The 27-Ingredient Chili Con Carne Murders: A Eugenia Potter Mystery

by Nancy Pickard

  Marjorie McHenry didn’t even acknowledge Jed’s presence when she came up and surprised Mrs. Potter by offering to take over the job of attaching the lids to the little tubs of leftover chili.

  “Why, thank you, Marjorie.”

  Neither of the McHenrys took a turn at the chili pot. They ate theirs standing, alone together—if you didn’t count their bodyguard—in a far corner of Mrs. Potter’s living room, talking to nobody, approached by no one. A strange pair, Mrs. Potter thought, as she had so often. She didn’t know whether she was dreading or anticipating the dinner with them and Jed the next night. Did they know that she was coming too? Mrs. Potter glanced at Jed, who smiled at her again. Had he asked them yet? Well, she thought as she returned his smile, I guess I won’t know that until I show up at their door tomorrow night. Unless, that is, I manage to get a few more minutes alone with Jed before the end of this horrible … wonderful … day.

  “Here, Bandy.” She handed him one of the tubs of leftover chili that Marj McHenry had just lidded for her. “Take some of this back home with you.”

  When he didn’t immediately go off with it, but stood there for a long moment, she took the hint. Mrs. Potter lifted two more tubs off the counter and stacked them onto the other one in his hands. Only then did Bandy murmur “gracias,” and turn to go. Mrs. Potter knew why: those extra tubs would go into his freezer to feed some thin and hungry stranger who sneaked up Bandy’s back staircase under cover of the dark of some future night.

  He’d said he didn’t have any “nephews” staying with him now.

  Mrs. Potter wondered if that still held true.

  Did “now” mean now … or only then, when he’d answered her question.

  That worry disappeared from her mind as the other guests came up to offer their condolences, and to tell her they’d be stopping by Juanita’s house on their way home. Several of them promised to show up even earlier the next morning to continue the search for Linda Scarritt, even though the sheriff was taking over. One after another her neighbors thanked her, and she them, and they accepted her little offerings of leftover chili.

  “Thanks, Genia,” said one of the women. “Now I won’t have to cook for the kids after I pick them up from the baby-sitter.”

  “Well, then, here,” Mrs. Potter said, “please take another tub.”

  By the time she was finished and everybody but Che Thomas and Jed had gone, Mrs. Potter felt she had stocked the larders of virtually the entire valley with little plastic containers of 27-Ingredient Chili con Carne.

  CHAPTER 19

  Mrs. Potter still hoped to say good night to Jed privately.

  But his other hostess, Che Thomas, walked with them to the front door. Jed and Mrs. Potter could only thank one another, politely and rather stiffly, under Che’s amused eyes, and tell each other awkwardly how nice it was to have had the opportunity to see each other again. Mrs. Potter cringed inwardly at the stilted sound of her own words. It was like saying good night to him in front of her college dorm “mother.”

  “Good night, Genia, darling.” Che leaned forward to plant a kiss on Mrs. Potter’s cheek. “I’m going home to have a good cry over Ricardo, and I suggest that you go right to bed and do the same. I’ll send somebody over to help you clean up the mess in the morning, so you just turn off the fire under the pots and close the door on those dirty dishes. You can always find a clean cup for coffee in the morning, and what more will you need, after all? If anything more happens tonight, you’ll call me, you hear?”

  “Yes, and thank you for everything, Che.”

  “Pshaw, girl!” Che linked an arm with Jed, and led him off the ramada steps. “You follow me, Mr. Jedders H. White, and you won’t get lost on these back country roads.”

  “Good night, Andy,” he said, turning back once.

  “Good night, Jed,” she called after him.

  “What’s this Andy business?” she heard Che ask him as the two walked out her front gate.

  Her bedside phone rang just as she was crawling under the covers. She grabbed it quickly, in case it was Juanita.

  “Hello?”

  “Am I calling too late, Andy?”

  “Oh, Jed, of course not.”

  Mrs. Potter sat up again, using her free hand to prop herself up against the pillows and to pull the covers up under her arms. It was ridiculous, she thought, how pleased she was to hear his voice, and how invigorated she felt, when only the moment before she’d been so tired she could hardly move her brush across her teeth.

  “I hated saying good-bye to you like that …”

  “I regretted it too …”

  “But there wasn’t anything we could do about it …”

  “Not with Che standing there …”

  “So I had to call; I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Not at all. I’m glad …” Mrs. Potter found that she could only repeat those words. “I’m really so glad …”

  “Andy, I shouldn’t say this, what with all the tragedy that surrounds you tonight, but I still want you to know that I had the most wonderful time with you today. It was grand to see you again. I know this isn’t the time …”

  “It’s all right, Jed.”

  “The last thing you need is some lovesick old swain showing up on your doorstep …”

  Mrs. Potter began laughing, and oh, it felt so good, it was almost as much a release as the tears she had intended to shed privately once she was in bed. “Is that what you are, Jed? A swain? That sounds rather dashing to me.”

  He began laughing, too, and then said, “I wanted to stay and help you clean up the kitchen, but Mrs. Thomas …”

  “Yes …”

  He paused. She paused. Neither of them spoke for a long, meaningful moment. “Well, I won’t keep you on the line, even though I’d like to talk to you for hours, days, months. I just want to tell you—oh, Lord, Andy, I guess I just want to tell you everything. How beautiful you still are. How grand I think your life has been, and what a success I think you’ve made of it. What a wonderful woman you grew up to be, and all behind my back. I’m babbling, I know, and you’re thinking that this is embarrassing and not at all the proper behavior for a gently reared Bostonian, and you’re wishing I’d stop and hang up …”

  “Far from it, Jed.”

  “Andy, I feel like a teenager. I don’t know if I can wait until tomorrow night to see you again.”

  Mrs. Potter was blessed with sudden inspiration. “Maybe you won’t have to, if you really want to get together again sooner than that. I have to return a rental car to the Nogales airport tomorrow, Jed, would you like to go with me?”

  “I’d love to,” he said quickly, but then added, “How will we get back?”

  “Fly,” Mrs. Potter announced. “I’ll tell you about it tomorrow.”

  “You want to hire that aerial search company to fly us over the same route that Ricardo took when he hired them, don’t you?”

  Mrs. Potter could only blink in admiration.

  “You’re wonderful, Jed.”

  “Hold that thought,” he commanded. “Good night, dear Andy.”

  Mrs. Potter was left with a dial tone in her hand and a broad smile on her face … which suddenly grew quite pink. She’d forgotten all about the party line. Had there been any telltale clicks? How could she know, when she only had ears for his voice! Well, now the entire valley would probably know that the tall, handsome gentleman was no ordinary guest of the C Lazy U.…

  Her embarrassed pleasure soon surrendered to the tears she had delayed crying for Ricardo. She fell asleep marveling at the exquisite capacity of the human heart to hold joy and sorrow, hope and hopelessness, in equal measure, and all at the same time.

  She awoke once in the middle of the night, thinking about the list of initials on her yellow pad and about Ricardo’s remark about Agatha Christie mystery novels. If she was right, and he had been murdered, then those twelve people were the suspects, because it was one of them, she felt positive, who was to meet Ricardo
at five o’clock that morning.

  “Who, Ricardo?” she whispered into the darkness of her bedroom. “Who killed you, and what have they done with your granddaughter?”

  This time, it wasn’t sadness that kept her staring wake-fully into the dark room, it was anger … a growing fury that begged—no, demanded—resolution.

  “I’ll find her, Ricardo,” she whispered. “I swear it to you, old friend. And then I’ll find out who is trying to destroy your family and this ranch.”

  CHAPTER 20

  Bandy’s bum leg hurt him as he swung it down onto the ground and got out of his truck, in front of the garage. He grunted, a sound he didn’t allow himself to make when other people were around.

  At the thought of other people, Bandy glanced up at the windows of his apartment. Dark. No sign of the boys for whom he’d brought the chili. Before he lifted the plastic tubs from the seat, he checked to be sure the lids were on tight. He’d left them in the truck for a little while up at la patrona’s while he made his usual rounds of the compound to check that the side gates were locked, and when he’d returned to the truck he’d noticed that one of the lids was loose. Good thing he’d seen it or there’d have been a mess in the front seat. Making sure that the lids were now secure, he picked up the tubs with his gnarled fingers and made his way to his own front door, hurting with every step.

  He didn’t hold any grudges against the pain. Didn’t begrudge it the loss of most of his cowboying, didn’t resent it for keeping him from riding, or doing what he’d been accustomed to do. The pain was just there, a part of his existence like daylight and starlight. Besides, it was a reminder of Ricardo. The old man felt terrible about the way that Ricardo’s body had lain alone in the storm, tossed about like an elk carcass, partly devoured by predators. He wasn’t responsible for that, but he felt bad about it anyway.

  He wanted Ricardo to have a good burial now.

  He wanted it to be the best the county had ever seen, with riders astride horses with silver trappings and women wearing lacy mantillas to cover their heads, and children crying and priests dressed in the black cassocks he remembered from the cathedrals of his childhood in Mexico.

  He paused to take a breath, to ease his leg.

  The pain was all right, he figured. He was lucky, he figured, to have gotten away, from as tough a life as he’d led, with only this one pain. There could have been broken bones aplenty; he could have been gored any number of times by a bull, or tossed on his head by a horse, or even have shot himself in the foot, who knew? As it was, there was only this one bad pain and he’d earned it honestly, doing hard work. So what if he couldn’t do that anymore? So what if he wasn’t good for anything besides making a swimming pool safe for a woman to swim in? There were worse jobs and much less honorable ones, he figured. She was a good woman anyway and he was pleased to do that for her if that’s what kept him in room and board.

  He didn’t know how much longer that would last, if Juanita had her way.

  At least now, he thought, they’d need him awhile longer.

  He was closer to the garage, only a few more steps to go. He glanced up again. Quiet, just like he’d told them to be. They were good boys, these two new ones, but too young to be making the trek. Or maybe he was just feeling too old, and so everybody else looked too young. He’d told them there was trouble on the ranch, a couple of people missing, and they’d be mighty handy scapegoats if anybody was to know they were around. Well, Mrs. Potter knew now; after giving him these tubs of her good chili, she’d have guessed it. Anybody could have seen her hand them to him and they could also have guessed what he wanted them for. Well, maybe there wasn’t as much for his boys to worry about now that everybody thought Ricardo got bucked off Patches.

  Not such a bad way to go, in Bandy’s opinion.

  He wouldn’t have minded it himself, but it was too late for that, now that he couldn’t ride anymore.

  Bandy smiled to himself: maybe he’d fall in la patrona’s swimming pool and drown one day. She didn’t know he couldn’t swim; she’d never let him do even that small job if she knew he’d never learned how to swim. They could bury him under the rose bushes and never have to fertilize them again.

  Bandy was chuckling under his breath as he put his key in his door.

  But there was something he was forgetting, some remaining threat to his boys. The sudden thought made him stop smiling.

  Linda. At the memory of her, the old man leaned against the doorframe and broke down in tears that racked his shoulders. Poor little girl. Such a nice child, always so kind to him, so cheerful and hard working. Poor child, poor little girl. Ricardo loved her so much, and now where was she …?

  They could blame his boys for this.…

  They could say his boys found them, killed Ricardo, raped her, killed her, hid her, they could say anything.…

  He had to warn his boys, get them moving, gone from the ranch.

  Bandy knew what he had to do: feed them a good dinner of la patrona’s chili, pack them up with a few dollars and a spare shirt from the stockpile of castaways he kept for “his boys,” and truck them into the next county before morning. That’s the advice he’d gotten this evening from the one person he’d told about them and about what they’d heard when they had slipped over the border onto Las Palomas Saturday night. They’d been camping on the hard ground at the bottom of El Bizcocho when they were jolted out of their nervous sleep by gunshots. And a woman screaming. They’d been so scared, thinking somebody was shooting at them. Bandy had known he had to tell somebody who’d know what to do about it, because maybe it had something to do with Ricardo and Linda. Or maybe it didn’t. He was torn in his heart, wanting to help his friends, and yet not wanting to do anything that might hurt his boys.

  He felt a welling of paternal protectiveness surging inside him that warred with his grief over Ricardo and his fear for Linda. He wiped his eyes with his jacket sleeve and pushed the door open. He began painfully to climb the stairs to his rooms on the second floor. When he pushed open the door at the top, he walked into utter silence.

  “Hombres? Está bien. Tengo chile para ustedes.”

  Men. He always called them men even when they were young as these two, because men was what they were going to have to be from now on. It’s okay. I’ve brought chili for you. They looked so relieved when they saw it was truly him. They took chairs at the kitchen table while Bandy spooned out the chili, which was still warm from la patrona’s stove, into three bowls. He’d been too upset to eat much up at the big house, but now he knew he’d need the energy of good food to propel him through the rest of this long night when he would help his nephews escape the county. Like them, he drowned the chili in Tabasco sauce and then he ate quickly and heartily, finishing his bowl and reaching for seconds.

  * * *

  Before dawn, Ken Ryerson pulled his truck up to the Ortegas’ garage, and gave a soft toot with his horn. When Bandy didn’t appear after a few minutes, Ken tooted softly again, sensitive to Juanita and her family who might be asleep in the house. He allowed enough time for the old man to put on his hat, jacket, and gloves, to limp to the door upstairs, to close it, to limp downstairs, and to open the lower door.

  When Bandy didn’t come down, Ken went after him.

  He opened the bottom door with his own set of ranch keys and bounded up the stairs, calling Bandy’s name. He thrust open the door and stepped inside. The smell hit him first. He stayed long enough to see the damage was mortal and that there wasn’t anything left for him to do for the three men in the small apartment, and then he stumbled down the stairs and was violently sick outside the garage.

  When he could stand up straight and breathe again, Ken walked to Juanita’s house. He couldn’t run; his legs were too wobbly. It was all he could do to keep from buckling to the ground and throwing up again.

  CHAPTER 21

  Before the first light of morning brought out the searchers again, Mrs. Potter got into the rented Subaru and drove down to
the stable to see Linda’s horse, Taco.

  A corral was attached to the stable, and just down the hill was the darkened garage where, she imagined, Bandy still slept. Farther on was the Ortega house, where she saw lights on and so she imagined the “children” were probably just rising now, starting to cook breakfast and get dressed to face the first official day of their lives without their father. She wondered if Juanita had slept and what Juanita would do now. Would she want to stay on at the ranch?

  Well, there would be time to consider all of that later.

  Mrs. Potter switched on the light in the stable, which smelled richly, comfortingly, of horses and hay.

  She touched the half gate to Patches’s empty stall when she passed it. Somebody—Bandy—had mucked it out since Ricardo’s horse had last stood inside it. Somebody else—Ken?—had removed Ricardo’s leather-tooled saddle from the body of the dead horse and returned it to its sawhorse in front of the stall. Ricardo’s silver-trimmed bridle hung in its accustomed place on the post between that stall and the next, which was also empty. Mrs. Potter touched the saddle and then the reins that hung from the bridle, as if some warmth from the man or the horse might still linger there. The leather and silver were cold and inert to her touch. Her eyes filled and her throat felt swollen with unspoken grief. Mrs. Potter walked quickly on to the last stall where Taco stood alone, his head bowed low. He raised it when she spoke to him.

  “Hello, boy.” The dullness in his eyes matched the feeling in her heart. She kept talking, to keep from weeping. “We’re so glad you’re home. Where’s your lady, Taco? Can’t you tell us?”

  Mrs. Potter peered over the half door of his stall and thought at first that the horse appeared perfectly normal. He wasn’t thin or dehydrated from his ordeal; he’d been running free with plenty of grass to eat and water from the last rain. In fact, thought Mrs. Potter, as she reached out a hand to stroke his black velvet nose, it hadn’t been much of an ordeal for Taco, unless he’d missed his stable and his oats, or if he now missed the familiar, soothing hands of his mistress lovingly brushing his coat and patting his prosperous flanks. He hadn’t even been gone long enough for his pretty brown coat to dull, or for his black mane and tail to mat. Your coat, Mrs. Potter thought, as she conversed silently with him, is exactly that Swiss chocolate shade that some of my friends favored in mink coats a few years back. You look just fine, Taco, certainly a lot better than those minks do now, except … there was that inexplicable dullness to his eyes, and an odd air of stoicism about him. And then Mrs. Potter noticed that he had one leg, his left rear, lifted off the straw.