I would have bet money that mattress was in the same shitty trailer my mom was still living in, and that theToy Storysheets hadn’t been washed since the day I left for college.
Andrew’s confused face begged for an explanation, but I had no energy to share details. William’s and my miserable upbringing always brought up many questions, turning simple answers into a wearisome and dreadful story.
“We were dirt poor and had to share everything.” William pulled up the handle on his suitcase. “I’m hungry and in the mood to celebrate whatever you guys discovered today. Let’s meet there in a few.” He pointed at a restaurant and bar adjacent to the hotel lobby.
“Does our room have an en suite?” I asked.
“Sort of.” Andrew hoisted his bag onto his shoulder and took two of William’s suitcases while I picked up mine and another of William’s. “It’s shared with the neighboring room, but there’s a lock. Remember to unlock it when you’re done and lock your door when you return to your room.”
Yikes.
Our room was bleak but clean, with yellow walls, a chair, a double bed, a stack of clean towels on top of it, and a nightstand with a lamp. A window, covered with threadbare curtains, looked out on the street where we’d parked our Jeep. The bathroom had a basic shower, a small rusted-out sink, and a toilet that at some point in its life had been white.
William quickly washed, changed into a bright Hawaiian shirt and grey shorts, and skedaddled to the bar. A warm shower was god’s gift to me to scrub off the crypt’s dirt, cobwebs, and dead man leftovers. As I ran a bar of soap over my body, the memory of Andrew’s arm pressed hard against my torso made my pulse beat harder in my throat. I shouldn’t think about it, but my lascivious brain couldn’t help itself. I pictured Andrew’s hands and what they could do. I closed my eyes, and my hand slid over my breasts, down my stomach, and finally reached?—
Nope.
If I let my mind wander in a valley of sexual fantasies, it might journey into a territory ofwhy don’t you find out? And I didn’t need that. This was strictly a business affair.
With my hair wrapped in a towel, I did my best to save my dress. I applied mascara and burgundy lip gloss, and changed into yesterday’s floral dress with a sweetheart neckline, a fit-and-flare skirt, and cutouts on each side of my waist.
The hotel’s pub had a homely atmosphere, dimly lit with decorative hanging lights here and there, its walls covered with vivid artwork, and twinkling tea candles on the mirrored bar amid the bottles. I found William and Andrew in the furthest corner, a small chandelier dangling over their table.
William was scrolling on this phone while sipping from a glass containing brown liquid, and Andrew held one of the newfound letters in one hand and a pencil in his other. His sleeves were rolled up and his hair was wet from the shower. Oblivious to the loud pop music, clatter, and shouting around them, Andrew looked lost in his thoughts. With his eyebrows pulled together and mouth in a flat line, he wrote something in his notebook, then read more. He flipped the paper over and glanced up, his eyes immediately locking with mine. His face relaxed, and the corners of his mouth turned up as he lowered the paper. And there it was, the look he had had this morning when he’d seen me. A warm spring burst into my heart and my chest expanded as if a million flowers had bloomed inside of me.
“Any new interesting discoveries, Dr. Jones?” I slid into a chair beside him.
“Yes.” He placed his journal on the table and pointed at his last note. “In one of the letters to Augustine, Jorge mentions his return from a construction site, but it’s not clear where it was.”
“Another church?” I asked, scooting my chair closer to him.
Heat radiated from Andrew’s body, and his citrusy bergamot and powdery coumarin scents beguiled me. Was that how his bed smelled after he slept in it? Had sex in it? A hum went through my body, pooling low in my core. Some people you just knew would be amazing in bed. I bet Andrew was a master at using his fingers and his sultry mouth to unravel women and make them come undone…
“Judging by the details,” Andrew said, yanking me out of his bed and back into the present, “this space should be cathedral size.” He peered at me half-amused. “You okay? You look flushed.”
“It’s a little hot in here,” I said with as much conviction as I could muster, pressing my hand to my cheek. “What about the book?”
“A collection of short stories. It was specially bound for Jorge Pérez since it has his monogram.” He planted the tome before me.
Gold flowers and vine swirls on both sides decorated the black leather-bound book. In the center was a circle with the same motif that was on Jorge’s crypt. The interwoven JP and a cross above it. Five raised bands divided the spine into four compartments, each crowned with a different image: sun, cross, ship, and star. The inside pages were printed in two columns, with blue chapter initials three-lines high, embellished with red ornamentations. Notes, markings, and doodles in someone’s handwriting annotated passages.
I brushed my hands on my skirt to get rid of sweat, then traced my finger over the penciled inscription. “What does all this mean?”
“I’m not sure yet. But we have tonight to figure it out.” Andrew smiled. “Would you like to see the letters we found today?”
We. He said it as if we were partners in this venture.
I nodded like a sugar-high child, beside myself with excitement, though overwhatI wasn’t sure about yet.
Andrew slid the book aside and set the letters in its place. “Some of them don’t make much sense to me.” He picked one up and laid it flat on top of the others. “They start with the usual family greetings, and then list these.” He ran his finger over a sheet that looked like a page from merchant trade records. It had two columns. One with strings of numbers separated by periods, and the other with words.
“What are the words?”
“Description of goods. And this one is especially perplexing.” He took a paper out of his journal. “Dr. Garcia thought this note from his archive might be helpful. It’s from Augustine to his son and it has one line similar to these.” Pictographs of vegetation and fragments of architectural plans dotted the sheet. The bottom had a line with three numbers and one word.
“Do you know this word?”
“Horse.”
