The Pot Thief Who Studied Einstein Page 14

  Aguirre excused himself shortly after dinner. Dolly refused my offer to help with the dishes, insisting instead that we move to the living room for coffee and dessert. The latter was an excellent flan, the former a thin impotable brew. Even though we didn’t remember each other from high school, reminiscences came easily because we had in common a few friends and many experiences at the old AHS before it was abandoned and later turned into condos.

  When I finally took my leave, she walked me to the door. When I opened it and turned to say goodnight, there ensued an awkward moment of silence. I moved my hand out in a deliberately uncertain manner that could be interpreted as either the start of a handshake or a friendly embrace. She took my hand in both of hers, tugged me gently towards her, and gave me a demure kiss.

  “Will I see you again?” she asked.

  “I’d like that,” I answered.

  Another brief moment of silence, but not quite so awkward.

  “In that case,” she said, “maybe we should have a proper goodnight kiss.”

  And we did, except that improper might have been a better description of it. When it was over, she said goodnight and I went home.

  30

  Having spent an alcohol-free evening with Dolly and her father, I decided a nightcap was in order, and no one would be surprised that I selected Gruet Blanc de Noir.

  The bottle was already in the fridge, but I transferred it to the freezer while I selected a flute from my extensive collection and put it in the freezer next to the bottle. I gave Geronimo some fresh water, went back inside and washed my hands, opened a can of chocolate covered peanuts, and then took out the champagne and flute – both now properly chilled – and settled in for some serious thinking.

  I had experienced two very interesting kisses that day. Chris was a handsome devil, but Dolly was definitely a better kisser. I wasn’t offended by Chris’ kiss, although I would have avoided it had I seen it coming. I don’t find homosexuality abhorrent nor do I think gays are deviants. Chris likes men. I like women. So the problem wasn’t Chris; it was Susannah.

  I wondered if I could put a positive “spin” on it as they say these days. “Hey Susannah, I’ve got good news. You know how you were wondering why Chris hasn’t tried to put a move on you. Well, you won’t have to worry about that anymore because...”

  Then I thought about not telling her. Just let her figure it out. Miss Gladys could handle T. Morgan and Susannah could deal with Chris. It wasn’t my place to butt in. This approach had the imprimatur of the Roman Catholic Church. Or at least Father Groaz, a man who is wiser than I am and also a lot holier.

  I guided my thoughts to Dolly. She had a cute round face, a creamy complexion, and lovely long lashes. She was a pleasant, easy-going person with a good sense of humor, and she liked Geronimo. She didn’t set my heart to pounding like Izuanita did, but I did feel a little pitty-pat when we kissed. Her full lips felt terrific, not to mention the other parts of her anatomy that she squeezed against me when we kissed.

  I didn’t know where I stood with Izuanita. The truth is I hadn’t broached the subject for fear that she would consider me an old fool. I guessed she was in her early thirties, so that made me around fifteen years older than she was. I might just as well tell her I was abducted by aliens as to let her know I viewed her romantically. In all likelihood, I was to her just an odd but mildly entertaining shopkeeper she happened to meet.

  My mind kept going back to Susannah. I knew it was not my place to tell her about Chris, but my heart didn’t agree, and the longer I thought about it, the more I came to believe she would be disappointed in me if I didn’t tell her.

  So I woke up Monday morning determined to tell Susannah that evening at Dos Hermanas, dreading doing so, and knowing I’d probably spend the whole day obsessing about how to phrase it. But as fate would have it, I spent most of the day in jail.

  Whit Fletcher was leaning against the wall across the street when I opened for business. He strolled across the street and said, “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say may be—” Well, you know how that goes, so I won’t repeat the entire Miranda warning.

  After he read me my rights, he said, “I had a hunch you knew that stiff you said you couldn’t identify. What I never suspected was that you killed him.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” I replied.

  “That’s what I said when the report came back from the crime lab. Schuze is a pot thief, he don’t murder people. That’s what I told ‘em. But evidence is evidence, and my opinion that you couldn’t kill anybody even if you wanted to ain’t evidence. It wouldn’t even be allowed in court seeing as how I’m not a shrink. So even though I know you don’t have the cojones to kill anyone, there’s nothing I can do but take you downtown and wish you luck.”

  “What evidence?”

  “Your fingerprints are on the glass that had the poison in it. Didn’t it occur to you to wipe the glass off, Hubert? If you’d done that, I wouldn’t be arresting you.”

  Half of my brain was panicking and picturing scenes from prison life, but the other half was thinking. “Was it a pilsner glass?”

  “What’s that?”

  “A type of beer glass, tall and shaped like an ice cream cone.”

  Whit shook his head in disappointment. “First you forget to wipe off the glass, then you admit to knowing what the glass is after I already Mirandized you. I always figured you was smarter than that.”

  “I know what the glass is because I saw it when I was at his house.”

  “This just gets worse and worse for you. Maybe you should shut up until you talk to your lawyer.”

  “No, listen to me. I went there to give him an estimate on his pot collection. That glass and a bottle of beer were sitting on the coffee table. After I finished doing the estimate, he went to get my money and insisted I drink the beer. That’s how my prints got on the glass.”

  “I thought you didn’t know his name.”

  “I didn’t. I still don’t. The deal was set up by Carl Wilkes.”

  “The guy who got you to break into the museum?”

  “I didn’t break in.”

  “Maybe you should find some new friends.”

  “There was nothing illegal this time. Carl said there was a pot collector who had decided to sell his collection and needed an appraisal of its value. The collector didn’t want me to know his name. So when you asked me at the morgue if I knew the name of the deceased, and I told you I didn’t, I was telling the truth.”

  “But not the whole truth. You coulda said you’d seen him before.”

  “What good would that have done you? You still wouldn’t have known who he was.”

  “We coulda gone to his house and found out.”

  “I didn’t know where his house was.”

  “You just told me thirty seconds ago that you was there pricing out his pots.”

  “I was, but I didn’t know where the house was. I was blindfolded when they took me there and when I left.”

  He stared at me for a few seconds. “Hubert, I don’t know whether you’re making up a smokescreen or losing your mind.”

  Then it came to me. “I was framed!”

  “Funny how often that happens,” he said. “Down in Cerillos we got hunnerds of guys was framed.”

  “But I really was. Think about it. The guy practically insisted that I drink the beer. In fact, I was afraid he wasn’t going to pay me until I did, so I opened the bottle, poured it in the glass—“

  “Pilner glass.”

  “Pilsner; there’s an ‘s’. Anyway, I poured it in the glass and...”

  I didn’t finish the sentence because it hit me that what I was saying didn’t make sense. Why would the collector want my prints on the glass? Frames are constructed by murderers so that someone else takes the fall. But the collector wasn’t the murderer. He was the victim.

  31

  The only explanation I could come up with as we drove downtown in Whit’s unmarked police cruiser
was that the collector committed suicide and wanted to make it look like I had killed him.

  You’re probably wondering why he would do that insofar as he didn’t know me and had no reason to shuffle off this mortal coil in such a fashion as to land me in prison. I was wondering the same thing and with much greater urgency. The best answer I could come up with was life insurance. Maybe he had a big policy and wanted his kids to get the proceeds. Life insurance, for obvious reasons, doesn’t pay when the death is self-inflicted. So by making it look like I killed him, he would make sure the insurance paid off.

  But that theory had two flaws. First, what sort of person would want his last act on earth to bring grievous harm to an utter stranger? And second, his heirs would get a million dollars worth of pots, not to mention the house and whatever else he owned, so the lack of a life insurance payoff would hardly be a calamity.

  Somehow I never mind talking to Whit and telling him things I shouldn’t tell a cop who’s arresting me. I guess I figure he knows I’m innocent and can help me even though he never says that. But once we arrived at the police station and he turned me over to other people, I did the wise thing and clammed up.

  It took almost three hours for them to search me, fill out forms, fingerprint me, and photograph me. The only thing that didn’t take long was the questioning session because I told them I wouldn’t answer any questions unless my lawyer was present. They let me call him, and then they put me in a cell.

  Fortunately, there was only one other occupant, a tall skinny guy who needed about five thousand dollars worth of cosmetic dentistry but didn’t look like he could afford so much as a toothbrush. Or would use it if he could. At one point in his life he must have had enough money for a tattoo The letters h-e-l-l were on the back of the first joints of the fingers of his left hand and the letters b-e-n-t were on the right. If he held his hands out in front of him palms down, he could read “hell bent.” But as I looked at his hand, I saw “tneb lleh.”

  Around noon my jailers asked me if I wanted lunch. I declined.

  One of Layton Kent’s paralegals finally showed up around one with legal paperwork, perhaps a writ of some sort or maybe bail. I didn’t care. I just wanted out. The process to let me out took almost as long as the one to put me in. I haven’t stayed in many hotels because I don’t like to travel, but I think the Albuquerque Jail could definitely streamline their check-in/check-out process with a little advice from the folks at Hilton.

  The paralegal, an attractive young lady with perfect posture and a pleasing smile, drove me to Layton’s club in his Rolls Royce. As you may have heard me explain, Layton has an office somewhere, but he seldom uses it. He spends most of his day at his table that overlooks the 18th green at his club. He doesn’t play golf or take any other form of exercise, and he looks like a man who spends a great deal of time at a dining table. He must weigh close to three hundred pounds, but he doesn’t look fat. He looks big, of course, but he doesn’t seem blubbery. His face is large and its transition to his neck ill-defined, but the whole area is without wrinkles. His hair is precisely cut, his nails perfectly manicured, his clothes stylish. The word that comes to mind is sleek. Not sleek like a cheetah, sleek like a whale. Very large but still sleek, the only bulge – and I’m just guessing here – being his wallet, which must be enormous.

  He is widely considered to be the most influential man in Albuquerque. He knows everyone who is anyone, and quite a few people like me who are no one. His lovely wife, Mariella, is the Grande Dame of Albuquerque society. She isn’t just on the A list – she draws it up. She is reputed to be a descendent of the Duke who gave our fair city its unusual name. This seems unlikely in light of the fact that the Duke never set foot in the New World. Royalty didn’t travel overseas in those days. Considering what it must have been like to cross the Atlantic in a wooden ship about eighty feet long, who could blame them?

  Layton’s practice centers on creating legal ways for rich people to get richer and avoid paying taxes on their riches. His client list includes most wealthy Albuquerqueans and a lot of other lawyers. They like to use him because he is not seen as a competitor. He runs his practice with a bevy of paralegals and secretaries but no other attorneys. And he doesn’t practice corporate law and only rarely stoops to criminal law when a current client requires it.

  I seem to require it more than any of his other clients, and I’m sure he would have dropped me from his list the first time I was accused of murder had it not been for Mariella. She is a collector of rare Native American pottery, and I am her personal dealer.

  Layton was wearing a white linen suit, a pair of tan and white saddle oxfords, a silk shirt the color of the fine tan leather on the saddle of the shoes, and a sage-colored knit tie. He could have passed for Sydney Greenstreet playing in a movie written by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

  He laced his manicured fingers on the table and sat motionless as I told him the whole story, starting with the blindfolded ride, backtracking to the three visits of Segundo Cantú and the reappearance of Carl Wilkes, then all the shenanigans on Titanium Trail, and ending with the events at the jail.

  “You left out an important detail,” he said after I finished.

  “I have heard your explanation of why the client has to tell the lawyer everything,” I replied, “and that’s what I did.”

  “And the name of the person you are charged with murdering?”

  “I have no idea.”

  His eyebrows rose without his brow furrowing. I don’t know how that’s possible. Maybe he’s had plastic surgery and the skin is so taut on his face that the upward motion of the lifting brows is transferred all the way over his head. Every time he does that trick I want to walk around behind him and see if the back of his neck is wrinkled.

  He didn’t say anything, so I did. “Remember I told you about Whit making me go to the morgue to identify a corpse? I knew who it was – the collector – but I didn’t know his name.”

  “I understand that you didn’t know it then. But surely they must have told you the name when you were arrested.”

  I shook my head.

  Layton raised one hand and the attractive paralegal came to the table with her briefcase.

  “Our copy of Mr. Schuze’s arrest warrant, Jenny.”

  She retrieved it from the briefcase and handed it to him. Layton smiled. “You probably think I retain you as a client because Mariella is fond of you.”

  I nodded.

  “That is a factor. But there is another. You are the most incompetent client in the annals of jurisprudence, and I enjoy the challenge of representing you.”

  I wanted to tell His Pompousness that I didn’t give a damn about being a competent client, but discretion required me to remain silent.

  “You have been arrested and processed without even knowing whom you are accused of killing. It is not, as you surmised, the anonymous pot collector. It is another player in the narrative you gave me – Segundo Cantú.”

  I felt like I was in freefall. I grabbed the table and took deep breaths. After the spinning sensation subsided, I started thinking, and I remembered Whit’s exact words from that morning.

  “It can’t be Cantú,” I told Layton. “After Whit read me my rights, he said, ‘I had a hunch you knew that stiff you said you couldn’t identify. What I never suspected was that you killed him’. So it has to be the collector.”

  Layton thought for a few seconds. “There are only two possible explanations. One is that Detective Fletcher made a mistake. I reject that possibility prima facie. Fletcher is a Philistine, but he is by no means incompetent. Thus, we must accept the second possibility.”

  “And that is?”

  “The collector was also named Segundo Cantú.”

  32

  “So Segundo Cantú...” Susannah started. Then she hesitated and evidently decided she needed to clarify. “The young one,” she said, “the one you didn’t kill—”

  “I didn’t kill the older one either,” I pointed out. />
  “I know that, Hubie, but for now we have to go with the police’s version. Anyway, I was going to say that the young one must be Segundo Cantú, Junior. So that makes him ‘Second the Second’!”

  “Maybe he’s not a junior,” I ventured. “Maybe they just happened to have the same name.”

  “Right. Two guys named Segundo Cantú, and one of them just happens to ask the other one – who lives on the same street by the way – to deliver his pots down to Spirits in Clay because there’s a guy down there in Old Town named Segundo Schuze who can copy them.”

  “Except I’m not named Segundo.”

  “It wouldn’t be any weirder if you were. They have to be father and son. And that should help us figure out who did it.”

  She was in her element, a real live murder mystery. She loved it. I was also in the murder mystery. Unfortunately, I was the suspect, and I hated it.

  I have a tendency to drink too much when I’m under pressure, so I was nursing my margarita to avoid that pitfall. Susannah kept glancing at my glass because she was ready for a second – or maybe I should say a segundo – and we always order refills simultaneously.

  “A girl could die of thirst waiting for you to finish that thing,” she finally said and then added, “You drink. I’ll talk. They have a good case against you, Hubie. First, you admitted going to his house. Second, your prints are on the murder weapon—”

  “A glass isn’t a mur—”

  “You drink. I’ll talk. Your prints are on the glass that had the poison that killed him. I’d say that’s a murder weapon. Third, you lied to Whit at the morgue—“

  “I didn’t—”

  “You drink. I’ll talk. You didn’t tell a lie, but you also didn’t tell him you had seen the guy, something an innocent person would have done. Fourth—”

  “I am innocent and...” I saw her eyes narrow and held up a palm. “I know, I know. I’ll drink, you talk.”