The Pot Thief Who Studied the Woman at Otowi Crossing

by J. Michael Orenduff

  The elevator reached the eleventh floor and I stepped out. She stuck her foot against the door.

  “Did she take your razor, too?” The woman had no shame. Then she smiled. “What’s your name?”

  “Hubert.”

  She laughed. “I’m Stella, but of course you already know that. If you need to borrow an iron, just ask. I might even show you how to use it.”

  I missed two covert elements in that conversation. In case you are no better at hidden messages than I am, I’ll tell you what they were. The first surface message was my fumbling attempt to misrepresent myself. The hidden message was that the person I pretended to be was irresistible to Stella and, Susannah later explained, to many other women as well. I had inadvertently fed Stella a great pick-up line.

  The second surface message was that Stella felt sorry for me and was willing to lend me her iron and instruct me on its use. The hidden message—again explained to me by Susannah—was that Stella was flirting with me.

  Since I broke in six more times, you already realize I didn’t find the purloined pots that first morning. My second trip to Rio Grande Lofts did not involve surreptitious entry. Stella let me in as a guest. She used one of her blouses to demonstrate how to iron. It was the blouse she had been wearing moments before the lesson began. One thing led to another as they tend to do when a woman disrobes in front of a guy who hasn’t had sex in several years.

  Stella turned out to be Channel 17’s Roving Reporter, which is why she assumed I knew who she was. I didn’t because I don’t have a television.

  You may also recall—amazing how things can get so complicated—that I was briefly a suspect in the murder that happened in Rio Grande Lofts. The primary reason I was a suspect was Stella’s report on the evening news. Standing in front of crime scene tape at Rio Grande Lofts, she reported that, “Hubert Schuze had been at the party, left the party, and then the partygoers hear a gunshot. When Schuze returned, he was covered with blood.”

  After hearing that, I was pretty certain I was back to doing my own ironing. But Stella and I eventually became friends.

  Which is good because I was depending on her to help me out if hiring Freddie became an issue.

  I called her on the Monday after Sharice and I returned from Tucumcari. She met me in my office.

  “You said you’re now the head of the art department. So why are you in a closet?”

  “Enrollment increases in art classes made us run out of classrooms. So I gave up my office and made it a classroom.”

  “You want me to do a story on your magnanimous gesture?”

  Stella’s beautiful blue eyes would be beguiling were it not for the fact that she never blinks. Her reportorial style is head-on blunt. Like Geraldo Rivera but smarter and better looking.

  “The story I thought you’d be interested in is that Freddie Blass is teaching art classes this semester.”

  “I thought he was in prison.”

  “He was released on the Saturday before classes began.”

  “How did he get hired so fast?”

  “Like I said, enrollment is skyrocketing. We needed adjuncts and we needed them fast.”

  “Even ex-cons?”

  “Especially ex-cons. Universities are about changing lives. For students and for teachers. Freddie paid his debt to society. He was a model prisoner and received a commendation from the Warden for the work he did in rehabilitating other inmates. We’re giving him a second chance.”

  I was laying it on thick and she was staring into the hall.

  “Why are those kids hanging around?”

  “I told them Stella Ramsey would be here. They probably want a selfie with you.”

  She smiled. “Bullshit. You want then to encourage me to do a piece on Freddie.”

  I nodded. “Just talk to them.”

  I’d called Charles Webbe after I called Stella, and he showed up while she was chatting with the students. He asked me why I was still in the adjunct office.

  “Trying to reduce my carbon footprint.”

  “Right. What you got for me?”

  I handed him the envelope from the Safari Motel. He peeked inside and said, “So you went to Tucumcari and got a hair sample from Tristan’s mother, and you want to find out if she’s actually related to you.”

  “The Tucumcari part was easy,” I said. “But how’d you know the hair part and why I wanted it?”

  “Because I’ve run through all the possibilities. One would be that the woman who you think was your Aunt Beatrice was not actually your aunt. And your real aunt is the mother or grandmother of the John Doe in the morgue. Babies being accidentally switched shortly after birth does happen. My favorite example is the Mark Twain story The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson in which two babies, one white and one black, are switched at birth, resulting in both passing for races that they are not. You and I are about the same age; maybe we were switched at birth.”

  “May be something to that. Just think, if I’d been switched and got your parents, maybe I’d have grown up big and strong.”

  “Yeah, but you’d still be white.”

  I asked him if switched babies is just an urban myth, and he surprised me by saying, “Approximately 25,000 babies are switched every year. Most of the mistakes are discovered before the parents leave the hospital, but many of them are not. 25,000 sounds like a lot, but there are 4 million births a year, so it’s less than one in a thousand. But it does happen.”

  My next visitor was William Hughes, Assistant Director of the Office of Compliance, who said, “I am here to inform you that a complaint has been filed with my office by a faculty member who alleges that you violated the Equal Employment Opportunities Act.”

  He handed me a sealed envelope. “This is a copy of the complaint.”

  He handed me another envelope. “This is a copy of the procedure you are to follow in responding to the charge. Please note that neither the director nor the staff of the Office of Compliance with the Equal Employment Opportunities Act forms an opinion about any allegation until all parties have completed the required procedural steps.”

  I had heard this same spiel from Mr. Hughes during the fall semester except in that case it had been an allegation that I’d violated the Equal Education Opportunities Act and the complainant—is that a word?—had been a student. It’s hard to walk the halls of academe these days without tripping over the initials of some act.

  Mr. Hughes thrust a clipboard at me with a single paper under the clip. “Please sign here to acknowledge receipt of a copy of the complaint and the procedural process.”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “You aren’t going to sign the form acknowledging receipt of a copy of the complaint and the procedural process?”

  “I am not.”

  He stared at me for a few seconds. “I know you.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “You also refused to sign a complaint last semester.”

  ”Right.”

  “You know the process will go forward with or without your participation.”

  “I do know that. And I choose without.”

  He shook his head slowly. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “Nothing is wrong with me. You and I just look at things differently. I’m suspicious of large institutions, corporations, and government. I don’t think legislation and cumbersome one-size-fits-all procedures are an effective way to assure justice and equality. My father was fond of saying that in the year I was born, the two most important things the government was involved in were Watergate and Viet Nam. I guess his distrust of institutions rubbed off on me. If Professor Armstrong has a problem, I would welcome him to come to me and talk about it person to person. I’d try my best to solve any problem he has.”

  “How do you know it’s Armstrong?”r />
  “Because he and I are both part of a small department. We know each other.”

  “Perhaps he feels he wouldn’t be treated fairly by you.”

  “I suspect that’s exactly how he feels. But he has no reason to believe that because he hasn’t tried.”

  “You don’t get to choose how he deals with his complaint. He makes that choice, and he chose to file an official complaint with us.”

  “Which is his right. And I have chosen not to participate, which is my right.”

  He stared at me for a few seconds then walked away.

  Whit Fletcher passed Hughes in the hall, the only two men in the building in suits. “Someone is teaching a class in your office,” Whit said.

  “Former office.”

  “You been demoted back to adjunct already?”

  “No. I just think classes are more important than offices.”

  “How about I buy you a cup of coffee?”

  I found a table at Frontier and Whit bought two coffees.

  “You know about Crimestoppers?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  He said, “Big cities like Chicago and Miami pay five thousand or more for a tip that helps solve a murder. The Albuquerque branch pays a measly one thousand. Guess they factor in local cost of living.”

  “Or in this case, cost of dying. But the low payment doesn’t affect you, Whit, because law enforcement personnel are not eligible.”

  ”Which is where you come in. If I get a lead, I feed it to you and—”

  “I know. I call it in and we split the reward. We worked that before, remember? Except you got the lion’s share.”

  “Well, I did all the work.”

  “I don’t know about doing it again. That time we got a dangerous person off the streets, and I used the money to help someone in need.”

  “I also used my part for someone in need. Birdie needed a 25th anniversary diamond. I coulda been an endangered species if I didn’t produce that stone. You shoulda seen her examining it to make sure it wasn’t one of those ziconimums. She was squinting so hard you coulda blindfolded her with dental floss.”

  “But this is a weird situation,” I said. “The murdered guy—if he was murdered—is kin to me. Me providing a tip may be … not a conflict of interest, not nepotism … I don’t know what to call it.”

  He shrugged. “What you should call it is a long shot. I been researching puncture wounds. Sent the guy’s picture to every PD and Sherriff’s office in the state. Sent uniformed guys to fancy men’s shops in Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Denver and El Paso. Zilch. What I figure is the only way we solve this is if you figure it out. And we have some new info. The lab boys say the cause of death was blood loss caused by the laceration of the right external iliac artery. But they also found some poison in the wound.” He pulled a paper from his shirt pocket and read the name to me. “Palytoxin.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “Me neither. But the boys say it would have killed him if he hadn’t bled to death.”

  “So I guess we can rule out accidental death.”

  “Yep. I figure the stabber was trying to poison the guy and just hit the artery by accident.”

  Chapter 22

  I spent all day Tuesday working on my 12th day report and was a bit late getting home. Sharice and I generally have a coupe of Gruet and talk about how our days went. I didn’t think the 12th day report would be of much interest, so I asked her to go first.

  “No. You have to go first,” she replied, “because after you hear my news, you’ll be speechless.”

  “I worked on the 12th day report.”

  “Which is?”

  “A summary of enrollments, changes to the published schedules, and expenditures related to the start of the semester.”

  “Why is it called the 12th day report?”

  “Because the 12th day of class is when we peg the official enrollment number for every class.”

  “Why the 12th day?”

  “Part of the funding from the legislature is based on enrollments. Since students add and drop classes, the numbers vary every day. So someone decided the 12th day would be the official day because it’s long enough into the semester that we have time to take a count.”

  “So God created the universe in six days, but it takes humans twice that long to count students?”

  “Actually, the computer counts them. The Dean will have all the numbers at the meeting tomorrow. What he wants from the department heads is the reasons for the numbers—why they went up or down, why some sections were added and some cancelled, things like that. Boring, right? So what’s your exciting news?”

  She scooted over, put her arms around me, gave me a long and passionate kiss, then said, “I’m pregnant!”

  “We’re going to have a baby!”

  She laughed. “That’s what generally happens when a woman is pregnant.”

  “But it’s less than a month since your last—”

  “You are so behind the times. It’s part of what I love about you. You and my Dad are alike in that way. He and you are going to become great buddies.”

  “But it’s only the 21st.”

  “And we had sex without birth control on the 8th.”

  “So I got you pregnant the very first time we weren’t using birth control?”

  “Do I detect a little male ego in your voice?”

  “No. Well… maybe. But I didn’t think it would happen that night.”

  “Maybe it didn’t. Maybe it was two nights later. But it did happen, and I hope you’re as excited as I am.”

  “I am. And also sort of overwhelmed. We’ve created a new human being. That’s a lot of responsibility.”

  “Which you’re ready for, right?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “And you remember that little rhyme,” she asked. ‘First comes love, then comes marriage, then come baby in the baby carriage’?”

  “I do. And we can still get it in the right order if we get married before the baby is born.”

  “You’re sure you want to marry me?”

  “I’ve asked you fifteen times in the last year-and-a-half.”

  “Ask me again.”

  I jumped off the love seat, knelt in front of her, took her hand, and said the two simple words—‘Marry me’.

  “Yes!”

  “I’m going to love being your husband. And I’m going to love being a father. But I’m totally unprepared for that role. I’ve never even held a baby, much less tried to take care of one.”

  “You were also totally unprepared for being department head, but you figured that out. You’re a quick study.”

  “Most of it is still a mystery to me. And the few things I figured out may or may not be right.”

  “According to the Channel 17 news, you’re already a legend among department heads.”

  I stared at her.

  “I was watching the 5:00 o’clock news while waiting for you. Your former girlfriend, Stella, did a report on Freddie that made him out to be the best teacher in history and you to be a hero for hiring him. She even had a segment with a guy named Delatorre who talked about how Freddie helped rehabilitate fellow inmates via art lessons. I figure you put her up to it, right?”

  “Guilty as charged. But I told her it was not about me, just about Freddie. And she was not my girlfriend.”

  She gave me a devilish smile. “Right. She was just a beautiful woman who seduced little innocent you by ironing in the nude.”

  “Exactly.”

  She laughed and said, “You were so cute when you told me about that.”

  “You made me do it.”

  “Yes I did. And I loved the way you squirmed. Like you’re doing now. I’m not jealous of her, Hubie. I’m your only true love and you’re mine. And now we’re having a b
aby together.”

  “Yes we are. What will we name her?”

  “That theory about frequent sex producing a higher percentage of girls is just statistics. We need to pick a girl’s name and a boy’s name. How about Hubert if it’s a boy?”

  “No way. People would call him Junior, and that would make me think of Tristan’s mom. How about Collin?”

  “You want to name him after my dad?”

  “Sure. It’s a good simple name, and I think your dad would love having a grandson named after him.”

  “And if it’s a girl?”

  “Your mom was named Sibyl, right? Let’s name her after your mom.”

  “Or we could name her Martha after your mom.”

  I sat there thinking for a few moments. Sharice asked if something was bothering me.

  “I guess it’s the uncertainty about my family. I never even thought about these things until Floss Man dropped dead in the Plaza and turned out to share some DNA with me. Maybe we should hold off naming our child after anyone in my family until I know who exactly is in my family.”

  “Or maybe,” she said, “we should forget about family and start afresh. Make up a new name for our child.”

  “Like Tesla,” I said. “I read that over a hundred babies were named after that electric car last year.”

  “All boys,” she ventured.

  “You’d think so, but most of them were girls. Maybe their parents wanted to spark a feminist movement in the world of electric cars.”

  “Groan. I read that religion related names are popular.”

  “Like Noah or Job?”

  “No. Like Halo, Amen, Calvary, and Lucifer.”

  “Lucifer? Really?”

  “Maybe we should just stick to well-known names like Jermajesty.”

  “Jermajesty is well-known?”

  “Of course. The child who was stuck with that name is Jermaine Jackson’s son.”

  “And Jermaine Jackson is?”

  “A popular entertainer. No one you’d care about. I went online today and read about names. A New Zealand judge made a 9-year-old child named Talula Does the Hula From Hawaii a ward of the court so she could change her name.”

  “What kind of parent gives a child a name like that?”