I walked across the gazebo and back, my mind whirling. Poor Sis, if she’d had a thing for Tonya. I went back to where I’d been standing before, but faced out, leaning my stomach against the rail, and my left hand reaching high up on the post. I could smell flowers and glanced down at bright yellows, whites, and blues.
“My friend,” Emma paused, then began again. “She saw Tonya fight with Joe.”
“And?” I prodded.
She turned to look at me, more like stare, with Mother’s watery expression. “She was pregnant, Raymond. She was gonna have a baby.” The tears glistened, again, and one slid free. So, I wondered, did that make my sister jealous, or angry, or what? Not just sad.
“That’s news,” I said. “Did she see anything else?”
“Yeah. She said that Tonya was going to kill herself. With a broken bottle, or something. And then she was going to throw herself in the river.”
“Dramatic.”
“Yes. But she talked her out of it.”
“That night?” Now, I mimicked Mother’s peering gaze.
“Yes.”
“Who was your friend?” Wow. Maybe Tonya really had committed suicide. And maybe my sister’s friend had been the last person to see Tonya alive.
“Well,” Emma hesitated. I figured she didn’t want to speak out of turn. Then, she pressed on. “I went up there with Tammy Lynn and her sister Joanie, and Patsy Daniels.”
“And who stayed?”
“Patsy.”
Holy cow, I couldn’t wait to tell Mother. And Lonnie.
Chapter Nineteen
Eleven in the morning was early for a bar in my book, but I followed Patsy Daniels inside the Blue Gringo. She neither welcomed, nor discouraged me, when I sat beside her. Too early for a waitress, too, so when the barkeep came over I ordered a cola and some green chile cheese fries. Patsy ordered a full lunch—burger, fries, and beer.
I hummed the tune to School’s out for Summer. She didn’t say anything. But when the barkeep came back with our drinks she looked up at him and said “thanks.” I noticed red rings circled her eyes. Almost like she’d been crying. Maybe she had. Tammy Lynn Wilson had recently died, and, as the school nurse, they must have been friends. Correction, continued their friendship from years ago. Thinking on it, I remembered them together on the playground. Patsy and Tammy Lynn. Like me and Lonnie. Best friends. Of course her eyes were rimmed with red.
She got up and sank some coins in the jukebox, and a banging beat filled the place. Loud country music. Too early for Mac, I thought. And then realized she’d probably turned on the music to stop my rendition of that old, school anthem. Not too sympathetic of me, since they both worked at the school. Most especially since school was out forever—for Tammy Lynn anyway.
“You go to college up at UNM?” I asked when she got back to the table, in an ice breaker sort of way.
“Hmm? Oh. Yeah,” she said. “I taught for years. English.”
“So how did you get to be vice principal?”
“When the principal at the Junior High quit a few years back, I applied for vice. I knew the guy who had the job, and he planned on moving up. He got it, and so did I. Then, when this one became vacant… well, here I am.” She smiled as she spoke, and I could tell she had pride in her achievement.
“That’s really great,” I said.
“You, Raymond? What did you do after you left here?”
“Finished school, obviously,” I said. “Went to college. I got my Bachelor’s in Anthropology and minored in Journalism. Then on for a Master’s in Anthro.”
She laughed, but quietly, like she hurt so bad that even humor couldn’t fully touch her. “What can you do with that?”
“Be a journalist,” I replied with a snort.
“I suppose,” she said. Clearly, she’d never read my hippopotamus triumph.
“Hey,” I said, suddenly empathetic. “I’m sorry about Tammy Lynn.”
“Sure,” she said, and her face turned red, mostly around her chin and the area between the corners of her mouth and cheeks. Her chin puckered, and began to tremble. I thought she’d break, but she got it under control. Silently, I applauded her effort.
We talked a little longer, and I finished my fries. She ate noticeably slower than me. I liked to think it was because of my short stint in the Army. Boot Camp forces you to eat faster than lightning. I wiped the last fry around the cheese, loading it up, and popped it in my mouth. Nothing like a good chile cheese fry, and Blue Gringo had the best. I glanced out the perpetually propped open door. Emma still stood on the gazebo. Now, though, she’d wilted over the railing.
Maybe, if Tonya had fallen in the river, or something—if I could prove it wasn’t murder, or suicide, my sister would be able to handle seeing Anthony and Joe around town. As it was? The girl was a mess. I had to speak up, before I lost my chance.
“Hey, Patsy?”
“Yes?” She’d put on her Vice Principal voice. It sounded like one, anyway. Stiff, disapproving. Like… we’re done here, move along.
“I wanted to ask you about Tonya Romero. For a friend.”
She looked like I slapped her, then clapped a lid on it. Like she’d done with Tammy Lynn. She looked out the door. Her lips thinned, and her expression hardened. I followed her gaze. My sister still hung over the gazebo.
“There’s nothing to tell,” she said, her voice sharp. “Tonya was my best friend. Just like Tammy Lynn. I have a habit of losing friends, did you notice?”
I hadn’t. In fact, before today I didn’t know she’d had more than casual friendships with either person. “I’m just trying to figure something out about Tonya,” I said.
“Like who saw her last?” She shot out the question.
“Sure?” Not what I was going to ask, but hey, who’s complaining. If she wanted to interview herself, that was alright by me. My journalist feelers tingled.
“Yes, probably me. Is that the answer you want?” She ran right over her question, following up in a staccato fashion. “What I saw is maybe different than what Anthony and Joe said. The other kids, too. I’d got pretty close while she and Joe argued. She told him she was preggo. He said tough. Get rid of it. Man, was she broken up. So she grabbed an empty bottle off the ground and broke it.”
“I thought you guys had a keg?”
“Yeah, and pot. What of it?” She stiffened aggressively.
I looked at her, raised my eyebrows in question.
She chilled a bit, and continued, “it was old, just laying on the ground. From a bum, probably. Point is, she broke it and then swung it. And, she hit him.” She said it triumphantly, like it was a good thing for girls to hit guys with jagged-edged glass.
“So, he was bleeding?”
“Yeah.” She’d dropped all pretense of academic superiority by this point, and reverted to rough slang and accent. “Then Anthony talked her down, got the bottle away from her. They left, and boy, I freaked out. I didn’t have a car, because your damn… sister… hauled outta there when Earl showed up.”
“Tammy Lynn drove her home?”
“Course.” She shoved a hand through her short hair in a swift, angry movement. I noticed the roots coming through, and she hadn’t had it trimmed yet. It still spoke of ‘unkempt.’ I wondered what was up. Maybe she always let herself go at the end of the year? Or maybe, like Emma, she couldn’t handle Anthony Sanders being out of prison.
A few other patrons entered the bar for lunch, and looked curiously at us, and I willed her to chill down. But, if anything, she got louder, more adamant in the truth of her tale.
“I hung out with some kids, but I couldn’t help worrying about what was going on. Then, they came back. With giant shakes and fries from Bee’s. Good God! Tonya was alright for a while. I went to sit with her, comfort her, you know? But then she took off with Joe. We could hear the crash. Even over the music blaring from car speakers. Then Joe shows up, all bloody, and he tries to tell us what happened. He and Anthony and Lonnie all piled into a c
ar. Maybe Earl, too. And the rest of us all went running down there. The guys had gotten there before us, but Tonya wasn’t anywhere. She was just gone. They found her next morning. In the river.”
I thought about the stories I’d read in the paper. This was close, but this wasn’t it. Why hadn’t she told the police, or the journalists, or anyone, that Tonya and the guys had come back like that? That she’d seen Tonya there? And more to the point, why had she said she was the last one to see her alive… but now it was Joe? Something definitely didn’t add up in all these stories.
I looked back out at the plaza, but the gazebo stood empty. Heat waves emanated from the ground. I could see them, even from inside the relative cool of the saloon.
“But, hey,” Patsy caught my attention. She stood, then moved between me and the door. She poked her index finger to emphasize her words. “If you wanna investigate something, don’t waste it on old news. Maybe you should ask Mac Garfield about Tammy Lynn’s murder. He threatened to kill Warren, right here, in front of everyone. And then Tammy Lynn ends up dead? The same night? That’s too much of a coincidence for me.”
Chapter Twenty
I sat down across from my mother and described my conversation with Tonya. She seemed interested, but stopped short in connecting the two incidents. She was quite intrigued, however, with Patsy Daniel’s suggestion that Mac had been at the bar the night Tammy Lynn got killed.
“Didn’t he say he was home all night?” She stopped playing with yarn.
“Yes,” I said. “I think that was to give Jennifer an alibi, though.”
“Perhaps to give himself one, too.”
I already thought of that.
“You think the Daniels woman was telling the truth?” She turned ‘the stare’ on me.
“She seemed like it.” I debated it. Could she have looked so upset, and also been so insistent, if it hadn’t happened?
“Someone can be telling the truth…” Mother began one of the Marpleisms that were becoming increasingly common. “…without telling all of that truth.”
“Hmm.” I thought on it. Had Patsy Daniels left anything out? In the Tonya bit, I thought so. She’d started her tale by saying she’d been the last person to see the girl alive. But, by the end of the story, she’d been just one in a sea of drunk and wasted teenagers, and Joe had been the last person with Tonya. In the Tammy Lynn incident, she’d inferred that Mac was the killer because he’d threatened Doctor Wilson. I could see the possibility of a mix up because of the identical jackets. Further, she’d fingered him as present at the Blue Gringo when he’d put himself at home, with his family. Now that Jennifer had a solid alibi, Mac’s had been shot all to hell. He couldn’t have been home, as he and his mother insisted, at the same time that he was at the Gringo.
“We’re going to have to talk to him,” I said.
“Quite,” she said. “Dee will not be happy with us.” Especially as Mother had spent the morning visiting with her over tea—giving her the good news about Jennifer.
❃ ❃ ❃
Of course, Mac stuck to his alibi. At home with his mom. All night. Yes, Jennifer had snuck out, but that didn’t change the fact that they were home. Crud, and double crud, I wished I had a different suspect.
We’d marched across the gravel drive, me behind Mother, and she behind her purse. We pushed our way past Mac when he opened the door, and stood in their small, living and dining front room combo.
“He was here, Jane,” Dee insisted. She patted Mac’s arm, and he took her hand in his right, and slid his left arm around her. Line dancing alibi. They stood side, by side, her left hand gripped firmly in his right.
“Thanks Mom,” he said, and I wondered why he would thank his mother for providing an alibi that was true. It should just be a given that she would tell the truth… If truth it was.
“Why are you doing this to us?” Dee asked. Tears threatened the corners of her eyes.
“It isn’t like that,” I began.
“It simply… is,” Mother said. “To get to the truth, many secrets must be overturned.” Another Marpleism? She was right, though.
“Are you certain you don’t have anything else to tell us?” Mother turned her piercing, all-seeing eyes on Mac.
He shifted uncomfortably, but didn’t change his story.
“The truth will out,” Mother prophesied. “The truth will out.”
❃ ❃ ❃
My phone buzzed while my feet rested on Mother’s footstool, my head against the back of her chair, my butt in the seat, and my eyes closed. She lay on her bed resting her own eyes. Without looking, I groped for my phone on the side table. Would no one leave me alone? For a second my heart leaped. Continental Geographic? Was it already Sunday? No, it was only Monday. My editor had given me a week.
A familiar voice answered my ‘hello.’ One that could make my heart leap for a different reason than my editor.
“You might want to get over here,” Lonnie said.
“Uh, where?”
“The police station in town.”
I opened my eyes. “Not the Sheriff’s office?”
“No. We have a situation here. In town.”
Huh. Tammy Lynn Wilson was murdered in his territory. I wondered why he needed me to meet him here in town. But, he wasn’t forthcoming. He simply said, “hurry,” and “bring your mom.”
I got her, but she wasn’t pleased to be awoken. “This better be important,” she griped.
“Take it up with Lonnie,” I said as I backed the Jeep out of the drive. I could have run faster than I drove the few blocks, but saddled with my mother, I had to drive.
We pulled into an empty spot in front of the modern single story building. It looked out of place in our mud village, covered with glass and metal, rather than adobe. I tried to hurry her up the walk, but it wasn’t her mission. It was Lonnie’s. She put on the old lady brakes. As we approached, the door opened, and Lonnie held it to the side for us.
“Afternoon, Raymond. Mrs. M.” My heart danced a jig inside my ribcage. But, we each nodded, all business like. I searched the empty foyer for our target.
“Why are we here, Sheriff Zonnie?” Mother barked in her authoritarian voice. “You’ve interrupted very important goings on, for what? An empty room?” I grinned. Very important nap?
“Right this way.” He smiled over her head. The thing about Lonnie is that he never smiles. When he does, it’s the smallest upturn of his lips. But he’d been smiling an awful lot lately. I wondered why. His smile disappeared as the inner door buzzed and he held that one for us too, And, like before, Mother walked between him and the door, under his arm. I almost laughed. She did some of the funniest things, completely unaware.
He directed us down a dull green hall and opened a side door. “In here,” he said. He shook his head several times.
A shock met my eyes, and clearly Mother’s, too. Dee Garfield sat at an interrogation table. A woman police officer interviewed her, and glanced up with an irritated expression as we entered the room. “Sheriff,” she said.
He shrugged his shoulders. “They were in the neighborhood.”
“Why, hello,” Dee said when she raised her gaze from her hands in front of her.
“What have you done, dear?” Mother said, and went to her side. She put an arm over Dee’s shoulder, and set her battle bag on the green table.
The officer harrumphed loudly, and shoved her chair back from the table. “I think we’re done for a moment,” she said and rose. As she left she grabbed Lonnie’s arm and pulled him into the hall. Jealousy shocked me as I felt the green monster rise up at her touch. I smothered it for the silliness it was.
“I think, maybe we’re good cop,” I said to Mother. She glanced across at the mirror that took up most of one wall. Then leaned over Dee again.
“Dear,” Mother said. “Certainly you haven’t claimed that you’re guilty of Mrs. Wilson’s murder, have you?”
“Of course.” Dee turned red eyes on us, reminding me
of my earlier talk with Patsy. So, this is what came of my meddling. My mother’s good friend found it necessary to turn herself in for a murder she clearly hadn’t committed, in order to protect her son. I expected Mother to turn accusing eyes on me, but she didn’t. “Sit, Raymond,” she said. “We can’t have you hanging over us like that.” So, I did.
“Tell me, my dear,” Mother began. “Where did you do this deed?”
“I… I…” She paused. “Way out on the river.”
Mother tightened her lips knowingly and stared pointedly at the mirror. “Any specific location?”
“Just… somewhere. I don’t recall right now. But, it will come to me.”
“Sure, it will.” Mother patted her hand. “Now, how did it happen?”
“Why, what do you mean?” Dee shifted her gaze between the two of us.
“Well,” I said. “You can’t simply walk into a police department and turn yourself in for murder.”
“Certainly, you can,” Mother said. She pursed her lips tightly together as she looked my direction, and then again at the mirror. “Dee has, in fact, done so.”
“Yes, but, I mean.” Exasperated, I blurted out the first words that came to my mind. “How did you do it?”
“I.” Dee paused. “I.” She looked at the mirror, echoing Mother’s gaze. “Well, I suppose I just pushed her in.”
“She didn’t fight back?” Mother stared at the mirror throughout this exchange.
“No, of course not.”
“So, you, an eighty-year-old woman, merely pushed a young woman, in the prime of her life, into the Rio Grande?”
“Yes,” Dee said, matter of factly.
Lonnie and the officer returned. He waved to us to follow him into the hall. “They’re not letting her go,” he said. “Not yet.”
“But they will?” I tried to see behind his shuttered expression. He didn’t look like the same man who played in the water with me two days ago.
It's Marple, Dear Page 12
