his wake.

“Time to find a new hotel,” Annja muttered, rubbing the back of her head. “And some aspirin. Ouch.”

Swinging out her sword arm, she dismissed the blade back into the otherwhere and went to gather up her things.

* * *

A
NNJA
SLID
ONTO
a patio chair at the café across the street from the Hotel Argantonio, which wasn’t far from the museum and the Plaza de Mina. She intended to check in at the hotel, but first wanted to gather her wits about her. Besides, she was hungry after the tussle at the Hotel Blanca. She was gradually moving up in hotel class and stars, which she hoped would deflect further in-room fights with unknown hit men. Powering up the laptop—which wore a new dent on the corner, among many other dents, but which was also no worse for wear—she decided to cybersurf before she completely forgot what Ava Vital had told her earlier.

Sipping coffee while she waited for her meal, she looked up the bullfight, the final act, in particular.

The faena was a series of passes made before the bull, to square it up in preparation for the kill. To make the kill, the matador thrust the
estoque
between the bull’s shoulder blades, which must go through to the aorta or heart. The act must be made by charging head-on toward the bull and allowing as close as possible connection to the horns while avoiding getting gored. It was the moment when most matadors did get gored.

A quick, clean death was preferred, and the crowd would let the matador know with boos or seat cushions tossed into the ring if he hadn’t placed the sword well. Placing the sword was called the
estocada,
as Ava had referred to the act that had killed Diego.

Sometimes, if death was not instant, the matador would perform the
descabello
with a second blade to sever the spinal cord. Annja had seen that done during the fight yesterday afternoon. If that failed to kill the bull, then the matador’s assistant must move in for the coup de grâce with yet another cut to the spinal cord at the base of the brain.

The bedspread had barely been wrinkled in Diego’s hotel room. Someone not experienced with placing the blade certainly may have struggled with his victim. On the other hand, a professional would have worked quickly and cleanly.

Annja paused to let the idea of an actual matador having killed Diego sink in. Such a man, who would kill for an artifact, would likely already have many artifacts of immense value in his home.

Had it been a business exchange gone bad? Why would the matador kill the delivery person and then not take both artifacts?

“He’d only wanted what was in the wooden crate,” she murmured.

Pressing a palm to the back of her head, she felt the tender bruise, which had started to swell. She was lucky she hadn’t gotten a cracked skull out of the deal.

Her thoughts went immediately to the votive crowns in Manuel Bravo’s sanctuary. They were the right size to fit the crate. Which would make Ava Vital’s assumption correct. But that still didn’t explain why the dancer had it in for El Bravo.

Or how a bull statue possibly containing a valuable treasure was connected to it all. She switched her search to the seventeenth century.

“Louis XIII and Anne of Austria were both fourteen when they were married. Tough luck, kids. I can’t imagine representing a nation so young, and to be forced to the conjugal bed? Ugh.”

Anne’s father, Philip III of Spain, sent along a dowry of jewels and a wardrobe worth half a million crowns.

She searched for more information on the dowry, perhaps a list of its contents, but there was nothing like it online.

Anne of Austria had traveled in a caravan from Spain to Versailles, where her future husband met her. The retinue possibly carried the dowry, but it could also have been sent by an armed guard preceding or following that first ostentatious meeting, Annja decided.

She clicked over to a Rumors of History site and after sorting through the bibliography of seventeenth-century articles was thrilled to find a scanned sketch very similar to the bronze bull. The article had been written by Rockford LePlante himself and stated the bull was merely a delightful ruse, which hid an even greater treasure. Anne’s father, Philip, had enjoyed puzzles and secrets and often had valuable objects made that hid inner workings or treasures. The piece could well have been intended as a gift to King Louis XIII.

The scan was of an old document, so it didn’t look like something LePlante could have drawn in contemporary times, and it was intricate even though the actual statue was rather plain. It indicated an open belly in the bull, which hid something inside. The scan was blurred there, and Annja bit her lip because she couldn’t make out exactly what was inside.

“A ruby?” she wondered.

Her cell phone rang. When she picked up, James Harlow started right in, expressing his surprise she was still in town. He kept saying that, as if she should have left already. Why did everyone want her out of town?

“I’m just trying to help,” she said. “But it’s hard to do that when strange men wielding nunchucks jump me in my hotel room.”

“Are you all right, Annja? Did you call the police? Where are you now?”

“I’m fine, though the back of my head hurts like a mother. I suspect the police wouldn’t be too pleased to hear from me again.”

“Any idea who sent the guy? Did he say?”

“No. Between dodging his weapon and watching him leap over my balcony to make his escape, he didn’t take the time to mention who was behind his visit. I tell you, people have lost all etiquette nowadays.”

“At least you’re not hurt seriously. You aren’t, are you?”

“I’ll survive. But I may need to wear a crash helmet for a while.”

“Ouch, that sounds bad. Did you go to the emergency room?”

“I’m exaggerating. I’ll be fine.”

“Good.” Hardly an empathetic response, more rote, if anything. “Where are you staying?”

Providing that info didn’t feel right. Not to someone who seemed to want her out of town as much as the next guy. “I’m looking for a new hotel at the moment.”

“So no luck on your search?”

“No luck, but a bit of serendipity. I spoke to the woman who tried to kill El Bravo.”

“I’m ever surprised by the circle in which you travel, Annja. How did you manage that meeting?”

“I have my ways. She’s led me to believe Diego Montera’s killer may have been a matador or a man with the skills of a matador. And there’s a certain local matador who has an amazing collection of artifacts displayed in his home.”

“Manuel Bravo,” Harlow said. “I’ve been to his place.”

“I wasn’t aware you two were friends.”

“Acquaintances. A few years ago I was invited to a party and only spoke to him briefly. Did you see the Scythian Baal god he’s got in the main room? You can’t lay your hands on those anymore. He admires the bull as totem as much as I do.”

“You don’t seem too upset the man has a collection of illegal artifacts.”