The Corpse with the Emerald Thumb

by Cathy Ace

  “None of us has seen Juan,” replied Dorothea on behalf of the group.

  “I thought he might be at home, or in church?” offered Tony, who’d been quiet for a while.

  “I tried both places. No sign. Thought he might be here,” replied Big Al.

  “Unlikely, on his day off,” responded Frank Taylor, his wife nodding her agreement.

  Big Al nodded and put his hands on his hips. “I guess you know what all this is about?” he asked, looking directly at me. Once again he had an unusual look on his face. Clearly the man was thinking about something other than our main topic of conversation. He might be facing a grim task, but he was distracted.

  I felt a blush well up from somewhere deep inside me. Oh dear! “Dorothea told us,” I replied, as truthfully as I could. I’m not really cut out for lying to policemen.

  “Al, you don’t know who our guest is. She’s going to be staying at Henry’s place for the next week,” announced Dorothea, with obvious glee. As I looked at her again, I felt some sympathy for the woman begin to creep over me. Dorothea seemed compelled to make herself the center of attention, which spoke to my internal psychologist of a child who’d been ignored or, maybe because of her size, had been the center of attention for all the wrong reasons. Either way, I felt I should make an effort to temper my judgmental attitude toward the woman.

  Big Al shook his head and held up his hand, indicating that Dorothea should be quiet. She was, but she looked crestfallen. Tapping his teeth with the end of an arm of his sunglasses, Big Al looked sternly at Dorothea. “Don’t tell me, Ms. Simmonds. Don’t tell me!” He returned his attention to me. “I’ve seen this woman’s face somewhere before, but I can’t quite remember where it was. Just give me a moment . . .”

  I could feel my heart thump in my chest. What if he’d looked up from the crime scene and spotted me in the window? What if I’d already given away my link to the resort on the coast, and my connection to Bud?

  We all waited while Big Al narrowed his eyes and sucked on the arm of his sunglasses. Yuk!

  “Got it!” he exclaimed. Every face conveyed anticipation. I suspected mine portrayed something closer to fear, however hard I tried to look like the rest of the group. “I know exactly who she is.” He smiled at me, enigmatically, as he spoke, looking me up and down. “This is Doctor Caitlin Morgan, a professor at the school of criminology at the University of Vancouver. A specialist in criminal psychology, she’s done some fascinating work in the still-controversial field of victim profiling. I must say that her arrival here, today of all days, is . . . very interesting.”

  His words hung in the air as all eyes turned toward me.

  Getting Into It

  I’M RARELY SPEECHLESS. I THINK the general opinion among my students would be that I’m never lost for words. But as the group took in the announcement about who I was, and what I did, I felt my mouth dry up. I swallowed, hard, and mustered a weak smile.

  “How on earth do you know all that about me?” I asked the now much more menacing policeman. Had he seen me at the condo window? Even if he had, how would he know who I was?

  As Al peered at me, he nodded. “I know a great deal more about you than that,” he replied ominously.

  “Really?” I squeaked.

  “But I am being rude.” He smiled. Shark teeth. “I know who you are, but you don’t know who I am. Allow me to introduce myself,” he saluted, hand to his forehead, “Alberto Jesus Beselleu Torres, captain of law enforcement for the municipality of Punta de las Rocas. If folks around here are feeling especially formal, they call me Captain Al. Of course, if someone’s feeling intimidated by my presence, they tend to call me Captain Torres. At your service, Doctor Morgan.” He stood to attention and bowed at the waist.

  “Oh, please, Cait. Call me Cait. I’m not that keen on being Doctor Morgan inside the university, let alone when I’m away from the place. So please, everyone,” I tried to catch each member of our group with what I hoped was a winning smile, “it’s just Cait. Cait Morgan. Thanks.” I tried to maintain the smile as I added, “So how did you come to know who I am?” No point beating about the bush.

  Al relaxed his formal stance and smiled broadly, and more genuinely, I thought. “I wish I could say I possess cop-telepathy, Cait, but I recognized your face from a photograph on your university’s website. I am taking some criminology classes at the university in Guadalajara, and yours is a very good school, with a reputation to which our little department aspires. Your work on victimology, and the theories that came out of your school some years ago on geographic profiling, is fascinating.”

  Again, I could feel a blush rise on my cheeks. I’m not very good at accepting compliments. Not really used to them, I suppose.

  “Thanks,” was all I could summon. Thank heavens that’s the only place you’ve seen me, was what flitted through my mind.

  “So what brings such a well-known criminologist to our little out-of-the-way bit of paradise?” Al asked the obvious, if undesirable, question.

  “She’s a friend of a friend of Henry’s,” butted in Dorothea, aiming to re-establish her position as local know-it-all as rapidly as possible. “Isn’t that right, Cait?” She beamed at me, glowing with proprietorial pride.

  “Yes,” I replied. Monosyllabic responses seemed safest.

  “Well, it’s auspicious,” observed Al. “We’ve all suffered a great loss this morning, as you’ve heard. A valued and much-loved member of our community, Margarita Rosa García Martinez, a wonderful and irreplaceable woman, was found murdered. I have the perpetrator in custody, a circumstance I would like to boast was due to excellence in police work, but, really, I just happened to be on the scene at the time.”

  I have to take my chance!

  “That’s certainly our good fortune, Al. I’ve been told that the man in question . . . do you have his name yet, by the way?” I tried to make it sound like a throwaway question that had just occurred to me.

  Al shook his head. “No,” he replied, looking grim.

  “Oh, right,” I said, trying to make sure I didn’t give away my relief, then continued, “I’ve been told that the man in question cut the throat of your, um, friend, and then strangled her. Can that be true?”

  Al’s face cracked into a wry grin. “I know it seems unlikely, but Margarita’s throat was certainly slashed, and the man was found with his hands around her neck. One could surmise that he was finishing off the job, to be sure she was dead . . . or maybe he thought better of his actions and was trying to save her—”

  “Oh, come off it!” interrupted Dorothea loudly. “Serena said he was throttling the life out of her!”

  “He could have been trying to save her,” said Tony.

  “Rubbish!” exploded Dorothea. “If he wanted to save her, then why did he cut her throat in the first place?”

  “Maybe he didn’t.” It was out before I could stop myself. Damn and blast! Shut up, Cait.

  “What do you mean, Cait?” asked Al, as everyone once again gave me their unwanted attention.

  Yes, what do you mean, you stupid blabbermouth? I composed myself as much as possible. Think! Deflect! In a split second I decided upon a course of action, then threw myself into it.

  “Forgive me,” I said, as gently as I could. “I know I’m a new arrival here, and I am mindful of the fact that you all knew Margarita and have feelings for her. As Al has told you all, I’m a person who focuses on victims—I consider their life and lifestyle, their habits, their history, their families and friends to help me, and those in law enforcement, build a better picture of why and how they might have ended up becoming a victim. None of this is to imply that they chose to become a victim, of course,” I added hurriedly, as this is one of the criticisms of my discipline that I hear most often. “Certainly I have colleagues whose life’s work is to look into the backgrounds of the criminals. But I look to the victim. Now, in this instance, you might not know anything about the man you have in custody, but you all know a great deal
about the victim. And that knowledge could lead us to discover who the murderer really is . . . and why Margarita, apparently, had her throat slashed and was strangled.”

  “But we know who the killer is,” shouted Dorothea. I wondered if she had any idea how to use a normal speaking voice. “It’s that horrible man!”

  I didn’t like to hear Bud spoken of that way: I worked hard to prevent my expression from betraying my feelings toward Dorothea. My sympathies toward her were evaporating.

  “I think that Cait means we can find out who the killer really is, rather than who the real killer is, isn’t that right, Cait?” Frank Taylor leaped to my defense.

  He was totally wrong, of course, but I didn’t want anyone to know that. “That’s exactly right,” I said as brightly as possible.

  “Ah, if only we could afford to retain the services of the famous Professor Morgan,” said Al, watching my eyebrow rise, “but Cait Morgan, the private individual, is here for a vacation, not to work on a case.” He looked a little disappointed.

  I decided to go in for the kill. Obviously this man was ambitious, otherwise why would a local cop in one of Mexico’s smallest municipalities be a part-time criminology student? He must want to better himself. I saw how I could insert myself into the case, find out who had really killed Margarita, and clear Bud. I had to be careful to go about things the right way. I didn’t want to appear to be too keen to get involved, but I also didn’t want to put him off to the point where he’d feel guilty about accepting my insights.

  “You know what,” I opened, “it sounds like a fascinating case. With all due respect to the late Margarita and you, her friends, I think I would find it an interesting challenge, that is if you don’t mind me asking you lots of questions about Margarita, her life, and maybe even your lives?”

  There were general shrugs around the room. I noticed, out of the corner of my eye, that Al had the look of a hungry man eyeing up a meal.

  “I wouldn’t want to impose,” he said quietly.

  “So you think you can work out who this murderer is, just by asking us all a bunch of questions?” asked Frank Taylor hesitantly.

  Al managed a weak smile—and a slight eye-roll—in my direction.

  I stepped up. “Not exactly. What I do is try to understand the life of the victim, because this often opens up possible reasons for them having been killed. You see, without giving you the full lecture on the subject, more often than not there is some link between a victim and the person who killed them. This is especially the case when it comes to premeditated murder. Most murders are carried out by someone very close to the victim—a spouse, family member, or very close friend. That’s where most investigations start, and where I’d start too: with the victim’s closest family and friends.”

  “But Margarita couldn’t possibly have known the man that Al has in custody, or someone would have recognized him. Oh!” Dorothea dramatically clapped her hand to her forehead. “Of course—he’s a hit man, that’ll be it!” She looked triumphant for an instant, then crestfallen. “But why? Why would a hit man come here to kill Margarita?”

  “We don’t know everything about Margarita,” said Ada Taylor quite timidly. She seemed surprised to discover she’d spoken aloud.

  Frank took his chance to leap to his wife’s defense. “That’s true, Dorothea. We all knew her, to some degree or other, but that’s really just her professional life, you know, her flowers, her plants, and her photography.”

  Photography? Interesting.

  “Yes,” agreed Ada, spurred on by her husband’s support, “I’ve never even met her at a social engagement when she wasn’t involved in the event in some way—doing the flowers or taking the photos. In fact, I have no real idea about the woman, or her interests, outside of her jobs.”

  Dorothea looked ready to shout something at us all when Tony spoke up. He had a way of disappearing into the background that I suspected came from having been in the food service industry for years. “Callie knows . . . knew Margarita quite well. She liked her. It’s funny, though, we were saying only the other day how very private she was. She wasn’t chatty when she was doing her floral work, or her photography, or even on occasions like last night, when she brought all her accounts for Callie to work through. In the past year of their being what folks would call ‘close,’ Callie’s only ever been inside Margarita’s home once, and that was because she’d offered to help carry some equipment to her van.”

  I allowed the conversation to develop. It was interesting to see this group gradually realize that they’d hardly known the woman who a few moments earlier they were sure they’d all understood.

  I noticed that Al’s eyes were darting around the group as people spoke. He was nodding his head. “You’re all right, of course,” he said. “Even as I was driving her killer to the police station, I thought about how little people here knew of the real woman.” An interesting choice of words. He looked at me. “Cait, it’s clear that in just a few moments you’ve made people think about this in a way that we might never have done. If you feel you could bear to give up some of your free time to help me gain some perspective on this, I’d value your input. It won’t be for long. I’ll be handing the guy over to the Federales the day after tomorrow. They reckon that by then they’ll have cleared out enough of the people they rounded up in the dawn raids this morning for there to be room in the system for him. Since I’m stuck with him until then, it would be a great comfort to our community if I could use that time to maybe work out who he is, and why he killed Margarita.”

  And it wouldn’t be too bad for your career, would it Captain Torres? I thought, as I smiled sweetly.

  “I’d be grateful for the chance to get to Casa LaLa, maybe wash and brush up a bit, and unpack a few things first, but I don’t see why we can’t just dive straight in,” I replied.

  Al beamed. “I’ll give you a hand with your bags, then I’ll go find Juan and break the news. How about I pick you up here at 5:00 PM?”

  I checked my watch.

  “Okay, that would be great. Thanks. Do I walk to Casa LaLa from here . . . ?” I wasn’t really sure how to finish my sentence as I didn’t know what my alternatives were.

  “No need to drive, it’s the nearest building to this one. Just a five minute walk,” replied Tony. “You have the key I gave you?” I nodded. “And the code is for the alarm, which has a pad right inside the front door. The water boys will be there tomorrow, so would you like to take some bottles for now?”

  “The water boys?” I was puzzled.

  Tony smiled. “Yeah, every Monday, Thursday, and Saturday morning they bring water for the water coolers in the houses and take the used containers. Since Henry wasn’t expecting you, he didn’t hold on to any containers, so they’ll bring you two tomorrow—I’ll sort that for you. Then you’ll have a spare. If you can be at home around 8:00 AM the guy can show you how to put the bottle onto the unit that cools and dispenses it. It’s not complicated. You just put the empty where he tells you, and they replace it next time they call. If you need extra, just let me know. But, like I say, I’m guessing there won’t be anything at Henry’s place at all, so why not take a few bottles now, to pop in the fridge? I’m sure you’ll find your way around his place okay. The pool boy comes on Friday and Monday, so he’ll show up tomorrow morning, but you don’t need to be there for him. He has a key and his own code.”

  Oh, my very own pool! The thought gave me pleasure. Even though I can’t swim, I enjoy the way a pool catches and plays with the light, and, if it’s shallow enough, I can always have a little dunk. Then I immediately remembered poor Bud’s plight, and my priorities—no dunking for me!

  “Thanks, Tony. Maybe I’ll see you later for a bite to eat. We’ll see how my time goes with Al, okay?” My smile was genuine as I was remembering the menu I’d read.

  “Sure thing. If no one else needs me right now, I’d really like to call Callie. I think I’ve got the full picture. She’ll be devastated by the news, but
it’ll be worse if she hears it from someone else.” Tony was trying to get Dorothea, Frank, and Ada to leave, and they took the hint.

  “Absolutely, Tony. You’ve got a busy day ahead of you, I’m sure,” said Frank, as he began to usher his wife toward the door. “Come along, Dorothea, we’ll let this young man get on with his work. We retired folk have nothing better to do with our time than sit about, but he’s got to get ready to feed us all tonight. It would be great if you could join us, Cait. We all eat here most evenings, even if it’s just to see each other and catch up on the gossip.” His expression changed from jovial to embarrassed as he uttered his last words.

  “Oh, Frank,” remonstrated his wife.

  “Everyone knows what I mean,” replied a red-faced Frank. Looking at me he added, “It’s always fun to have the chance to catch up with a fellow Canadian. Did you know our place is called Casa Canuck?” He grinned. “You a hockey fan, Cait? Get to many of those Vancouver Canucks games?”

  “Not on my money, and with the prices of the tickets,” I replied, maybe a little too quickly.

  “Quite right,” said Ada. “We watch most of the games here, on satellite,” she added. “Sometimes it feels like we live in a very sunny Prince George, almost like we never left home.”

  “So you’re from Prince George?” I attempted to sound politely interested.

  Frank replied, “I had a brewery there, family business. Ada was the local butcher’s daughter. It was a match made in heaven: beer and beef! The kids wanted nothing to do with it, so I sold up. Now I’m spending their inheritance. They didn’t want to put in the work, so they won’t get the profits. Besides, if our son wants to be an eternal kid and our daughter wants to double the world population with that tofu-eating husband of hers, good luck to ’em, but they can do it on their own. I worked my way up from the bottom—my father made sure I did every job there was before he let me have any management responsibility. But kids these days . . .”