Tim said insolently, “Captain Harrod, I presume.”
Adam made deliberate tracks across the rug and sank down on the couch. He said, “Have a chair, Captain. Sit down, Jo.” His voice was disgusted.
Harrod said, “Thanks.” He pulled up a chair to a position where he could observe all of the faces. Jose didn’t accept the invitation. He stood behind Harrod. He too wanted the faces.
Harrod continued, “I am here for Captain Moreno of the State Police, investigating the accident in which Beach Aragon was killed yesterday.”
Disinterest was the only response.
“What do you know about it?” he directed to Tim.
“Nothing at all,” Tim said idly.
“The car was in good condition when you drove up to Los Alamos?”
Tim fingered a yawn. “Really, I have no idea. I’m not a mechanic.”
Harrod’s lips thinned. He nodded to Rags. “What about it?”
Rags wasn’t insolent, nor was he glib. “We got there all right. No trouble.” He thought of something and added it, “It wasn’t raining then.” He thought of something else and added it quick, “He drove pretty fast.” He’d been coached; he was pleased with his performance.
Jose couldn’t hold his tongue. “The car was in perfect condition. I keep it that way.” Beach drove fast but he was a good driver. He wouldn’t take chances on a slick hill in a rainstorm.
Harrod took over again. “All right, you got there. No trouble. Then what did you do?” His eyes fixed on Tim.
“Beg pardon?” Tim was bored.
Dulcinda said coaxingly, “Captain Harrod wants to know what you did up there?”
“How ridiculous,” Tim sneered at her.
“That’s what I mean,” Harrod said sharply.
Tim stroked his decadent beard. “Nothing interesting, I assure you, my dear Captain. We sight-saw. All the dull routine, and we dutifully murmured, ‘How interesting.’ The compleat tourists, weren’t we, Rags?”
Rags said nothing. His knuckles were at his mouth.
“Decidedly dull,” Tim repeated, “although it’s considered quite a historical monument, you know. It’s where they created the atomic gadget.”
Harrod said briefly, “I know.” After a long moment he continued the questions. It was slow going but he got through lunch, the meeting with various Los Alamosans, the impending storm, and the drive to Struyker’s house.
“He simply insisted we stay over for someone’s cocktail party. Quite tedious people, I can’t remember who they were. Then the storm. It was electric and so were the drinks. Cheap liquor is so potent. It was then that Alvie—Alvie Struyker, our host—decided he’d take us to dinner. We didn’t have anything to say about it, actually! He wanted us to meet a perfect character, Adamsson was the name—” He glinted a nasty smile.
Adam burst, “So you’re what he wanted to bring to dinner!” He explained to Harrod and to Jose, “This Struyker called and asked if he could bring some friends to dinner. I told him no.” He addressed Jose alone, “I was expecting you and Beach, you remember?”
“He invited Beach too,” Tim inserted loftily.
Harrod said to Adam, “You know Struyker?”
“I’ve met him a couple of times, someone brought him to my place for a drink. We’re informal in the Valley. He must have got the idea I kept open house.” He was burning with rage.
Jose knew the type, party parasites, Santa Fe was full of them as well as the Valley. They insinuated themselves into your house, bumming drinks, brazening friendship. But it might have been something else. Someone might have known that the Aragons were having dinner at Adam’s; someone might have planned to get rid of both of them. Two nosy Aragons.
Tim was bored. “Beach embraced the idea. He claimed to be a great friend of this Adamsson.”
“He was my friend,” Adam thundered.
The golden eyebrows lifted at him. “Your friend insisted he must drive back to town for my sister. For some reason or other, he wanted her to join us for dinner.”
Jose gritted, “Which one of you went with him?”
“My dear!” Tim exclaimed softly. “Did you think the rest of us were insane?”
Harrod quieted Jose with a glance. “You mean he went alone?”
“Quite.”
“Was he drunk?”
Jose’s hands tightened.
Tim sighed hopelessly at Ragsdale. Rags said, “Everybody was drinking plenty. It was a cocktail party.”
“And you’d had drinks at Struyker’s before you went to the party?”
Tim said, “But naturally. That is how one entertains in this country, is it not?”
Jose cried out, “Are you trying to say Beach was drunk and ran off the road?”
“We’re trying not to say it,” Tim said. “But isn’t it obvious?”
“No, it isn’t!” Jose denied. “What about the bottle?”
“Bottle?” Tim frowned from Ragsdale to his sister. Rags kept his knuckles in his mouth; Dulcinda was a ramrod. Tim looked to Adam and to Harrod. They were waiting silently.
“The bottle of perfume,” Jose said flatly.
“Oh!” Tim began to titter. “That bottle.” He tittered into a vacuum. He apologized, “It was really amusing.”
“In what way?” Harrod asked too quietly.
“Because it was such dreadful perfume. Mexican, you know. And Beach kept twittering, ‘Bottle, bottle, who’s got the bottle?’ And that poor chap, Struyker, trying to explain that it was a present he’d bought for his mother.”
“After that you went to the cocktail party and then to dinner?” Harrod’s voice beat relentlessly. “But Beach left the party to go for your sister? You let him go although he was drunk and there wasn’t to be any dinner party?”
“We didn’t know that yet,” Tim said haughtily. “All of us were rather spiffed. Rather.”
“I see,” Harrod said.
“You don’t see,” Jose cried. “It didn’t happen that way.”
“I know it didn’t,” Harrod agreed.
Wrath twisted Tim’s simpering face. No one else stirred.
“All of you left the cocktail party together. Beach Aragon was alone only after he went through the exit gate. And the steering wheel on his car was defective.” He got to his feet. “Captain Moreno has gone to bring in Mr. Struyker. We’ll all get together later.” He touched Jose’s arm.
At the door they waited for Adam. The big man towered for a moment over the three who sat there, holding his strength leashed. Then, still silent, he lumbered to where Jose and Harrod waited.
The Cathedral bells were ringing the noon mass as Jose reached the street.
II
When Jose came out of church, there was the gauntlet of sympathy to run. He made the correct responses but he didn’t know to whom he was making them. Under the old cottonwood tree in the churchyard Dulcinda was waiting. She was patient. She waited while he was proper; she waited while he convinced a brace of cousins that he couldn’t go with them to Aunt Caterina’s. He didn’t want to join in family mourning; his grief was his own. He didn’t want to have anything to do with plans to send Beach home to California in a wooden box. What was left wasn’t Beach. What was Beach was gone forever.
He couldn’t remain there any longer arguing, he moved down the walk with the cousins. When they came opposite the tree, Dulcy put out her white-gloved hand in a restraining gesture. The cousins didn’t notice. He could have continued on down the steps with them; he could have made it harder for her. But he didn’t. He didn’t care what they thought. He needed to know what she had to say.
He murmured, “Excuse me,” to the boys, not watching the disapproval which would follow him. He walked to her.
“I’ve been waiting for you.”
“How did you know where I was?”
She said, “Your friend, Mr. Adamsson, was in the lobby when I came down. I asked him.”
Adam must have made Jose’s excuses to the family by p
hone. He wouldn’t want to be weighted by their mourning either.
Jose said, “Well, I’m here. Now what?”
“I must talk with you.”
“Go ahead.”
She turned her eyes about the barren churchyard. “Not here.”
“What’s the matter? Afraid you might get religion?”
She flushed slightly. “I’d rather be more comfortable.”
He dropped his glance to her tall heels, raised it slowly up the tailored suit of small checks to her proud head. Her cold, proud head. “Very well,” he agreed. “I’ll take you to lunch.”
She drew back. “Not the hotel. I want to be private.”
Deliberately he curled his lip. “This is so sudden, sweet.”
The expression on her face slapped him. And then she set her short white glove on his arm. “If that’s the way you want it, Jo.” If she weren’t mixed up in God alone knew what, if this weren’t strictly phony, he’d have set to leaping. As it was, he felt nothing but pity. Until she asked, “What about your house?”
He could have saved her the trip. He could have told her the stuff was no longer there. But he picked up her words, “If that’s the way you want it.”
The Sunday strollers watched them descend the eroded concrete steps. Across the way, under the beamed portales of the post office, the idlers watched them. All over town it would be whispered that Jose Aragon was dating a sleek blonde instead of weeping with his family. He couldn’t say that he didn’t care; it angered him to know that his old aunts and uncles would be given the additional burden of gossip to bear. But he didn’t care enough to relinquish a private conversation with her.
He said, “I don’t have a car. It got broken.” They walked on the opposite side from the hotel. “If it weren’t Sunday, I could buy another one,” he said sardonically. Obviously her heels weren’t designed for walking. “We’ll taxi, which will leave you stranded with me in the country.”
She said, “I don’t mind.”
There didn’t seem to be anyone watching from the hotel. By now, Tim would know that his sister would be successful in what she set out to do. It wasn’t her fault that the package hadn’t been delivered as ordered. Outside of that one mischance, everything was on schedule. Tim was safely out of Mexico.
They rounded the ticket-office corner and advanced toward Jack’s stand. Nothing like strolling through the center of village life, let everyone have a good look. The girl on duty in the booth-like taxi office said, “There’ll be one here any minute now.” They always said that.
Jose ignored Dulcy’s nervousness. He leaned against the outside wall and asked, “Cigarette?”
“No, thanks.” She wanted to hide inside that crowded, smelly booth but there wasn’t any excuse for it. Not on a perfect August morning.
“I hope you can cook,” Jose told her. “Lunch will be on us.” She didn’t look as if she could so much as open a can or that she had ever tried. Or that she cared to try.
She tried to smile, keeping her back turned to the street. She wasn’t such a professional, after all. Or she wasn’t afraid. Yet she was afraid; when the cab drove up, she was in it before it braked.
Only when they were at the gates of the casa did he let himself think of the sorbita. She wouldn’t be hanging around; she had what she wanted. Because he hoped for her to come back, wouldn’t change that cold fact. Juana and the girls had gone, the gates were open. He touched Dulcinda’s arm, guided her up the gravel path. “You don’t mind the back door, do you, sweet? Only my friends use it.” He helped her through the patio entrance.
“Does that make me a friend?”
They stood close together, too close. Because of the heels, her tilted head was where it should be, the right height. She’d go this far and farther for her lousy brother.
He answered her question bluntly. “No.”
She turned, walked to the swing, and sat down. Her eyes were averted. From her white pouch she took cigarettes and a lighter. He let her service her own smoke.
“I’m getting myself a beer,” he told her. “Do you want one?”
“If you please.”
The white clouds were fluffing over the blue horizon. In less than an hour they’d be unmasked as thunderheads, at the moment they were innocently decorative. He built a couple of bulky cold-beef sandwiches, hot with sauce, carried them out with the beer. “Hors d’oeuvres.” There’d been no sound of Francisca within.
She smiled briefly. “Thank you.”
He pulled a canopied chair nearer the swing. With a mouthful he said, “Go on, talk.”
She lifted her lashes. “I need help.”
“And you come to me?”
“I don’t know where else to turn.”
“You’re in a poor way.” Again she seemed lost. “If you have to depend on me for help, you’re licked before you start.” He wouldn’t be stirred by her; it was an act, nothing more. “I don’t like you. Or your brother. Or his friends.”
“I know that,” she said. “But I believe that you are too honest to permit a person to be what you call framed.” She looked into his skeptical eyes. “My brother had nothing to do with Beach’s death.”
“Oh, no!” he said wearily.
“It’s true! You must believe me. I know it’s true. After you left, he went over and over it with Rags, trying to figure out when and how it could have been done.”
“They’re going to frame Struyker, is that it?”
“It must have been Struyker! All of them had been drinking too much. It’s true that they did leave the cocktail party together. They went back to Struyker’s house. Tim figures Struyker must have tinkered with the car there.”
“Why did they go back to Struyker’s?”
“Tim can’t remember. But don’t you see, Struyker must have arranged it that way.” She stressed, “They’re not trying to make up a story, they’re trying to figure it out. That’s why I know that Tim didn’t do it; if he had, he’d have an excuse.” Her voice was thin. “He always has an excuse.”
He waited for her to continue.
“They remember that Struyker said he’d ride down as far as the gate with Beach to show him the way. He’d pick up his own car where he’d left it in town. They remember this because both Tim and Rags suggested going along but Struyker insisted they wait at the house. Because of the heavy rain.”
“What about the couple he lives with?”
“They were still at the cocktail party. The baby and the nursemaid were the only ones at home. She was getting the baby ready for bed.”
“Go on.”
“That’s all. Tim and Rags waited until Struyker returned and then they all sat around about an hour longer. To give Beach time to call for me and return to meet them. It wasn’t until they left the house that Struyker told them they weren’t having dinner with Mr. Adamsson but would go to a restaurant in Tesuque.”
“You told me last night that Tim called you he wouldn’t be home to dinner.”
“That was earlier. Before any of these arrangements were made.” Without expression, she said, “Tim is careful to avoid being saddled with me.”
He said, “They must have noticed the accident when they went down the hill.”
“They did. But they didn’t know who it was or what. They didn’t stop, a person doesn’t. The police were there.”
“You want me to save Struyker from this frame?”
“You must understand!” she cried. “It’s Tim who’s being framed, I tell you. Struyker must be the guilty one. But he’ll let Tim take the blame, because of Tim’s … mistakes.”
“Struyker knows about Tim’s … mistakes?”
She said quietly, “I’m terribly afraid that he does. It was he who came for the package.”
The clouds were mounting higher. You could see the darkness in them. He said, “Begin at the beginning, Dulce. You were in Mexico and Tim made a mistake. Whom did he kill, the girl or the boy? Or was it the old man?”
She
shook her head, “I don’t know—”
“Don’t start that. He said a him or a her.”
“It was the girl. But he doesn’t remember.” Her voice was under her breath. “He doesn’t know what he did that night.”
“He says. You decided to get him out of it.” He didn’t try to keep the contempt from his voice. “Because he was your little brother. How did you know what to do? You picked a sucker and said, ‘I need help’?”
She didn’t defend herself. She said flatly, “Tim had a friend. He worked in the office of one of the big export companies. He knew what to do.”
“Who was he?”
“The name would mean nothing to you.”
“What is the name?”
“Luis de Vaca.” The heat before the storm was oppressive. She pushed her hair away from her face. “Luis told me to take Tim to Chapala, to a friend of his there. Ragsdale. I was to leave Tim with Rags who would see him to the border.”
“Then what?”
“Then I went back to the city and waited until Luis could make the arrangements for Tim to cross the border safely.”
“How much did the arrangements cost you?”
“He wanted five thousand dollars. I couldn’t raise that much.” She remembered the hopelessness. “He agreed to arrange it for one thousand if I would carry a package across the border for a friend of his.” She said defiantly, “I suspected it was smuggling but I didn’t care. I had to help Tim.”
“A murderer.”
“I don’t know. He doesn’t know. How could I let him go to prison?” She believed she was right. Tim was her blind spot.
“Then you picked a dumb Mexican to do the dirty work.”
She had the grace to flush. Or it was the heat. “Only because I was afraid to go back to that dreadful Senor Praxiteles. That is the truth. No harm could have come to the Mexican. He could have proved he was hired for an errand.”
“He might have had a rough time. But okay, he didn’t. And you told the truth as far as it went. He wasn’t smuggling the package across the border, he had a receipt. He was only smuggling what was in the package. What was it?”
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