Widows' Watch

by Nancy Herndon

  22

  Sunday, October 3, 8:45 A.M.

  Chimayo, New Mexico

  Lance glared at them while Leo patted him down. “Couldn’t you have done this at the house where I wouldn’t be embarrassed?”

  “Hey, we didn’t even have to let you come to this race. It’s costing the department a bundle to guard you,” snapped Elena. She was sick and tired of Lance, who was still doing the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde bit. He’d been charming to everyone at dinner, especially Harmony and Maggie Daguerre; then he’d demanded to have a bedroom to himself, once Harmony had gone to bed and Maggie had left for her tent, the plan being to sandwich the two kids in between her and Manny. Leo had been so pissed, he not only shared a room with Lance, he’d cuffed the prisoner to the hand-carved wooden bedpost. Elena had warned Lance that if he yanked on the cuff and damaged the post, Harmony would kill him, no matter how great his water metaphors were.

  “What’s this?” demanded Leo, dragging a sharp implement from Lance’s fanny pack.

  “It’s part of the repair kit,” snapped Lance.

  “Then you better hope the bike doesn’t break down,” said Elena, confiscating the item, “because you’re not taking it with you.” She could just imagine him stabbing Maggie and riding off onto some unpaved track where he’d meet a gay activist in a Bronco and escape into the mountains.

  “Heavenly Father,” intoned Dr. Sunnydale, president of Herbert Hobart University. His white hair was handsomely styled, his suit a beautifully tailored light gray, and his tan as California as it had been when he was a famous TV evangelist. In Chimayo, among the bicycle-racers, fans, and townsfolk, the university president looked as out of place as a poodle in a coyote litter.

  “Who the hell is he?” demanded Sheriff Ruben Portillo. “Father Reynaldo is supposed to bless the racers.”

  “We ask thy blessings on our fellow, Lance—ah—”

  “Potemkin,” whispered Harley Stanley, Vice-President for Academic Affairs, who had offered to ride his motorcycle ahead of the racers, carrying first-aid equipment and refreshments. The sheriff had refused.

  “He’s the president of Herbert Hobart University,” Elena murmured.

  “. . . who has been unfairly harassed by the vigilante police,” continued the university president.

  Harley Stanley hissed into his ear, causing Dr. Sunnydale to frown at Gus McGlenlevie, who had evidently urged on him the phrase vigilante police. “—who has been given his own escort to the race by the Los Santos Police Department,” the president amended.

  Lance grumbled. Elena stifled a giggle. Father Reynaldo looked as if he’d like to excommunicate President Sunnydale. Citizens of Chimayo, who would never have allowed the race to start in their town if it weren’t for the leaking roof, were muttering angrily about the insult to their priest and the Sanctuario. This pushy Protestant had no right to give the blessing, they said, mostly in Spanish, but not always.

  “We ask, Heavenly Father, that you smile upon this fine young man, whose troubles are legion but whose heart is pure,” said the president.

  Bicycle racers now muttered resentfully because one of their number was being given special clerical attention. Lance looked embarrassed and sulky while Harmony whispered to him consolingly and Maggie Daguerre gave him a comradely slap on the back. Much good she’d be as a guard, thought Elena. Maggie and Lance had met the night before at Harmony’s table and

  talked white-water rafting over savory bowls of caldillo and hot flour tortillas in the Portillo kitchen during a noisy dinner served to family and guests.

  “. . . safety, Christian sportsmanship, and the American competitive spirit,” concluded President Sunnydale. “Amen.”

  Muttering under his breath, Father Reynaldo stepped forward and asked a proper blessing on the racers. At a blast from a ram’s horn, preserved from Spanish colonial days, the herd of bicycle racers pedaled vigorously away on the High Road to Taos.

  “They just left Chimayo,” said Sheriff Portillo into his car microphone. He had deputies stationed along the route in case Lance tried to make a break for it. “Don’t know what your superiors are thinking of,” her father muttered to Elena. “Letting a murder suspect roam around the countryside like this.”

  “It’s all right, love,” said Harmony, whisking up to her husband and giving him a fleeting kiss. “Lance is innocent. Would I invite a murderer to dinner and to spend the night?”

  “You not only would, querida. You have on at least one occasion.” Ruben caught his wife by the flowing sash that circled her slender waist and pulled her back for a hug.

  Elena sighed, wishing she had a marriage like her parents’. Her father had returned from Josie and Armstrong’s house last night and had undoubtedly made love to her mother after dinner, for they had retired suspiciously early. Elena and the guests and relatives had to do the dishes, which was only fair. Harmony had driven all the way to Chimayo, after all, then cooked dinner for twenty-five people.

  Elena rubbed the small of her back. That bed in Josie’s old room was a killer. Not that she had cause for serious complaint. Maggie Daguerre, who was at this moment racing madly along on a bicycle, had occupied a sleeping bag in the Portillos’ orchard, sharing a tent with Manny Escobedo and being kicked by his unfriendly children, Tito and Virgie.

  “I will say,” said Ruben Portillo, “that Potemkin has good taste in women.”

  Elena grinned. “He’s in his twenties, Pop, and—”

  Ruben tugged Elena’s French braid affectionately. “I can tell when a man’s in love with your mother. Quit that, you kids!” he roared.

  Cleo, Josie and Armstrong Carr’s daughter, was supervising a mass scaling of the adobe wall around the old plaza. Virgie Escobedo, when shouted at by the sheriff, fell off and glared at him. Tito scrambled over the top and dropped out of sight. Two and Rafaela’s twins, Tres and Carlito, obeyed their grandfather by climbing into the gnarled branches of a tree that overhung the wall.

  “Look at me, Abuelo,” shrieked Connie, the three-year-old daughter of Johnny and Betts Portillo. They had left her in Harmony’s care so they could drift through the crowd peddling tiny clay bicycle racers in sombreros and ponchos. The figurines had come out of Betts’ kiln just the day before.

  Ruben strode to the wall and snatched his capering granddaughter from the top. Cleo sat astride the adobe playing the shepherd’s flute on which she composed her own tunes. With Connie under his arm, Ruben stopped to listen. “That’s a good one, Cleo,” he said. “Now get your bottom off that wall.”

  “Daddy, I’m bored,” complained Virgie Escobedo.

  “You’re getting to be a real pain, kid,” said the sergeant. “I know who put that lizard in Maggie’s sleeping bag.”

  “Not me. I’m too old for silly stuff like that.”

  “You’re saying Tito did it?”

  “So what if he did? She didn’t care.”

  “That’s ‘cause she’s a gutsy lady,” snapped Manny.

  “I don’t want a stepmother,” muttered Virgie. “And she’s too tall for you, anyway.”

  “Who says I’m marryin’ her?” growled Manny.

  “Mama.”

  Six-year-old Tito dropped off the wall, yelled, “Snitch,” at his sister, and ran for his life when she made a grab for him.

  “Bringing those two was a big mistake,” Manny muttered to Elena. “You wouldn’t believe how they treated Maggie last night.”

  “Maggie didn’t seem to mind.”

  “Yeah,” said the sergeant gloomily. “I guess that means she doesn’t care one way or the other about me. Otherwise, she’d want my kids to like her.”

  “Elena!”

  Elena turned to see her friend Sarah Tolland, the chairman of Electrical Engineering at Herbert Hobart, working her way through the crowd. Sarah was trim, gray-blond, fortyish, and pretty in a very conser
vative way.

  “I can’t believe it,” said Elena. “I didn’t know you’d be here, Sarah.”

  “I didn’t know Gus would be here,” said Sarah, scowling. Her ex-husband was at the edge of the crowd flirting with one of the village girls, whose father was watching them closely.

  Elena grinned. “If Gus tries to make a move on that young woman, her father might just drown the author of Rapture on the Rapids in an acequia.”

  Sarah grinned. “Gus has posters all over campus announcing that book. They can write in posthumous under his name and double the sales.”

  “So what are you doing here? Supporting Colin?” Sarah’s boyfriend, Colin Stuart, a professor in her department, was one of the racers.

  Sarah nodded, but she didn’t look particularly happy. “I’ve been wanting to call you about Colin. I wondered if you’d be amenable to a date with him.”

  “He’s your boyfriend, Sarah,” said Elena, astonished.

  “It’s not working out. He’s a wonderful person, but it’s causing trouble in the department, my dating one of my own faculty.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Elena. “Good men are hard to find.”

  “Tell me about it.” Sarah glanced darkly at her ex-husband. “Not that I mind about Colin. Nice as he is, there’s really no—well—spark between us.”

  Elena grinned. “So you want to fix me up with someone you find boring?”

  “I don’t find Colin boring at all!” said Sarah indignantly. “Believe me, you’ll like him. He’s charming, intelligent, good-looking, and—”

  “Snap him up,” advised Elena’s sister Josie, who had come in on the end of the conversation.

  “I think I’ll pass,” said Elena. “The last time I dated a member of Sarah’s department, he turned out to be a murderer.”

  “Which one is he? I mean Colin, not the murderer,” Josie asked.

  “Forty-five, gray hair, good-looking, green cycler’s tights,” said Sarah.

  “Elena would love to go out with him,” said Josie.

  “I would not. He’s too old for me,” Elena protested.

  “Older men are better,” said Josie. “Look at me and Armstrong. We’re perfect for each other, and he’s almost twenty years older than I am.”

  “Your mother’s invited us to a barbecue tonight. I’ll introduce you then, Elena,” said Sarah. “There’s Paul Zifkovitz from the Art Department. I need to have a word with him.” She edged away before Elena could refuse the introduction.

  “Traitor,” Elena said to her sister. “Why are Johnny and Betts talking to Dr. Sunnydale?”

  “They’re offering to sell him a collection of Southwestern folk art—wholesale.”

  Elena groaned. Surely Herbert Hobart University wouldn’t—Her fears that her brother Johnny and his wife might end up charged with art fraud were forgotten when a voice behind her said tentatively, “Detective Jarvis?”

  What a voice! Mariachi baritone with an Anglo accent. She hated to turn around and find out who went with it. However, the voice’s owner couldn’t be considered a disappointment. Out of professional habit, she committed his physical characteristics to memory: lightly tanned face; square chin, slight flattening at the bridge of the nose, probably from a break; thick, wind-blown brown hair; hazel eyes that picked up the green of his sport shirt; and a killer smile that said, I’m prepared to be your best friend if you’re interested. She put him at five-nine or ten, one-fifty, late twenties, wearing tan slacks and a tan windbreaker over the green shirt, sneakers, hands in pockets, easy stance.

  His smile widened to a grin. “I promise you won’t find me on any Wanted posters.” He held out his hand. “We haven’t met, but I’m Michael Futrell. I’ve kind of been following your career. The acid bath case, that rape-murder last year.”

  A police groupie, she thought, disappointed.

  “I’m an assistant professor of criminology at H.H.U.”

  No matter how cute he was, Elena didn’t want to date any more professors. It was bad enough that Sarah wanted to fix her up. This one was the right age, but he probably just wanted to talk shop.

  “I’ve been kinda of lying in wait, hoping to introduce myself,” he said.

  “You mean you followed me up here?” asked Elena. He looked O.K. She’d hate to think he was some kind of creep-stalker.

  “No, I’m here because my twin brother is riding in the race. He’s a professor too. I heard all the kids calling you Aunt Elena and then Sarah Tolland talking to you, and I thought, ‘Gee, that’s her.’”

  “Does your brother teach criminology too?” she asked, trying to imagine a university department with twin professors. No one would know who was teaching what.

  “Kinesiology,” Michael Futrell replied.

  What the hell was that? Elena wondered.

  He laughed as if he could read her mind. “That’s Phys Ed to those of us not into heavy athletic endeavors.”

  “Like me?” she asked suspiciously. Did she look out of shape or something?

  “Actually, I meant like me. I don’t mind hiking, but I prefer gardening.”

  Elena looked at him with new interest. Gardening and criminology? Had God thrown Michael Futrell into her path after playing so many romantic jokes on her? Like Frank the Narc, her ex-husband. Like her last date, the homicidal engineering professor.

  “Unfortunately, my gardening has to be done in pots on my apartment balcony,” said Michael Futrell ruefully. “Anyway, you don’t want to hear about my world-class patio tomatoes.”

  Elena wouldn’t have minded. She grew tomatoes herself.

  Looking even friendlier, Futrell said, “I was hoping we could—”

  “Niña, get yourself over here.” She turned toward her father, who was standing beside his sheriff’s car, squawks coming from the police radio. Elena excused herself and hurried away. If Lance had taken off across the mountains, she and Leo would be in deep shit with Beltran.

  “Your Lieutenant Daguerre just went down,” said Ruben Portillo. “Then someone rode over her leg.”

  Elena groaned. “Now we don’t have anyone guarding Lance. Is she badly hurt?”

  “Broken leg.” The sheriff added wryly, “That’s some murderer you got there. He came back to help her—only racer who did.”

  Eavesdropping Los Santos race fans groaned.

  “’Tis better to be a good Samaritan than a bicycle-race winner,” said President Sunnydale. “Herbert Hobart University is proud of Lance—ah—”

  “Potemkin,” snapped Vice-President Harley Stanley, who had been telling everyone who would listen that Lance’s trophy would be on display at the Herbert Hobart administration building. Now there would be no trophy.

  “Dr. Sunnydale,” said Josie, giving the ex-evangelist a charming smile, “has Herbert Hobart University ever considered establishing a museum for that famous Southwestern artist, Armstrong Carr?”

  “Your brother is driving Lieutenant Daguerre back,” said Ruben Portillo to Elena. “She evidently advised the suspect to return to the race, so he’s on the road again.”

  That was dumb of Maggie. “How many deputies has the Taos sheriff provided at his end?” asked Elena anxiously. Maybe Lance had arranged the accident, planning to fall behind. In front of the pack, everyone would see him if he tried to disappear, but if he were trailing, he could escape unnoticed. “Leo, we got a problem.”

  “Tell me about it.” Her partner had just limped up. “There’s a thorn in my Nike. I’ll probably get gangrene of the foot.”

  “Yeah, and never tap dance again,” Elena replied unsympathetically. “I told you to wear hiking boots.” She turned to Manny Escobedo. “Did you hear, Sergeant? Maggie’s out of the race. Broken leg.”

  Suddenly Manny was all cop. “Then no one’s guarding the prisoner.” He thought a minute. “Either of you ride a motorcycle?�
�

  “Not me,” said Elena.

  “I’m wounded,” said Leo. “Anyway, we don’t have a motorcycle.”

  “There’s a guy named Stanley who does,” said Manny, who had started his police career in the motorcycle patrol. Announcing his intention to catch up and guard the prisoner himself, he went off to requisition the vice-president’s Harley.

  “I don’t know how you can think that Lance is a danger to anyone,” said Harmony, who had been listening. “Would he come back to assist a policewoman if he were planning an escape? Of course he wouldn’t. Elena, could you help Aunt Josefina with the preparations for the barbecue?”

  “Mom, I’m on duty,” Elena protested.

  “Behave yourselves,” said Manny to his kids and roared off.

  23

  Sunday, October 3, 7:30 P.M.

  A cool breeze whispered through the Chimayo Valley, rustling the leaves on cottonwood trees, stirring wild grasses and flowering fall bushes. Elena sighed with enjoyment, looking off toward clouds with underbellies blushing in the setting sun, mountains darkening. Crowds of racers and spectators mingled, drank beer, margaritas, and lemonade sold by townsfolk; watched the cabrito, wrapped in foil, being dug out of the cooking pits; sat at wooden tables eating the local cuisine.

  Lance Potemkin, after rescuing Maggie, had come in fifteenth, which didn’t seem to bother him. Los Santoans had to take what comfort they could in Mark Futrell’s third-place medal. Riding right beside Lance at the finish was Sarah Tolland’s friend, Colin Stuart. Hoke Mitchell complained that the two men had actually been chatting on the last lap into Taos. They were still chatting at a table under a huge cottonwood tree, Lance guarded by Leo.

  Maggie Daguerre’s leg had been set at a hospital in Santa Fe after Deputy Sheriff Two Portillo dropped her off at Emergency. Manny picked her up once he had returned the vice-president’s motorcycle. As a result she and Manny were gorging themselves while Manny’s children and the Portillo grandchildren, led by nine-year-old Cleo Armstrong, decorated Maggie’s cast with elaborate, brightly colored pictures and Indian symbols—flute players on her ankle, road runners circling her shin. Elena wondered how Maggie’s captain was going to react to that garish display of folk art in the conservative precincts of I.D. & R.