Unless someone specifically wanted to frame Eloy, and no one else, for a murder. I didn’t say it aloud.
“Why are they so sure it was you? Who was the victim, anyway?” Drake was asking.
Eloy squirmed on the thin mattress on his bunk. His hands twisted nervously. He mumbled something that neither Drake nor I could hear.
We exchanged glances in the silence. “Who?” I repeated.
Eloy looked up at me. “My brother,” he said, his voice suddenly strong, his eyes ready with a challenge.
Chapter 4
“Your own brother was the victim, and you never thought to mention this?” I stage-whispered.
His voice dropped lower, though the cells on either side of his were empty. “It was five years ago, and it happened in Albuquerque. It tore our family apart because Ramon was Mama’s favorite. Learning about his death put her in a nursing home. You can understand why I’ve spent five years trying to forget it, can’t you?” His voiced cracked and he looked utterly miserable.
I swallowed hard. “Eloy, can you tell me about it? What happened that day, when did it happen, where were you?”
“I was on my way home from a ski instructor’s trip to Santa Fe at the time they said it happened. I don’t really know any details. Ramon was a priest, with a parish in Albuquerque. He rarely came to Taos anymore, and we didn’t have much in common. I was always the lazy brother, the worthless one. Ramon was the saint.”
He saw my eyebrows tighten. “No, really,” he protested. “My mother actually used to call him that. ‘Ramon is such a saint,’ she’d say to anyone who’d listen. It gets really old, and you can see why he and I weren’t especially friendly. But why would I kill him? I hardly ever saw him.”
I didn’t have any ready answers for that. However, I did know where I could go for more information on the murder. Drake asked Eloy whether he needed anything like his toothbrush or other personal items from home. We left a few minutes later.
“Let’s drop in to visit Eloy’s mother in the nursing home,” I suggested. “Maybe she can shed some light on things for us.”
The home was a modern place on the south side of town, not far from the hospital. Decorated in tones of beige, coral, and turquoise it had a southwestern flair without being overdone. Consuelo Romero had a private room, with some furnishings that had obviously come from home—an old easy chair, a hand-carved wooden bureau, and some paintings. The nightstand beside her hospital bed held a small carafe of water and a glass, alongside a picture of a young priest in white robes. There were no pictures of her other son in the room.
“Mrs. Romero has periods of lucidity and periods of complete confusion. You never know which way it will be, so don’t expect too much,” the nurse at the desk had told us. “It’s severe senile dementia.”
The same nurse introduced us to the old woman, but I had the feeling that we could have been anyone—she really had no idea who we were or why we were there, even after we repeated our story a couple of times.
Mrs. Romero sat in the easy chair across from her bed, her bird-like legs covered with a colorful crocheted afghan. Tiny hands, heavily corded with blue veins, lay passively on her lap. Her upper torso was snugly buttoned into a bulky purple cardigan with the collar of a wool shirt neatly showing at the neckline. Her coal-black hair revealed a small perfect line of white at the roots.
“Tell us about your family,” I asked.
“That’s my Ramon, right there,” she said in a dreamy voice. “Ramon, he was such a saint,” She pointed to the photograph.
“We wondered about your other son, Eloy,” I began. “Eloy is a friend of Drake’s and he has some problems now.”
A look of confusion came over her. “Eloy? Which Eloy? I knew a boy Eloy in school when I was just a little girl.”
“No, this is the Eloy who is your son. He comes to visit you here sometimes.”
Her eyes were polite, but blank.
“Tell us more about Ramon,” I prompted. “He lived in Albuquerque, I understand.”
“Rome. Ramon went to Rome. Ramon to Rome. Roma Ramon . . .” Her voice went sing-songy.
“He served at the Vatican?” I asked.
“Israel.” This time her voice was firm. “He worked in Israel.”
I glanced again at Drake. Neither of us were making any sense of this.
“Roma Ramon . . . Roma Ramon . . .” Drake and I exchanged a glance.
“Mrs. Romero, thank you so much for your time. If you think of anything else you can tell us about Ramon or Eloy, just have the nurse call me.” I took her fragile hand and squeezed it. She continued to gaze raptly at the photo of Ramon.
“Well, I think that was useless,” I told Drake after we got back to the car. “I’ll ask Eloy what she meant about Rome and Israel. Who knows if there’s any reality to any of that, or if her poor mind is wandering completely.”
I left a business card with the nurse on the off chance that we’d ever hear anything more from Mrs. Romero. But I had the feeling that, even in her clearer moments, we’d get nothing more than what Eloy had told us. How difficult it must be for him, I thought. Caring for his mother, paying for the nursing home, when she worshipped his brother and didn’t even remember him. Awful for poor Eloy. And it might make perfect sense that he hated his brother for it. I mulled over the situation while Drake backed out of the parking lot.
“One more stop here in town,” I suggested. “Then I’ll get my boots and we’ll head back for the cabin where we can still pretend to have a carefree honeymoon.”
“Just tell me where, my love, and I’ll gladly drive you there,” he said gallantly.
I pulled out the Taos phone book that I’d remembered to bring from the cabin and looked up the office address of Mike Ortiz, Eloy’s brother-in-law, the lawyer. According to the small map in the book, it was located on a street that ran parallel to the main highway through town. We located it without too much trouble.
Ortiz’s secretary didn’t seem to inclined to give us a spur of the moment appointment, but Mike himself walked out of the inner office at the precise instant I was beginning to chew on her a bit for not having him return Eloy’s call yet. He ushered us into his office personally.
Mike’s graying hair bore tread marks through it, where he’d run his fingers as though soothing a monstrous headache. I know this because I watched him do it twice before Drake and I had taken our seats. His trim body was clad in a wrinkled white shirt and gray slacks which, if he hadn’t slept in them he had most certainly worn them for several days without the advantage of hanging them up between times. His pale yellow tie had a big red chile stain on it and his nails hadn’t seen a manicure. Mike Ortiz was probably not the town’s most successful attorney.
The office itself was another giveaway to his lack of business achievement. From the appearance of the dingy armchairs and battered desk, I guessed that someone had started him out with nice furnishings fifteen or twenty years ago and he’d never had the money to replace them. The stuff that was trendy in the early 1980s was way past prime now.
“So what does ol’ Eloy want now?” he grumbled. He blinked his eyes hard, twice.
“You mean you haven’t called him yet?” I asked. “He placed a call from jail last night. It’s now almost mid-afternoon.”
He raked his hair again. “Look, I had a rough night, okay? Didn’t even get in until noon today. I’ll get down there and figure it out before the day’s over. Eloy’s speeding tickets aren’t gonna change my day, okay?”
I controlled my impatience. “Eloy’s in jail, charged with murdering his brother Ramon. I think that deserves a bit more of a defense than a speeding ticket.”
Ortiz sat up straight. “Murder, huh?”
I got the feeling he wanted to let go with something like “Whoa!” but realized that wasn’t proper lawyer-talk.
“Well, in that case I guess I better get over there.” He tugged at his tie to straighten it and reached for a leather jacket that hung over
an artificial philodendron. “My wife’s gonna have a fit when she hears this.”
Meaning that he was in deep doo-doo if he didn’t get her brother out of jail pronto.
“I’m with a private investigation firm in Albuquerque,” I told Mike. “Eloy asked me to look into this. If you’re going to be his defense attorney, we’ll probably need to confer after you’ve talked to him.” I handed him a business card, which he glanced at casually and tossed on the desk.
“We’ll see. Let me see if there’s any chance of getting bond set on this. Then I may let you know.” He punched the intercom button. “Carla, I’ll be out for an hour or so,” he barked. Then he walked out the door, past her desk, and out the front door.
Drake and I shrugged at each other and followed. He drove me to a nearby store that sold footwear, while I wondered privately why a guy like Eloy, who seemed fairly bright, would trust his life to Mike Ortiz—unless the brother-in-law rate was extremely cheap.
An hour later, outfitted with warm boots that came up to my knees, we were once again on the road to the Taos Ski Valley and our private little cabin.
“Come on,” I coaxed as we parked the Jeep at the cabin. “I really need to get some exercise. Let’s strap on those snowshoes and hike around the property a bit before it’s really dark.”
“I can think of something just as physical and much more fun,” Drake teased, wiggling his eyebrows at me.
“Later.” I headed for the service porch and pulled out two pair of the snowshoes.
The shadows were deep already, actual sunlight having never quite appeared all day. We made one circle of the house, then ventured into the forest making our own trail between pine trees that stood like skyscrapers in nature’s Manhattan. We found a stand of small blue spruce among the ponderosas and decided we’d come back tomorrow with a saw and cut one for our Christmas tree. By the time we got back to the cabin we were both starving. Drake brought out the portable indoor grill and sizzled a couple of steaks for us, while I made a salad and some garlic bread. We snuggled before a blazing fire with glasses of wine and decided that life was just about perfect.
Until the phone rang.
“Eloy! What’s happened?” Drake’s look of alarm gradually turned to a smile.
“What?” I nudged at his arm as he listened to Eloy.
“Tomorrow? Okay, what’s the weather forecast? . . . Okay.” He nodded and scribbled some notes on a sheet of my computer paper. “Okay, see you then.”
He turned to me and could tell that I was about to burst.
“Mike Ortiz got Eloy out on bond. The judge ruled that he wasn’t a flight risk; Ramon’s death was five years ago and Eloy’s never had any other trouble with the law. Besides, the judge’s sister lives next door to Eloy and she’ll alert him if it looks like he tries to skip.”
Only in a small town.
“So,” he continued, “they went out to the hangar and checked things over. Two young guys want me to fly them up to the high country tomorrow. So, that’s our first charter.”
“All right!” I cheered.
“Eloy said he’s going by the home to see his mother tonight, and he’ll be out at the hangar in the morning to help me get the flight organized. Lucky for me he was there tonight.”
I had to admire Eloy’s devotion to his mother, knowing how difficult it must be for him to have always been the least favored son. And it was certainly unselfish of him to tend to Drake’s business this afternoon, when he had such pressing personal matters. I felt myself being pulled toward finding out the answers that would free him from the murder charge.
Drake was out the next morning just after dawn, driving Eloy’s truck to deliver it to him. I spent some time composing an e-mail to Ron with questions for which I hoped he could pry answers from the Albuquerque police. Our usual contact there was Kent Taylor in homicide, but I seemed to remember that he was taking vacation about now. Mainly I wanted some details about Ramon’s murder—the who-what-where-when stuff.
At eight o’clock—not holding out too much hope—I called Mike Ortiz’s office to see if I could learn more about what the police had on Eloy. I wasn’t terribly surprised when his secretary said he wasn’t in yet, so I left a message that I hoped conveyed the idea that I really wanted to talk to him this morning. Feeling a bit at loose ends, I cleaned up the breakfast dishes and fed Rusty a scoop of doggy nuggets.
When the phone rang at eight-fifteen, I was surprised to think that Ortiz would be calling me back that soon. I was even more surprised when it turned out to be Ron.
“Hey kid, I sure didn’t expect to hear from you on your honeymoon,” he joked. I could picture my brother sitting at his always-cluttered desk, cup of coffee at hand, his felt Stetson hanging on the doorknob.
“What can I say, Ron? My new husband is off working that aircraft of his, so I had to come up with a murder to solve. You got my e-mail, I guess? By the way, how are things going with Tammy?”
“I knew it; yes; and fine.”
Ron has picked up Drake’s habit of answering my bunched up questions with bunched up answers.
“We’re down to only a couple of crises per day here,” he said, referring again to Tammy’s work. “I’ve got a little background info on the priest’s murder.”
“Wow, that was quick.”
“Yeah, well, I’m just a terrific detective. Okay, here’s what I’ve got. Seems Father Ramon was entangled in a little bit of a sex scandal at the time of his untimely death. Had an affair going with a married woman parishioner, a well-kept secret. She only came forward after he died and her husband had left her. He was shot on the steps of his church after evening mass. You may remember some of this, it made the news at the time.”
“I think I do. It was late and there was no one around. A security man found his body on the steps, but he’d already been dead several hours?”
“That’s the one. Anyway, at first there were no clues, but after the woman came forward about the affair suspicion fell heavily on her husband. Police were really moving in on him but it turned out that he had an iron-clad alibi for the entire evening. Was at a lodge meeting and the guys who sat on either side of him both swore that he never even got up to go to the bathroom. They even investigated the possibility that he’d hired the killer, but he passed a lie detector test without a hitch and they never found any other evidence to substantiate that theory.”
“Did they ever find the weapon?”
“Not till just the other day. And the way they found it is bizarre.”
I poured another cup of coffee and carried it to my computer table, where I could make some notes.
“An old priest in the same parish Ramon served died last month. The assumption is natural causes—he was eighty years old—but that may get questioned. Anyway, among the old man’s possessions in his nightstand drawer they came across an old pawn ticket for a gun, dated five years ago, three days after Ramon was murdered. Luckily Kent Taylor was on the case and something clicked with him. Same parish, two priests dead, pawn ticket—it’s not exactly commonplace for a priest to pawn something—with the date coincidence. He checked the registration by the gun’s serial number and discovered its owner is Eloy Romero.
“Eloy claims to know nothing about his gun ever being pawned. Says he was driving from Santa Fe to Taos the night his brother was killed—alone. No one can verify what time he left Santa Fe or what time he arrived in Taos. He says he got in late that night, but the earliest any witnesses can place him back home in Taos was early afternoon of the next day. And the gun was back in his closet until a couple of days ago when Tenorio got the warrant to find it. So if somebody else pawned the gun they put it back later. That doesn’t make much sense.”
I let out a pent-up breath. It didn’t look good for Eloy.
“What’s the motive?” I asked.
“Police say there are people who witnessed a big blow-up between Eloy and Ramon about a week before the murder. Ramon had come up to Taos on some church
business, but met with Eloy so the brothers could decide what do to about their mother’s health situation. She was becoming senile and couldn’t stay alone in her own home anymore. Ramon told Eloy that if he were a good son . . .”
Like himself, I inserted mentally.
“. . . he would give up being such an outdoorsman and stay home to take care of his mother. Eloy apparently screamed a bunch of obscenities and shoved his brother around. Reports vary on whether he actually punched the priest, but a number of people witnessed the altercation in the parking lot of some popular restaurant up there.”
“Sounds like Eloy’d just had his fill of being told he wasn’t good enough,” I commented. “The mother is still saying it, in her more lucid moments. That Ramon was a saint. Eloy just couldn’t compete.”
“Another factor comes in here,” Ron continued. “The family isn’t wealthy, by any means, but the mother does own some property there in Taos. There’s one bit of commercially zoned land that got tied up in some kind of building moratorium but was released a few years back and some big corporation wants it—bad. They’ve offered, and she’s turned down, over a half-million dollars for it. Then there’s the family home. Not much of a house, but the property is fifty acres and it borders some movie star’s ranch. A fairly generous offer has been made on that property too. Even the cabin property is probably worth ten times what the family paid for it way back before the ski area was developed. Only problem is, the mother’s mental state isn’t good enough that she can handle such matters anymore. Ramon wouldn’t agree to sell either property. Now that Ramon is dead Eloy and his sister would be beneficiaries of all that money if they wanted to sell them.”
“And the police believe this all adds up to a pretty substantial motive,” I filled in.
“You got it.”
I told him to let me know of any new developments, then I slowly hung up the receiver. Things were suddenly looking complicated. My mind was trying to work its way around all the implications when the phone rang again. I jumped, sloshing coffee onto my sweater.
Honeymoons Can Be Murder: The Sixth Charlie Parker Mystery (The Charlie Parker Mysteries) Page 3
