Santa Fe Mourning

by Amanda Allen

  Despite the late hour, Juanita was up and waiting when Maddie stepped into the house. She sat at the kitchen table in her quilted dressing gown, a steaming mug in front of her along with a glossy fashion magazine of Maddie’s. It looked as if she had been cleaning out some of Tomas’s belongings, for a crate sat on the floor, filled with shirts and bandanas and bottles. The bottles made her think of booze and the trouble Tomas might have been in that led to his death. There was a jar of hair pomade, a faceted bottle of something like cologne, and a couple other bottles. They looked a bit like the ones in the crate the boy had dropped off in the club kitchen before he vanished.

  Juanita saw her looking at the box, and she kicked it away. “It looks like he was keeping hooch hidden, doesn’t it?” she said, her voice low, toneless. “Hypocrite.”

  Maddie longed to ask her what she meant by that, but Juanita shook her head and tried to smile. “Some cocoa, Señora Maddie?” she said, pushing herself back from the table.

  “Oh, Juanita, that sounds perfect just now.” Maddie sank gratefully into a chair and kicked off her heeled shoes. Buttercup scampered up onto her lap, and the sweet smell of chocolate filled the kitchen. She was glad she wasn’t in New York; she was too old for so many late nights.

  She took a long drink of the cocoa once it was ready, thick and sweet and slightly spicy, as only Juanita could make it. It drove out the lingering bitter tang of cocktails.

  “I’m afraid I didn’t find out much tonight, Juanita,” she said. “I thought I saw that boy, Harry, the one you said was Eddie’s friend. But he vanished.”

  “He’ll come back around, unless he’s already run away from town,” Juanita said. “It’s not a big place here; there are only so many spots he can go. Mr. Springer called and said I can take Eddie some more of his things first thing in the morning. He’s already been moved to another cell, a bigger one, until the judge gets back. Mr. Springer said it won’t be long.”

  Juanita was trying to sound hopeful, but Maddie could see the sadness in her eyes. She reached out to squeeze her hand. “You, me, Mr. Springer—we’re all working just as fast as we can to find out what really happened. I’m sure that between us we’ll be done in no time, and Eddie will be back here where he belongs.”

  Maddie tried to sound hopeful too, to project a confidence she was far from feeling.

  She glanced over the table at Juanita’s reading material, a film mag open on a glossy photo of Norma Talmadge. The cropped waves of the actress’s shiny, dark hair framed her smiling face, a fur collar of an evening cloak drawn up around her neck. Love finds our favorite sweetheart! gushed the headline.

  “She does look pretty, doesn’t she?” Maddie said wistfully. “I do wonder sometimes what my hair would look like in a bob.”

  Juanita looked shocked. “Are you a—a flapper now, Señora Maddie? I read that term all over the place; it sounds terribly naughty.”

  Maddie laughed. “Never. I’m an old widow with dull clothes; no one would call me a flapper. I also can’t do the Charleston, I don’t carry a flask in my garter, and I would be exhausted if I tried to stay up clubbing until three every night. I don’t know how those bright young things do it.”

  She thought of Elizabeth Grover with her cropped hair and beaded gown, her handbag full of contraband and her many dance partners. Now there was a flapper.

  Juanita frowned down at Norma’s smiling face. “Well, I hope Pearl and Ruby never decide to become flappers then.”

  Maddie sighed. “Me neither, Juanita.”

  “Oh, I almost forgot. Dr. Cole called while you were out,” Juanita said. She took a slip of paper from her dressing gown pocket and passed it over the table.

  Dr. Cole. David. Maddie felt a sudden excited flutter deep inside at the thought of him, a new energy, but she pushed it away. It was surely no time for schoolgirl giggles over handsome blue eyes! She scanned the penciled words: Found something interesting. Meet me at hospital at ten tomorrow morning? There was also a telephone number.

  Maddie glanced at the clock. Ten was really only a few hours away. She sighed at the thought of a hospital first thing in the morning. She had hated the place ever since her volunteer work when the men came home from war and during the ’flu.

  Yet she had to admit she was also intrigued. She had the feeling that David was not the sort to use the word “interesting” lightly.

  CHAPTER 12

  The next morning, Maddie was up bright and early despite her late night and walked toward St. Vincent’s Hospital in the sharp, clear sunshine of midmorning. A few fluffy, cotton-like white clouds drifted through the sky, which shifted between turquoise and an almost violet-blue with no sign of rain. She hurried past dairy wagons on their way to make deliveries, artists selling pottery and jewelry on the plaza, and workers lugging buckets of paint to houses.

  She smoothed her beige kid gloves and pushed her oval sunglasses back up her nose. She didn’t want to think too hard about what had made her dress in one of her new stylish outfits, a fashionable suit of lightweight pale-green tweed and a brimmed hat of beige straw with green trim. It certainly couldn’t be because she was seeing Dr. David Cole again.

  Surely not.

  She paused on the corner where the large French Gothic cathedral sat across from La Fonda. The square towers of honey-colored stone glowed almost rosy in the morning light. Once, when she was caught in the sticky, dark web of grief, someone had told her that one day she would notice beauty again. Feel that spark of life, art, and joy again. She hadn’t believed them back then.

  But now, as she looked up at the jewel-like stained glass catching the pure, clear light, she saw what they meant. She wanted to help Juanita find that one day too.

  She cut through the garden between the cathedral and the hospital, which was run by the Sisters of Charity and had been for over fifty years. It was a three-story, white brick Victorian structure, clear windows blinking down at the passers-by. Maddie hurried up the steps and into the foyer.

  The familiar old smell of a hospital—disinfectant, stale air, the tang of medicine, and the faint tinge of fried food—brought back a flood of memories from that time after the war when she had volunteered with the Red Cross.

  Nursing nuns rushed past her, bustling efficiently in their starched white wimples and aprons over their black wool habits. An orderly pushed a trolley carrying a groaning patient under a blanket. One of the sisters said she would fetch Dr. Cole for her right away.

  Maddie fought the urge to fidget and pace as she waited, keeping herself from checking her hair and lipstick. She was there on an errand. That was all.

  “Mrs. Alwin—Maddie,” he called, and her self-deception of not looking forward to seeing him personally crumbled. He hurried over to take her hand with a smile. “I’m so glad you could make it.”

  “Of course,” she answered. “I’m so grateful you’re doing us this favor.”

  A frown flickered over his face, and she saw something she recognized very well in his blue eyes, a sadness overlaid with curiosity. She had felt that way much too often herself. “I found something—well, rather interesting.”

  “Interesting?”

  “Yes. I wasn’t sure if such information would upset Mrs. Anaya too much, so I thought I would get your opinion first.”

  “I’ll be happy to tell her whatever she should know,” Maddie said. “She is a very strong woman. But I admit, I’m intrigued.”

  “Come with me. I’ll show you what I’ve found.” He led her toward the lifts. “Are you particularly squeamish, Madeline? I should have asked before.”

  Maddie laughed. “Not very. My mother thinks I’m quite unladylike.”

  He laughed too, and she almost hoped she heard a note of admiration in it. “I didn’t think so.”

  “I wasn’t allowed to take real anatomy classes at art school,” she said as they stepped into the lift and he pulled the iron grate into place. “I did work at a hospital as a Red Cross volunteer at the end of the war, wh
en—well, when I knew my husband wasn’t coming back. I stayed on to help during the influenza. Just changing dressings, pushing a tea cart around, things like that. But I did see some things.”

  The doors clanged closed, and she found herself in the small space all alone with him. She wanted to break free, to run away—and for the lift ride to never end.

  “I can imagine.”

  “Nothing like you saw in Europe, of course,” she said, staring hard at the lit-up buttons marking off the floors.

  That small frown flickered over his brow again and then was gone. “And you never caught the ’flu yourself?”

  Maddie shook her head. “Back in the 1890s, when I was very tiny, my mother and I had a similar illness. Fevers, chills, congestion. We never got sick in ’18, but my father did. Fortunately, he survived. I was able to help out in the New York hospital.” She shuddered to remember what she had seen there, the rows and rows of sick people and not enough beds for them, all of them coughing their lives away.

  David nodded seriously. He stroked his silver-flecked beard in thoughtful reflection. “I saw that sometimes myself. If people had been ill back then, twenty or so years ago, they didn’t catch the Spanish ’flu. Intriguing. My wife . . .” He paused. “My wife was not so lucky. She died before I returned from France.”

  Maddie was shocked. That would certainly explain the deep sadness she often sensed in him, the sadness that echoed her own. That faraway look in his eyes. Her heart ached for him. “Oh!” she cried. “I am so terribly sorry. I didn’t . . .” She swallowed hard, not sure what she should say.

  “It was a long time ago,” he said. The lift doors opened, and he took her arm to help her out. “I’m afraid I didn’t warn you this was the morgue. I promise you won’t see anything untoward, though. Nothing your mother would object to.”

  She had to smile. “I told you, David, I’m not squeamish. Not too much, anyway. I’ll do whatever I can to help Eddie. And I am very interested. I do like a good detective novel from time to time.”

  “I thought so.” He led her through the bare cement basement. The air felt cold, clammy, and the smell of disinfectant was even stronger, overlaying something sharp and metallic, like blood. She was glad she had worn a suit with a warm jacket, even if she had really chosen it because it was pretty.

  He took her into a small room, windowless, lined with stainless steel counters and cabinets with a drain in the middle of the sloped stone floor. A body covered in a white sheet lay on a concrete slab, and Maddie realized it must be Tomas. She could see a glimpse of a hand under the hem of the sheet.

  She swallowed down a sudden bitter tang of sickness and hoped she had meant it when she told David she wasn’t squeamish. She didn’t want him to think she wasn’t brave, even as she felt like a terrible coward.

  He picked up a notebook from the counter and flicked through the densely written pages. “I thought the amount of blood, the pattern of bruising, was a bit odd. It looked like he was surely beaten to death.”

  “Yes,” Maddie agreed, remembering the scene at La Fonda. She wished she had paid more attention, taken note of more details. It all seemed to have happened in a flash. “That’s what I thought, or maybe that he was stabbed. I didn’t hear or see any gunshot.”

  “No. I thought so too, yet once I looked closer that just didn’t seem right.” He folded back a corner of the sheet and held up the hand. It was the palest gray but with those quite dark fingernails she remembered. “I’ve ordered some toxicology tests, but I think maybe Mr. Anaya here was being poisoned before his death.”

  “Poisoned?” Maddie cried. She stared down at the hand, so horribly pale, and ran through her mind everything in her own kitchen, her own garden. Surely that couldn’t be. None of the rest of them were sick. Unless . . . “Why do you think that?”

  “I saw such things in medical school. Most of my own work as a medic on the battlefield was much more straightforward. Yet I remember studying the signs very well. Skin discolored, blood turning to a strange foamy consistency. Mr. Anaya has such signs, here and here. See? I also noticed it in the autopsy itself. If he was beaten in this way, the way he was the night he died, it would have been painful but not fatal.”

  “Someone trying to make a point, maybe?” Maddie said, thinking of Tomas’s strange activities around town and how many people seemed to dislike him.

  David gave a wry smile. “I like to read detective novels too. The internal bleeding was extensive, and there is also quite a lot of bruising here and here.”

  Maddie frowned. “What sort of poison? Something quick, something he would have taken that day?”

  He shook his head. “I think it was something slower acting. An arsenic, perhaps. That can be found in any rat poison at the corner store or even cleaning agents. Or an herb. I don’t know much about the local flora, I admit. It could have been disguised in food or drink. It might have made him feel ill beforehand. Had he been complaining of such things?”

  “I don’t know,” Maddie answered, feeling foolish she hadn’t asked such things herself. “I had just gotten back from New York. I can ask Juanita, though. He did seem a bit feverish when I last saw him, his eyes a bit yellowish.”

  “I think someone really didn’t like your Mr. Anaya.”

  “I think a lot of people didn’t,” she said, thinking about what Mr. Bennett had told her, the woman from the brothel, the possible bootlegging, the mysterious way he and Juanita had had to leave their home. The quarrels between him and his family. There was so much she didn’t know, so much the private people in Santa Fe kept hidden.

  “Of course it would be his wife who had the most access to him in that way,” David said carefully.

  “Oh, no,” Maddie protested. “I know Juanita. She wouldn’t do this, nor would Eddie. And whoever beat him—would they have known it would hasten his death?”

  He glanced down at the body, his eyes narrowed. “So maybe we’re looking for at least two people? Or maybe one who wanted to be rid of him, one that wanted to, as you say, teach him a lesson.”

  Maddie did like the sound of that word—we’re. It made her feel not so alone for the first time in ages. That she had a partner in something. This wasn’t a puzzle she had to solve herself. She had lots of people helping her.

  She looked down at that pitiful gray hand. In life, Tomas Anaya had been a large man, a bit intimidating. Now he was shrunken, sad, like all those poor boys who had come back from war only to be struck down by septicemia or the ’flu. It wasn’t fair, wasn’t right. His family deserved answers.

  She suddenly noticed a slightly yellow tinge beneath the gray of death. It made her think of some of the soldiers who had been gassed in the war, a sickly yellow-green color to their nails and their skin. She had noticed Tomas seemed unwell when she saw him at her house. Maybe David really was right. Maybe Tomas had been poisoned before he died, eaten from the inside out like those soldiers. But who would do that, and how?

  She frowned as she tried to remember something that seemed stuck in the depths of her brain, something just beyond her grasp.

  Then she remembered—that box of Tomas’s belongings that Juanita had been packing the night before. There were a few bottles, hair pomade, maybe breath freshener, and a strange, faceted bottle with a little bit of amber-colored liquid in it. She had thought it was cologne. Juanita had hinted it was hooch, which somehow made him a hypocrite. That would make sense if it was like the bottles the boy Harry delivered to the speakeasy. What if it was something else entirely?

  And where had he gotten it?

  “I think I might have an idea,” she said.

  “I would be very interested to hear it,” Dr. Cole answered. He tucked Tomas’s hand under the sheet again, carefully, respectfully. She liked his calm, dignified attitude. “But I can’t ask you to stay in such a place any longer or your mother might hear of it and be angry with me. Maybe you would join me for a meal sometime soon?”

  “Oh, yes, thank you,” Maddie s
aid gratefully. She felt like she could do with a drop of a drink herself after so much strange information, and she wanted to hear what David might think about the bottles she had seen at Mr. Bennett’s club. “That would be lovely. Lunch at La Fonda? I have a favorite table in the dining room. And maybe we could look for a clue or two while we’re there?”

  He smiled ruefully. “I would love nothing better, Mrs. Alwin—Madeline. But I fear duty calls at the moment. Sister Adams, the duty nurse, is very strict, and I’ll be in a lot of trouble if I don’t review all the new information on the patients’ charts after her rounds.”

  Maddie laughed despite a little pang of disappointment that there wouldn’t be just a little more time with him that afternoon. Time not spent in a morgue. “I quite understand. I’m sure I met many Sister Adams types when I was a volunteer. I do hope you are visiting living patients this afternoon?”

  “I promise all of them are still with us.”

  “Thank you so much for taking the time to help me. It’s very kind of you.”

  “Not at all. It’s all very intriguing.” He glanced away, a sadness flickering through his eyes once more. “And no man should ever go without justice. There’s too much wrongdoing in the world that goes unanswered.”

  “Indeed there is.” She wondered again what sadness it was he carried. The terrible things he must have seen in the war? The loss of his wife? He fought against the injustices that made her angry and helplessly sad, as well, and he saw darkness that lingered in people’s hearts. Whatever had led him to pursue a healing profession, to try to right at least some wrongs? If only she could get to know him better. It was a feeling she hadn’t had in a long time, that flicker of excited interest, that feeling of knowing someone that she had only just barely met.

  They walked together back to the lift, and Maddie was glad to be leaving behind the dank, dim small rooms of the basement morgue. Dr. Cole was quite right. There was too much sadness in the world as it was without any poor soul being taken out of his life, away from his family, too early and in such a terrible way.