Closely Akin to Murder

by Joan Hess

  Jorge Farias may have been bragging when he’d mentioned his influence in local matters, but he hadn’t been exaggerating, I thought with a flicker of apprehension. “Did you speak to Comandante Alvarez?”

  “He was reluctant at first, but I asked him to have a word with Quiroz. He returned to say he will be at the court house all day and can see you whenever it is convenient for you. His English is adequate.”

  I thanked her, then poured myself a cup of coffee and carried it with me as I opened drawers until I found a telephone directory. There were two listings for Pedro Benavides; I brilliantly deduced that bufete was more likely to be the word for “office” than for “salad bar,” and dialed that number.

  The receptionist, perhaps out of boredom as much as anything, tried to deter me with a snivelly discourse in Spanish, but I repeated my name until she relented and put me through.

  “Señora Malloy,” Benavides said briskly, “it is as I warned you. Perez cleaned out his office before he died, and his widow had no place to store the many boxes. She had them taken to a dump. I am sorry.”

  “So am I,” I said, then made him wait while I refilled my cup and thought about our earlier conversation, when he’d been rattled by the nature of my mission. “I spoke to Ronnie last night,” I continued. “I asked her if she’d ever wondered who arranged for the packages she received while in prison. It was quite a burden on you, wasn’t it? You had a tremendous workload, yet every month for eight years you took the time to find a box, fill it with food and medicine, and take it to the prison. That was very generous of you.”

  “The money came in the mail for that purpose. I may not have been an effective public defender, but I was an honorable man.”

  “Do you realize you made almost a hundred deliveries?” I said. “How far was the prison?”

  “It took an hour to drive there,” he said guardedly, as if he believed that I could catch him in a lie. For all I knew, the prison could have been a block away from his office or two hundred miles away in Mexico City. One of the first skills a nosy amateur sleuth needs to perfect is the ability to bluff. Peter had provided me with ample opportunities to practice, and, frankly, I was a pro.

  I took a deep breath. “Señor Benavides, you had a motive other than honor. Isn’t it true that you were promised an additional payment if you faithfully delivered the packages until Ronnie was released? Isn’t that how you were able to leave the public defender’s office and set up a private practice? If so, it would have been very naive of you not to know the name and address of this benefactor in the United States. Were you that naive?”

  He hung up.

  Demoting myself to the minors, I drew a dollar sign next to his name. Ronnie’s crime had destroyed the Hotel Las Floritas, so Santiago certainly wouldn’t have arranged for the packages to express his gratitude. Jorge Farias had claimed that thirty years ago he’d have been unable to afford a drink in the bar of the Hotel Las Floritas; if he’d managed to scrape together the money every month to provide Ronnie with provisions, he could have taken them to the prison himself rather than set up an elaborate ploy. It was hard to imagine that Fran Pickett would have sent money to her father’s murderer; if she had, why the need to pay Benavides for anonymity? Debbie D’Avril and Chad Warmeyer would have felt resentment, not compassion, for the girl who’d sabotaged their careers. Ronnie’s parents were dead, and no one else in the family knew what had happened.

  I was out of players, which was most annoying. I cannot tolerate mystery novels in which the villain wanders into the plot in the penultimate chapter. Of course, in this case the murderer had confessed to the crime two days after she committed it, and was currently defending her research in Brussels and fantasizing about a Nobel prize. Santiago might have been killed by an unhappy tenant or a dissatisfied junkie. Coincidences happen. Then again, if I bought Chico’s expensive and at least partially mendacious story, Santiago had seen someone sneak out of the bungalow, and had ended up on someone’s payroll.

  It all kept coming back to Chico, I realized as I ate a croissant and finished the last of the coffee. I reviewed all of our encounters, forcing myself to visualize his grimy face and remember precisely what he’d said. It did nothing to aid digestion, but I came up with an idea, albeit feeble, to uncover his identity.

  I called Gabriella and said, “Please let Comandante Quiroz know that I’m going to the Hotel Las Floritas to have a look at the lobby. If he has a problem with that, tell him to speak to your father.”

  “Oh, Señora, it is not a good thing for you to do. Here in Mexico we honor the dead. We even have a festival called Día de los Muertos, when the children eat candy skeletons and families have picnics in the cemetery. But Santiago’s death should mean nothing to you. Comandante Quiroz is satisfied that you were not involved. Would it not be better to forget all this and go home?”

  “I have no doubt about that, Gabriella, but I’m still going to the Hotel Las Floritas. My estimated time of arrival is thirty minutes from now. Shouldn’t you be on the phone with Quiroz?”

  I awoke Caron and badgered her until she promised not to go one foot past the hotel pool, not even out to the beach or into any of the nearby shops. Presumably, she would be in no danger of anything more life-threatening than a sunburn. I was convinced Chico had left Acapulco; I hoped Farias’s bloodhounds were snapping at his heels—or chewing on his ankles.

  The white limo at the curb wasn’t of preposterous length, but it would dwarf the Cadillac. Adolfo opened the door for me, and instead of taking the egalitarian attitude, I climbed into a leather, brass, and ebony chamber. Various buttons on a panel activated a tiny television, reading and overhead lights, and climate control; I finally found one that caused the partition to glide open.

  “Yes, Señora?” Adolfo said promptly.

  “I would like to go to the Hotel Las Floritas.”

  “Gabriella called me a few minutes earlier and said Comandante Quiroz does not object. Please help yourself to the bar with Señor Farias’s compliments.”

  I’d always wondered who rode in such cars, and now I knew. The only credential required was the willingness not to gag when presented with the bill. I sipped chilled mineral water as we purred down the boulevard on yet another wild goose chase. My success rate was such that I had no need to take a correspondence course in taxidermy.

  The Hotel Las Floritas was less menacing in the daylight, back to its shabby, neglected ambiance. No one was visible, but I asked Adolfo to accompany me in case I bumped into a tenant with an attitude.

  The door of the lobby was still ajar. I eased it open, paused to allow the indigenous vermin to take cover, and then went into the main room. In the past, it may have had charm, but now the primary decor consisted of mildew, dust, and cobwebs. The bloodstains on the threadbare rug had dried to a dull brown; the stench in the air was that of violent death. On the walls were more photographs of celebrities with capped teeth and professional smiles. Someone schooled in the history of Hollywood would have had a grand time hunting for familiar faces, but Bette Davis was the best I could do, and only after some thought.

  “Now what, Señora?” Adolfo said, trying with limited success to keep the bewilderment out of his voice.

  “You can wait here.” I opened a door and found a smaller room with a mattress on the floor, a chair with little of its original upholstery, and an array of empty bottles amidst dingy T-shirts and dingier boxer shorts. The room beyond that was apt to be a bathroom, but I was not inclined to explore it, since I had a feeling that Santiago and I had different standards when it came to hygiene and porcelain.

  “What I’m looking for,” I said as I came back into the lobby, “are the old guest registers, specifically from the last part of 1965. Supposedly, Santiago saved them in order to relive his better days. I didn’t see them in the other room.” I went behind a counter and began opening cabinets, sneezing periodically as three decades of mold drifted out. My eyes were streaming by the time I found a drawer f
illed with large, thin books that originally had been bound in leather and embossed with the name of the hotel.

  I stood up and beckoned to Adolfo. “Would you please carry these out to the porch?” I asked. “If I stay in here any longer, I’m liable to sneeze off my nose.”

  After Adolfo made three trips, we had well over forty guest registers in a precarious pile. He offered to bring me something to drink from the limo, and left me to ponder where to start. I put on my reading glasses and took the top one. The ink had faded to a watery beige, but I made out a date, sneezed, and reached for the next one.

  There were only a few remaining when I spotted the pertinent year. I carefully turned the brittle pages until I found a December date, then eased my finger down the page until I came to Oliver Pickett’s scrawled signature. Below that was Debbie D’Avril’s name, embellished with tiny hearts above the I’s. Chad Warmeyer had printed his name with anal-retentive precision. I continued down the page: Arthur and Margaret Landonwood, and daughter; Jeannine Diego Delgado, possibly the Mexican actress; Henri and Madeline Delacroix, the French couple.

  I took out my notebook and copied all the names of those who’d been in residence on New Year’s Eve, then set aside the register. Four of the couples had Hispanic surnames. Two women had shared a bungalow; I recognized one of the names as that of a fleetingly famous striptease queen. The final two couples had Swedish and German names, respectively.

  According to my list, none of the bungalows had been occupied by two men, unless one of them had a serious identity problem.

  Chico had done it again.

  I asked Adolfo to drive me to a bank, and then to the hospital. At my request, he stopped next to a flower vendor and I bought a bouquet to brighten Manuel’s room—and appease my conscience. The fragrance reminded me of the sickly sweet stench in the lobby of Las Floritas; I’d encountered it in the past, but it still made me queasy. Maybe it truly was time to retire my magnifying glass and hang up my deerstalker hat. Peter had certainly thought so the previous night, when he’d sputtered like a burst water main for more than an hour. My responses had grown increasingly perfunctory, until I finally hung up on him.

  Our relationship was not something I cared to think about, so I resumed brooding about Chico. Had everything he’d told me come from Santiago’s maudlin memories? Chico could be nothing more than what he seemed: a broken-down scavenger scraping by on a little money, drinking himself to death while he wrote and rewrote the first sentence of the Great American Novel. Clearly, he was an opportunist. What was odd, though, was that after he’d stolen the money from my purse, he’d stayed long enough to give me his fabricated story about watching the party progress into an orgy—and seeing someone come out of the Picketts’ bungalow. He’d told me to be sure to mention it in my article. Why did he care?

  When we arrived at the hospital, Adolfo told me how to find Manuel’s room, then let me out at the entrance and went to park in the shade. The exterior of the building was of the same faux-adobe stucco utilized all over the city. The lobby was much like that of the hospital in Farberville: cheap furniture, plastic plants, serious faces, and well-worn linoleum.

  I took the elevator to the third floor and walked down a hallway to Manuel’s room. From inside I heard voices, but I didn’t bother to eavesdrop (okay, so the conversation was in Spanish) and opened the door. Jorge Farias was seated in an oversized chair that must have been brought to the room especially for him. His eyes were closed and his hands rested on the knob of his walking stick; the effect was rather regal, although this Old King Cole was by no means a jolly old soul. Gabriella stood by the window. She was wearing a pink sundress, but had covered her bare shoulders with a shawl out of deference to the solemnity of the occasion.

  Manuel’s head was wrapped with gauze and his cheek was discolored, but he gave me a wan smile as I approached the bed. “You did not need to come, Señora,” he said. “A hospital is not a place for tourists.”

  “I’m really sorry about this,” I said awkwardly.

  Manuel glanced at his brother-in-law. “No, Señora, it was all my fault. I have been told that the señorita suffered much indignity because of my error. When I opened the front door of my apartment, Chico shoved me backward. Before I could regain my balance, he hit me with a piece of pipe and I lost consciousness. The key to the Cadillac was on the kitchen table.”

  “I heard that you went to the Hotel Las Floritas this morning,” Farias said.

  I handed the bouquet to Gabriella, then turned around to face him. “Yes, I did. It seems that no one is stepping forward to volunteer any information, so I’m obliged to dig it up for myself. For instance, I now have a list of everyone who was staying at the hotel on New Year’s Eve. Chico was not among the guests.”

  “Then he lied to you. Does that surprise you?”

  “Not really,” I said as I sat down on a chair designed for mere mortals. “And it’s hard to decide what, if anything, he told me is true. He claimed to have seen someone leave the bungalow after Fran did, and he also said Santiago had seen this person. Did you?”

  He pursed his mouth for a moment, regarding me with the same ill-disguised hostility he’d shown the previous day. “I told you everything that happened, Señora. I was in the parking lot when Fran ran up to the car and got in the backseat. She ordered me to drive away, and so I did. I saw no one else. Chico told you his story because he wanted money from you.”

  “He is a very bad man,” added Gabriella. “Look what he did to poor Manuel.” She put the bouquet on the window sill and reached down to stroke his shoulder with her finger.

  Poor Manuel nodded. “I warned you about him when you first encountered him near the lobby.”

  “I’m not attesting to his character,” I said, more interested in the sweat forming on Farias’s forehead and the nerve twitching in his eyelid. “But for some strange reason, he wanted me to know that someone else was in the bungalow just before Oliver Pickett was killed.”

  Farias tightened his grip on the walking stick. “There were more than thirty people at the party. When Pickett burst into the room, there was much confusion. I cannot swear that everyone ran out the front door immediately. Maybe one of the boys had to pull on his pants before he could escape.”

  “While Oliver patiently waited?” I said. “If he was as outraged as everyone says he was, I can’t imagine anyone asking his permission to get dressed or finish a cigarette. How long were you in the parking lot before Fran appeared?”

  “Ten minutes, perhaps fifteen.”

  “Did you see Santiago heading toward the bungalows?”

  Farias hesitated, then said, “When one prays, Señora, it is traditional to close one’s eyes. I opened them only when Fran got into the limousine.”

  “Papa,” said Gabriella, “Manuel has fallen asleep. We should leave now so he is not disturbed.”

  I nudged her toward the door with the subtlety of a rogue elephant. “Let’s go ask the nurses if there’s a vase we can use. It would be a shame if the flowers are wilted when Manuel wakes up.”

  “We will be back in a minute, Papa,” she called as I dragged her out into the hall. “Why do you ask Papa all these questions?” she continued, frowning at me. “You have caused him to be tense and bad-tempered. This morning he spoke so sharply to my mother that she cried, and our only driver who speaks French has threatened to quit. Morale is very bad at the agency when Papa is like this.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that, but what began as a straightforward story has taken more twists than the drive along the coastline.” I patted her arm and gave her what I hoped was a supportive smile. “I’m leaving in the morning, and everything should be back to normal at the agency. I’ve been told it is the largest and most reputable in Acapulco.”

  “Oh, yes,” Gabriella said, then spoke to a nurse behind a desk. The woman nodded and glided down the hallway, presumably to find a receptacle for the bouquet.

  I widened my smile until my ears wiggled; if we
were near the psychiatric ward, I might have been accused of being an escapee. “How long has the Farias Tourist Agency been in business?”

  “Two years ago we celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary. We had a lavish party at one of the hotels, with much food and music. The mayor presented Papa with a brass plaque.”

  “Your father has come a long way from the day he was only an employee, hasn’t he?”

  She nodded proudly. “After he bought the agency, he worked very hard to expand the fleet of limousines and vans. We accommodated over three thousand tourists last year with less than two dozen complaints.” She took an ugly green vase from the nurse and started back toward Manuel’s room. “Many of the complaints were not our fault. In several situations, the groups were larger than we had been led to expect. One of your famous authors was drunk when he got off the airplane, and insisted—”

  “How was your father able to buy the agency from its previous owner?” I said quickly. “He himself told me his salary was tiny back then.”

  She stopped and looked back at me. “He worked hard, Señora. Do you have any more questions before we go into the room?”

  “Did he send a check every year to Ernesto Santiago?” I asked out of desperation as she reached for the doorknob.

  She gaped for a second, as if startled by a distant connection, then moistened her lips and said, “I can think of no reason why he would. Goodbye, Señora. Please enjoy your last day in Acapulco. There are many lovely places you have not yet visited. You and your daughter should tour the Casa de la Cultura de Acapulco. They have a very nice display of pre-Columbian artifacts and Mexican handicrafts.” She went into the room and closed the door.

  So Jorge Farias was on the payroll, too, I thought as I went down to the lobby and out into the sunshine. He’d not only accepted hush money, he’d also offered it to Santiago. There seemed to be more questionable financial transactions (past and present) than in the Cayman Islands on an average day. Benavides, Farias, Santiago, and even Ronnie had been the recipients of someone’s generosity.