The Wrong Hill to Die On: An Alafair Tucker Mystery #6 (Alafair Tucker Mysteries)

by Donis Casey

  Matt’s laugh was incredulous. “Not hardly. I did have a few words with all three Arrudas that night, but it was all quite cordial.”

  “What did you talk about?” Elizabeth’s forthright questioning may have been impolitic, but it was to the point. Alafair placed her elbows on the table and leaned forward, interested in spite of herself.

  For the first time, Matt’s gaze slid away before he answered. If she had not been looking right at him, Alafair would not have seen it. “The usual folderol, mostly about the restaurant,” he said. “I spent more time talking to Tony than Bernie or Jorge that night.”

  “Well, Dillon had his nose atwitch about something you and Bernie may have said to one another that night,” Elizabeth said. “Could you tell what Dillon had on his mind when he questioned you?”

  “Not that! He must have got that idea from somebody he talked to between when he talked to me and then y’all. He did ask me if I thought Bernie was a Villista. I reckon that with all this worry about Pancho Villa’s roving army coming across the border Dillon thought he had better make sure Bernie had not been an advance scout or something of the like.”

  “And what did you tell him?” Shaw wondered.

  Matt laughed. “I told him not hardly. Bernie hated Diaz, Huerta, and Villa, the whole bunch of them, after his family was displaced by the war. But of course Dillon doesn’t know one revolutionary faction from another.”

  “Well, he asked us a bunch of questions about you when he was by my house, though I think we put him onto another scent. You’d best be on the lookout for another visit from the marshal, though, Matt. Just in case.” Elizabeth tapped a finger on the table as she delivered her warning.

  Cindy spoke for the first time since the subject of Bernie Arruda had been raised. “I do not like that marshal.” Her voice trembled.

  Matt looked at Cindy across the table, his entire mien softening. “Mr. Dillon has a tough job, Cindy.” His tone was soothing. “He has to be tough to do it. I can put up with a hard line of questioning if that is what it takes to discover who did this cruel murder.”

  Elizabeth looked amused at Matt’s gentle handling, but Alafair and Shaw cast one another a glance.

  Cindy sniffed. “I suppose you’re right, Matty. He had our houses searched, though, and I cannot stand the thought of those men pawing my things. Web thinks he’ll search the homes of everyone at the party, so be warned.”

  Matt’s eyebrows knit. “He searched your house?”

  Cindy leaned across the table and covered his hand with her own. “There was nothing for him to find. Still, I didn’t like it one bit.”

  Elizabeth made a disdainful noise. “Oh, pooh, Cindy. He doesn’t really think any of us conked Bernie. He just wanted to give me a hard time for my lip.”

  Money

  Cindy seemed comforted by Elizabeth’s certainty and eager to change the subject. “Oh, Matty, we’ve had the most wonderful adventure today. We spent the morning out at the old Rural School, watching them make the motion picture.”

  Matt grinned at her enthusiasm. “Did you really? I’ve seen the shooting once or twice since they have been here. It is interesting. I think that by now most of the actors and workers have had a meal or two here, as well.”

  Blanche spoke up. “Did you meet Dorothy Clark?”

  “Is she the young one? Yes, she has been here with her mother and some of the others three or four times. She is a very pleasant young lady.”

  “Why, Matt,” Elizabeth teased, “such luster and glory! You should place a big sign right outdoors. ‘Famous Actors Ate Here!’ You could charge extra for folks to sit in the same chair Hobart Bosworth sat in.”

  Cindy giggled. “Oh, Elizabeth, you are awful.”

  Matt was willing to go along with the joke. “That’s not a bad idea! So tell me, I heard there were going to be fireworks on the set today. Was it exhilarating?”

  “Thrilling!” Cindy exclaimed.

  “Loud,” Alafair said.

  “Eye-popping,” Shaw agreed, “and more than the film people bargained for, I’ll allow. The explosives man planted a hair too much dynamite and blew that building into toothpicks, and somebody’s cache of money sky high.”

  Matt’s eyes widened. “Money,” he repeated.

  Elizabeth held out a slender arm and pushed up her sleeve to reveal a small round bruise. “You would not have believed the evidence of your own eyes, Matt. Coins and bills of every ilk came tumbling down among the shards of wood like a golden rain from heaven. Some poor wretch picked the worst place in the world to hide his poker winnings.”

  Elizabeth, Cindy, and Blanche enthusiastically finished the story, too wrapped up in their tale to notice that Matt had not blinked or twitched a muscle since the word money was uttered. When they finished, Alafair observed that Matt’s olive complexion had paled a couple of shades.

  Tony Arruda

  Shaw walked with Elizabeth to retrieve the automobile, leaving Alafair, Blanche, and Cindy sitting content on a bench in front of the eatery. Blanche was eager to restore her new friend’s good humor with talk of the motion picture, so Alafair left the two to their pleasant reminiscence and took the opportunity to walk a little way up the sidewalk for a better look at the neighborhood. She got as far as the corner of the little adobe house when she glanced down the alley and caught sight of the screen door at the back of the restaurant fly open and a man with the stub of a cigarette in his mouth step outside. He was pulling on a twill jacket over his white bibbed apron, walking like a man with a destination in mind. He was small, smaller than Alafair, and she was no more than middle height for a woman. His complexion was the dark red-brown of polished mahogany. Without his rakish black and silver charro outfit, Alafair would not have known him on the street, but after Matt’s assertion that he was at that moment working in the kitchen, she expected this was Tony Arruda, Bernie’s brother.

  She cast a quick look over her shoulder to see Cindy and Blanche still sitting on the bench with their heads together. Shaw and Elizabeth had not yet turned off the street into the restaurant parking lot. She had a few minutes.

  “Excuse me, mister!” She started down the alley, and the man stopped and turned his head to look at her.

  As she walked toward him his eyebrows knit, plainly wondering what on earth this strange Anglo woman could possibly have to say to him.

  As she neared, Alafair could see that he bore a disturbing resemblance to the dead man. “Excuse me for bothering you, sir, but are you Tony Arruda?”

  He blinked at her. “Yes, Señora. How can I help you?”

  “My name is Miz Shaw Tucker. I am sister to Miz Webster Kemp, at whose house you and your brothers played music the other night. I am the one who found your brother’s body the next morning, and I wanted to take this opportunity to say that I’m very sorry for your loss.”

  The expression on Tony’s face grew more skeptical as she talked, as though he seriously doubted her sincerity. “Thank you, Señora.”

  “I understand Mr. Dillon delivered the horrible news to your family.”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you have any idea who may have murdered your poor brother?”

  He shook his head. Alafair could tell that he was anxious to get on with his errand and was not inclined to discuss the matter with her, but he did offer her a soft answer as an acknowledgment of her expression of concern. “Bernie knew many people, Señora, and had his hand in many pots. He was a man with much emotion, laughed easy and fought easy, too.” No more speculation than that.

  Alafair came at it another way. “I understand he enjoyed his acting job in the motion picture.”

  “He did.”

  “Was Bernie married?”

  “His wife died in Mexico, Señora, but he has a daughter here. She lives with our mother.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry. Where do they live?”

  “In Guadalupe.” He crushed the cigarette under his heel then looked back up at her, his manner still deferentia
l but a spark of defiance lit his black eyes. “Why do you wish to know?”

  Alafair approved of the lift of his chin.“Would it be all right if I made a call of condolence to them?”

  Tony smiled for first time. “You are kind, Señora, but it is not necessary.”

  “Has the marshal released you brother’s body?”

  “He has.”

  “When is the funeral?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Alafair?” She turned at the sound of her name. Shaw was leveling a curious stare at her from the head of the alley. “You ready to get on back?”

  “Coming,” she called, and turned back to Tony. “I am sorry, Mr. Arruda. Please express my condolences to your family.”

  By the time she reached Shaw, Tony had disappeared around the back of the building. Shaw took her arm and ushered her toward the Hupmobile, which was waiting in front of the restaurant with all hands on board. “That was Tony Arruda, Bernie’s brother,” she said, anticipating his question. “I was just telling him I was sorry for his loss.”

  Shaw knew Alafair better than that. “Did he have any idea about who did his brother in?”

  “If he did he wasn’t going to tell me about it.” They climbed into the back seat next to Blanche. “Elizabeth,” Alafair said, as they took off, “where did you say this town of Guadalupe is?”

  Unrequited

  They stopped long enough to retrieve Chase from Mrs. Carrizal’s tender care and to drop Cindy off at her front door. They walked into Elizabeth’s house feeling tired and grubby after their adventure. Alafair hauled Blanche into the veranda bedroom and washed her down, made her drink a cup of healing tea, and lie down for a nap.

  She found Shaw and Elizabeth in the parlor. They had draped themselves comfortably across the divans, and Shaw withdrew one long leg so she could sit down next to him. Chase was nowhere to be seen. Elizabeth has probably sent him outside to wander the neighborhood like a stray dog, Alafair thought, and wished they had left him with Mrs. Carrizal until supper. For a few minutes the three of them sat in silence, sipping mugs of sweet tea.

  It was Shaw who broke the spell with a laconic question. “So, Elizabeth, how long has Matt Carrizal been in love with Cindy?”

  Alafair sputtered a laugh. Trust him to read her mind.

  Elizabeth, on the other hand, was stunned. Her mouth dropped open. “Why, Shaw Tucker, where did you get such an idea?”

  It was Alafair who answered. “Oh, come, Elizabeth, you’d have to be blind as a post hole not to recognize that moon-struck look. I have four daughters who are spoken for, and I’ve seen that look in the eyes of each of my sons-in-law.”

  Elizabeth slowly leaned forward and placed her goblet on the tea table, giving herself time to consider. “Well, I’ll be switched. That is something that never occurred to me. Of course, I don’t get the chance to see the two of them together very often.” She sat back. “I’ll tell you this, though. If Matt has tender feelings for Cindy, she don’t return the sentiment. Not in the same way, at least. Cindy and I have been friends for a long time, and she has never hinted that her eye has wandered. Of course, I met her after she married Geoff and moved in next door. Until today I had no idea that Matt and Cindy knew one another before that. She was crazy about Geoff when I first knew her, and she still would be if he’d give her the slightest reason. As it is, now she’s just crazy because of him.”

  Neither Alafair nor Shaw spoke, so Elizabeth shifted in her chair and continued. “I declare, if what you suspect is true, I wish Cindy had known that Matt fancies her before she fell for Geoff! But then Matt is too good. Cindy don’t think a man loves her unless he runs roughshod over her. That’s the example she learned from the way her daddy treats her mama. Geoff already owned that house when they married. All he needed was the right kind of wife to keep it for him and produce an heir. She’d have been much better off with Matt, but there would have been no possibility—her daddy would never allow her to involve herself with a Mexican-blood man, no matter how respected and successful. Those Gillanders are a proud bunch, cross-ways to all but their own kind.”

  It was Shaw’s turn to laugh. “Doc Moeur said almost the same thing to me about the Gillanders on the night of the party!”

  An Inordinately Proud Bunch

  The Moeurs had been among the last guests to leave that night. Shaw had walked Dr. Moeur to his Franklin roadster parked in front of the house and the two men had gazed up at the star-filled sky and talked while they waited for Mrs. Moeur to say her farewell to the hostess.

  “How’d you get out here to Arizona, Doc?” Shaw had told his own story so many times over the course of the evening that he was eager to hear someone else’s tale for a change.

  Moeur was willing. “Well, after I got done with my medical studies and married Honor, I was looking for someplace to set up practice. My brother Bill was already here, and he said I ought to come out because Arizona was wide open and full of promise. So out we come. We ended up here in Tempe almost twenty years ago, now.” Moeur paused to light an enormous stogie. “I was born in Tennessee, myself. But I went to school in Arkansas to study doctoring.”

  “Where at in Arkansas?”

  “Fayetteville.”

  Shaw was as delighted as if he had accidentally met a heretofore unknown relative. “Why, that’s our old stomping ground! My daddy’s family has lived around Mountain Home for as long as any living soul can remember, and my mama’s folks ran off from the Trail of Tears and hid back up there in the hills near to a hundred years ago.”

  “Well, I’ll be. It is a small world, isn’t it?”

  “It is that. Do y’all like living out here?”

  “I love it,” Moeur said, amid plumes of smoke. “Bill was right about Arizona being full of promise. You wouldn’t believe the growth around here since we joined the Union.” He paused. “You know, I worked as hard for statehood as anybody. I even helped write up our state constitution. But as much progress as has been made in the last four years, I have to say there are some things I liked better about being a territory.”

  Shaw gave a sage nod. “I know just what you mean. We moved out to Oklahoma from Arkansas in ’93, right after the bank panic. It was still the Indian Territory then. We got statehood in ’07, which it’s nice to be able to vote for President and all, but now there are a lot more rules and regulations than there used to be. And some of the carpetbaggers and speculators who have moved in lately…” He let the comment hang and took the opportunity to broach another topic. “What’d you think about Gillander’s hubbledebub?”

  Moeur chewed his cigar for a moment while he considered his reply. “Oh, old Duncan is harmless. They’re an inordinately proud bunch, those Gillanders. Sort of think God created a special place in the universe just for them. Scotchmen, you know.”

  Shaw thought of Alafair’s Gunn relatives and smiled. “I know.”

  “What worries me, though, is that there are a lot of folks around here that agree with him. Too many believe that all the Mexican immigrants are just coming across in order to take what we have.”

  Shaw caught the doctor’s tone. “But you don’t.”

  “Like Levi said, there is a terrible lot of violence and unrest down there right now. I’d want to get my family out of that situation, too.” Moeur had sighed and flicked a column of ash into the ditch.

  Anything is Possible

  “Matt seems like a fine man to me, Elizabeth,” Shaw said. “I’d be proud to have him for one of my girls. Do you know him well?”

  Elizabeth shrugged. “I know him through his folks. I reckon any son of Mr. and Miz Carrizal is a person worth knowing. Why? What are you thinking?” The fact that Shaw and Alafair had so quickly noticed something about her friend Cindy that she had not gathered after years of acquaintance had shaken her.

  Alafair answered as though it was she who had posed the question in the first place. “Well, nothing to speak of, really. It just seemed to me that Matt was awful distrait wh
en he heard about the cache of money that got blown up.”

  Elizabeth’s expression said this was going too far. “Now, if you are suggesting that Matt Carrizal is connected with that money or anything else distasteful, you are seeing things that aren’t there, sister. If you threw a rock into a crowd, whoever you hit would be as likely to be the culprit at Matt.”

  “All right, honey, you know him way better than I do. I’m just thinking aloud.”

  Elizabeth looked stubborn. “Don’t think such thoughts aloud when Joe Dillon is around. You know he’s fishing around for some reason to latch onto Matt.”

  “You’re right. I’ll keep my speculation to myself.” Alafair’s tone was soothing, and Elizabeth seemed satisfied.

  The conversation moved on, and Alafair had little to say until Elizabeth picked up the tea glasses and took them back into the kitchen. When she was out of the room, Alafair leaned close and spoke to Shaw just loud enough to be heard. “That money was put there by Bernie Arruda.”

  He turned his head to look at her. “What makes you say that?” She often pulled these conclusions out of thin air, which both amused and annoyed him. She was often right, which amused and annoyed him even more.

  “Mr. Bosworth said it was Bernie who found the schoolhouse location for the motion picture…”

  Shaw interrupted her. “Then he would have known they were going to dynamite the building. Why would he hide his money there?”

  This little detail did not bother her. “He meant to fetch the money away before the explosion. But he didn’t get the chance before he got killed. Also, Tony Arruda tore out of Matt’s restaurant in a hurry after we left. I figure Matt told him what happened out at the film set and he was off to tell someone else. I meant to ask him about the money when I saw him in the alley, but he made his escape before I could finagle it out of him.”

  “So somehow Matt is involved and Tony, too? Now that’s convoluted thinking, Alafair. If Bernie’s murderer intended to steal his money, he must have killed Bernie before he found out where it was. Not a very good plan.”