"You're busy." I smiled at him. "I don't want to bore you with details. But it's just going to be a matter of time before she remembers exactly what happened down here."
"She hasn't talked about it yet?" He was fiddling with an ornate letter opener, an onyx jaguar head on the handle.
"She's getting there." I stared back at him, trying to read his mood. "We may soon find out who was behind whatever happened to her." Then I tried a long shot. "Maybe officialdom here had something to do with it."
"Let me tell you something." He sighed again, seeming to regain his composure. "The sovereign state of Guatemala definitely plays by its own rules. Whenever foreigners down here meet with foul play, lower-level officials have developed a consensus over the years that sometimes it's better not be too industrious. Nobody's ever sure of what, or who, they might turn up."
The meeting was definitely ending, and once again I had more questions than answers. Something about Barry Morton felt wrong, but I couldn't quite get a grip on what it was. One thing I was certain of: He knew more than he was telling me. Why was that?
As I was exiting through his outer office, headed for the swarming streets below, I waved good-bye to his secretary, a stout, fiftyish Ladino matron with defiantly black-dyed hair, a hard look mitigated somewhat by the Zircon trim on her thick glasses and a small silver pendant nestled on her ample, low-cut sweater. It was the pendant that caught my eye, being the silver face of a cat, most likely the local jaguar. Looked just like the ones I'd seen you-know-where. I was staring so hard I almost stumbled over a chair. Yes. It was definitely like those I remembered from Kevin and Rachel.
The only difference was, when she bent over to reach for her stapler, the medallion twisted around and the back, I could see, flashed blank silver, no engraving of lines and dots.
So where did she get it? I started to ask her, but decided I'd just get more BS runaround. Then I had another thought: Maybe she handled a lot of things that never made it to Barry Morton's desk, the "don't waste the boss's valuable time" kind of secretary. Maybe she s the one I really should have been talking to, the kind of woman who takes care of everything while the high-paid senior supervisor is at long lunches.
She looked at me, and our eyes met and held for a second. Had she been listening in on my chat with Morton? Did she know something I ought to know?
By then, however, thoughts of Steve were weighing in. I hadn't seen him in three and a half months and I was realizing that was about my limit. I wanted to recapture the lost time. Our being together was going to make everything turn out right.