The Pot Thief Who Studied Einstein Page 19

  “Drop the weapon, Miss.”

  It’s a good thing I have that peephole. A second later and I would’ve had another bruise on my chest.

  45

  It was an unusually slow night at Dos Hermanas.

  Tuesdays are often slow, but this was the height of the tourist season. Maybe the tourists were all riding the tramway that evening. The view is said to be spectacular at night.

  “I can’t believe you went along with the Kevlar vest plan,” she said between bites of a chip. “No offense, Hubie, but you’re not much of a risk taker.”

  “Having her confront me with a cop looking through my peephole was a lot less risky than not knowing when and where she might try to ambush me again.”

  “Still, I just can’t picture you standing there calmly as she pulled that pistol out of her bag.”

  “She told me about killing her brother. ‘I had to kill him’, she said. And I said, ‘Just like you have to kill me?’”

  I didn’t tell her my voice cracked.

  “I still don’t quite understand how you figured it out.”

  We were on the veranda under an orange sky.

  “Neither do I.”

  I pulled out my list of clues and waved it above the table. “I wrote down everything related to the pots and Cantú. Then I weeded it down, crossing out things that didn’t seem relevant.”

  “I don’t see any crossing out marks,” she said, taking the list and scanning it.

  “Well, every time I eliminated something, I rewrote a new list on a fresh piece of paper.”

  She sighed. “That is so you, Hubie. What’s this one – ‘driver’s accent’?”

  “Ahh. That one I owe to your suggestion that I might be able to identify the driver by his voice.”

  “So you remembered where you’d heard that voice?”

  “Not exactly. I don’t think I could have identified the voice just by remembering it. But when I speculated who it might be, I realized it sounded like Segundo Cantú.”

  That’s the way the process had gone. I’d look at one thing on the list, give it a tentative explanation or meaning, then test that by seeing how it would affect the significance of other things on the list. It was like a ball of string – no particular place to start, but everything connected in some way.

  “Here’s how I think it went with the driver. When I figured out that Izuanita had some connection with the Cantú family because of her familiarity with the Cadillac, I asked myself if she might have been the driver.”

  Susannah got that expectant enthusiastic look she gets when she shifts into her murder mystery mode. “You dismissed my suggestion that the driver might be a woman,” she said with a triumphant smile.

  “You’re right. I should have taken your suggestion more seriously because trying out Izuanita as the driver led me to realize it was the son.”

  “How did you eliminate Izuanita?”

  “Two things. First, every time she was near me, her long flowing hair would brush against me; that never happened on my blindfolded ride.”

  “She could have had it up.”

  “Right, but the driver held my arm as we walked up to the door, and his hands were bigger than Izuanita’s.”

  “So if it wasn’t her, how did it help?”

  “Because while I was considering her as the driver, I asked myself if her voice would be right.”

  “If she lowered her voice like I suggested when I said it might be a woman?”

  “Right. And it worked. When I imagined her voice in a lower register, I realized it would fit with the driver’s voice. It was succinct and clipped like the driver. And Hispanic, but not like the accents you normally hear here.”

  “So you realized her voice was like the driver’s voice only higher.”

  “Right. And then—“

  “You realized that she sounded like a female version of Segundo the Segundo.”

  “Exactly.”

  “So you figured they must be siblings.”

  “Yeah, and that fit with a bunch of other things on the list.”

  “Such as?”

  “Well, the last time I saw Wilkes, we were talking about what would happen to the pots. Carl was hoping he could sell them for the heirs, and he told me Cantú had two children. I took a guess that their names were Primero and Segundo, and Wilkes said he knew the son was named after the father, so he was Segundo. Then he said he didn’t know the other name but would wager it wasn’t Primero.”

  Susannah did that thing with her shoulders, pushing them forward to show confusion. “And that means what?”

  “I assumed the other name wasn’t Primero because you normally name the first child after the father. So the first child was named Segundo, and under that circumstance, you certainly wouldn’t name the second child Primero.”

  “This is giving me a headache. Let’s get another round.”

  I agreed that was an excellent idea, and Angie was there in a flash since she didn’t have many customers to tend to.

  After we had our new drinks and fresh chips and salsa, Susannah said, “So where were we? Oh, right, the Primero shall be Segundo and the Segundo shall be Primero.”

  “In this case, that wouldn’t surprise me. But the reason the second child couldn’t be named Primero—“

  “Is because it would have to be Primera. She was a girl! I told you Primero did it. I just didn’t realize Primero was a Primera.”

  I nodded assent.

  “You should have figured that one out sooner.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you said Wilkes said he knew the son was named after the father. The son. You wouldn’t say it that way if there were two sons.”

  “That wasn’t the only thing I missed.”

  “You can say that again.”

  “What else did I miss?”

  “I hate to say this, Hubie, but you missed the fact that Izuanita had the same weird bone structure as her father and brother.”

  I sat back and let my hands fall into my lap. “I was blind. I even got upset when you described her as ‘deformed’.”

  “Well, maybe ‘deformed’ was a bit harsh.”

  “And Chris called her a Modigliani woman.”

  “A lot of people think the women in his paintings are hot.”

  “Really?” I felt a little better. I told her about Einstein’s quip that the universe and human stupidity are the only two things that are infinite and how I had changed it to be ‘male stupidity’. Naturally, she agreed.

  “She had really long limbs,” I muttered nostalgically. “And great skin.”

  “Men always go for skin.”

  I smiled. “The more the better.”

  She took a playful swing at me. “You said she smelled great, too.”

  “That’s on the list,” I remembered out loud.

  She scanned down the paper. “Burning tropical flowers?”

  “That was the smell I remembered being in the air right after I was shot.”

  “And?”

  “The burning part must have been the gun powder. It made an interesting combination with her perfume.”

  “Your nose really is good. Too bad your eyes are going or you might have recognized her as the driver of the van when you were on that ridiculous stakeout.”

  “My eyes are perfect. The only reason I couldn’t make her out was I had forgotten to take off my reading glasses.”

  “You didn’t take your reading glasses off your perfect eyes. Interesting logic.”

  We both started laughing. I pulled out my dollar reading glasses and put them on and stared at Angie, and we laughed even more. Then I took them off and felt around on the table for the chips, accidentally pushing the bowl. It was a sophomoric moment, but we were in that kind of mood.

  When we stopped being silly, Susannah asked me about the other things on the list. She loves this stuff.

  “What were some of the things you took off the list?” she asked.

  “The
main one was T. Morgan Fister.”

  “He shouldn’t have been there to begin with. You just didn’t like him.”

  “Neither did you. But there were good reasons to put him on the list. He told me he was interested in Native American artifacts, and Miss Gladys told me he lived on a street named after a metal.”

  “And you figured that metal was titanium.”

  “I thought it might be, but when I checked into it, it turned out to be lead.”

  “A base metal,” she observed.

  “Appropriate,” I said.

  “Cassettes?” she said, looking down at the list.

  “When we went to the Hurricane, she suggested we have some music. She reached into the glove compartment, pulled out a cassette, and stuck it into the player without even looking at what she was doing.”

  “So? The glove compartment is the first place I would have looked for a CD, and the player was right there in the middle of the dashboard.”

  “It wasn’t a CD, Suze.”

  She hesitated for a moment. “A cassette. Of course. She’s not old enough to be that familiar with cassettes. Wow, you noticed that?”

  “Not at the time. It was only after I began to think she might be a Cantú that the cassette thing dawned on me.”

  She looked back at the list. “The red stuff in the back seat was her lipstick?”

  “Fingernail polish, but the same shade of red.”

  “It says ‘Her name’. What does that mean?”

  “Tristan told me Cantú was an immigrant. He found that out from the demonstrators. When I later tried out the thesis of Izuanita as a Cantú, I realized someone from Mexico is more likely to give a daughter that name.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know, Hubie. That sounds like a stretch.”

  “By itself, yes. But remember that the theory I put together was made up of a lot of little things that individually didn’t seem significant. But when they all fit together, then you have something.”

  She still looked dubious, and I thought of a great example.

  “Think about sub-atomic particles,” I started.

  “Not that again,” she pleaded.

  “Each particle,” I persisted, “doesn’t have a definite path. But when they’re all packed together to make a tennis ball, then there is a definite path. That’s the way all these clues worked together.”

  “Lame.”

  Maybe it wasn’t such a great an example after all.

  “I just thought of something weird,” she said. “Segundo the Segundo tried to frame you for the murder of his father, and his sister tried to frame you for the murder of her brother.”

  “And the police bought it both times. Scary.”

  “But Fletcher didn’t go through with the arrest the second time, and I know why.”

  “O.K., I’ll bite – why?”

  “It would have been double jeopardy. You can’t be charged a segundo time for a Segundo’s death.”

  “That’s pretty good. But the real reason he let me go was he bought my theory. That and his desire to make some money on those pots.”

  “Hubie! That’s terrible. It’s one thing for you to take your copies. Cantú owed you money and someone already had the originals, but taking anything else would be just plain old stealing.”

  “From whom?”

  “From...from... hmm. I guess they technically belong to Izuanita as Cantú’s only surviving child.”

  “Nope. The law prevents you from profiting by any criminal act. When she killed her brother, she lost the right to inherit.”

  “Maybe there are cousins or something.”

  “Not in the U.S., and I doubt that anyone from Mexico is going to show up and claim the estate. After all, he was a drug dealer fleeing a rival gang many years ago.”

  “So who gets the pots?”

  “I have no idea. Maybe they go to the State of New Mexico lost and found. I’ll ask Layton about it.”

  “Knowing him, he’ll probably find a way to get some of them to the University and a few to Mariella’s collection.”

  “No doubt. And maybe he’ll know about some obscure law that allows the person who helps the police apprehend a dangerous felon to lay claim to the property that felon was trying to hie off with.”

  “Yeah, a law as obscure as the word ‘hie’. Speaking of felons, what do you think will happen to Izuanita?”

  “I have no idea. Maybe she’ll plead insanity and get off.”

  She looked into my eyes trying to read me. “Is that what you want?”

  I thought about it for a while. “I could say I want justice served, but maybe it already has been. The drug dealer sees his son’s life ruined by drugs. The son kills the father, then the sister kills the son. Even if she gets off, her life is a mess.”

  “And what about you, Hubie?”

  “What about me?”

  “Yeah. Remember when I had that romance with Frederick Blass and he turned out to be a murderer?”

  “All too well. He tried to frame me for it.”

  “You do seem to be a popular target for frames. Reggie West tried to frame you for the death of that federal agent, Gobelly.”

  “Guvelly,” I corrected. “Do I need a different brand of deodorant or something?”

  She laughed that off. “I worried for a while about how I could misjudge someone so completely.”

  “I don’t think I’ll worry about that for long. I know why I misjudged Izuanita – lust.”

  “Good to see you’re taking it well.”

  “It helps to have another girlfriend on the horizon.”

  “Dolly?”

  “Yeah, I have a date with her tonight.”

  “Maybe something more than smooching in the parking lot.”

  “Definitely.”

  “You sound pretty confident.”

  I couldn’t help but smile. “When I invited Dolly to dinner at my house, she wanted to bring dessert, but I told her I was making pastel de tres leches. Then she volunteered to bring wine, but when I hesitated, she said, ‘Oh, I guess you don’t like wine’, and finally I told her she really didn’t have to bring anything.”

  “And?”

  “Well, I felt a little funny about saying she didn’t have to bring anything – like I wasn’t being gracious. So when she invited me over for tonight, I didn’t want to volunteer to bring anything because she hadn’t.”

  “You’re just being your usual overanalyzing self.”

  “Probably. Anyway, I didn’t have to ask because she said there were two things she’d like me to bring. The first was a bottle of Gruet.”

  I stopped and took a sip of my margarita.

  Susannah knows when I’m stringing out information, but she plays along.

  “And the second thing was?”

  “My toothbrush.”

  “Wow. But won’t that be awkward? I mean, what about her father?”

  “He’ll have to get his own toothbrush,” I said, and we both signaled for Angie as we laughed.

  About the Author

  Mike Orenduff grew up in a house so close to the Rio Grande that he could Frisbee a tortilla into Mexico. Despite such bizarre antics – or perhaps consistent with them – he became a college administrator, serving as president of The University of Maine at Farmington, The American University in Bulgaria, New Mexico State University, and Bermuda College. He was also the Chancellor of the University of Maine System and a visiting faculty member at West Point. His first murder mystery, The Pot Thief Who Studied Pythagoras, won the Dark Oak Mystery Contest in 2007 and the Kindle version won the 2010 EPIC Award as the eBook of the Year in the Mystery/Suspense Category. The second book in the series, The Pot Thief Who Studied Ptolemy, won Best Fiction Novel from the Public Safety Writers Association in 2010. He is married to the noted art historian Lai Orenduff who believes The Pot Thief Who Studied Einstein is the best book so far in the series.

  A preview of the next Pot Thief mystery follows....

 
Coming in March 2011 –

  The Pot Thief Who Studied Escoffier

  Ed.—Hubie has agreed to create unique chargers for the table settings in a soon-to-open restaurant in Santa Fe. The fee was too enticing to pass up, although the restaurateur was not negotiable on the potting site...the plates must be made at the restaurant in Santa Fe. Hubie has misgivings about giving up the comforts of his tailor-made shop and home. Nonetheless, Hubie arranges for his absence, packs his equipment into his Bronco and heads to Santa Fe...

  On the road to Santa Fe, I thought about Frank Aquirre teaching us about the 1607 founding of Jamestown.

  Two ironies came to mind. 1607 was also the year Santa Fe was founded, but that didn’t make the history books at Albuquerque High School. I guess they were all published back East. Jamestown was described as the first European settlement in the new world. From which I deduced in the steel trap mind I had in those days that either Spain was not considered part of Europe or Santa Fe was not considered part of the new world.

  The second irony was that I had started dating Aguirre’s daughter that summer.

  The hotel now known as La Fonda was also founded in 1607. The rambling stuccoed building on the southeast side of the Plaza is not the original structure, but it looks like it could be with its ornately-carved wood vigas and hand-made floors tiles. La Fonda (Spanish for ‘Inn’) has been the meeting place for conquistadores, Indians, priests, cowboys, artists, peddlers and politicians for over four centuries.

  As I stood by the registration desk scanning the couches and chairs in the lobby, all those groups and more were represented. The menagerie of eccentrics, posers, tourists, hawkers, Indians, Hispanics, turquoise-bedecked blondes, pony-tailed men, bikers, and local Sufis was so oddly diverse that it might have been a caucus at the Democratic National Convention.

  The guy I was looking for fit right in. But then who wouldn’t in a crowd like that? He wore a white tunic with a stiff collar and harlequin pants with a drawstring. As I neared him, I could read the embroidery on the tunic – ‘Schnitzel’ in bold red letters with “Chef Kuchen’ in black script just below.