The Pot Thief Who Studied Billy the Kid Read online

  “I know information received in confession is sacrosanct,” I said, “but couldn’t you have reported the fact of the death to the police without revealing who had told you?”

  He let out another sigh and shook his head. “I could have done that. But I had to consider the consequences. I didn’t want the police trying to extract confidential information from me or my parishioners. Being questioned aggressively by the police would hardly qualify me as a martyr. My larger concern was my parishioners.”

  He looked up at me. “The Penitentes were virtually in control of this parish when I arrived. The deacons and I have made great strides to reduce their influence. Their morada is gone. Their number is reduced. They have been driven underground. The last thing we need is the police questioning the parishioners. Everyone would suspect that I had tipped the police about the death. Even though I would have withheld the name, it would destroy their confidence in me and, more importantly, the Church. I also did not want the police trying to discover who made the confession, pitting neighbor against neighbor, child against parent. It would tear this community apart. And yet… it did not seem right simply to remain silent. The deceased person deserved better than an anonymous grave. His family deserves to know his fate. The people who participated in his death – I will not quite call it a murder – should be called to account for their actions.”

  “So you decided to come to me.”

  He nodded. “I remembered a newspaper article about you in which you were described as someone who has long been suspected of illegally digging up old pots. The article caught my attention because of its unusual headline, Pot Thief with a Conscience?”

  “I remember that article,” I said. “I had returned some sacred pots to the San Roque Pueblo. I did it because it was the right thing to do. The last thing I wanted was publicity.”

  “I thought it was a perfect compromise,” he said. “If you found the body and reported it, then the authorities could identify the victim, notify his family and arrange for a proper burial. And this community would be spared an ordeal. But compromises are never perfect. By involving you, the villains discovered their misdeed was known. They have moved the body. Now it will never be found.”

  “ size="+0" face="Palatino Linotype">You have no idea where they might have taken the body? Is there another secret location they use for their ceremonies?”

  “No.” He looked down and shook his head. “My meddling has only made things worse.” He looked back up at me. “I’m sorry to have involved you in this sordid mess.”

  “No apology necessary. I’m sorry I didn’t go directly to the police as my friend suggested.”

  A slight smile formed on his lips. “Over thirty years since your last confession?”

  “Yes, and the person who heard it was not Catholic.”

  “Nor, I would hazard, are you.”

  I admitted it. Then I said, “I have a question for you. Since you’ve taken a vow of poverty, how did you have the money to pay the teenager for the pot you sold me?”

  “I never said I paid him. I said I got it from him. He brought it to me out of gratitude for helping him recover from a drug habit. We are not supposed to receive gifts other than small tokens such as cookies or a bottle of inexpensive wine. I know those rules exist for a legitimate reason. Personally, I find poverty to be spiritually liberating. But it is socially awkward to refuse a gift from a parishioner, especially one as fragile as this young man. So I accepted the gift, knowing I couldn’t keep it. When I hit upon the plan involving you, it was also an opportunity to divest myself of the pot in what I thought was a good cause.”

  “I should have known something was fishy when you didn’t bargain hard and also threw in the location of the cliff dwelling.”

  “I have no experience in such matters.”

  “What did you do with the thousand dollars I gave you?”

  He smiled. “I told the teenager and his mother that I enjoyed having the pot but had to sell it because we are not supposed to become attached to material goods. That was easier for both of them to accept than turning it down when it was first offered to me. Knowing I liked having it was especially important to the mother because—“

  “She made it.”

  He was flabbergasted. “How did you know?”

  “I found a shard in that cliff dwelling before I found the body. Something about the design made me uncomfortable. I didn’t figure out what it was until I made a pot based on that shard. When I placed the new pot in the shop, I noted how different it was from the one you sold me. They could not both have been from the same tribe. Then I examined the one you brought. The pieces fit together like two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.”

  “Why shouldn’t they? They were from the same pot.”

  I shook my head. “Prehistoric pots were not made on wheels with procels with ssed clay. There are always irregularities and little bubbles. When they break, small pieces fall off along the fissure. Only a new pot can receive a clean break.”

  He laughed. “It was foolish of me to try to fool an expert, but it worked at first. I had to break the pot so it could pass as ancient. But to get back to your original question, I gave the money to the woman for her son’s college fund.”

  “She is talented,” I said. “If she has another pot as good as that one, she can add to that fund by selling it to me.”

  If I ever get enough money to start buying pots again, I thought to myself.

  “I will make that known to her.”

  We looked at each other for a few seconds. I can’t be sure how he felt, but I sensed a bond between us.

  I rose to go. He stepped into the aisle so that I could pass. We shook hands. I started towards the door.

  After a few steps, I turned back and asked, “Surely you don’t own a car?”

  He was puzzled briefly then laughed. “Oh, the drivers license I showed you. I got that on my sixteenth birthday at the DMV office in Hatch. I’m not sure I actually knew how to drive. But it’s a small farming community. You have to have a car to get to the fields, so they were pretty lax. I renew it every five years in case I ever need a form of identification.”

  “You miss Hatch?”

  “I miss the smell of fresh green chile roasting.”

  “Vaya con Dios,” I said.

  He extended his hand and made the sign of the cross. ”God be with you.”

  36

  El Bastardo was waiting for me when I stepped outside the church.

  Before I could turn to grab the heavy door, his hand shot in my direction. But it was open.

  “I just wanted to say goodbye.”

  I accepted his handshake warily.

  “I was already drunk when I heard you were with Sirena. I don’t even remember the fight, but she said you beat me fair and square, so no hard feelings, que no?”

  “No hard feelings,“ I agreed. “I admire you for taking it like a man.”

  The smile on his face revealed how much he liked the compliment.

  “Sirena, she also told me you two were just chaperones and not really on a date. She says I have to think before I get mad. I know she is right, but I’m not too good at thinking.”

  He looked me up and down. “Even with me drunk, I can’t believe a little shrimp wearing a cast could knock me out. You must be one tough vato.”

  “Las apariencias engañan,” I said, certain that he didn’t get the double entendre of my appearance being deceiving and him being deceived about what knocked him out.

  When I reached the truck, Susannah said, “Jeez, Hubie, you must have been a very bad boy. You were in confession almost an hour.”

  I fastened my seatbelt and she started out of the placita.

  “Actually,” I said, “I was in confession for only a couple of minutes. I spent the rest of the time sitting on a pew talking to Alvar Nuñez.”

  She almost rammed one of the deserted storefronts. “Nuñez was in the church? So everyone here was lying to protect him.”

&n
bsp; “No. They just don’t know his name.”

  “Impossible. Everyone knows everyone here.”

  “Everyone does know him. They just don’t know him as Alvar Nuñez. They know him as Father Jerome.”

  This time she barely missed the gas station, possibly saving us from death and the village from a fiery end by stopping just inches from the one pump. I guess if you want premium in La Reina, you’re out of luck.

  “Alvar Nu&ntiltype">Nude;ez is the local priest? I can hardly believe it.”

  “I saw him when he came out of the office to take your confession.”

  “But you saw his drivers license that said Alvar Nuñez.”

  “That’s the name his parents gave him and the one he had when he was sixteen and got his license. But when he became a Dominican, he took a new name.”

  She turned off the engine and rolled down the windows. The air at 8,000 feet was cool and fresh. “Did you find out why he lured you to the cliff dwelling?”

  I had almost forgotten that was the purpose of our visit. So much had happened, but none of it seemed to mean anything. I told her what Father Jerome told me.

  “So did Father Groaz change his name?” she asked.

  I explained what I had learned about the distinction between a diocesan priest and a priest who is a brother in one of the orders like the Dominicans, the Franciscans or the Jesuits.

  “I guess I don’t know much about my own church,” she said.

  “At least you know about confession. If you hadn’t decided to make one, I wouldn’t have seen Alvar… er, Father Jerome.”

  “So what? Nothing came of it. This whole thing has been one giant goose chase. If you had a cell phone, none of this would have happened. You could have called me from that cliff dwelling. I would have come to get you. You wouldn’t have trekked across the wilderness with a wounded coyote and a dog. You wouldn’t have sprained your ankle. Maybe you would even have listened to reason and reported the body to the police. They could have found it before it was moved and figured out who murdered it.”

  “I don’t think a cell phone could get a signal there.”

  “And your kiln won’t work without electricity.”

  “Huh?”

  “You have a kiln even though there are times you can’t use it, just like a cell phone. Even murder mystery fans understand that.”

  “Murder mystery fans?” Susannah weaves her own logic, but I can’t fault her. She usually figures things out before I do.

  “Yeah. They have a website called DorothyL, and they’ve been talking about how irritating it is when an author uses ‘no cell phone’ as an excuse.”

  Now I was really confused. “As an excuse for what?”

  “For something in a mystery like a detective not calling for back-up, or a person not calling his best friend when he discovers a body in a cliff dwelling.”

  “And who is Dorothielle? The name sounds like she could be Miss Gladys’ sister.”

  “It’s not a name, Hubert. It’s a first name and middle initial, Dorothy L. As in Sayers, the famous murder mystery writer.”

  Now it was beginning to make sense. The reason she was upset had nothing to do with my not having a cell phone, although she does complain about that. What was irritating her was that the murder mystery she thought we could solve had turned out not to be a murder.

  She steered back on to the road.

  “I wouldn’t say nothing came of it,” I said. “I know the b>I know ody was a modern person. I know Father Jerome tricked me into going out there hoping I would find the body and report it. And I know I should have taken your advice and reported it the first time you mentioned it.”

  She was tactful enough not to say she told me so. What she did say was, “You still don’t know the important stuff. Who stole your Bronco? Who was the dead guy?”

  “Yeah, and what happened to my hat?”

  “It blew away. Forget it.”

  “Consider it forgotten. I do agree that the identity of the dead guy is puzzling. A dilemma in fact.”

  “Exactly. If the dead guy was from La Reina, why aren’t they worried about him? Looking for him? And if he wasn’t from La Reina, why was he in the ceremony?”

  I shrugged. “Not my problem.”

  “I still think he was murdered.”

  “The hole in his hand was made by a nail, Suze, not a bullet. He volunteered to play Jesus in a reenactment of the Crucifixion.”

  She shuddered. “Why would anyone do that?”

  “They believe they must suffer for their sins.”

  “They claim to be Christians,” she said, “but they don’t seem to get the message. Jesus suffered for us. We don’t need to repeat his ordeal.”

  “People have been doing it for almost a thousand years. I think the Flagellantes started in Italy around the year 1200.”

  “You remember that scary guy in The Da Vinci Code who whipped his back until it looked like hamburger?”

  “Silas,” I said.

  “There really are people like him,” she said, the idea obviously hard for her to accept.

  We drove along in silence until we reached the paved road.

  “Well, Hubie, I won our wager. The dead guy was definitely modern. So you have to take my car.”

  “I don’t want your car.”

  “You can’t back out now. A deal is a deal. Now I can buy a new car.”

  “I can’t drive with this cast, so you might as well keep your car for now.” I was hoping to wiggle out of this deal and wanted to buy time.

  “The first thing we have to do is retrieve it,” she said. “There’s a reception Saturday at the La Rinconada Gallery in San Patricio. The art department is sponsoring one graduate student to attend, and I was selected. So I get a guest cottage free for one night. I want you to come with me. We can stop by the ranch the second night on the way home and switch the truck back for my car.”

  “That’s a nice offer, Suze, but I think I’d just be in your way.”

  “You wouldn’t be in my way. You’d be good company. I don’t want to drive all the way down there by myself. And you need to get away. This Rio Doloroso thing has been tough on you.”

  “I don’t—“

  “Listen, Hubert. I drove you all the way to that cliff dwelling so you could go down there to find pots and check the age of a dead guy, neither of which you did. Then I drove you all the way up here to La Reina where you got into a bar fight, and I got accused of being a witch. The least you can do is ride along with me to La Rinconada.”

  I smiled at her. “When do we leave?”

  “Tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Good. I was planning to sleep late.”

  37

  Our route to San Patricio took us through Willard – population 249.

  Then we started hitting the really small towns, Progresso, Cedarvale, Corona and Robshart – population 18, but I suspect they are counting the cemetery.

  As we entered Carrizozo, population 996 and the current county seat of Lincoln County, I reminded Susannah of the local ordinance that prohibits women from appearing in public unshaven.

  “I have no plan to stop,” she said, “but I shaved my legs this morning in case the engine blows up and I have to get out of the truck and appear in public.”

  I was laughing when she added, “I also wore clean underwear in case we’re in an accident. Mom would be proud of me.”

  Carizzo is the Spanish word for reed and carizzozo is the adjectival form, ‘reedy’. Reeds don’t grow in deserts, so I assume the Spanish named the town for the wiry grass that grows in the surrounding plains. Or maybe they were referring to some women with coarse leg hair that they didn’t want to encounter in public on the paseo.

  We turned east on U.S. 380. Since we were getting closer, Susannah told me about La Rinconada. It features paintings by Peter Hurd, Henriette Wyeth-Hurd, Michael Hurd, Andrew Wyeth and N.C. Wyeth. I gathered the Wyeths and Hurds are all in-laws, and one or more of them own the galle
ry.

  “The only painting I know by any of that bunch is Andrew Wyeth’s Cristina’s World,” I said.

  “You won’t get to see that one. It’s in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. You like it?”

  “There’s something about the girl in the picture that makes me want to know her story.”

  “Everyone feels that way, Hubie. That’s why itfonts why its such a famous piece. It captivates viewers. Wyeth was inspired to paint it when he saw a neighbor named Christina Olson crawling across a field. She couldn’t walk because she suffered from Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease.”

  “A tooth disease can prevent someone from walking?”

  “It’s not a tooth disease. Charcot, Marie and Tooth were the names of the three people who discovered the disease. The figure in the painting is actually Wyeth’s wife Betsy who posed for the painting.”

  “Then why isn’t it called Betsy’s World?”

  “Because it was Christina who inspired the painting. Betsy was just the model.”

  “What about the house at the top of the hill she’s looking up at? Is it one of those Hollywood sets that’s just a flat surface with the front of a house painted on it?”

  I was feeling disillusioned.

  “No, Wyeth painted from the real house. It’s called the Olson House.”

  “So he used the real house but a fake person.”

  “Betsy Wyeth was not a fake person, Hubert.”

  “You know what I mean. It’s supposed to be a painting of Christina Olson looking longingly up the hill to her house where they’re serving tea and scones or something, and she’s sad because it seems so far away and she can’t walk because she’s got a sore tooth. And up until a moment ago, my appreciation of the painting was even greater because I now know what it’s like to be mobility impaired. But even though that’s the way the house really looked, the woman in the picture got up and walked away after Wythe finished painting, and that spoils the painting for me.”

  Susannah was laughing now. “If Christina had been in the painting and you found out about her, that would have spoiled it for you, too.”