Holy Guacamole!

by Nancy Fairbanks

  “She got slugged last night in a strip club,” said Luz, grinning.

  Very funny, I thought. If she’d been closer, I’d have kicked her.

  “My land!” exclaimed our hostess. “You’re too old to be stripping, and you got that prissy look about you. Like you wouldn’t approve of strip clubs. Now me. Walter and me took in a few strip clubs in Juarez when we were younger. Chunky, brown-skinned girls taking their clothes off. Didn’t seem that much of a show to me, but one of the places had a fellow singing bullfight music. I liked that one.”

  “Can you remember anything else about the man who visited my neighbor last Saturday, ma’am?” Luz asked. “Like his car. What kind of car was he driving?”

  “Oh, it was just an ordinary car. I never pay much attention to cars. That’s a man’s thing. Walter could have told you, but he’s dead, more’s the pity. It was a dark color, or maybe it just looked that way because it wasn’t parked under a light. Doctor obviously didn’t know what house he was going to, parking two houses away. Not even in front of a door. His car was pretty long. Not one of those runty little cars they got these days. Course, him being a tall fellow, he probably couldn’t get into one of those runty cars.”

  After we’d thanked her for the information, she said, “Well, it was my pleasure. Nice to have company from time to time. Wouldn’t like it every day, but now and then’s nice.”

  “She’s going to have more company,” Luz said as she walked toward the street. “We’ll have to give her name to the police.” She sighed. “We need to get hold of Guevara. And what did I tell you? Prissy. She noticed it too.”

  “Am not,” I retorted.

  38

  Going Behind Sergeant Guevara’s Back

  Luz

  Carolyn didn’t want to visit police headquarters at Five Points with a black eye and an eye patch. “They’ll take one look and arrest me,” she predicted. I pointed out that she was the person who discovered that Dr. Brockman had not been where he claimed while Vladik was being killed. Her testimony was important. “You could tell them about it,” she insisted. I got her there by the simple expedient of refusing to drive her home or let her drive herself, but I had to listen to her debating on whether or not she should wear the hat into the police station.

  Personally, it cheered me up to go inside. Previously, I hadn’t wanted to. It would have been a reminder of what I’d lost to this damned disease, or so I thought. Guevara wasn’t there, but Lieutenant Robert Matalisse, a man I’d broken in in Narcotics, was and running Crimes Against Persons these days. Who wouldn’t rather talk to Rob, I thought, when the alternative was Art Guevara? I hustled Carolyn down the hall to Matalisse’s office and stuck my head in. “Got a minute for a retired cripple?” I asked cheerfully.

  He stood up and ushered us in, smiling. To my surprise there was gray showing in his hair. I’d always thought of him as a young man. “Making waves again, Luz?” he asked. “Lots of cop gossip making the rounds. You and Chuy and some DEA agent bringing in a Juarez cartel guy. Heard you came across the border with the guy in the trunk of your car.”

  “Trunk of Carolyn’s car,” I corrected, and introduced her. “And the two of us brought him in. Chuy and Parko from DEA just got us out of the hands of INS and into the jail with our prisoner.”

  “And now you’ve got someone else in the trunk?” He motioned us to chairs and dropped into his own behind the desk.

  “No, but we’ve got a suspect in a murder case. Of course, it could still be Ignatenko from Brazen Babes, but—”

  “Hold on.” He studied Carolyn, with her eye patch and huge, floppy denim hat. “You the lady got knocked out by Gubenko last night?” He nodded. “I saw the assault report this morning. What are you two? A ladies’ detective agency?”

  “Oh, that is a delightful series, isn’t it?” Carolyn exclaimed. Up till then she’d been silent and sulky. “But it’s called the First Ladies Detective Agency. Those books are so charming; they make you want to visit Botswana.”

  Rob looked blank, and I said, “He doesn’t read books. Whatever you’re talking about, it’s not what he meant. Anyway, Rob, and before my friend here reviews the whole damn book for you, we’ve found a local doctor who told my ex the night it happened that they needed to get rid of Gubenko. Then he told his wife he had to go in for emergency surgery at Providence, only a night nurse who was on duty while Gubenko was being suffocated said the doctor wasn’t there—at the hospital. Then this afternoon we found an old lady who saw a tall guy with a doctor’s bag go into Gubenko’s house. That was after Gubenko staggered in.”

  “Guevara’s case.” Rob squinted at me. “This wouldn’t be you trying to get your ex in trouble, would it, Luz? What’s his name?”

  “Escobar. Francisco Escobar, and no, I don’t think he had anything to do with the murder.”

  “He didn’t,” Carolyn chimed in. “Barbara, his present wife, said he was home in bed with her while Vladik was being killed.”

  “And how did she happen to tell you that?” Rob asked Carolyn.

  “Because our ad hoc ladies’ opera committee was trying to figure out who could have killed Vladik, and we started with our own husbands. That’s how I know that Vivian Brockman thought her husband was at Providence Memorial for emergency surgery when he wasn’t.”

  “Carolyn was another person who heard Brockman say he had to get rid of Vladik, but you’ll want to talk to my ex as corroboration. Just don’t tell Francisco I was behind it,” I added. “I haven’t seen him in years, but we parted on good terms, and I’d just as soon keep it that way.”

  Rob studied us thoughtfully, probably trying to decide whether we were both crazy or what. “Guevara says the guy died of food poisoning. In fact he got tox screens back today that say something bad was in the guacamole the victim ate.”

  I could see Carolyn tense at the mention of food poisoning and guacamole. Damn! What if she made the guacamole? Here she’d had me running around looking for a murderer, when she—

  “He’s out trying to get his hands on the guacamole maker right now.”

  Again I glanced at Carolyn, who was biting her lip. But then there was the pillow. I’m the one who said it had been used to smother a sick man. Was she just going along because she hoped it was true? I explained the pillow evidence to Rob, then the butt and handprints I’d had photographed. “Guevara knows about the pillow and the prints on the sofa. He just didn’t want to bother following up.”

  Rob shrugged. “You and Art never did like each other.” “Doesn’t mean the department shouldn’t look into the lead,” I retorted.

  “I didn’t say it did. What’s the doctor’s name?”

  “Peter Brockman. The neurosurgeon,” said Carolyn. “He’s the current president of Opera at the Pass, which explains his association with Vladik Gubenko. He made the remark about getting rid of Vladik at the party where Vladik got sick and went home. If the guacamole made him sick, it was probably because he ate several pounds of it. As nice as guacamole is, and this was very good, it’s not meant to be eaten in such large quantities.”

  Matalisse was frowning. “You couldn’t have found a suspect who was less prominent in the community?”

  Carolyn, who had the bit in her teeth at that point, said, “Most of the people at that party are prominent in the community. They may not all like opera—they certainly didn’t like that particular performance—but supporting opera is seen in that group as a fashionable thing to do. Not Jason and I—we love opera—but—”

  “Yeah, thanks. I’m getting the picture. We’ll definitely look into Brockman.”

  “And don’t forget the butt print,” I reminded him.

  Rob grinned. “We’ll ink his ass and make him sit down.”

  Carolyn looked shocked. “I really need to get home now, Luz,” she said plaintively.

  “I can believe it,” Rob agreed. “That’s some shiner you’ve got there. I can see it spreading out under the patch. Me, I’d take that patch off.
It’s not like you need to wear it for us. We’ve all seen shiners before. Hell, a lot of us have had them.”

  “Thank you for your concern, Lieutenant,” she replied. Prissy again. She probably felt like crap. I’d like to have stayed to be sure that they followed up on Brockman, but I figured I owed it to her to get her home.

  “Okay, Caro. Let’s hit the road,” I agreed. “And Matalisse, don’t let Guevara talk you out of the follow-up on Brockman. I guess if you piss an opera lover off enough by screwing around with a good opera, you might get killed.”

  “I wouldn’t have thought so,” said Carolyn. “Professor Gubenko presented Macbeth as a story about drug dealers, and it did offend a good many people, but surely killing someone over it is an extreme reaction. Perhaps the doctor is overworked and having a nervous breakdown.”

  “I read Macbeth in high school. Pretty violent. I can see the connection to drug dealing,” said the lieutenant. “You might have got a few cops over to the performance if they’d known what Gubenko had in mind.”

  “If it’s ever brought back, I’ll certainly advise the publicity committee to send flyers to police stations,” said Carolyn. She had risen and looked a little wobbly. The woman is a wuss, I thought. A black eye isn’t that big a deal. But it turned out that she wasn’t even wobbly. She insisted on dropping me at home and driving off on her own. Now what was that about? I’d pissed her off again? Or Matalisse had? She was a hard woman to please.

  39

  Anxious Relatives From Juarez

  Carolyn

  Swaying on my feet had been a good move. It was obvious that Luz hadn’t wanted to leave, but she did when she thought I was ill. From the time I heard that the sergeant was after the guacamole provider, I couldn’t wait to get out of there. I was probably too late to defend Adela from him, but I had to try. I drove straight home and checked my answering machine. Nothing—not even from Jason. He hadn’t called in several days now, even to say for certain when he’d be back, which was very irritating, especially considering that he was in Austin with some young thing named Mercedes Lizarreta. Nothing from anyone else. I called the dormitory, but Adela wasn’t there. Had she been arrested? I couldn’t very well call Crimes Against Persons and ask. That wouldn’t be very subtle.

  I ducked into the “maid’s bathroom” to examine my eye. My house has a room and bath for a live-in maid, which I don’t have; mine comes once a week but not that week because she was visiting relatives somewhere in Mexico. My eye was truly dreadful, all puffy and a rich, dark purple with red streaks and black edging. Driving home had been a chore because my vision on that side was pretty much obscured. I discovered that one’s depth perception is quite altered when only one eye is functioning. I had to start braking as soon as I saw a traffic light in order to avoid running into the back of the car ahead of me if the light turned red. I was standing sideways to the mirror over the little sink, trying to look at my injured eye from a side view, which, of course, wasn’t possible, when the telephone rang. While rushing into the kitchen to answer, I bumped into the side of the door. Consequently, I was wincing when I picked up.

  My caller was Adela, in need of my advice. Her aunt and uncle from Juarez had come to visit, so she had spent much of the afternoon giving them a walking tour of the campus. When she returned to her dormitory, the student on desk duty told her that the police had been looking for her. “That horrible sergeant is going to arrest me,” she wailed.

  I couldn’t tell her that was unlikely. He probably did plan to arrest her. Instead I asked where she was at that time, and she replied that she was in her uncle’s car, calling on her aunt’s cell phone. Would that be Tia Julietta, who had given her the guacamole additive? I asked. It was, and Tio Javier, the lawyer. I suggested that they leave campus immediately and meet me at Casa Jurado, where we could have a nice dinner—I had to eat, so why not in company? —and decide what to do. Adela agreed immediately, whispering that her relatives from Juarez had been suggesting all sorts of peculiar strategies.

  This should be interesting, I thought, if I manage to drive there successfully. I hung up, went back to the maid’s bath, retrieved and donned my eye patch, and decided that a large denim garden hat might not be the proper headgear for dinner. After ruffling through the hatbox in the hall closet, I selected a wide-brimmed black hat that necessitated changing to a black outfit. Finally, I was ready and drove off to the restaurant, where I found Adela, looking distraught, while her aunt and uncle dipped chips in the excellent chile con queso, the large size, and conversed in Spanish. Introductions were made, the language switched to English for my sake, and Tia Julietta complimented me on my hat, remarking that she herself liked hats because they were dressier for evening and warded off evil spirits that might be lurking above one’s head.

  Tio Javier told me to pay no attention to his sister, who clung to all sorts of old-fashioned, supernatural ideas instilled in her at an early age by their abuela, a delightful but somewhat crazy old lady, now deceased. I felt as if I’d walked into a scene in a magic realist novel—Isabela Allende or Gabriel García Márquez, neither of whom is Mexican. We consulted our menus. The aunt ordered Pescado al Mojo de Ajo, a fish filet in garlic butter; the uncle ordered steak Tampiqueno; Adela ordered, at my suggestion, spinach enchiladas, which are so very good and have such a lovely, subtle sauce; I tried something new, Enchiladas de Calebacitas, Mexican-squash enchiladas. Then we gingerly approached the subject of Adela’s fear of arrest.

  “It may be about to happen,” I admitted. “I was at police headquarters this afternoon, giving evidence on a man who may have smothered Adela’s professor, when I heard that the toxicology reports had come in and revealed an unusual addition to the guacamole, which, as you know, Adela made.”

  “Why are the police pursuing my niece if her professor died from smothering?” asked the uncle.

  “Unfortunately, the sergeant in charge of the investigation does not believe in the smothering theory because it is obvious that something made Professor Gubenko very sick before he died.”

  “But you convinced him, no?” said the aunt.

  “He wasn’t there. He was out looking for Adela.”

  Adela started to cry.

  “There, there child,” said Tia Julietta. “There is nothing in your horoscope to suggest that you will be arrested.”

  “Julietta, mia hermana, this is not a time for horoscopes,” protested Tio Javier. “This is a time for logic. Do you not agree, Senora Azul?”

  “Quite possibly,” I agreed, assuming that I was the Senora Azul he had addressed. “A friend with police connections and I have been investigating this death. We talked to the sergeant’s lieutenant, who has promised to look into our suggestions.”

  “Well, that is excellent,” said Tio Javier.

  Why was I thinking of him as Tio? I didn’t speak Spanish, and he wasn’t my uncle.

  “No sergeant will ignore the wishes of his superior,” said the uncle as he popped a bite of steak into his mouth. “The food here is excellent.”

  “It lacks something,” said Aunt Julietta.

  “Then don’t add it. We have enough troubles for our poor niece because she listened to you.”

  “I do not blame Tia Julietta,” said Adela, who was sniffling over her spinach enchiladas. “I asked for her help, and she gave it.”

  “And look what happened,” said the uncle. They fell back into Spanish to argue the matter. I pretended not to notice and occupied myself by admiring the delightful window that decorates the front wall of the restaurant—thick chunks of colored glass set deep in a black, rough-surfaced, flaring frame, which is, in turn, inset in the thick adobe wall. It rather reminded me of the window in the Juarez Cathedral, one side of which has a very modern wall. On the other hand, part of the cathedral is definitely Spanish colonial style, the part that survived an earth tremor, which occurred soon after the structure was finished. I wonder if the parishioners considered that disaster a message from God or a simple m
isfortune. Whatever they thought, they redid the destroyed part behind the spires with cement blocks and the memorable modern window. Peculiar, but interesting. The old mission sits right beside the cathedral.

  I savored my Enchiladas de Calebacitas, which were delicious, the yellow and Mexican squash, the corn niblets, the diced white onion and tomatoes all lightly cooked. The squash and onion were rather crunchy. This concoction was layered and topped with white cheddar cheese between corn tortillas and baked. Adela and her aunt and uncle continued to argue. Now Julietta was shedding tears.

  I looked over the new art exhibit decorating the walls—paintings reminiscent of Frida Kahlo’s work. Not only in Kahlo’s style, but some that looked like Frida herself. As far as I know, Frida Kahlo never painted anything but self-portraits. The restaurant paintings, which are for sale and change from time to time, hang on white walls or walls paneled with slanting boards of dark wood. In a place of honor near the cash register, highlighted with an orange arch, is a framed, highly polished frying pan that was the first when the restaurant opened over thirty years ago. The pan has an engraving, thanking the owner’s mother for her help in establishing the restaurant. What a delightful place!

  Since the argument at our table was escalating, I said, “Have you noticed these paintings. Very like Frida Kahlo, don’t you think?”

  Enchiladas de Calebacitas

  My favorite dish at Casa Jurado in El Paso is the spinach enchiladas, but those are a Jurado family secret. Second in my heart, and almost as good are the squash enchiladas, for which the owner dictated the recipe on the spot when I asked for it. After the dictation, we discussed the trip Henry and his wife are planning with their son. How envious I was. They plan to start in the mountains and walk the pilgrim trail to Santiago de Compostela. Not that I can imagine myself walking five hundred miles, but what an adventure it will be to follow in the footsteps of the thousands, maybe millions of pilgrims who have traveled to Santiago since the Middle Ages.