The Pot Thief Who Studied Einstein Page 10

  Martin continued, “Even if the electron gun is aimed exactly at the same place, the ‘dents’ are not the same. Each electron hits in a different place.”

  Susannah shrugged. “So?”

  “Doesn’t strike you as odd that two electrons start off in the same place, leave the gun at the same speed and end up at different locations?”

  “Not really. The baseballs travel the same path because they’re big. But the electrons are so small they get pushed around by the wind or magnetic forces or light waves or something, so they get bumped off course.”

  Martin looked at me. “I think you should give her the book.”

  “I don’t want it,” she interjected before I could respond. Then she waved for Angie. While we were waiting for refills, she said, “Look at us. One part-time night student, one guy who got expelled, and one who dropped out at age thirteen, all having a grand time at the bar discussing subatomic particles. We need to get lives, guys.”

  “This is life,” I said. “Part of life is about figuring things out.”

  “Things that matter, Hubie. I guess people building nuclear reactors have to worry about electrons, but the rest of us have more important things to figure out.”

  “I didn’t believe all triangles have interior angles equal to 180 degrees when Mr. Matthews told me that in the fourth grade. I figured there are so many different triangles – long skinny ones, squashed flat ones, etc. – that their interior angles couldn’t always be the same. But when he showed me the proof, it suddenly made sense to me.”

  “Your fourth grade class did geometry proofs?” asked Martin.

  “Not the whole class. Mr. Matthews gave extra sessions after school for kids that were interested in math, donating his own time. Sometimes he smelled of what I later came to realize was rye whisky, but in those days I just thought he was sleepy and had bad breath. But on the days when he was alert, it was like magic to me, the idea that you could prove something with absolute certainty.”

  “I had teachers like that,” said Martin, “I would’ve stayed in school.”

  “I wouldn’t have given up my after-school time,” said Susannah. “Proofs may be certain, but nothing in real life is, and that’s what makes it interesting.”

  21

  Geronimo was waiting for me. When I passed through the shop and then my workshop into my living quarters, I could hear him scratching at the patio door.

  I popped the cork on a Gruet Blanc De Noir and opened a box of dog biscuits. I took a sniff and decided the biscuits didn’t go with champagne, so I grabbed a box of piñon brittle I’d bought from a shop a few doors to the east, the same one where I buy my piñon aftershave.

  It was cool out in the patio. Geronimo sniffed the dog biscuits and came to the same conclusion I had. However, he was having them with water, not champagne, so I told him he’d have to make the best of it.

  I sipped the Gruet and looked up at the stars. I opened the piñon brittle, and Geronimo looked up at me hopefully.

  “Only after you finish your biscuit,” I told him, and damned if he didn’t wolf down the biscuit. He’s smarter than he looks.

  I gave him a large piece of brittle, and when he crunched it, it flew in all directions. I guess that’s why they call it brittle. It didn’t faze him, though. He chewed the part he had bitten off and then went around picking up all the pieces with his sticky tongue. I swear he’s part anteater.

  When I was a kid growing up, I used to sneak out of the house after my parents were asleep and lie in the grass and look up at the stars. There wasn’t as much light pollution back then, and you could see all the major constellations. The skies are not as clear now, but because there’s no moisture in the air and we’re a mile high, the atmosphere is still easier to see through than most urban locations, and the wall around my patio has a bit of the ‘well-effect’. So I sat there looking up at the twinkling stars and wondering if they were really composed of zillions of subatomic particles zooming around in random directions.

  The champagne was cold and crisp and the piñon brittle hard and sweet, so I had a little more of each.

  And woke up sometime in the middle of the night asleep in my lawn chair. Geronimo had taken advantage of my slumber to finish off the piñon brittle.

  “You are grounded,” I told him as I staggered inside and slipped between my five-hundred-thread-count-long-staple cotton sheets.

  I dreamed of Izuanita, but it would be less than gallant for me to share the details of that dream. I can say that at one point she was standing close to me with her long arms on my shoulders, her scent around me like a cloud from Xochimilco.

  There was a rhythmic beating. Perhaps native drums. Perhaps my heart pounding at her nearness.

  Perhaps someone at the door. I covered my head with one of my pillows (I sleep with four). Go away, I said telepathically to the early bird customer. I don’t care if I miss a sale, just go away.

  But he kept pounding.

  I rolled unsteadily out of bed, donned my robe and made it to the front door where I saw Whit Fletcher.

  “You got a warrant,” I said after opening the door.

  “What kind of question is that?” he asked, feigning hurt. “I drop by to see an old friend and you want to know if I got a warrant.” He shook his head in disappointment at my cynicism.

  “O.K.,” I said, “no warrant. How about coffee?”

  “Now that’s more like it,” he said. “I could use a good cup of Joe. How about you put the pot on?”

  “I meant did you bring coffee,” I muttered to myself as he followed me back to my kitchen. I lit the fire under the coffee pot that I had primed the night before and excused myself for several morning ablutions.

  When I returned, Whit had made himself comfortable in my willow chaise, so I took one of the less comfortable kitchen table chairs after pouring us both a cup of Café Bustelo, two bucks a pound at the grocery store and better than the stuff that sells for five times as much. It’s roasted to Latin American tastes and holds up well to a lot of cream and sugar.

  “I been thinking about what you said before we went to the morgue,” he said.

  “I said a lot of things before we went to the morgue, but none of them did any good because you made me go anyway.”

  “I didn’t make you go. You was just doing your duty as a citizen.”

  “Right.”

  “What I’m talking about is when you asked me why we thought you might be able to ID the guy.”

  “You said it was police business and nothing I needed to know.”

  He pushed a mop of silver hair off his forehead. “That’s still true officially. Let’s agree right now that’s what you’ll say if anyone asks you about it.”

  I nodded.

  “Fact is, the dead guy was a pot collector. So naturally, we figured you’d know him.”

  I felt a freshet of relief. Premature as it turned out.

  “He collected those real old pots. You know those whatyamacallits – the ones you dig up illegally.”

  “Anasazi,” I said.

  He smiled at me. “If you didn’t know him, how’d you know he collected Anasazi?”

  “You just said so.”

  “I said whatyamacallits.”

  “Nice try,” I said. “You also said the kind I dig up, and almost all of those are Anasazi.”

  “That’s O.K., Hubert. I still think you know him, but I won’t press it.” He took a sip of his coffee. “How much one of those pots worth these days?”

  So that’s why he’d come by, the scent of money. “Depends on its condition,” I said. “One in good shape can bring fifty thousand.”

  He whistled softly in admiration of a fifty thousand dollar pot. “That guy you saw at the morgue – the one you say you didn’t know – he had twenty-five old pots. I don’t know if they was Anasazi or not. You’d be the one to know that. And I don’t know if they was in good shape. Most of ‘em had nicks and cracks and some had big pieces missin’, but mayb
e that’s good shape considering how old they are. I guess you’d be the one to know about that too. But I know there was twenty-five of ‘em because I counted them myself. And I can multiply pretty good, so I figure even if they weren’t all good enough to bring fifty thousand, that collection is worth at least half a million.”

  I just sipped my coffee and said nothing.

  “The way I figure it, those pots don’t have anything to do with him being poisoned —“

  “Poisoned?”

  “What’d you think? He died of natural causes?”

  “I guess I just assumed he’d been shot or knifed or something.”

  “You see any holes in him?”

  “He was covered with a sheet, remember?”

  “I guess you did have your eyes open after all. Anyway, if he’d been killed for the pots, they’d be gone. So if they weren’t the motive, then they ain’t evidence. I don’t know who has claim to them, but I figure nobody but the original collector knows exactly how many pots was in the collection, and if a few of the better ones were to go missing, what’s the harm? What I’m sayin’ is I may be able to lay my hands on a few of these pots and no one’s gonna squeal about it.”

  I was still sipping coffee.

  “But I’d need an expert to tell me the best ones to select. And I’d need someone to sell them. On the sly, so to speak. And you and me have done a few deals in the past that always worked out pretty good, so I was thinking…”

  I didn’t hear what he was thinking because the coffee was gradually lifting the fog, and I realized that what he had already said implied that he had seen the collection.

  When he stopped talking, I asked him when the guy had been poisoned.

  “We found him on Sunday, but he hadn’t been doing any praying. Coroner said he’d been dead ten to twelve hours, so he must have died late Saturday night or early Sunday morning.”

  The house had been empty on Thursday, three days before the police discovered the dead guy. My head started spinning. How had Whit seen the pots?

  22

  “I told you that wasn’t the house.”

  “You never said that,” I countered.

  “Well,” she admitted, “maybe not in so many words, but I always thought you were too confident.”

  “I’m still confident. That was the house.”

  “Then how come the pots were gone on Thursday and back on Sunday when Whit got there?”

  I was ready for that one. “Because they took the pots before Thursday. Then, when the guy died, they figured they better put them back. After the heat’s off, they’ll take them again.”

  She gave me a look of total incredulity. “You have got to be kidding me. Why would they put the pots back after they killed the guy?”

  It was time to explain my brilliant theory. “They didn’t kill him. They took the pots sometime after my appraisal and before I went back in on Thursday. They were home free. Then somebody murdered the guy on Saturday night or Sunday morning, so they brought the pots back because if they got caught with the pots, the police might also tag them with the murder, thinking they had killed him to get the pots.”

  Susannah rolled her eyes skyward then took a drink from her margarita. Then she took a long slow deep breath. “Hubert,” she said, “this is bizarre even by your standards. First, who are the ‘they’ who took the pots? Second, who are the ‘they’ that killed the guy? And third, why would the first ‘theys’ – the ones who took the pots – feel like they had to put them back after the second ‘theys’ killed the guy?”

  Somehow it sounded less convincing the way she said it. But I wasn’t ready to admit defeat. I may be only 5’ 6” and 160 pounds, but I’m still a man, and we don’t easily admit to being mistaken.

  “I don’t know who the ‘they’ were who took the pots,” I said confidently, “but I know for certain the pots were gone, so there has to be a ‘they’ who took them. Or maybe a him or a her. Someone took them, that’s for sure. Then a second ‘they’ – or a him or a her – killed the guy. It can’t be the first ‘they’ or him or her, because if you already have the pots, why go back and kill the guy?”

  She stared at me for a while. Finally she said, “Here’s a better theory. The pots didn’t belong to Cantú. They never did. They were never in that house you broke in to. They were in another house and they’re still there.”

  “But the house I broke in to,” I protested, “was the house where I did the appraisal.” Except I think I may have pronounced it ‘appwaisal’.” I was on my fourth margarita, still trying to deal with the shock of what Whit had told me.

  “Face it, Hubert,” she demanded. “It was not the house.”

  “But it was exactly like it.”

  “All the houses in Casitas del Bosque are exactly like it. They’re cookie-cutter houses. That’s why they all have the back window in the same place.”

  “And the same cream-colored shade?”

  “Yep.”

  “And the same fireplace?”

  She nodded. “The same fireplace.”

  “And the same beige carpet?”

  “The developer probably got a great deal on a bulk purchase.”

  “Even the shelves?”

  “What else would you put on the sides of a fireplace?”

  I took another drink from my margarita. Probably a mistake. I was already feeling queasy. “So,” I said, “the pots are in another house in Casitas del Bosque?”

  She leaned back in her chair and gave a slight nod. The nod may have been slight, but the triumph behind it was palpable.

  “That seems way too coincidental,” I protested. “I mean, what are the odds that Cantú, who asked me to copy three of the pots, lived in the same condominimum edition as the guy who actually owned them and got killed?”

  “I think you mean ‘condominium addition’.”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “No, you said ‘condominimum edition’, like it was an issue of a magazine dealing with very small condoms.”

  I was totally confused.

  “Actually,” she continued, “it’s not coincidental at all. If the collector was a recluse and wanted someone to take the pots to be copied, he would probably choose a neighbor. What would be surprising would be if Cantú didn’t live near the collector. It’s just like I said from the beginning, Hubie. Cantú was just the errand boy, and you wasted all that time watching his house, and you even stole his car.”

  “But it still seems suspiciously coincidental that Cantú picks this time to move,” I contended. “How do you explain that?”

  “Maybe the collector gave Cantú some money for helping with the sale of the pots and Cantú decided to move to a better neighborhood.”

  “And leave his car?”

  “That part is odd. Wait a minute! Maybe Cantú is the murderer!”

  Here we go again, I thought to myself.

  “It makes sense,” she said. “He kills the collector for the pots and then leaves town. He can’t make his getaway in his own car, so he buys a new one, or borrows one, or rents one, or steals one…no, he wouldn’t steal one …but he gets another car and leaves.”

  “So,” I said, “he doesn’t want to take his car because he’s on the lam and he wants to get out of town fast.”

  “Exactly,” she said.

  “But he takes the time to pack up all his belongings?”

  “Maybe he was really attached to them.”

  “Face it,” I said. “Neither one of us has a clue what’s going on. “

  “I guess you’re right.”

  “The one thing I do know is that I’m not taking the car back.”

  “So cars are joining pots on the list of things you steal?”

  I ignored that jibe. “If Cantú was the errand boy, then he must know the collector pretty well. So I’m going to hold the car until Cantú places an ad in the paper like you said in your note. I’ll give him his car back when he tells me where the collector went. Then I can col
lect my twenty-five hundred dollars and be done with the whole mess.”

  Susannah walked me home. Out the front door of Dos Hermanas. Across the street and up a block to the Plaza. Diagonally across the Plaza to my street then a block down on the left to the entrance to my shop. Just past the United Plumbing van on the right.

  When I got inside, I brushed my teeth and splashed some cold water on my face. Or maybe I brushed my face and splashed some cold water on my teeth. I’m not certain. Whichever one it was, it sobered me up enough to tell Susannah about the United Plumbing van.

  Being a Woman of Action, she handed me the phone book I had used to look up the address of Segundo Cantú and ordered me to look up United Plumbing.

  I actually found it interesting. Turns out there are about two hundred plumbing firms in Albuquerque. There are small one-person operations, franchises like Roto-Rooter, big mechanical contractors, air-conditioning experts, and firms that specialize in one thing like backyard spas.

  The variety amazed me. You can get a plumber in this town to do just about anything. Some are even available twenty-four hours a day. Some are radio-dispatched. All of them are licensed and most are bonded.

  Well, you wouldn’t put ‘not bonded’ in a yellow page ad, would you?

  The names of the companies include standard ones like A-1 Plumbing and companies named after their owners like Pacheco’s Plumbing. Then there were some with cutesy names like All Knight Plumbing, Drain Busters, Flo Right, H2O Services, Pipes R Us (they didn’t have the ‘R’ turned backwards), and my personal favorite, Plumbology. I am not making this up.

  Finally, there were a lot of names you would find only in New Mexico, like Zia, Coyote, Desert Sky, Cactus, and my favorite as an anthropologist – Petroglyph Plumbing. There’s only one kind of plumber that Albuquerque didn’t have – one with the name of United Plumbing.

  23

  When I woke up on Thursday morning, a family of desert badgers were having a burrowing contest in my cranium.

  Susannah must have readied my coffee – I’m pretty certain I didn’t – so I hit the brew button, took off my undies and turned the shower on full blast. After the hot water had warmed the tile floor in the shower, I sat down and let the water cascade over me for maybe twenty minutes.