Closely Akin to Murder

by Joan Hess

  Someone with resources, like the person who’d inherited Oliver Pickett’s estate. Regrettably, I had no idea how to find her.

  “Where would you like to go?” asked Adolfo as he opened the limousine door for me.

  “To the court house,” I said.

  I’d assumed it would be somewhere in the vicinity of the downtown area, but I was wrong. Once again we went up into the hills, passing shops, bars, markets, and the omnipresent construction sites. I finished a second bottle of mineral water and was starting on a third when we came down into an industrial zone of derelict ware houses and what appeared to be abandoned factories.

  I tried a button marked intercom. “Are you sure the court house is around here?”

  “Yes, it is next to the Centro de Rehabilitación, the prison. There have been protests about its location. It is not convenient for the lawyers and judges to drive out here, nor for the families of the prisoners.”

  He turned down what might qualify as an alley, apparently unconcerned that the limousine might sustain damage from the cars parked on the sidewalk. Shortly thereafter, we were on a country road of sorts, with arid expanses of dirt and scruffy plants. I’d seen Adolfo make more than one call on a cellular phone; I hoped Farias had not been issuing orders to dispose of the passenger’s corpse in a rock quarry.

  Towering gray walls came into view, forming forty-foot barriers on two sides of a grassy parking lot. They were topped by concertina wire, and above the one in front of us I could see a guard box. The scene was oppressive, to put it mildly, and I was doubting my wisdom in requesting to be brought there as Adolfo parked.

  “You must walk from here,” he said, pointing at a whitewashed booth. “Only those with official passes can drive past the guards.”

  If I’d had a lace hankie, I would have been wringing it in my admittedly sweaty hands. I knocked back the rest of the mineral water to fortify myself, then allowed Adolfo to open the door for me.

  “You’ll need to come with me,” I said. “We’re looking for Comandante Alvarez.”

  Adolfo shrugged. “As you wish.”

  We trudged across the field to a tunnel where the walls met. Inside were two drowsy guards on wooden chairs and a sign that Adolfo obligingly translated: no weapons, no alcohol, shirts and shoes required. Claustrophobia was optional, I supposed, trying to ignore the walls on either side of us.

  Adolfo led the way through a maze of corridors and courtyards, then up a flight of stairs to a large room with an aura of bureaucratic lethargy. On one side were closed doors; across from them were cubicles with desks in front of meshed windows. The typewriters and telephones were silent, and only a handful of employees were reading files. At least one was filing her nails.

  Adolfo gestured at the doors. “Those are the chambers. When a judge has decided on a verdict, he comes out to one of the tables and the prisoner is brought to the window to hear his sentence.”

  “Aren’t there courtrooms?”

  “Only in special cases. This way is faster and saves money.”

  I asked him to locate Comandante Alvarez, then went into a cubicle and gazed through the mesh at the narrow walkway. Through the opposite windows I could see a parched garden and an orchard of gnarled, leafless trees. To my relief, I couldn’t see the cemetery Ronnie had mentioned when speculating about Fran’s disappearance. I would have more luck finding her there than I would somewhere in the United States. As everyone was so fond of reminding me, thirty years was a long time.

  My morose thoughts were interrupted by a gray-haired man with a creased face and a nose that had been broken more than once. I’d been expecting a version of dear old Quiroz, but this man gave me a civil, if not heartwarming, smile. “I am Comandante Alvarez. I have been told you wish to speak to me, Señora Malloy. I am sorry you had to come so far, but I must be here today for depositions. We can sit at this table.”

  “I want to ask you about the death of Oliver Pickett,” I said, taking out a notebook. “I was told you were involved in the investigation.”

  “Yes, I was.”

  “When the body was first discovered, you believed his death was accidental. Later you found evidence to incriminate Veronica Landonwood, right?” When he merely nodded, I added, “Someone found a shirt with blood on it?”

  “One of the maids found it in a garbage can on the hotel grounds. The girl’s name was on a tag sewn in the collar. She became very emotional when asked to explain it, and this led us to search the bungalow where she was staying with her parents. I myself found her diary in her suitcase. The entries made it clear that she desired a sexual encounter with Pickett and had been scheming to arrange it. She confessed to his murder and also of her attempt to cover up the crime with the assistance of his daughter. The daughter then acknowledged her role. There was no need for further investigation.”

  “Did you question the others in Pickett’s group?”

  “We asked them what happened that night. I don’t remember their names, but they all agreed that while at a party, Pickett fell into the swimming pool. He was angry because he thought he’d been pushed, but he was also drunk. He announced he was taking a cab back to the Hotel Las Floritas to change into dry clothes. One of the women offered to accompany him, but he refused. They all stayed at the party, dancing with each other, and only several hours later did they begin to worry about Pickett’s failure to return. When they went to the bungalow, it was dark and the daughter was asleep. She said she’d heard nothing. It was agreed that Pickett might have run into someone at the hotel and gone to another party somewhere in Acapulco.”

  “Did any of them leave the party?” I asked.

  “They swore they were together from the time he left until they returned as a group to the hotel,” Alvarez said, glancing at his watch. “I have a meeting in a few minutes, Señora. If you have a final question . . .”

  “Did you question the other guests at the hotel?”

  “As a formality, yes. There was one couple, young and recently married, who were in their bungalow and saw nothing. All the rest of them were out at parties, with the exception of a maid who said she went to bed before midnight.”

  “Santiago claimed he saw someone sneak out of the bungalow,” I said.

  “Santiago,” said Alvarez, “was a reluctant and unreliable witness. At first he refused to tell us of the party. Later he admitted he’d seen Pickett get out of the taxi and discreetly followed him. Once the party had been disbanded and things were quiet, Santiago went back to the restaurant. A few days later, he suffered a fall and spent some weeks in a hospital in Mexico City.” He paused to give me a sharp look. “Quiroz accepted your testimony that you never spoke to Santiago, Señora. Were you lying?”

  I put my notebook away and stood up. “No, I was told this by a third party. Would it be possible for me to see the court records?”

  “You will have to send a written request to the authorities in Chilpancingo, which is the capital of Guerrero. It will be reviewed within ninety days and you will be informed of the decision. To be honest, Señora, I would be surprised if the records still exist. If they do, the likelihood of being allowed to review them is very small because the case involved juveniles.”

  “Is there any way to find out if someone has been given access to them in the last year?”

  Alvarez thought for a moment, then sighed and said, “I have been instructed to cooperate with you, so I will see what I can learn. It may take several weeks, though. Often the person with the pertinent information is out of his office for various reasons, or must put the request through the appropriate channels.”

  I wrote down the telephone numbers of the Book Depot and my apartment and tore the page out of the notebook. “You can call me at the Acapulco Plaza until tomorrow morning,” I said, “or afterward at one of these numbers.” I thanked him for his time, then beckoned to Adolfo, who was entertaining a secretary.

  “Did you find out what you needed?” he asked me as we escaped from the stif
ling grayness.

  “All I found out,” I said as I flicked a fly off my arm, “is that I’m better suited to selling books than meddling.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Since I was out of ideas, brilliant or otherwise, I had Adolfo take me back to the Acapulco Plaza and arranged for him to pick us up the next morning to go to the airport. What a bizarre four-day trip it had been, I thought as I went up to the suite. Caron had been held hostage, Manuel had been assaulted, Santiago had been murdered, and I’d been dragged to the police station as a suspected knife-wielding drug dealer. I couldn’t remember a time when I’d personally been responsible for so many catastrophes. Santiago was the only one who had suffered irreparable damage; Manuel would recover, and in the past, Caron and I had found ourselves in stickier situations.

  I left my notebook on the bed and took a paperback down to the pool. Caron was cuddled up with Mr. Dickens on a chaise longue, her grimace indicating she was not especially enamored of him.

  “We need to pack to night,” I said as I sat down next to her. “You’ll have quite a story to tell when we get back home, won’t you? I wish I did.”

  She peered at me over the top of the book. “You sound awfully discouraged, Mother. I told you before we left that the whole thing was stupid. Why would anybody even remember a bunch of stuff that happened so long ago? By middle age, there is a measurable reduction in neural activity and a corresponding decline in the ability to retrieve information.”

  “The information I need to retrieve is in the Los Angeles County Court house,” I said, “and I’d probably have as much luck there as I would in Chilpancingo. I guess I should call Ronnie before it gets too late in Brussels.” Instead of doing so, I beckoned to a waiter and ordered a margarita, then leaned back and examined each dead end for a tiny fissure. Miss Marple had waited in her cozy cottage for fresh information to be served alongside tea and scones. Maud Silver and Hildegarde Withers snooped more vigorously, and heaven knows Cordelia Gray went after her prey. Alas, they knew what they were doing; I felt as if I were all dressed up with nowhere to go . . . except home, shrouded in failure.

  Caron closed the book. “I can’t concentrate if you’re going to sit there and wheeze. I’m surprised the sky hasn’t clouded over out of deference to your mood. This is My Last Day to work on a tan, you know.”

  “You’ll be relieved to learn I have very little impact on the weather,” I said.

  “I wasn’t holding my breath.” She discarded the book, dabbed lotion on her nose, and lay back to capture whatever ultraviolet rays remained in the late afternoon sunlight.

  I sipped the drink and watched the brightly colored parasails drift across the sky. It was easy to ignore the cables linking them to boats far below and imagine them to be fanciful tropical birds gliding in the breeze. Two bikini-clad girls walked by, pointing at the parasails and chattering excitedly in Spanish. A man on a nearby chaise longue pulled off his sunglasses to ogle them; the acceleration in the rhythm of their hips suggested they were aware of him.

  Fran Pickett would have garnered such looks, I thought idly, but not stooped, gawky Ronnie. Fran had been compared to a fashion model, petite and perfectly sculpted. Wearing a bikini must have been quite a contrast after a semester of plaid skirts and blazers—or whatever convent school girls wore. According to Ronnie, Fran had loathed the school and the stringent supervision of what she’d called “the sisters of the holy swine.”

  The convent would be a good place to start trying to locate Fran and her mother, but I doubted I could go to the public library in Farberville and track down the order in Know Your Nuns. I couldn’t see myself on the doorstep of the local Catholic school, asking if anyone there knew of “the sisters of the holy swine.” As a child, I’d always worried what the voluminous black habits might conceal; the anxiety lingered despite the modernization of their attire.

  “Holy swine,” I muttered.

  “What’s the matter?” Caron said without raising her head (and possibly deflecting a ray). “Have pigs taken to playing volleyball on the beach?”

  “ ‘Holy swine’ is a crude nickname.”

  “I told you some of these people are disgusting. They ought to wear black plastic garbage bags instead of bathing suits. They certainly have no business playing volleyball; they’d be better off praying at a shrine dedicated to Our Lady of Liposuction.”

  “Shrine,” I said, my lips barely moving.

  “Will you order me a lemonade? It is so incredibly hot here that I can feel my flesh melting.”

  I distractedly waved at the waiter as I envisioned myself on the doorstep of the Catholic school, this time inquiring about a convent in the Southwest that was staffed by the Sisters of the Holy Shrine, most likely of something or other. Eyebrows might be raised, but offense would not be taken. And I might get an answer.

  “She’ll have a lemonade,” I said to the waiter, my face aglow with the rosy rapture of a novitiate. “What the hey—make it a double.”

  The following afternoon, Caron and I arrived home without incident. Caron dropped her luggage in the living room and dashed into her bedroom to call Inez to find out what unprecedented and deeply momentous events had taken place during the last four days. She was probably hoping to hear that Rhonda Maguire was impregnated or imprisoned. Either would be acceptable.

  I put on clothes more suitable to the blustery November weather, made a pot of tea, and sorted through the mail. Praying that Peter’s schedule had not changed, I craftily called his house and left a message on his answering machine. I could have tried the police department, of course, and I knew I couldn’t avoid him indefinitely. Comandante Quiroz had not been told about the kidnapping, and there was no reason to think he’d been in further communication on whatever computer system had culminated with the printout on Peter’s desk. Unless Caron insisted on appearing on the nightly news or holding a press conference to breathlessly describe her ordeal, Peter might never find out about it. I would be spared a lecture accentuated with dejected sighs and avowals of frustration at his inability to convince me of the folly of my ways. Despite his intelligence, the man was a slow learner in certain matters.

  I looked up the telephone number of St. Martin’s Academy, then decided that calling was cowardly. It would also require me to convince Caron to surrender the phone—not an easy process. I went down the back staircase to the garage, brushed a spider off the windshield, and drove toward Thurber Street.

  The Book Depot was open, but as usual there were no customers with a lust for literature streaming through the doorway. The bewildered retiree was sweeping the brick expanse beneath the portico; he looked so despondent that I was tempted to stop and assure him that his temporary tenure was drawing to an end. However, I continued toward the school, where I dearly hoped I would encounter Sally Field instead of Rosalind Russell.

  Classes had ended for the day, and only a dozen or so students were in the paved playground adjoining the three story red brick building. The girls wore knee socks and dark skirts, but their winter coats hid the rest of the ensemble. The boys wore slacks rather than blue jeans, and their hair was uniformly short. This did not guarantee that these neatly dressed youth would not grow up to be professional wrestlers and trailer park queens, but it was an improvement over the slovenly attire at other schools in town.

  I parked, rehearsed my story until my teeth started to chatter, and walked up the sidewalk to the main entrance. Through the glass I could see two women conversing in the hallway and a hunched figure pushing a mop. I went inside and hesitated, unsure how to address women who might be undercover nuns.

  One of them smiled at me and said, “Are you looking for the office? It’s at the end of the hall just beyond the trophy case.”

  “Thanks,” I said, then scooted past them without being forced to resolve my quandary. The awards in the trophy case were based on academic achievements instead of more physical endeavors; St. Martin’s had won the parochial equivalent of the College Bowl four yea
rs in a row. A framed photograph of moppets commemorated the planting of rosebushes at a nursing home. Red and blue ribbons from science fairs added a festive touch.

  The office was large and equipped with all the technology of the day, including a droning photocopy machine, multibuttoned telephones, and computers. I was struggling to envision Rosalind Russell bent over a keyboard when a middle-aged woman in slacks and a sweater came out of a back room. Surely nuns did not wear makeup, I told myself as I went to the counter.

  “Are you here about our second semester enrollment?” she asked. “We still don’t have the application forms, but I can take your name and address and mail it to you.”

  It was tempting to give out a false name and flee, but I stiffened my spineless back and said, “I’m trying to get information about a convent school in another state. This seemed like the logical place to start. I was hoping there might be some sort of catalog with listings.”

  “If there’s a catalog like that, I’ve never heard of it. Let me see if Sister Mary Clarissa is still in her classroom.” The woman went back into the inner sanctum, leaving me to perspire ever so discreetly and wish I were at the bar at the Acapulco Plaza. I doubted St. Martin’s Academy would offer me a margarita and a bowl of pretzels.

  The woman returned and gave me directions to the biology lab. The corridors were similar to those at Farberville High School, but the lockers were unblemished and the graffiti was absent. A poster announced an upcoming choir concert, and taped on the wall outside what I presumed was a kindergarten classroom were drawings of coneheaded Pilgrims.

  The lab was on the second floor; the astringent odor of formaldehyde was unmistakable. As I came inside, Sister Mary Clarissa stepped out from behind a lab table. She was gray-haired and dauntingly stern in an odd combination of gray skirt, white blouse, gray cardigan sweater, and high-topped athletic shoes. The only manifestation of her vocation was a small gold cross on a chain around her neck.