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

by Nancy Pickard

  Mrs. Potter had been more than thinking about that probability; in fact, she’d been actively worrying about it, for reasons she didn’t feel she could discuss with him. “It’s a consideration,” she replied in her best Western-vague manner. “You think I ought to?”

  “Man knows ranching, all right. I’d think he’d be glad to settle in to one good job instead of holding down a dozen dinky ones like he does. And he’s got that little spread of his own that he’s building up, over to the western slope. Got too many irons in the fire, you ask me, but then some people like the smell of smoke better’n I do.”

  “Charlie, did you have words with him yesterday, over at the windmill? I thought I saw you and Ken arguing.”

  “Nah, only one of us was arguing, Genia.” Charlie’s smile creased his faced even deeper than usual. “Me and my big mouth, I made the mistake of saying something about how he was sure quick to take over for Ricardo, and it seemed to tick him off something terrible. Told me he wasn’t doin’ no such thing, and I could mind my own business, if it pleased me to do so. Well, I told him it did, but that didn’t soothe him down none and he run off like a bull with a burr up its tail. But you didn’t come over here for this,” Charlie said suddenly. “Unless you got ESP or somethin’, and you knew that bull was out. What’s this about a call I’m supposed to have got from one of Ricardo’s girls?”

  “Oh, Charlie, I hate to tell you, but I have more bad news. Bandy’s dead. Ken found his body this morning in his apartment, along with two young Mexican illegals who were staying with him. It looked like food poisoning to Ken and to Juanita, and that’s why Angela and Estella are calling around, to warn you not to eat any of my leftover chili. That may have been what killed them.”

  “Damn it!” He jerked off his cowboy hat and threw it violently to the dirt at his feet. “Now it’s happened, Genia, just like I told Rico it would, over and over. How many times did I tell him? Now you got two dead wets on your hands, and how are you going to explain that? What are you going to do with their bodies? They won’t have any identification, you can bet on that, no way for you to send them on home, ’cause you won’t know where their home was. Hell!” He bent down to pick up his hat and when he straightened up again, his face was red. “I told Ricardo, I said you’re going to get Genia in trouble, if you don’t care about yourself and Bandy, think about your employer. Think about what the immigration people are going to say to her when they find out you’re harboring wets on her place. Dammit, Genia!”

  “Oh, Charlie, nothing’s going to happen to me. It was Bandy’s doing, and that’s what I’m going to say, and that’s what they’re going to believe, wouldn’t you?”

  But he fisted his hands and placed them on his hips, and stared beyond her toward the mountains behind her ranch. “Yeah, they’ll buy that. And just as well it ended this way, I guess.…”

  “Charlie!”

  “Not that I’d have Bandy die such a mean, hard death—I don’t mean to say that—but I’m saying it’s better that he won’t be taking in no more wetbacks. Governor’s been asking me to sit on a special board, Genia, one that’s going to look into this state’s immigration problems and solve them once and for all, if I have any say about it. Hell, if I have my way, we’ll take that electrified fence of Reynolds McHenry and we’ll string it all along our border, keep them damn freeloaders out of our country. The way I figure, if they could keep all them East Germans out of Berlin for all those years in an entire country, we can manage to do it for an entire state.”

  “Our own Berlin Wall, Charlie?”

  “Oh, I know you don’t like this kind of talk, Genia, but I’m a realist, not like you and Ricardo.”

  A “realist,” Mrs. Potter often thought, was what unimaginative people called themselves when they couldn’t come up with any better solutions than ones that involved pain to other people.

  “I don’t have to tell you how I feel about your opinions on this subject, Charlie.”

  He almost smiled. “No, you don’t, Genia. You and me, we tell each other what we think, always have, and so did Ricardo and me. I hate to say it, but with Rico and Bandy dead, that ends the wetback problem for this valley, and I can’t say as I’m unhappy about that, bad as I feel about them. Wish it could have been accomplished in some other way than killing them and a couple of innocent young wets, but there you have it, that’s as it is.”

  “You really do think Ricardo may have been killed by illegals?”

  “I do, and they got Linda, you mark my words. I feel bad not being out on the search for her this morning, Genia, but you understand I’ve got to take care of things around here, too, before I can leave.” This time his smile was wider, and gentle, a reminder of her problem with the stray bull. “But I’ll head on over to your place this afternoon, if they haven’t found her yet.”

  “Of course, Charlie, I do understand that everybody’s got their own chores to do. Cattle won’t wait for our emergencies. Why don’t you give me that container of chili, Charlie? I want it in my hands, so it won’t find its way into anybody else’s mouth, and so I can personally destroy it.”

  Charlie’s face suddenly flushed a deep red.

  “Well, I can’t, Genia. I don’t know how to say this, but I don’t have that tub of chili anymore. It’s already been eaten.”

  “Oh, no, Charlie! By whom?”

  His flush deepened to purple, and he wouldn’t meet her eyes. “Well, hell, Genia, by Shep, that’s who.”

  “Shep?”

  A mixed breed collie came trotting around the corner of Charlie’s truck and came up to stick his wet nose into his master’s hand.

  “Heard your name, did you, boy?” said Charlie.

  Mrs. Potter burst out laughing. “You fed my best chili to your dog, Charlie?”

  “Eats everything I do,” he said, defensively. “It’s no offense meant to your chili now, Genia, so don’t you go to taking any.”

  “Well,” Mrs. Potter said, still laughing as she reached down out of her window and stroked the dog’s head, “at least I can see that he’s still alive to tell the tale. What’d you think of it, boy? Did you like that chopped sirloin I put in it? I’ll bet you did, and the ground pork too.”

  “Aw, hell, Genia!”

  CHAPTER 24

  A FOR SALE sign hung on the fence that abutted the gate to Saguaro Ranch. Mrs. Potter knew from Ricardo that Walt and Kathy Amory had got in over their heads when they purchased the five-thousand-acre spread, but she hadn’t known things had reached this state and so soon. Driving up the gravel road to their house, Mrs. Potter thought, Somebody’s going to “steal” this ranch; it’s so run-down, it’s bound to be a bargain for some lucky buyer.

  Not just anyone could have detected that it was rundown.

  But after twenty years of ranching, Mrs. Potter could spot leaning fence posts that should have been replaced and sagging barbed wire that needed tightening. She saw pastures that looked overgrazed, and a few cattle that appeared underfed. Ricardo would have had a fit if he’d seen them, she thought. There was nothing he had detested more than ranchers who spent their money on themselves while they let their livestock suffer. But as Mrs. Potter approached the Amorys’ home, with its big barn off to one side and various items of farm equipment scattered about the yard, she wondered if Walt and Kathy had spent it all on their own comforts. If they had, the results were not visible. The buildings needed painting, and judging from the way the weeds had grown up beneath the rusty equipment, it didn’t appear to have been used for some time. Overall, there was a desolate, dreary look to Saguaro Ranch, Mrs. Potter thought, the look that children get when they aren’t sufficiently loved and tended to.

  Walt Amory stood on the front porch, looking her way, so Mrs. Potter stuck her arm out her car window and waved. He waved back, a diffident-looking gesture, and remained standing there until she walked up onto the porch. “We threw the chili away,” he said immediately, in a quiet voice that she rather had to strain to hear. “As
soon as Mrs. Ortega’s daughter called. I was sorry to hear about your hired man, Mrs. Potter.”

  “Thank you, Walt. I’m beginning to think it wasn’t my chili, but I don’t want anybody taking any unnecessary chances. Did you throw it where the dogs can’t get it?”

  “Yes, I think so. Kathy took care of it.”

  Mrs. Potter smiled. “Charlie Watt’s dog seemed to like it fine.”

  Walt smiled a little, too, and she thought: what a nice man he seems when he does that. “Charlie fed it to his dog? Not much of a compliment to you, was it?”

  “He says the dog’s his best friend.”

  “Well, then, I guess it is a compliment, after all.”

  Mrs. Potter waited for him to invite her into the house.

  After an awkward moment he did, even throwing an offer of coffee into the deal. Mrs. Potter walked through the doorway, past the screen door he held open for her, and into a home that was shocking in its bareness. There was a kitchen table with a vinyl top, and four matching chrome chairs with vinyl seats and backs, and that was all, not even a television, or a couch to view it from. Mrs. Potter saw newspapers scattered on the tabletop, and when she took a seat at Walt’s gestured invitation, she saw those papers included the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. They were opened to the employment sections.

  Walt Amory caught her staring at the ads and he smiled that sweet, rather sad smile of his again. “Well, there’s my secret, out in the open for everyone to see.”

  “I’m sorry, Walt—”

  “Please don’t be, Mrs. Potter. It’s plain enough, or should be, from the ‘for sale’ sign by the gate. I don’t suppose it was hard for you to tell that we’ve sold off most of our cattle, and we’re having a hard time keeping up with the few we’ve got left.” He stuck his hands in his pockets again. His expression was almost peaceful behind his horn-rimmed glasses. “We had great plans for decorating this house.” He laughed a little, and Mrs. Potter was surprised that it didn’t sound at all bitter. “Didn’t get very far with that plan, as you can see.” He nodded toward the papers. “Not getting very far with that plan, either. Nobody’s much interested in a forty-year-old with a computer software company in bankruptcy and a cattle ranch on the skids. Your man Ricardo—I’m awfully sorry about him, too, by the way—told me it was going to be tough, and he was right. I don’t blame him for saying he wouldn’t give us a loan from that bank of his down in Nogales. Heck, I wouldn’t loan me any money, either.”

  For Walt, he was almost chattering, she thought.

  But then he seemed to get snagged on another thorn of shyness, not seeming to know what to say next. To cover it he turned toward the single item on the kitchen counter, a full coffeepot, pulled a single mug out of a nearly empty cabinet, and poured it full to the brim. He handed Mrs. Potter her coffee, then stepped away from the table and stuck his hands in his pockets.

  “I hate to say this,” he blurted, “but as sad a thing as Ricardo’s death was, it may turn out to be helpful to Kathy and me.” His glance was apologetic. “I don’t think the rest of his bank board is as savvy as he was, and without him to dissuade them, we might even get that loan after all. I don’t know, though, if it’ll help. May be too late for anything, except if we won the lottery.” He smiled slightly. “Any lottery.”

  “Walt … what happened?”

  He sighed. “Amateurs. We’re amateurs, Mrs. Potter, who fell for the romance of ranching without understanding any of the realities of it. I knew it was an expensive hobby, really, I’m not such a fool as I must look by now. But I thought we could pull it off. At first, we only took a reasonable amount of money out of our software business, but then as the bills kept coming in, we kept taking out more and more, until our business began to suffer as much as our hobby.… It’s seductive, in a way, ranching is—you keep draining your one real source of income in order to prop up your unreal source of income.”

  He laughed a little, as if he amused himself.

  “And you keep thinking, if I can just cover this one invoice, and then this next one, and then we’ll sell some cattle and we’ll put the money back in the other business.… But, heck, the feed bills have been enormous, so much bigger than I ever anticipated, and I think our tractors and our other rolling stock must have worn out faster than a car on a one-year warranty. It seems that we’re always taking them in for repairs.” He paused, and Mrs. Potter felt for the first time that he was struggling to contain some bitter emotions. “Well, we’ve even stopped that now. All that expensive machinery that’s in our yard? You saw it? I call them Agricultural Artifacts. They’re no use to us anymore, we can’t afford to fix them or run them. Sometimes I think the cost of fencing alone put us under. Seemed like I’d buy a roll of fencing long enough to encircle Eastern Europe and it’d be gone before our hired hands had it half up. And then I’d buy more, and none of it went as far as I thought it would. Oh, heck, you’ve got your own troubles, Mrs. Potter, and a lot more tragic than ours.… Aren’t you sorry you drove up here to hear all about mine?”

  “No, Walt, not at all, I’m just sorry that—”

  He nodded, cutting her off, though nicely. “Thank you.”

  “Where’s Kathy today?”

  “She went to visit the Steinbachs this morning. Gallway says he’s got a real estate agent that’s better than the one we found, so he’s taking Kathy in to Tucson to meet the woman.”

  Mrs. Potter couldn’t help but react to that startling piece of news, delivered without so much as a blink of Walt’s brown eyes. “They drove out of town? Together?”

  “Yeah, but I don’t think it’ll help much. What we need is a miracle or, barring that, a friendly neighborhood millionaire. You don’t think the McHenrys would like a few more thousand acres to play with, do you?”

  Mrs. Potter tried to match his apparent serenity in regard to Kathy’s little trip with Gallway. “Have you asked the McHenrys?”

  “Seriously?”

  “Sure, why not?”

  “Well, no, it was just a joke.”

  “I’m having dinner with them tonight, Walt. Would it be all right if I sounded them out on the subject? I mean, you’re probably right, and it’s unlikely, but how will you know unless you ask?”

  His sweet smile appeared again. “That’s what Kathy’s always telling me, that I need to ask for what I want, that the worst anybody can say is no.”

  “She’s right.”

  “She’s a saint, is what she is.”

  Mrs. Potter looked at him, startled at the wetness in his eyes as he said that, and the vehemence in his young voice. Kathy Amory, a saint? Now, there was an interesting perception, one that would certainly boggle the minds of Lorraine and Che. Mrs. Potter wondered at the apparent naïveté of this young husband who waved his wife off on a trip out of town with the very man who was known all around town as her lover. Didn’t Walt know what everybody was saying? It couldn’t be that he didn’t care; his last words and the look on his face showed that he cared about his Kathy very much.

  The coffee was some cheap brand, watered down.

  Mrs. Potter drank enough to be tactful, then set it aside.

  “If there’s anything I can do to help, Walt.…”

  He laughed a little, but it had a strange, giddy sound to it. “Write a check for about a quarter of a million? No, no, that isn’t funny. Thank you, Mrs. Potter, that’s very kind of you, but I think we got ourselves into this fix, and I think there’s nothing much that anybody else can do to get us out of it. Unless Ricardo’s bank in Nogales comes through.”

  “I’ll keep my fingers crossed for you.”

  He escorted her back to her car.

  “I haven’t seen your saguaro cactus patch for a long time, Walt. Would you mind if I drove into your pasture to take a sentimental look at them? I dearly love those crested saguaros, and they’re just so rare to see anymore. And you never know how ranch owners will be, you could sell this place tomorrow and the new owners could be lik
e the McHenrys, and never let anybody on the place again. It’s just through a couple of gates, isn’t it? I’ll certainly close them behind me.”

  He gently shut her door for her, and pushed down her lock.

  “I wish you could, Mrs. Potter, maybe next time. We’ve got a couple of bulls in there that can’t be trusted. I’ve tried to sell them—heck, I’m trying to sell everything, but who wants a couple of mean-tempered scrawny bulls who’ll sire mean-tempered scrawny calves?”

  “It’s too bad people can’t be so sensible,” Mrs. Potter joked, trying to raise another smile from him. “We’d have fewer skinny curmudgeons in the world.”

  It worked. When he waved her off, the gesture was almost jaunty.

  On the way back to the main road, Mrs. Potter determined to call Walt Amory back in a day or two and offer to buy his remaining cattle, including those bad-tempered bulls. Maybe they were ill-nourished, which was enough to make any creature mean. Maybe they’d been ill-treated by owners who meant well but who didn’t know the front of a cow from the back of a computer terminal. Or maybe they were mean, and in that case she’d try to sell them herself, and probably have better luck at it. As Mrs. Potter gazed out at the Amorys’ sparse pastureland, it hurt her to see their cattle looking so runty, at this time of year especially, when they should have been fat with pregnancy and with rich feasts of thick grass. Ken! she thought, suddenly. Ken Ryerson was trying to build up a small herd of his own; this might be a good, and sadly cheap, way for him to increase his numbers. She’d have to remember to suggest it when she saw him next, which would be soon, she hoped, as she had some potentially disturbing questions to ask her ambitious young part-time hired hand. Like, just how ambitious was he? Did Ken Ryerson want his late boss’s job, did he want his late boss’s granddaughter … and did he want them badly enough to kill the one man who might stand in the way of both of those desires?