The Pot Thief Who Studied D. H. Lawrence

by J. Michael Orenduff

  Just at that moment, Glain opened her door and Agatha Cruz, looking frail and scared, asked Carla if she could stay with her. Carla said yes, and the two of them went into Carla’s room and we all heard the bolt slide into place.

  “Everyone get back in your rooms,” commanded Glover.

  I looked at Maria, shrugged, and went back to my room. Saved by the bell. I hoped. I hadn’t agreed to share a room with Betty which would have ruined my chances with Maria. And for all I knew, I may have prevented another murder.

  To tell the truth, I wasn’t anxious to jump into bed with either Betty or Maria. I like sex as much as most people do, and I found them both attractive, but I’ve always thought it prudent to get to know a woman before going to bed with her. It’s not a matter of some grand principle. It’s just that having sex with someone creates a sort of bond. I don’t mean you have to do the honorable thing and get married. I always thought that was silly. But once you’ve had sex, the relationship between you changes. That’s not bad, necessarily. In fact, usually it’s a good change. But it’s not one I like to rush into because the woman in question might turn out to be someone you don’t want to go to the next stage with. I’m not saying that I’ve never had sex with a woman I just met, but it’s not my customary practice.

  Take Stella, for example. Stella and I met in an elevator, and she started flirting with me. I didn’t realize she was flirting with me at the time. Susannah explained it to me later after I told her about the conversation. Then I went to visit Stella a day or two later in her apartment, and – well – to put it bluntly, she seduced me. Mind you, I’m not putting the blame on her. I’m an adult and responsible for my own behavior. I could have resisted.

  Or maybe not. She was gorgeous, shapely, and so alluring that I just couldn’t think of any reason to resist. What was the point I was trying to make here? When I start thinking about Stella, my mind sort of... Oh, now I remember. The point is that I was attracted to both Betty and Maria, but I was glad the circumstances were such that I didn’t have a chance to give in to temptation. And although Dolly had said she didn’t want to see me again, I was hoping that was just temporary.

  33

  When we got back to the room, Susannah said she couldn’t get Winant off her mind.

  “Freezing to death must be horrible, Hubie.”

  “We don’t know that. No one who froze to death has ever come back to tell us if it was horrible.”

  “We should ask Cyril’s great-grandfather. Maybe he knows someone in the spirit world who froze to death.”

  “I heard something like that. Two men met at the pearly gates and struck up a conversation. The first man said he froze to death. The second man says he had a heart attack. He said he knew his wife was cheating on him so he went home early to try to catch her in the act. He ran into their bedroom where he found her undressed but alone. He ran down to the basement, but no man was hiding there. He ran up to the second floor, but no man was hiding there either. He ran up to the attic, and no one was there. He ran downstairs, through the kitchen, and out into the garage, but still found no one. Then he had a heart attack from all that running up and down stairs and died. ‘Too bad you didn’t check the freezer on your way through the kitchen,’ says the first man. ‘If you had, we would both still be alive’.”

  “That’s a terrible joke, Hubert.”

  “Yeah, but it took your mind off Winant.”

  “True. And he was a disagreeable guy anyway. You know what I most disliked about him?”

  I bit. “What?”

  “His frozen countenance.”

  I laughed.

  Neither of us felt like sleeping. I doubt anyone in the building could sleep under the circumstances. So Susannah suggested we try to figure out who the killer was. We all wanted to know who it was so we could stop him. Or her. But Susannah is hooked on murder mysteries and found it exciting to be in the middle of a real one.

  For my part, I was feeling responsible for making people believe there had been two murders. Even though I thought I was right, there remained a sliver of doubt. Rich may have fallen into the bath. He may have used both an electric shaver and disposable blades. For all I know, he may have enjoyed icy baths.

  Winant may have gone in the freezer to cool off. Maybe he had taken a vow of chastity so that being icy cold was a blessing for him. Maybe someone came along and accidentally trapped him inside by hanging the lock in the latch and was afraid to admit it. That’s a lot of maybes. But it could happen.

  “I think the best suspect is Vasquez,” Susannah volunteered.

  “Why?”

  “He keeps clinging to the idea that the deaths were accidents. If you want to kill a whole group of people one by one, it’s easier if you can convince them the deaths are accidents. That way they aren’t on guard against a killer.”

  “But he’s also the one that keeps saying we should call the authorities,” I pointed out.

  “That’s just a ploy to throw suspicion away from himself,” she countered. “He knows we can’t call the authorities. And on top of that, he’s a lobbyist.”

  “Good point.”

  “Of course it could be Saunders,” she said.

  “How do you figure that?”

  “Because he’s a judge and he sort of took charge after we found the first body. Remember that in the movie, the murderer turns out to be a retired judge, but you don’t suspect him because he takes charge of the group and seems to be trying to reveal the killer and stop the killings. It’s clever, isn’t it, Hubie? You pretend to be hunting the killer, so no one thinks you are the killer.”

  “You told me there are no coincidences, remember? Well, it would be quite a coincidence if what was happening here turned out to mirror what happened in an Agatha Christie mystery.”

  “It wouldn’t be a coincidence if the killer got his ideas from reading mysteries. It could happen, Hubie. You know what they say – ‘Life imitates art’.”

  I snapped my fingers. “We need pictures.”

  “I didn’t see any security cameras.”

  “I don’t mean pictures of the killer in the act. I mean pictures of everyone here.”

  “Of course!” she said, and then hesitated. “Why do we need pictures?”

  “Because someone here isn’t who he says he is.”

  “I knew it! Who is it?”

  “If I knew that, we wouldn’t need the pictures. Did you bring a camera?”

  “No, but you did.”

  I frowned at her.

  “The cell phone Tristan gave you is also a camera,” she said.

  “But we’re out of range for cell phones.”

  “Jeez. Give me the thing. You don’t have to be in range for the camera to work.”

  I looked out the window and saw falling particles. I couldn’t tell whether it was sleet, snow, or rain. I opened the window but couldn’t feel anything because of the deep eaves. I had to lean out the window and extend my arm full length to discover it was a warm gentle rain. That’s a New Mexico spring for you – a blizzard one day, a tropical drizzle the next.

  Of course the rain was welcome. It would begin to melt the snow. We could all go home, and there would be no more murders. Maybe the police could eventually find out who did it. I hoped justice would be served. But frankly, it was not my problem. Unlike the other murders I had accidentally gotten involved in, I wouldn’t have to figure out who the killer was.

  34

  Carl Wron and I spent an uneventful shift as sentries. Shortly after six, the guests started to straggle out of their rooms. By seven most people were up and in the main room. Glain and Cruz hadn’t come out, but the ones who did must not have gotten much sleep. They looked like zombies.

  The snow cover had been reduced from several feet to several inches by the rain. We could have driven away, but we agreed we should stay put until the police came. Benthrop said he wasn’t staying a minute more, but after Glover threatened to stop him by force if necessary, he took a
chair and sulked.

  It was decided Canon would drive to Taos and bring back the police since he was in charge of the facility where it had all happened. He got in a pickup with a university seal on the door, and we watched him drive away with relief. It seemed like our nightmarish weekend was nearing an end.

  Maria made coffee, and we all remained in the main room on the grounds that there is safety in numbers. We sat around sipping coffee until someone suggested we should wake Glain and Cruz, so Betty went and knocked on the door.

  There was no answer. She knocked louder. Still no answer. We all looked at each other, and what we saw looking back at us were faces full of angst. Even though no one said a word, we arose almost as one and dragged ourselves into the hall where Betty was standing at the door to Glain’s room. Howard Glover stepped up to the door and slammed an open palm against it, creating a detonation that was probably audible inside the freezer and loud enough to wake both Fred Rich and Charles Winant.

  Still no answer. Someone asked if anyone had a key. Saunders said Don probably did, but he was gone, and Betty observed that a key wouldn’t do us any good anyway since we’d all heard the bolt slide into place last night. Howard looked around at us, and we all nodded a silent permission. He took one step back, lowered his shoulder and rammed it into the door. It was a cheap hollow-core number and he was a big solid-core man. The door split open like a dried gourd.

  Carla Glain was on the floor, a pool of black blood around her head. Betty screamed, Susannah gasped, and Patel let out a small shriek. Glover bent down to take another look and confirmed what we all knew.

  Like a squad of shell-shocked soldiers, we stood there staring at her until Patel spotted a piece of paper on the bed. He picked it up and handed it to Glover who read it and handed it to Saunders who held it up for us all to see. Words and letters had been cut out of magazines and taped to the paper. They spelled out a message: “They were evil. I killed them. Now I can rest in peace. Agatha.”

  After we looked at the paper, we all looked at the window. It was open. We walked around the bed to get a better look and there on the floor were Agatha Cruz’s blue robe and pink fuzzy slippers, the floor around them soaked with rain from the open window.

  “She killed Glain during the night and escaped out the window,” said Vasquez in a tone more of resignation than concern.

  “I don’t think so,” replied Glover. “Glain’s head was bashed in. I don’t think that old lady would have the strength to do that.”

  “Yeah,” said Susannah, “and I can’t see her climbing out a window either. On top of that, why would she write her confession that way? If she’s going to admit to the murders, what’s the point of disguising her handwriting? The real killer must be trying to frame her.”

  “Then where is she?” asked Saunders.

  “The real killer must have taken her,” said Susannah. “He brained Glain, gagged and bound Cruz and took her out the window.”

  “Why did he take her robe and slippers off?” Saunders retorted.

  “So she couldn’t run away. Maybe he wanted a hostage.”

  “But we had sentries all night. It couldn’t have been one of the sentries because the other one on duty would have seen him leave. And no one left a bedroom other than the sentries after Cruz went into Glain’s room.”

  “That’s it!” shouted Susannah. “We’ve all been assuming the murderer had to be one of us. But it must be someone who’s been sneaking in.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “No one came into Fred Rich’s room through a window. The snow was piled up against the panes when we found him. There are only two doors to the outside of this building, and with all of us milling around, I don’t see how someone could walk in out of the snow and not be noticed. Even if no one saw him, we would have heard the door or at least seen the snow on the floor. On top of that, where would a killer hide in a blizzard for two days?”

  “We can’t be absolutely certain no one came in,” she said dejectedly, and I felt bad about deflating her theory. Then she perked up and said, “Where would Cruz get a dull instrument?”

  I told everyone that Cruz looked like she had things under her clothes that night when I saw her in the hall, and for all I knew, one of those things could have been a hammer or an iron bar.

  “It had to be Canon,” said Benthrop, his eyes wide with excitement. “He came in here through the window after he left for town and killed Glain and snatched Cruz.”

  Saunders gave him a withering look. “We all saw Canon drive off in the truck.”

  “He could have come back.”

  “Without us hearing the truck?”

  “Maybe he walked back,” insisted Benthrop.

  “Wouldn’t matter,” chimed in Glover. “She’s been dead for several hours. If Canon did it, he had to do it long before he left for Taos.”

  Glover said we should try to track Cruz, so we all traipsed outside as if we knew what we were doing. There were still a few inches of snow, so we could see the tracks. Footsteps led from below Glain’s window out to the cliff Canon had warned us about.

  We crept up to the edge. I did less creeping than the others. I have severe acrophobia. We peered down at thick brush two-hundred feet below. If anyone had jumped, fallen, or been thrown over the cliff, we couldn’t tell. We circled around the building and found no other tracks except those leading out from the front door to where Canon had entered the truck. We were standing by where the truck had been parked when Vasquez noted belatedly that we shouldn’t be disturbing a crime scene, so we all went back inside.

  Betty said, “That crazy old hag killed them and then jumped off the cliff.”

  “Why did she take her nightgown and slippers off first?” asked Susannah.

  Betty shrugged. “Maybe she wanted to make sure she would freeze to death just in case she survived the fall.”

  “Maybe it was another case of paradoxical undressing,” said Susannah jokingly.

  That brought a few stern looks her way.

  “It seems to me,” I ventured, “that she didn’t jump. She wanted to make us think she jumped. That’s why she worded the confession like a suicide note. I already mentioned her robe looked bulky. She could have had regular clothes on underneath which she wore to make her escape.”

  “So where is she?” asked Glover. “There were no tracks except to the cliff.”

  There were a couple of minutes of silence while we all thought about it. I was the first to speak. “Maybe she had ropes under her robe and rappelled down the cliff.”

  Glover was incredulous. “That old lady?”

  “Her robe must really have been stuffed, Hubie,” said Susannah. “You’ve given her a weapon, a second set of clothes, and ropes under there. Why not a parachute?”

  I turned up my palms but said nothing.

  “I don’t think Cruz could rappel down the cliff, but a good climber could come up that way,” said Glover, “so maybe someone did come in through the window, kill Glain and take Cruz away. That would explain why the only tracks were between the window and the cliff.”

  “I knew it was someone from outside,” said Susannah.

  I didn’t believe that but had no better theory to offer. I went over and sat down next to Susannah and asked her in a whisper if she had all the pictures. She said she had them all except for Rich and Winant. She had surreptitiously snapped one of Glain on the floor. I whispered to her to go to the freezer and get pictures of Rich and Winant, and she made a face like she was licking a lemon.

  Adele the Serving Wench was heading down the hall and Benthrop demanded to know where she was going. She said she was going to the bathroom, and Benthrop insisted that one of the other women go with her in case she was the murderer.

  “Why would one of us want to go to the bathroom with the murderer?” Betty asked quite sensibly.

  “Well,” squeaked Benthrop, “we can’t let her go alone.”

  “Why?” asked Glover. “You afraid she might kill her
self?”

  Maria suggested wryly that Benthrop should guard the ladies room, but Adele gave her a mean look and continued on down the hall. She returned a few minutes later and everyone watched her silently take a seat at an unoccupied table.

  Susannah then announced that she too was going to the bathroom, did not need a chaperone, and would return shortly. I noticed she had the cell phone in her hand and went down the hall that had the side entrance to the kitchen. She’s a trouper.

  I took the opportunity to ask the group if anyone had moved the pot I used during my talk, but they all denied knowing what had happened to it.

  The camaraderie I had sensed during the elk dinner was gone, or perhaps it had existed only in my imagination. We sat in sullen silence until the police arrived.

  I passed the time thinking about my missing pot. Or, more accurately, how I felt about it. I felt angry and cheated. I felt – and I generally don’t like the way this word is thrown around these days – violated.

  And guilty. Because if I didn’t like the way having my pot stolen made me feel, then how could I justify stealing pots myself?

  The answer is that the previous owners of the pots I dig up are dead and therefore can’t feel the way I felt. I would never steal a pot from another living potter, Native American or otherwise. But was I just rationalizing? I thought about it long and hard and decided quite honestly that I wasn’t.

  Of course the Duran pot didn’t belong to some prehistoric potter. But who did it belong to? Cyril believed it still belonged to his great-grandfather. But maybe the university had some legal claim based on something like adverse possession. After all, it had been in their possession for eighty years. But judging from the fact that it was sitting under a desk in an unlocked cabin, they probably didn’t even know they had it. It deserved better. At least I knew the pueblo would be a good home for it, and it would be among people who would honor it.

  Rationalization? Maybe, but I felt returning the pot to Cyril was the right thing to do. I put that belief to the ultimate test by asking myself what I would do if he failed to give me the three Dulcinea pots in return. It made me feel good to realize that I would give him the pot anyway.