It's Marple, Dear

by L Mad Hildebrandt

  “Yes. They came and picked it up.”

  “What do you mean, ‘picked it up?’”

  “Just that, Raymond. They’ve reclaimed the thing, and they towed it back to the city.”

  “The rental agency?”

  She took another sip and nodded.

  “To Albuquerque?” She might have meant London, for all I knew. She smiled that benevolent, alien Marple smile, and then she poured some more tea and offered me a chocolate chip cookie—er—biscuit.

  ❃ ❃ ❃

  Three cookies and tea fueled my morning. Late morning, anyway. Without a car, it’s lucky that most places are within walking distance. I headed to the library.

  Angel’s Rest Public Library is the largest building in town—unless you go over to the college, whose buildings dwarf anything for miles around. Seventy-five to be exact, because that’s how far it is to Albuquerque. The three story, stucco building is a block beyond the plaza. Life on the Serengeti left me in great physical shape, I’m glad to say, so the walk was a breeze.

  An ancient, yellow cat guarded the library door. It lay on the wide banister rail and stared with its slitted, golden eyes, as if it was a lion statue. Sneaking past, I slipped inside. I pulled up short, nearly blinded by the dark interior after the glaring desert light. I yanked off my sunglasses, and could just make out the shape of the counter. I stumbled forward, one hand held uselessly in front of me. More for protection. I’m sure everyone enters the exact same way.

  “Where’s your reference desk?”

  The woman behind the counter pointed. I peered the direction I thought she meant, and could see light gray at the end of a long, dark tunnel. “Thanks.”

  It was a straight shot to the next room. By this time, I’d got my sight back, and paused before a desk labeled ‘reference.’

  “Can I help you?” The Navajo kid behind the desk had long, black hair, neatly plaited down his back. I read his name tag. ‘Marcus Apache.’

  “Sure, Marcus,” I said. “I’m looking for information about an incident that occurred around…” what had Emma said? “About thirty, or thirty-one years ago.”

  “Do you have any of the names involved?” His fingers poised over the keyboard.

  “No, not really.” I wasn’t ready to mention Joe Gonzalez. It was a fool’s errand, really. Just because my sister, and the lady next door thought it could be him.

  “Tsss.” He sucked air between his teeth. “That will be a bit harder, then. Was it local?”

  “Yes,” I said, and his face brightened.

  “Then we can take a look in the Angels’ Rest Journal records. You’re in luck, we’ve had it digitized back that far.”

  “Great!” My morning looked better already. I handed him my driver’s license, which he stowed in a drawer, and he took me and a disk to the first available computer in a bank of them along the front wall. He showed me how to navigate the file, and left me to it.

  I didn’t know what I was looking for, and I didn’t know if it was important. The look on my sister’s face when she saw Gonzalez had really surprised me. Like Mother’s illness. It was another mystery my family had kept from me. Even if Gonzalez didn’t have anything to do with this murder, and I didn’t think he did, I wanted to know why it meant so much to Emma.

  I scanned documents for a while. I felt a headache coming on, and maybe a little motion sickness from the pictures sliding up the screen. Okay, a lot of motion sickness. And then I saw it. A picture of the dead girl, and another of Lovers’ Lane. It had begun in the exact location where Lonnie had found Mrs. Wilson’s car. Where she had fallen, jumped, or been pushed into the river, to fetch up sometime later under the bridge.

  Tonya Romero, I read. She’d been at a keg party by the river, along with her boyfriend, Joe Gonzalez. Wow! He’d really killed his own girlfriend? I tried to picture the face of the guy in the bar. Stringy, shoulder length brown hair, a fedora covering his crown. Moody brown eyes under rather bushy eyebrows. Handsome in a bad boy kind of way. Witnesses interviewed were Jeanine Pryor—the Old Timers’ Town nurse?—, Gonzalez’ best friend, Anthony Sanders, Ildefonso Zonnie! And Earl Murphy! Another wow moment!

  I scanned several months’ worth of papers, and read a few more articles. I got the gist of it. The kids, mostly my age, a few younger like my brother Earl, and a few older, had gone partying up at Lovers’ Lane. Nobody knew, or would tell, where the booze came from, but quite a few of the kids had gotten drunk. Including Joe Gonzalez. Some of the kids, including Jeanine Pryor, saw Joe and Tonya arguing. Then, apparently, the two took off in his Mustang. They’d crashed into a tree somewhere between the party and the bridge. Joe had returned to the party, covered in blood. And when the kids, including Earl, Lonnie, and Anthony Sanders, got to the wreck, Tonya was gone. She was fished out of the river the next day… from the eddy under the bridge. Kinda Chappaquiddick, I thought.

  Déjà vu tickled its fingers down my back.

  Joe went to Juvenile Hall for it. When he hit eighteen, they transferred him over to the pen, and ten years later he got out. Judging by Emma and Dee’s behavior, he became the town pariah.

  I thought about the current murder. The only name I could see that overlapped was Jeanine Pryor. She was the Old Timers’ Town nurse. Who knew how many kids were at the party? I didn’t know, and couldn’t find out without asking around. The location was the same, though. Other than that, it was something I could probably dismiss.

  ❃ ❃ ❃

  I stopped by the twins’ store on my way home from the library. It was what I expected in a small town, and in an historic building. Long and thin and cramped, but stocked with quality merchandise. Several people perused the racks. Earl worked behind the counter, but I didn’t see Emma around. “Called in sick,” Earl explained. Hung over, probably. But I didn’t say so.

  “Hey, remember that murder up at Lovers’ Lane years ago?” I couldn’t shake it. Lonnie had seemed to think something hadn’t been right up there. Certainly not with the verdict. Even if it didn’t connect to the current murder, it still upset my sister, and my brother was a witness.

  “You mean, when we were kids? Don’t drag that old thing up, Sis. It was a long time ago. Joe paid.”

  I leaned against the counter. “Do you think he really did it?”

  “I don’t know.” That’s not an answer. Either you think someone’s guilty, or you don’t.

  “Emma thinks it could be related to Mrs. Wilson’s murder.”

  “She would!” Earl grabbed a box of jeans from beneath the counter and stalked over to a shelf. I followed him, and he began sorting pants onto shelves by size. “Really, Raymond. Ignore her. She’s always been upset over that. She wasn’t even there, so what does she know?”

  “But you were?”

  “You obviously know that.” He paused, pant in hand, and stared at me.

  “I read the papers,” I admitted with a sheepish grin.

  His tone softened, his eyes relaxed, as if remembering the past. “Emma’s always been the protective one.” He shook his head, then added, “She had a crush, or something, on Joe. I think that’s why she took it so hard. His killing some girl, instead of her.” He laughed. “I mean, instead of liking Emma, not killing her.”

  “Yeah,” I said, bobbing my head. “I know what you mean.” That explained it. Maybe. She’d been pretty upset over old history. “Well, I’ll leave you to it, then. Mother’s been alone for a while.”

  “Back to the grind.” He raised up the pair of pants, in emphasis.

  I stepped out into the glare of the desert sun. Diagonal from the western wear store, I saw a familiar figure standing in front of the only local coffee shop. Coffee! I loped across the plaza corner, intent on two things. A cup of coffee, and to speak with Dr. Wilson. As I got closer, I could see a pleased expression on his face. It matched the impeccable suit he wore. Overdone, I thought, for our dusty little town.

  “Hey, Doc,” I called.

  He paused, with his fing
ers on the handle of his car. “Yes?” Recognition, then surprise, dawned in his eyes, and he straightened to face me. “Miss Murphy?” He hadn’t called me Raymond. My expression probably matched his.

  “I just wanted to say I’m sorry about your wife.”

  He glanced at the coffee shop, then back. “Thank you. It’s quite a tragedy.” I’d forgotten how smooth, and milky, his tone was. Deep. Chocolate.

  Had he just said that like she was someone else’s wife? “And how is your mother?”

  “Fine.”

  Even with a cocoa and marshmallow voice, shouldn’t he show a little grief? “It’s strange that she was out so late. Did she tell you where she was going?”

  A twinge of irritation twisted his lips. “No, Miss Murphy. And if you’re about to ask, I was at home. Alone.”

  My shoulder lifted. My head tilted toward it, and the dimple deepened in my cheek. “Did she often go out alone?”

  “No! Yes!” He couldn’t seem to make up his mind. He glanced at the coffee shop again. A woman stepped outside, then paused on the step, staring at us. “Only when I worked late,” he added, and quickly popped open his car door. My eyes flicked toward it. A Lexus. The one she was driving?

  “You were working late?”

  “YES!” His tone said he’d had enough. He slid into the seat.

  Wait a minute! Hadn’t he just said he’d stayed in? Now he was working?

  “Goodbye, Miss Murphy. I really must get back to work.”

  I stepped back as he slammed the door shut. It purred to life, and he sped away. Looking back at the coffee shop, I recognized Nurse Jeanine Pryor hurrying toward her own car. Now, that was strange. Why did they care if I saw them together? After all, they both worked at Old Timers’ Town. And then it struck me. She’d come out the front door of the two story building. Hadn’t he come out the back?

  Chapter Ten

  Mother stood just inside the door as I opened it, keys in her hand. “Yikes, Mother,” I said. “What are you trying to do, give me a heart attack?”

  She ignored me in her increasingly usual way, and rattled the keys. I held out my hand, and she dropped them in my palm. “What are these?” I asked. They were smallish, with a nickel-sized, round head, and a one inch appendage. I figured they would fit in a padlock.

  “For the Jeep,” she said.

  “The Jeep? These are car keys?”

  “Raymond.” She shook her head in that way old women have, starting with their face normal height, and then lowering it a bit at the far end of each movement, until the chin nearly rests on the chest. She looked up at me with disappointed eyes.

  “Sure. Sure, they are,” I said, not wanting to go where Mother’s expression led. Still, they didn’t look like car keys to me. They were far too small, even for the days before electronic keys. “But, the Jeep isn’t running.”

  I rarely look in the garage, only a couple times since Dad and I took off. Last time, maybe twenty years ago, the Jeep had flat tires and was covered in dust an inch thick.

  We headed into the workshop. That’s the ghost part of the house. A carpenter lived here before Mother and Dad bought the place and we always joked that he still lived in the shop, blaming him for the creaks and moans of the old building. He’d built the long rectangular addition. It was open beamed, with a high, peaked roof. Currently, the ceiling was in various stages of collapse. In the back left corner, the adobe had caved in, leaving behind a pile of misshapen dirt bricks. Daylight streamed through, brightening that one corner, but leaving the rest of the room in shadows. Through the gaping hole a corner of the back shed, also long unused, was visible. It looked like someone had been weeding around the shed.

  The right corner remained intact, a steel covered door firmly in place. We picked our way through the detritus of years gone by. Foot powered lathes, and saws. Hand tools. And projects long abandoned in various degrees of completion. Earl and I had played back here, and left piles of scrap. But, Emma had steered clear, afraid of spiders and ghosts. Which, of course, we played up. I never feared them, though. About the only thing that frightens me is, apparently, cactus. And cats. Maybe the letter C.

  I hesitated, then wiped cobwebs off the door handle, and swung it inward. Near pitch blackness greeted me. I stumbled down the three steps, gripping tightly to the wooden handrail. Carefully, I moved forward until I bumped into the Jeep. Then to the right, to the end of the vehicle. A step, and my outstretched arm touched the inside of the garage door. Now, I could just make out light filtering through the crack between the two side-by-side doors. Sliding my hand toward the gap, I found the inside handle, an old fashioned thing, wrought by the carpenter. And maybe a blacksmith. I pried the lever upwards, the device unhooked with a snap, and I shoved the doors away from me.

  I spun about… and spied a thing of beauty. The garage was grimy as ever, but the Jeep was sparkling clean. Or at least as sparkling as a 1941 Willys MA can be so long after it came out of the plant. Dad bought it on a whim, at auction, and got it for a song, or so he told the tale. He got it before I was born. Even before he got married. But, he left it because of Mother. He said it reminded him of his home state—of New Mexico—and of her.

  Looking at it brought back my old memories, and of leaving. But, it was beautiful. “You had this done? For me?”

  “Well, not for you, exactly,” she said. “But having you home is like…” she stopped. Confusion washed over her features. She looked down, then at me, then at the jeep. She shifted gears. “We’ll need a car if we’re to solve this murder.”

  “You’re right, Mother.” I climbed behind the wheel and cranked the key. It started like a charm. Either she’d had the engine replaced, or she found one fine mechanic to do the job.

  ❃ ❃ ❃

  Mother clambered into the seat next to me. I backed out, then shut the garage from the outside. “Let’s take her for a spin,” she said, throwing her head backward, and laughing outright. She turned a star-spangled smile on me, and I saw why Dad hadn’t kept the Jeep. She loved the freedom of it. Even with the canvas top on, which she’d apparently had replaced, the breeze lashed us gloriously. I laughed, too, as I shifted, and we turned onto the highway toward Magdalena.

  The Jeep had play in the wheel as big as a jitterbug turn, and the feel of the road… well, all we could feel was the road. The desert heat melded with the wind we kicked up, keeping us 1940s cool. A small herd of antelope leaped across the road in front of us, and I downshifted, then shifted back up again. This was definitely the most fun I’d had driving in years. And, that’s including the Land Rover I’d used in Africa. Most of that might be because this one was my own. Well, Dad’s. But he wasn’t likely to reclaim it.

  As we topped a rise, Mother yelled over the wind. “Turn into that subdivision up there!”

  I did. “What’s this place?” I yelled as we pulled off the highway.

  “The good doctor’s neighborhood,” she said, as she pulled her funny gray bonnet out of the purse she had attached to her arm.

  Not for the first time, I was glad I carried a wallet in my back pocket, or in my backpack. Or, at most, in a smallish, flat bag on a long strap across my chest. Rather like Jeanine Pryor’s the night before. Though, to my knowledge, I’d never forgotten I had it strapped on. I’d rather have anything but a giant, black, granny purse.

  “What are we doing here?” I pulled the car to the side and parked where she indicated.

  “I believe that is the Wilson house,” she said, and pointed to a near-mansion.

  “Wow.” I looked at the other houses in the subdivision. “Who can afford this?” There were at least fifteen completed homes, and several in various stages of construction.

  “Retired bankers, and doctors, perhaps?” Mother said. Or, the internet set, I thought. Modern money. Each had full landscaping, and even in the desert, the houses had been grouped around a water feature, complete with fountain. Sheer decadence, I snorted.

  I climbed out. Mother waited, the
n raised her eyebrows at me. I went around to her side. Being Raymond. I sighed, then gave her my arm, and helped her out. She gripped her purse in front of her, as before. Upon further thought, she held it just like her counterpart in film. Taking small, deliberate steps, she marched to the nearest house. Not the doctors, of course, but his neighbor. Wow, I didn’t want to know what Lonnie would think about this.

  She pounded on the door, with a rather heavy fist for such a frail old woman. I stood back, so that whoever came to the door wouldn’t think I was the demanding one. She raised her hand to bang again, when the door opened a crack. A young woman peeked out, then opened it wider when she realized two women stood on her porch, rather than the obnoxious young man my mother’s banging, no doubt, caused her to expect.

  “May I help you?” Her voice was soft, yet pleasant.

  “We would like to ask you some questions,” Mother said.

  “Yes?” She twisted her head to the side and raised her eyebrows in question.

  “About the Wilson’s,” Mother added.

  “Oh,” the lady said. She looked at Mother, then at me. Then at Mother, and again, at me. “You’re not with the police,” she said. I shook my head. “Are you private detectives?” I shook my head again.

  “We’re looking into the accident,” Mother said, as if she had every right to investigate. The lady apparently took her word for it, because she didn’t shut the door in our faces. “We’re interested in the relationship between the doctor and his wife. Was it a good one?”

  “We weren’t exactly friends,” she said. “But, they seemed to be on good terms. I never heard any arguments between them. And Tammy Lynn was always good to the children in the neighborhood.”

  “Oh, yes, that’s what we’ve heard,” Mother said. “She was quite a motherly soul.” We heard that? Just because she was a school nurse, it didn’t necessarily follow that she was particularly nice to kids.

  “She never had children of her own, though,” the woman said.

  “Yes, sad,” Mother said. “I was never blessed with children, either.” She never failed to surprise me. What was I, chopped liver? The two commiserated for a moment, and I peeked in the door. Children’s toys lay sprinkled around the foyer behind her.