The Pot Thief Who Studied Billy the Kid (Pot Thief Mysteries)

by J. Michael Orenduff

  “And for the main course?”

  “The salad was the main course.”

  She laughed. “So that’s how she stays so slim.”

  “Maybe it’s how she justified the dessert, a saskatoon pie in a buttery crust.”

  “A Canadian-themed meal. And after dessert?”

  “We played Scrabble.”

  “Scrabble is not ‘chic’, Hubie.”

  “It is when the board is revealed by removing the tablecloth, and the players are sipping Gruet rosé.”

  “And after Scrabble?”

  “We smooched.”

  “Saying ‘smooched’ is so not ‘chic’. Did it lead anywhere?”

  “That’s sort of a personal question, Suze.”

  “In other words, no.”

  We both laughed at that. “She said to me, ‘Keep your cast on, Cowboy’.”

  “I guess it would be awkward with a cast.”

  “I don’t think I’m likely to find out. But things are going great. Maybe after the cast is off…”

  “Things are looking good for you, Hubie.”

  I sighed. “Only in the romance department. The rest of my life is falling apart.” I crunched a chip. “I’m beginning to wonder if there really is something to that King Tut Curse.”

  “You had nothing to do with King Tut.”

  I shook my head. “It’s a generic term. Anyone who digs in a grave can get it.”

  “Good thing mosquitoes are rare in the desert,” she joked.

  “Dying from a mosquito bite is only one example. Curses can take any form.”

  “And what sort of curse are you suffering?”

  “Think about it. Immediately after I dug in that grave, someone stole my Bronco. You say there are no coincidences, and I’m beginning to believe you. Then a coyote showed up dragging a chain. Doesn’t that sound like some sort of macabre symbol?”

  She was twisting a lock of hair around her fingers. “It is bizarre, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be a symbol.”

  “Then I dropped my canteen and sprained my ankle, leaving me immobilized in the desert with no water, a potentially fatal situation.”

  “But you didn’t die. You were rescued by a doctor even though you were in the middle of nowhere. That’s the opposite of a curse. It’s more like a miracle.”

  “Another way to look at it,” I said, “is that it was just the curse keeping me alive so the next pestilence could be visited on me. Like in the Old Testament. The only reason they didn’t die of thirst during the drought was they had to be alive when the swarms of locusts arrived.”

  “Well, no locusts have shown up, and nothing bad has happened since you got back.”

  “Wrong. I got two bad phone calls today. The first was from a supercilious young woman at my bank saying they couldn’t grant me a second mortgage.”

  “You’ve been paying on that place for over twenty years. You must have tons of equity.”

  “Equity is not the problem. I don’t qualify for a loan because I have a low credit score.”

  “You don’t pay your bills?”

  “I don’t have any to pay. The only bill I have is my mortgage, but they’re the ones considering the loan so they don’t count. What they want is a credit score based on how I’ve paid other people.”

  “What about your credit card?”

  “I rarely use it. And when I do, I pay it off when the statement arrives.”

  “That should help raise your credit score.”

  “No. It lowers it.”

  She plunked her glass down on the table. “Paying off your credit card lowers your credit score?”

  I nodded. “I know it sounds crazy, but if you pay the whole balance, then you really don’t have a loan from the credit card company. They were just a sort of payment agent for you. But if you make installment payments and have a rotating balance, then your credit score goes up because you are handling the loan responsibly.”

  “No you’re not. The responsible thing is to pay it and avoid interest.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed, “if you want to be responsible to yourself. But the bank can’t make money that way.”

  “So they reward you for paying them interest by giving you a higher credit score so you can qualify for a loan and then… wait, pay them more interest. I guess it does make sense – for the banks. And I suppose this system was invented by the same crooks who ran the banking system off the cliff then got a government bail-out.”

  “You got it. And then used some of our money to give themselves huge bonuses.”

  “This is making me mad. Let’s change the subject and go to the second bad call. Maybe it will be better.”

  “Huh?”

  “But first,” she said, “let’s get another round.”

  I agreed we had earned it by breaking the code to our evil banking empire even though there was nothing we could do about it, so I signaled Angie for replenishments.

  After they arrived, I told Susannah what Whit Fletcher told me.

  “He said he’d poked around, and there is no missing person who’s a likely candidate to be our friend from the cliff dwelling.”

  “How would he know that?”

  “He called his connections with the sheriff’s offices in each of the counties closest to the site. They told him the people they have on their missing list are people they suspect have relocated of their own volition, people running out on child support or skipping bail, thinks like that. Then there are a few missing children. There is no adult they are actively looking for.”

  She mulled it over. “I guess it was worth a try, but it doesn’t tell us much. The dead guy could have been a drifter, an illegal immigrant or some other type who wouldn’t be on any record.”

  “Like a prehistoric person,” I said. “They didn’t record deaths in the tenth century.”

  “It’s not a mummy, Hubert. Someone moved it, remember? You agreed that means it was probably a murder victim. You got too close to the evidence, so the killer relocated the body.”

  “I did think that made sense, but there’s another possibility. Maybe a treasure hunter found the body and took it.”

  “Why?”

  “To sell, of course. Human remains bring big bucks on the black market.“

  “God, that is so sick.”

  31

  The pot went into the kiln the next morning.

  I was happy with what came out that afternoon. It wasn’t exactly like the shard, but it was close enough to fool the average buyer.

  Not that I deliberately set out to deceive buyers, average or otherwise.

  If someone is conceited enough to think he knows a genuine work when he sees it, being hoodwinked is just rewards. But when a buyer asks me if a pot is genuine, I tell the truth.

  After it had cooled, I took the pot to the shop and placed in on a shelf. I looked at it trying to decide on a price. Then I glanced at the partial pot Alvar Nuñez had brought, and lightning struck.

  It wasn’t the electrical kind from the sky. It was the mental kind from your brain when the synapses line up and truth strikes you like a bolt out of the blue.

  The pot Alvar sold me was not from that cliff dwelling high above the Rio Doloroso.

  I’ve been studying pot designs for over twenty years. There was no way the people who produced that shard also produced that pot. The designs were too different. To think they came from the same tribe would be like thinking Lew Wallace wrote both Ben-Hur and The Da Vinci Code.

  I examined the Alvar pot closely.

  I paced the floor until a quarter to five, no mean accomplishment with a cast on my foot. Then, I started my walk to our watering hole.

  “Alvar Nuñez is a fraud,” I said after taking the first sip of my margarita. “That pot he sold me didn’t come from the cliff dwelling.”

  “How do you know?” Susannah asked.

  “It doesn’t match the shard I found there.”

  “It doesn’t have to, does it? Not all pots made by
the same tribe are alike.”

  “Right. But there are certain consistencies in the designs, shapes and colors. Even casual collectors can tell the difference between a piece from Acoma and one from Kewa.”

  “And the shard and the pot are that different?”

  “Worlds apart.”

  “Wait,” she said excitedly, ”maybe the pot is from the cliff dwelling and it’s the shard that isn’t.”

  I shook my head. “I dug up the shard myself, so I know it was from there.”

  “You also dug up a hand, and it wasn’t from there.”

  “Why would someone bury a shard there?”

  “Maybe the dead guy had it on him when he was killed.”

  Oh brother. “We don’t know for certain that he was murdered. And even if he was, the shard is the ringer, not Alvar’s pot. I examined it closely after I realized how different it is from the shard. Not only didn’t his pot come from that cliff dwelling, I don’t even think it’s Anasazi. I think it’s a very good fake.”

  “Maybe it’s one of yours,” she said and laughed.

  “I can’t believe I bought a fake.”

  “I’m glad you did, Hubie. This could help us solve the mystery.”

  “Which mystery is that, Suze? Who stole my Bronco? Who moved the body? What happened to my hat?”

  “The first two. Forget the hat. Tell me everything Alvar said to you.”

  I closed my eyes and tried to remember our conversation.

  “He said he got the pot from a teenager who said he found it in a cliff dwelling. I asked him where, and he said at his house. I said I meant where was the pot found, not where did he get it, but he ignored that question. We looked at a similar partial pot I have priced at three thousand. He said he would take two thousand for his. I offered five hundred. He said if I gave him a thousand he would also tell me where the pot was found.”

  She chewed on that while I loaded a chip with salsa.

  “So he asks for two thousand. After you counter with only five hundred, he goes all the way down to a thousand without further haggling. And he throws in the location of the cliff dwelling even though he had ignored your earlier request for the location.”

  I nodded.

  “So he doesn’t haggle much, takes a low price and throws in the location. It’s obvious, Hubie. He wasn’t there to sell a pot. He was there to lure you to that cliff dwelling.”

  I admitted it made some sense, but there was a huge unanswered question.

  “Why?”

  “He wanted you to find the body.”

  “Why?”

  That one stumped her but not for long. “He’s the murderer and subconsciously wanted to be caught because he couldn’t handle the guilt.”

  “Then why not just go to the police? Why involve me?”

  She bit her lip. Then she said, “Maybe his guilt is not about the murder. Maybe he thinks the victim had it coming. But he still feels guilty about burying him in an Anasazi site.”

  “You’re striving.”

  “Yeah, you’re right. How about this? Alvar is not the murderer, but he knows who is. He wants the guy caught.”

  “Same issue. Why not just go to the police?”

  “I’ve got it! You told me he lives in a tiny village. That means he knows everyone there. The murderer is a dangerous guy. Alvar is afraid if he goes to the police, the murderer will come after him. But if it looks like an accidental discovery, the murderer won’t connect it to Alvar.”

  “I don’t know, Suze. Seems a bit far-fetched.”

  “So maybe we don’t know the reason. But you admit it looks like Alvar wanted to lure you to that site.”

  “I admit that could be the case.”

  “Then the best way to find out why he did it is to ask him.”

  32

  We left for La Reina the next morning.

  The trip took us 3,000 feet up in elevation and 300 years back in time.

  A primitive road snaked along a creek and eventually up to the spring which was its source. It was a good thing Susannah hadn’t yet traded the truck back for her Crown Vic. That boat would have struggled climbing the dirt road to La Reina, a village time has forgotten.

  The villagers seemed to like it that way. Low adobes were scattered around a system of acequias that fed level plots of corn, beans and chiles and small orchards of apples and apricots. The road ended in a placita around which were clustered a bar named El Erupto del Rey, a general store, a gas station, a town hall, a hair salon, a grocery store, two empty stores and a church, the only building in town that wasn’t eroding.

  The bar had booths against the front wall, tables in the center of the room around an open area for dancing and a bar along the back wall with a dozen stools. We sat on the stools and asked the kid behind the bar if they served food. He said they had pizza, hamburgers, tacos and chile stew. Susannah chose the hamburger. The smell of roasting chiles hanging in the air forced me to chance the stew.

  The kid threw a hamburger patty on the grill along with the two halves of the bun face down. He spooned some stew from a crock-pot into a bowl. The crock-pot seemed out of place, but so did a fifteen-year-old barkeep.

  “You want a beer?” he asked.

  “You’re not old enough to serve beer.”

  He shrugged. “There’s no one else here.”

  “You have Corona?”

  “Sure.”

  “Okay, I’ll have one.”

  He had a pleasant kid’s smile. “You’re not a policeman, are you?”

  “I’m not.”

  He opened my beer and Susannah’s Pepsi. He flipped the patty, dressed the bun like he’d been working as a short-order cook for years and slid a standard hamburger onto the bar.

  “I suppose you know everyone around here.” I said.

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m looking for a guy named Alvar Nuñez.”

  He shook his head.

  “You sure?” I asked.

  “There’s only eight apellidos – family names – around here “

  Susannah shot me a glance at the word ‘apellidos’.

  “What are they?” I asked.

  “Zaragosa, Maldonado, Campos, Castillo, Padilla, Gomez, Medrano and Maestas.”

  “How come you can list all the names so easily?” Susannah asked him.

  “My great grandmother made me memorize them. Those are the eight apellidos of the families on the original land grant.”

  “And everyone here is descended from those families?”

  “Some married in from outside, but they got the old names when they married. Except for a white guy named Braddock. I don’t know when he came here. He’s married to one of my aunts.”

  “Is there anyone else I could talk to?”

  “My great grandmother is here, but she doesn’t speak English.”

  “I speak Spanish. I’d like to meet her.”

  He shrugged and passed through a curtain in a doorframe. When he came back he said, “She wants to know what you want to talk to her about.”

  “I want to ask her about someone from La Reina who may be missing.”

  After another consultation, he motioned me to follow him to the back. When Susannah rose, he said, “Please wait out here, Miss.”

  The young man introduced his great grandmother, who called him Ernesto, as Señora Celerina Gomez Maestas. He didn’t give her my name since he didn’t know it. I introduced myself and thanked her for agreeing to speak to me.

  After a bit of polite conversation, Ernesto brought us coffee. After we had finished the coffee, I told her a scientist who was studying the Rio Doloroso had found an unmarked grave, at which news she crossed herself and kissed her rosary.

  I asked her if she had heard tales of people being buried in unmarked graves either in the past or recently. She said all the villagers were strictly traditional with regard to burials, and she was sure no one in the area had been buried anywhere other than the cemetery by the church. I asked her if there ha
d ever been runaways or disappearances. She said some people left, of course, mostly young people. They went to the big cities like Taos or Tierra Amarilla for the excitement.

  I managed to keep a straight face.

  I asked her if she knew anyone named Nuñez. She did not. Then, on a lark, I asked if there might be someone who could contact the spirit of the person in the unmarked grave.

  Her eyes seemed to withdraw under her wizened brow. She crossed herself again and said, “Claro que sí, la curandera.”

  33

  “So we’re going to wait around until the curandera shows up, and then what? Have a seance?”

  “Maybe. Or maybe just get some information. Curanderas know a lot about their villages.”

  We had moved from the bar to one of the booths. The lamp over the table – an inverted T with a metal cylinder on each end – cast a yellow cone of light over each of us. I felt like I was sitting in a comic book frame.

  “Hubie, I need to start learning a few words in Spanish. I’m going to the bar for a fresh Pepsi. This one is warm.”

  I turned to look at Ernesto’s replacement. He was a handsome young man with deep-set dark eyes.

  “How do you say ‘eyes’ in Spanish,” she asked me.

  Just as I suspected. She wanted to flirt with the new bartender, tell him he had beautiful eyes.

  “Ojos,” I answered.

  She went to the bar, got a fresh glass of Pepsi, chatted up the young man and returned to the booth.

  “I saw you flirting with the bartender.”

  “He does have great eyes, but I wasn’t flirting with him. While he fixed my refill, I asked if he knew anyone named Nuñez.”

  “Does he?”

  “He says he doesn’t. Do you think Nuñez really doesn’t live here or are the villagers just protecting him?”

  “I don’t think Ernesto could lie so convincingly. Same for his great grandmother.”

  “What address was on his drivers license?”

  “I looked at his license to verify his name. I didn’t look at the address.”

  “Why would he tell you he lives here?”