Cinco de Mayhem

by Ann Myers

  My first thought was that Crystal was awfully nice. My next thought was that she wanted something. “Free? Like Flori gives away free food for information?”

  Juan’s broad shoulder rose and fell a few millimeters. “She only asked if Flori and you were looking for the murderer.”

  I raised my eyebrows, silently encouraging Juan to reveal what happened next.

  “I said, ‘Sí,’” he said. “What else could I say?”

  True. Any local like Crystal would know of Flori’s reputation for sleuthing. And despite my intentions to stay far away from crime and conflict, I was building the same reputation.

  “How did Crystal react?” I asked Juan as he loudly extracted the last drops of juice from the ice chips.

  He rattled the ice and thought. “She said that Napoleon tricked everyone. She said that she bets his death will too. I don’t know what she means, but she asked me to keep her informed.” His lips twitched in the hint of a conspiratorial smile. “You want me to tell her something special, you let me know.”

  Jenkins reached the end of his swabbing and analyzing about forty minutes later, wiping his brow. His face was paler than usual, yet sweating. He slumped into a seat by the window, retrieved his thermos and a laptop from a satchel the size of a small suitcase, and began pecking at the keyboard with his index fingers.

  “You want me to keep filming that bloke?” Addie whispered when I came out to the dining room, wearing a fresh apron and bearing a bleached menu.

  I told her to save her battery, for now. “But sit behind him. If he reaches for his pockets or gets up, that’s when he could plant something.”

  “Jolly good, guv’ner,” Addie said. Having triple-watched all available episodes of Downton Abby, she’d started in on British crime dramas. Flori thought this was a great idea and had given Addie an entire Agatha Christie DVD set for Christmas.

  Jenkins looked up as I approached his table. “Lots to write about,” he said, tapping away.

  About how spotless Tres Amigas was? About how the air smelled of lemon bleach and baked goods? I forced a smile and asked if he’d like anything from the menu. “We’re known for our green chile stew,” I said as pleasantly as I could muster. “Customers rave about our healthy muffins. We have some Mexican specials too, for Cinco de Mayo. Shrimp tacos?”

  The inspector clutched his stomach and made a sound of disgust. “Shrimp?” He tapped a few words while I waited, wondering if seafood so far from the sea was some sort of infraction. “Fine,” he said, looking up. “So you’ll leave me alone. Get me a bowl of chile stew. Flour tortillas on the side and a muffin for later. This is on the house, I assume?”

  “Of course,” I said through my frozen smile. “Any coffee with that? Tea?”

  He reached for his thermos. “No drinks. Just bring me that soup. Make sure it’s hot. Then get me the owner of this place and we’ll talk.”

  His attitude made me think that we wouldn’t be chatting about the A+ rating we were about to receive. I glanced at Addie and she gave me a thumbs-up with one hand. In her other hand she aimed her cell phone at Jenkins.

  Back in the kitchen, Flori threatened to add habaneros to Jenkins’s bowl of green chile stew. “That’d fix him,” she chuckled.

  “That’s all we need, more for him to write up. He seems to disapprove of shrimp, and he says that he wants to talk to you.”

  Flori ladled out a bowl of stew, a flavorful mix of green chiles, tender lamb, and creamy potatoes. “He can have stew, but no payoffs.” She placed the bowl on a tray and tightened the sash around her karate top. My elderly boss was dressed for battle, from her orange sneakers to the karate-style band wrapped around her hairnet.

  I delivered the food along with a shiny spoon, a falsely perky “Enjoy,” and a failed attempt to read over Jenkins’s shoulder. He snapped the laptop closed and held the spoon up to the light. I was glad I’d repolished it and that Addie was filming.

  Jenkins peered up at me through narrowed, watery eyes. “You want to stand here and stare at me while I eat? Your funny friend already has a recording.”

  “Funny? Who are you calling funny, you . . . you . . .” At a loss for Britishisms, Addie muttered a few choice words of Spanish. “Don’t worry, Rita love,” she said to me. “I’ll bleep that bit out of the film.”

  I took a seat by Addie and watched Jenkins slowly sip soup.

  His son’s nothing like that shifty one,” Addie whispered, keeping her eyes on Jenkins Senior. “Junior’s a good lad. I asked him about his dad and he told me to stay clear. I said, ‘not if he’s messing with me friends, I won’t.’”

  Worry jolted me from the monotony of Jenkins’s sipping. “Addie, please be careful,” I said, aware how prickly I’d felt when Jake said the very same thing to me. Addie was young, though, and trusting.

  She also wasn’t deterred. “I told Junior, I said someone hid that cockroach in Miss Linda’s tamale and set you up to find it. He was kinda angry that I knew, but he agreed that that’s what must have happened. Not that he knew firsthand.”

  “That’s one possibility,” I said. Telling a friend that her boyfriend is a jerk, or a potential accomplice to murder and cockroach treachery, rarely works out well. I squeezed Addie’s free hand. “Promise me you won’t trust anyone,” I said.

  Her eyes widened. “Even Miss Flori and Linda?”

  “No, no. I mean anyone who could be a suspect or close to a suspect, okay?”

  “Right. Just like with Miss Marple,” Addie said, seriously. “Anyone could be the killer. Too bad we don’t have a butler to pin it on.”

  We had a shifty food inspector, a questionable hot dog guy, and a generous juice lady. That seemed like more than enough suspects to me. The door chimed, announcing new customers. I got up, ready to seat them as far from Jenkins as possible. Maybe they’d choose the patio. Out of habit, as I passed Jenkins’s table, I asked if he was doing okay. I seemed to have interrupted a sip. He gurgled, then coughed. Sweat beaded on his pasty face.

  “You okay?” I asked with real concern. “Would you like a drink? More water?”

  “No. No drink,” he stuttered, his voice raspy. “What did you put in this?”

  Addie had come up beside me, her cell phone held low to her side.

  “Did you get a hot pepper?” she asked. “They give some people the sweats, they do.”

  Jenkins’s head bobbed and wobbled until a final backward fling that sent him toppling from his chair. Addie and I grabbed his arms and sat him upright against the table. His breathing came in ragged jags interspersed with groans.

  “Water, Addie!” I commanded. “And get Flori!”

  One of the new customers, a slight man in a leather-fringed jacket, appeared at my side. “I’m a doctor,” he said, lifting Jenkins’s head and peering into his rapidly blinking eyes. His words calmed me, until he added, “Call 911! This man needs to get to the hospital, fast!”

  Chapter 18

  Flori’s green chile stew recipe has been called heart-stopping, soul expanding, a heavenly experience. Never, however, has it brought a diner so close to the other side. I called the hospital the next morning while waiting for Celia to draw on her eye makeup.

  “You a relative?” the receptionist asked.

  “I . . . er . . . I was there when he passed out,” I said, unwilling to tempt additional bad fortune by lying to strangers.

  Silence on the other end was followed by, “Rita? Is that you? It’s Ana-Grace, Addie’s cousin. I recognized your er.”

  I admitted to being noneloquent me. “You probably heard, then. He was eating our green chile stew and . . .” I stopped before adding another er.

  Ana-Grace had heard. “Yeah, everyone’s heard. Weird, huh? Addie said he was eating and she was filming and then he got as sick as a cow on jimson weed.” She lowered her voice. “I shouldn’t be saying, but that’s what the doctors are looking into. They’re running tests.”

  Cows? Jimson weed? I had to ask for clarification.<
br />
  “Poison,” Ana-Grace said, sending shivers up my arms. “The docs don’t know what type yet. Possibly a nasty plant like jimson or a bad mushroom got into his food by mistake.”

  Or not by mistake. I gripped the phone.

  Ana-Grace said, “Oops. My switchboard’s lighting up. Gotta go. Be careful what you eat, okay?”

  Do you know anything about jimson weed?” I asked Celia as she settled into the passenger’s seat. I was driving us both today. Celia often carpooled with a friend and the friend’s teacher mom. This morning, however, she had to go in early to set up a theater backdrop she’d helped paint. I, meanwhile, was running late. So much for my noble vows of walking or running to work. I’d left an apologetic message on the café’s answering machine for Flori. I could blame the long wait on the hospital switchboard. More truthfully, I’d overslept. My dreams had been a repeating reel of nightmare images featuring Jenkins as a walking-dead zombie inspector and ghostly Napoleon berating me for not solving his murder. Dream Napoleon had called me an idiot and thrown crepes at me, and then we’d gotten on a roller coaster with Flori’s mariachi band and I couldn’t find my purse. Only near morning—and unfortunately after I’d shut off my snooze button—did I fall into a more peaceful sleep.

  Celia stopped messing with her cell phone and looked up. “Jimson? Is that what the health inspector guy ate? It’s supposed to make you high. Really messed up.”

  I clamped my lips shut before Don’t do drugs! fell out. Instead, I asked what she knew.

  “You know that famous flower painting by Georgia O’Keeffe?” my daughter said. “Okay, I know, she did tons of them, but it’s a white flower, really up close? The one that sold a while back for like forty-four million? That’s datura. Jimson weed. You’ve seen it. There’s some in Victor’s garden down in a sunny spot by the creek.”

  “Kind of like a big morning glory?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” my daughter confirmed. “But they have spiny fruits that kind of look like prickly pears, and they’re poisonous, even to touch but especially if you eat the fruits and seeds. Some kids from my school ate a bunch of datura.” Celia shook her dyed head. “Stupid. They ended up getting their stomachs pumped.”

  Definitely stupid, I agreed. I felt better about Celia, if not the ailing food inspector. “Honey,” I ventured, since my daughter seemed to be in a sharing mood, “are you hanging out with some new friends lately?”

  She shot me a frown. “Yeah, some. It’s no big deal.”

  No big deal unless her new friends were a bad influence. I took a deep breath and launched into my stay safe and smart speech. I wrapped up with, “As you said, drugs are really stupid, like skipping out of class. You wouldn’t want friends like that, right?”

  Celia lowered her mascara-coated eyelids. “Geez, Mom, what’s going on? I thought we were just talking about jimson poison and now you’re getting all intense. I have a new friend or two. It doesn’t mean I’ve ditched school or my old friends. Things change, isn’t that what you told me? Look at you and Dad, and you kicking out Dad.”

  Okay, she had me, although I didn’t kick Manny out. I’m the one who left. He kept the house and garage, where a bunch of my stuff still languished in storage boxes. Anyway, he was the one who cheated.

  “Relationships do change,” I said, diplomatically.

  “Right!” Celia exclaimed as if I’d just affirmed her teenage worldview. She inspected her clumps of mascara in the visor mirror. “Like you and your new boyfriends.”

  I caught the stressed plural on “boyfriends,” as Celia had intended.

  “What?” I asked my daughter. “I don’t have an actual ‘boyfriend’ let alone a bunch of them.”

  “How about that guy Georgio?” Celia teased. “He gave me a ride downtown last night. We talked about art, and he said he wanted to stop by and see you again.”

  I blinked and tried my best to appear calm. “Celia, I’m sorry, I should have given you a ride yesterday or let you take the car. Please don’t accept rides from Mr. Andre again.”

  “Why? Because he’s an art thief?”

  I gaped at my daughter. How did she know about that?

  Celia laughed. “Don’t worry, Mom. I didn’t grill him about crimes like you and Flori would have. I’ve read about him in the paper. He sure knows a lot about art. He told me all about that painting he wants to buy.” She fiddled with her cell phone. “He said that even if Victor’s art goes into storage for a while, it’s okay. When it comes out, it’ll be like it’s brand new, a surprise again, like that painting he wants. I don’t get why he likes that one so much, though.”

  Celia raised her earbuds. Before she plugged in, she said, “Anyway, it’s your big date night tonight, right? When I stopped by Tres Amigas last weekend, Flori said I should tell you to make chocoflan. She’s right, you know. That’s the most awesome cake ever.”

  “Flori has some extreme dating ideas,” I told my daughter, who snorted in laughter.

  We swung by Celia’s school. She got out, still plugged into her headphones. Before she shut the door, she gave me a wink. “Good luck tonight, Mom!”

  I had a feeling I’d need luck, and not only tonight.

  My feeling was confirmed when I reached Tres Amigas.

  The CLOSED sign dangled in the front door. A few would-be customers waited outside, checking their watches and cell phones. I checked my watch too, although I knew it was already past opening time.

  “You’re closed?” one of the women asked, recognizing me. Her brow wrinkled in worry and incomprehension. “You’re never closed on Fridays. This is Friday, right? I didn’t miss a day?”

  Oh, it was Friday, all right. I’d double- and quadruple-checked that myself. I was starting to worry when Flori opened the door a crack and handed out a paper bag.

  “Muffins on the house,” she said to the ladies. To me, she said, “We have a small problem in the kitchen, Rita dear.”

  I feared I knew the problem. What I wasn’t prepared for was who was delivering the bad news.

  Manny posed in front of the mannequin band, flashing a smile as he snapped a selfie. When he saw me, he stuffed the phone in his pocket and put on his cop-business face. “Shutting you down here, Rita. You almost killed a man. It’s unlike you. Usually you only stumble on the bodies.”

  “Can he do this?” I asked Flori.

  My elderly friend wore a fluffy red cardigan over her tai-chi attire. For a moment she seemed frail to me. Then she straightened to her full petite height.

  “He can’t, but we’ll take the day off for propriety’s sake.” She raised her voice and said, pointedly, “And so we have time to investigate who actually poisoned that dirty man.”

  “Some would say you poisoned him.” Manny flashed his toothpaste-model smile at us. “In fact, that’s what Mr. Jenkins himself says. The doctors are thinking poison mushrooms. Did you slip some in his chile stew?”

  Flori’s frown suggested confusion mixed with a hint of disgust. “Mushrooms? No one puts mushrooms in green chile stew.”

  Jenkins knew he didn’t eat mushrooms here, I was sure of that. The man was a liar. Besides, he’d seemed feverish before taking a single sip of stew. I described his preexisting symptoms to my ex, ending with, “If you don’t believe us, Addie has it all on video.”

  “And why exactly is that?” Manny asked in over-the-top exasperation.

  “So he couldn’t plant another cockroach,” Flori said, as if this should be obvious. She waved a finger at Manny. “You should be investigating health inspector Jenkins. He and Napoleon were wrapped up in dirty business together.”

  Manny snorted. “I’ll be investigating here first. I need to see your frozen food.”

  It figured that Manny would be checking the freezer. My ex’s cooking skills were limited to microwaving TV dinners and opening cans of soup. He had little interest in food in general. Other than New Mexican, Tex-Mex, and Mexican, he steered clear of regional and ethnic foods, and when it came to green
vegetables, he had the culinary range of a fussy toddler. In retrospect, I should have taken Manny’s eating habits as a sign of our incompatibility. Love is blind, though, and sometimes lacking taste buds too.

  Bunny emerged from the kitchen, followed by Juan. “I’ve bagged everything that looks like a mushroom,” she said. “Your turn to check the freezer, Manny.”

  Manny left, grumbling. Bunny gave a rare smile. “We drew straws for the frozen duty,” she said.

  “I’m glad you won, dear,” Flori said, and offered her some coffee. “Unless you’re scared of our food,” she added.

  Bunny, who lifts weights for fun, flexed broad shoulders. “You don’t scare me, and I sure wouldn’t mind one of your health muffins. But first I have something to show you ladies. We’re not only here for that sick inspector. We’re still investigating a murder. Do either of you recognize this knife?”

  I caught Juan’s widened eyes. He shook his head ever so slightly side to side.

  Bunny drew a clear plastic evidence bag from her inner jacket pocket and held it up for us to see.

  “Juan here denied recognizing any knives,” Bunny said. “Even the one he was chopping onions with. This knife, it was found in some mulch by a tree a few feet from Napoleon’s body.”

  Standing behind Bunny, Juan shook his head more vigorously and mouthed what I thought was No.

  I recognized the knife and I knew that Flori did too. So would Juan. The blade was common enough, about seven inches long and what my culinary school instructors would have termed a general utility knife. The handle, however, was one of a kind. I stared at the familiar carving on the worn obsidian, an outline of an owl done in a Native American style. Linda had used this knife for as long as I’d known her and probably much longer than that. She kept it in her cart and used it for mundane tasks like opening packaging and cutting the corn husk ties around her tamales. I let Flori answer.

  “That’s Linda’s,” she said without hesitation.

  “It’s the murder weapon,” Bunny said.