by Ann Myers
For a moment I considered a Florilike maneuver of hoisting myself over his wall to spy. Then logic took over. What did I expect? To catch him videotaping a confession or laughing about murderous deeds with co-conspirators? Unlikely. I was about to go inside when movement caught my eye.
“Hello?” I put down the waffle maker and fumbled to light the miniflashlight on my key chain. Swinging its weak beam into the darkness, I anticipated the glowing eyes of a raccoon or the toothy sneer of a coyote. The clang of glass and metal came from the area by Victor’s back door where he kept his recycling bin.
“Is someone there?” I clapped my hands. “Shoo, get out of here!” Wildlife frequently visited our yard, following the creek downstream from a nearby bird sanctuary and open space. The sanctuary connected to pine and piñon-dotted hills and miles of forest, home to deer, foxes, coyotes, and even some mountain lions and bears.
This was no coyote, and it startled me more than a bear. A human form, hunched and massive, appeared in the thin beam of my flashlight and then quickly disappeared into the shadows.
“Hey! Come back here!” I yelled. I immediately regretted these words. A giant was skulking around a murder scene and I yell for him to come on over? To my horror, the figure reappeared under Victor’s bluish porch light, where he stopped. I froze too, afraid to move but ready to bolt for the casita if he approached. The front door would likely be unlocked. That thought also filled me with horror. Celia was inside. What if he reached the door before I did?
“I’m calling 911!” I bellowed, reaching for the waffle maker and waving it wildly as I backed toward the door. “Nine-one-one!”
The figure spun and disappeared, leaving only the sounds of rustling brush. Celia appeared at the door, wide-eyed.
“Mom? What’s going on?”
“Coyotes,” I told her, pushing her inside and then locking the dead bolt and the chain lock.
“You told coyotes you’re calling the cops? Gosh, Mom, Victor’s death really is getting to you.” The kettle, having called the pot black, made a huffy snort and returned to her bedroom.
If the police did drive by during the night, as the dispatcher assured me they would, I didn’t notice. They surely didn’t come down the driveway or I would have heard them. During the long night, I woke to the slightest groans of the old beams and rustlings of leaves. When I did sleep, my dreams morphed into anxiety nightmares. By five-forty, unable to keep my eyes closed any longer, I gave up and got up, pulling on jeans and a sweater. Bits of colored icing clung to the cuff. I brushed them off, wishing the laundry would do itself. It wouldn’t, and neither would the grocery shopping, finding storage space in my tiny home, and sorting out the new me. My dwindling supply of clean clothes also meant that I’d have to visit the little utility room and laundry attached to the main house, exactly where I’d seen the creepy lurker last night.
I peeked out the living room windows, checking for anything or anyone unusual. The only eyes that looked back belonged to two ravens playing with an old apple. One tossed the withered fruit in the air as the other cawed, flapping its glossy black wings and dancing on springy toes. Some people disparage crows and their bigger brethren, ravens, as nuisances or bad omens. I’ve always admired these impressive, intelligent birds and was happy to discover that they’re celebrated in New Mexican art and lore. However, as the two crows flew off to join others, a darker thought struck me. A murder . . . that’s what a group of crows was called. The flock gathered in a giant cottonwood, directly over Victor’s house, cawing madly.
Coffee didn’t help my edginess. Nor did the lack of food in the house. I was about to resort to an expired granola bar when I heard footsteps crunching on gravel, moving toward the kitchen window. Fear spun up the adrenaline of too much caffeine and too little sleep. Grabbing a marble rolling pin, I tiptoed to the window, ready to roll out some serious defense moves.
Through the cotton curtain, I spotted a blurry form moving near the window. What if last night’s intruder was scoping out more break-in prospects? I decided to make the first move.
“Make my day!” I yelled, yanking open the curtain and waving the rolling pin. This was another move I immediately regretted. Not only did I sound like an idiot, I pulled down the curtain rod and tipped over a sugar canister and a potted basil. That, and Flori looked ready to wet her knickers from laughing so hard.
“Oh dear,” she said, removing her glasses to wipe away tears of glee as I let her in the front door, the place most people would go instead of skulking around the windows. “I shouldn’t be laughing, but surprises make me giggle.”
“Is the doorbell not working?” I asked.
“Now now, don’t be cranky, cariño. I didn’t want to wake you up after your big date and all that police fuss over in Tesuque. I thought I’d peek and see if you were up. You’re the one waving around that rolling pin and yelling like Dirty Harry.” She carried a canvas shopping bag in one hand. Binoculars big enough to spy on Albuquerque swung from her neck.
“It wasn’t a date,” I muttered. The binoculars were an ominous sign. Flori was not a birdwatcher. And I wasn’t going to bother asking how she knew about my night. Dancing, drinking cocoa, and meeting with law enforcement in public places would be as easy as candy on Halloween for her gossip network. Still, I couldn’t help being a little impressed. And a little suspicious.
“You don’t have a GPS device stuck to me, do you?”
My elderly friend made a snorting sound, waving off modern tracking devices as if they were useless newfangled trinkets. “I could give you the details, but we don’t have time.” She brushed past me to the kitchen. I recognized the bakery box she pulled from the shopping bag.
Any lingering grumpiness vanished. “You went to Clafoutis! You’re an angel, Flori!” I reached for the box, anticipating the treasures it held. The owners of Clafoutis, bona fide pastry chefs straight from France, made delectable goodies using sinfully perfect loads of butter. My savory favorite was their flaky, buttery croissant wrapped around ham and cheese. On the sweet side, I could barely pick a favorite because everything was so good. I loved the éclairs and the moist little almond cakes and of course their namesake tart. A clafouti is like a flan, but firmer and studded with fruit. Cherries are the typical choice, although the bakery also makes versions with plums, berries, or bananas.
My hand hovered over the box as I imagined the possible treasures inside. A firm slap ended the fantasizing.
“Not yet,” Flori said, pushing the bakery box aside. “We’ll get to that later. Right now we have to get going. I don’t want the whole world up and seeing us.”
“And what are we doing?” I asked, looking longingly at the pastry box.
“Snooping of course.”
I should have known.
Chapter 14
Flori was out the door before I could ask the who, what, and where of our snoop. Aiming to set a good example, I wrote Celia a note: Out with Flori. Back soon? Realizing I should set a better example than that, I recorded the exact time and invited Celia to help herself to the bakery box. Then I grabbed my keys, locked the front door, and prepared myself for the battle over who would drive, feeling way too edgy and hungry for Flori’s hair-raising pedal stomping. I expected to find her revving her old boat of a Cadillac. The white whale sat in the driveway, but no silver bun poked above the steering wheel. She wasn’t impatiently tapping her foot by the door or sneaking around the wrong side of the police tape either.
“Flori?” When several more calls went unanswered, I began to worry. I should have warned her about the skulking figure. I should have insisted that we go outside together. A muffled voice came from the back garden. I thought I heard my name and the word “Help.” Now I was scared. Regretting that I hadn’t brought the rolling pin, I grabbed the first thing at hand on the porch, a decorative broom made of cinnamon twigs.
“I’m comi
ng, Flori!” I took the most direct route, stumbling through Victor’s rock garden, dodging agave spines, and hurdling over a small stone wall before skidding to a stop near the stream. Water trickled over smooth stones, creating a soft burble and blurring the muttered Spanish emanating from a thicket of creek willows.
“Flori? Hang on!” Willow branches whipped at my face as I forged in, one hand shielding my eyes, the other dragging the cinnamon broom. In a tiny clearing of trampled ground, I found her. She stood alone and perfectly safe, pointing to a line of red paint. Pushing up her Harry Potter spectacles, she sniffed the air. “What is that delightful smell . . . cinnamon? That reminds me, we have to get into Victor’s kitchen. I want his recipe for bizcochitos. That man wrote everything down, and it would be a sin for a recipe like that to be lost to the spirit world if no one went and found it.”
With a sigh, I put my broom into an at-ease position. I really needed a pastry. If she’d bought only one éclair, I was going to take it. No polite deferring until others made their choices. Boldly declaring what I wanted would be part of the new me.
“What are you doing with that broom?” Flori asked.
Any explanation about saving her from a hulking giant using a glorified potpourri stick seemed silly now. I asked what she was doing in the shrubbery.
“Following the trail.” She pointed to the line of red paint. “See this? It’s probably a surveyor’s mark. I found a little mark against a tree up closer to the house, but mostly the paint line’s been dug up or hidden under rocks. Except here.”
Right, because who else but Flori and a Santa Fe surveyor would bother to thrash through a willow thicket to scout out a line? I needed to get my bearings. After holding back the branches for Flori to pass, I squeezed back out to examine the alignment of fences and yards.
“Up there.” Flori pointed. “That pine tree has the other paint mark.”
From where we stood to the pine, we were a good four feet inside Gabe and Victor’s property, according to the fence line. I ran my hand along the rough bark still attached to the fir limbs that made up the attractive barrier. Coyote fencing, it was called around here. Sometimes the branches have different heights, a look that works well against a sprawling desert sky. Victor’s fence had a neatly trimmed top, but the logs, slightly thicker than my arm, were lashed tightly together and ended about three feet above my head. Unless I boosted Flori onto my shoulders, there was no way we could see over.
Flori cupped her hands to her face and peered through small gaps in the logs. “We need to get over there,” she said. “That Broomer man is number one on my suspect list. Which reminds me, here’s my list so far. If you see any of these people around town, keep an eye out for suspicious behavior.”
She produced a small day planner from her coat pocket and thrust it at me. I opened to the first page, New Year’s day five years ago. The date sparked memories. Was that the day Manny and I tried to go into Chicago for brunch, but he got called on duty? Or was that the year when Celia and I went to Mom’s on our own and Manny watched football with the guys? Images of Mom’s New Year’s staple—cold shrimp poised above bottled cocktail sauce—flashed through my head. She’d already invited me and Celia for every upcoming holiday, but I wasn’t sure when we could go. Thanksgiving seemed too soon, Christmas too busy. Maybe New Year’s, though I’d yet to broach the prospect to Celia, Manny, or Flori.
I shook my head to refocus.
“I’ve numbered my suspects by the day of the month,” Flori explained, pointing to the number one.
I flipped through the days. On each, Flori had listed suspects and their questionable characteristics.
“Okay, you beat me,” I said, reaching February third and the last name. “But the mailman, really?” I squinted, trying to read Flori’s spidery scrawl. “He’s unreliable, but I don’t see him as a murderer.”
“I heard that he tramples flower beds on purpose and delivers packages without postage,” Flori said, sticking her nose in another gap. “Now I’ll admit, most of those are long shots, but you can’t be too careful. Friends, coworkers, relatives, neighbors . . . they all have to be checked and eliminated.”
“Suspect number twenty-eight, Dalia Crawford, left a basket of jelly and tarot cards on my porch this afternoon,” I said, wishing I had a pen to cross off Dalia’s name. “Homemade jelly, no less. Made from organic currants she and Phillip grew themselves.”
“There you have it. Shows that they’re handy and know the layout of your property,” Flori said stubbornly. “Anyway, they had opportunity, and I do not trust tarot readings. They try to tell you what to do.”
This from a woman who followed her sixth sense, I thought, continuing to flip through Flori’s list. “It’s a wonder you didn’t list me.”
“Don’t be silly. I eliminated you straight away along with Linda and Celia, and then Bernard, since I can vouch for his whereabouts. And the Espinosa couple next to the Crawfords. They’re wintering in Florida, although why anyone would want all that humidity . . .” She listed a few more suspects to eliminate, including a school bus driver, the UPS man (despite his disturbing predilection to wear shorts in all weather), and Gabe, the out-of-town sister Teresa, and first cousins Albert and Lucinda, who were clearly distraught. “It’s the first two that are my main suspects,” Flori said resolutely. “The rest are backup, in case we get short on ideas.”
I flipped back to January first and second, feeling quite pleased with myself. “These are the main suspects on my list too. Broomer is number one, and Jay-Jay number two.”
Flori took her nose out of the fence and beamed at me. “Good girl! You found out about Jay-Jay? I knew you would. You’re a natural at snooping, just like you are at chile sauces. Now, let’s pay a visit to suspect number one.”
I was glad I’d worn old sneakers instead of my usual leather Keens. On the other hand, the Keens claimed to be waterproof. The sneakers flooded instantly with water that felt like liquid ice.
“Ooo,” Flori said, stepping into the frigid creek. “Now that’ll get your blood flowing in the morning.”
So would sugar and butter in French pastry form, along with a full night’s sleep. “I don’t know what we’re expecting to find,” I grumbled. Checking out the other side of the fence had seemed like a fine idea, until my toes turned to ice.
Flori made tsk-tsk sounds. “I should have let you eat first. You’re light-headed and petulant. Of course we don’t know what we’re going to find until we find it. That’s what investigating’s all about, as you well know. You can also bet that your ex, Detective Do-Little, isn’t going to come back here to investigate. It’s up to us.”
The part about Manny was likely true. Having set his mind on suicide, he’d drag his heels at any other explanation. Finding Victor’s killer might be up to us, and maybe he was only a coyote fence away. But did we have to wade through ice water to get there? My grumpiness evaporated, however, when we reached Broomer’s yard. An astounding Southwest version of a Japanese garden stood before us. Ink-black river rocks curved to a sea of pebbles, raked to perfection. Junipers resembled ancient bonsai trees. Sleek bamboo swayed gracefully, setting off a small raised teahouse featuring sliding glass doors and what looked like authentic tatami mats.
“Mmmm,” Flori said. “Not much into the local aesthetic, is he? Very suspicious.”
Awesome was more like it. I forgot everything my mother ever taught me about trespassing—as in, never trespass—and made my way up rustic stone steps to the teahouse, following the sounds of cascading water. Every so often the flow was interrupted by a hollow clack, like wooden cymbals.
“Wow,” I said, assuming Flori was right behind me. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”
“Like the view, do you?”
I jumped sideways and right into full-frontal view of a fully naked Broomer. “Oh my gosh, I’m so s
orry!” I stuttered. I lurched backward but found myself blocked by bamboo.
“Come to join me for a skinny dip?” Broomer sank back into the steaming, rock-lined pool the size of an oversized hot tub. Rounded boulders lined the water. A waterfall cascaded over a rocky ledge, falling in sheets behind his blond hair. Slightly raised and off to one side, a bamboo tube fed another round, deep pool. This was the source of the wooden clacking. Water flowed through one bamboo tube to another that collected water until it reached a tipping point. Once emptied, the collector sprang upward, striking a rock. It would have been hypnotizing to watch, if Broomer hadn’t been there.
“Want to slip into that cold pool first? Go for it. You’ll jump right in with me after that.” He laughed as the bamboo clonked behind him.
I kept my eyes on the view behind his head as I stammered out an explanation.
“We were . . . ah . . . looking for something down by the creek and we ended up on your side and—geez, your garden is amazing and, sorry, we couldn’t help looking, I mean looking at the garden, not, I mean . . . ah . . .”
He was clearly enjoying my discomfort way too much. A wolflike grin spread across his face, broadening as my face turned hotter than Cass’s molten metals.
“We?” he asked as my explanations fizzled out. “Did you bring along a friend? The more the better, I say.”
Flori appeared beside me, not bothering to keep her gaze abovewater. “That bath looks pretty good, but at my age, I skinny dip only after dark.”
Broomer laughed. “Sounds good to me, ladies. I’ll set the mood lighting if you want to drop by tonight. But now, if you don’t mind, I have to get to my gallery. Either one of you ladies hands me that towel, or . . .” He started to rise.
Flori stood next to the blue piece of cloth he’d motioned toward. “Towel!” I bellowed, sounding like a surgeon in need of an emergency clamp.
Time did not seem to be of the essence for Flori. She dangled the dish-towel-sized rag between two fingers. “Not so fast,” she said. “We have some questions for you. Let him have it, Rita.”
