by Ann Myers
When I told Flori this, she waved away my worries. “Nonsense,” she said. “You had to check, cariño. What if someone else had been hurt? You had to go in there. Isn’t that right, Linda?”
Linda didn’t look like she agreed entirely, although she tactfully switched the subject. “Gabriel’s door was open? That’s so dangerous. Who does that in these times? Anybody could walk right in . . .” She eyed me, an anybody who had walked right in.
Flori continued to guillotine tomatoes, discarding their pulp and seeds before slicing and dicing them faster than any food processor. “I’m mad and sad at the same time,” she said. “Victor was my friend and a good Catholic too. We sat together at mass last Sunday and then visited Our Lady of Peace. I wish I’d known he was feeling so sad. I wonder if he told Our Lady?”
I could picture them in front of the seventeenth-century statue of Mary, also known as La Conquistadora for her time among the early Spanish colonists. Although not Catholic, I also occasionally visited her chapel to enjoy its peaceful beauty and admire her seasonally changing outfits, selected from her sacred wardrobe of over two hundred items. I thought of the sticky-note reminders I’d written earlier. I had one to add—not that I was likely to forget.
“We should go to the cathedral later and light some candles,” I said, my voice starting to shake with emotion.
“We’ll buy the big candles at the gift shop,” Flori agreed, emotion cracking through her stern tone too. “No twenty-five-cent ones for Victor. And I don’t care what the Church says about . . . well . . . about taking one’s own life, if that’s what actually happened. He’s in heaven no matter what, in my book.”
“Mine too,” I agreed, as did Linda, who sniffled her way out to the dining room.
Flori and I chopped mounds of onions as an excuse for teary eyes. She commandeered some of the onions for her stew pot. “Chorizo and corn chowder for the soup of the day,” she said, before starting up her questioning again. “So what did you and Victor talk about?”
“That’s the thing . . .” I’d replayed the conversation in my mind for hours, trying to come up with any clue or hint in his words. “He told me all about his Day of the Dead altar. He showed me pictures of his ancestors and talked about the special food he was going to put out.”
“His father loved rice pudding with mangoes on top,” Flori said, shaking her head sadly at another friend lost.
“Yeah, and a deck of cards for his uncle and marigold wreaths to attract the spirits. He said something similar to what you told me. The Day of the Dead is a happy time, that we’re to celebrate life and those who’ve gone before us. He had a lot of plans to welcome them back.”
Flori’s mouth was set in a firm line. I could imagine her mind turning.
I smashed garlic for her soup and tried to explain what kept running through my head. “There was this odd bit too. I didn’t understand it. He said that some spirits haunt us.”
Flori’s dark eyes narrowed. “Haunt us, he said? Which ones?”
“Those not at rest.” I repeated his words exactly as I remembered them. “And there’s more . . .” By the time I finished describing the fight with the neighbor, Broomer, Flori was drumming her fingers on the table. When I stopped talking, she thumped her fist down, sending cutlery clattering.
“I knew it! I knew Victor wouldn’t kill himself!”
I’d had the same thoughts, though suspicion didn’t make them true. But I had no time to tell Flori so. Our short-order cook had arrived, the griddle was sizzling, and Linda was unlocking the front door, letting in a stream of customers begging for coffee.
Chapter 6
Well,” Flori demanded, mid-breakfast rush. “How should we go about this? I have time to break into Victor’s place this afternoon.” She pointed to her wrist, where a plastic sports watch dangled. It was neon orange, matching her sneakers and the grinning pumpkin ornament stuck in her bun of silver hair.
I didn’t care what time she was free for a break-in. I wasn’t coordinating watches or breaking into a possible crime scene. Luckily, I had an excuse.
“Sorry, I have an appointment with the police this afternoon.” I suppose I sounded rather righteous. In truth, I dreaded this task and the likely encounter with Manny.
Flori tapped her small, sneakered foot. “That might work,” she replied, ambiguously.
The less I knew, the better, I decided. Anyway, I had more immediate concerns, like balancing the waffle special on my wrist. I’ve waitressed off and on since high school. In all that time, I’ve never mastered the art of plate balancing. Splay your fingers, a frustrated front-of-house manager used to yell at me. Splaying makes no difference. As soon as I take on more than two plates, I tense up and begin to wobble. I also tend to forget orders moments after they’re uttered and have been known to refill water onto diners’ laps and grate cheese on their heads. Let’s just say that serving isn’t my greatest culinary strength.
A sausage rolled toward the precipice of the waffle plate. I overcorrected, sending a little pitcher of blueberry syrup crashing into the waffle stack.
Flori took this moment of weakness to quiz me on the time of my appointment and potential points of entry into Victor’s place. A window? A vulnerable glass door? A chimney?
“Let me get this order out,” I said, trying to heft the burrito plate with my oven-mitted hand. It was a dangerous move. Our egg, potato, and chorizo burritos must weigh in at several pounds and are smothered in molten sauce and melted cheese.
“Well go on and get back here fast. We need to establish our plan.” Flori put the finishing touches on a plate of carne adovada, succulent chunks of pork slow-braised in an earthy red chile sauce. Carne adovada is a New Mexican favorite at any meal, in burritos, tacos, or as a star on its own. For breakfast, Flori serves the spicy dish with hash browns, guacamole, and a fried egg. Pretty much everything can be topped with an egg at Tres Amigas.
“Here, as long as you’re going out, take this with you. Table one.” She plopped the plate on my oven-mitted wrist.
Poised for hot chile disaster, I backed out the swinging door, saying my usual waitress prayers. Please let me locate the right table. Please let me not throw chile on a customer. My destination was the far side of the room, beyond hazards including a baby carriage, stray chairs, and a framed painting, likely some priceless work of art. I added, Please don’t let me harm precious infants and artwork, and carefully made my way across the room. Customers took advantage of my slow-motion advance to ask for stuff.
“Miss? Can I get more coffee?”
“Me too. And some water.”
“I’d like the check.”
“I want a muffin. Are they gluten free?”
With a plastered-on smile, I promised I’d be right back. Did customers think I had a coffeepot and muffins of any kind balanced on my head? I caught Linda’s eye and managed to nod in the direction of the needy diners without spilling anything. Then I made my way cautiously past the baby and her carriage, reaching the waffle and burrito table first. I didn’t recognize the two ladies and figured they must be tourists, especially after one frowned at the burrito.
“This plate is really hot, so please be careful,” I said. I say this phrase so much that it appears in my dreams.
“Why is my burrito covered in sauce, and why is it two colors?” the burrito lady demanded.
I pegged her accent as upper Midwest, likely somewhere west and north of Illinois. Her fashion was over-the-top Santa Fe, from the mother lodes of turquoise and silver jewelry to the crinkled peasant skirt and purple cowgirl boots with rhinestone sparkles.
I upped my perky voice as I carefully placed the waffle special in front of her friend. “The burrito has red chile on one side, green on the other. Christmas, we call it here. You made the perfect choice.”
Now, however, the friend frowned. “W
hy’s this waffle a funny color? I think there’s dirt in it.”
I have little patience for food fussiness. I don’t like it when customers complain before tasting, and I never understood Manny’s refusal to eat green vegetables and most ethnic foods other than New Mexican and Mexican. Since I don’t have to live with customers, though, I can usually handle their demands with a smile. Today was another story. I had to force a pleasant response. “That’s blue corn,” I said through a clenched-toothed smile. “Organic and grown right here in New Mexico. It has a delicious nutty flavor and is higher in iron and zinc than typical yellow corns.”
“I don’t eat blue foods. They’re unnatural.” This lady had gold accessories layered across a ruffled Western shirt.
“Oh, these blueberries and blue corn are all natural,” I said, feeling my lip twitch. “Why don’t you ladies try them, and if you don’t like something, we’ll be happy to fix you a different dish.”
The woman in silver and turquoise sliced her burrito open and speared a forkful of fluffy eggs and spicy chorizo sausage. “This is delicious,” she conceded, already digging in for a second bite. “But here, take this with you. You have an embarrassing typo on your menu.” She thrust it at me. I guessed the issue before I saw the red marks slashed across the laminated page. The chili vs. chile spelling debate. Indeed, she had scribbled out every e and added i and armies of exclamation points.
“You’ll want to correct this,” she said snippily. “I don’t like to patronize restaurants with sloppy errors, and I know others who feel the same way. I’ll try to hold off my Yelp review about this, but . . .”
She let the “but” hang ominously. A red marker lay beside her tapping right index finger.
I summoned the last dregs of perky. “Actually, here in New Mexico, we spell ‘chile’ with an ‘e’ because of the central role of the chile pepper, spelled with an ‘e.’ Like the famous Hatch green chiles, which I’m sure you’ve heard about. Our chile sauces and stews focus on the pepper, unlike say chili con carne in other parts of the country.”
“I like Cincinnati-style chili,” her friend said, glancing up from the cell phone that had attracted her attention throughout the chili vs. chile discussion.
Thank goodness Flori wasn’t here to see the vandalized menu or hear New Mexico chiles mentioned in the same sentence as ground-beef chili on top of spaghetti. Once, a customer had asked for the Cincinnati version. After the full details of the dish emerged, Flori nearly evicted the man for blasphemy.
The lady in gold dumped syrup on her waffle. Although she didn’t seem to care about spelling grievances, she continued to have color concerns. “I’ve never had such a blue breakfast. Do you have any whipped cream to cover it up? I’ll need more plain syrup too. And a refill on coffee and more Sweet’n Low and fat-free creamer—hazelnut, if you have it.”
Grateful for an excuse to leave, I commanded my sleep-deprived brain to remember her requests and headed to table one, hoping the carne adovada hadn’t turned tepid. I immediately recognized the figure behind the newspaper. His cowboy hat hung on the back of the chair and his legs, in dark blue jeans, were crossed elegantly, one cowboy boot swinging over the other.
“Incoming carne,” I said brightly to alert Jake to my presence. I’m not the only person to blame for throwing around plates of hot food. You can’t trust customers, including respectable ones like Jake Strong. Customers make sudden moves that send their own plates flying. The kicker is that they get rewarded with a free meal.
He quickly folded the paper and cleared a wide spot for me to land the plate in. Okay, so I once spilled a bowl of soup—more specifically, red chile posole—on handsome Jake Strong. It was right after my divorce and I’d just talked to Mom. In her usual fashion, she’d infected my mind with thoughts of If you don’t start looking for a man now, you’ll end up old and lonely. When I saw Jake, those thoughts turned to, Here’s a decent, employed, and gorgeous man; sure hope I don’t do something horrible like spill posole all over him. At that moment, another customer bumped into me and the embarrassing vision came true. Flori had wiped off Jake’s jeans with a wet towel and flirted brazenly with him. That’s when I got serious about the no-dating moratorium. No worrying, no pressure, no spilling of hot soup or overheated emotions.
Now, a hint of Jake’s cologne—a delicious mix of bergamot and cedar—wafted toward me. He pointed to his paper, snapping me back from cologne enjoyment to gloomy reality. “Such terrible news,” he said.
Victor’s smiling face graced the front page of the Santa Fe New Mexican, right below the headline, RENOWNED LOCAL ARTIST FOUND DEAD.
Tears welled in my eyes. To hold them in, I raised my face to the ceiling, pretending to study the multicolored skeleton parts and flowers hanging from the beams. Flori had instructed Juan, our griddle master, to arrange each paper tibia and severed hand ornament just so. I’d insisted on the flowers because, despite what Flori says, not everyone loves so much bone décor.
Jake must have noticed because he turned over the paper, hiding the picture. “I’m sorry, Rita. Victor was truly a good man. One of the best. They say here that the police aren’t looking for suspects.”
I nodded, trying to hold my emotions together. I did not want to start weeping in front of Jake and the entire breakfast crowd. “Yeah,” I managed. “It looks like suicide.” I saw no use in telling him that Flori and I felt otherwise. Her sixth sense and my feelings would not impress a lawyer. Or the police. Manny would automatically disagree. I hoped that Bunny would listen.
Jake pierced his egg, and golden yolk cascaded over the brick red pork. My stomach rumbled, reminding me that I hadn’t eaten yet. Would it be breaking my moratorium to join Jake and pig out on comforting chiles rellenos? What if I put a cheesy chile and an egg on a mound of crispy hash browns and topped them all with green chile sauce? I decided that neither the moratorium nor the breakfast crowd—not to mention my dieting aspirations—would allow this fantasy.
“Suicide sure doesn’t seem like Victor,” Jake said, composing a perfect bite of pork, potato, and egg. “I had a meeting set up with him. He was so adamant that I rearranged my schedule to fit him in.”
“Aha! More evidence of murder! You’re one hot tipper, Jake Strong. Isn’t that right, Rita?”
This exclamation, followed by the smack on my right shoulder blade, startled any lingering tears and fantasies away. Luckily, I wasn’t holding anything spillable.
“Ack! Flori! What are you doing sneaking up on me like that?”
My diminutive boss stood behind me, a coffeepot in one hand, a canister of whipped cream in the other.
“Well someone had to come do the refills, what with you out batting your eyes at handsome lawyers. I sprayed cream all over that tourist woman’s waffles and her coffee while I was at it. Can’t tell what they are now. Good thing I keep this stuff on hand for emergencies. Good thing I came moseying by here too.” She brandished the cream can, looking ready to unload it onto anyone else who might complain. Jake leaned away from us both.
“Yeah,” I said, sarcasm creeping into my voice. “Good thing.”
If Flori noticed the sarcasm or that she nearly startled me out of my socks, she ignored it. Investigating, she always says, demands rule-breaking for the greater good. She’s also a firm believer in the persuasive powers of sugary praise and food.
She poured Jake more coffee along with a heaping helping of flattery. “You’re an astute man, Mr. Strong, and you smell good enough to put on the dessert menu. Now, tell us what you think Victor wanted to talk about.”
Jake knows Flori well enough to know her tricks. He leisurely chewed some carne adovada and shrugged in an exaggerated gesture of helplessness. She waited him out, a trick she learned from an old friend in law enforcement, the same person who taught her to operate a Taser and tail suspects.
“Sorry, can’t tell you,” J
ake protested in between bites. “Attorney-client privilege.”
“Was he an actual client yet?” I asked. My legal knowledge doesn’t extend far beyond Law and Order, although I did learn a few things about lawyers and their ways during my unpleasant divorce proceedings.
Jake’s response was cautious. “He wanted to become a client . . .”
“Ha!” Flori raised her whipped cream can triumphantly. “So, he wasn’t a client yet. You can tell us, then. Don’t worry, it’s all for the good. Victor’s good.”
“Technically, privilege can still apply.” Jake studied his plate.
Flori waited, fiddling rather ominously with the can of pressurized cream.
“I suppose I can tell you this much,” he said, eyeing the spray can warily. “I don’t actually know what he wanted. Like I said, we never got to meet.”
Across the room a customer waved his coffee cup in the air. Flori ignored him. “Why would Victor need a lawyer?”
“The property line dispute?” I postulated. When Jake looked at me questioningly, I filled him in on the argument with the neighbor. “What else would there be, unless it was something about his art center or one of the kids he helped?”
Jake frowned over his coffee. “I wish now that I’d asked. All I know is that he wanted someone immediately and with . . . er . . . my ‘specialty,’ is how he put it. I told him I wasn’t sure if I could fit him in right away. He said it was urgent.”
Flori disregarded restless customers and took a seat across from Jake. “Your specialty, you say? Now that is disturbing, no offense, dear.”
Jake shrugged slightly and recrossed his legs, looking elegant and handsome and in no way offended.
What was his specialty? I was ashamed that I had no idea. I was pretty sure it wasn’t divorce, given that I’d Internet-researched all divorce lawyers in the greater Santa Fe region. Perhaps something to do with finances or real estate? He certainly did well, to judge by his posh office, fancy car, and designer suit coats, not to mention his great-looking jeans and flashy silver cowboy accessories. I risked looking foolish and asked.