The Pot Thief Who Studied Pythagoras Read online

  “Thanks, Hubie.”

  “Close the door and take a shower.”

  I took everything out of her clothes and put them in the washer. I looked through her wallet. She was right about not being a teenager; her driver’s license showed her to be twenty-one. There was a picture of a young guy about her age, a ten, two ones, and some change, and a astrology card for Leos.

  I put her wallet, belt, shoes, and other meager belongings on the counter and started making huevos rancheros. I normally drink champagne with late night breakfasts, but the coffee was brewed, and I didn’t think popping a cork was a good idea.

  At least she knew how to shower; she looked clean and refreshed when she emerged, and she lit into the food like a dog. Without the heavy makeup and lipstick, the puffy lip and welt on her cheek were more noticeable, but I decided not to say anything about them.

  I showed her to my bed and told her to get some sleep. She looked around the place. “Where are you going to sleep, Hubert?”

  “I have a hammock in the patio.”

  She giggled. “It’s freezing out there. You could sleep with me,” she said and started to unbutton the shirt I had given her.

  “Keep the shirt on! And if you try any more monkey business, I’m calling the cops.”

  I got my thermal underwear and knit hat from my chest of drawers and went to the bathroom where I put them on under my clothes. Then I got my sleeping bag and went out to the patio.

  I’m an amateur astronomer, and I often sleep outside because I enjoy gazing up at the stars, although I usually choose warmer nights. Tonight I wasn’t thinking about the heavens. I was wondering whether allowing Kaylee to stay was a good idea. The doors from my living quarters to the workshop and from there into the shop were deadbolted as they always are at night, so there was no danger she would break a pot. And what damage could she do in my living quarters? Rip my sheets? Steal my forks?

  I decided not to worry about it, and I looked up in the sky and remembered that I had learned that very day that Pythagoras was the first person to discover that the morning star and the evening star are one and the same, the planet Venus. I looked for Venus, but of course it had already passed the meridian at that late hour, and the next thing I knew, so had I.

  12

  Kaylee slept late, and when she awoke, I started fixing her another plate of huevos rancheros.

  Someone knocked at the door just as I finished cooking, and I went forward to discover Whit Fletcher, Detective First Grade, Albuquerque Police Department. Fletcher is about six feet tall with silver hair always in need of a trim, blue-grey eyes that slant down and make him look tired, and big meaty hands. We’ve had a few dealings over the years, usually ending with me getting out of a jam and Whit getting money. I’ve never actually bribed him, but I have made it possible for him to supplement his income. He’s not really a bad cop. He goes after the drug dealers, wife-beaters, rapists, and murderers with zeal. The American Civil Liberties Union would probably see it as a little too much zeal, but then Whit probably doesn’t belong to the ACLU.

  He doesn’t have any interest in arresting pot thieves or people who forgot to get a license for a cat, and he’s not above making a buck on the sly.

  “Well, if it ain’t Hubert Shoots, my favorite grave robber. I’m surprised to find you here, Hubert; I thought you would be on the lam by now.”

  “It’s ‘Schuze’ Detective Fletcher, sounds like what you wear on your feet.”

  “Which is exactly what you should be putting to work walking yourself away. But here you are in your little fence operation as usual.”

  “Where else should I be?”

  “As far away as possible. That’s where I’d be if I’d murdered someone.”

  “Well, you didn’t murder anyone and neither did I.”

  “That’s what I told ‘em downtown, Hubert. I said to ‘em, ‘He steals pots; he don’t murder people.’ But unfortunately, they got witnesses that put you at the scene.”

  The trembling came on so unexpectedly it was like my autonomous nervous system got the message before it reached my consciousness. I put my hands on the counter so he wouldn’t see them shaking. My heart was so far up in my throat, I didn’t know if I could speak, but I managed to ask what scene he was referring to, and of course he said it was the Hyatt.

  “You were there weren’t you, Hubert.”

  “Yes, I was, but I didn’t murder anyone.”

  “Well, what were you doin’ there, Hubert? I know you weren’t attending the convention of,” and here he flipped open a small notebook and consulted his notes, “the Philadelphia Society, were you?”

  “Philadelphia Society?”

  “Yeah, they collect stamps. Funny name for a bunch of stamp collectors. Maybe they only collect stamps from Pennsylvania. You weren’t there as a stamp collector, were you?”

  “No, I wasn’t. I just went to have a few drinks with a friend.”

  “Your friend a man or a woman?”

  “A man.”

  “Meet him at the bar, did you?”

  “No, I went to his room; he’s a guest there.” My mind was racing; had someone killed Carl Wilkes?

  “Two men in a hotel room could start people talking, Hubert. Your friend got a name?”

  “I don’t think I should give you his name.”

  “Why? He won’t be needing it if he’s dead.”

  “I don’t know if he’s dead, and I don’t want to violate his privacy by giving his name to the police when he hasn’t done anything wrong to the best of my knowledge. Neither have I, for that matter.”

  “O.K., don’t give me his name. He’ll just have to stay John Doe until we find out who he is. And I’ll tell you what I’m gonna do because you and me are friends, Hubert. I’m going to tell you his room number. It’s 1118. Was that your friend’s room?”

  So it was Guvelly. He was a jackass, but that didn’t mean he deserved to be murdered.

  “No, Detective Fletcher, I’m happy to say that my friend was not in room 1118.”

  “Maybe in an adjoining room?”

  “No,” I said, “he was on an entirely different floor.”

  He leaned against my counter and smiled. “So maybe you can explain what you was doing on the eleventh floor?”

  I started to deny it then remembered the security camera near the elevator. Damn.

  “I guess I just pushed the wrong button.”

  Fletcher stared at me and used a big hand to push his hair back up out of his eyes. “I guess that could happen; there’s lots of buttons in those elevators in big buildings, Hubert. Who would’a thought we’d ever have skyscrapers in Albuquerque?” He shook his head in apparent wonderment and his hair fell back over one eye, and then he just stared at me.

  “Well,” I said, “even if I was unlucky enough to accidentally be on the floor where someone was murdered, at least I wasn’t there when the murder took place.”

  “You got a problem there too, Hubert. You see, that’s exactly when you were there. We got a little piece of evidence that times you and also ties you in real tight, but I can’t tell you about it even though you and me are friends.”

  I stood there with my mind racing, thinking what the other piece of evidence might be, trying to remember if I had done anything that seemed perfectly innocuous at the time but might now look suspicious to police investigating a murder, trying to think what else could go wrong.

  And that’s when Kaylee walked in flashing cleavage in my loose-fitting shirt and holding a bottle of Gruet Brut in her right hand.

  “Can we open this, Hubert?”

  Whit’s eyebrows arched up, and he said, “Who’s the young lady, Hubert?”

  “Whit, this is Kaylee. Kaylee, meet Whit Fletcher,” I said, and added without thinking, “from the Albuquerque Police Department.”

  Whereupon she gave me a look of betrayal, threw the champagne bottle at me, and ran back to my living quarters. She was trying to lock the door, but I got there in t
ime to force it open, and Whit was right behind me.

  She slumped down in a chair and started crying.

  “What the hell’s going on here, Hubert?,” said Fletcher. Then he turned to Kaylee and said, “How old are you, Miss.”

  “She’s twenty one,” I said.

  “You better hope so,” he said to me.

  “Oh, come on, Whit. Give me a little credit, huh. She showed up her last night with nowhere to go, so I told her she could stay and then we’d figure out what to do this morning.”

  “With her shirt half off and a bottle of booze in her hand, it looks like she figured out exactly what to do. You sure she’s over eighteen?”

  She was continuing to sob and didn’t say anything. “I’m sure,” I said.

  “Well, I’ve got some more questions for you,” he said.

  “I’ve already told you everything I know about her.”

  “I’m not talking about her. I’m talking about what happened at the Hyatt.”

  Funny how the mind works. I found myself entertaining the irrational hope that this was a dream and I would wake up. Then I found myself actually wondering if we could start over, and I almost asked Fletcher if he would step outside, come in again, and let me have another shot at our conversation. But of course I didn’t ask him that. Instead I said, “Maybe I should talk to my lawyer before I say anything else.”

  “Might be a good idea, Hubert. You can call him from downtown.”

  13

  Before we left, I called Susannah and she promised to come pick up Kaylee.

  On the way downtown, I decided the smart thing would be to say nothing until my lawyer arrived, and, just as a change from my recent string of decisions, I decided to do the smart thing.

  I spent an eternity in a windowless room with a metal table and four chairs. I tried them each and found one with a cracked weld between the back of the seat and the right rear leg. That caused the seat to flex slightly, and I decided it was the most comfortable of the four so long as it didn’t collapse. Given that I weigh only a hundred and forty, that seemed a chance worth taking.

  I asked for something to read, but that request was denied. I asked for a glass of water and was given one. I thought about asking for bread to go with the water, but decided against it. I kept telling myself I had nothing to worry about. I hadn’t killed Guvelly. I hadn’t entered his room. O.K., perhaps my fingerprints were on the outside of his door. Surely fingerprints on the outside of a door are not enough evidence to convict someone of committing a murder inside the room. I wished I hadn’t said anything to Fletcher, but the notion that I had killed anyone was so ridiculous that I hadn’t taken it seriously until the conversation already had me several miles down the road to perdition. Well, nothing could be done about that now. I determined I would say nothing else and let Layton handle everything. There was nothing to worry about. Except paying his bill; he is the most expensive attorney in town. Of course if I stole the pot at UNM and Wilkes paid me twenty-five thousand…

  What was I thinking? Here I was at the police station being questioned for murder, and I was considering committing a burglary to pay for my defense against the murder charge. And I’m not even a burglar. Unless I had beginners’ luck, I would probably be caught in the act.

  I drank more water and finally had to ask to go to the restroom. I hadn’t required permission to do that since the seventh grade. It’s humiliating— especially with a deputy watching.

  Layton Kent, Esquire finally showed up and carted me away in his Rolls. I know he has an office somewhere, but he seems to conduct most of his business from his table overlooking the 18th green at his club.

  Layton and his wife, Mariella, are one of the most prominent couples in town. His clients are frequently other lawyers who use him to set up corporations, trusts, and other scams for their ill-gotten but perfectly legal gains. They use him because he doesn’t practice criminal law and is therefore not seen as a competitor.

  Despite the nature of his practice, Layton condescended to get me out of jail when I was under suspicion for murder because Mariella, who is said to be a descendent of Don Francisco Fernandez de la Cueva Enriquez, Duque de Alburquerque, the man after whom our fair city is named, is an avid collector of traditional Native American pots from New Mexico’s pueblos, and I am her personal dealer. Whether she is in fact descended from El Duque is subject to debate. So far as history records, Enriquez never crossed the Atlantic. However, Ms. Kent is a nice lady, and it would be ungallant to question her lineage. Not to mention bad for business.

  My trim behind and Layton’s ample one had just hit the leather seats of his table when we were suddenly surrounded by other diners wanting to make sure they were seen with and by Layton, and solicitous staff were placing chilled flutes in front of us and cloth napkins on our laps.

  The cadaverous looking captain appeared and with a bottle of Dom Perignon and said, “Shall I pour, Mr. Kent?”

  “Yes, Phillip, please.”

  Layton sipped the champagne and indicated his satisfaction with a long sigh. I was hoping to be included in this largess, and I was not disappointed. Dom Perignon may be a notch or two above New Mexico’s own Gruet, but it costs a hundred dollars a bottle wholesale, so I stick to the Gruet which is available for thirteen bucks at the discount store and tastes almost like the French original.

  Layton is six feet tall and although he probably weighs close to three hundred pounds, he is light on his feet and has only one chin, albeit a very large one that extends from his jaw to the bottom of his neck without any sign of an Adam’s apple. He was wearing a taupe wool suit with a gold silk tie and matching handkerchief. The collar of his hand-tailored shirt rolled in such a way that it seemed to embrace his neck, creating a snug and neat fit without allowing any of Layton’s skin to hang over the collar.

  “Chef Marcel has sage hens, today, Mr. Kent,” said Phillip.

  “Excellent. We’ll both have that,” he said. I was never given a menu.

  “We’re having chicken with sage?” I asked in surprise. Sage is an excellent herb for fowl, but the menu at Layton’s club runs more to haute cuisine.

  “They are not chickens, Hubert; they are sage hens. They are relatives of the grouse and live in and feed off the sage in Wyoming so that they have a natural sage flavor unlike anything that can be imparted by applying herbs externally to a domestically raised bird.”

  “Oh.”

  “Marcel usually stuffs them with morels, but it may be too early in the year for morels. In that case, he may have some porcini. Also excellent, though I prefer the morels.”

  I would prefer one of Consuela’s chicken enchiladas, I thought to myself, but said nothing.

  “Now,” he said, “tell me who you are thought to have murdered and why they think it.”

  I told him the almost whole story, Wilkes coming to my store and tempting me to steal the Mogollon water jug from the Valle del Rio Museum, Guvelly coming to my store and accusing me of stealing the other Mogollon water jug from Bandelier, and my visit to the Hyatt, both the eleventh and the ninth floors. I know you’re supposed to tell your lawyer everything, but I didn’t tell him about my visit to the Museum.

  Our sage hens arrived, stuffed with morels, and I have to admit they were delicious. If I thought they served food like that in the prison up the road in Cerrilos, I might have been willing to be sent there for the murder of Guvelly.

  Layton doesn’t discuss business while he eats, so we were both able to enjoy the meal.

  He ordered “mango scented flan” for desert, but I declined. We got back to business over coffee.

  Kent started by saying, “I don’t understand why the police don’t know the name of the victim; the innkeepers statute in this state is quite clear; every guest must be registered under his or her true and legal name. You say this Guvelly showed you his badge?”

  “Yes, but I didn’t really get a good look at it.”

  “You should have insisted. There might be
a problem with his identity, which would explain why the local authorities haven’t formally charged you.”

  “How so?”

  “They may have discovered he is not who he represented himself to be, and while they can charge you with murder even without knowing the name of the victim, it could make getting a true bill from the grand jury more difficult for them later on. So they could be trying to identify him before formally charging you.”

  “They might arrest me again?”

  “You weren’t arrested, Hubert; you were merely detained. And if they do arrest you or make any contact with you, you must notify me immediately. And for God’s sake, say absolutely nothing.”

  14

  Miss Gladys Claiborne must have been watching for me because just moments after I finally got back home, she showed up with a dish she called Chicken Delight. I briefly considered inquiring into the origin of the name but decided against it. Odds are it was dreamed up by some elegant Texan woman named Delight.

  The dish centers on chicken tenders, a piece of the chicken I am not familiar with. The tenders are combined with canned French-cut green beans, cream of chicken soup, and a crust made of crumbled shoestring potatoes from a can. Yum.

  I begged off on the grounds that I had just had a large lunch with Layton, but I made the mistake of telling the truth when she asked if I had eaten dessert, so I had to agree to eat the one she had brought, a rectangle of lime Jell-O with crushed pineapple and miniature marshmallows.

  I seemed to remember Susannah telling me that Jell-O has something in it that’s good for you, so with that in mind I was able to down the dessert.

  “How do you like it?” she asked.

  I nodded to indicate it was good. I was trying to chew it, but it kept squishing away from my teeth.

  “A very rude man came to my shop the other day, Mr. Schuze. He works for the government and I’m certain he must be a Yankee because he had no manners to speak of.”

  “Was his name Guvelly?”

  “I believe it was. I could scarcely understand him when he spoke.”

  “Did he say he was investigating me?”