by Ann Myers
Doubt and confusion engulfed me. How could this be? I’d hoped that the gun would point to someone else. I’d assumed that sweet, peaceable Victor wouldn’t touch let alone own a gun.
“No evidence of forced entry,” Bunny was saying. “Not at the brother’s door or at the door that separates their sides of the house. Nothing suspicious in that. Only shows that people need to be more careful.”
“Careful not to shoot themselves,” Manny muttered. He dropped the folder of photos on the table. Some splayed out, allowing Flori and me to see. She gasped and turned her eyes heavenward, crossing herself. I wanted to turn away too, but I couldn’t. There was something wrong, something I couldn’t quite place. “Wait . . . no . . .” I said, reaching out.
“Yes, it’s hard to accept suicide,” Bunny said, sounding like one of the pamphlets from Celia’s school counselor. “We often try to look for signs in retrospect but that can’t help.” She started to gather the photos into the folder.
“Wait!” I grabbed one of the terrible close-ups and forced myself to study it. Beside me, Flori paused in her prayers.
“What?” she whispered.
“The gun . . . do you see where it is?”
“Aha!” Flori exclaimed, slapping me on the back. “Now there’s your evidence! We knew it! Murder!”
Chapter 10
Manny sputtered. “So the gun’s in his right hand. That’s your big clue? So what?”
“So what?” I demanded, turning to Bunny. Surely she’d see the point. “You pick up a gun to shoot yourself, your last act, you’re scared . . . are you going to use your nondominant hand?”
Bunny flipped through the pages of her file, not responding but not blowing me off either.
“Do we know for sure he was a leftie?” Manny said. “Even if he was, maybe he used his right hand to shoot. I know a guy, he’s left-handed but he plays golf right-handed. Jimmy. Good old Jimmy Marks. You used to know him, Rita. He’s one of my friends.”
“Victor was definitely a southpaw,” I said, ignoring yet another attempt by Manny to claim one of our mutual friends. “He painted left-handed. He used left-handed metal cutters to make tin frames for his artwork. Ask Celia, she’s left-handed too. She and Victor joked about all the great artists being lefties. Ask Gabe for confirmation, if you want, but I know I’m right.”
“It would be unusual to shoot with your nondominant hand,” Bunny said over Manny’s snorts of disapproval. “I suppose it’s possible that someone else was involved. They could have come in the open front door at Gabriel’s—”
“And then what?” Manny interrupted. “The door between the brothers’ wings was locked.” He leaned back in his chair, shooting me a guess-I-told-you look.
Bunny missed his look. She was flipping through her notebook. “I asked Gabriel about that,” she said. “He said the interior door locks automatically on Victor’s side when it closes. Said that it’s a pain and that Victor occasionally locked himself out by accident, but it’s some kind of fancy antique—like everything around there—so they didn’t want to change it out.” She turned to me. “Rita, when you followed Victor back to his wing last night, did the door close fully behind you?”
I tried to imagine myself back in the scene. I remembered hurrying through the foyer, feeling uneasy about Broomer and anxious to get back to Victor’s side. The door had surely been open, or else how would I have followed Victor? Yes, I could see the door, about halfway open. I’d slipped right through. Had I shut it?
“I think I pulled it closed a little. I can’t say for sure that it latched,” I admitted. What if I could have prevented Victor’s death by simply closing a door? Stress pounded out a staccato headache in my temples.
“It’s something to look into,” Bunny said.
“And fast!” Flori again slapped her hands on the table. When she pulled them off, they made a sticky sound. I made a mental note to bathe us in hand sanitizer the second we left the building, which I wanted to be soon.
I stood, nodding to Flori. “We’ll help in any way we can with this murder investigation.”
“Murder,” Flori reiterated darkly. “We’ll be sending you our list of suspects.”
Bunny frowned at her notebook, flipping pages. She shut it with a snap. “We have a few things to check. We’ll talk to you again.” She looked determined to solve a murder. Or was she simply ready to get rid of us?
Manny, meanwhile, sounded like a kid who’s been told he’ll be cleaning his room rather than going out for ice cream.
“More work,” he griped to Bunny, puffing out his bottom lip. “Just what we need with Halloween and Day of the Dead coming up. Holidays are nothing but a pain.” To me, he put in a final jab. “If this is murder—which I doubt—you didn’t help anything, Rita. Your fingerprints will be all over the crime scene. I should charge you with interfering.”
“Go ahead and try,” Flori said, heading for the door. “Rita has a hotshot lawyer, a hot one at that!”
Indeed, our hot lawyer was right outside the door. Jake leaned casually against the wall, cowboy boots crossed, as if waiting for the cows to come home. I hoped he hadn’t heard Flori’s “hot” description or her presumption that he was “my” lawyer.
He winked at me with those gorgeous steel-blue eyes before smiling at Bunny and Manny. “Officers? Is there a problem here?” The friendly words had a hard edge.
“No problem,” Bunny snapped.
Jake, still smiling, extended both elbows, inviting me and Flori to loop our arms through. I basked in the gentlemanly gesture, as well as the scowl it produced on Manny’s face.
Later, at the earliest bird start of happy hour, I recounted the moment to Cass.
“I wish I could have seen Manny’s expression,” she said with a grin.
“It was pretty sweet,” I said. “He was definitely jealous.”
“Good. All the jealousy he put you through, he deserves that.” Cass unfolded her napkin and picked up her menu.
We’d snagged our favorite corner table at Small Plates, a little restaurant with a Spanish-meets-the-Southwest theme. The décor is modern in a dark, cozy way, with sleek cement floors, charcoal-hued walls, metal accents, and a hand-carved wooden bar that could be in an art museum. We took a moment to study our menus, featuring tapas-style dishes, and the specials scrawled in chalk across a blackboard wall.
“Maybe Flori’s right,” Cass said, reaching for the wine list.
“Right?”
“About you showing some interest in that hunky lawyer. I mean, Rita, come on. He’s a dream to look at, not to mention I hear he’s a wonder in the courtroom . . . and probably elsewhere too . . .”
I had been fixated on the menu and whether I could justify ordering smoked-paprika mac-and-cheese in addition to ham and cheese croquettes. I tore my eyes away long enough to roll them at Cass’s suggestive suggestion. “Hey, didn’t you agree to back me up on my moratorium? You’re my spotter. Remember the one-year vow?”
My friend shrugged. “Just testing you.”
I’d been tested enough today. I discarded any righteous thoughts of a light grilled radicchio salad and declared that I’d be ordering croquettes and mac-and-cheese.
“Perfect. And how about the fried artichokes? They’ll count as a salad.” Cass, never on a diet or worrying about one, mused at the menu a bit more, then asked if I’d also split some meatballs.
Would I ever. These were not just any meatballs. Small Plates served albóndigas al azafran, tender morsels of pork, beef, and Manchego cheese simmered in a white wine, saffron, and almond sauce as rich and exotic as the dish’s name. Flori pestered the chef until he gave up the recipe. The yummy meatballs now appear at Tres Amigas with various New Mexican twists, like a spicy red pepper sauce and piñon nuts in place of almonds.
Donavan, ou
r waiter, who strutted the restaurant like it was his personal catwalk, took our order and returned a few minutes later with our wine and complimentary olives.
“Let me know if there’s anything I can do for you,” he said in a deep baritone, leaning in close to Cass’s ear.
“Thanks,” Cass said coolly. My gorgeous friend gets plenty of male attention, most of which she ignores. She claims to have no time for serious relationships. Plus, she says, she’s happily raised a child as a single parent for seventeen years. Why should she add in a partner or husband now?
Donovan took the rebuff in stride and swaggered off. Cass and I raised our glasses.
“To Victor,” we said in unison.
We sipped in silence for a few minutes. I thought of Victor making cookies, collecting apples in the backyard, and painting with Celia. Could I have helped him? Would it have been as simple as shutting and locking his door?
When Donovan deposited terra-cotta cazuela dishes filled with golden croquettes and meatballs, Cass broke the silence. “I’ve been thinking about what you said at breakfast. You know, about the possibility of murder.” She looked around furtively at the tables nearby. The other diners studied their menus and chatted, uninterested in our conversation. “I have the perfect suspect for you,” she said in a dramatic stage whisper.
I halted my fork midway to the croquette and waited.
Cass leaned across the table. “Jaylee Jantrell, Jay-Jay for short. Victor’s ex-wife.”
I searched my memory, which was coming up blank. Had I known of a wife, ex or not? I couldn’t recall Victor mentioning her, though it’s not like I’d go around mentioning Manny if I didn’t have to.
“Jay-Jay’s a witch,” Cass said, then quickly revised her statement. “I shouldn’t say that. I know some perfectly lovely witches. Switch the ‘w’ for a ‘b’ and a bunch of nasty adjectives. Mean, shrill, conniving, jealous, greedy . . .” She took a break from adjectives to sample the meatball. Then she said, “Okay, maybe she didn’t actually do it, but she’s mean, and the ex should definitely be on any list of suspects, right?”
“Sure,” I said, distracted by the sight of Donovan strutting toward our table, bearing a steaming bowl of shellfish.
“Mussels in white wine,” he said, practically cheek-to-cheek with Cass. “From the gentleman with the scarf.” He scowled toward the bar, where a slender man in black jeans and a suede jacket dipped his chin in our direction. Cass flitted her fingers in a little wave and mouthed, Thank you.
I marveled. I’ve been the recipient of a few free drinks, mostly from dudes at sports bars when I waitressed in my twenties. But mussels? The shiny black shells swam in a savory broth, smelling of grapes and the sea. I also marveled at the man. Not only was he gorgeous in an elegant, artistic way, with chic black hair and clothes. He also wielded knitting needles and a skein of black yarn.
“Wow,” was all I could say, not that “wow” did such a man justice. He could be a male model placed there to make the bar seem hip, upscale, and urban.
Cass smiled. “I know. That’s Salvatore Dean. Such confidence, right? I mean, what man sends over seafood?” She put her nose over the mussels and breathed in happily. She added, as if this would explain everything, “He’s a wood-carver.”
I’d pictured him as a dancer in some avant-garde troupe. Or flamenco. I could definitely imagine him strutting around a dance floor in manly leggings with a rose in his mouth. I shook off the image. If I was serious about my moratorium, I had to stop reading romance novels.
“A wood-carver?” I said, knowing that Cass would eventually give up more details. “Who knits?”
Cass agreed that the knitting was a bit odd. “But kind of sexy too, don’t you think?” she added.
She was right about that. He’d started knitting and purling, not in the tight, proper manner of elderly ladies, but loose and confident, like the knitting needles were a musical instrument.
Cass selected a mussel and expertly sipped it from its shell. “He’s not any old woodworker. No carved bears like you see up in Colorado.” She named a downtown store famous for its high-priced, handmade furniture. “They sold one of his coffee tables today for nearly $12,000. I guess it’s the night to celebrate windfalls, not that mine comes anywhere close to that.”
“Wow,” I said again. My vocabulary seemed to be declining along with my early middle-aged memory. Maybe a meatball would help. I sampled one, reveling in the complex sauce, and then turned the conversation back to Victor’s ex-wife, admitting I had no recollection of her.
“You probably wouldn’t have met her,” my friend said. “They split ages ago. She’s an art dealer. I say ‘dealer’ loosely. She’s more like a professional swindler who undercuts artists and clients any chance she gets.”
Cass picked up another mussel. “She gets most of her inventory from desperate people. For instance, I heard that she got a stack of Gustave Baumann wood-block prints from a widow facing foreclosure. She paid a couple hundred for museum-quality originals and then turned around and sold them for thousands. I’m telling you, she’s a prime one for the suspect list.”
Artists, I knew, held a special hatred for anyone who swindled their kind or anyone with a true love of art. Jay-Jay sounded unpleasant and untrustworthy. That didn’t make her a murderer. As I’d learned, you can’t assume anything in an investigation. The nicest grandmotherly type could be a cold-blooded killer, while the biggest jerk could be as innocent as a newborn.
“How did you know I had a list?” I asked, digging into the gooey mac-and-cheese. I took a bite, luxuriating in the creamy, cheesy comfort and watching as two twenty-something women sidled up to Salvatore and his knitting. I wondered if I should tell Cass. She glanced over her shoulder, following my gaze.
“No worries,” she said, guessing my thoughts. “We have a date tonight, and he won’t break it. In fact, I worry he’s getting a little too attached to me.” She rolled her eyes as if the attraction of a swoon-worthy man with both knitting and wood-carving skills was her burden to bear. “Anyway,” she continued. “Of course you have a list, right? And I don’t care what you say. You’re involved in this, Rita.”
Cass knew me too well. I couldn’t deny it. “Flori is making a list too but she won’t share it yet,” I told her. “She wanted us to write lists separately and compare. We asked Jake to make one, but he worried about client conflicts.”
“See, he’s thoughtful as well as handsome. So who else is on your list?”
I had to admit that she’d nearly doubled my tally with the addition of Jay-Jay. I had two main suspects. Number one was Broomer. The distant second was a random burglar/killer. However, as Jake pointed out on the drive back from the police station, Victor’s home showed no signs of robbery.
“Jay-Jay’s better than your unknown killer,” Cass contended. “She has motive. Victor’s art. She’d love to get her hands on that, let me tell you. You know the saddest thing? Now that he’s gone, the value of his work will skyrocket.” She caught Donovan’s eye, holding up her nearly empty wineglass to indicate that she’d like another.
I considered my long walk home and decided to make my first glass my last. I nursed the drink, watching the restaurant fill up for the dinner hour. I realized that I recognized many of the people in the room. Some were fellow cooks and food workers. Others were regular or occasional customers at Tres Amigas or parents of Celia’s classmates. It felt nice to feel like a local.
I raised my half-full glass to Cass’s newly filled one and we switched to a happier subject, namely Cass’s new superclient.
“She walked in off the street,” Cass said, waving her hands heavenward in a hallelujah gesture. “I couldn’t believe it, she was literally dripping turquoise and diamonds, and you know I barely do anything with stones or gems. Well, she saw my plain silver works and said she had to have som
e. She bought a whole collection, ordered specialty pieces, and recommended me to some of her friends.”
I was about to ask the identity of this mystery woman when Cass clasped her hands together. “Oh look, there she is now.” She rose, wineglass in hand.
I gawked. I knew this woman too. Cass’s wealthy client was none other than Flori’s baking nemesis, Gloria Hendrix. Cass and Gloria air-kissed. After three rounds of efficient cheek swaps, Cass introduced me.
“Rita, you know Gloria? Gloria, Rita is an amazing chef who works at—”
I cut in. “Oh, I’ve worked in a couple places around town,” I gushed loudly, flashing a Sorry look at Cass. To cover my rudeness, I launched into compliments, all of them true. “What a gorgeous bracelet! And those rings!”
“By our fabulous Cassandra.” Gloria held out her hands, which sported three sleek silver rings, all effortlessly graceful. Gloria’s face was another story. Her lips puffed like overfilled sausages, a feature made more obvious by her otherwise taut, wrinkleless skin. I suspected she had indulged in extra helpings of Botox, eye lifts, and whatever made lips inflate.
“Cassandra, you must come to my Day of the Dead cocktail party tomorrow night. I’m having a skeleton theme, of course, and everyone will be there.” She drawled out the names of some upper-crust types and hotshot artists, including Salvatore the confident knitter.
Cass handled the invitation smoothly, saying that she’d love to stop by.
I knew that she’d be inwardly cringing. For all her poise and confidence around men and flames, Cass dreads large events. Yet no artist in this shaky economy can turn down a chance for publicity and schmoozing. She had to go. Gloria’s frozen face turned to me. “Rita, I hope you’ll come too. If you’re part of the food scene, you’ll absolutely adore what I’m serving.”