by Celia Kinsey
“You think that had anything to do with Jorge being killed?” I asked.
Neither Juanita nor Chamomile thought so.
“What about Jasper?” I asked. “What kind of person is he?”
“He and Janey are really close,” Chamomile said. “Janey’s a really good person, and I don’t think she’d be that close to a bad one.”
Janey had gotten close to Jorge, I wanted to point out, but I refrained. Good people, I’d learned from bitter observation, did not always attract only other good people into their lives. Extraordinarily kind, generous, and forgiving souls often did just the opposite. They drew the most despicable and unsavory characters like moths to a flame.
Chapter Six
When I got back up to my apartment, Earp was clamoring to be released from durance vile. When I opened the door of the bathroom, he popped out of the opening like a champagne cork and made a beeline for his water dish.
I could hear him slurping away as I slipped inside the bathroom to see how much damage he’d done to the bloody glove. Surprisingly, other than being slightly damp from being mouthed and a few stray tooth marks, the glove appeared much as it must have when Earp found it.
The blood had dried to a dark reddish-brown. I took a small, clean plastic trash bag from underneath the sink and used my tweezers to pick up the glove by the edge of the cuff. It was then that I noticed the initials on the glove.
Bold letters in black permanent marker proclaimed that the owner of the thick leather glove was a J.H.
Since I didn’t know either Jasper or Jorge’s last name, this discovery told me little. I dropped the glove into the plastic bag, tied it securely, and put the plastic bag in my purse.
When I walked out of the bathroom, Earp seemed to have forgotten all about the glove. I filled his bowl with kibble to keep his mind off the disappearance of his treasure.
I’d selected a brand that claimed to be perfectly suited to the needs of the sedentary senior dog, but Earp didn’t seem to appreciate my efforts to maintain his health. He hated the stuff.
However, for once, Earp didn’t turn up his nose at his diet dog food. He buried his face in the bowl and started wolfing down his dinner. Apparently, sedentary senior dogs didn’t think much of the kibble, but ones who’d spent most of the morning on the lam thought it was just fine.
As I descended the stairs with the glove in my purse, I dialed the Santa Fe County sheriff’s office and asked to speak to Officer Reyes.
“My dog dragged in something that may interest you,” I told him.
“Your dog seems to drag in a lot of weird things.”
That was true. Shortly before Thanksgiving, Earp had gradually unearthed bits and pieces of a pair of long-buried human skeletons, much to my chagrin, so I couldn’t blame Officer Reyes for being leery of what Earp might drag in.
“It’s a bloody leather work glove belonging to a J.H.”
Officer Reyes offered to drive out down to Little Tombstone to collect the glove, but I told him it was not necessary. I needed to come up to Santa Fe, anyway.
As I was walking out the back door of the Bird Cage Café on the way to my car, I met Oliver.
“How’s Janey?” I asked.
“Not great.”
“Has she heard from Jasper?”
Oliver said Janey had not yet heard from her brother. As he was speaking, I remembered I still had Jasper’s phone in the pocket of my coat.
“Where does Janey live?” I asked.
“On the north side of town, near the end of Road Runner Alley.”
Dignifying the village of Amatista by calling it a town was practicing extreme optimism, but then Oliver grew up in the outback of Australia, and I had spent the last decade living in LA, so naturally, we saw things differently.
“It’s the little blue house,” Oliver told me.
Three-quarters of the houses in Amatista do not have house numbers posted—even though they are supposed to for emergency services—and all but two of the six streets are dead ends, anyway. If you are a newcomer, you identify houses by describing some distinguishing feature. If you are an old-timer, you call houses by the family names of the people who owned them when you were a child, as in, the old Spalding house or the old Romero place.
“I have Jasper’s phone,” I told Oliver.
Oliver had questions about how I’d come into possession of Jasper’s phone, but I brushed them off for the time being. Apparently, he hadn’t yet heard that I’d been up at Nancy Flynn’s ranch when she’d discovered Jorge’s body.
“I can take the phone to her,” Oliver offered.
“It’s no trouble. I’m on my way up to Santa Fe, anyway.”
The truth was, I had a lot of questions for Janey. I hoped she was up to answering some of them.
On my way out of town, I took a detour down Road Runner Alley. Dusk was falling. I pulled up outside Janey’s house. There was a light on inside, and the curtains were already drawn. I was about to get out of the car when Jasper’s phone started to ring. I wasn’t going to answer it, but when I saw the name on the screen, I changed my mind. It was Hugo, one of Nancy’s three remaining ranch hands. He might have some idea where Jasper had gone.
I swiped the screen to pick up the call, but as I did so, the phone slipped from my grasp and fell between the driver’s seat and the center console. I was reaching to fish it out, when the voice on the end began to talk.
I won’t tell you exactly what Hugo said, other than to say it was foul and abusive in the extreme. Distilling Hugo’s diatribe down to its main point, Jasper apparently had something Hugo valued highly—or at least Hugo believed Jasper had it—and he (Hugo) intended to get that thing, come hell or high water.
About the time I managed to pry the phone from between the seats, Hugo added something that made a chill run up my spine.
“If I don’t get what I want, I’m coming after Janey.”
I put the phone to my ear.
“This is Janey,” I said.
The phone went dead.
My hands shook as I placed Jasper’s phone face down on the passenger seat of the car. I sat there in the driver’s seat for several minutes, trying to compose myself.
I toyed with the idea of marching up to Janey’s door and taking her straight up to the sheriff’s office along with me, but I changed my mind. Instead, I called Oliver and asked him to come to get Janey.
“Have her pack a bag,” I told Oliver. “She can stay with me and Georgia tonight. She’s not safe at her house.”
Oliver wanted to know why Janey wasn’t safe at her house, but I didn’t have time to explain.
“I’ll talk to both of you when I get back from the sheriff’s office. And try not to make it obvious Janey’s staying with me. Take her up the back stairs and lock the door to the stairwell behind you.” Just as I was ready to hang up, I remember to ask, “What is Jasper’s last name?”
Chapter Seven
“I think both Janey and Jasper’s last name is Hamm,” Oliver told me.
J. H.
If Jasper’s last name was Hamm, then there was a very good chance that the bloody glove Earp had dragged in belonged to the missing cowboy.
Oliver promised to go pick up Janey. I texted Georgia to let her know we’d have an overnight guest. I’d explain later, I told her.
When I reached the Santa Fe County sheriff’s office, the clerical staff had battened down the hatches for the evening. I had to ring the buzzer and wait to be let in.
Officer Reyes took the glove and put it into an evidence bag, plastic trash can liner and all.
“There’s been another development,” I told Officer Reyes, producing Jasper’s phone and laying it on the desk between us.
“What’s that?”
“I happened to pick up Jasper’s phone outside the bunkhouse this morning.”
Officer Reyes raised his eyebrows, but he didn’t ask what had possessed me to swipe a broken phone.
“Has anyone reported Jasper Hamm as a missi
ng person?”
Officer Reyes didn’t think so, but he checked anyway.
“No, nobody’s filed a missing-persons report.”
“I’d like to file one.”
“And what is your relationship to the missing person?”
He had me there. I’d only seen Jasper Hamm a handful of times. He occasionally ate at the Bird Cage, and I’d observed him from a distance working on Nancy’s ranch.
“Neighbor. Jasper Hamm is my neighbor,” I said. That was the best I could do.
“I’ll file a report if you’re officially asking me to, but have you considered that sometimes people who’ve gone missing have no desire to be found?”
I had considered that.
“Are you saying that Jasper is a suspect?”
Officer Reyes would do very well as a professional poker player.
“In the early hours of a case like this one,” he told me, “everyone who knew the victim is a suspect.”
“Very well,” I said. “I’ll not file a missing person’s report yet, but you should know that Jasper’s life may be in danger; not only that, his sister is being threatened. ”
Then I told Officer Reyes about the phone call from Hugo. I was gratified to see that he was noting down everything I said, but when I asked him if he intended to call Hugo Montrose in for questioning, his expression went blank again.
It was a very unsatisfying exchange, and I left the Sheriff’s Office feeling just as anxious as I had when I’d arrived, and considerably more deflated.
When I arrived home, Janey and Oliver were sitting on the couch, Georgia was cooking supper, and Maxwell was attempting to demonstrate to our guests the proper procedure for sweatering a pug.
“Why don’t you take Earp into the bedroom for a bit?” I told Maxwell, who wanted to know why.
The “why” was that I didn’t think he needed to hear that our houseguest was there because someone might be trying to bump her off, but instead, I told Maxwell that we’d appreciate some before-dinner entertainment and that he and Earp should put on a show for us. Good performers, I told Maxwell, always rehearse first.
Providing before-dinner entertainment is squarely in Maxwell’s wheelhouse. He’s not a very verbal child when it comes to making conversation, but he has a flair for the dramatic. Lately, he’d taken to monologuing Earp’s inner thoughts. Could Earp have understood them, he’d have a real bone to pick with most of the words Maxwell puts in his mouth, but the whole thing is wildly amusing, particularly to Maxwell himself, who routinely collapses in giggles halfway through his interpretations of the inner life of the pug.
With Maxwell safely out of earshot and the heat turned down under the stew bubbling away on the stove, I had an attentive audience. After I’d told my story, omitting nothing, nobody said anything for a while.
“Do you have any idea what Jasper might be holding onto that Hugo wants?” I asked Janey.
She shook her head. I believed her. She really didn’t know.
“Any idea where Jasper might have gone off to?”
She shook her head again.
“Do you have any other family in the area?”
Another nod, no.
“Is it possible—?" I didn’t know quite how to ask if it was possible that Jasper had killed Jorge. I could imagine that Jorge’s treatment of his sister might have been enough to cause the man to have murderous intent.
I didn’t have to finish my sentence. “Absolutely not,” said Janey. “I’ll admit that my brother has caused his share of trouble over the years, but he’s never once been violent.”
That Janey knew of.
I let the matter rest, but I was not reassured. None of us are prepared to entertain the ugliest and darkest corners of the hearts of the ones we love.
The timing of Jasper’s disappearance was deeply suspicious. The obvious explanation was that Jasper had killed Jorge and gone on the run. An equally plausible explanation was that he had witnessed the murder and was fearful of his safety if he told what he knew. A third, and less likely, explanation was that Jasper was an intended second victim of the killer and was lying dead or injured somewhere. A fourth, and least likely, scenario was that Jasper had left the ranch for some other reason entirely, and the timing of his disappearance had been nothing more than a coincidence.
It had been less than fourteen hours since Jasper had last been seen eating breakfast at Nancy’s kitchen table. It was far too early to panic or to draw rash conclusions.
“You’d better stay here until the situation becomes clearer,” I told Janey, “and it’s probably best that as few people know your whereabouts as possible.”
I didn’t get any dissenting opinions on that point.
Just as Janey was asking me to go into greater detail about the bloody work glove Earp had dragged in, Maxwell poked his head out of the bedroom and announced that he was ready to put on a show.
I never could have managed to get Earp into the getup that Maxwell had put together for him.
Shortly before Christmas, Georgia, Maxwell, and I had gone to see a performance of The Christmas Carol put on by the Santa Fe Players.
Earp, Maxwell announced, was the Ghost of Christmas Past. The pug been rendered suitable for the part by being swaddled in toilet paper. One eye was obscured by a curtain of tissue, and when Earp walked, he kept stepping on trailing toilet paper. He was shedding his costume square by square.
“Did you stick that paper on with toothpaste?” I asked, sniffing the air. There was a definite bouquet of damp Eau de Pug and spearmint.
“It isn’t good to waste,” said Georgia.
“I know,” Maxwell told his mother. “I’m not wasting. Look!”
Maxwell whipped his toothbrush out of his back pocket—which he seemed to have placed there in anticipation of just such an objection to his off-label use of the toothpaste—and proceeded to demonstrate how one might recover the paste from between the layers of paper.
“Stop!” Georgia ordered as Maxwell raised the paste-smeared brush to his teeth.
Maxwell lowered the brush and pointed out that we could also reuse the paper.
“We won’t even need to use air freshener,” he insisted as he picked up a pasty piece of toilet paper recently shed by Earp and gave it a dramatic sniff.
I looked over at Georgia. She was looking slightly queasy.
Oliver was trying so hard not to laugh, I thought he might pass out from holding his breath, and Janey was surprisingly mirthful considering that her ex-boyfriend was dead, her brother was missing, and she herself was under threat.
“We’ll discuss the proper use of bathroom supplies later,” I told Maxwell, “but since you’ve gone to all the trouble to get Earp into costume, let’s see what you’ve got.”
Chapter Eight
Earp, in the starring role of the Ghost of Christmas Past, with Maxwell playing dual roles as Scrooge and the Voice of the Ghost, proved to be quite a hit.
“Old Marley is as dead as a doornail,” said Maxwell. “Bah! Humbug!”
He then moved behind Earp to signal that it was now the Ghost of Christmas Past who spoke. “I am the Ghost of Christmas Past!” Maxwell quavered, then leapt to the side to signal his return to the role of Scrooge. “Bah! Humbug!”
“I am the Ghost of Christmas Past!”
“Bah! Humbug!”
“I am the Ghost of Christmas Pa—"
“Are you almost finished?” said Georgia. “I think the stew is sticking.”
Maxwell cheesed it on the “Bah, Humbugs!” and drew himself up for his closing monologue.
“Every stupid who goes around saying 'Merry Christmas’ should be broiled in his own pudding—” Maxwell broke character for a second to say, ”I know you shouldn’t call people stupid, but I’m taking tactic license.”
I think he meant artistic license. I was impressed with the kid’s vocabulary.
His mother wasn’t.
“Are you done?” Georgia demanded.
“There’s more,” said Maxwell. “I lost my place.”
He drew himself up again and thrust out his chest.
The Ghost of Christmas Past had long since lost interest in the proceedings. Earp had flopped down on the rug. He more closely resembled a pile of toilet paper than a pug, but he let out a snore from time to time to remind us he was still alive under there.
“Every stupid—” Maxwell began again.
“You already said that part,” his mother pointed out.
“It’s not nice to interrupt,” said Maxwell.
Georgia pressed her lips together and excused herself to the kitchen.
“I’ll have to start over,” said Maxwell.
“Go ahead,” said Janey.
“Is he alright?” Maxwell pointed at Oliver, who had his face buried in one of the couch pillows.
“He’s fine,” I said. “How about you start again from, ’Every stupid.’”
“Every stupid who goes around saying 'Merry Christmas’ should be broiled in his own pudding and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. He should!”
Maxwell delivered his lines in a rush, with one eye on his mother, who was taking down bowls from the cupboard and banging them down on the counter in a marked manner.
“Bravo!” I said and started the crescendo of applause.
“Well done,” said Janey.
“You should be videoing these performances and posting them to the internet,” Oliver said. He’d managed to regain his composure sufficiently to take his head out of the couch pillow for Maxwell’s final lines. “Seriously, Georgia. This pair has star quality.”
Maxwell took this praise in stride, and, ever the gracious performer, insisted that Earp also take a bow. Getting Earp to take a bow involved hauling the pug up from the floor, grasping him around the abdomen, and turning him toward the audience while pitching forward at a precarious angle. This maneuver required leaning heavily into the coffee table for support. Earp remained somnolent throughout.
Maxwell was gratified to get no less than three encores.
“Why don’t you get Earp out of that—costume?” said Georgia at the conclusion of encore number three. “The food is ready.”