So now the priest numbered gang members, a scorned woman and her irate husband, along with a possible ring of art thieves among his enemies. Sounded to me like Eloy might be pretty far down on the list. The only thing that really nailed him was the fact that the ballistics tests had confirmed his gun as the murder weapon and Eloy himself told me it hadn’t been out of his possession. I still didn’t have a handle on who might have gotten hold of that gun, who had pawned it, and how on earth they’d managed to replace it in his house after the murder, but I’d just about bet money that it wasn’t Albuquerque North Valley gang members.
“After that pawn ticket with the gun’s serial number led them to Eloy Romero, they backtracked on the drive-by theory and are putting together their evidence against him,” Ron told me.
“And what do they have so far?”
“Nothing beyond circumstantial stuff, according to what I can get out of them. The matching serial number, the fact that Eloy has no alibi for that night, the missing gap of several hours when he says he was on the road but could have managed to duck down to Albuquerque and confront his brother. His motive is the fact that their mother’s health is so bad and she always favored Ramon—it could be the inheritance proved to be a strong enticement.”
I flipped through the file, writing down the address of Lourdes and the address of the Albuquerque woman Ramon had dallied with. I couldn’t picture Eloy, the easy-going ski instructor, who was happy to live on very little taking such a drastic measure for a larger share of an inheritance. My money was still on the larger forces at work here, those who had stolen the valuable religious artifacts and were blackmailing Ramon.
We finished our enchiladas and each polished off another margarita before I headed back to the office to settle into our temporary quarters. Drake had left a message on the answering machine, letting me know where he was for the night—Trinidad, Colorado—and the phone number of his hotel. I called him and we each rehashed our day. Afterward, I burrowed down into the covers and Rusty flopped down on the rug beside me.
I awoke early the next morning, realizing that I was hearing traffic sounds from Central Avenue two blocks away, strangely unfamiliar after my time in the mountains. I quickly showered and dressed, deciding to make the early mass at Our Lady of Lourdes. Rusty looked at me curiously when I made him stay behind. He wasn’t accustomed to staying alone at the office, but Ron and Tammy would be here within an hour or so.
The drive down to the North Valley was fairly easy at this time of day; most of the traffic was headed up the hill instead. I located the church, another traditional adobe with rounded shoulders and a wooden cross above its bell tower. A scattering of people were leaving, walking down the concrete steps, dressed for jobs they’d now rush off to. I hung in the background until most of them had left and I saw the priest hovering near the door. I walked up and introduced myself. Except for his clerical collar, I would have easily taken him for a high school kid. His freshly scrubbed face with traces of a few pimples and his brown hair neatly parted on the side reminded me of someone whose mother had insisted that he have a good breakfast before she sent him out the door.
“Glad to meet you Ms. Parker,” he said in a voice that still needed to come down an octave or so.
I explained that I was looking into the death of their former priest and asked whether he’d been here at the time.
“No, I’m afraid I was away at seminary then,” he said. “I got this assignment two years ago, after the church had been through a series of temporary clergy.”
“I understand the murder happened right here on the front steps,” I said. “That must have been terribly hard on the parishioners.”
“Yes. Many of them had a hard time accepting it.” He looked down at the steps. “Actually, I think these are new steps,” he said, indicating the concrete. “The old ones were brick, but so much blood soaked into them that it couldn’t be cleaned off. Some of the parishioners were so distraught that they’d fall down weeping whenever they saw it. Others simply stopped coming. One of my predecessors had the steps replaced.”
“I don’t suppose anyone’s come into the confessional and admitted doing it?” I asked.
He stepped back.
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked.” I wasn’t sure whether he was more offended at my flippancy, the thought that a person from his own church might have done it, or that I’d ask him to break the sanctity of the confessional.
I left a few minutes later, feeling like I’d gotten all the information he knew.
Chapter 19
Stella Chavez lived in a trailer park less than a half-mile north on Fourth Street. I followed the winding one-lane road, past signs that warned of slow children playing, to number forty-three. Like most of its neighbors, number forty-three sat on a bare patch of dirt. A large cottonwood tree behind it spread bare branches to the azure sky. In summer it probably provided one of the few touches of green in the park.
The Chavez trailer was a single-wide, like its neighbors, white siding with a stripe of pink running horizontally around it, like a belt trying to hold up the skirting around the bottom. It was only successful in a few places. I mounted warped plywood steps and knocked on the metal door. It was opened by a middle aged woman in a flowered muumuu. Her once-attractive face had become pudgy and her hair was lank and unwashed. Long lashes framed large eyes the color of strong coffee, but the eyes were tired-looking. Even at a glance I got the sense she was a woman who’d given up caring. The smell of pinto beans and tortillas wafted through the open door.
“Stella Chavez?”
She nodded confirmation.
“I have a few questions about Father Ramon Romero,” I said, handing her one of my business cards.
She took a step back, her hand on the edge of the door.
“Please. I’m trying to find out the truth about what happened to him, on behalf of his family.”
“Leroy hasn’t left for work yet,” she hissed. “Come back in a half hour.” She shoved my card down into her pocket and closed the door in my face.
I turned slowly. Her voice came faintly from inside the trailer. “Just somebody selling something,” she was saying.
I climbed back into my Jeep and backed out of the spot where I’d parked behind their faded blue Chevy Nova. Watching carefully for the slow children, I backed to the first curve in the road and found a spot in front of a trailer whose occupants must have already left for work. The Chavez’s trailer was visible and I hoped I could keep an eye on it without Leroy Chavez noticing my conspicuously shiny Jeep.
Ten minutes later, he emerged, a stoop shouldered man in blue jeans, a plaid shirt and worn sheepskin jacket carrying a black metal lunchbox. He climbed into the Chevy Nova without a glance my way and slowly ground its engine to life after three tries. He gunned a puff of blue smoke from its tailpipe then backed out and lumbered away in the direction from which I’d come. I allowed two minutes for him to rush back for any forgotten item, then pulled into the spot where he’d been parked.
Stella met me on the porch, dressed now in a pair of pull-on knit slacks and flowered blouse, with a quilted jacket on and her purse over her arm. Her hair had been hastily pulled back into a ponytail. She was visibly startled when she saw me.
“I didn’t have anything else to do for half an hour,” I told her. “Thought you might be able to offer me a cup of coffee.”
She didn’t look at all pleased that her escape had been aborted, but she didn’t try to run. “I don’t know if we have any. I was just going down to the market.”
“That’s okay. I really don’t need any and I’ll be quick.” I blocked the plywood steps. “Could we go inside?”
Grudgingly, she opened the door with her key and preceded me into a small entry with a haloed picture of Jesus facing the front door. In the living room, the furnishings were old but clean and everything inside was neat and orderly. Dark wood paneling and brocade drapes throughout made the place dreary and I could begin t
o understand why a woman locked in here all day would turn to a little outside excitement.
“I’m not looking for the lurid details,” I began. “And I have no opinion on whether a priest having a love life is right or wrong. I’m just trying to clear a man that I think has been wrongfully accused of murder—if he’s truly innocent.”
She relaxed a touch. “I just remembered that I do have some coffee,” she offered shyly.
I followed her into the kitchen and watched her pour from a silver electric percolator. We both stirred sugar into our cups.
“Did Ramon ever talk to you about his family?” I asked. “His mother or his brother Eloy, especially?”
“You’ll never repeat this to her?” Stella asked nervously.
I shook my head.
“Ramon was his mother’s favorite. He made no secret about that. He worried that her health was not good and he was not close by to help her. He said his brother Eloy was a bum, wouldn’t lift a finger to help out.”
I thought of Eloy, working an extra job to afford the nursing home care his mother was getting. But I didn’t say anything.
“His sister is married to a lawyer. Ramon hoped they would take care of the mother, but they’re both so busy. I guess the brother-in-law isn’t really successful, I mean, not like you think of lawyers making all this money. They get by okay, but she has to work. She’s a secretary at an insurance company, you know. They both work forty hours a week and there’s no one taking care of their mother during the day—”
I had to interrupt. “Actually, now she’s in a nursing home. She’s getting excellent care.”
Stella looked somewhat mollified. “Well, it wasn’t like that back then.”
“Did Ramon ever say anything about any religious artifacts? You know, crosses, things like that?”
Something closed off inside her. “No . . . I don’t remember anything like that.”
“I talked with an old priest in Taos. He had some documents that showed Ramon had gotten involved with some men who were stealing and selling valuable items. Did he ever mention a man named Leon Palais?”
“Oh, no, no. Never would Ramon be involved in something like that.”
Her loyalty was touching, if somewhat misguided. I was surprised that she wasn’t bitter toward him about the trouble that must have ensued when the church and her husband found out about her off-limits affair. I wondered whether she had instigated the romance, tired of her dreary life without promise, or whether Ramon had lured her into it, making it seem more innocent than it was. Either way, I doubted I would get any unprejudiced information out of her. She clearly still had feelings for him and wasn’t about to say anything against him. I felt sure she knew something about the stolen artifacts but didn’t intend to share it with me.
I thanked her for the coffee, returning my cup to the kitchen sink. I drove out of the trailer park, wondering where to turn next.
The day was one of those January oddities we get here in New Mexico. Although the temperature hovered in the twenties, the sky was deep and clear and the sun warmed my car to the point that I actually had to roll down windows to relieve the stuffiness. A storm front was predicted to move in by tomorrow, however, and all that would change. I decided to look in on our remodeling project, do a couple of errands, then head back to the mountains by this afternoon.
The traffic on Fourth had abated somewhat with the morning commuters now safely at work, but the little old lady shoppers were out in force. I zagged my way south on Fourth to Griegos, then out Rio Grande to Central. Our neighborhood is just south of Old Town, in the old Albuquerque Country Club area. The homes were mostly built in the ’40s and ’50s, with large rooms on decent-sized lots. A touch below ostentatious in their day, nearly modest compared to some of the newer places today. I grew up in this area, where most of the neighbors are now old enough to be my grandparents. It’s quiet, undisturbed, and I love it. It had nearly broken my heart to see our home almost consumed by fire, but I had to admit the new additions would be nice when finished.
I pulled up in front and found Hank Logan at work directing the delivery of a load of drywall.
“It’s coming right along, Charlie,” he greeted. “Come in and let me know what you think.”
We walked through the cold rooms, the heat being cut way back to a level that would barely prevent the pipes from freezing. I admired the progress.
“We’ve finished the drywall in the guest room and study. We’ve just got the master bedroom and bath and the hallways to go. I’ve got the texturing scheduled for Wednesday and the painters early next week. After that, the bathroom fixtures come in—they’ll take about a day—then light fixtures, carpet. You’ll be ready to move back in no time.”
I was ready now, actually.
After ascertaining that he didn’t need anything else from me, I wandered next door to Elsa’s. She greeted me at the back door, wearing a pink velour robe I’d given her for Christmas at least ten years ago.
“Why, Charlie! Come on in.” She held the door and ushered me to the kitchen table. “I didn’t know you’d be in town.”
She bustled about, pouring me a cup of coffee and setting a plate of toast triangles in front of me.
“Here, have some breakfast,” she insisted.
I didn’t mention that I’d already enough coffee to make me buzz. I took a half slice of toast and spread her homemade raspberry jam on it.
“How is that fine young man of yours?” she asked. “And Ron and his boys. I hardly see them anymore without you next door.”
“Everyone’s fine,” I told her. “Drake’s got a charter for the next couple of days, so I decided to come by and see how the remodeling is going.”
“That nice builder told me it would be ready for you to move back in about a month or so.”
“That’s about right, I guess. The timing should work out with our job in Taos too. We’ve contracted to stay there until March first. But I’ll sure be glad to get moved back into our own house. And I know Drake is enjoying the work up north, but doesn’t want to miss out on anything around here either.”
“Ron mentioned that you’re working on an investigation up there?”
“I had two of them going, actually,” I said. “I think we wrapped up one of them. The other one is more complicated.”
I filled her in briefly on the situation with Eloy and his brother’s death. “This priest certainly had a number of problems, though,” I said. “His involvement with an art theft ring, the tension in the neighborhood over the graffiti problem, his family bickering over his mother’s property, and then the scandal of that affair.”
At the mention of Ramon’s affair, Elsa perked up. “That’s the priest you’re talking about?” she asked. “Why, I followed that. I think I still have the newspapers. There was a lot more to that story than met the eye.”
Chapter 20
For a woman of eighty-seven, Elsa’s memory is amazing. I followed her into the living room where she cleared a few items off the top of an old steamer trunk and lifted its lid. Inside were stacks of yellowing newspapers and magazines.
“What is all this stuff?” I asked incredulously.
“Oh, whenever I see a story that catches my attention I save all the issues and put them in here,” she beamed. “I’ve got the Kennedy assassinations, the moon landing—although I think they staged that whole thing somewhere in Hollywood—and the time that one mayor got booted for his shenanigans with money.”
“And the story of Father Ramon’s illicit affair with a married woman,” I added.
“Oh, that one was messy,” she confided, digging into one of the stacks.
I shouldn’t have been surprised. Elsa had followed a couple of favorite soap operas for years, although she wouldn’t admit to exactly how much they titillated her. A few months ago I’d had occasion to bring some old files over and work on them here. I’d watched firsthand how she finished her gardening work every day by a certain time so she wouldn’t mi
ss “her shows.”
Within a couple of minutes, she’d pulled out the papers she was looking for.
“There,” she said triumphantly. “Look ’em over. You can bring them back when you’re done.”
I put on my jacket and tucked the papers under my arm. “Is there anything you need from the store?” I asked. “Any little chores around the house?”
“No, no, I’m fine,” she assured me. “I always do my shopping on Wednesdays. Even if they don’t give out trading stamps anymore.”
Worried that the lack of trading stamps would start her on a new subject, I hurriedly said goodbye and told her to be sure to call Ron if she needed anything. I tossed the old newspapers into the back seat of the Jeep and drove the few blocks up Central to the RJP Investigations offices. Not planning to stay long, I parked out front.
Tammy was feeding Rusty half a donut when I walked in. She looked up at me guiltily.
“He really shouldn’t have this kind of stuff, huh?” she asked.
“Well, let’s not make it a habit,” I said. She was doing such a good job getting Ron organized that I didn’t want to nitpick the details.
We went over a few office matters, then I went up to Ron’s office and peeked in. The phone, as usual, was at his ear, but he gave me a grin.
Across the hall, in my office-turned-bedroom, I gathered my overnight bag and the snow boots that seemed ludicrous here but would be a necessity back at the cabin. I carried everything out and stashed it in the back cargo area of the Jeep, Rusty following my every step. Donuts or not, I guess he wanted to be sure he wasn’t left behind. Once the luggage went into the car, he knew I was leaving.
Ron was off the phone when I went back upstairs, and we spent thirty minutes in which I filled him in on the resolution of the Hope Montgomery story and thanked him for the quick legwork on that. I also told him about my interview with Stella Chavez this morning and Elsa’s hints that Stella’s affair with the priest had gotten quite messy. I left a few minutes later, with just a couple of stops to make in town before starting the drive back.
Honeymoons Can Be Murder: The Sixth Charlie Parker Mystery (The Charlie Parker Mysteries) Page 16