Queen of Bones

  Also by Teresa Dovalpage

  Death Comes in through the Kitchen

  Copyright © 2019 by Teresa Dovalpage

  All rights reserved.

  Published by

  Soho Press, Inc.

  227 W 17th Street

  New York, NY 10011

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Dovalpage, Teresa

  Queen of bones / Teresa Dovalpage.

  ISBN 978-1-64129-015-9

  eISBN 978-1-64129-016-6

  Description: New York, NY : Soho Crime, [2019]

  I. Title.

  PS3604.O936 Q44 2019 813’.6—dc23 2019010829

  Interior design by Janine Agro

  Printed in the United States of America

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  To the wonderful Soho Crime team,

  for making me a better writer. Muchas gracias.

  Part I

  Oya’s Feast Day

  Oyá dresses in purple and dances alone, with a necklace of bones clicking around her throat. She is the keeper of the cemetery gates and welcomes refugees from life into her kingdom. She collects little sugar skulls on the Day of the Dead and offers sweets to the widows and orphans. The mother of nine stillborn children, she has a special place in her heart for women who have lost their babies, as well as children without mothers.

  Owner of the seven winds, Oyá rides them and rules over storms, tornadoes and tempests. She often enters atop them brandishing her horsetail fly whisk, swirling her nine skirts.

  She keeps one foot in life and the other in death. Mistress of cemeteries, the orisha Oyá is not to be invoked in vain.

  The ceremony started in the early afternoon. That day, February the second, was devoted to the Virgin of Candlemas, associated with Oyá in the religion of Santería. (Oyá was also worshipped as Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, though even the most knowledgeable santeros couldn’t explain her connection to the Discalced Carmelite nun.) Her devotees had gathered in an old house located in Guanabacoa, a colonial town across the bay from Old Havana. The backyard had been prepared for the ceremony. An altar stood covered in a white linen cloth and ornamented with fresh violets, candles and candy in small copper trays, as copper was Oyá’s favorite metal. Eggplants—fried, steamed and raw—were served on porcelain dishes. A large print of Saint Thérèse presided over the altar.

  The women who hoped to be possessed by the orisha wore skirts in all shades of purple. The newly initiated to Santería were dressed only in white down to their stockings and shoes, with white turbans or white kerchiefs covering their heads. Men were dressed formally, with old-fashioned, well-polished shoes and ironed shirts.

  At three o’clock, the drums began to thunder. Dancers moved in a whirl and followed the rhythm that beat in synchrony with their hearts. Those who didn’t dance remained in their seats eating malanga fritters, a meat and vegetable stew known as caldosa, and guava pastries, all of which they washed down with generous swigs of rum.

  Rosita, a tall forty-year-old woman who was dressed in all purple for the occasion, felt the wind rushing in her ears. Padrino, the babalawo who was leading the ceremony and Rosita’s Santería godfather, tapped her lightly on the head with his cane. She stood, and Oyá entered her body, whizzing through her, dancing, laughing, crying, bending over, grabbing food from people’s plates and eating it right before their eyes.

  “Maferefún, Oyá!” they greeted her.

  The orisha blessed the guests in a grave voice laced with contralto undertones. Oyá kept dancing until Rosita’s body collapsed on the floor. Two older women took her to a bedroom and placed cologne-soaked towelettes over her forehead. After she’d recovered, Padrino came to see her.

  “Oyá came in strong today,” he said.

  Rosita smiled and spoke in her usual high-pitched tone.

  “Padrino, do you remember that boyfriend of mine who left Cuba?” she said. “Juan. The one I couldn’t forget.”

  Padrino nodded.

  “Oyá told me he would come back, like a salmon swimming upstream. Does it mean he’s returning to Cuba, Padrino? Juan hasn’t been back in twenty years, as far as I know.”

  “Maybe,” Padrino said. “But do you know why salmon swim upstream, mija?”

  “To mate?” Rosita blushed.

  “And to die.”

  “Don’t say that, Padrino,” she whispered. “Juan is the man of my life. The first and the only.”

  1

  Change of Plans

  The water was hot, but not scalding. The golden glow from the jasmine-scented candles created an ambiance that Sharon, in her real estate jargon, would have called “intimate luxury,” “a private sanctuary” or something of that sort. She shifted in the hot tub and let the jets massage the tension out of her shoulders. Her acupuncturist had mentioned that she had knots underneath them. She sighed.

  Yes, she was tense. Nobody had to tell her that; she already knew it. First, there was that high-end North Valley property she’d hoped to sell sooner than now. She had wooed the owners, an elderly couple, until they’d agreed to let her stage their home using everything from trendy designer friends’ tips to feng shui furniture arrangement. In a year of painfully slow sales, that 1950s house, with its five bedrooms, marble countertops, and Olympic-sized pool that hadn’t been used in a decade, was her small real estate company’s most auspicious prospect.

  An open house was scheduled for the coming Saturday, the same day her husband was flying to Havana. It would be Juan’s first visit to the island in twenty years. Though he hadn’t said it in so many words, Sharon had the impression that he preferred to travel alone.

  She remembered their meeting with the Santa Fe–based travel agent who had helped Juan get his Cuban passport and, bizarre as it sounded, his Cuban visa as well.

  “So I can buy a visa for twenty-five dollars and travel to Cuba tomorrow, while Juan, who was born there, needs to ask for his visa three months in advance and pay four times as much?” Sharon had asked. “That’s weird.”

  Sonya, the Cuban travel agent, agreed that it was.

  “That’s Cuba for you, Señora,” she said. “A little crazy, yes. But I’m here to make the paperwork easier for you.”

  Sharon liked her. Sonya was bright and polite. Unlike Juan, she spoke fluent English. As the only Cubaviajes representative in New Mexico, Sonya managed everything from people-to-people permits for Americans to the entry visa and passport applications for Cubans.

  It took Juan five months to get all his documents ready. He needed a Cuban passport to enter the island and an American passport to get back to the United States. The fact that he had left Cuba on a raft in 1994 also contributed to the delay, Sonya explained. “They” had probably gone through his records to make sure he wasn’t the kind who would go back to cause trouble. “They” was the ambiguous pronoun that Cubans, or at least the Cubans Sharon had met, used when talking about their government and its surveillance system. It could be the political police, La Seguridad. Or Fidel Castro himself, or his brother Raúl, or the Politburo. But things were improving, Sonya had assured Sharon. “The paperwork will get easier from now on,” she had said.

  Sharon looked out the picture window she had installed in front of the hot tub. She had bought this town house because of its Sandia Mountains view and the glorious sunsets it captured. She had al
so gotten it because Juan had fallen in love with the golf-focused gated-community gym, where a retired weightlifter offered weekly classes. Juan didn’t know how to play golf, but he loved body building. He also loved the pool and Jacuzzi—and all good things in life, as he put it. Sharon wanted to think that one of the good things in his life was her.

  She got out of the hot tub and glanced at her naked body in the full-length mirror. At forty-nine, she still looked good. No belly fat. Wide hips, but she had a grown daughter. Good posture. Tits nipped and tucked. For her fiftieth birthday, she would buy herself a facelift.

  She opened the door to the master suite and heard Juan’s voice. He was speaking Spanish. After seven years of marriage to him and several classes at a local college, Sharon wasn’t totally fluent, but she understood almost everything he was saying. And he was saying this:

  “I want to see you again. To make sure we’re okay . . . No, no, I’m not blaming anyone! I just need to see you. That’s why I’m going alone. No pressure, you know?”

  Sharon waited behind the door until Juan finished his conversation. It ended with a promise to call whomever he was talking to as soon as he arrived and a muddled apology.

  Sharon pursed her lips and patted herself dry. She put on a blue cardigan sweater and white pants, which she had laid out for herself on the sink before her bath, and breathed in heavily to calm herself down. When she entered the master bedroom, Juan had changed into his workout clothes.

  “Amor, I am going to the gym,” he said, pronouncing “gym” “yin.”

  “See ya.”

  As soon as he left, Sharon started looking around for Juan’s cell phone, but couldn’t find it. He must have taken it with him, though he usually didn’t when he went to the “yin.”

  She willed herself not to panic. He could have been talking to a relative or an old friend. Juan had a complicated relationship with Cuba, which she had done her best to understand.

  They had considered traveling together at first, but by the time Juan’s paperwork was ready, the only available flights in April had fallen on the week of the open house, he’d told her. If he didn’t go then, he would have to wait until June, and he was afraid “they” would revoke his visa, cancel his passport or worse before then. He had also joked that Sharon, a spoiled American, wouldn’t enjoy the accommodations.

  “A five-star hotel in Havana is like a Motel 6 here,” he said. “I’m going to stay at the Habana Libre. It used to be a Hilton, and cockroaches live in the shower there.”

  “Roaches in the shower!”

  “Yes, the big flying kind. Palmetto bugs, like the ones you’ve seen in Miami.”

  “What about those private homes, the casas particulares?” Sharon had been reading up on Cuba, scouring Yelp and TripAdvisor.

  “To stay at a casa particular, you need to know the owners and get some references in advance. I wouldn’t know where to go. I’ll be fine anywhere, but you’ll feel out of place. I know you’ll want to leave right away.”

  “But it’s only a week.”

  “A week is a long time without hot water. Or Internet. Or cell-phone service. It’ll drive you crazy.”

  It had been clear that he didn’t want company on this trip. He had to deal with too much baggage. She knew the story, or at least the bits he had shared with her. Juan and his best friend, a young man named Camilo Ceballo, had left Cuba on a raft in 1994. They’d gotten lost and drifted in the Caribbean for nine days without water or food. Camilo had died at sea, and Juan, rescued by a fishing boat, had spent two months in a Miami hospital, sunburned and delirious, while the doctors doubted he’d live. He still had the scars from severe sunburn on his back and suffered nightmares that jolted him awake at night. Then his father had been diagnosed with cancer back in Havana. Not approved for his green card yet, Juan hadn’t been able to go back and see him one last time. Juan’s only living relative, his grandmother, was in a nursing home and seemed to have dementia. They hadn’t been able to get her on the phone in a long time. Of course he would have some unfinished business left in Havana. Sharon had tried to be understanding about what he called, only half-jokingly, his “Cuban tragedy.”

  It was certainly a tragedy, but why had he waited until Sharon was out of sight to make that call? And after buying a ticket for the only time he knew she couldn’t accompany him? She wondered if they really would’ve had to wait till June. She had read that there were more flights than ever departing to Havana from Miami, Fort Lauderdale, and other major American cities.

  Sharon went to the kitchen to pour herself a drink. Juan’s laptop was on the counter, charging. When she’d met him, he hadn’t known how to use it. She had taught him. His email was open, but besides a ton of spam, she found only a message from the travel agency confirming his ticket for April 12. He would fly from Albuquerque to Fort Lauderdale at nine in the morning, then change planes there and arrive in Havana at seven that night.

  She considered ditching the open house. Her assistant, Meredith, had just gotten her real estate license. She was nice and eager to learn but lacked self-assurance. She was far too meek at times, easy to push around. No, Sharon didn’t feel comfortable placing her biggest prospect of the year in Meredith’s pudgy hands.

  Sharon continued snooping on the laptop. Nothing in “My Documents.” The only thing Juan knew how to download was the music he used in his salsa classes. She clicked on “Pictures.” There was a photograph labeled “Elsa.” She opened it and gazed upon a young woman with curly hair sitting on the Havana seawall with the ocean behind her. The photo had been scanned and had lines all over it, as if the original had been badly wrinkled and worn.

  Sharon’s phone rang.

  “I’m so sorry, but we have a problem,” Meredith said in the squeaky, apologetic voice that Sharon hated. She waited, tapping her fingers on the counter.

  “I’m afraid we’re going to have to cancel the open house,” Meredith said. “Mr. Murray just called. They’ve gotten algae in the pool and need to shock it. They forgot to put in the chlorine you gave them. He says it looks like there are green strands of hair floating everywhere.”

  Sharon felt a rush of relief.

  “I’m sorry,” Meredith repeated.

  “No big deal,” Sharon said. “In fact, I’d rather wait until after Easter. The garden will look better. By the way, I need you to take over for the next week and a half. I’m going out of town. Think you can handle everything?”

  “Me? Well, yes.”

  Sharon didn’t give herself time to think it over. She punched in Cubaviajes’s number. She told Sonya that she was going to travel with her husband, and could it be arranged for her to go on the same flight?

  “What a great idea! Oh, he’s leaving in three days! But no worries. We’ll make it happen.”

  Sharon liked Sonya’s confident, optimistic attitude. If that girl ever wanted to leave Cubaviajes, Sharon would hire her and fire Meredith in a second.

  “Would you like for me to reserve a hotel room for you as well?”

  “Isn’t Juan staying at the Havana Hilton or whatever it’s called now?”

  “He hasn’t made any hotel reservations with us,” Sonya said. “Just the flight.”

  Sharon couldn’t imagine Juan going online to reserve a room on his own. Maybe he’d decided not to stay at the cockroach-infested Hilton after all.

  “Go ahead,” she said. “A place with no palmetto bugs in the shower, please.”

  Sonya laughed. “Most Cuban hotels don’t have those, Señora. The best one is Meliá Cohiba, a five-star high-rise in El Vedado.”

  Since she was still in front of Juan’s laptop, Sharon did a quick Google search and found Meliá Cohiba on TripAdvisor, listed among the “Top Ten Hotels in Havana.” It looked modern, upscale and bugless.

  “Yes, that one will do,” she said.

  “It’s one hundred seven
ty dollars a night. Shall I reserve for the full trip?”

  “Yes.”

  Sharon put it on her credit card and hung up. She retrieved a bottle of Bacardi that Juan had bought a month before, made herself a stiff drink and plopped down on the sofa.

  When Juan came in, sweaty and handsome, his muscles almost ripping his tight white T-shirt, Sharon smiled and said in the most casual tone she could muster, “I have a surprise for you, amor. I’m going to Cuba with you. I just called Cubaviajes and made all the arrangements.”

  Juan went pale. “What about your open house?”

  “It got canceled.”

  He began pacing the floor with his arms folded. “Are you sure you want to come?”

  “Yes, quite sure.”

  “Remember what I told you about the crappy hotels, the bugs and the lack of . . . everything? You aren’t going to like it.”

  “It’ll be an adventure,” Sharon said firmly. “A new experience for me. What is it, Juan? Don’t you want me to go?”

  Without responding, he reached for the bottle of Bacardi and began to guzzle from it.

  2

  The Three Musketeers

  The hotel was nicer than Sharon had expected. Their room had a queen bed, a flat-screen TV, a coffee maker, noisy but functional air conditioning and a view of Malecón Avenue. It reminded her of the Cancún resort where she and Juan had spent their honeymoon. The memory made her purr contentedly. They had patched things up on the flight from Albuquerque to Fort Lauderdale.

  “I hope I’m not imposing myself on you,” she’d said. “I’ve always been curious about Cuba, but it didn’t seem like you wanted me around.”

  “Well, I didn’t at first,” Juan had admitted, looking serious and sincere. “But I’m relieved you got your ticket, mamita. I’ll need you for moral support.”

  He squeezed her hand and kissed it. Sharon saw layers of congealed pain in his eyes. She didn’t feel like asking any more questions—for the time being, at least.