by Celia Kinsey
However, I’d stick strictly to the facts. I would not, under any circumstances, let on that I was completely convinced that the faceless form in the darkness— who’d clobbered Hugo on the head and probably just saved my life—was Jasper Hamm.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Shortly after three patrol cars arrived, a fire truck with a couple of paramedics showed up. While they were working on Hugo, he regained consciousness. I was standing nearby, still giving my statement to Officer Reyes, when I heard Hugo asking to speak to the police officer.
When the officer bent down to hear Hugo’s words, I stopped speaking and strained to listen.
“Whoever was trying to kidnap the kid hit me over the head.”
Nobody had been trying to kidnap Maxwell, I was quite certain of that. Maxwell had very much taken off from Little Tombstone of his own volition.
“Oh?” the officer said. He sounded a little skeptical, but Hugo stuck to his story. He’d been awakened by August, who’d come to the bunkhouse to collect his flashlight. August had told him that Maxwell was missing, and Hugo had headed out on August’s heels to search for the boy.
I didn’t believe a word of it. When Georgia had suggested calling Nancy and asking for help in the search, I’d specifically put the kibosh on the idea. Nancy, I trusted. The current occupants of her bunkhouse, not so much.
Unless someone else had called up to Nancy’s after Morticia and I had taken off, there was no way that August would have been in a position to inform Hugo about the missing Maxwell. I would have bet good money that at that very moment, August was lying in his bunk, fast asleep.
I was guessing Hugo had concocted his story while he lay on the ground listening to the chatter going on around him. I didn’t believe a word of Hugo’s story, but the officer seemed to.
An ambulance came and took Hugo away. I had hoped that the officers might decide to search the property, but they didn’t seem interested in anything but getting out of the cold. The wind had picked up, and the formerly tolerable winter’s night was growing increasingly uncomfortable.
I was worried about Earp and Hercules. I imagined the pug and the piglet, most likely separated from one another, were freezing and hopelessly lost.
I explained to Officer Reyes that Maxwell had not left home alone. The officer went to his patrol car and returned with a bright searchlight. We walked away from the hubbub and shined the light into the sagebrush as I called out to Earp (who might answer) and Hercules (who probably wouldn’t). I got no answering barks or squeals. No pug nor piglet emerged from the shadows cast by the saguaros; no tiny faces peeked around the back of the small boulders which littered the hillside.
I was getting a sick feeling in my stomach. I felt almost as ill as I had in the seconds after Hugo had pointed his gun at me and then been swiftly struck to the ground.
I decided to check the perimeter of the buildings. I walked around the side of the barn, resisting the urge to peek inside the window where I’d seen Hugo’s light, although I might have been less resistant to temptation if Officer Reyes hadn’t been at my elbow, and I’d been in control of the powerful light he carried.
I continued around to the back porch of the old house. It was there that I found Earp and Hercules, curled up together in a nest of old gunnysacks, fast asleep. I rooted around in the junk on the back porch and found a length of old bailing twine, which I fashioned into a leash for Earp.
I woke him up and tied him to one of the porch posts while I contemplated how to contain the piglet. In the end, I resorted to wrapping Hercules up in a dusty gunny sack and tucking her under my arm. She squirmed a little to begin with, but quickly calmed down. I think both animals were exhausted from wandering around for hours in the dark and the cold. I certainly was.
I rode back to Little Tombstone in the back of a patrol car with Earp on one side and Hercules on the other. I would have been allowed to ride in front, but the officer informed me that animals were not allowed up front for “safety reasons.”
I don’t know if you’ve ever been locked in the back of a police car. It’s a very confining feeling, and I found myself stroking Earp’s head to calm myself.
Hercules responded to the warmth of the patrol car by slipping off the seat to rearrange the floor mats. While the piglet left her gunnysack unattended, Earp managed, unnoticed by me, to get ahold of one corner and start shredding it with his teeth.
By the time we arrived at Little Tombstone—which couldn’t have taken more than ten minutes—the back seat was a mess. The bench seat was covered with muddy paw prints and piglet tracks, the floor was littered with bits of gunnysack, and Hercules had somehow managed to get one of the rubber floormats wedged into a crack under the seat.
“Sorry about the mess,” I told the officer.
He assured me that his human cargo often managed to wreak more havoc than my bunch had.
I went inside the Bird Cage and found a crowd of people. It was five in the morning, but Chamomile had evidently decided that what we all needed was a good hearty breakfast, so she was back in the kitchen banging away with the pots and pans.
I could smell coffee and very much wanted some, but it was just beginning to brew.
“Where are Georgia and Maxwell?” I asked Ledbetter, who was sitting alone at a table next to the coffee maker and staring at it as if willing it to percolate faster.
“Georgia took Maxwell upstairs and put him to bed,” Ledbetter told me. “I doubt he’ll go to sleep, though. He’s pretty upset that you forced him to abandon Earp and that piglet.”
I should have texted Georgia right away when I’d found them. As far as Maxwell was concerned, his best friend and second-best friend were wandering around, alone and defenseless in the cold.
“I’d better take them upstairs, then,” I said. “Don’t leave, though. There have been developments.”
Ledbetter was correct in supposing that Maxwell was not yet asleep. When I came in the door, he burst out of his bedroom and practically mauled Earp, who squirmed and grumbled at this over-enthusiastic show of affection. The piglet got similar, although markedly less effusive, treatment.
“I’m sorry, Emma,” said Maxwell.
He didn’t say for what, and I didn’t ask.
I could see a light on under the bathroom door. I wondered if Georgia had locked herself inside to cry tears of relief that her only child had not fallen down an arroyo never to be seen again nor been mauled beyond repair by a wild beast.
Maxwell appeared considerably chastened and rebuked. I had no doubts that Georgia had made herself abundantly clear on her position regarding future moonlight expeditions to observe Chupacabras in their natural habitat.
“I’m really sorry,” repeated Maxwell.
“I forgive you,” I said.
Maxwell motioned for me to bend down so he could speak in my ear.
“I saw them,” he whispered.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“Saw what?” I asked Maxwell.
“Chupacabras!”
“Where?”
“Out there.” Maxwell made a sweeping gesture which took in every acre of sagebrush for miles around. “I smelled them and saw their glittering eyes.”
To this day, I don’t know what Maxwell saw out there. It may have been a band of coyotes or a skulk of foxes whose eyes he’d seen shining in the darkness. The stench, which Maxwell had attributed to the Chupacabra’s trademark odor, was likely a decomposing cow or deer. Whatever it was Maxwell had seen and smelled, he was firm in his conviction that he’d witnessed an entire troupe of Chupacabras, and no amount of reasoning could persuade him otherwise.
Shortly after Maxwell had made this startling revelation, Georgia came out of the bathroom, very red around the eyes, and ordered him back to bed.
I put Earp and Hercules into their pen and spent several minutes talking Georgia down from breaking into the Museum of the Unexplained and ransacking the place, starting with the Chupacabra exhibit. She’d already spen
t several minutes trying to rouse Hank and give him a piece of her mind, only to have Morticia belatedly remember that she’d seen Hank leaving earlier in the evening with a bottle of whiskey and a rasher of bacon wrapped in an old towel, a dead giveaway that he was spending the night at his lady friend, Phyllis’s.
When I went back downstairs, Chamomile had finished cooking, and Janey was helping her dispense plates of migas. I said I wasn’t hungry, but when Janey insisted that I’d change my mind once I’d taken a bite, I discovered she was right.
I finished my migas and accepted seconds, and it was only after my third cup of coffee that I felt equal to the task of informing Ledbetter of the disturbing turn the night had taken.
“Hugo tried to kill you?” Ledbetter asked. “Are you sure he didn’t just intend to scare you?”
I had considered that.
“I don’t think so. If he’d intended to let me live, he wouldn’t have said what he did about his ‘delivery driver,’ it was very nearly an admission that he’s running a chop shop.”
“So you think Jasper saved your life?”
“The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that it was Jasper who knocked out Hugo.”
“But why did he leave immediately after decking Hugo?”
“He didn’t want to be seen.”
“Seems that way.”
“I don’t see why Jasper would have intervened if he didn’t believe my life was on the line.”
“But you said you didn’t see his face,” Ledbetter said. “How can you be so sure it was Jasper?”
I couldn’t prove it, but I was doubly sure of it ten minutes later when Janey and I were sitting in a quiet corner as I broke it to her that Hugo had trashed her house.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier,” I said.
Janey seemed to be taking this violation of her property remarkable well.
“It doesn’t surprise me that Hugo would do a thing like that,” she said. “Jasper warned me—”
I think she was about to go on when she realized she’d made a grave tactical error.
“You’ve heard from Jasper?”
“I have,’ she said. “He called me last night. I looked up the number, and it was the landline number for a bar in Albuquerque. He wouldn’t say where he’s staying or explain why he’s gone into hiding. He just wanted me to know that he is ok.”
“That must be a relief,” I said.
“I appreciate you not calling the police about Hugo breaking into my house,” said Janey.
But I had called the police. I’d left a message on Officer Reyes’s machine the previous evening.
“Don’t you want to file a police report?” I asked. “You’ll need it to collect insurance.”
“A broken door is the least of my worries.”
“What if Hugo stole something?”
“I guess I’m about to find out.”
“Janey—”
“Yes.”
“I may have called the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s office and left a message on Officer Reyes’s answering machine.”
“May have?”
“I did.”
Janey looked mad enough to spit nails, but after she closed her eyes and breathed in and out through her nose a few times, she just said, ”I know you meant well, but you really messed up. Now Hugo will know that someone’s watching him.”
“Is that a bad thing?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I can’t tell you.”
Janey seemed to know a lot more than she was telling me. I chalked that up to her conversation with Jasper, who must have filled her in on the situation and then charged her not to tell anyone what she knew.
I decided there was no virtue in continuing to pry, although I was far from certain that whatever Jasper had told his sister had any basis in truth.
“I’m sorry,” I told Janey.
“If you’re truly sorry, then fix it.”
“Fix it?”
“Fix it.”
“How am I going to fix it? I told Officer Reyes that I saw Hugo break into your house with my own two eyes. If I tell him I was mistaken now, do you really expect him to believe me?”
“You won’t know unless you try.”
“I don’t like to lie.”
“Don’t lie. Say you’re unsure.”
“But I am sure.”
“Are you absolutely 100%, beyond a shadow of a doubt, swear-on-your-grandmother’s-grave sure?”
When Janey put it like that, I had to admit I wasn’t quite that sure.
“Good, then you won’t have any trouble telling Officer Reyes that you might have been mistaken.”
We went out back of the Bird Cage, and Janey stood there and watched while I dialed the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s office.
“He won’t answer,” I told Janey. “He’ll have gone home to bed. He told me himself it was the end of his shift.”
“Fine, then talk to his machine again.”
Unfortunately for me, Officer Reyes did answer.
“What can I do for you, Mrs. Iverson?” Officer Reyes said. He might as well have said, “I thought I was rid of you people from Little Tombstone for at least the rest of the day.”
“It’s about the message I left on your machine last night.”
“I haven’t listened to my messages yet. I’ve barely finished my first cup of coffee.”
“I left a message saying that Hugo Montrose broke into Janey Hamm’s house last night, but I’d like for you to disregard it,” I said.
“Why should I disregard it?”
“Oh, well, I’m not 100% sure it was Hugo.”
“Exactly how sure are you?”
“Uh, less than that.”
I was 98% sure, but I didn’t want to admit to it with Janey watching me.
“Look,” said Officer Reyes on the other end of the line, “I know what I’m doing.” I think he’d have liked to have added, “and I’ll thank you not to interfere with an active murder investigation,” but he restrained himself.
Chapter Twenty-Six
After that, I think we all went back to bed for a few hours. I was the first to rise when I heard the faint slamming of doors and the sound of Juanita singing downstairs in the kitchen of the Bird Cage. Earp and Hercules were stirring restlessly in their pen in the corner of the kitchen. They’d soon be agitating to get out.
I roused myself from the couch, leashed up Earp, tucked Hercules under my arm, and headed downstairs. As I passed the kitchen door, I told Juanita that we’d had quite a night, and she followed me out back while I filled her in, while Earp and Hercules (who seemed well on her way to being house trained) did their business.
“Maxwell wasn’t hurt, was he?” Juanita asked at the conclusion of my tale. I think she’d have also enquired after the welfare of my little menagerie if the creatures hadn’t been there right under her nose, looking the very picture of vim and vinegar.
“Maxwell is fine. He’s over the moon because he believes he saw them.”
“Saw what?”
“A troupe of Chupacabras.”
“Hank will be thrilled.”
“I think Hank had best avoid any mention of Chupacabras for the next five years or so, at least in Georgia’s presence,” I said. “She’s the one who’s worse for the wear.”
“Well, you can hardly blame her. I’d have been terrified if one of my little ones had gone missing like that.”
Juanita has six children: two boys and four girls. They’ve all flown the coop except for the youngest, Jose, who’s a constant trial—not in a getting-into-trouble-with-the-law sort of way, but more along the lines of staying up all night gaming so he doesn’t make it up on time to get to his classes at the Santa Fe community college. According to Juanita, he also waits until the half-eaten plates of food he takes up to his room start to mold before he thinks about bringing them back down to the kitchen. But what makes his Juanita really on edge is that Jose keeps
a ferret in his room, to which he claims a great attachment, but I suspect it’s more to keep his mother out of his space than anything.
“How is Jose doing?” I asked.
Juanita just heaved a deep sigh and announced she’d better get back to the kitchen.
“Should I wake Janey up and send her down? It must be past time—”
“No,” said Juanita, “let the girls sleep. I can manage without them.”
I toyed with offering to help but decided I wouldn’t put Juanita to the trouble of turning me down. The only thing I’m any good at is washing dishes, and there wouldn’t be many of those until after lunch.
I took Earp and Hercules back upstairs, where the whole house was stirring. Janey was in the shower, Georgia was frying up eggs, and Maxwell was sitting inside the pen in the corner of the kitchen so as to be absolutely sure of not missing Earp and Hercules when they returned from their jaunt outside.
“I had a terrible time restraining Maxwell from going out in search of you,” Georgia said in an undertone, as if it were somehow my fault that the pug and the piglet had to be taken outside to answer the call of nature.
“They’re not robots,” I pointed out a bit petulantly as Maxwell fell on the pug and the piglet as if they’d been separated for a millennium. “Dogs and pigs have little digestive systems just like we do; or would you prefer robot pets?”
“Yes, absolutely,” said Georgia, “and while we’re on the subject, I look forward with great anticipation to the era of robotic children who can be powered down in the evening.”
“I suppose that would eliminate the possibility of waking up in the middle of the night and finding they’d run off into the wild blue yonder.”
“I yearn for the day.” Georgia smiled for the first time since she’d shaken me awake in the wee hours of the morning. “I shouldn’t be so upset. It’s not like he wasn’t found safe and sound. I don’t suppose Maxwell was ever in any actual danger.”
I decided this was not the time to bring up the fact that Hugo had pointed a gun at my head seconds after Maxwell had fled into the darkness to join Morticia. With any luck, Georgia might never have to find out.