Chile Death

by Susan Wittig Albert

  “Unless we can find out whose chili had the peanuts in it.”

  “Even then,” I said, “the State would have to uncover the motive and prove intent.”

  He gave me an amused glance. “It’s a case that some bright defense lawyer could have all kinds of fun with.”

  “Well, here are Exhibits A through Z,” I said, gesturing at the piles of papers on the bed. I handed him Jerry Jeff's score sheet. “And here’s the list of what JJ sampled before he died, with his comments. He wasn’t terribly impressed by the quality of the entries, I gather.”

  “Most of the stuff was pretty bad,” McQuaid said. He studied the score sheet, and I came around behind him and looked over his shoulder.

  In the half hour or so he had worked, Jerry Jeff had sampled fifteen different cups of chili. He hadn’t scored any of them above a seven on the ATTA scale. In the "Comments” section, he had written general remarks like "awful!!!” and “mediocre.” Nowhere had he written the word "nut” or "nutty,” or commented on the texture of a particular sample.

  "Not much help here,” McQuaid said, "except to narrow down the field. At least we know which of the cups he sampled.”

  I grinned. "Surely you weren’t expecting him to write something like ‘This stuff will be the death of me.’ ”

  "Smart ass," McQuaid said. He pushed himself over to the bed, where the papers were stacked. "Let’s go through the registration forms and match up these fifteen samples with the contestants, to see if we recognize anybody connected with Jerry Jeff.”

  It took a little while, but when we were finished, we had fifteen entry forms, cross-matched through the log-in sheets to the numbered sample cups listed on Jerry Jeff's score sheet. The entry forms included the contestants’ names, addresses, and phone numbers.

  “Here’s Pokey Clendennen,” I said, leafing through the stack.

  “Oh, yeah?” McQuaid said. “I didn’t know he was a chilehead. I don’t think he’s entered the cookoff before.”

  “Maybe he had another reason for entering,” I remarked. I handed McQuaid the forms and watched him shuffle them. His eyes were intent, his face full of interest. I was sorry that Jerry Jeff was dead, but glad that McQuaid was coming to life. "Find anybody else you know?”

  "Several guys from the Honchos, most of them friends of JJ’s. Otherwise, I don’t—” McQuaid stopped and tapped one of the forms. "Wait a minute. Here’s Craig Burkhart. He and Jerry Jeff mixed it up in a lawsuit a year or so ago. I think there’s still bad blood between them.”

  I frowned. "Wasn’t it something about a piece of property?” I paused. "There might be another connection between them, too. Lulu Burkhart.”

  "Oh, yeah?” McQuaid shook his head. "Jerry Jeff got around, didn’t he? I wonder who else’s wife he was involved with.”

  "Fannie Couch is the one who told me about Lulu,” I said. “I can ask her if she’s heard any other names in the past year or so. And for information about the lawsuit, we can talk to Charlie Lipman. He’s Jerry Jeff's lawyer.”

  “Oh, yeah? Where'd you hear that?”

  “Don’t you remember? Jerry Jeff told Roxanne to talk to Charlie about the divorce settlement. If Charlie didn’t handle the lawsuit, he’ll probably know who did.”

  "Okay,” McQuaid said, "I’ll phone Charlie. I’ll also talk to Pokey Clendennen and Craig Burkhart. Burkhart tried to sell me some investment property once, and our paths have crossed from time to time.” He pulled out two forms and handed me the rest. “You take these.”

  I sighed. “I was afraid you were going to say that. Thirteen calls? I’ll be on the phone all afternoon.” I looked at my watch. "Scratch that. I have to be at Ruby’s by four.” "Sorry, China.” McQuaid gave me an apologetic look. "I’d do it, but you’ve got the cover. Just tell them you’re collecting recipes for your column in Thursday’s paper. They’ll be glad to hand them over, just so they can see their names in print.”

  "Except for the killer, who will probably lie. However,” I added thoughtfully, "if somebody tells me there’s no peanuts in his entry and the analysis turns up peanuts in his chili, he’s a pretty good candidate, wouldn’t you think?” I put the rest of the papers back into the manila envelope and laid it on top of McQuaid’s chest of drawers. “Oh, by the way,” I remarked casually, "Brian says he’ll e-mail us from the ranch. I’ve got the laptop out in the car. Want me to bring it in?”

  “That’d be good,” McQuaid said. He was reaching for the phone beside his bed. "Surfing the web doesn’t take a lot of muscle, and it’ll give me something to do when I’m not torturing my legs on those damned machines.”

  I smiled. The exercise machines were only part of it. Getting McQuaid involved with the computer again would help to pull him back into real life. Things were looking up.

  All of the calls I had to make were local, so I went out to the car to use the cell phone, opened both doors to let the breeze through, propped both feet on the dash, and settled down to my chore. Half an hour later, I stopped to make a tally. I’d done pretty well. I had struck out on two (ten rings, no answer), left one message on an answering machine, and managed to talk to ten of the thirteen contestants.

  Of the ten, eight promised without hesitation to phone, fax, or mail me their recipes, expressing eagerness to have their chili immortalized in the newspaper. The other two confessed that they didn’t have recipes but would give the matter some thought and reconstruct a list of the ingredients. One sounded particularly troubled. It turned out that he'd celebrated a bit too enthusiastically the night before the cookoff and hadn’t been able to crawl out of his sleeping bag, much less stand over a bubbling cauldron all morning. His nephew had done the actual cooking, and he had no idea what might have jumped into the pot. The nephew had lost his wristwatch, and he himself was missing a T-shirt.

  None of the ten laid claim to any exotic ingredients, except for one guy who used a mixture of ground buffalo and beef kidney suet, another who admitted that he’d thrown in a package of moldy cream cheese he found at the bottom of the cooler, and a third who claimed that he always threw in what was left of the breakfast coffee, including the grounds. Nobody mentioned anything about peanuts until I prompted them with a casual question and got in return a volley of hoots and hollers and an incredulous “Peanuts? In chili? Who you tryin’ to kid?” If peanuts or peanut butter had been somebody’s secret ingredient, he was not going to share that fact with the masses.

  I was on my way back to McQuaid’s room with the entry forms and the laptop when I thought of Carita Garza. I turned around and went back to the hallway where the administrative offices were located, but Opal Hogge’s door was locked and nobody answered my knock. As I went past the nurses station, I was stopped by a short, dark young woman with long hair braided into two plaits down her back and tied at the ends with green yarn. Like the other aides, she was dressed in green scrubs and tennis shoes.

  "Excuse me,” she said in a low voice, “but aren’t you Ms. Bayles?”

  I nodded. “I signed in once already, earlier, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  "No, nothing like that.” She glanced over her shoulder, put her hand on my arm, and pulled me into a small room that held a refrigerator, a sink, and a microwave. On the door of the refrigerator was a hand-lettered sign that exclaimed, "Do NOT Steal Food From People’s Lunches!!!” "My name is Angie,” she said. "I’m Carita’s cousin. She said you promised you’d help her get out of trouble, and I wondered . . . have you talked to Mrs. Hogge yet?”

  "I won’t see her before tomorrow.” I studied the girl. With her narrow face, high forehead, and olive skin, she resembled Carita, although she wasn't quite as pretty. “Do you have any information?”

  "I’m not sure.” Her face was troubled, her eyes half- fearful. "If you mean, do I know who’s stealing, no. But I thought if you were going to see Mrs. Hogge . . . that is, it might help if you knew . . .” She managed a tiny smile. "Excuse me,” she said. "I’m a little nervous.”

&nb
sp; "I’m sure you want to help Carita,” I said, to prompt her.

  "Oh, yes, I do!” she exclaimed. "But if Mrs. Hogge found out that I was the one who told you, she’d fire me, too. And if you mention it to her, or confront her about it, she’s just going to deny it. So I’m not sure that telling you this will do any good.”

  "Telling me what?" I asked, feeling frustrated. "Look, Angie, if you want to help Carita, you’re going to have to give it to me straight. With specifics.”

  She considered for a moment, then seemed to decide that I could be trusted. She took a deep breath and plunged in. "It’s about Miss Velma. Velma Mayfield. She has early-stage Alzheimer’s. Half the time she can’t remember where she is or what’s going on. And if she wants something, she thinks it’s hers.” She shook her head. “It’s enough to break your heart. She’s really not that old, and she used to be very smart. She still tries to read, but most of the time she's holding the book upside down."

  Light-fingered, Jug had called her. "Do you suspect Miss Velma of the thefts?”

  "She might have taken a few things," Angie said hesitantly. "Air. Purtle’s Walkman, maybe, or Miss Curlew’s bath bag—stuff that’s missing from this wing. But I don’t think she could have wandered around in Rio Grande without being noticed. And if she took things, what did she do with them? Her room has been searched a time or two and nothing’s turned up.”

  "Well, then, what’s the problem?”

  Her eyes darkened. "Arliss Velma has an ornery streak, you see, and she talks back to people. She makes .. . well, personal remarks, some of them pretty nasty. Most of us just brush it off, because Alzheimer’s sometimes works that way, and you can’t be mad at a person for what they can’t help. But Mrs. Hogge really gets furious. They must have known one another a long time ago, because Aliss Velma is more familiar with her than with the rest of us.”

  "Familiar?”

  Angie cleared her throat. "Well, yes. Miss Velma calls her Opal, which is Mrs. Hogge’s first name, and sometimes she calls her Bunny, which must be a nickname or something. And she says things like, ‘If you’re not good, I'll tell your daddy what you did’—you know, stuff like that, in a childish, taunting kind of way.”

  "And that makes Mrs. Hogge angry.?”

  "Oh, yes! Friday morning—day before yesterday—I opened Aliss Velma’s door and saw Mrs. Hogge shaking her. She had her by the shoulders and she was jerking her like a rag doll. Aliss Velma was crying and her roommate was trying to get out of bed and make her stop." She grimaced. "I guess Mrs. Hogge didn’t hurt Aliss Velma, but she might have.”

  You bet. I had read of far too many cases of serious injuries to the brains of children and elderly people caused by the relatively simple act of shaking them. It could be a deadly act. “What did you do?” I asked quietly.

  "She turned around and I was afraid she saw me. But I shut the door fast, and I don’t think she knew who it was. If she did, I’m sure I would have heard about it already.”

  I regarded Angie thoughtfully. It was possible—just marginally possible, I thought—that she was making this up to cause trouble for Opal Hogge, who had fired her cousin. "You mentioned the roommate. Would she be able to say what she saw?”

  "Mrs. Rogers?” Angie frowned. "Well, maybe. She has Alzheimer’s too, but she has moments when she’s fairly lucid.”

  "Have you reported the incident to Mrs. Sanders?”

  Angie shook her head. “I ... I haven’t told anybody. Even if Miss Velma could tell what happened, nobody would believe her. And if Mrs. Hogge found out I was making accusations, she’d fire me, for sure! Just like Deena, who worked in the kitchen. One of the freezers went out and the food thawed, and Mrs. Hogge fired her for failing to report faulty equipment.”

  Not a woman your heart might warm to, 1 thought. "Still, it would be a good idea if you told Mrs. Sanders.” Angie nodded miserably. "I’m sure you're right. But Mrs. Hogge pretty much has the last word around here, and nobody wants to get in her way." She chewed a corner of her lip. "I was trying to figure out what to do when Carita told me about you and how you got that lady out of jail, and I thought. . .” She pondered a moment. "Well, I thought if you knew what Mrs. Hogge had done, you might be able to put some pressure on her or something. She can’t fire you."

  Pressure? That would be blackmail. But I don’t think that was the way Angie meant it. She wasn’t exactly in a position of power, and it was probably the only way she could think of dealing with a supervisor who seemed to her both irrational and vindictive. I was beginning to be very curious about Opal Hogge.

  "Anyway,” Angie said, looking at me with something close to relief. “I feel better now that I’ve talked to you. I mean, maybe you can’t do anything, but I feel better.” "Thanks,” I said dryly. "You’re going to be here tomorrow morning?”

  “I come in at seven.”

  "Good. I’ll think about what you’ve said. If I decide that Mrs. Sanders should hear it, will you tell her?”

  She pulled one braid over her shoulder, twisting it in her fingers. "I . . . suppose,” she said reluctantly. "If you say so. But I don’t want to get into trouble with Mrs. Hogge.”

  "I understand,” I said. "One more thing. What’s the number of Miss Velma’s room? I might want to stop in and see her."

  "She’s in Brazos, Number 33.”

  "Thanks,” I said, and patted her on the shoulder. But I refrained from telling her that I would do the worrying for her. I already had enough woriying to do

  Chapter Ten

  The Aztecs believed the chile pepper to be a powerful sexual stimulant, and early Spanish priests cautioned against its use, claiming that it "inciteth to lust.”

  Elizabeth Rozin Blue Com and Chocolate

  Chile has long been the source of laughter for us in these rugged [Sangre de Cristo] mountains where a well-honed sense of humor is a survival skill. The popular identification of chile with the male member has spawned a plethora of chioteo [jokes], like the joke about the politico who takes a bathroom break during a campaign rally on one of our bitterly cold nights. When the man using the urinal next to him remarks, “Pretty chilly. Senator,” the politico replies, “Gracieu."

  Jim Sagel "Chile del Norte”

  New Mexico Magazine

  McQuaid hit the mute button on the remote control when I came into the room. “What took you so long?” he demanded.

  "Hey,” I said. "I had thirteen confessions to hear, plus one nurse’s aide to absolve. You didn't expect me to finish in fifteen minutes, did you?”

  "What’s this about a nurse's aide?”

  "Later.” I put the laptop on the floor, perched on the corner of his bed, and propped my feet on the arm of his wheelchair. "How’d you do?”

  "Well, I talked to Charlie Lipman. Turns out that he was Cody’s lawyer in that suit. It was a dispute over some commercial property. Burkhart lost, but not graciously. He threatened to get even.” McQuaid paused meaningfully. "Charlie said he didn’t think the animosity had died down any. I kept my mouth shut about Lulu, but I wondered if that had something to do with it."

  "I suppose he was curious about your interest in Jerry Jeff's affMrs. What did you tell him?”

  "The truth. Jerry Jeff told me that somebody had threatened him, and forty-five minutes later he was dead. Charlie said he might have some information he could share, but he’d like to think about it until tomorrow.” “Typical lawyer's response,” I said. "Never make a statement today that you can put off until tomorrow.” "Yeah. Well, that’s as far as we got. But there’s no hurry. This isn’t the kind of case where the murderer is likely to hop a plane for Mexico.” His face grew serious. "I don’t know. Maybe I’m bored and grabbing at something to do. Maybe I’m making a mountain out of a molehill.”

  "I don’t think so,” I said. I didn’t want to lose the momentum. I loved the energy in his voice, the interest he was showing. Maybe we were spinning our wheels, but who cared? We were headed in the right direction. "How about Burkhart a
nd Clendennen? Did you connect with them?”

  "Clendennen said he’d get you that recipe if you’d stop by the insurance office and pick it up after noon tomorrow. He’s got to go to Austin, and won’t be back until then.” He paused. “Lulu Burkhart says Craig is in Houston and won’t be back until tomorrow afternoon. Actually, his chili recipe turns out to be her recipe, because this was his first cookoff and he had no idea how to go about it. She’ll be happy to give you a copy for your column.” He gave me a glance. “She also volunteered the information that Craig doesn't eat chiles and has never been all that crazy about the chili cookoff.”

  “Interesting,” I said. I took out my notes and gave him a quick rundown on my telephone calls. "I didn’t find out anything of particular value," I concluded, "but if these guys come through, at least I’ll have enough recipes for my newspaper page. And as you pointed out, this gives us some baseline data. If one of those samples turns out to have nuts in it—”

  "Yeah,” McQuaid said. "Nothing to do but wait for the results of the analysis, I guess. And the autopsy, of course. It might just turn out that Jerry Jeff choked to death on a chunk of hot pepper. Or that Bubba was right, and he suffered a heart attack.”

  "Speaking of Bubba,” I said, "are you going to tell him about those threats?”

  His look was mildly incredulous. "You don’t think I’d obstruct justice, do you?” I laughed, and he added, "But there’s no point in complicating Bubba’s life until we see the autopsy report. He’s in no mood for frivolity, believe me. The Council hired some big-city consultant to come in this week and do sensitivity training with the force.”

  There was a sympathy in McQuaid's voice that I did not entirely share. I don’t exactly dislike Bubba Harris, especially since I found out that he keeps bees for a hobby, and I certainly have my reservations about the Council’s getting tangled up in police business. But Bubba’s had things his way for fifteen years, which means fifteen years of a mostly white, mostly male police force in a town that is at least half female and one-fifth Hispanic. There are quite a few people who would like to hire a police chief who could be responsive to the entire community. I’m one of them.