Mariachi Meddler

by D. R. Ransdell

  “At least she remembered about the bill. Last summer I overdrew my father’s account by two thousand dollars!” Again she tried to pull apart the receipts.

  “It’s easy to lose track.”

  “The problem was my math. I thought there was an extra three thousand, but instead—”

  “It was a simple mistake.”

  “Explain that to my dad!”

  Now I smiled. “I’d love to, but I don’t think he’d believe me.” I’d forgotten the pleasures of quipping with a woman who had no vested interest in my plans and was pleasant about assisting me.

  “Please,” I said, indicating the bundle, “allow me.”

  In an exuberant motion, I tore the bundle apart so effectively that the whole array of receipts flew from my hands and spilled over the floor as if someone had plugged in a giant fan. Stupid.

  “I am so sorry.”

  “No problem.” She bent down on her knees to start gathering the slips of paper, and I did the same. “I’ve been telling Father for years he should computerize the whole system. Not only would that help us keep track of things,” she glanced over my shoulder, “but then we could throw away this monster filing cabinet! It takes up too much space.”

  We straightened the bunches of receipts into neat piles, checking the names as we went along.

  “I’m sorry to put you to work,” she said.

  “It’s my own fault.” My eyes caught something unexpected, a receipt for an E. Leonard. Sixty dollars on a World Class card on July 6th. No street address was listed, only a P.O. box in Vegas. Edith had claimed she was home with her sister the night of her husband’s death. Perhaps she’d been following the man instead.

  I stared at the receipt, trying to memorize the P.O. Box. If she was jealous enough to follow him, maybe she was jealous enough to kill him too. Or hire someone to do it.

  “You found your receipt?” she asked.

  “No,” I said, startled. I stretched my fingers. “Just taking a break.” We went back to straightening piles. When my assistant wasn’t looking, I slipped the Leonard receipt into my pocket. I was sure the staff of Moonlit Nights wouldn’t miss it.

  A few minutes later she finished with her pile of papers and then stood and smoothed her pants against her leg.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t see your name anywhere.”

  I indicated my own pile. “Me neither.”

  “Maybe you paid in cash?”

  I shook my head. “You’d think I could remember.”

  I handed her the receipts and helped her staple them back together.

  “Perhaps you can call your bank,” she suggested as we walked towards the main room.

  “Of course. No big deal.” I masked my disappointment and kicked myself for not bringing a picture of Yiolanda. I could have played the situation differently, perhaps portrayed myself as a long-lost friend, and shown the picture to the waiters. Most people who saw Yiolanda remembered her. Even the women.

  “Mr. Díaz, I hate to tell you this, but we don’t keep the best records. And sometimes,” she continued softly, “if a receipt gets misplaced and we don’t find it until later that night after we’ve done the tallies, we throw it away.”

  I nodded. “I promised my wife I’d try to find out, and I was in the neighborhood. I didn’t think it would be hard.”

  “It shouldn’t have been.”

  “Thanks for your time.” I escorted her back to the table where a stack of menus awaited her. The restaurant’s whimsical logo featured an alley cat crooning away at a big yellow moon.

  “Please, let me take your phone number. I’ll call if I find it.”

  “Oh, don’t bother.”

  “May I borrow your pen?”

  I handed her the ballpoint sticking out from the pocket of my shoulder bag. She took it and smoothed out a paper napkin.

  “Sixty-oh-three, one-five-two-nine,” I said.

  “If we find the receipt, I’ll be sure to let you know.”

  “Right. Thanks again.” I extended my hand.

  “My pleasure.”

  I left the restaurant wondering whose number I’d given her and hoping she’d asked just to be polite.

  ***

  I approached Hotel Farfalla cautiously. From the outside, it was the same as two weeks before, suggesting that the owner’s demise hadn’t changed anything.

  When I’d called to reserve a room, a man answered. I assumed Edith would be there to run the business, but when I asked to speak to her, the man said to call her at home and provided the number. But I was hesitant to embrace contact with Edith. I couldn’t remember what I’d told her about myself. The day we met, I’d been too busy processing information to think about what I was saying.

  The hotel’s modest lobby area had a reception desk to the right and three love seats huddled around a square, wooden coffee table in the middle. No women were in sight. The man behind the desk, whom I judged a bit younger than I, set down his newspaper and rose to greet me.

  “I’m sorry, but we’re out of rooms.” His straight hair was limp and his wrinkled shirt damp. He had a pleasant demeanor; he’d no doubt repeated the room information several times in the past hour. Judging from the empty cubbyholes in the rack behind his head, only two rooms were currently unoccupied.

  “I called earlier.”

  “Oh!” He opened a school notebook where names had been listed. “I’m Andy Veracruz.”

  His fingers traced over the penciled scrawls until they reached my name. “Here we are.”

  He led me to a small room on the third floor. The room was basic, but so were my fifty-five dollars, and since my window overlooked a park, the opportunities for people-watching compensated for the absence of a cozy atmosphere. I stuck my nose out the window. The fumes from the cars were noticeable because I was used to being further off the ground.

  “Would you prefer the room at the back? There’s no view, but it’s quieter.”

  “Traffic doesn’t bother me,” I said, reaching for the key. “Besides, I’ll probably be out late.”

  “Have a pleasant evening.” He bowed slightly as he left.

  The room was the size of a big closet. The single bed filled the bulk of the room. The bathroom would have been a hazard for anyone who couldn’t sit comfortably in an airline seat, but the Pine-Sol left an agreeable fragrance. I sat on the bed, a crinkly thing with old springs, and bounced up and down a few times. Then I lay down, staring at the once-white ceiling and wondering if Yiolanda had ever lain here, staring at the same ceiling, with Leonard bouncing on top of her. Afterwards, what had she claimed about the passion she felt for him?

  Inadvertently I took a nap. By the time I woke up, the sun had set and the pedestrian traffic signaled the advent of a night’s entertainment. I prepared to join it. I put on black pants, a silk shirt Christina had given me for my birthday two years before, and a sports jacket I’d borrowed from Joey. I didn’t want to look too out of place at a posh club. It wouldn’t be any posher than the scene around L.A., but since I never went dancing, I hadn’t bothered to keep up with the styles.

  In the lobby of Hotel Farfalla, a French couple and three British ladies studied maps of the city. The man behind the desk had graduated from the newspaper to the soccer match that played on a small black and white TV on the corner of his desk.

  “Excuse me,” I said quietly so the tourists couldn’t hear me, “I heard the news about poor Mr. Leonard. Have the police learned anything?”

  The man shook his head. “Nothing so far, and I guess it’ll stay that way. Did you know my uncle?”

  I wasn’t surprised. There was a family resemblance. “I knew Edith better than I did her husband. My cousin went to grade school with her. How’s she getting along?”

  He paused to study the doorway. He wanted to be a lot further away than he was. “I can’t tell. Since my uncle’s death, she’s hardly left her house.”

  The French tourists got up to leave. The woman held up her key, wordless
ly asking my informant if he wanted it, but he shook his head.

  “My uncle was fairly discreet, but he didn’t always make it home at night.”

  I folded back the edge of the newspaper lying on the desk. “It happens.”

  Leonard’s nephew didn’t strike me as the gossipy type, but he was desperate for release. I’d witnessed the phenomenon more frequently on airplanes. Since the people beside you knew darned good and well you’d never see them again, they were willing to tell you their entire life story.

  “To tell you the truth, my uncle was ordinary. I don’t see how he got so many women.”

  “He had more than one?”

  “Most of the time. But there was nothing special about them either.”

  I felt my face redden. “Is that so?”

  “Except for one. Farfalla, he called her. Hence—” He pointed to the sign outside.

  “Discreet.”

  He didn’t catch my sarcasm. He was lost in memory.

  “That one my uncle was nuts about. Has that ever happened to you, that you went nuts over a woman?”

  “Once, but it was a long time ago, when I was still in high school. I would have done anything for her, but then she dumped me without any warning. I never understood why, and I probably never got over it.”

  “I had something similar once, but you learn to bounce back.”

  “If you’re lucky.”

  “I guess. And my uncle sure wasn’t. He called me one night a few weeks ago, panicked. It was his turn to do the overnight, but he begged me to do it for him.”

  “Was something wrong?”

  “He was afraid he’d miss his chance to see her. She doesn’t live in Vegas anymore, and she was only going to be here for a couple of nights.”

  “I guess your uncle isn’t the first man to lose his head over a woman.”

  “Oh, no. And living in Vegas you see just about everything. Still, I feel sorry for my aunt. The only reason my uncle didn’t appreciate her was that she loved him too much. ‘Farfalla’ was a completely different type. Knew how to dress, all that stuff. Always said ‘hi’ to me. Kind of a let’s-do-it smile, if you know what I mean.”

  I knew exactly. “No wonder Edith was angry.”

  The man planted his hands on his waist. “After putting up with it for a decade, she wasn’t angry enough.”

  “A decade? I have furniture that doesn’t last that long.”

  The nephew straightened his collar, but it flopped back down. “The woman moved to California a couple of years ago. She only comes every couple of months.”

  An elderly tourist descended the stairs. “May I have new towels? The ones in my room are soiled.”

  The man disappeared into a back room, emerging with fresh towels seconds later as a group of tourists bustled in through the front door.

  “I’d better let you go,” I said, extending my hand. “Sorry. I didn’t catch your name.”

  “I probably forgot to tell you. I’m my uncle’s namesake. Stephen Leonard.”

  I was sorry I’d asked.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Dazzle! Dazzle!, where Chester Mathews worked before his untimely demise, was a small club on the second floor of a tourist shop near the Stratosphere. The cracks in the plaster and the spots on the wine-colored carpet in the entryway told me the decorating job wasn’t new. I paid the cover charge and slipped inside.

  The club consisted of a dimly lit rectangle. A bar occupied one long leg; a series of mirrors above it gave the sensation of space. Two rows of small tables hugged the opposite wall, inviting cozy conversations. The dance area, also rectangular, beckoned with a waxed wooden floor. Music emerged from the speakers, but at a comfortable level, unlike the clubs near Squid Bay I passed on evening walks.

  I took a seat along the bar where the bartender casually participated in several conversations at once. He served me promptly but then left me alone when I didn’t immediately start talking to him.

  I had too many questions in my head to make chitchat. Yiolanda had dined at Moonlit Nights and certainly not alone. A few hours after dinner, she’d been at the crime scene of a murder in a nearby part of town. I got the picture out of my wallet for the twentieth time and studied the faces of the bystanders. They were mostly male. The only other woman stood far from Yiolanda, but people were so bunched together I couldn’t tell who was with whom. The grainy reproduction masked features except for Yiolanda’s. Hers jumped out.

  Gradually the club filled. The clientele consisted of congenial, well-dressed males. I suddenly realized that the man at the other end of the bar had been observing me for a concrete reason. I glued my eyes to the beer bottle, counting the number of words on the label.

  When prompted, the bartender brought me another beer.

  “What time does the main show start?”

  He glanced at his watch before surveying the empty dance floor. “Not for a while, although usually customers are dancing by now.”

  The noise levels had quadrupled. Earnest conversations rippled around the room. The focus was on making new friends. I wasn’t sure I could get away with asking many questions before giving my fellow drinkers the entirely wrong idea.

  An older couple nudged in next to me. A wiry man sat on the only available stool while his lover, of similar stature, leaned into him. The bartender greeted them as old friends.

  “So who’s the new show stopper?” asked the seated man. His features were well defined, but the crow’s feet were gaining ground.

  The bartender poured both men shots of whisky and gave the seated man a glass of water to go with it. “I don’t even know what he looks like, but the boss says he’s as good as Chester was.”

  “Did the police ever find out who killed him?” I asked.

  The bartender raised his eyebrows.

  “Police!” said the seated man. “You can’t rely on them to care about our world. They pretend we don’t exist.”

  “Officially,” said the bartender, “there’s nothing. If you really want to know, ask those guys over there.” He pointed behind my shoulder.

  “Relatives?”

  The gay couple snickered. “Sort of.”

  After a moment, I turned around. Near the stage, G.C. and Cross stretched their limbs, preparing for their show.

  The last time I’d seen them, they were speeding off from Noche Azul after losing sight of me and Yiolanda. No wonder they’d marched into Rolando’s restaurant as if they owned the place; they were used to getting attention. I hadn’t pegged them as gay, but they looked too comfortable to be anything else.

  “Consider the bright side,” said the standing man jovially, indicating Cross and G.C. “Now they won’t have to fight over him.”

  If they were used to threesomes with Mathews, no wonder they were willing to punish Yiolanda.

  The seated man stirred water into his shot. “He wasn’t worth it anyway. You can’t trust a ‘bi’ these days. It’s too dangerous.”

  We nodded agreement.

  The music stopped and the lights dimmed to near darkness. When a new song started on a louder system, Yiolanda’s two headaches strutted to the middle of the dance floor. To the sound of a heavy rock song I couldn’t identify, they started gyrating. They began by making small motions standing apart from one another. As the song continued, they worked their way towards the center of the stage and towards each other, the crowd cheering them on. They moved gracefully, reveling in the positive reception they got from the crowd.

  “Their timing is off tonight,” said the standing man after a minute.

  “They’ve lost focus,” said the bartender. “They’re sworn to revenge. Took off work to fly to L.A. and look for the killer.”

  “What about the little bitch Mathews was sleeping with? She ought to know something.”

  “Maybe she didn’t kiss and tell.”

  I strained to hear more of their conversation, but when they changed topics, I excused myself to vie for a better view. As I watche
d G.C. and Cross’s performance, I could see their biceps and the strong leg muscles that showed beneath clingy shorts. They were both in perfect shape. Yiolanda and I had escaped from them because we’d been lucky, not because we’d been fast.

  Soon I veered towards the exit. I was sure neither man had seen me, and I was anxious to keep it that way. As soon as I hit the street, I phoned Squid Bay.

  “Noche Azul Restaurant,” said Dennis. “May I help you?”

  “It’s me, Andy. Can I speak to my brother? If he’s mid-song, I’ll wait.”

  “Let me check.” The background noise suggested a lively crowd. Joey was singing. He sounded pretty good. I probably needed to let him practice more often.

  “Say bro,’” he said a couple of minutes later. “You owe me a big one.”

  “I owe you five or six. How’s it going over there?”

  “Not so hot. Your girlfriend showed up.”

  A car whizzed by. Automatically I backed away. “Do you mean Stefani?”

  “Yes, that girlfriend!”

  “You’ve never met her. How did you know who she was?”

  “I didn’t! This gal keeps making eyes at me, winks, blows me a kiss. I try to ignore her. Finally I start singing to the ceiling to avoid eye contact.”

  “Pablo and Sergio didn’t fill you in?”

  “They weren’t paying attention. In the meantime, she gets uptight. She comes up to the stage and starts swearing at me!”

  “Shit. What did Rolando say?”

  “He hasn’t been in tonight. But your buddies laughed themselves silly.”

  “Poor Stefani! But I told her we look alike.”

  “Maybe she forgot. Anyway, she thought we were making fun of her and started to cry. Sergio had to jump off the stage, put his arms around her, and explain I wasn’t you. She didn’t believe us until I showed her a picture of the kids. That calmed her down.”

  I could already imagine the scenario, and all the explaining I would have to do when I got back to town. “How did Yiolanda react?”

  “She didn’t notice.”