Feliz Navidead

by Ann Myers

  Flori explained the knitting group. “Unlike those foul-tongued quilters, we’re getting stuff done. We’re sleuthing while we work.”

  I held in a groan. When I left with the kids this morning, hadn’t Flori promised to keep our investigation both preliminary and a secret? Now all these knitting snitchers knew, and worse, so did Bill. He raised a milky blue eye, took me in, checked his watch, and made a note.

  “Come sit and knit,” Flori said. “Would you like a drink?”

  Would I ever! However, I couldn’t sneak back home with margarita on my breath. Mom would catch me for sure. I settled on hot apple cider and squeezed in at a far corner of the table beside Flori, who handed me needles and a ball of black yarn so I could “blend in.” She knew full well I couldn’t knit. She’d tried to teach me and had finally given up, telling me I was “good at other things.”

  I rewound the ball of yarn for something to do. The ladies on my other side were discussing knit targets, including the statue of the dancer in front of the Pajarito. The lady with the basketball hoop called dibs on making the dancer a warmer loin cloth. Snickering laughter erupted. This was definitely Flori’s kind of group.

  “Ah, the Indian brave. He’s right under the scene of the crime,” Flori said, loud enough to cut across the giggles.

  A hush fell over the group, save the clicking of needles and Bill’s radio squawking.

  Flori continued. “Remember, the first person who provides evidence to solve the devil killing gets free meals at Tres Amigas for a whole year.”

  Margarita glasses clinked.

  I groaned. Flori chronically gave away free meals in exchange for information. The meals were redeemable with secret code words that I could never keep straight, and Flori refused to keep a written list. The codes were secret, she said. Plus, there was informant confidentiality to consider.

  Across the table, a woman with a thick silver bob drew out a flask and doused her coffee cup. She took a slug, breathed out like a seasoned shot drinker, and declared that she’d solved the crime.

  “That’s nice, Hazel,” Flori said. “But you only get the free meals if you provide real, solid evidence.”

  Hazel pursed her lips. “Well, it’s obvious who did it, isn’t it?”

  A few people murmured Santa and Wyatt Cortez.

  “No, no,” Hazel said. “Come on, we have better memories than the young people give us credit for.” She looked challengingly around the group. Everybody but me, Flori, and note-scribbling Bill had their eyes fixed on their knitting.

  “The Ortiz family, of course,” Hazel said. She raised her cup in the direction of Flori and me.

  I’d reached the end of my ball of string. I picked up my needles and wrapped some yarn around one. “You mean the relatives of the woman Francisco Ferrara accidentally killed?” I said, trying to sound casual as I cocooned the needle in yarn.

  Miriam coughed pointedly at the word accidentally.

  “So you don’t think it was an accident?” I asked.

  Miriam admitted that it was “technically” ruled an accident. “But my niece’s friend was at that party,” she added. “She was one of the servers. She said that everyone had at least one drink. Who knows if Mr. Ferrara didn’t have more? He wouldn’t let the police give him a Breathalyzer test. That’s suspicious, isn’t it? The Ortiz family must think so.”

  “Exactly,” said Hazel, in a “case-closed” tone.

  I was wondering how many tipsy ladies I could stuff in my car. They were all pretty petite. Probably four, and I could do a couple runs. None of them should be driving either.

  Flori, showing off her mind-reading talent, said, “It’s a good thing our group dues pay for taxi rides home, isn’t it, ladies?”

  Hazel grumbled that her last taxi driver wouldn’t wait when she jumped out to tie a lovely knit hat on a statue. “Just because it was in Cathedral Park, he claimed it was sacrilegious and drove off and left me.” She shrugged. “I got more done without him.”

  I was thinking more about the dead woman’s son and other relatives. “I wonder what happened to the son. Angel? Was that his name? Didn’t he go to live with his grandmother?” I silently thanked the Internet for allowing me to sound in the know. Now if YouTube could teach me how to knit.

  No one answered right away. Several sets of eyes flicked nervously to Flori.

  Flori put down the piece she was working on, which I feared was another ski mask. “I’ll say it. I’m not afraid of her. Josephina Ortiz was my school chum back in the day. She’s a witch, and her grandson Angel’s a killer.”

  I gaped at Flori.

  “See!” Hazel crowed.

  Needles clicked. Everyone else kept quiet, except Miriam, who politely asked me what I was knitting. “Such a lovely yarn choice,” she said.

  I put my hands over the embarrassing yarn lump and asked the obvious questions. “A witch and a killer?” Hazel might actually have solved the case. “Who did he kill? When?”

  “Angel was a juvenile at the time,” Flori said. “So his name wasn’t in the papers.”

  “But people heard,” Miriam said, nodding at Bill. “It’s rather sad. Angel had a difficult childhood and I don’t think he meant to kill. It was a schoolyard brawl. He punched someone, hard, and the young man fell and hit his head and died. Tragic all around. Angel’s actually turned into quite a nice young man. I heard he’s a wonderful baker and he takes care of his grandmother.”

  His grandmother the witch. I waited for someone to bring up that topic. Hazel obliged.

  “She’s not really a witch,” Hazel said belligerently. “That’s only something superstitious villagers up in the mountains believe.”

  “She might be a witch,” the lady closest to me said. “If she wants to be. She is rather frightening and, besides, we mustn’t judge.”

  Flori agreed. “To each her own. I will say, Josie has always had a way with casting the evil eye and issuing curses. All the women in her family do. Her mother was legendary.” To me, she said. “Rita, you’ll be interested to know that Josie worked at the Inn of the Pajarito for many years. I hear she still shows up there a lot. Wyatt Cortez lets her walk about and rest in the housekeepers’ lounge. She gets a bit muddled about times and decades.”

  Sympathetic murmurs for the forgetful witch went around the table, and the conversation turned to the logistics of knitting giant socks for the green dinosaur mascot of the Sinclair gas station.

  “What does Josephina Ortiz look like?” I asked Flori.

  Flori smiled, sending her wrinkles fanning across her round, rosy cheeks. “Josie hasn’t aged well. She was about your height. A trouble with her back makes her my height nowadays. She likes to wear black and shawls. No pointy hat. She’s not a Halloween witch. She’s a bruja, more mischievous than mean.”

  I was beginning to picture her perfectly. “She speaks Spanish?”

  “Oh yes, that’s what she spoke at home as a girl.”

  I left soon after, but not before setting the Knit and Snitchers on the task of locating Josephina and Angel Ortiz. As Flori pointed out, Josephina wasn’t the type to list her number and address in the phone book. Stepping out into the cool air, I dodged an incoming taxi. I was feeling pretty good. I’d gotten what I came for, a new motive and a lead on either a witness or a killer. The trouble would be explaining to Manny that I’d actually seen a witch.

  Chapter 11

  “Manny always loved my thumbprints,” Mom said. I knew she meant a favorite holiday cookie, though my mind flashed to an absurd image of Manny collecting cookie-dough fingerprints. I imagined my ex in his supercop mode, dusting cookies and cordoning off baking sheets with crime scene tape.

  “Everyone loves your thumbprints, Mom,” I said.

  She waved off the praise modestly and pressed her thumb into another ball of vanilla-flavored dough. It was Friday evening, and we’d eaten our comforting baked ziti early to clear space for cookie production. Christmas carols played on the radio, Celia sat at
the kitchen table beside me, and Hugo purred at my feet.

  Celia dug out a last spoonful of lemon curd and filled a thumbprint. Back home, Mom used her own homemade strawberry jam. Here, we were using up some of the half-empty jelly jars that mobbed the back of my fridge. Blueberry, strawberry, lemon marmalade, and prickly pear thumbprints already cooled on the counter.

  The prickly pear jelly was pale apricot in color and impressively homemade by Dalia using fruits harvested from our yards. I’ll admit, I was a little skeptical, having had a painful run-in with local cactuses. But Dalia had a hot method for removing the spines. She burned them off using a small kitchen torch. For good measure, she strained the pulp three times. The remaining juice was slightly tangy with elusive hints of strawberry, watermelon, and bubblegum. I loved it. Mom had deemed it “interesting.”

  I helped myself to a barely cooled cactus thumbprint. Celia polished off a raspberry jam version. My sometimes sullen teen had cracked over a week’s allotment of smiles during cookie making.

  “These are great, Gran,” she said. “Have you tried Flori’s bizcochitos? They’re award-winning, like your thumbprints.”

  Mom beamed at the mention of her county fair win and vowed to try a bizcochito. “They’re not spicy, are they?”

  “Only when Flori rolls them in cinnamon sugar with hot pepper in it,” Celia said, devilishly. I decided not to mention Flori’s other additions of lard and wine.

  Mom took out the final tray of thumbprints. “What flavor do you think your father would like best, Celia?” she asked.

  “I don’t think we have to worry about—” I started.

  Mom interrupted. “Really, Rita, be nice. It’s the holidays, and Manny worked so hard capturing that awful Santa. Now if your lawyer friend hadn’t gotten him out of jail . . .”

  Celia wisely kept her head down and focused on nibbling cookie crumbs.

  “Jake’s simply providing a basic right,” I said, glossing over the fact that he charged hefty fees for this right. “Presumption of innocence,” I continued grandly. “And Santa could actually be innocent. We can’t have an innocent Santa go to jail on Christmas, can we?”

  Mom looked up. She’d moved on to her wonderful, soft gingerbread cookie recipe. Molasses globbed in slow motion into her measuring cup. “Oh?” she said, raising her eyebrows. “Why would you think he’s innocent? We both saw him. He certainly looked like a killer, Rita. You’re not getting involved, are you? Not after we talked . . .”

  We hadn’t really talked. Mom had issued a warning and I’d evaded the issue. I knew I had no chance of coming out ahead in this conversation. I’d either have to outright lie or upset my mother.

  “Jake’s a good and honest man,” I said, sticking to the truth. “With a sweet tooth too.”

  Celia joined in Jake’s defense. “Yeah, we can make Jake a plate of cookies. He’ll love these cactus thumbprints and your gingerbread cookies, Gran. Maybe we can make dog biscuits for his bulldog, Winston. We’ll say they’re a gift from Hugo.”

  I smiled gratefully at Celia.

  “He would like cactus cookies,” my mother said, as if she expected such questionable behavior from a man she was still calling an ambulance chaser.

  I offered up another lovable characteristic. “Jake makes his grandmother’s recipe for sweet mincemeat empanadas every year,” I said. “They’re little hand pies, with dried fruits, spices, and brown sugar. You’d love them, Mom. They remind me of Grandma’s apple mince pie. Jake said he was going to bake a batch this weekend and give us some.”

  “Does he make his own crust?” Mom demanded.

  I had to reveal that he used pre-made tortilla dough if frying the pies, or store-bought pie crusts if he was baking. I laughed it off. “Men, right? It’s impressive he’s making pies, though. He makes fabulous biscuits too, with lots of butter and a maple syrup glaze.” I stopped myself before pointing out that Manny’s culinary aptitude began and ended at microwave dinners, and even then he’d managed to mess up his Hungry-Man meals.

  Mom acknowledged that biscuit making was nice. She wiped her hands on her apron and said, “So, have you met his mother and father?”

  “Not yet,” I said, feeling like I was failing a test. Mom launched into a storm of questions about his parents’ ages, why and when Jake divorced, and what other relatives I may—or may not—have met. I told her what little I knew, most of which came from Flori. According to her, Jake’s ex-wife was a filmmaker and had left Jake for the greener pastures of Hollywood. I didn’t mention that Jake had been brokenhearted and waited as wistfully as Winston for a couple years, hoping she’d return. That worried me a little. Did he still have a spark for his ex? I’d seen her photo on a film Web site and like everyone said, she was tall, blond, and beautiful.

  “I met a cousin,” I added, with more enthusiasm than the event warranted. The cousin was a bland accountant named Bob who worked in Albuquerque and seemed nice enough. Jake and I had run into Bob at a coffee shop. The meeting hadn’t been planned. Doubt crept around the edges of my brain. Why hadn’t I met his parents? They lived near Taos, only an hour’s drive away up the Rio Grande. Jake and I had taken a day trip up that way in the fall. We’d stopped to gaze at golden aspen leaves and eat at a humble café known for its green chile cheeseburgers and bulldog mascots. Winston had been delighted. I had a photo on my phone of him drooling over his new bulldog girlfriends.

  Maybe Jake was feeling protective of our relationship, like me. I reached for another cookie, thinking I should have kept the secret longer.

  Thankfully, Mom turned her attention to Celia and her friends. “So, this boy Sky you hang out with . . .” Mom said.

  Celia coolly informed Mom that Sky had a boyfriend. “A supercute guy from the prep school,” she said, landing hefty disdain on “prep.”

  Mom, to her credit, said that was very nice for Sky. “Sky’s good-looking and polite. A nice boy. No young gentlemen for you, dear? Did your school have a Christmas dance?” When Celia scrunched her face in disgust, Mom supplied tales of my dancing woes. “I remember when Rita and Albert Ridgeland—he has a lovely dental practice now—went off to junior prom. I had to put my yardstick between them, they were dancing so close.”

  “Albert was a clutcher, Mom, and sweaty,” I said. That night marked the launch of my disastrous, foot-stomping dance moves. I munched on a cactus cookie, hoping to wipe away the memory.

  Celia grinned. “I don’t dance,” she told her grandmother. “I don’t have time for boys either, other than friends.”

  “You’re a smart girl,” my mother said. “I’m sure you’ll know the right boy when you meet him. Take your time. But not too long.”

  I got anxious just thinking of that advice.

  Celia took it in stride. “How did you know, Gran?” Celia asked. “How did you and . . . ah . . . Granddad meet?”

  I could understand her terminology trouble. Celia had never known her grandfather, and I only had a five-year-old’s foggy memory of him. I saw my chance to quiz Mom. “Yeah, Mom. Tell us some stories about you and Dad,” I said. “Was there dancing? Smooching on Great-Gran’s porch?”

  Mom stared at the gingerbread recipe printed on a faded, smudged card I’d carried around since college. She waved a hand. “Oh, I don’t know. That was so long ago. I don’t recall. Are you sure you wrote out the spice measurements correctly in this recipe, Rita? This looks like an awful lot of ground cloves.”

  Was Mom employing my time-honored deflection technique? Mom, who’d been fussing that I didn’t share enough? Celia raised an eyebrow over her milk glass. Mom continued muttering about the spice proportions and stuck her head in the fridge, presumably looking for cold butter, though I knew the recipe called for good old-fashioned Crisco. It was Christmas, I decided. We should all be allowed some deflection.

  I changed the subject. “I think we should all go get a Christmas tree for outside. Jake’s secretary is making birdseed ornaments and popcorn strings that would be perfect.
He could help us haul the tree and decorate.”

  “That would be nice, dear,” Mom said, and I swear she breathed a sigh of relief. “I do miss my Christmas tree.”

  “We can get some white lights,” I said, feeling bad that we hadn’t re-created more of Mom’s holiday traditions. “We’ll decorate the porch in lights,” I said, “And I can get electric candles for the window. It’ll be just like home.”

  Mom looked dubious, especially when Celia announced that it was time for devil practice.

  “You don’t have to drive me, Mom,” my teenager said as we sat in the driveway waiting for the car to warm above frigid sputtering. The night was cloudless and a nearly full moon glowed behind the cottonwood towering over my landlord’s house.

  “You won’t even know I’m there,” I said, which was always a lie in teenager’s ears.

  “Yeah, right,” Celia said. Sounding more cheery, she said, “If you’re hoping to hear the play’s canceled, don’t waste your time. We all got a message today from Ms. Crundall herself. She says the play must go on! Francisco would want us to and we can’t let bully creeps scare us. Anyway, Dad says they have their man. They just need more evidence.”

  I tactfully kept quiet. Manny hadn’t exactly embraced my tip about Angel and Josephina Ortiz as potential suspects/witnesses. He’d been predictably snarky when I told him that the elderly Ortiz was a real live witch and not a figment of my imagination, as he’d suggested the night of the murder. He’d then recounted the futile afternoon he’d spent interviewing Wyatt Cortez’s staff of un-jolly elves. None of the elves would say anything bad about their boss, although Manny gleaned that they hadn’t been pleased with their costumes.

  “I’ll hover in a dark corner with Cass,” I said. “She’s going with Sky. I won’t be the only concerned mother there.”

  Celia gave a skeptical sniff. “I’m going to have to make Sky an extra-tall imp costume. He says he won’t let me go up on the roof alone. Dad says the same thing, but he can wear his cop costume.”