Pot Thief Who Studied Pythagoras Page 7

  Then I remembered that while I had been fending off Kaylee, she had been fending off the LA guy.

  “… and then went back to his hotel where he started a fire.”

  Maybe fending off was not the right phrase. I wondered what sort of fire she was referring to.

  Luckily, she didn’t attempt to tell me what happened next. Instead she said, “He may be the one.”

  “I hope so.”

  “Do I detect some doubt?”

  “I just don’t want you to get hurt. I’m glad the two of you are off to a great start. But he’s in Los Angeles and you’re in Albuquerque. Long distance romances can be tricky.”

  She laughed. “How would you know? You’ve never been out of New Mexico.”

  “I went to Mexico once.”

  “You went to Juarez, part of which borders on New Mexico.”

  “But I went through El Paso, and that’s in Texas.”

  She sighed. “Hubie, this is not a discussion about your travels or lack thereof. But you’re right about long distance romances. And he understands that. He said we should start slow and see how things progress. He’ll be stopping here every few weeks as his travel schedule allows, and we’ll see how things develop.”

  “Sounds like a good idea.”

  I put my finger in my margarita and swirled the ice counterclockwise.

  “Geez, you don’t sound exactly thrilled about my new romance.”

  “Sorry. I’m a little preoccupied tonight.”

  “Still worried about Kaylee?”

  “No,” I said and told her everything that had happened that day.

  “Wow. Gravelly is dead?”

  “Guvelly,” I corrected.

  “Yeah, him. I’ve never known anyone who was murdered. Of course, I didn’t actually know Gubelly. But I know you and you knew him, and I guess that’s like what, two degrees of separation?”

  “I don’t understand that degrees of separation thing. But I know what you mean, and that’s what bothers me. If someone you know is murdered, then the murderer might also be someone you know, like you’ve fallen into the wrong crowd.”

  “You didn’t fall into Gubelly. He came to you.”

  “Guvelly. Here’s what worries me. Obviously they know I was on the eleventh floor because of the camera by the elevator. And maybe they know I was at his door because I might have left fingerprints. That’s just bad luck. But Fletcher said, ‘We got a little piece of evidence that times you and ties you in real tight.’ What do you think that might be?”

  Susannah drained her glass and thought about it. I signaled to Angie for two more and held the chip bowl aloft to indicate we needed a refill on those as well.

  After we were reprovisioned, Susannah said, “Maybe someone looked through the peephole when you knocked and saw you there.”

  I liked the initial sound of it and wondered why I hadn’t thought of it. Then I saw the flaw in it.

  “That would only implicate me if the person who saw me through the peephole did so at or near the time of the murder.”

  “Right.”

  “So who would be in the room at the time of the murder?”

  “The murderer and the victim. Oh, I see what you mean. The victim can’t report seeing you because he’s dead. And the murderer can’t report seeing you without implicating himself.”

  “But the peephole theory could still work.”

  “You mean if someone in another room looked out?”

  “Exactly. I knocked twice and rather loudly the second time. So if someone across the hall heard the noise and looked out, they might have seen me.”

  “So what good does it do knowing that?”

  Her question finally jostled my brain into gear, and I felt optimistic for the first time since Fletcher’s visit to my shop. “If someone else saw me in the hall, then they might also have seen me walk away without going in.”

  “But how can you find out what room and who it was?”

  “Maybe I can get Fletcher to tell me.”

  “He’s a cop. Why would he help the suspect?”

  “It’s Whit Fletcher, Suze.”

  “Oh, of course—money.”

  “Exactly.”

  By that time, I had forgotten all about the Dom Pérignon I’d had at lunch. I drained my margarita.

  16

  I walked unsteadily back to my shop, let myself in the front door, heard the bong, made a silly joke to myself about a bong in a pot shop—well, I had been drinking—locked the front door behind me, used a different key to unlock the door to my workshop directly behind the store, relocked that, and then unlocked the next door in the series, the one into my living quarters.

  At least that’s what I thought I did.

  My bed is a single, dressed, as you already know, with five-hundred-thread-count sheets of Egyptian long-staple cotton. After four margaritas, it was between those sheets that I longed to be. As tempting as it was simply to remove my shoes and crawl in, I forced myself to take a hot shower, two aspirins and a large glass of water. When finally my body slid between those millions of tiny threads, I was asleep in an instant.

  I awoke many hours later refreshed and famished, thankful for the two benefactors of humankind who invented the margarita and the aspirin. I set the oven on warm and placed a plate inside with two corn tortillas. I broke two eggs into the frying pan and cooked them over-medium with a pinch of cumin. I placed the eggs over the tortillas, poured on green chili sauce, sprinkled queso fresco on top and returned the plate to the oven. While the cheese melted, I extracted a bottle of Gruet Blanc de Noir champagne from the fridge and filled a flute.

  Why not? Hair of the dog. I then sat at my kitchen table and enjoyed my favorite breakfast—huevos rancheros verde and champagne.

  While I ate, I read another article from the anthology about Pythagoras. I wondered what Pythagoras would make of my living space that has no right angles. Everything is slightly off, the walls akilter, the floors atilt. Pythagoras was evidently a man of precision. He and his cult worshipped numbers. The number one was God—perfect unity. Two was the duality of reality—man and woman, hot and cold, wet and dry, etc. He’s even credited with discovering that harmony between plucked strings is a function of their length, so music is also a matter of numbers.

  Despite all the precision of his famous theorem and his fixation with numbers, Pythagoras also had a mystical side. He taught that when you arise from sleep, you should smooth out the sheets lest someone use your imprint to harm you—sort of the early Greek root of the voodoo theory that you can injure someone by sticking a pin in their likeness. I glanced to my bed and saw my imprint. In a fanciful mood, I stepped over and smoothed it out. It was then that I heard someone moving about in my store. I looked at my watch and was surprised to see it was just past my normal opening time.

  I opened the door into my workshop and heard someone calling my name from inside the shop. Reassured by the familiar voice, I unlocked the door from the workshop to the store and said good morning to Reggie West from next door. He sells gelato, which so far as I can tell is sherbet. It’s even harder to sell during the off-season than pots because it faces the added challenge of being a summer­time treat. Reggie has been trying to diversify into chocolates, piñon nut candies and jalapeño lollipops. They’re better than they sound. Even with these exotic additions, I think he’s struggling­. Of course the alimony may also be a factor. Did I mention he pays it to two former wives? It’s sad to see a former Marine laid low by family court.

  “I noticed your lights were off even though it’s past opening time, so I tried the door and it was unlocked. I thought you might be making pots, so I was just headed back to tell you to turn on the lights and put out the open sign.”

  “I thought I locked the door when I came in last night.”

  “Did you and Susannah
close up Dos Hermanas again?”

  “Yes, but I didn’t think I was tipsy enough to leave the door unlocked.”

  “Well, I had my key to your shop in my hand, but the knob turned when I took hold of it, so I just walked in. Maybe it didn’t quite catch when you turned the key last night.”

  I asked him to stay while I looked around to see if anything was missing. I have about a quarter of a million dollars of inventory, retail value, in my shop. Two thirds of it is in display cases or on shelves. None of that was missing. The rest of the merchandise is locked in cabinets behind my counter. I checked the cabinet doors, and they were all locked. However, a few of the hinges were slightly loose, and I was afraid someone had opened the cabinets by unscrewing the hinges. I unlocked each cabinet. Nothing was missing.

  “Everything okay?” asked Reggie. He has a square face, a prominent chin and a smile that is so wide and bright it seems almost practiced.

  “Seems to be. You mind keeping an eye out? In the unlikely case a customer comes along and wants to see something, just tell them I’ll be back later.”

  After washing up the breakfast dishes and myself, I set off to Tristan’s apartment. He’s not actually my nephew. He’s the grandson of my Aunt Beatrice, my mother’s sister. I think that makes Tristan my second cousin once removed. Or maybe it’s my first cousin twice removed. I’ve never been certain about the terminology. So I just call him my nephew, and he calls me his uncle.

  He was asleep of course—it being prior to noon. I took along the only alarm clock that works, a steaming cup of aromatic coffee and a bag of pungent breakfast tacos from Duran Central Pharmacy.

  During other hours of the day and most of the night, you can reach Tristan on an i-thingy. You can do almost anything on it—listen to music, play games, swamp the Internet and even have old-fashioned phone conversations. You can. Tristan can. I can’t. I couldn’t even figure out how to turn it on.

  I let myself into his apartment with my key and held the coffee and tacos under his nose until he came to. He stared up at me. “Uncle Hubert?”

  “Who were you expecting?” I stuck the food even closer to him.

  “What time is it?” he asked groggily.

  “It’s time for breakfast.”

  He wrapped the blanket around himself like a cape, stood up and stretched. Then he flopped back into bed. At least he landed sitting up.

  I handed him the coffee and he took a few tentative sips. Then he started in on the tacos. Once the chili and egg combo hit his taste buds, he was awake.

  After he finished off the tacos, he wiped his mouth on the sheet and reached for what was left of the coffee.

  “I could have gotten you a napkin,” I said.

  He shrugged. “I’m planning to wash the sheets today.”

  “I guess that means you have a date tonight.”

  “Yeah. I might even vacuum.”

  “You don’t own a vacuum.”

  “I have a little hand-held one in the car.”

  “That one plugs into the cigarette lighter. Will the cord stretch all the way in here?”

  “No, I rigged up a transformer. Then all I had to do was split the—”

  “Tristan?”

  “Oh, right. Not interested in technical things.”

  “Not usually, but I do have a technical question for you.”

  He smiled that big dopey smile the girls all love and said, “You didn’t come over just to bring me breakfast?”

  “Well, that too. And also just to visit.” I really like the kid. He’s sort of lost in space sometimes, but he’s honest, smart, unassuming and really good with older people. And I don’t mean me. I mean really old people. Of course the young girls also like him. With his vestigial layer of baby fat, smooth olive skin, black hair that hangs down in ringlets around his neck and those bedroom eyes, they find him irresistible.

  “What’s the question?”

  “It’s about the laser device on my shop door.”

  “It’s basically harmless, but you shouldn’t look directly into it. That’s why it’s mounted only three feet off the floor. If it were at shoulder height and you just happened to look to your right as you entered, it could contact your eyes and cause a problem. Also, it’s not a good idea for it to pass real close to a pacemaker.”

  “I’ll post a sign outside warning midgets with pacemakers to call ahead for special entry requirements. Why three feet high, by the way, instead of even lower?”

  “It’s hard for the average person to step over something three feet tall, so no one can enter undetected.”

  “Interesting, but not what I want to know. Can it keep a record of how many customers come in and when?”

  “It not only can, it does. It’s designed to hook into your business software so you can track exactly how many customers are in the store at different times of the day and make staffing decisions and things like that. Of course you don’t have business software or even a computer, so the only feature you use is the sound that lets you know when someone enters or leaves.”

  “And the only staffing decisions I make are whether to open for business or not. So I couldn’t find out how many people came in yesterday?”

  “Sure you can. You don’t use that function, but it’s still in there. All you have to do is hook a computer to it and read the record off the memory chip.”

  “All I have to do? I can’t understand what you said, much less do it.”

  He said he would take the reading for me. Before I left, I asked if he needed money. He said he was okay, so I gave him a fifty. When he says he’s broke, I give him a hundred. When he says he’s fine, I don’t know what I give him because he’s always either broke or just okay.

  17

  Susannah’s idea about the peephole had me thinking I might work something out with Whit Fletcher. So when I got back from Tristan’s, I called, and he came over.

  “You decide to confess, Hubert?”

  “Good afternoon, Detective. Nice to see you, too.”

  “Got any coffee?”

  “It’s just plain coffee,” I told him. “If you want something fancy, there’s a Flying Star over on Silver and a Starbucks in the Hyatt.”

  He took a sip. “You know what those places charge for a cup of coffee? Three dollars. You believe that? That can you got there probably didn’t cost you three dollars.”

  He took another sip and sat the cup on the counter. “How come you don’t keep no stools up here? Might be nice to take a load off.”

  Whit weights around two twenty, some of it in a paunch, but he seems in reasonable shape. His long face has a matching thin nose between those slant-down eyes.

  “I don’t want customers sitting at the counter drinking coffee. I want them browsing around the shop selecting purchases.”

  “What do you care? You don’t make no money in here. This place is just a front for the illegal stuff you sell on the sly.”

  I didn’t comment on that. Instead, I told him about the missing pot from Bandelier and about a federal agent making two visits to my shop.

  “So why are you tellin’ me? Bandelier ain’t exactly in my jurisdiction.”

  I told him my theory. The federal agent didn’t really think I stole the pot. I don’t break into buildings. But the thief might bring it to me because of my reputation. The agent hoped to scare me enough that I would give him the pot to avoid trouble.

  Whit drained the last of his coffee, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and put his cup on the counter. “That’s a nice fairy tale, but I don’t understand why you’re tellin’ me about it?”

  “The agent said there may be a finder’s fee, but I can’t collect it, can I?”

  “Probably not. A thief don’t usually get a finder’s fee for returning what he stole.”

  “I didn’t steal it. But they aren
’t going to believe that if I walk in with it under my arm.”

  He brushed his hair back and smiled. “And that’s where I come in.”

  Whit’s quick to pick up the scent of money.

  “Exactly. If I can find the pot, I can pass it on to you to collect the fee.”

  “And we split it.”

  “Naturally, I would want something for my effort in recovering the thing.”

  “Naturally. But you’re forgetting one thing. If your story is right, this federal agent might be after that fee, and he’s not gonna take too kindly to you throwing it my way rather than his.”

  It was time for me to put my ace on the table. “I don’t think we’ll have a problem with the agent.” I played a drum roll in my head and said, “His name is Guvelly, the guy in room 1118.”

  He picked up the cup to take another sip, saw that it was empty and put it back down. Then he just stood there thinking. Finally, he said, “If I remember right, Hubert, you told me you went up to room 1118 by mistake.”

  So much for my dramatic announcement.

  “I lied. Guvelly told me he was in the Hyatt. He seemed to be trying to snare me. So I decided to drop in on him unannounced. I went up to the eleventh floor. No one answered my knock.”

  “You just stood outside the door.”

  “Right.”

  “Un huh. You hear a shot while you was standin’ there?”

  “I didn’t hear anything.”

  Fletcher’s eyes drooped further down than normal. “Maybe you oughta think about your story some more and then give me a call.”

  I’m usually happy to see Fletcher go, but this time I wished he had stayed for two reasons. First, I wanted to know why he didn’t react to my knowledge that Guvelly was the murder victim. Second, I needed him to protect me from the two Indian thugs who walked into my shop after he left.

  The first one looked like someone you’d encounter at the top of a beanstalk. He was a foot taller than me, and any one of his limbs outweighed me. His face was a random assortment of planes circling two small eyes. I thought he was alone until I heard someone behind him close the door and turn the latch.