don’t think anything yet. But it’s a damned good lead, first one I’ve got. So…” He hesitated. “I was wondering if you’d be willing to have a look at the skeleton yourself.”
“Me?” Margo asked. “Why?”
“You’re an anthropologist.”
“Yes, but my specialty is ethnopharmacology. I haven’t done any physical anthropology since graduate school.”
“I’ll bet you can still run circles around most of the anthropologists here. Besides, I can trust you. You’re here, you know the Museum—but you’re not on staff.”
“My research keeps me pretty busy.”
“Just a look. On the side. I’d really appreciate your opinion.”
“I really can’t see what an old Hottentot skeleton would have to do with a murder.”
“I don’t know, either. But it’s my only lead so far. Look, Margo, do this for me. You knew Marsala. Please help me solve his murder.”
Margo sighed. “If you put it that way, how can I say no?”
“Thank you.” D’Agosta smiled. “Oh, and lunch is on me.”
C lad in faded jeans, a denim shirt with studded buttons, and old cowboy boots, Agent A. X. L. Pendergast surveyed the Salton Sea from the thick cover of ripgut grass at the fringes of the Sonny Bono National Wildlife Refuge. Brown pelicans could be seen hovering over the dark waters, wheeling and crying. It was half past ten in the morning, and the temperature stood at a comfortable 109 degrees.
The Salton Sea was not a sea at all, but rather an inland lake. It had been created by accident at the turn of the twentieth century, when an ill-conceived network of irrigation canals was destroyed by heavy rains, sending the water of the Colorado River flooding into the Salton Sink, submerging the town of Salton and eventually creating a lake covering almost four hundred square miles. For a time the region was fertile, and a series of resorts and vacation towns sprang up along the shores. But as the waters receded and grew increasingly salty, the towns were left high and dry, the vacationers stopped coming, and the resorts went bankrupt. Now the area—with its barren desert hills and salt-encrusted shores, fringed by wrecked trailer parks and abandoned 1950s resorts—looked like the world after nuclear armageddon. It was a land that had been depopulated, skeletonized, burned to white, a brutal landscape where nothing lived—save thousands upon thousands of birds.
Pendergast found it most appealing.
He put up his powerful binoculars and walked back out to his car—a 1998 pearl-colored Cadillac DeVille. He drove back to Route 86 and began making his way up the Imperial Valley, following the western edge of the sea. Along the way, he stopped at roadside stands and sad-looking “antiques” shops, where he spent time examining the merchandise, asking about collectibles and dead pawn Indian jewelry, passing out his card, and occasionally buying something.
Around noon, he pointed the Caddy down an unmarked back road, drove a couple of miles, and parked at the foot of the Scarrit Hills, a series of naked ridges and peaks stripped to the bone by erosion and devoid of life. Plucking the binoculars from the passenger seat, he exited the car and trekked up the nearest rise, slowing as he approached the summit. Ducking behind a large rock, he fitted the binoculars to his eyes and slowly peered over the crest.
To the east, the foothills ran down to the desert floor and, perhaps a mile away, the bleak shores of the Salton Sea itself. Wind devils crawled across the salt flats, whipping up cyclones of dust.
Below him, halfway between the hills and the shore, a bizarre structure rose from the desert floor, weather-beaten and dilapidated. It was a vast, sprawling mélange of concrete and wood, once painted in garish colors but now bleached almost white, studded with gables, minarets, and pagodas, like some fantastical cross between a Chinese temple and an Asbury Park amusement parlor. This was the former Salton Fontainebleau. Sixty
“Me?” Margo asked. “Why?”
“You’re an anthropologist.”
“Yes, but my specialty is ethnopharmacology. I haven’t done any physical anthropology since graduate school.”
“I’ll bet you can still run circles around most of the anthropologists here. Besides, I can trust you. You’re here, you know the Museum—but you’re not on staff.”
“My research keeps me pretty busy.”
“Just a look. On the side. I’d really appreciate your opinion.”
“I really can’t see what an old Hottentot skeleton would have to do with a murder.”
“I don’t know, either. But it’s my only lead so far. Look, Margo, do this for me. You knew Marsala. Please help me solve his murder.”
Margo sighed. “If you put it that way, how can I say no?”
“Thank you.” D’Agosta smiled. “Oh, and lunch is on me.”
C lad in faded jeans, a denim shirt with studded buttons, and old cowboy boots, Agent A. X. L. Pendergast surveyed the Salton Sea from the thick cover of ripgut grass at the fringes of the Sonny Bono National Wildlife Refuge. Brown pelicans could be seen hovering over the dark waters, wheeling and crying. It was half past ten in the morning, and the temperature stood at a comfortable 109 degrees.
The Salton Sea was not a sea at all, but rather an inland lake. It had been created by accident at the turn of the twentieth century, when an ill-conceived network of irrigation canals was destroyed by heavy rains, sending the water of the Colorado River flooding into the Salton Sink, submerging the town of Salton and eventually creating a lake covering almost four hundred square miles. For a time the region was fertile, and a series of resorts and vacation towns sprang up along the shores. But as the waters receded and grew increasingly salty, the towns were left high and dry, the vacationers stopped coming, and the resorts went bankrupt. Now the area—with its barren desert hills and salt-encrusted shores, fringed by wrecked trailer parks and abandoned 1950s resorts—looked like the world after nuclear armageddon. It was a land that had been depopulated, skeletonized, burned to white, a brutal landscape where nothing lived—save thousands upon thousands of birds.
Pendergast found it most appealing.
He put up his powerful binoculars and walked back out to his car—a 1998 pearl-colored Cadillac DeVille. He drove back to Route 86 and began making his way up the Imperial Valley, following the western edge of the sea. Along the way, he stopped at roadside stands and sad-looking “antiques” shops, where he spent time examining the merchandise, asking about collectibles and dead pawn Indian jewelry, passing out his card, and occasionally buying something.
Around noon, he pointed the Caddy down an unmarked back road, drove a couple of miles, and parked at the foot of the Scarrit Hills, a series of naked ridges and peaks stripped to the bone by erosion and devoid of life. Plucking the binoculars from the passenger seat, he exited the car and trekked up the nearest rise, slowing as he approached the summit. Ducking behind a large rock, he fitted the binoculars to his eyes and slowly peered over the crest.
To the east, the foothills ran down to the desert floor and, perhaps a mile away, the bleak shores of the Salton Sea itself. Wind devils crawled across the salt flats, whipping up cyclones of dust.
Below him, halfway between the hills and the shore, a bizarre structure rose from the desert floor, weather-beaten and dilapidated. It was a vast, sprawling mélange of concrete and wood, once painted in garish colors but now bleached almost white, studded with gables, minarets, and pagodas, like some fantastical cross between a Chinese temple and an Asbury Park amusement parlor. This was the former Salton Fontainebleau. Sixty
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