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bringing Julie up to date on things at the Hacienda. Her uncle Jamie, the resort bookkeeper, had indeed left for Minnesota a few days ago to have his knee operated on. Annie would be staying through today so she could orient Julie on things, but she would head for Winston-Salem the next morning to wrap up the last of her divorce. Tony Gallagher was back home in Mexico City at the moment “Oh, I’m sorry,” Julie said. “I’d love to have seen Uncle Tony.” Tony, being Carl’s brother-in-law, wasn’t actually Julie’s uncle, but she had come to refer to him that way when she was working at the Hacienda. She had felt strange calling him “mister,” she had once explained to Gideon, and she’d been too shy to call him “Tony,” so “Uncle Tony” it had been. For whatever reason-perhaps that he was younger-Tony’s brother Jamie, who had exactly the same relationship to her that Tony did, was just plain Jamie. Interestingly enough, Annie, who was niece to both of them, called neither of them “uncle.”
    “You will see Tony,” Annie said. “He’s planning on coming down in a couple of days.”
    “You mean Tony doesn’t live here?” Gideon asked. “He lives in Mexico City?”
    “On the outskirts,” Annie said. “In Coyoacan. In this fabulous gated community surrounded by other rich Yanquis, assorted strung-out rock stars, and the occasional Colombian drug lord. He only comes down here once a month or so for a few days.”
    “So who runs the Hacienda? I mean, who’s in charge?”
    “Nobody’s in charge,” Julie said. “It’s a family affair. No boss, really. Right, Uncle Carl?”
    “Well, yeah, I guess that’s true,” Carl said. “We just kinda get along, muddle through, you know? Jamie makes sure we get the bills paid, and Annie kinda keeps an eye on things around the place, keeps us all in line. Not that much to it, really.”
    “says you!” Annie said, then loyally added: “And you do plenty too, Pop. The place wouldn’t even exist without you.”
    “Aw, hell, I just look after the horses,” Carl said softly.
    “But Tony does own it?” Gideon asked.
    “Oh, Tony owns it, all right,” Carl said with a nod. “You got that right.”
    “Okay, fill me in a little, would you, folks? Tony Gallagher is an American, isn’t he? How did he come to own the Hacienda Encantada?”
    “Well, yes, he’s an American citizen, all right,” Annie said, “because he was born there, but he was raised on the Hacienda, although it wasn’t the Hacienda back then. See, his father-my grandfather-Julie, didn’t you ever tell this husband of yours all this stuff?”
    “Of course I did. He just didn’t pay attention, although he did put on a pretty good act.”
    Julie and Gideon both laughed, and she reached forward to give his shoulder an affectionate squeeze with just a little bit of a wicked twist at the end. The thing was, it was exactly the kind of thing he was always accusing her of when she failed to commit to memory some fascinating point he’d made about skeletal morphology or protohominid locomotion.
    And the excuse he gave now was just about as lame as hers usually were. “I guess it didn’t seem to appertain to anything concrete at the time. Now that I’m here, it’s become highly germane.”
    “ Appertain,” Carl said, appreciatively rolling the word around his mouth, trying it out on his tongue. “ Highly germane. Whoa. Does he talk like that all the time, sweetie?”
    “I warned you,” Julie said. “He’s a professor.”
    “Right,” said Gideon. “It’s what I do. Hey, I even know some better words than that. Wait till you get to know me. But go ahead, tell me about Tony.”
    “You tell him, Pop,” Annie said. “Pop knows the whole story better than anyone.”
    “Well, okay, sure,” Carl drawled. “Guess I better start with the place itself…”
    A hundred and fifty years ago, the Hacienda Encantada had been a genuine hacienda, a real working sisal ranch, including