Widows' Watch

by Nancy Herndon

  Elena made a wry face. “I’m just following Maggie’s instructions, but I’ll tell you, Sergeant, it’s really getting weird. I’ve now got three old guys killed in the last three years, their wives all at the Socorro Heights Center when the deed was done.”

  “That is weird,” Manny agreed. “I’ll drive.” The two went to the lot and hopped into an ‘88 Ford Escort, which had been turned over by the Mexican police, another of the hundreds of stolen cars that crossed the border weekly, but one of the few that ever came back. With all the identification numbers filed off, LSPD couldn’t find the owner. The car was heartily disliked in the department because potholes and bumps, even the traffic humps at banks and schools, would turn off the fuel pump and leave you stranded until you delved under the carpet in the trunk to turn the pump back on. The Ford Company called it a safety feature that kept the car from catching fire after accidents; the detectives called it a pain in the ass and turned it in regularly to departmental mechanics for adjustment.

  “I got two more possibles,” said Elena, “but they’re before everything went into the computer, so I’ll have to look up the paperwork. You think I should chase it for more than five years?”

  Manny wheeled out onto Raynor and headed for the interstate. “Go with what you got now,” he advised. “See how good it looks. If there really seems to be a connection, and that’s hard to believe—I mean, what have we got here? Some nut who hates his grandfather, so he runs around killing old men every year or so. Anyway, if it looks good, we’ll have I.D. & R. check it further back.”

  “Thank God,” said Elena. “You wouldn’t believe how many error messages I got just coming up with these cases.”

  “Sure I would,” said Manny. “Everyone knows about you and computers.”

  They took the Paisano overpass to Alameda, where they found Jesus Bonilla insisting that he was not leaving his shop to go to the hospital no matter how big a lump he had on the back of his head. The hijo de puta pulled a gun on him, made him turn around, and whacked him with the butt. “Where are the police when you need ‘em?” asked Jesus indignantly.

  “You turned up anything on that czar’s medal?” asked Elena.

  “I been attacked and robbed, and you’re worrying about some damned czar’s medal. No wonder everybody hates the police.”

  Not everyone, thought Elena smugly, remembering Lydia Beeman. Just scumbags like Jesus Bonilla. By the time she and Manny got through taking Bonilla’s statement, it was 3:45, too late

  to pull those I.D. & R. files and see if she could find two more Socorro Heights murders. Well, the last guy, Stoltz, had been a widower, so unless he had visited the center himself, he wasn’t part of the pattern. If there was a pattern. Manny’s joke about grandfather-haters wasn’t going to fly. Someone in the center fingering houses for burglary? Nothing of great worth had been stolen. And the husbands had been at home. But the thief might have had some reason to think they wouldn’t be. Maybe she should check for successful burglaries while the householders were at the center. The only other possibility was the spousal abuse factor and T. Bob Tyler or some other avenger of women. It worked for the Potemkins, for the Brolies. Nothing on the Castros. And one of the two remaining victims didn’t even have a wife—well, not a living wife. His next of kin had been a son.

  “That Maggie Daguerre is something else,” said Manny. “Right out of hospital emergency, with her leg in a fifty-pound cast, and she still wants to go to a barbecue and sleep in a tent.”

  “She’s going home early today.”

  Manny looked alarmed. “Something wrong?”

  “Mostly her captain,” said Elena, grinning. “He doesn’t like the cast. Thinks it’s unprofessional.”

  “Yeah? Jesus,” said Manny, “I thought it was a work of art. I never realized my kids had any talent that way.”

  They arrived back at headquarters, where Elena clocked out and headed for home, but the Potemkin murder was so curious that she wished it were tomorrow morning so that she could keep delving.

  27

  Tuesday, October 5, 8:30 P.M.

  Elena dragged a rocking chair from her bedroom into the living room so she could keep her mother company while Harmony was walking the loom. “That’s really a great pattern, Mom,” she said, examining the growing length of fabric.

  “My patterns usually are,” Harmony replied. “I don’t know why that Lydia Beeman—well, we won’t talk about her.”

  Elena stifled a grin. “What about Lydia?”

  “It’s just that I was beginning my weaving class—I have twelve ladies and two gentlemen—and I told them that weaving is a very practical skill. You can make fabrics for home decoration and for your own wardrobe. I mentioned this outfit as an example.” Harmony gestured to her loose-weave overblouse and full skirt. The blouse had a high mandarin collar and wide, three-quarter-length sleeves. The deep purple fabric was banded at the sleeves and hem with rose and turquoise Indian designs. A silver concho belt inset with pinkish-red stones cinched the blouse at the waist. Elena hated to think what an outfit like that would cost in one of the Santa Fe boutiques. No wonder her mother was starting to make money. “So what did Lydia say?”

  “She said my clothes are quite impractical because they aren’t machine-washable, probably not even hand-washable.”

  “Well, I suppose it’s true,” said Elena.

  “What does that have to do with anything?” Harmony demanded. “There are people who don’t even have washing machines. And most of my clothes are hand-washable. Comfort, color, beauty—those are the important qualities in clothes. The self-image they give you—”

  “Mom, you’ll have to admit that Lydia Beeman is the wash-and-wear type. She probably doesn’t even wear skirts.”

  “She made remarks about my sandals too. Said I’d ruin my feet unless I switched to sensible walking shoes. There’s nothing wrong with my feet!”

  “I know, Mom. They’re very pretty.”

  “She probably has ingrown toenails or bunions. That’s why she wears those ugly lace-up shoes.”

  Elena sensed a real feud developing between her mother and Lydia Beeman, which was kind of unusual for Harmony.

  “How’s your investigation coming on the Potemkin case?” asked Harmony.

  “Lance came in and told us that he’d been with some professor from the university the whole time.”

  “I knew it!”

  “But the professor denies it.”

  Harmony looked astonished. “He must be lying.”

  “Quite possible,” Elena agreed. “The man’s married.”

  “What? To another man? I didn’t know that was possible in Texas.”

  “It’s not. He’s divorcing a wife and wants partial custody of the children, so Lance didn’t want to mention their—ah—weekend together.”

  “Well, of course he didn’t. Very thoughtful and caring of him.”

  “We still have to question Professor Sims in person.”

  28

  Wednesday, October 6, 9:00 A.M.

  “Interviews this afternoon,” said Leo. “Two o’clock. Bayard Sims and Lance Potemkin.”

  Elena was getting ready to go downstairs for the backfiles on the Cox and Stoltz cases.

  “Manny says you’re making progress on the serial-killer angle.”

  Elena shrugged. “I’m keeping after it, anyway.” She gathered up her notes and headed for I.D. & R., where she asked a clerk to pull the two files. Porfirio Cox first. The man had been shot by an intruder with a Russian Tokarev handgun in September, four years ago at around three in the afternoon. The intruder got in by knocking out a pane in the back door and unlocking it from the inside. The gun was never found. No fingerprints but the family’s. A gold papal medal had been stolen, which Cox, a builder, had received for his donations of labor and materials to the Catholic Diocese of Los Santos.


  Another medal. Was the killer a medal collector? Or just someone who liked to take a souvenir with him? Could you get anything from a fence for a papal medal? Los Santos was heavily Roman Catholic. She read on. There! The wife, Marcia Cox, had been at the Socorro Heights Senior Citizens Center when he was killed. Elena asked the clerk for a cross reference on family violence. Nothing turned up.

  Her last victim within the five-year period—barely—was Herbert Stoltz, a retired colonel. A widower. Killed around two in the afternoon. Murder weapon—an Italian Beretta Modello. Nice gun. Elena thought about the weapons. All World War II. Maybe. They didn’t actually have the weapons to confirm the ballistics reports. No sign of breaking and entering, but there were a number of items missing, according to the victim’s son: a Rolex watch—now that would bring some money, unlike the stuff she’d turned up on the other victims; a West Point ring—that too might be worth something; three military medals for valor. More medals. But no wife this time.

  She began to read the detectives’ reports. Lousy typing. They didn’t have computers, so there were misspellings, X-ing-outs. “Oh boy,” Elena breathed. No wonder this one didn’t have a wife. He’d killed her.

  Elena asked the clerk for the file on Frances Stoltz, and read slowly. Herbert Stoltz had shot his wife during a quarrel over her threat to file for divorce. He hadn’t told detectives why she was filing, just that a man who had been married for almost fifty years had a right to expect that his wife would stick by him in his old age. So why hadn’t he been in jail instead of at home where someone could ring his bell, walk in, and kill him? Suspended sentence. Elena called the D.A.’s office, got lucky. The First Assistant D.A. had tried the case himself and remembered it.

  “He had a high-priced lawyer and a lot of character witnesses,” said the A.D.A. “Everyone said this was a good man, driven temporarily nuts because his wife wanted to leave him for no good reason. Was that fair? his lawyer said. He’s old and sick, no good to her anymore, so she wants to take off with half his pension. He had an all-male jury. They ate it up. Convicted him on the lowest count and gave him a suspended sentence in the penalty phase. What a crock! That was one mean old man,” said Thaddeus Call. “Autopsy showed she had about five fractures—probably a battered woman, but the judge wouldn’t admit that into evidence.”

  “No domestic violence records?” Elena asked.

  “Not a one, and the family and neighbors wouldn’t admit that he’d been beating her. Hell, the poor woman had had a radical mastectomy. He probably hit her in the breast and caused that too.”

  “Would you know if she went to the Socorro Heights Senior Citizens Center?” Elena asked.

  “Not that I remember. But I don’t see that it would have had any bearing on the case. She was home when he shot her. Oh, and he got his. Someone shot him in the same house.” The A.D.A. sounded pleased about that.

  Elena had been taking notes as he talked. After the call, she bowed her head, fingers forced back through the thick black hair that fed into her French braid. Another battered wife—murdered, in this case; another daylight robbery-murder; medals stolen, jewelry off the body. She’d have to start interviewing survivors and people at the center. Survivors first. If the murderer was at the center, she didn’t want to tip him off. There weren’t a lot of men over there. She’d have to ask her mother about the two taking the weaving class. And she particularly needed to find out more about T. Bob Tyler. But what was the killer’s motive? Did he think he was some sort of knight—rescuing elderly princesses from their abusive princes?

  “How’d my instructions work?”

  Elena looked up to see Maggie Daguerre swinging down the aisle on her crutches. “Pretty well. Mostly because I ignored the complicated stuff.”

  Maggie laughed. “You want to do lunch, as they say in the business world?”

  “Do lunch? You mean like go somewhere where they serve cocktails and appetizers and—”

  “No, I mean like pig out on Mexican food—any place they don’t have stairs.”

  “You’re on.” Elena collected her notes, slung her purse over her shoulder, and preceded Maggie out of I.D. & R. “Are you and Manny an item?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. His kids like me now, but that doesn’t make him any taller. Maybe if he’d grow—four or five inches; that would do it.”

  Elena laughed. “I don’t think there’s much chance of that. You’ll have to shrink.”

  “No way. Not for about forty years. Not at all if I drink this stuff your neighbor in Chimayo gave me—Joaquina. Some herbal tea that’ll keep me young and gorgeous forever and stop my leg from aching.”

  “Or give you terminal diarrhea,” muttered Elena, remembering Sarah’s experience with Joaquina’s potions.

  “All I can say is I hope it works on the young and beautiful part, because it didn’t do shit for my leg.”

  29

  Wednesday, October 6, 2:00 P.M.

  Bayard Sims and Lance Potemkin met in the reception room at Crimes Against Persons. “Sorry, Bayard,” said Lance, glancing at the woman behind Sims. “But since she already knows, I couldn’t see letting them continue to think I killed my father.”

  Elena, who was with Lance, watched Sims turn brick-red.

  “Professor Sims, if you’ll come this way,” said Leo.

  The woman behind Sims said, “Where he goes, I go. I’m his lawyer, not to mention his wife.”

  Carmen, the receptionist, was staring at Mrs. Sims with horror. Carmen looked like a shampoo ad, with a glowing, luxuriously curled head of hair; Mrs. Sims looked like she had a rusty wire brush on her head.

  “His lawyer?” asked Leo. “He’s not a suspect.”

  “I suppose you’re the boyfriend,” said Mrs. Sims, eyeing Lance. “Well, we’d better head for that room with the tacky early American couch and thrash this out.”

  Lieutenant Beltran, who had been briefed on the progress of the case just an hour before, strode into the reception area and said, “The suspects will be questioned separately.”

  “Suspects?” snapped Opal Sims. “Neither one of these men did anything—except break the sodomy law.”

  Carmen’s mouth dropped open.

  “Opal,” muttered Professor Sims, looking pained. He was a stocky man, handsome in a distinguished, graying way, but shorter than his wife.

  “I believe in calling a spade a spade,” said Opal Sims.

  Lloyd Booker, a black detective in Sex Crimes, who was entering the reception area at that minute, said, “Some of us spades take that amiss, ma’am.”

  “I’m not surprised,” snapped Opal Sims. “Nothing pisses me off more than this politically correct racial and ethnic sensitivity crap. Now, can we get on with this interview?”

  Elena had now placed Opal Sims as a tough criminal defense counsel, easily pissed off in court, as well as elsewhere. “Is Professor Sims going to back up Lance’s alibi?” asked Elena.

  “Whatever he has to say, we’re interrogating them separately,” said Beltran.

  “I’ll tell you what,” said Opal. She fished in her purse and came up with a notepad, ripped off a sheet for Lance and one for her husband. “Just write down the span of time you were together out at Bayard’s tedious country place, then note any time that you weren’t in each other’s presence while you were at the house. You don’t have to say what you were doing because that would be self-incrimination.”

  “Look, lady,” roared Beltran.

  “Don’t ‘look-lady’ me,” Opal Sims snarled back. “I’m appointing myself counsel for Potemkin too. Now, write!” She glared from her husband to Lance. “You cops can compare what they have to say.”

  Lance looked taken aback to find himself, willy-nilly, represented by the wife of his lover, the woman who had insisted that they part company. Elena, who was enjoying the scene immensely, managed to keep from laughin
g out loud because she could see that the lieutenant was furious. Sims sat down, took a cookbook from his expensive soft leather briefcase and, using it as a writing surface, began to jot things down. Lance turned and used the reception counter to make his notations.

  “Great hair,” said Carmen. “Are you really gay?” Lance nodded and added some more notes to his written testimony. “Too bad,” said the receptionist. “Is that a perm or natural curl?”

  “Natural,” said Lance.

  “Shit,” said the receptionist. “Who cuts it for you?”

  “Mrs. Pargetter, the secretary in Electrical Engineering.”

  “You’re kidding? An amateur?”

  “No,” said Lance. “She’s faster on a computer keyboard than I am, and that’s saying something.”

  “Great,” said Mrs. Sims. “Then you can type Bayard’s new cookbook. I sure as hell don’t want to.”

  Lance gave her a look, added one last item, and handed his paper to Elena, who read it over. Sims handed his to Leo.

  “I don’t care what those papers say,” muttered Beltran.

  “Oh, don’t be such a grouch, Lieutenant. I got my husband in here; I told him he had to tell the truth except where he needed to take the Fifth. Now read the damn accounts of their time. I’ve got a deposition at four. You screw that up, I’ll file suit against the department. Wouldn’t be the first time.”

  Beltran gave her a fulminating look and compared the two schedules. Before he could comment, Opal Sims strode off toward the large interrogation room, leaving the others little choice but to follow her.

  “You’re both swearing to these?” Beltran asked angrily.

  Opal plunked herself down on the blue polka-dot couch. “You sit here, Bayard,” she said, patting the cushion beside her. “You can sit over there, Potemkin,” she said to Lance, pointing to a chair beside the table. “We don’t want any hand-holding here. You may not have killed anyone, but you two could get yourselves arrested for—”

  “Opal!” grated Bayard Sims.