The Pot Thief Who Studied Georgia O'Keeffe Page 10

  I returned to the kitchen and scooped the sautéed onions and tomatoes into tortillas, added diced avocado and chopped fresh cilantro and—mindful of the drinking water in Albuquerque—washed the tacos down with a cold Tecate.

  I justified the beer with lunch because I’d be skipping margaritas with Susannah. I had a date that night with Sharice.

  24

  She cracked the door a few inches. Only her face and left hand were visible.

  “Take my hand and close your eyes.” She led me through the apartment and back to the bedroom. “You can open your eyes now.”

  She was naked.

  “Love your outfit,” I said.

  “Glad you do. But you’re overdressed for the occasion. Let me help.”

  She unbuckled my belt. I figured this was the night.

  It was.

  And that’s all I’m going to say about it.

  Well, I will say one thing. Just before we jumped into bed, I heard myself say, “Marry me.”

  When we were dressed, she opened the door to the balcony and let Benz in.

  “What was he doing on the balcony?”

  “He likes to sit out there and watch the pedestrians.” She hesitated before adding, “And I didn’t want him in the house while we were …”

  “Oh.”

  She opened the oven and extracted something I chose to think of as a one-dish-meal, although it was dangerously close to being a casserole.

  “The green chiles are great,” I said, “but what are they stuffed with?”

  “Porcinis, shallots, cream and cognac.”

  “Porcinis are little pieces of pork?”

  “You know I don’t eat meat.”

  “So I guess that rules out my second guess that they’re nuchal ligaments.”

  She giggled. “They’re mushrooms.”

  They were rich, earthy, complex and delightfully chewy.

  The chilled Gruet was the perfect complement to the creamy entrée.

  “I guess I can’t bring you yuccas anymore.”

  “Why?”

  “They’re known here as the candles of the virgin. You no longer qualify.”

  She laughed as she took away my champagne flute. “No more for you just yet.” She flashed that wanton smile. “Champagne, that is.”

  She put Benz back on the balcony.

  25

  My plan the next day was to sit in the shop uninterrupted by customers and bask in the memory.

  And maybe take a nap at some point. I didn’t get much sleep.

  The plan was thwarted by visitors. They didn’t come to buy pots, alas. They came because of Carl Wilkes. News of his death must have reached most of the people who knew him.

  The first guy was a square-shouldered fellow with a matching face and a flattop. Which was not merely the name of his hairstyle but an extremely accurate description. It looked as if each hair had been individually cut so that no single strand would differ in length from its colleagues. I wondered how much time he spent in the barber’s chair.

  “Jack Haggard,” he said, extending a hand. “You Hubert Schuze?”

  “I am.”

  “Carl Wilkes told me about you. I guess you know he’s dead.”

  I nodded. His tone matched his appearance—blocky.

  “Carl and I were associates,” he said.

  Now there’s a word. Associates. Designed to muddy the water. If Jack wanted me to know his relationship with Carl, he would have told me they were business partners, friends, adversaries, neighbors, brothers-in-law, high school teammates.

  But they were associates. Which told me only that he didn’t want me to know what his connection was with Carl.

  He was evidently waiting for me to say what my connection was with Carl.

  I didn’t. I just nodded again.

  “Shocking,” he said, after he realized I wasn’t going to speak.

  “Yes, it was.”

  “When’s the last time you saw him?”

  “Are you a policeman, Mr. Haggard?”

  “No, no.”

  “Because the police asked me when I had seen him and what we talked about and other things like that as part of their investigation. And since it’s an ongoing investigation, I don’t think I should talk about it with anyone at this point.”

  “I see,” he said, although he obviously didn’t. “That’s too bad. I was hoping you could help me.”

  “In what way?”

  “Carl and I were working on something. A deal.”

  “Oh.” He and Carl were associates and they were working on a deal. The man was a font of information.

  “It was a deal that involved, uh … your profession.”

  “You two were going to open a retail shop?”

  He looked disappointed. “No. The deal involved you, I believe.”

  “Hmm.”

  “He tell you a name of someone else maybe it involved?”

  “Sorry, but I really can’t talk about it.”

  “It’s important to me,” he said.

  “I can’t help you.”

  “What if I wrote it down?”

  “Wrote it down?”

  He extracted a card from his shirt pocket, wrote on it and handed it to me.

  He had written one word—tompiro.

  “Well,” he said, “what do you think?”

  “I think that word should be capitalized.”

  He frowned. He took the card back and wrote on it again. He handed it back to me. “Think it over, then call me. There may be big money in it for you.”

  After he left, I looked at the card. The side he wrote on was white and matte like ordinary paper. Which explains why he could write on it. In addition to tompiro there was a phone number with a 915 area code. The only two area codes in New Mexico are 505 and 575.

  The other side of the card was high-gloss yellow with equally shiny black lettering that read: ACE BAIL BONDS, RELIABLE 24-HOUR SERVICE.

  Not to be snooty, but the use of all capital letters did not strike me as a sign of reliability. The telephone number for Ace Bail Bonds had a 575 area code.

  Maybe the deal Haggard mentioned that he and Carl were working on was starting a bail-bond company.

  Maybe Jack’s nickname was Ace, and he was Carl’s preferred bail bondsman. Or maybe Jack was the one who needed the services of a bail bondsman.

  There were, no doubt, other possibilities, but I didn’t explore them because I heard the bong and looked up to see a couple entering Spirits in Clay hand in hand.

  A flap on the back of the man’s forest-green shirt ran between his shoulder blades. I suppose the idea is to provide ventilation. But when the ambient temperature is higher than normal body temperature—as it frequently is in Albuquerque—the air drawn in will increase your heat rather than lower it. His twill pants were held up by a belt whose buckle was partially hidden under a pouch any marsupial would be proud of.

  The woman wore cargo shorts and a pink shirt, also vented. They looked like a couple of tourists on the type of safari where you view lions from the windows of air-conditioned buses.

  “You must be Hubert Schultz,” she said. “We’re the Edwardses—Donald and Dotty. Carl Wilkes was our dear friend. He often spoke of you. When we found out he was dead, I said, ‘Donald’”—she looked at him and he nodded to affirm that she had indeed addressed him—“we just must visit Mr. Schultz to convey our deepest sympathies.”

  She turned to him and he nodded again.

  “Actually, my name is Schuze, not Schultz.”

  Dotty clasped her hands in front of her. “I am sooo sorry. I’m just terrible with names. Donald will tell you that.” She looked at Donald and he nodded. “I tell you, Mr. Chews, when it comes to names, my memory is a sieve. And of course it’s worse in ti
mes of pressure like this.”

  I didn’t know if the pressure was from the death of their dear friend Carl, from her mixing up my name or from the warm air that must have been streaming up through her vented shirt.

  When I didn’t say anything, she continued. “Carl was not only a friend, he was a scout.”

  “A Boy Scout?”

  She giggled nervously. “Isn’t that funny, Donald?” Another look, another nod. “What I meant to say is that he found things for us.”

  “Old things,” Donald said.

  “Right,” Dotty added, “very old things. Our entire house is decorated with very old things.”

  Donald cleared his throat. “You see, Hubert—you don’t mind if we call you Hubert, do you?” It must have been a rhetorical question because he didn’t pause long enough for me to answer. “We love the ancient peoples of this land. We study them.”

  “We have a library full of books about the ancient ones, don’t we, Donald?”

  “We do, and three other rooms just for our collections.”

  “Large rooms,” said Dotty, “packed full of ancient treasures.”

  “And Carl helped you find those treasures.”

  “You do understand. What did I say, Donald? Didn’t I say he would understand?” She continued after Donald nodded. “I said, ‘Donald, anyone who was such a good friend of Carl’s will understand.’ I just knew it.”

  They smiled at me. After thirty seconds or so, I decided they expected me to say something. “Thank you for coming by. I suspect Carl would be happy that you did.”

  “Excellent,” she said.

  “Great,” he said.

  “So we can expect to hear from you?” she asked.

  “When the time and circumstances are appropriate,” I replied.

  Donald handed me his card, and they left.

  His card was a staid, low-sheen white on both sides even though there was lettering only on one—his name and phone number with only the first letters of his Christian and family names capitalized.

  26

  You’re engaged?”

  “No.”

  “But you just said you asked her to marry you. Don’t tell me she said no.”

  Having spent the night with Sharice and part of the day with Jack Haggard and the Edwardses, I had plenty of fodder for the cocktail hour.

  “She didn’t say no,” I answered, “and she didn’t say yes.”

  “She said maybe?”

  I shook my head. “She didn’t say anything. She just laughed. Then she pulled me into bed and … well.”

  “I know—you consummated your relationship. Congratulations, by the way. What’s it been? Three years since your first date? Call Guinness—they probably want you in their book.”

  “Three years ago wasn’t a date. It was just lunch. And most of the time we’ve been dating, I’ve been in one cast followed by another.”

  “Equivocations and excuses. Admit it, Hubert, this courtship has been positively Victorian. I know you won’t give details, but can you at least say something about it?”

  “Sure. It was worth the wait.”

  Her shoulders slumped. “I could tell that from the dopey smile you showed up with tonight. Can’t you just share a little romantic something about it?”

  “Okay. She asked me to close my eyes while I was still standing outside her front door. Then she took me by the hand and led me to the bedroom. When I opened my eyes, she was completely naked.”

  She laughed. “I love it. No points for being coy, but I admire the girl’s take-charge attitude. So after you did the deed, she just pretended you hadn’t proposed to her?”

  “She must have thought I was joking.”

  “Why would she think that?”

  “Maybe she thought I was using humor to express my delight. You know—she’s standing there in her birthday suit about to drag me into bed, and instead of saying Thank you or I’m really excited about this, I say Marry me.”

  “So you were joking?”

  I sipped my margarita. “I don’t know. I just blurted it out. Maybe I subconsciously wanted to propose.”

  She sighed. “I’d settle for any proposal—conscious, subconscious or unconscious.”

  I jumped on that to change the subject. “You want Baltazar to propose to you?”

  “It’d be nice to be asked, but I don’t know what I’d say. He’s a fun guy and a nice person. But he seems rooted in La Reina.”

  “And you don’t want to live there.”

  “I don’t know. Willard is about the same size, but after living in Albuquerque all these years …” She paused. “Let’s get back to you and Sharice. I know how much you like her. So now that you two are sleeping together and you proposed to her—”

  “I didn’t propose to her—it just popped out.”

  “Like you said, it was a subconscious proposal. So what’s next—you two going to play house?”

  “I don’t know. Do people shack up these days after one night of sex?”

  She frowned. “No one says shack up anymore. And anyway, you’re asking the wrong girl. I’ve never lived with a man. I would have moved in with Kauffman had he asked me to, but it might have been awkward, since his wife was living with him.”

  “Don’t beat yourself up—you didn’t know he was married.”

  “And I could still move in with Freddie, but only on the days when they allow conjugal visits.”

  “Not your problem. He hadn’t murdered anyone until you started dating him.”

  “So I turned him into a murderer?”

  “Of course not. Look, you’ve had a bad stretch, but these things even out in the long run. Maybe Baltazar’s the one. If not, I’m sure Mr. Right is right around the corner.”

  Her smile returned. “Of course he is—Mr. Right wouldn’t be left around the corner.” She dipped a chip in the salsa. “So the Haggard guy, he must be a pot hunter.”

  “Or a bail bondsman.”

  “Or a pot hunter who keeps a bail bondsman’s card just in case. You should do that, Hubie.”

  “I don’t need a bail bondsman. I’ve been digging up pots for over twenty years and never been arrested.”

  “I meant for the next time you get arrested for murder.”

  “Don’t even joke about that.”

  “And Donald and Dotty must be collectors. You know what, Hubie? I’ll bet they were in it together.”

  “In what together?”

  “The Tompiro caper.”

  “Caper?”

  “That’s exactly what this is. Like The Maltese Falcon.”

  “How is it like The Maltese Falcon?”

  “You should remember. You even quoted that line about partners. Peter Lorre offers Humphrey Bogart five thousand for the Maltese falcon, but Bogart doesn’t have it. Then Sydney Greenstreet pays him ten thousand for it, but it turns out to be a fake.”

  “And the similarity is?”

  “Carl offered you thirty thousand for a pot, but you didn’t have it. Now Haggard also wants it—he even wrote the word on that card.”

  “He forgot to capitalize it.”

  “Will you just pay attention? He wants the bird, so you can sell it to him just like Bogart sold it to Greenstreet. But you sell him the fake you made. So he gets a fake just like Greenstreet did.”

  She looked positively triumphant.

  “You said Haggard wants the bird. I think you meant the pot.”

  “See? I told you these two capers are almost identical.”

  “Well, they are in one sense. Bogart didn’t have the falcon to begin with, and I don’t have the Tompiro.”

  “You’ll have it in just a few days.”

  27

  A cigarette in one hand. The other one rapping on my door. Her eyes peering in just abo
ve the gold-leaf letters of SPIRITS IN CLAY, which pegged her at about five-ten.

  Tristan had installed a remotely operated lock after I’d experienced some security issues. I left the remote on the counter, walked to the door and cracked it open.

  “You Hubert Schuze?”

  “Yes.”

  She pushed at the door. Even though my foot was wedged against it, she managed to slide it back a few inches. She was scrawny but wide-shouldered with sun-bleached hair and a wide mouth with parched lips.

  “I need to talk with you.”

  I pointed at the icon of a cigarette with a red line through it. “You’ll have to put out the cigarette.”

  She stepped away from the door. “Then we can talk out here because I am not going to waste this smoke.”

  I stepped outside and the door clicked behind me.

  “I want the thirty thousand dollars Carl Wilkes gave you,” she said.

  I fanned away the smoke her words carried. “Who are you?”

  “I’m his wife, and that money is community property.”

  I remembered telling Susannah I wouldn’t have cavorted with Carl’s wife if he had one. In her unique style, she’d responded, “And especially if he didn’t have one.”

  So he did have one. Now I felt bad about not inviting her into the shop. What’s a little smoke in the air compared to losing a spouse?

  “I’m sorry about your loss.”

  She waved it away with a brown-stained hand. “Don’t be. I’m surprised someone didn’t plug him years ago.” She must have seen the look on my face because she added, “We haven’t lived together for years. Don’t get me wrong. I liked him well enough. Even after we were separated, if one of us got the urge, the other would usually oblige. But he dealt with lots of pot thieves who carried guns, so it didn’t come as much of a surprise that one of them used theirs.”

  I shuddered.

  “We were still legally married when he bit the dust. That thirty thousand he gave you is mine.”

  “He offered me thirty thousand if I could get him a certain kind of pot.”

  “A Tompiro,” she said.

  “Right. But I didn’t get it, so he didn’t give me anything.”