I picked up the place mats from the dining table and carried them to the back door to shake out the crumbs. Wiped off the table, set the centerpiece back in place, and made busy work tidying little things.
"Hey," Mary interrupted, "come on, you don't have to do all that. Let Rusty out of the car and let's go sit down. Everyone's gone now."
Overjoyed at being let out of the car, Rusty bounded around the perimeter of Mary's neat lawn a few times, joining with her dogs in some kind of tag game that only they understood. Mary and I went back inside a flopped on the plaid couches in the living room.
"Now, you going to fill me in?" she inquired.
I did, a brief version, ending with my night in jail.
She chuckled. "Now that's one privilege I haven't enjoyed myself," she said.
"I know someone at that clinic was the person who broke into my room at the motel," I insisted. "I just can't figure out why one of those doctors would be after me. The questions I've been asking around town shouldn't have prompted that."
"Well, you know with lawsuits what they are today," she said, "maybe they're scared of a malpractice suit. Even if Cynthia's death were Richard's fault, maybe the doctors are afraid they could somehow be held responsible."
I shrugged. It could make sense.
"Hey, it looks to me like you're about to doze off on me," she smiled. "Let's get your room made up and let you get some real sleep."
My eyelids felt like rocks and my limbs were like lead. She was right.
We went upstairs to the room Drake and I had shared, was it less than a week ago? The bed was rumpled and the bathroom felt humid from recent showers. Mary bustled about gathering the towels and replacing them with fresh ones from a drawer. She stripped the sheets from the bed in a couple of deft moves, balling them up and tossing them into a pile at the door.
"Here, we'll remake this real quick." She pulled clean sheets from a dresser drawer and quickly spread one. Flapping it toward me like a giant sail, she took one side and I took the other. Within two minutes, the bed was again smooth and inviting.
"Do you have stuff to bring in from the car?" she asked.
I went downstairs and retrieved my shopping bag. By the time I got back, she had spritzed disinfectant around the bathroom fixtures and wiped them off. There was no sign that the place had been recently vacated by other occupants.
"Now we'll cozy it up a little," she said, closing the white wood shutters, "and I'll try to keep everyone quiet. You sleep as long as you want—you need it." She closed the door quietly behind her.
In the bathroom, I unwrapped my new toothbrush and toothpaste. Having a clean mouth made me realize that the rest of me wasn't exactly pristine, so I did a very quick, very hot shower. Within ten minutes I lay between the cool sheets, my mind and body gone limp.
Little sounds dragged me into wakefulness from time to time, but as soon as I realized where I was, I allowed myself to drift back into a pleasant darkness. I dreamed, pleasant little scenes, some with Drake and myself doing some mundane little everyday thing together, some going back to my childhood. My parents were there and the house was just as it is today. The actions were nothing extraordinary, just daily routine. I stretched and lay between sleep and wakefulness for some time before thinking to find out what time it was.
The sun had cast striped shadows through the shutters, but they had faded now into a soft gold, telling me that it must be late afternoon. I got up, feeling completely refreshed, not foggy headed like I usually would after sleeping in the daytime. Slipped on a pair of shorts and t-shirt and brushed my teeth again.
Sometime during the day, Mary had slipped in and gathered my dirty clothes. They sat in a neatly folded pile on the dresser. When I opened to door leading to the hall, Rusty raised his head. He'd been sleeping like a quiet sentinel outside my room.
"Hey, kid," I said, rubbing his ears vigorously.
He whapped his tail against the doorjamb, leaning into my legs, obviously relieved to see that I was okay.
Downstairs, Mary dozed on the living room couch, her head slightly back, her open mouth snoring softly. I tiptoed toward the wonderful smell emanating from the kitchen. Two large kettles simmered on the stove. Lifting the lids revealed one pot of pinto beans with plenty of ham and onion. The other contained green chile sauce, rich with chunks of beef and spices. My stomach rumbled in response. I helped myself to an apple from the fridge and walked softly back to the living room. Just as I reached one of the overstuffed chairs, a floor board creaked, bringing Mary slowly from her sleep.
"Welcome back," she smiled at me.
"Boy, I needed that," I agreed. "Between having very little sleep last night and the fright of my life the night before, I guess I've been stressed."
She nodded a knowing acknowledgement.
I told her about the carefree dreams I'd had during my long rest. "Guess that means I needed to put all this behind me for awhile."
"That's what we're here for," she said, "to give people a chance to unwind. It's amazing how many of them still can't do it, though. You know, they get up here at altitude, where they should just veg out, but they don't. Always got that schedule to keep."
"Will your other guests be here for dinner?" I asked.
She glanced at her watch. "It's nearly five," she said. "They ought to be back soon. I always get a little worried with hikers that stay out too late. Had a pair of teenagers last summer didn't come back by dark. We had to call out Search and Rescue."
"The chile and beans sure smell good," I told her.
Almost in answer to her concern, we heard voices out in the yard. She got up and looked out the window. "Here they are now, thank goodness. Bet they'll be tired tonight."
As it turned out, the hikers were the energetic sort. They wanted quick showers, a change of clothes, and then decided to head into town for dinner. Mary and I dined by ourselves on the chile and beans. Afterward, she built a cozy fire and we nestled into the couches.
"So, what's going to happen next with your case?" she asked.
"Steve Bradley wants me to stay around for a couple of days. Says the judge will have to determine a fine for my breaking the lights at the clinic. Guess that was a stupid thing to do," I told her.
"Well, yeah," she agreed. "Why were you trying to get in there anyway?"
I briefly told her how I hoped to find something in the patient files that would lend a clue to Cynthia's death and to the over large number of miscarriages that seemed to affect women in the county.
“What kind of clue?” she asked.
“I don’t know—the abusive husband might have been the culprit in Cynthia’s case. I’d just hate to think a doctor would protect someone like that.”
"You know there's been Phillips's in this town for a long time. Those boys' grandaddy and great-grandaddy were prominent businessmen here."
I remembered the old pictures in the miner's museum. There had been a building called Phillips Mercantile in one of them.
"I'll bet those were exciting times," I remarked, "with the mines going strong. The Hispanics and Indians that had been in these parts for a long time must have felt rather displaced."
"They worked in the mines, too, you know. Made real good wages for the times."
"Maybe I'll go back to that old museum tomorrow," I said. "Gotta have something to do with the whole day." I set my wine glass down on the coffee table and yawned. "Maybe the mountain air is getting to me," I told Mary. "I can't believe it but I'm already drifting back off to sleep."
"Well, why don't you just hit it for the night?" she said. "You need to catch up."
I didn't need to be told twice. Ten-thirty and I was feeling like I'd put in a full day. Rusty tagged along behind me as we went up the stairs.
Chapter 26
Chattering birds caught my attention. Sunlight streamed through the slats in the shutters. I stretched once then got up to look out. The green lawn glistened with dewy sparkles. Rusty rose and pressed his nose to the door. I tiptoed ove
r and opened it for him, certain that Mary would let him outside.
Back at the window, I watched him scamper across the lawn with the other dogs. I slid the window open and breathed the clean air. Except for the faint clinking of dishes in the kitchen and the birds’ steady chatter, the world was silent. In the city, there’s a perpetual background noise. I never realized how pervasive it was until I came here. For the first time since Drake left, I allowed myself to feel at peace.
A few minutes under the hot shower invigorated me and I put on my clean shorts and shirt before going downstairs to find Mary. She stood at the stove, scrambling eggs. A platter of crisp bacon waited under the warming hood and a sheet of golden-topped biscuits sat on the counter top.
“Hey,” she greeted. “You look a hundred percent better than yesterday.”
“I feel a million percent better,” I assured her.
“Our hikers have already hit the trail,” she said. “They sure are the restless sort. They took biscuits and bacon with them, so the rest is for us.”
She scooped the thickened eggs onto two plates.
“Grab some flatware,” she said, “and we can eat here in the kitchen. Unless you’d rather go in the dining room.”
“Nope, kitchen’s fine with me.”
She stacked several biscuits in a cloth-lined wicker basket, carrying it and the bacon platter to the table. Butter and jam waited there already. I picked up the plates and set them down on the checkered cloth.
“What’s your plan for the day?” she asked.
“Well, I thought I might go back to the miner’s museum and look around. And maybe the newspaper office to look at old issues.”
I didn’t mention the miscarriage statistics I’d seen in Albuquerque, which I hoped to verify, corroborate or somehow explain locally.
“Would it be okay if Rusty stays here while I go into town?” I asked after we’d put away all the eggs and a good-sized portion of the bacon and biscuits.
“No problem.” We carried our plates to the sink and I put the leftover food away for her.
The road into town was dusty dry once again, all trace of the recent rain gone now. The day was clear although the temperature had dropped pleasantly from last week’s highs. I drove slowly, savoring the pine-scented air, noticing little details like the colorful flowers along the roadside and the cool stream that crossed under the road.
In town, the air felt warm and much stuffier than in the mountains. The brown adobes contrasted sharply with the deep blue sky. Heat waves wriggled above the highway. The newspaper office was at the north end of town, about a block off the main road in an adobe building that might have once been a private residence. I pulled into the yard and parked in the dirt lot, taking the last of the approximately three spaces. The other two cars were middle-aged compacts of nondescript colors.
Inside, a twenty-something girl sat at a desk near the door, her eyes intent on a computer screen, her hand guiding the mouse attachment around a purple pad. On screen there appeared the layout of newspaper columns with blanks where the photos would go. She clicked a couple of times before acknowledging me.
“May I help you?” she finally asked.
I told her I’d like to look at back issues. She nodded and motioned me to follow her. I expected to find a microfiche reader and film but instead she led me into an alcove off the hall that contained a built-in Formica desk with shelves rising to the ceiling. The shelves contained bound copies of past papers.
“How far back do these go?” I asked.
“Um, like probably thirty years,” she said, her eyes darting up to the shelves.
“And before that?”
She looked at me like I must be seriously deranged. “Older than thirty years?”
“Yes . . . there was a newspaper here way back then, wasn’t there?”
“Well, yeah, I guess. The masthead says 1886.”
“Are the older ones stored somewhere else?” I asked, determined to as large a pain in the ass as I could be.
“I’d have to check. I’ve only worked here, like, about two years. I think I heard there was a fire once, a long time ago.”
“I’d appreciate it if you would ask,” I told her.
She left me alone with the bound papers, the desk, and an unpadded wooden chair. I scanned the spines, determining that each oversized book contained a year’s worth of the small weekly paper. I pulled the most recent one, which ended with the December 31 issue of last year, now seven months old. I paged through to the Births and Deaths section.
One death, Thomas J. “Buck” Miller, aged eight-nine. No births that week. Next paper, one birth, no deaths. Next paper. I got pretty quick at it and covered the entire year in about fifteen minutes. I tried to remember whether I’d read anything remarkable but it seemed pretty average.
“I checked with Mr. Sargeant,” the receptionist-reporter-computer person told me. “The really old copies of the paper are in the room across the hall. You can just go in there if you want.”
She indicated the door and opened it for me, reaching around the edge of the wall to flip a light switch. I thanked her and she went back to her desk. I sampled another year, the next most recent one, but he lure of the old papers kept tugging at me. I glanced up and down the hall then ducked into the other room.
The room was obviously a catch-all for everything that needed storing. Boxes and papers filled every spare corner. Shelves filled with oversized books lined the walls. The bindings started out to be leather with hand tooled designs and gold stamped letters. They gradually evolved to vinyl and cardboard, like the ones in the hall alcove. Just to get a sense of things I chose the oldest book. Opened the front cover. The Phillipsburg Gazette.
Phillipsburg.
As in, named for the Phillips family. As in, Doctors Rodney and Evan Phillips.
My brain wheeled into motion. I scanned the lead stories for the first several issues. The newspaper had been started by a Phillips. The mercantile store was owned by a Phillips. The mayor was a Phillips, the town doctor, the assayer. I shoved the first volume back onto the shelf and pulled won another. Same story, second chapter.
Book after book came down from the shelves. The format stayed the same through the 1800s and into the roaring twenties. The Depression years passed with Phillips’s in charge. The war began. Several Phillips men died heroically, according to their grandfather’s newspaper. The 1950s brought prosperity to Phillipsburg, along with the rest of the country. Other family names appeared often enough that I was beginning to feel comfortable with them. Martinez, Romero, Smith, Hazelton, Baca, Torres. Evan Phillips’s birth was announced and well documented in photos.
In 1960, a man named Ben Torres ran for the state legislature. He must have run a vicious campaign, although only a fraction of his words made the newspaper. Evan Phillips’s mother died and his father remarried. The late Mrs. Phillips had owned the newspaper. Within a short time her stock was bought up by a corporation from Santa Fe. The Phillips family lost control, for the first time in the town’s recorded history, of the news the town would read.
Ben Torres, the recently elected state Senator, introduced a bill in the state legislature to change the town’s name from Phillipsburg back to its original Valle Escondido—Hidden Valley. The largely Hispanic New Mexico state legislature voted in the change with no objection and with no consulting the Phillips family. It was the end of an era.
My skin suddenly felt cold. Evan Phillips was a young child when this happened. Rodney was born to the second wife and probably wouldn’t remember any of it. But their father must have been a very bitter man. Losing the power the family had once held over the little town must have rankled deeply. He probably ranted and railed against the Hispanics in the town. The young boys had probably been brainwashed with enough hateful prejudice to corrupt them forever.
I returned to the alcove to look again at the most recent newspapers. Something niggled at the back of my mind. I reread the birth records. Only one Hi
spanic baby had been born to a Valle Escondido family in the past six months and that one had been delivered in the hospital in Santa Fe. I now knew what they were doing. I just had to find out how.
Chapter 27
Near the plaza, I parked in the shade of a young mimosa tree about a half block from the museum.
The same old man sat behind the counter inside, perched on his wooden stool. He straightened some postcards and rearranged the booklets and tourism department freebies for my benefit. I paid the two dollar admission once again and walked into the room with all the old photos. It took me a few minutes to remember which one showed the Phillips Mercantile building. I wasn’t positive, but thought the building still existed on the plaza. I memorized the shape of it, hoping to find out its current purpose.
Although the museum was small, I took my time covering it, making sure I absorbed all the information I could. Now that I was looking for it, the Phillips family name appeared with generous frequency. I recognized many of the photos from the newspaper accounts. Businesses owned by various Phillips’s had been featured in news stories. The Phillips family home was pictured as a large adobe structure, not lavish by today’s standards, but it dwarfed the other buildings around it at the time. I wondered if it still stood.
The museum’s volunteer watchdog sat dozing precariously on his wooden stool. I scooted my feet a little, creating a gentle sound to waken him. He snorted back a snore and his head snapped up. I pretended I hadn’t noticed.
“Could you tell me if the old Phillips home is still standing?” I asked. “The one shown in the pictures?”
He blinked two or three times. The wrinkles around his eyes deepened as he squinted in thought. Grizzled whiskers became more visible on his prominent chin. He worked his mouth in a chewing kind of motion, the better to get his memory working.
“Hmm, yup, I recon so,” he drawled from the side of his mouth. “Don’t know that you’d recognize it though. Place went way down hill after old man Phillips died.”
“So none of the Phillips family live there now?” I asked.
Small Towns Can Be Murder Page 17