The Corpse with the Emerald Thumb

by Cathy Ace

  “Absolutely! Do you want to put it in my camera to look at her photos?”

  “Good idea,” replied Al. “Let’s do it back in my office. It’s cozier there, and the light is better.”

  I agreed, and moments later we were head to head, looking at expertly composed photographs of birds at rest, wild flowers on the cliffs, waves crashing against rocks. The pictures were beautiful, but none of them showed an illicit embrace, a drug deal going down, or an illegal, or even worrisome, act of any sort. In fact there were hardly any photographs with humans in them at all. Clearly Margarita had loved sunrise, and sunset. Most of the shots were taken at that time. In a few, she’d used her bicycle wheels to frame an otherwise plain subject. With some it was the contrast of blurred images in the foreground with sharp ones in the distance that made a shot work, with others it was the reverse. She was a good photo­grapher. As I clicked through her work, I could tell it was a difficult process for Al, but I kept going.

  “Oh look, someone’s got a van just like Margarita’s,” I said, as I clicked through three or four shots that had clearly been taken in rapid succession. The shots showed the waves, touched by the first light of day, crashing against the huge formation of reddish rocks that sat off the shore, forming a point, which had inspired the naming of the area. In the background of the shot was the winding coastal road, upon which there was a little white van, just like the one that Margarita drove. “It’s a shame it got in the way,” I added. Clearly the photographer had thought the same thing because she had taken at least half a dozen more shots even after it had driven out of sight, the light on the water different in each one.

  “She was so good at this, but there’s nothing out of the ordinary here,” said Al sadly, as we realized we were looking at the first photographs we’d seen for the second time. “I had thought that maybe she’d seen something or someone she shouldn’t have . . .” He struck his desk with his fist in frustration. “If only that man would talk!”

  Clearly he’d given some thought to the possibility that Margarita had known something, or photographed something, that might have led to her murder. But, equally clearly, he also still firmly believed that Bud was the one who had killed her.

  If I am going to help Bud, I need to think!

  “Al, could you do me a favor, please?” I sighed. “I know this is a difficult time for you, and I really want to help with your inquiries all I can, but I could really do with some quiet time. Is there any chance I could just take half an hour, in a comfy chair, in your apartment? It would save me the trouble of going all the way back to Henry’s place. I just need to think. I need to consider what the drugging of Tony and Callie and the break-in at the store might mean. Would that be okay?”

  “You mean you have to work out who might have done those things, when that man is still locked up in there?” he asked grimly.

  I nodded.

  “Sure, let me show you through. I’ll set you up with a beer, and you can have some thinking space.”

  “No, no beer, thanks, but a couple of bottles of water would be great. I’m finding that all this humidity, and the perspiring that goes with it, is making me thirsty, and I don’t want to let you down by drinking beer and not being at my best.”

  A few minutes later I was settled in a corner chair, which was obviously where Al sat to read at night, given its proximity to a small table that was covered with books and papers and held a reading lamp. He opened the windows and turned on a ceiling fan, as well as a fan that sat on a table, and another that stood in the corner of the room. I had a cold bottle of water in one hand, a head full of information, an aching desire to work out what on earth was going on in Punta de las Rocas, and an excellent place to do just that.

  “I’ll give you a shout if I get any news from the hospital. I’m hoping that maybe Callie or Tony can shed some light on who might have drugged them, and, of course, I’ll let you know if my prisoner talks. You go ahead, Cait Morgan. I have read everything you have ever written, so I know that some of your methods are unusual. Give it your best. Come up with an explanation, and then come tell me what it is. Okay?” He half-smiled, but concern played around his eyes.

  “Okay, I’ll do my best,” I replied.

  As he pulled the door closed, he said in Spanish, “It had better be good.” Odd.

  Tea Time

  I WOKE WITH A START when Al touched my shoulder. “You were tired. I let you sleep,” he said quietly.

  “What time is it?” I asked, then I looked at my watch. It was gone 5:00 PM. “Never mind,” I continued. “What happened? I’ve been asleep for over an hour! I didn’t mean to fall asleep. Oh no!” I was panicking. Bud didn’t have time for me to sleep. I’d meant to do some deep thinking, to let my mind float in a technique I’d used before called “wakeful dreaming.” My body had let me down. It had let Bud down. I’d achieved nothing at all, and his time in the relative safety of Al’s cells was ticking down.

  I jumped up, immediately regretted moving so quickly, and gave my body a moment to uncurl properly. I made noises like my mother used to make in her later years. My mouth was parched. I needed water. I drank from the bottle Al had given me earlier. It was warm, but at least it was wet.

  Somewhere on the edge of my consciousness was a sliver of a thought. A remembrance from a dream. What was it? It was a question I had to ask . . . who? Think, Cait!

  “I’m sorry, Al, I’ve let you down. I didn’t mean to sleep. I’ve wasted time. I need to talk to the people from the Hacienda Soleado who were on the spot at the crime scene, and to Bob and Maria too. But I have no way of getting to either place. Could you help me out? Oh—and is there any news from the Booths? What have I missed while I’ve been asleep?”

  Al looked at me and shook his head heavily. He looked tired, haggard even. “The doctor at the American hospital says that Callie Booth has woken but has no idea what happened. She took Dorothea’s sleeping pill, and from half an hour after that, everything was a sleepy blur. That is the good news. The sad news is that Tony has died. He never regained consciousness. I am partly to blame.” I noted that his red eyes were probably the result of weeping. “Last night, when you left to walk to Casa LaLa, I stayed with Tony and we had a few drinks together. The doctor says it is because he had alcohol in his system that he died. Callie had not drunk anything, so she survived. Though she does not see that as good fortune now, having just been told that her husband has died, on top of her best friend being murdered.”

  “You must blame the person who doped them both.” Al nodded, then looked away from me. “Is there anything else?” I hardly dared to ask.

  “The doctor at the other hospital, the Mexican hospital, where I left Juan this afternoon, has called me to tell me that Juan had to be ejected from the mortuary because he would not leave his daughter’s body. Which, given that he did not speak to her in life, and I know that this hurt Margarita a great deal, has puzzled me greatly. I will also admit it has made me angry.” He looked it.

  “Miguel has telephoned me from his girls’ school to tell me that they are all quite well, and to thank you for passing on the message, but to say you must have misunderstood, because the school did not call the police station.”

  Al let that sink in for a moment. He obviously suspected something fishy.

  “Other than all of that, as if it wasn’t enough, I have been in my office attending to my normal duties, one of which, sadly, means I have to go out shortly. I need to visit a local family. A niece of theirs, who lives about fifty miles from here, has just been found dead. She ran away from home a few days ago, after an argument with her father. Her parents thought she would go to stay with a friend, then come home. The Federales found her this morning, but they do not know exactly when she died. Maybe a day before she was found. It looks like she was the latest victim of the Rose Killer. The news of the killing has broken, but they have not revealed the identity of the girl to the public yet. I must speak with her aunt and uncle. I think that someone
in their family will have told them already, but, although this is a case for the Federales, I can perform my community duties and visit them, to show them respect. The family lives in the village near the Rocas Hermosas Resort. I will take you to Rutilio’s. I know that many of the people from the Hacienda Soleado will be there to eat. Of course, Amigos del Tequila cannot open tonight without Tony, but it seems that the FOGTTs choose to eat outside their homes most days, so they have arranged to eat at Rutilio’s tonight. Miguel says Rutilio is very excited because this group of people doesn’t usually eat at his place. He has called his brother to say he’s going to take his chance to impress them all.” Al rolled his eyes. “Is that a good plan for you?” His voice was flat, which wasn’t surprising, but there was anger beneath the sadness. His movements were short, sharp, staccato. He was frustrated and angry. But I couldn’t be sure why.

  I agreed to his plan for me. Once again, we sped off toward the sea. This time it was still light, and there was a strange greenish glow in the sky. The clouds that had been bubbling on the horizon when I’d eaten brunch at Rutilio’s now filled the sky. Layer passed across layer, some the palest of grays, some thunderous black, the fading sun streaming through fleeting gaps. The humidity signaled a probable storm, and I could almost feel the electricity building in the air. When we reached the resort, Al pulled over in front of Bob’s Bodega, and I got out of the car. As he pulled away, I walked to Rutilio’s Restaurant, where, sure enough, the full complement of FOGTTs was all present and correct. It was as though they operated like a flock. Of crows.

  My arrival brought mild interest but no cheer to the group, intent as it was upon discussing the terrible tragedies that had befallen the locality. Rutilio had pulled tables into a grouping so everyone could sit together, and there was a spare seat for me—between Greg and Frank. Oh joy!

  I accepted the seat and found that Ada was pouring me a cup of greenish tea. It seemed incongruous, to say the least. I thanked her for her thoughtfulness, sipped at the tea, which was as disgusting as I had expected, and asked Rutilio for a bottle of water.

  Poor guy’s knocking himself out for this lot, I thought to myself. He was red in the face and shouting at the two girls, who seemed to work the same hours he did. They all appeared to be rushing about without achieving a thing.

  With tea finally giving way to cocktails, served alongside chips and salsa, I accepted a chilled Pacifico from Rutilio, declined a glass, and sipped from the bottle. Jean didn’t seem impressed, but impressing Jean George wasn’t on my to-do list that evening—in fact, given the stinky look she’d shot at me when we first met, it wasn’t ever likely to be. I still had no idea why she’d been so snotty. Everyone else, after all, had been quite welcoming.

  The conversations ebbed and flowed, as they always do within a group. Shock, disgust, sadness, worries about how Amigos del Tequila could continue without a chef—these were the expected topics. I managed to remain noncommittal, nodding when required, but not really participating. Frankly, I was impressed that these people, who obviously spent a great deal of time in one another’s company, still had so much to talk about. And, boy, could they talk. The dynamics were interesting. The six of them chatted, and I let it all wash over me, while I smoked a cigarette, sipped my beer—my first of the day, delicious!—and gathered my thoughts. At the farthest end of the table, I caught Dorothea expounding on how terrible it was that the man in prison had rushed in and killed Margarita without even taking the time to talk to her—stupid woman. Then I thought about what she’d said in a different way. Context, Cait. Of course—that’s not how it happened!

  I’d been grappling with who could have entered the flower shop while I’d been observing it. I’d become completely caught up in the idea that the whole incident had begun when Bud had left the apartment, because for me that’s when it had begun. My thinking about the event lacked true context—a context that included more variables than Bud’s part in it. It could have begun ten, twenty minutes earlier. There was no real reason to suppose that the killer had entered the store and killed Margarita immediately. Yes, her throat must have been slashed just a few moments before Bud entered her store, but the killer could have been in there with her for some time. My first visit to Margarita’s store had presented me with a picture of an attack without much of a struggle. Margarita had either not seen the knife coming, because it came from behind, or, if she’d been facing her killer, she must not have suspected that they meant her harm. I’d been looking at the whole thing within the wrong time frame. I had to reconsider the whole series of events leading up to Bud’s discovery of Margarita’s body from much earlier than just a few minutes beforehand.

  I felt compelled to remove Callie and Tony Booth from my list of possible suspects, but that still left a lot of folks in the running, including anyone, resident or visitor, who might have wanted Margarita dead, for whatever reason, and had simply walked into her store, killed her, and managed to get away unseen.

  Looking around the table I realized that maybe someone who’d been on the spot had seen something useful after all. They just hadn’t been asked the right questions, about the right time frame.

  Purely by chance there was a lull in the conversations when I asked, “I don’t suppose any of you saw anyone in the street, or going into Margarita’s store, within the half an hour before she was killed, did you? And I mean anyone, even someone you didn’t know or recognize.” I heard Jean gasp. I turned in her direction.

  Jean George glanced at her husband. “Dean and I had been walking on the beach together for at least an hour before we arrived at the flower shop, hadn’t we, honey-pie? So we couldn’t have seen anyone go inside the store at all.”

  Dean nodded, but no one else answered, because, at just that moment, Al arrived. I almost coughed up a lung when he appeared beside me. When I’d stopped choking, I managed to splutter, “You’re going to give me a heart attack if you keep doing that.”

  I was annoyed that Al’s arrival meant everyone had an excuse to not answer my question, as seats were rearranged to accommodate him, and then the food appeared. We all sampled different items from the large platters that Rutilio had decided to serve to us family style. It wasn’t bad food; it just seemed as though it was all made from roughly the same ingredients encased in different things. To be fair, despite the fact that I was rethinking the entire case, I enjoyed everything I tasted, and some of it was very good indeed. Maybe Miguel had a point when he said that his brother prepared good food. Though I suspected that Rutilio had taken the decision to cater to the tourist palate just a bit too far, and we were missing out on many wonderful local flavors, sauces, and exciting dishes.

  As I ate and thought about the people I was sharing my meal with, I caught a snippet of something that Dorothea was hissing at Greg in a whisper. “. . . color looks great in the bottle . . . never know,” she said. My mouth was full of chicken fajita when it came to me in a flash. Of course, maybe that’s what you’re up to . . . bottles versus barrels. Callie’s notes . . . the calculations.

  “I’d like to make a toast,” said Al, breaking across my train of thought. He was standing at what had now, de facto, become the head of the table. He cleared his throat. “This isn’t going to be a normal sort of toast, but I think you’ll understand why I’m doing this if you’ll give me a moment.” There were shufflings, and a couple of nods and smiles. “When I first met Professor Cait Morgan, I spoke very highly of her.” Smiles and nods were directed at me. “I was delighted when she said she’d help me look into the identity of Margarita’s killer, because I have developed an admiration for her work as a part of my studies. I have read everything that she has published, and she is an excellent thinker and researcher.” I was beginning to feel a bit embarrassed. “As some of you know, it was I who recognized her for who she is, because I had seen her photograph on her university’s website.” Nobody, myself included, seemed to have any idea what Al was rambling on about, and I wished he’d get to the point. �
��I visited that same website when I was in my office earlier today, and it was then I found out that at the end of the last academic year Professor Morgan was elected to her university’s Roll of Honor for a second time.”

  I had no idea what was coming next, but I was squirming in any case because I hate being praised in public.

  Al continued, undaunted. His expression was complex: a mixture of determination, anger, and . . . sadness. Odd. “To mark this, she was invited to a luncheon, which was followed by a ceremony where she was presented with a framed commemoration of her achievement.” He pulled a roll of paper from his pocket, smoothed it out, and held it up for us to see. It was a color print of a photograph of me being presented with the item he’d just described. He turned the photograph so that everyone had a chance to look at it, which they did, most smiling at me afterwards and trying to look gracious.

  “I’ve also made an enlargement of a figure standing behind Cait Morgan.” As he said the words, my heart sank.

  He unrolled the second photograph and held it up. I didn’t need my glasses. I knew what it would show. There was Bud, smiling proudly and clapping, as I beamed into the camera.

  “That’s him!” shouted Frank. “The killer. In that photograph.”

  He was speaking on behalf of the entire group, and all eyes turned to me. I could feel my whole body shaking. I’d only ever felt that way once before in my life—when the cops dragged me out of my home, as the corpse of my ex-boyfriend lay on my bathroom floor.