Chapter Six
They ate Wiener schnitzel, a specialty of the house, at La Doña Luz. Carlotta was loquacious, but her conversation tended to wander; he had to keep gently leading her back to the topic of Jenny Ames.
"It was so long ago,” she almost wailed. "Six or seven years. How can I remember—”
"Eight years, Miss Evers.” Weaver turned on his most charming smile. "Yes, a long time, I’ll admit. But can’t you remember any more than that?”
“I could have, I guess—if I’d known at the time, or even right after, that it was anything worth remembering. But it wasn't until months after that ride on the bus that I knew it was important—I mean that her body was found and I remembered that the girl I'd talked to had been going to meet Mr. Nelson and so she must be the one I talked to. That sounds mixed up, I guess, but you know what I mean. And after two months I couldn’t remember everything she said, because I wasn’t paying an awful lot of attention at the time. You know how it is when you talk to somebody on a bus; it goes in one ear and out the other, except interesting things like that she was coming to Taos to get married and everything."
"But she promised to look you up, you said, after she was married. Didn't you wonder when you didn’t hear from her?”
"After seeing her just that once? Of course not. People always promise things like that and how often do they really do them? And then a week or two later I happened to hear that Mr. Nelson had left and I thought they’d just decided to move away and live somewhere else. But then when they found her body, that was different. I tried then to remember everything I could, and the sheriff helped me. He kept asking me questions for hours. And now you’re—” The gold tooth flashed. “Well, I guess this dinner is worth it. Go ahead."
“Attagirl,” Weaver said. "Then let’s start over again—forgive me—at the beginning. You hadn’t seen her in the bus station in Santa Fe before you boarded the bus?”
"No, I was almost late for the bus; it was ten minutes after the time it was supposed to leave when I got there, but you know how buses are, always a little late pulling out, so I made it, just barely. I got on just before it started and all the seats were taken except one so I sat down there, and it happened to be the one next to her. "
"Do you remember what your first impression of her was?”
"I'm afraid I don’t, Mr. Weaver. I remember what my impression of her was after the trip, but not what I thought when I first saw her. Probably just that she was pretty, nice-looking, something like that.”
"Which of you spoke first?”
"I probably asked her if the seat was taken. You generally do before you sit down beside somebody on a bus." She paused and considered. “I think it was the third or fourth seat back, on the driver’s side. And then, just naturally, we got to talking. Probably one of us said it was a beautiful day—it really something like that; that's the way most conversations start. Pretty soon, it couldn’t have been more than a minute or two, she asked me how far I was going on the bus—it goes all the way through to Denver, you know, not just to Taos—and I said Taos, and that’s when she got really interested. She said she was going to Taos too and that she'd never been there before and would I tell her something about it.
“So I did and she kept asking questions and I guess I was telling her about Taos all the way to Espanola before I asked her anything about herself; I finally asked her if she was going there on vacation or to take a job or what, and she told me she was going there to marry Charles Nelson and did I know him.”
“And did you?”
“I knew who he was, by sight. In a place like this, and eight years ago it wasn’t even as big as it is now, you get to know who almost everybody is, even if you don’t know them."
“How much did you know about Nelson?”
“Only that he was supposed to be an artist and lived out near Seco, and that he wasn’t very sociable and hadn’t made any friends here. That’s about all.”
“According to the newspaper account I read, Jenny Ames thought that Nelson taught at one of the art schools here. Did you tell her she was wrong about that?”
“No, because I wasn’t sure he didn’t. I mean, from the little I knew about him, I didn't think he worked for anybody but I wasn’t positive about it."
Weaver nodded. They'd finished dinner by then and were drinking their coffee. "Just think back, Miss Evers. Try to remember if she said anything at all that would give you even a slight clue to where she came from or give what she'd been doing."
"Well—that's what the sheriff kept asking me, but if she said anything about that, I don’t remember—I couldn't remember when he was asking me then, so how could I now? I don’t think she said anything at all about herself—her past or where she came from, I mean. She was so interested and excited about where she was going and what she was going to do that the other just didn’t come up at all.”
"But little things, if you can remember them, may have been clues. Did she, for instance, seem familiar with Spanish-Americans or was she curious about them and what they were like?"
"I don’t remember her asking about them. But I don't think she was from New Mexico anywhere. No, don’t ask me what it was she said that made me think that—I just remember that I thought it, but I don't know why. And she didn't have any special accent, if you know what I mean. I mean like an Eastern accent or a Texas accent—those I can always tell. Nor Southern. She talked just like most people."
"And what did she tell you about how she met Nelson?”
“That she'd started corresponding with him through a Lonely Hearts Club in some magazine—she didn’t say what magazine, I’m sure, or the exact name of the club. That the letters he wrote were wonderful and that after they’d both written awhile, he came for a vacation to the town she lived in and—”
“Did she say town? Are you sure of that?”
"I think so, yes. She said that he was there a week and they'd fallen in love with one another but that he had to go back to Taos on account of his job there and they’d arranged for her to follow him as soon as she could get ready, and they were going to get married here. She thought he was awfully handsome and wonderful—I guess any girl thinks that about a man she's going to marry."
It wasn't pay dirt, Weaver was beginning to realize. Except for irrelevant little things such as the sequence of conversation, he hadn't learned anything he hadn't already known.
He tried a different tack. “Can you describe her?”
”Well—no better than I did for the sheriff. She had on a light summer coat, tan, I think. And a hat, but I don’t remember what kind. Maybe it was a tam. She was—oh, medium height and weight, kind of a nice figure as far as you could tell with her wearing a coat—and a kind of a pretty face, some make-up but not too much. Dark hair, I didn't remember whether it was black or dark brown, but it turned out that it was black. And—well, that’s about all, except that she seemed awfully eager and excited. But she thought she was coming here to get married, so you can’t blame her for that.”
Weaver didn't blame her for that.
He blamed Carlotta Evers for not remembering the name of the town Jenny Ames had probably mentioned, and for being so vague about everything else—but, he told himself, eight years was eight years and he probably wouldn’t do any better himself. He wondered why he’d expected to get anything out of Carlotta now that the sheriff hadn't been able to get out of her only two months after the murder.
He tried a few more times, from a few other angles and with the help of a few post-dinner drinks, and then gave up. He took Carlotta Evers home to her apartment, and made no passes.
He felt that he didn't want to drink wine after the several highballs he'd had after dinner with Carlotta so he picked up a bottle of whisky at a liquor store which was still open on the plaza and took it home with him.
He made himself a drink, a fairly stiff one, and sat in the kitchen sipping it and thinking back over his conversation with Carlotta, wondering if he could deduce
from anything she had said any fact, however slight, that he hadn’t already known about Jenny Ames.
No, nothing—unless that she seemed more real, more vivid, now that he'd actually talked to someone who had talked to her. But still no clue to where she'd come from, what she'd been.
Why weren't you missed, Jenny? Why did no word come from whoever knew you after your name was in the papers all over the country? Did you come from Mars or Venus? No, Nelson couldn 't have written you there; the mail service is too poor. But why didn't somebody miss you, somewhere? You were lonely, yes, or you'd never have written to a Lonely Hearts Club, but you must have had relatives or at least acquaintances who should have recognized your name.
Somehow, he thought, it made her seem more pathetic—what happened to her more tragic—that no one knew her. That no one besides the murderer, who had made his getaway, knew whence she came or what she had been. That, besides the murderer, only two people remembered having seen her at all, and one of those two had seen her only for seconds, through a window and from a distance.
You were cheated out of your life, Jenny, before you had a chance to live it. Quite probably you were a virgin, inexperienced in love. Other men had made advances—they must have if you were pretty, as Pepe and Carlotta say you were—but no one you liked had asked you to marry him and that was what you were waiting for, and you were lonely. So lonely that you wrote to a correspondence club.
And hit the jackpot—you thought. A man who corresponded with you and then came to your town to see you. And he was handsome and said he loved you and you loved him, and he said he wanted to marry you. You must have been awfully happy, Jenny, on that bus ride to Taos.
But why, Jenny, did he kill you?
Was he mad, or was there another reason? Was he Bluebeard, and did you open his closet, perhaps, and see the murdered bodies of his other wives? Then turn, to see him picking up the knife?
Damn him, Weaver thought; mad or sane I'll like to find him and kill him with my own hands.
He went to the back door and opened it, stood there staring out into the darkness, listening to the far yapping of the coyotes. He told himself: this happened eight years ago. It doesn't matter now.
The next day, seventy degrees at ten o'clock, humidity negligible, sunshine perfect.
A man of DeLong's came out with a truck; he cleared the junk out of the shed, fixed the broken pane, ran wiring from the meter back of the house and rigged a light in the shed. “I brought the paint, Mr. Weaver,” he said. “But Ellis said maybe You wanted to do the painting yourself. That right?”
“That's right. Bring brushes?”
"A three-inch brush, yes. And enough paint to do inside and outside—or did you just want to do the inside?”
Weaver decided that since the paint was here, he might as well paint the outside too.
It was the best day he'd had yet. Something to do, something constructive that would give him the privacy he’d want after Vi’s arrival. He got buckets of water from the creek and washed the wooden floor of the shed first, then painted the ceiling and the walls while the floor dried. He painted the floor then and was about to start on the outside when he realized it was mid~afternoon and he was hungry; he hadn’t eaten anything since an early breakfast.
He drove in to Taos to eat so he could pick up the framed pictures if they were ready for him; they were. He ate quickly and hurried back; he got almost half of the outside painted before darkness stopped him.
He slept well that night dead tired. He finished painting the outside the next morning; the inside was almost dry by then and he decided it would serve without a second coat. He drove in to Taos and found a small used oil heater, some boards for shelving, an army cot. He bought a few tools and some nails to go with the shelving. He'd want a drape of some kind for the window, but that could wait until Vi got here; that was a woman’s job.
He checked the post office for mail—there wasn't any— but didn't stop in Taos to eat or to have a drink. He hurried back to finish and furnish his sanctuary. He finished it before dark, and it was good.
Again he got to bed early and slept well. He awoke at dawn and it was Saturday and he lay in bed trying to decide whether he should go to Santa Fe today and spend the night at a hotel there, or whether he should stay here until three or four o'clock in the morning, time to drive down there and pick up Vi. He damned her again for taking such a train when others were available; she wouldn't be leaving Kansas City until this afternoon, maybe he could still send her a telegram telling her to take the bus at Santa Fe and that he’d meet her in Taos. But no, he should have done that right away instead of promising to meet her and then reneging at the last minute.
If he was going to drive down in the early morning, he realized, he’d have to buy an alarm clock today. It was that thought that decided him; an alarm clock would cost as much as a night in a hotel and he certainly had no other use for one, here in Taos. Yes, he'd drive to Santa Fe today and stay there overnight. A call left at the desk would get him waked in time to meet Vi. Also, in Santa Fe it would be easier to find out whether six o'clock was the time the train pulled into Lamy or the time its connecting bus reached Santa Fe.
While he made and drank coffee he found himself wondering what he could do today; no point in driving to Santa Fe until late afternoon or early evening. Maybe there was some loose end to the Jenny Ames story that he could wind up, and then, as soon as he got his typewriter tomorrow, he could get the thing off to Luke.
But what angle was left that he hadn't tried? Well, there was the hotel in Albuquerque where Jenny had stayed overnight, the night before her fatal trip to Taos. Why not check there? Albuquerque is only sixty-odd miles past Santa Fe; if he left by noon he could drive there today, do his checking, and get back to Santa Fe in the evening. But the paper hadn't mentioned the name of the hotel. Would Callahan remember it, or be able to find out for him?
He killed part of the morning straightening up the house so it would be in perfect order when Vi got there—not that it would stay that way long unless he wanted to keep on doing the work himself—and putting a few finishing touches on the shed. Then he drove to Taos and went to the office of El Creplisculo.
Callahan's desk—an ancient roll-top—was closed and the girl behind the counter said, "Mr. Callahan doesn’t come in on Saturdays, sir. But he happens to be in town; he was in here for a minute just a few minutes ago. If you walk around the plaza you'll probably find him somewhere."
Weaver walked around the plaza, looking in at likely places; he found Callahan having a cup of coffee at the counter in the Rio Grande Drugstore. Callahan said, "Hi, Weaver. Cup of coffee? Jeanette! Bring another cup of coffee.”
While they drank their coffee, Callahan said, “How goes it with Jenny, Weaver? Get anything from Carlotta?”
"Not much. Guess I’ve got about all there is to get. There’s one angle I might still try, though, if you can help me. I'm driving down to Santa Fe today anyway; I might go on to Albuquerque while I'm at it and see if I can get anything at the hotel she stayed at there. Do you remember the name of it?"
“Ummm, no. Wasn’t it in the news story?”
"Pretty positive it wasn't. I made notes of all names and. dates and if the hotel had been there, I’d have noted it down."
“Let me think awhile. It may come to me. You’re not in a hurry to leave, are you?"
"Not that I think you’ll get anything important there. You know, the more you think about that case—and you've got me thinking about at lately—the funnier it gets. No beginning and no end—nothing except what happened here. We don’t know where Nelson came from—unless the Colorado license plates on his car meant he came from there and I doubt it—nor where he went, outside of that one stop in Amarillo. We don't know where the Ames girl came from, beyond that one night in Albuquerque. We don’t know— we don't know much of anything .”
“Did they trace the license number on Nelson's car?”
"Would have if anybody ha
d noticed it or remembered it. But nobody did. Like your car—I've seen it and noticed that it's a Missouri license, but I don’t remember the number.”
"Not sure I remember at myself. I see what you mean. Listen, you say Sheriff Freeman's dead, but what about any deputies of his who may have worked on the case? Would any of them be around?”
"Afraid not. Freeman had only two deputies. One of them went into the army shortly after that; I don’t know what happened to him except that he never came back to Taos. The other—let's see—he got a job with the state police a couple of years ago, but the last I heard he was working in the southern part of the state, around Lordsburg, hell of a ways from here. You might find him, but I doubt if it would be worth the trouble. Joe Sandoval his name is; he did some leg work on the case, but he’s no mental heavyweight. Hey, I just thought how you can get the name of that Albuquerque hotel."
“How?”
“At the Albuquerque Tribune; they'll have it in their files. They covered the case—even had a reporter up here for the inquest. And to them the fact that she'd spent the night before she was killed at a hotel there is a local angle; their stories would be sure to play it up—probably with an interview with the desk clerk who’d registered her, if he remembered her at all ."
"Thanks. Silly of me not to have thought of that myself.”
Callahan laughed. “Sillier of me—as a newspaperman—not to have thought of it sooner. Well, I’d better push along; got some errands to do yet and want to get home by noon. Have a good trip.”
It was a good trip. The road from Taos to Santa Fe and thence to Albuquerque goes through some spectacular and breath-taking country, and it is at its best in early June.
Weaver thought it strange, but not too strange, that as he drove through the narrow, tortuous streets of Santa Fe—streets laid out for burro traffic rather than for automobiles—he had no desire to look up any of the people he knew there. Had known, rather. Why, now, try to renew contacts that meant nothing to him any longer? The past was gone—like Jenny Ames was gone. White bones by now, crumbling. Where? He'd never thought to ask. Unless for a photograph to accompany the story, what did it matter? No, he didn't want to see Jenny's grave. He'd always hated the thought of graves and cemeteries; he'd never gone to visit the graves of his own parents. Not because he was above sentiment, or below it, but because it had seemed such a useless, even a ridiculous gesture. As though the dead knew whether you came to visit their graves or not.
The Far Cry Page 8
