Santa Fe Mourning

by Amanda Allen

  “So you were expected to follow in the family business?” Father Malone asked.

  “I was. Luckily for me, I always found medicine fascinating,” David said. “I loved nothing more than following my father on his rounds, hearing people’s stories, helping them when I could.”

  “It is the same where I grew up,” Juanita said. “If your mother made pottery, so did you. If she was a weaver, so were you. I wasn’t so good at either of those things, I’m afraid.”

  “But you are a most excellent chef, Mrs. Anaya,” David said. “This lamb is wonderful. I haven’t had any cooked so perfectly since I lived in France for a time. Hospital food isn’t always so palatable, I’m afraid. And this mint sauce—sublime.”

  Juanita smiled happily. “You must have some more then to take with you. The mint came from Señora Maddie’s own garden. I learned this recipe from my grandmother. My own mother never met a piece of meat she couldn’t char to bits. It needs a deft hand and good timing.”

  “I wonder if such talents skip generations,” Gunther said. “I don’t know anyone in my family who likes to write. Or in Maddie’s who can paint. My brother, for instance, is a stockbroker. I couldn’t add a line of sums to save my life.”

  Maddie laughed. “So true. My own brother likes a ‘jolly nice’ Dutch still life to show his friends after dinner parties and impress them with the cost of it, but that’s about it.” She took a sip of her tea, thinking about families, about how they were similar or completely different, how such things could happen even if two people grew up in the same house.

  “Ah, yes. Families,” Father Malone said. “Can’t live with them, can’t be without them!”

  “Did your family approve of you going into the church, Father?” Maddie asked. “Or did they argue against it, like my parents and my painting?”

  “They would have liked it well enough if I stayed in the East and aimed for a cardinal’s red hat. Not so much when I came out to missions in the Wild West, though. But we must all follow our true purposes in life.”

  Maddie thought of the half-finished canvases in her studio, the colors and shapes that wouldn’t leave her mind until they came out through her paintbrush. “I hope so.”

  “You, Mrs. Alwin, are to bring us beauty and truth with your paints,” Father Malone said with a kindly smile. “Mr. Ryder distracts us and educates us with his pen. Mrs. Anaya feeds us. And Dr. Cole brings us health or, failing that, justice.”

  Maddie suddenly noticed that most of the food was gone, even the trifle, and the girls were getting heavy-eyed. The hour was growing late, and they still had serious matters to talk about. “Girls,” she said to the twins, “would you like to bring in the coffee and cheese plate for us? Your mother has them waiting on the kitchen table.”

  Once the children were gone, the merry chatter turned solemn. Dr. Cole wasted no time in telling Juanita that Tomas’s body would be released for the funeral as quickly as possible, his suspicions about the poison, and the results of the tests that had just come back that evening.

  “It looks like something called ethyl biscoumacetate,” David said. “A blood thinner. It can have some medical uses, but only when carefully monitored and in very small doses, and sometimes it’s in rat poisons. It inhibits the formation in the liver of clotting factors and can bring on hemorrhaging, especially a thin, bright-red, frothy blood, such as Mrs. Alwin here remembers seeing at the scene of the crime. It can cause jaundice, thus the yellowing of the skin, and fever, until even a small cut can cause a person to bleed to death. It appears this is what happened to your husband, I’m afraid.”

  Juanita’s eyes widened with horror, and her hand flew to her mouth. “We keep a box of rat poison in the kitchen,” she whispered. “Could his work in the garden—or maybe a mix-up with something else . . . ?”

  “Oh, no,” David quickly assured her. “He would have had to ingest a greater quantity of it than in such a powder, and over a period of time. Death can occur up to two weeks after discontinuing the drug. No one else here has been ill, so it couldn’t have accidentally found its way into food or drink here in your own home.”

  Father Malone frowned thoughtfully. “When I was a very young man at a mission on the California coast, another priest had a very pretty rosary he once got in the tropics. Red-and-black seedpods, dried and carved into small roses. Paternoster peas, we called them. Sadly, a young child ate one of the beads and bled out in just such a way. Such a small amount. Could it be a similar accident, Doctor?”

  David seemed to think about this for a moment and shook his head. “I don’t think so. It would take a larger amount and a cumulative effect. Only a tiny amount of the paternoster pea is fatal if chewed. The taste would be rather bitter, though it could be disguised in alcohol or maybe strong coffee. Do you know of any place where your husband regularly eats or drinks, Mrs. Anaya?”

  Juanita shook her head. “My husband was not often home of late, Dr. Cole. But I know he didn’t drink alcohol, or at least he didn’t used to. Ever.”

  They could hear the clatter of the girls returning from the kitchen, and David quickly said in a low voice, “If you can think of anything at all later, Mrs. Anaya . . .”

  “Of course.” Juanita leaned closer to him and whispered, “I did notice he seemed very distracted lately, losing track of his thoughts, having fits of temper, things of that sort. His skin and eyes also seemed yellow, but he wouldn’t go see a doctor.”

  David nodded. “Common symptoms, I’m afraid. For how long?”

  “Three weeks. A month, maybe,” Juanita said.

  The girls returned with the cheese platter and coffee set, and there could be no more talk of poisons and murder while they were there. Pearl and Ruby told them instead of the play they were devising for their new dolls, and Gunther suggested revisions and costume changes, making them giggle.

  Later, Maddie walked with David to the garden gate. It was a beautiful night, the air soft with the promise of summer, the sky dusty-dark above them. It seemed so strange that something as terrible as murder could happen in her beautiful new hometown.

  “Thank you so much for coming tonight, David,” she said. “I think hearing this information, no matter how appalling, has done Juanita some good. At least we can feel like we’re doing something.”

  “Honesty is usually the best policy in matters like this, especially when someone is as strong as Mrs. Anaya and can bear it. Hopefully we can use this to help young Eddie.”

  Maddie nodded. “I do hope so. I’m sorry that you’re getting such an impression of our town, right when you first arrive! It’s usually not this exciting, I promise, at least not in a murderous way.”

  He laughed. “I am very glad I came here, Maddie. It’s even more than I was hoping.” He took her hand and pressed a quick, warm kiss to her fingers. “I’ll phone tomorrow if there’s any more news. Tell Mrs. Anaya her dinner was lovely.”

  Maddie watched him walk away into the night and curled her hand tightly in the fringed hem of her shawl, as if she could hold the memory of that kiss there. She glanced up at the moon, rising in a shower of silver in the sky, and whispered, “Don’t you dare tell,” to its shining light.

  When she returned to the house, feeling almost as if her feet floated above the ground just a tiny bit, she could hear the clatter of dishes being washed in the kitchen. She gathered up the last of the used platters from the dining room table and went to add them to the soapy sink.

  Juanita was washing the dishes, a small frown on her face as she seemed to look at something—worry about something—that was far away from the cozy kitchen. The girls were brushing Buttercup in the corner, up far past their bedtime.

  Maddie took up a dish towel and started polishing the glasses on the drying board. For a moment, there was only the soft splash of water, the girls’ giggles, and the hum of insects through the screen door to the garden.

  “Dr. Cole does seem like a nice man,” Juanita said. “Not many busy doctors would go out
of their way to help like that.”

  Maddie remembered his kiss on her hand, his smile as he said good night. “He is very nice. I’m sure that with all of us working with each other, we’ll be able to piece together what really happened in no time.”

  Juanita nodded, and they were silent again for a long moment as they washed and dried, washed and dried. “You were so lonely when you first came here, Señora Maddie, as I was when I first left home. Your eyes were so empty.”

  “I . . .” Maddie swallowed hard, thinking about her silent house after Pete died, her hollow heart. “Yes. I did feel empty when I first came here. But then I found friends like you and a new home.”

  “I know how it feels, yes. To be lonely even when you’re not alone. Never alone.”

  “You mean alone in your marriage?”

  Juanita nodded. She glanced at the girls, but they were too busy with their brushing task to pay much attention to boring grown-ups. “It wasn’t always like that, though. When we first met, he was funny and strong. Sure of himself. He always seemed to know what to do to make things right. I know it’s hard to believe now, but I enjoyed being with him then. Would do anything to be with him. And then . . .” Her voice trailed away.

  Maddie was fascinated. This was the most Juanita had ever told her about the Anayas’ past. “And then?”

  “We got older. Things happened to us, made him hard in his heart. Angry.”

  “But you haven’t become hard and angry.”

  Juanita shook her head. “What use is that, Señora Maddie? It just wastes our time, and there’s not enough of that as it is. We have to help each other whenever we can.”

  “You’re exactly right.” Maddie opened the cabinet to put away the clean plates. “But it looks like Tomas’s anger landed in the wrong place this time.”

  Juanita frowned. “I warned him to take more care. He stopped listening to me a long time ago. Sometimes grief can blind us, make us not see the important things right in front of us.” She laid her hand gently, fleetingly, on Maddie’s. “Don’t let it do that to you.”

  Maddie wondered if she meant Dr. Cole or something else entirely. “I’ll try not to.”

  Juanita nodded and handed her the last of the dishes to dry. They put away the remaining crockery, and Juanita herded the protesting sleepy girls toward their beds.

  Maddie started to go to her room, as it was growing so late, but she glanced out the kitchen window and saw the tiny red glow of the end of one of Gunther’s cigarettes in his own garden. Sure she could never sleep even if she did retire and wanting to have someone to talk to, she wandered over to say good-night to her friend.

  “Can’t sleep either?” Gunther asked as she pushed open the gate. He gave her a sad little smile. “Darling one, I would have thought you were tucked up safely in bed, dreaming of your handsome doctor.”

  “Maybe I’m thinking about him too much,” Maddie said. “I don’t seem to feel tired at all.”

  “Then sit down; have a brandy with me. I don’t feel like being alone either.”

  Maddie drew up one of his wicker chairs under the canopy of trees and took the snifter of brandy he passed to her. It was the very finest, as Gunther almost always had, and she could glimpse the silvery-greenish moon between the canopy of leaves. A soft breeze caught at her hair, and it seemed an idyllic night.

  Yet she couldn’t quite find the serene contentment that usually fell over her like a silken eiderdown blanket on such night and made her glad to be alive exactly where she was. Her worry over Eddie and his family wouldn’t leave her thoughts, and now she worried about Gunther too. His smile wasn’t at all his usual merry grin, and his hair was rumpled and ascot untied and hanging over his shirtfront.

  “You were quite right,” Gunther said at last, breaking the soft silence. “Your doctor is beautiful. No, not beautiful. He’s much too rugged for that! But those eyes. That accent. I would ride the trains all the time if I could find someone like that.”

  Maddie laughed. “Pure serendipity. I never thought I would find someone like that either. Even if nothing at all comes of it, I will always be quite amazed.”

  Gunther sighed. “Serendipity. I put it in my books all the time, yet I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen it.”

  “It will happen when you least expect it. People used to tell me that all the time when I lost Pete, but I never did believe them. I thought they were just saying what they thought they should say.” She thought of the Anayas—of Juanita, who worked so hard and loved her children so much and seemed to get so little in return. Of Gunther, who deserved a committed love, a content life, more than anyone she knew. “Of course, serendipity works for bad too.”

  “Poor young Eddie, you mean?” Gunther said, pouring them another measure of brandy. “At least he has useful friends on his side now. Lawyers, doctors, priests. Most boys in his position wouldn’t.”

  Maddie nodded. What he said was horribly true. There were two kinds of justice in the world for the haves and have-nots. She quickly caught him up on what she had learned so far. “I wish we could all help more. I just feel so very helpless.”

  “You, darling? Never! Others just sit and wait and wait for things to happen; you go looking for answers. Tell me, what do you think of Dr. Cole’s findings? Blood-thinning poison, fatal beatings—just like a detective novel.”

  Maddie shook her head. “I was never much good at my science classes in school. Always had my nose in a novel. Jane Eyre isn’t much help now. I can see someone getting angry enough to give him a beating. Bootleggers protect their territory, whether it’s New York or New Mexico. But to plan out a poison over weeks or months . . .” She shivered. “That seems to be full of hatred. He wasn’t the most likable man ever, sure, but what could he have done to get all of that?”

  Gunther stared down into his drink, as if the swirl of the liquid could answer him. “My dearest, I know you don’t want to think of it, yet the newspapers say such murders are usually domestic affairs. Would you say the Anayas had a happy marriage?”

  Maddie thought of the quarrel she had heard on the day she came home. “Not really. They’ve been married a long time, I think. Yet Juanita says Tomas hasn’t been around much lately, off on some mysterious errands. Juanita claims he mostly ignores the girls, which I’ve noticed is true, but bullies Eddie. Out of worry, she says, but I saw a bruise on Eddie’s face the day I got home.”

  “Was he faithful?”

  “Juanita says he used to step out a bit. I’m not sure how much. She doesn’t tell me much about such scandalous stuff. She didn’t really seem all that deeply concerned about it when she mentioned it and says men will do what they will. But Pete never did things like that.”

  Gunther sighed. “She’s right about that, your Pete notwithstanding. A lover scorned isn’t always thinking straight.”

  Maddie knew he was right. The papers were indeed full of husbands and wives going after each other in fits of rage. Juanita was too calm for that, too quiet, too stoic. Maybe those were the ones to worry about the most, though? “Aren’t those usually lovers shooting or stabbing each other in a sudden quarrel or something? Tomas and Juanita are both so quiet, it’s hard to imagine such a thing happening to them. Maybe with one of his fancy women, if he really did have one? She might have lost her temper, whoever the poor girl was.” Or even Juanita might have snapped, though Maddie didn’t want to consider such an occurrence. “People are such strange, unpredictable things.”

  “Truer words were never spoken, Madeline, my dear. It makes our work possible, paintings and books and such.” He reached into his pocket for his cigarette case and lit up a fresh smoke. “You really don’t think it could be the wife?”

  “Juanita? No. She’s one of the best people I’ve ever known, kind and nurturing. Rather like the mother I always wished I had. She was angry at Tomas, for sure, and she would always protect her children. She is also very religious, though. I’m sure she thinks marriage is forever.”

&nbs
p; “Her Father Malone would probably counsel her the same, though he seems a nice sort for a clergyman. A Father Brown sort, even. Could his kindness maybe even lead him to—help Juanita out a bit? Or at least look the other way if someone else did?”

  Maddie was shocked. Father Malone, a priest, condoning murder? He certainly would have warned Tomas to cease his activities, if the priest even had a chance, but kill? “Father Malone as a poisoner?”

  Gunther shrugged. “Maybe not. My mind does tend to work in novel plots. He would be concerned with sin and all that. Possibly he just thought if Tomas was ill for a while, he would leave Eddie alone, repent his pagan ways.”

  “Maybe. Then again, lots of people might have thought something like that. I might have myself, if I had been back from New York to see what all was going on.”

  “You wicked girl! So Lady Macbeth.” He poured out the last of his brandy bottle. “But I would rather hear more about your doctor now. I do have to live romantically in vicarious ways, you know, since Bertie left.”

  Maddie laughed and told him more about her trip to Sunmount, her talks with Dr. Cole, even how kind he had been in a most uncomfortable situation at the morgue.

  “I do hope he is as nice as he appears,” Gunther said wistfully. “You deserve a little fun and happiness, darling.”

  “As do you! As do we all. Once all this nastiness is over.” And let it be soon, she added silently.

  After the bottle was utterly gone, she made her slightly unsteady way back into her own house. It was quiet now, Juanita and the girls retired to their own guesthouse, the kitchen and the dining room clean. Maddie went through her bedtime rituals of brushes and cold creams, but even once tucked up under the blankets, she couldn’t go to sleep. She was too wrapped up in poisons, the state of marriages, priests and Father Brown novels, luck and who got it and who didn’t.

  She finally fell into a trouble slumber when the sun was peeking over the horizon.