Of course. One of his favorite comedians. Hers, too, since Groucho now reminded her of the guy who kept her heart in a twitterpated state day in and day out.
He held out his hand for her to take. “And so, milady, now that you have witnessed a grand display of the dance your father and I have named the Butterfly Hurly-Burly Twirly, would you like to give it a whirl?”
“Hey, I thought it was Burly-Girly,” her dad said. He stood next to her on the old Maya road. Judging from his watermelon-slice wide grin, he’d enjoyed Quint’s performance as much as she had. “Like a large, female gorilla.”
Quint snorted. “Did I look like a large, female gorilla?”
“Sort of,” Juan teased.
Angélica took the hand Quint offered and tugged him back by her side. “Maybe I’ll try that dance with you after we get back home and I have a couple of drinks under my belt.”
“I’m going to hold you to that, boss lady,” Quint said, breathing a little heavy after all of that gyrating.
He locked onto her hand, holding tightly as if he expected her to pull away. But she didn’t want to let go. After another day of turtle-paced progress, his laughter and energy eased her frustrations and reminded her that there was far more to life than digging in thedirt.
They strolled hand-in-hand in silence for several steps alongside her father on thesacbe, slowly making their way back to camp for the evening. The rest of the crew had left before them with Pedro leading the way, complaining how much his stomach was growling and the lack of a coldcervezawaiting at camp for him.
Angélica glanced at her dad, who looked like he’d been wrung out and left to dry in a hot breeze. “What else did you guys find behind that door slab besides butterflies?”
Upon hearing about not only their detour to one of the large mounds on Dr. Fernel’s LIDAR map, but also her father’s decision to start the excavating without her, she’d been downright flabbergasted. And a bit pissed, to boot.
Why had he gone forth without her? That wasn’t his usual way of handling a discovery. For one thing, it was unprofessional. For another, he’d obviously been swept up in Dr. Fernel’s excitement and allowed himself to be derailed from following normal dig site procedures. Procedures he’d long ago established and she’d adopted upon taking the reins.
Damn it, she wished she’d been there to see the swarm of butterflies that her father kept talking about and Quint had demonstrated with his whirling dervish performance.
Thankfully, Quint had the forethought to take pictures before he’d moved the stone slab—and to not let her dad or Dr. Fernel get hurt in the process.
As for all of those butterflies holing up in what her dad thought could be a mine, a bunker, a cave, or some other kind of underground structure … What the hell? The mass exodus in a chaotic eddy up into the treetops seemed more along the lines of bat behavior, not butterfly.
“We didn’t find anything of significance besides the altar stone that I told you about already.” Her dad answered her question as he limped along, leaning harder onto his cane than usual and wincing periodically as he stepped.
According to Quint, on the way back to where Angélica had been working near Structure II, her father had stepped on a stone that rolled out from under him, twisting his ankle slightly. Thankfully, it was not the same leg that hadbeen broken, so there wasn’t likely any further damage to his previous injury. To be safe, though, she’d have Teodoro check on him after they returned to camp.
“Was there any residue left on the altar stone worth examining?” she asked.
“Nothing visible,” Quint replied first. “But I’m sure if someone does a scraping of the surface and analyzes the residue under a microscope, there’s probably something of interest there.” He smiled her way. “Or whatever it is you call that process in forensic archaeology speak, boss lady.”
She smiled back, and then looked up to admire the rosy pink sky. If only she could fly as high as the vultures that had hung out overhead earlier in the day. The sunset was probably breathtaking from up there with the sea of green canopies spread out below as far as the eye could see.
“What about the structure you guys were really supposed to be checking out?” she asked them, returning to the happenings at ground level. “Did you find anystelaeor other indications of the site’s history around it?”
“No,gatita. It was just another ruin similar in style and size to Structures I and II, only in worse shape thanks to several strangler figs growing on and into the stone walls and ceiling.” Her father yawned. “It’s no wonder that ruin’s footprint was not as defined as the others on Dr. Fernel’s LIDAR map.”
“Some of the area leading up to and around that structure had a lot of dead vegetation, though,” Quint added. “Several trees were all long gone, going by the cracked, peeling bark, and how easy it was to snap off branches.”
She frowned at the road ahead. “Was there a pattern to the dead area?”
“Not that I could tell,” her father said.
“Could you guys see any fungus or biological clue as to why there’d be a dead spot?”
“There didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to the layout of the dead,” Quint said. “Just a patch of gray death in the middle of the green forest.”
“We might want to consider bringing in a biologist at some point,” her dad added. “We need to make sure there isn’t someproblematic spore or an underground pool of poison.”
“Why would there be a pool of poison?” Quint asked.
Angélica kicked a stone out of her dad’s path. “Much of the Yucatán Peninsula is connected via underground water systems. That means a farmer thirty miles away might be trying to eradicate a certain kind of plant for whatever reason, legal or not. The farmer dumps the poison on the plant and the soil around it. Thanks to the rain, it trickles down into the underground waterways. It catches a ride downstream and pools in a natural cavity miles away, destroying a patch of jungle. Or worse, it ends up in someone’s well water.”
