“That wasn’t very arduous,” I remarked once we had seen them to the door.
Jason grinned. “What did you expect? Bamboo shoots under your fingernails?”
“I expected to be grilled. Obviously they don’t think they’re investigating a homicide.”
“They don’t have any reason to,” said Jason. “I can’t imagine why they’re bothering people when they don’t even know yet what they’re dealing with.”
“The first twenty-four hours of a case are the most important,” I said knowledgeably. “If you ever watched police dramas on television, you’d know that, Jason.”
“My wife, the busybody detective,” he muttered.
Jason doesn’t approve of my recent, if minor, involvements in amateur criminal investigation, for which reason, I seldom mention such activities to him. He just gets upset, which takes his mind off his research. Although never for long.
7
A Meeting of Incompatibles
Carolyn
Jason, of course, began Monday by leaping out of bed, donning sweats, running briskly up and down the mountain, fixing and eating a healthy breakfast, and leaving for the university. I, on the other hand, would have happily slept away the morning. I had stayed up late reading Desert Queen, the wonderful biography of Gertrude Bell. She was a Victorian lady who charmed Arab men and shared information on the Middle East not only with her British colleagues but also with Arab kings, sheiks, and holy men. What an astonishing and eerie book. Her experiences in Iraq before, during, and after the First World War bring a shiver to the spine of the modern American reader because it seems that the same things are happening to us that happened to the British in the Middle East eighty or so years earlier.
Be that as it may, I did not get to make up for my lost sleep because Adela called to say that the police were sure she had murdered Vladik. “What did you say to them?” I asked reproachfully.
“Nothing,” she assured me. “I say I want a lawyer. They say I don’t need lawyer because they are investigating Vladik’s death, which ees probably the natural causes.”
“So there’s no problem. They really have no idea what they’re investigating, Adela. They’re talking to everyone who brought food to the party. Mrs. Brockman, Mrs. Escobar, me—we’ve all been interviewed.”
“But they take my passport and my student visa,” she wailed. “They say I cannot cross border, even to see my mama.”
That didn’t sound good to me, but I repeated my assurances and pointed out that if we (Mrs. Brockman, Mrs. Escobar, and I) had been citizens of another country, the police would have taken our credentials too. Then I advised her to attend her classes, talk to her friends, and stop worrying.
Adela immediately found a new cause for dismay: Who would be her voice coach now that Vladik was dead? I was very tempted to say that if she needed his coaching, she shouldn’t have spiked the guacamole. However, I held my tongue. Even if the guacamole had made him sick, which it probably had, at least according to Jason’s reasoning, Adela couldn’t have foreseen that he’d eat so much, and she hadn’t meant to kill him. If she’d actually meant to kill him, she wouldn’t have told me that she’d put some foreign substance into the guacamole. That was my reasoning.
By the time I got off the phone, I was wide awake, so I had breakfast and read the newspaper, where I discovered a very interesting quotation from the neighbor who had discovered the body, a quotation resulting from a later interview by the newspaper. “ ‘It’s possible,’ said Luz Vallejo, former police lieutenant, ‘that he died because someone put a pillow over his face and held it there while he was throwing up. He did the rest of his vomiting in the bathroom and over the side of the bed. So why was there vomit in the middle of the pillow? You don’t bury your head in your pillow to throw up.’ ”
She made a good point. The police investigating the death must have seen the pillow. What did they think? That one of us ladies had poisoned him at the party and then snuck into his house to finish him off? I wanted to talk to Luz Vallejo. The problem was, would she talk to me? A police person, which she had been, probably wouldn’t, but a retired person—well, older people, retired people, like an audience. I just had to find out where she lived.
Luz Vallejo
A blonde, white female, mid-forties, 5 feet 6 inches, 110 to 120 pounds, teal-blue pants outfit and Reeboks, arrived at my door at 10:23 Monday morning. Reporter, I surmised, although I didn’t recognize her, but then I’d been retired three years so there were probably new faces at the Times. “My name is Carolyn Blue,” she said, and she held out her hand. “I wonder if I could speak to you for a moment.”
“Reporter or Avon lady?” I asked, ignoring the hand.
She looked embarrassed and took it back. “I wanted to ask you about the—crime scene? Vladislav Gubenko, the man whose dead body you discovered. I saw your name and opinion in the paper this morning and, since you aren’t listed in the phone book, I just took a chance on asking around your neighborhood. You’re my second try. The man on the other side was very pleasant, but didn’t know you, or your husband.”
“How did you get past the security guard?” I asked. Damn rent-a-cops weren’t worth squat.
“I said I was visiting you,” she answered.
“I didn’t get any call. Did you climb over the rock wall?” I didn’t think she had, but it was fun to ask. She looked pretty surprised. The call probably came while I was in the bathroom. Turn the shower on, and you couldn’t hear it if a stray rocket from White Sands landed across the street.
“Me?” Carolyn Blue gave it a few seconds thought. “I don’t think I could climb a rock wall if I wanted to, and I’ve been told that dangerous spiders lurk in El Paso walls and jump out at you. Black widows and fiddler spiders, not that I’ve seen either, but I certainly wouldn’t care to be bitten by one. It’s frightening enough to spot a scorpion in the bathroom.”
“So he just let you in because, being a white Anglo, you looked harmless enough. Why do you want me to tell you about Vladik?”
“Well, I knew him—he was an acquaintance of my husband’s at the university and a fellow opera lover, and the police are questioning all us opera ladies who brought refreshments to the party. I don’t think my canapés made him sick. I don’t even know if he ate any of mine, but I guess dangerous bacteria can grow on anything. Then I read that you thought someone might have caused the aspiration of vomit that killed him by holding a pillow over his face. Sergeant Guevara and his detective didn’t say anything about that, so—well, here I am. I’d hate to think someone did that, but on the other hand, I’d hate to think my jalapeno-fruit canapés made him sick.”
The woman looked at me hopefully while my knee throbbed and it occurred to me that she might never stop talking if I didn’t let her in. And it would be interesting to see her expression when I described the crime scene. Talking to “opera ladies,” were they? Guevara was obviously screwing up the investigation, piddling around while he waited for tox screens when he should be checking to see who hated Gubenko, besides me and the guy who wrote the editorial in the Times.
That must have been some performance. I read some of Macbeth in high school and faked the rest with the Cliffs Notes my sister had in her bookcase in college, and I couldn’t picture Macbeth as a drug-dealing scumbag. Singing opera no less. Madre de Dios, but opera is hard to take. I never realized how bad until that asshole Russian moved in next door and turned his speakers up extra loud every night.
“Come on in,” I said, holding the door open and leading her into my living room. I sat beside the little table with the drawer that holds my gun, not that I thought she was carrying, but all those years in Vice make you careful.
“This is very kind of you, Ms. Vallejo,” she said sweetly.
Anything to get the weight off my knee, I thought, not so sweetly.
8
Was He Murdered?
Carolyn
Once we were seated in the ex-lieutenant’s living room, wh
ich was sizable but didn’t contain much furniture, I looked expectantly at my hostess. She looked back, but said nothing. A tall woman with medium-brown skin, a little lined at the eyes and mouth, gray-streaked, black hair cut short, wearing a denim shirt and jeans, she looked somewhat older than I, possibly fifty. Why had she retired so early? I’d read about police officers that took their retirement pay from one position and then became chiefs in small towns with a second salary, but she was home on a weekday.
“It’s very kind of you to talk to me,” I said, although she wasn’t talking to me and I wished she’d start. “Did you know Vladik well?”
A huge police dog padded in and eyed me suspiciously. “Over here, Smack,” the lieutenant said, and snapped her fingers. The dog sat down by her chair and stared at me. “I didn’t want to know Gubenko well,” she replied. “He tried to come on to me when he first moved in, which I didn’t like and put a stop to.”
Well, she was a handsome woman, although somewhat older than Vladik, I thought.
“And he played that damned music turned up past the point of pain night after night.”
“I take it you don’t like opera,” I murmured.
”I reported him to the condo committee about four times, and then I went over there and offered to shoot his sound system.” She smiled tightly. “That made a bigger impression on him than the committee.”
“You didn’t!” I started to laugh, thinking of Vladik, who had obviously seen himself as a ladies’ man, having to back off or lose his stereo set. I had to wonder whether she’d taken Smack with her on that visit. What a strange name to give your dog.
Luz Vallejo looked surprised and then joined me in laughter. “Dumb Russian. He should have known I couldn’t shoot up his hi-fi, much less shoot anything within the city limits unless it was in self-defense.”
“The police, especially since they’re your former colleagues, might accept your right to protect yourself against an opera attack,” I suggested.
She grinned. “So they might, but the DA, so I’ve heard, likes opera. So what do you want to know about the crime scene?” she asked.
“Anything you can tell me. If he simply died from food poisoning, that’s one thing. Wouldn’t that mean those of us who provided food aren’t guilty of a crime? But if someone deliberately killed him while he was sick—well, that’s murder, isn’t it?”
She stretched out long legs and lit a cigarette. “The best thing about being retired,” she commented, “is that you don’t have to be in places where smoking’s prohibited. Want one?” She offered me the pack.
“No, thank you,” I replied politely.
“Hate smokers, right?” She didn’t look as if she cared.
“The only time I smoked a cigarette, I threw up, and I imagine that you don’t like people throwing up on your property,” I answered evasively. I did, in fact, hate the smell of smoke, but I didn’t want to offend her. She struck me as sort of scary, both she and her dog.
“Got that right. Gubenko parked his car in front of my place that night, one wheel on the curb, then threw up on my sidewalk and fell into my bushes. Didn’t wake me, but it wasn’t hard to figure out the next morning when Smack and I went out for an early morning walk. Barf all the way from my yard to the Russian’s front door, and on inside, for that matter. The trail took me right to the body.”
“Where was the body?” I asked.
“He was lying on his bed, face up, all the signs of suffocation. Want to know what they are?”
“No, thanks. I’ll take your word for it,” I answered hastily.
“Thought so,” she replied. “Place smelled like a drunk tank. Vomit everywhere—in the bathroom, bedroom, hall, on him and the bedclothes. Green vomit. Were your canapés green?”
She was trying to, as my daughter would say, “creep me out.” “White, red, and peach,” I replied. Green was for guacamole, obviously.
“So maybe you’re in the clear, unless you held the pillow over his face. As sick as he was, I suppose a woman could have held him down till he inhaled in the middle of the next retching episode.”
I felt a little green myself. “And that’s what you think happened? Someone held a pillow over his face instead of him dying in the—more or less natural course of things? How did they get in his house?”
“They didn’t break in, if that’s what you’re asking. I checked while I was waiting for the medics and cops to arrive. Either the killer had a key, or the Russian left the door open. Probably the last. It was open when I got there the next morning. If the killer had a key, he’d have been smart to lock up after himself, so it would look like Gubenko died alone. And that’s not what I figure happened. The pillow was on the floor, vomit-side up, the indentation of his face still in it, and he was on his back.”
“Then why aren’t the police investigating that instead of chasing after us?” I asked.
“One, what Guevara is doing is the easy way, talking to respectable ladies while he waits for the tox screens to come in. Two, I told him what I figured happened, and he brushed it off because there’s bad blood between us. If I told him there was a guy with a knife behind him, he wouldn’t turn around or run. He’s lazy and stupid.” Her dog started to growl. “It’s okay, Smack,” she said, patting his head. “Just because I’m pissed off doesn’t mean you have to bite someone.”
“Is he dangerous?” I asked nervously.
“She. She’s a retired narcotics dog. Her partner couldn’t keep her when she got too old for duty because the partner had to get a new dog, so I took her in. But old Smack here could do some damage if I told her to, and if you’d come in with pot in your pocket, you’d have seen some action.”
“How fortunate that I don’t use illegal drugs,” I murmured weakly.
“Right. She jumped a kid at a high school the other day. I was there giving a talk. Kid was dealing coke and had a couple of ounces on him. Smack held him up against the wall, while I called in the troops. Of course, they had a cop undercover there who had enough to arrest him, so the dealer just got caught a little early. Any more questions?”
“I guess not,” I said.
“And what are you going to do with the information?”
“Well, since you don’t seem to think Sergeant Guevara is going to catch the killer, I guess I’ll ask around about any enemies Vladik might have had. I’d hate to see people harassed by the police when a real criminal actually killed him.”
Luz Vallejo laughed. “You’re going to investigate this yourself? Well, that’s a hoot.”
I could have told her that I wasn’t inexperienced when it came to investigation, but I didn’t. She’d hurt my feelings, and I didn’t care to be laughed at again.
9
Indignant Ladies Unite
Carolyn
I drove home to think about my next move, if, in fact, I wanted to make a next move. Lieutenant Vallejo had thought the idea “a hoot,” and Jason would be upset if he thought I was getting involved in another murder investigation. On the other hand, my life had been much more exciting of late, much more interesting. Writing about food is all very well, but one doesn’t really use one’s powers of logical thinking, and one doesn’t really make a difference in the world, only in a meal or two somewhere in the country.
Not that I’m ungrateful for the syndicated newspaper column on eating out that I more or less fell into and the book on eating out in New Orleans that I recently sent off to the publisher. I pulled into the driveway and started toward the front door, thinking of whom I might interview if I decided to look for the person who held the pillow over Vladislav Gubenko’s face. Before I could even sit down to make a list, I noticed that my answering machine was blinking. I pressed the Play button and heard the following:
“Carolyn, this is Vivian Brockman. I’m getting the women who made refreshments for the party together. I think we should protest this ridiculous harassment by the police. Lunch at the Magic Pan on Doniphan at twelve-thirty. I’m reserving a tabl
e on the patio. If you get this message in time, please come.”
I glanced at my watch and left the house, calculating that I’d only be five or ten minutes late, which would leave me time for their wonderful tortilla soup and a half sandwich. What did Vivian have in mind as a protest? Letters to the editor of the Times? Picketing the police station? Confronting Sergeant Guevara? Hiring a lawyer? One of the women who had provided food was married to a lawyer, so maybe we could get pro bono representation. And what would our suit against the police allege? Interfering with our civil rights? Slander? I’ve never sued anyone, so I had no idea.
Five women had preceded me, ordered, and were sipping iced tea. I sat down after greeting them and took in the ambiance. I’m very fond of the Magic Pan. Their patio has vines, greenery, ceiling fans, and a mister, so you can eat outside, even in hot weather—although not during high winds and dust storms, or when it turns cold. On those less frequent occasions, you eat inside where they sell interesting “antique” doodads and jewelry. I love jewelry so was glad to be outside and away from temptation. Bad enough that I was surfing the Internet for an area rug to put in the family room. I hadn’t mentioned this pursuit to Jason yet. He was still muttering about a rug I bought in San Francisco, although I’m delighted with that purchase. I love colorful rugs, and our floors are tiled here in El Paso so they need a bit of softening underfoot.
Now who, among the food providers at the opera party, had come to the meeting? I glanced around the table. Vivian, who had provided a mountain of shelled shrimp (available at the Albertson’s for a price) and a spicy sauce; Dolly Montgomery, little rolled sandwiches with a chile-cheese spread inside (Jason said he thought they’d come from the university catering service, about which I wish I’d known); Barbara Escobar, tiny pastry puffs stuffed with tuna salad; Olive Cleveland, a cauldron of very good chile con queso with a burner to keep it warm; and Maria-Reposa Hernandez, mixed hors d’oeuvres from the Portable Fiesta. Her husband was the lawyer.
Holy Guacamole! Page 5