Santa Fe Mourning

by Amanda Allen

  CHAPTER 14

  Maddie studied the house. This seemed to be the address Gunther had found for Tomas’s woman friend, the mysterious Mavis. It didn’t look disreputable, which was a bit disappointing. Not that she was sure what she had been expecting. Pink and purple paint? The smell of cheap perfume piped out into the breeze? Whatever she’d envisioned, it wasn’t this tidy, pale-yellow Victorian house, windows blanked with heavy curtains against the daylight, tucked behind a low stone fence.

  It was midafternoon and quiet there at the outskirts of town, while the plaza a few blocks away was bustling with people going about their business, grocery shopping, banking, and eating lunch. She’d thought surely it was a good time to find Mavis at home before business picked up. Maddie pushed open the gate and made her way up the front walkway to knock at the door.

  It opened a couple of inches to reveal an older woman in a green silk dress, maybe a little garish for the afternoon but proper enough. Her gaze flicked down Maddie, taking in her plain gray frock, her blue coat and straw hat with gray striped ribbon trim, her pearl earrings. “We don’t need you missionary sorts here again,” she said, starting to slam the door.

  Maddie blocked it with her foot. “Do excuse the intrusion,” she said sweetly. “But I promise I’m not a missionary. I’m here on some urgent business to see a woman called Mavis.”

  The woman frowned suspiciously. “What sort of business?”

  “The sort that might bring the police to your door, if it’s not sorted soon,” Maddie said. She took a roll of bills from her handbag and offered them. “None of us want that, I’m sure.”

  The woman took the money and stuffed it into her bodice before she let Maddie in. “No, we wouldn’t. Mavis is upstairs, third door on the left. Don’t take too long.”

  “Of course not.” Maddie’s artistic nature was very curious about what was behind that door, but once again she was a bit disappointed. It was decorated rather like her grandmother’s drawing room had been when Maddie was a little girl, all dark wallpaper and heavy walnut furniture, with staid, poorly done landscapes on the walls. Someone played softly at a piano while a girl sang in a warbling voice, but there weren’t very many people around at that hour, just a few women in dressing gowns who were chatting idly and watched her with curiosity as she hurried past.

  She made her way up the curving stairs to a long corridor, knocking on the third door to the left. “What is it?” a querulous voice called out. “I’m not on the clock yet.”

  “I’m not your landlady,” Maddie said. “I’m a friend of the Anayas. I believe you know them?”

  The door swung open. Mavis was a tall, sturdy woman with bright-red hair that matched her satin wrapper, smooth olive skin, and wide, dark eyes. She looked familiar somehow, but Maddie wasn’t sure where she had seen her before. She looked anxious and unsure, but also somehow—defiant?

  “Tomas Anaya?” she said urgently. Her voice had the touch of a fluid, almost Spanish accent. “You know him? What’s happened to him?”

  “I—he and his wife work for me,” Maddie said. Mavis really did look quite uneasy. Did she not know about the murder? “I’m very sorry if you haven’t heard, but he has died.”

  Mavis stumbled back a step, her fist curling into the edge of her satin wrapper. Her nails were lacquered the same bright red. “Died?”

  “Yes. I—well, I’m afraid he was killed.”

  Mavis’s face turned quite pale, and Maddie led her carefully to the nearest chair. She looked around and found a pitcher of water, quickly pouring out a glass and pressing it into the woman’s shaking hand. It was a small room, sparsely furnished with only a bed, a wardrobe pushed against the wall along with two chairs, and a dressing table cluttered with bottles, brushes, and pots of rouge and mascara.

  “I didn’t know,” Mavis murmured. “It’s been so busy here at work. I knew I hadn’t seen him in a few days, but . . . who did it then?”

  Maddie watched her carefully. “His son has been arrested.”

  “Eddie?” Mavis cried. “That kid? It can’t be.”

  “You know his son?” Maddie asked in surprise. She didn’t know a whole lot about being a man’s girl on the side, but talking about his kids with him didn’t seem like it should be part of it.

  “Of course I did. Well, knew of him. Tomas talked about Eddie sometimes.”

  “So you did know Tomas well?” Maddie said, trying to keep any hint of judgment out of her voice, any thought of Juanita’s worries and fears. She wanted Mavis to trust her.

  “Sure, he . . .” Mavis’s eyes narrowed. “Say, who are you again? How did you find me?”

  “My name is Madeline Alwin. Juanita Anaya is my housekeeper. Also my friend.”

  Mavis gave a rough laugh. “Friend, is it? Did she send you here? I didn’t think she even knew about me being in town.”

  “I’m not sure she does know,” Maddie said, even though Juanita had mentioned she thought Tomas was stepping out on her, or used to anyway. “I heard you knew Tomas through—talk.”

  “This is a gossipy town, no doubt about that. Worse than the pueblo when I was a kid.” She took another sip of water, her expression becoming wistful, faraway. “I wouldn’t mind seeing Juanita again. Telling her I’m sorry about Tomas.”

  Maddie was puzzled. “See her again?”

  “It’s been too long. She probably wouldn’t want to see me, though. She was always the respectable sort.” Mavis sniffled and glanced up at Maddie. “Say, you do know Tomas was my cousin, right? That makes me kin to Juanita, and to Eddie too. I have the right to be concerned.”

  Well, now, Maddie thought. That would teach her about leaping before she looked. Mavis was Tomas’s cousin, not his fancy woman. Interesting. “I’m trying to help Eddie, if I can. That’s why I’m here. Trying to see if I can find who really did this.”

  Mavis seemed to think this over, biting at her lip until a stain of lip rouge came off on her tooth. Finally, she nodded and kicked out the other chair for Maddie to sit down.

  “That poor kid,” Mavis said. She slid open one of the dressing table drawers and took out a bottle of what looked like whiskey. She added some to her water glass. “What can I do to help?”

  “Have you been here long?” Maddie asked.

  “At this house, you mean? Only a few months, when I got back here to New Mexico. That’s when I met Tomas again. Hadn’t seen him for years, but he remembered me.”

  “You mean you didn’t live at San Ildefonso before that?”

  “I left when I was nearly fifteen. That’s when I met Billy. He was a cowboy, passing through on his way to California. He was way too handsome and funny too. Lighthearted, y’know? Not like any of the other guys I knew growing up.” She took a long drink. “We were going to get married; I know we were. He just had to get some things sorted first. Then he died of the ’flu.”

  Maddie sighed. So much sadness all around. So much she didn’t know, couldn’t yet see. It was all hidden behind clouds of unhappiness. “I’m so sorry. My own husband died in the war.”

  Mavis gave her an understanding little smile. “Tough luck for us, huh?”

  “Yes,” Maddie agreed, even as she realized how very lucky she really was. Pete was gone, but she could live her own life in freedom, not tied down to a rough job like Mavis. She had a family, as maddening as they were, and lots of good friends. “Was Tomas going to help you get back home?”

  “He couldn’t even go back himself. Not yet. But I guess he was helping me in his own way.”

  “How so?”

  “I ran into him by accident. I knew he and Juanita lived here in town. I just couldn’t figure out how to get in touch with them, see if I could talk to them without embarrassing them.” She took another drink. “But then I met him at Madame Genet’s shop.”

  That was a name Maddie had been hearing a lot of lately. “The medium?”

  Mavis smiled. “You’ve heard of her? She’s great. I bet she could find your husband for
you.”

  “Maybe so,” Maddie said, thinking of Father Malone’s suspicions of the woman, both on a spiritual and criminal level. “Did she find your Billy?”

  “She’s close to it, I’m sure. She says sometimes the spirit you’re looking for won’t come through at first, that you have to search, talk to your spirit guides. But she knows things only Billy would. Maybe he’s communicating through those other spirits for now, like he’s shy or something. Not that being shy sounds much like Billy.”

  “And what was Tomas doing there?”

  “Looking for his son, of course. He couldn’t do it in the old ways anymore, so he thought maybe this would work.”

  “Looking for Eddie?” Maddie asked, then she remembered something Juanita had mentioned once. “Oh, yes, the poor baby who died. Forgive me, but Tomas didn’t seem like the . . . spiritually seeking type.”

  “He was sensitive, underneath. We just had such a hard time when we were kids, you know. We had to learn to be tough.” Mavis finished her glass. “I think he felt guilty about that baby. He said he hadn’t sent for the doctor soon enough. But he did like Madame Genet. He thought she had a gift, like the medicine men from the kivas at home.”

  “Is that why Tomas and Juanita left the pueblo then?” Maddie asked. “Something about the baby?”

  Mavis shrugged. “He says it was because he was a heretic.”

  Maddie was surprised. “Heretic? That sounds positively medieval. And Tomas didn’t seem very religious. Juanita says he wouldn’t go to church with her.”

  Mavis laughed. “Not that sort of heretic. Not like the inquisition they used to have right here in town. No, just not with the old ways from the pueblo. He thought people like Madame Genet were really onto something. But that was just an excuse anyway.”

  “An excuse?”

  Mavis suddenly closed up, her expression snapping into boredom as if a curtain came down. She put her glass down on the dressing table. “I don’t know, really. I’d left by then. And Tomas wasn’t much of a talker. Kept himself to himself, like we all should. But he was nice to me. We would have dinner, talk about when we were kids and things like that.”

  Maddie nodded. Keep herself to herself—that sounded like advice her mother would give, and it wasn’t terrible. But how could she not try to help her friends, if she could? Even if she feared she was useless?

  But something else about Mavis’s words caught Maddie’s attention. Mavis and Tomas used to have dinner together? Did that mean Mavis had had access to Tomas’s food and drink and thus could have slipped him something? Did she have a reason to, maybe a reason rooted in their old lives, or resentment that he couldn’t help her more now?

  “Anyway, I have to get to work, and you shouldn’t be here,” Mavis said abruptly. Maddie glanced at her, startled, and saw that Mavis’s expression had closed down, hardened. She pushed her chair back with a loud scrape and stood up, refusing to look back at Maddie. “Some of us have to earn our keep and can’t sit around yapping all day. I’m sorry Tomas is dead, but I don’t think I can help you.”

  Maddie wondered what had changed so fast, why Mavis was shutting her out. “Surely you’re the best one who could help me!” she said, trying to get Mavis to stay, to really talk to her. She felt as if she was on the edge of something just beyond her reach, but it was slipping away. “I only want to find out what happened. Don’t you?”

  Mavis shook her head. She reached for a tube of lipstick and leaned close to the window to draw a red line over her lips. Her hand trembled a bit, and she abruptly dropped the lipstick and tightened the sash of her robe. “I can’t help you,” she said again, her tone hoarse.

  Maddie realized she would get nothing else out of Mavis that day. The woman had obviously shut down. But why? Grief? Or guilt? Maddie took a card out of her handbag and put it down on the dressing table. “If you do think of anything else, or if you just want to call on Juanita, there’s my address. Come by any time.”

  Mavis didn’t even glance at the card. She just gave a brusque nod and hurried out of the room, so quickly she left the door ajar and Maddie sitting there alone. Maddie could hear the house stirring outside, the sound of voices calling to each other, the slam of doors, and she knew she didn’t have much time.

  She studied the table where Mavis had put down the glass. There were pots of powder and scented lotions, sticks of kohl, brushes and combs, and a tangle of ribbons. It looked like she lived backstage at the Follies.

  Suddenly, Maddie noticed a bottle at the back, a strange shape of sloped sides and flattened bottom, heavy and plugged with a dark cork. It was half-full of an amber liquid. It looked a bit like the bottle that had belonged to Tomas.

  She took off the stopper and gave it a cautious sniff. It just smelled earthy, sort of like the lilies of the valley scent her grandmother used to have, with a hint of gin underneath. She held it up to the light and saw a label on the underside. “Tonic,” it said in a blocky script, and she wondered if the handwriting could be the same as the note she had received warning her to mind her own business.

  She glanced over her shoulder, but no one was there. She quickly wrapped up the bottle and tucked it into her handbag. It couldn’t hurt to get David to take a look at the contents, to try to match up the handwriting on the label and find out where Mavis got it. The woman was acting very strangely. If she was Tomas’s cousin, if they were friends, surely she would want to help find his killer?

  Maddie took another quick look at the table and behind the screen, but she didn’t find anything else that looked interesting, and she knew she was running out of time. She straightened her hat and made her way out to the corridor, where one of the other ladies pointed her toward the back staircase. She found herself back outside, away from the heavy air of smoke and stale perfume, in the sunlight again. She was surprised to find it was still afternoon.

  She made her way back toward the center of town, wondering if she should stop at La Fonda and think over everything. She did know one thing—it was time to make an appointment with Madame Genet.

  As she turned a corner, she glimpsed a crowd of boys coming down the street, noisy and jostling, pushing each other off into the gutter. In their midst, she glimpsed a bright-blond head ahead a tall, skinny figure. Was it Harry, Eddie’s so-called friend?

  “Hey!” she called and walked faster to catch up with them. “Harry!”

  The boy broke away from his friends into a run. Maddie cursed the new shoes she wore and took off after him.

  CHAPTER 15

  The boy vanished through a doorway, and Maddie ducked after him. How could he move so fast? She was sure it was those blasted long legs and all the exercise he got running around on nefarious errands. She vowed to start walking more.

  She found herself in an empty shopfront, but she heard the clatter of footsteps nearby and then a muffled curse as a few crates fell over. She followed the sound and ran down a flight of stone steps into a dank basement. Up ahead, a door slammed.

  Maddie forced herself to stop and think, not just act on impulse as she had done too often lately. She pulled open an old, heavy, iron-bound door and faced a narrow passageway.

  She was sure it must be the tunnels Gunther told her about, the passages that snaked under the streets and made deliveries easier, especially illicit deliveries. They were more fun to hear about than to actually face alone. In real life, they were rough stone walls that pressed uncomfortably close, cold and damp. She listened carefully for any sound, and she heard more footsteps just ahead, echoing back to her eerily.

  She ran after them, thankful there was at least a little light in the small space from a few crude uncovered lightbulbs overhead. Probably the bootleggers had been tired of bringing their own flashlights, Maddie thought as she plunged ahead, her shoes pinching her heels.

  Why hadn’t she thought to bring a torch? she wondered. And maybe some trousers and sturdy boots? Oh, yes—because she had thought she was merely spending the afternoon at a brothel, n
ot chasing urchins down underground tunnels. Just a typical day in the life of a lady.

  Brothels, tunnels. How exciting her hoped-for quiet life in Santa Fe was becoming! Maybe it would be a fun story to recount later, she hoped. But for now, her feet hurt, she was hungry, and she cursed “excitement.”

  She stumbled around a corner and saw a figure up ahead, a flash of bright-blond hair in the shadows. She sped up, hoping he thought he had lost her and would get careless. She summoned up every girls’ field hockey game at Miss Spence’s, no matter how long ago they might have been, and put on a burst of speed. Just as the boy opened another door, she lunged forward and grabbed his arm.

  “Hey!” he yelled as they both tumbled to the floor. “Let go of me, you crazy broad.”

  “Are you Harry?” Maddie gasped. “Eddie’s friend?”

  He went very still. “How do you know that?”

  “Word gets around town; surely you know that. Did you know Eddie was in jail, waiting for bail?”

  He had the grace to look shamefaced. Red stained his freckled cheeks, and Maddie realized how very young he really was, just a kid like Eddie, getting mixed up in trouble before he was old enough to know what he was doing. She told herself sternly not to feel sorry for him, to keep view of what she had to do—help Eddie.

  “I didn’t want Ed to get hurt,” he muttered. “I just told him . . .”

  “Told him what?”

  “There was a job. I thought he could use the cabbage, you see? It was just one little thing.”

  “Is that how you started? With one little thing?”

  He looked away. “I dunno what you mean.”

  “This job. What was it? I know you make deliveries to all the speakeasies in town. Do you want me to talk to your cousin Tony at the police station?”

  Harry rolled over to sit up against the stone wall. Watching him warily in case he decided to scarper, she propped herself up beside him.

  The wall was cold and slightly damp through her spring-weight coat. She took a deep breath and noticed things around her for the first time. The cold air smelled of mildew and old beer and something more pleasant underneath, something sweet and spicy, like Mrs. Nussbaum’s tearoom’s cinnamon toast. She wondered if they were underneath the tea shop. It was like being caught between two worlds.