Santa Fe Mourning

by Amanda Allen

  Gunther sighed. “I do miss it sometimes. The lights of Broadway and all that. But it’s no place for black sheep like us, dearest, not with our horrid families breathing down our necks. Though if I’m black, you’re surely only a mild shade of silver.”

  Maddie laughed. “Not according to my mother. She even wrote to me after I left, telling me how I have failed my duty as a Vaughn. I am glad to be home. I have so much work to do, and painting just doesn’t go for me in New York. Do tell me all the gossip.”

  Gunther lit another cigarette and told her whose marriages were on the rocks, who was romancing whom, which artist was vying for a new gallery show, who had run off to Taos with whom. “All the usual; you haven’t missed a thing. But what of you, my love? Any hot romances in the city?”

  Maddie sipped at her cocktail and smiled. “My mother did try to set me up at that dance with her friend Mrs. Schuyler’s son. He tripped on the dance floor and tore the hem of my new green silk robe dansant. And there was a very pretty actor in that play. I got his autograph after.”

  Gunther snorted. “All weak tea, darling.”

  Maddie hesitated, staring down into the orange, swirling depths of her drink. She thought of Dr. Cole, his blue eyes and that English accent. “Well. There was . . .”

  “Oh, a tale, darling! I can tell. Spill all to your Uncle Gunther.”

  “It wasn’t anything interesting. I just met someone on the train. A doctor. From England.”

  Gunther gave a happy sigh. “Oh, I do love an accent! Handsome too, I suppose.”

  “Very. Such blue eyes, and a beard.”

  “Delicious!”

  Maddie finished her cocktail. “I’m a bit worried about something, though.”

  “Worried, dearest?”

  “Yes. I’ve heard odd things about Tomas Anaya.”

  “Your gardener? That tall, broody fellow with the broken nose? He always seemed quiet, but how can he help it with such noisy daughters? It must be the only way to cope, to pretend you’re not there.”

  “His wife says he has been acting strangely lately.”

  Gunther frowned at his cigarette. “You know, I think I may have seen your Tomas recently. I only noticed him because he seemed so out of place. It was a few weeks ago; I’d quite forgotten until now.”

  “Not at the Golden Rooster!” Maddie cried. She knew Gunther often went to the Golden Rooster Club just outside town, a place for gatherings of men of a certain persuasion.

  “I am sorry, darling, but it was. It was rather late, and I was a bit tiddly, but I remember that nose. He didn’t seem to be at all interested in it all, if that helps. Most unusual.”

  “Then why was he there?”

  Gunther shrugged. “He seemed to have an errand or something like that. Really, that’s all I remember. He did say something about that new place on Palace Street too. Maybe he runs rum for them or something.”

  “Most odd,” Maddie murmured. She had never seen Tomas drinking, but some people were quite secretive about it. And a lot of bootleggers didn’t drink much themselves, since it would drain away their profits.

  “La Fonda tonight, dearest? The Hendersons are back in town, and Olive is still talking about a new exhibit at the museum for the summer. They should all have some lovely new gossip for us.”

  Maddie shrugged away the puzzle of Tomas at the Golden Rooster, resolved to come back to it later. “Oh, that reminds me! I did get you something in New York. You might like it for tonight. I’ll just go fetch it.”

  “I do hope it’s a new cravat!” he called after her as she hurried into the house, a bit unsteady on her feet after the Pojoaque Lightning. “Mine are all absolutely worn to shreds.”

  As Maddie made her way down the corridor toward her bedroom, she could hear Juanita and Eddie arguing in the kitchen, Juanita’s voice growing higher as Eddie replied sullenly. Not wanting to embarrass them, she tiptoed into her room to fetch the tissue-wrapped parcel and tried to sneak back into the garden without being seen.

  As she passed the kitchen door, she heard a sudden louder shout.

  “. . . my own life, Ma!” Eddie cried after a crash, as if something slammed into the wooden table. “I’m old enough to do what I want with it!”

  “You’re just a child,” Juanita answered, her voice thick. “Everything I do is for you and the girls. You’re all I have.”

  “That’s not true. You can always leave, go back to the pueblo.”

  “You know I can’t! Thanks to your father. It’s all ruined.”

  “Just because he’s such a shit—”

  “Eduardo,” Juanita shouted. “Never use that word! Where have you learned such language?”

  “Where do you think?” Eddie muttered. “It’s not like I have a choice now.”

  Juanita let out a choked sob, and Maddie started to go to her. She knew it would embarrass Juanita to be seen like that, but she couldn’t just pass by. She took a step toward the kitchen when suddenly the front door behind her opened, sending light and a windy swirl of dust into the dark coolness of the house. Startled, Maddie whirled around, thinking it was Gunther, or maybe the girls, who would have to be kept away from the quarrel. But it was Tomas Anaya who stood there.

  Tomas was a tall man and a powerfully built one, his shoulders broad under his worn tweed jacket. His gray-streaked black hair fell over his brow, hiding the expression in his deep-set dark eyes and setting off his crooked nose. His skin had the faint sheen of sweat, and he seemed almost pale, yellowish, as if he was ill in some way. Even his eyes had a yellow tinge to the whites of them. He scowled when he saw Maddie there and swiped his wrist over his forehead.

  “Didn’t know you were back, Mrs. Alwin,” he said tonelessly. His swung the door shut behind him.

  Maddie unconsciously took a step back. “This morning. Eddie fetched me from the train station.”

  “He’s a hard worker when he wants to be.”

  Maddie nodded, studying Tomas carefully. He did seem ill, swaying on his feet, but he had been well enough to bully his son and wife lately. And what had he been doing at the Golden Rooster, or the new club on Palace? “Indeed, he is. I don’t know what I’d do without him, or Juanita and the girls.”

  “They know their place; I’ll say that for them,” he muttered.

  Juanita appeared in the kitchen doorway, her face blotched red with tears, her hair straggling from its pins. There was no sign of Eddie.

  “There you are, Tomas,” she said, tidying her hair and swiping at her eyes. “It’s a good thing you’re here. Eddie had to fetch Señora Maddie from the station this morning, and now he’s gone to bring in the firewood. He’s too young to be working so hard all the time.”

  Tomas scowled. “He’s plenty old enough to do it, and more. He’s almost a man. You coddle him too much, Juanita. If he worked harder, he wouldn’t have time to get into trouble.”

  Juanita’s hands curled into fists. “And I hear you make him do things he has no business at!” She glanced at Maddie, who was afraid her own shock showed too well on her face. Juanita took a deep breath, getting herself under control again. “Well, you’re back now; that’s all that matters. You can bring in the wood and get a fire started in here.”

  “No time for that. I just came to fetch some tools. I have a new job to do.” He brushed past Juanita into the kitchen, his boots heavy and loud on the wooden floor.

  Juanita frowned. “Are you at least staying for supper? I made stew, with some fresh roasted chilies.”

  “Not tonight, I told you!” Tomas shouted back. “You never listen to me.”

  “I—I’m just going to find the girls,” Juanita muttered and hurried to the back of the house after her husband. There was a crashing noise but no more shouting.

  Completely baffled, Maddie returned to the garden, glad of the sunlight and fresh air. Was there something strange in that cocktail? Maybe she had hallucinated the whole odd scene. What had been happening in her house while she was gone?

&nb
sp; She dropped onto the bench next to Gunther, feeling as if she had just run a mile.

  “Something wrong, darling?” he asked, lighting a new cigarette.

  “I’m not really sure,” Maddie murmured.

  “Nothing a fresh cocktail and a good gossip won’t fix,” he said cheerfully. “Are those my new cravats then?”

  Maddie looked down at her hands. She had forgotten why she even went into the house in the first place. “Oh—yes. Green silk with white dots, and a very pretty crimson I’m told is all the rage now in Paris.”

  “Darling, you are a muffin!” Gunther cried, unfurling the length of emerald silk. “I shan’t look so shabby now; it’s really been quite shameful. Now, my love, do tell me more about your lovely new doctor friend . . .”

  CHAPTER 4

  “Baby, baby blue eyes, stay with me by my side, ’til the mornin’, through the night, can’t get you out of my mind . . .”

  “Is that really how the tune goes, darling?” Gunther cried as he led Maddie down the winding street, past the Loretto Academy toward La Fonda, the two of them hurrying arm in arm as they sang. “It’s simply the bee’s knees!”

  “It’s the most popular song in New York right now,” Maddie said, a bit breathless from trying to keep up with his long strides. The path to the town plaza from Canyon Road was not a long one, but it was bumpy and rutted, and a person had to take great care walking it to avoid tripping in a pothole. It was especially perilous on the way home, after a cocktail or two.

  “It sounds like a foxtrot to me.” Gunther hummed the rest of “Baby Blue Eyes” as he grabbed Maddie in his arms and danced with her down the flagstone walkway, past astonished pedestrians on their way to promenade the plaza on the warm spring night. The bells from the cathedral tolled the hour, and she could glimpse their honey-colored stone towers against the sunset sky.

  Maddie laughed as they twirled and spun, and Gunther whirled her right through the carved doors of La Fonda. “Gunther, stop, stop! I have to change my shoes before anyone sees me.”

  “Of course, dearest. We must always be at our sartorial best.” Still humming, Gunther took off his hat and glanced in a nearby mirror, making sure his pomaded hair was still patent leather–smooth. “I have to say, I do miss dancing.”

  “We dance here,” Maddie said. She took off the rubber rain boots she wore on the dusty streets and exchanged them for her new red-and-gold T-straps. She smoothed the skirt of her red ruffled dress, embroidered with gold flowers down the hip and falling to the knee in the newest style. There really was something to be said for new clothes; they were like putting on a disguising suit of armor.

  “Not proper dances, like a thé dansant at the Ritz,” Gunther said with a sigh. “We should organize something.”

  “There’s Mrs. Nussbaum’s tea room on the plaza,” Maddie said. “Lovely cinnamon toast.”

  “Oh, no, darling! We couldn’t do it there. We need a palm court or a rooftop garden.”

  Maddie envisioned a rooftop terrace, lined with green palms and ferns, the town spread out below them as they sipped their cocktails and an orchestra played. “You must organize it then. It sounds lovely. But I have so much work to catch up on, especially if there’s to be a new exhibit at the museum.” She thought of the Pueblo Revival–style fine arts museum, practically brand new as it had only opened in 1919 but already filled to the brim with the best art of the town and crowded with tourists and buyers. To show something there would be splendid, if she was ready for it.

  “So I shall! It will be my new pet project. It has been rather dull here lately.”

  “What about your current novel?” Maddie asked. Gunther had already published two books to good reviews back in the East and said he was in the middle of a new one, a love story about an Indian maiden and a rancher.

  Gunther frowned. “That isn’t going so well at the moment. Maybe a party is just what I need to restart those creative juices.” He straightened his new green cravat, studying it closely in the mirror. “By the way, dearest, I did remember something else about your fearsome Tomas.”

  Maddie remembered the quarrel she had overheard in the kitchen. She hoped there was indeed an answer to Tomas’s strange behavior, one that might help set Juanita’s mind at ease again. “Oh, yes?”

  “I stopped in that wonderful new little club over on Palace. The one where the owner manages to get some lovely bottles from Mexico, not the usual local Lightning. I told you about it. I saw your Tomas going into the back room just as I got there. I thought he looked familiar, but it was too crowded to see anything else, and I forgot until now. He does get around, doesn’t he?”

  Before Maddie could answer, she heard a voice call, “Mrs. Alwin!”

  She resolved to ask Gunther more about this new bar later. She turned to smile at Anton, the Swiss concierge of La Fonda, who oversaw everything that happened at the busy hotel and always kept her table open at the restaurant. He hurried toward her, an image of fashion in his well-cut black suit and shining golden hair, his signature monocle in his eye.

  “Anton,” she said, hurrying to shake hands with him. “How very lovely to see you again.”

  “We’re glad to see you here again, returned safely to Santa Fe. Mr. Ryder has been moping without you.”

  Maddie laughed. “I doubt that. But perhaps you can help Mr. Ryder with a new scheme he has for a thé dansant. Guests here would surely love it.”

  She left Gunther and Anton talking avidly about dances, thinking she really needed to visit the bar before she faced everyone. As she moved through the lobby, she felt truly at home again at last.

  La Fonda was the largest gathering place in town and the most elegant, though not in the stuffy New York way of her mother’s favorite haunts. It was built in the style of a Spanish hacienda, surrounding an open courtyard with a large tiled fountain at its center. Maddie glimpsed the fountain and the ghostly shapes of metal tables and chairs in the twilight beyond the tall doors made of painted glass panes. In the summer when nights were hot, everyone liked to sit out there, but in the winter the south portal with its covered ceiling and massive adobe fireplace had to suffice.

  The corridors around the courtyard were filled with fine painted furniture cushioned with sheepskin and bright Navajo rugs on the tiled floors. The reception desk was busy checking in a touring group that had just arrived, a quarrelsome knot of people still in their dusty travel clothes, demanding the best rooms. They would relax soon enough, Maddie thought, once the New Mexico light played its magic on them.

  She skirted around them, heading toward the bar, but she never made it that far. “Maddie, is it really you?” someone called. She saw Olive Rush, the local organizer of all things artistic, marching across the lobby, several of their friends towed in her wake. Olive was an Eastern heiress, but one who, like Maddie, had never quite fit in there. She was an intellectual bluestocking, a Quaker, interested in art and architecture and native cultures, and she was superb at organizing exhibitions and tours of local art. Her velvet Navajo skirts twirled around her as she hurried toward Maddie.

  “It is me, Olive, happy to be back again,” Maddie said with a laugh. “I hear there is something new brewing at the museum?”

  “Of course there is, and I must tell you all about it. But come and have a drink first. Everyone is dying to see you and hear what’s going on in New York! Did you get to Stieglitz’s gallery while you were there?”

  Maddie followed Olive toward the portal at the back of the courtyard. There was already a crowd there, and someone had wound up a gramophone. Two waiters hurried past with trays of glasses, cocktails poorly disguised as “lemonade.” Suddenly, Maddie felt a bit dizzy, overwhelmed by the noise and the happiness of seeing her friends again, and she swayed unsteadily on her new, high-heeled shoes.

  “Maddie, are you quite well?” Olive asked. “You look pale suddenly.”

  “Just the long trip, I think. I just got back today,” she answered with a smile. “I’ll be in th
e ladies’ necessary.”

  “Don’t be long! We’ll order you a drink.”

  As they turned toward the portal, Maddie went the opposite direction, toward the ladies’ room that lay along a back hallway. It was quiet in that part of the hotel, the noise from the lobby just an echo. But when she pushed open the door, she found she wasn’t alone there.

  Elizabeth Grover, a young lady who was another refugee from the East, but not one who seemed to have any artistic aspirations beyond associating with artists, stood at the tiled counter in front of the tall mirror framed in hammered tin. She wore a gown almost as new as Maddie’s, a green-and-gold creation embroidered in an Egyptian pattern with a matching headband on her short blonde hair. Elizabeth was bent over the counter, and when she jumped up at the sound of the door opening, Maddie glimpsed a bit of white powder around her nose.

  Maddie carefully closed the door behind her. “Are you all right, Elizabeth?” she asked cautiously. Cocaine was certainly becoming a trend in New York, but she hadn’t seen it before in Santa Fe. Pojoaque Lightning was more the local poison.

  Elizabeth flashed a bright smile and quickly swiped whatever it was on the counter into her beaded handbag. “Never better, Maddie. I didn’t know you were back in town yet.”

  “Just today.” Maddie stepped up to the mirror and dug around in her own bag for her lipstick. “It looks like I’ve missed a lot of excitement since I’ve been gone.”

  Elizabeth laughed, a high-pitched, strained sound. “Not at all. When is it ever exciting here? That’s why it’s so nice.”

  “Something looks new here.” Maddie gestured to the bit of powder on Elizabeth’s nose, which was quickly wiped away.

  “Oh, well, I did make a new friend, over at that new place on Palace. Have to keep things fresh somehow. Would you like a bit? They can get you some, very cheap.”

  “No, not at that moment, thanks,” Maddie said, blotting at her lipstick. The new bar on Palace . . . Could it be the same place Gunther saw Tomas? Were they dealing in cocaine now, as well as bootleg liquor?