The Pot Thief Who Studied Billy the Kid (Pot Thief Mysteries) Read online

  He nodded.

  “Okay,” I admitted, “the logic is flawless. But it depends on two premises. The first is that two people were down there together. The second is that one them decided to kill the other one. Those both seem highly improbable.”

  “Maybe not so improbable. Maybe they were a couple of pot hunters. They got in an argument about splitting the loot, and one killed the other.”

  The more I thought about it, the more it made some sense. And the more uncomfortable I felt. Not about whether the dead guy was murdered, but about myself.

  I like to compare myself to Howard Carter who found King Tut or to the fictional Indiana Jones. I see treasure hunters as dashing romantic figures.

  But there is a seamy side to my profession. It’s estimated that illegally gathered artifacts in the United States constitute a billion dollar black market. The epicenter of that illicit industry is the Four Corners, the place where Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico meet. Archaeologists estimate there are four hundred thousand abandoned settlements and two million graves in that area.

  The diggers there are not romantic figures. They are often more like gangsters. They use backhoes. They damage more artifacts than they sell. And they carry guns.

  That’s a far cry from me digging with my hands under a desert moon and treating my finds with care and affection. But as the saying goes, if you lie down with dogs, you’ll get up with fleas. I was beginning to fear I might be part of the problem.

  Martin held up the pot he’d brought. “You can get this one without digging in a grave.”

  His uncle is a gifted potter. This was one of his smaller pots, about six inches high with a circumference the size of a grapefruit. The colors were sienna and pomegranate, and the design was traditional to their pueblo.

  “Unfortunately, I don’t have the money to buy it.”

  “You want it on consignment?”

  “Sure. How much does he want for it?”

  “He’s hoping for a thousand.”

  “Okay. Maybe it will attract some customers. I could use some.”

  15

  It took me fifteen minutes to make what is normally a three minute walk from my shop, through the plaza and over to Dos Hermanas, primarily because I had to take two rest stops.

  I leaned the crutches against our table at Dos Hermanas and said, “I’m sweating like a pig.”

  “Pigs don’t sweat, Hubie. That’s why they have to wallow in mud to stay cool.”

  “You raise sheep and cattle, not pigs.”

  “But I know about pigs. I was an ag major for a while.”

  “Okay, I’m sweating like a dog.”

  “Dog’s don’t sweat – they pant.”

  I threw up my hands. “Then I’m sweating like a human. But even we humans don’t sweat this much in the desert. I think it must be the crutches.”

  After we ordered, I told her how stunning Sharice looked in her sun dress. She commented that most men don’t notice how a woman is dressed.

  “It wasn’t so much the dress I noticed as what it revealed.”

  “So she has a good figure.”

  “Not in the traditional sense. She’s thin and sort of flat-chested with long limbs.”

  “Gamine.”

  “I don’t know what that means,” I said.

  “I learned it in art history. It’s a waifish girl, thin but somehow appealing.” She pulled her cell phone from her purse, punched a few keys and showed me an oil painting on the screen. “This is Le Nu Gris by Pierre Bonnard. His nudes are often described as gamine. Is this what Sharice looks like?”

  “Even thinner,” I said. “And her skin is a lot darker.”

  “I think I could have guessed the skin color part, Hubert, since you told me she’s black.”

  “Sharice also had on clothes, sort of.”

  “Skimpy dress, huh?”

  “It had almost enough material to make a pillow case, but somehow it didn’t seem skimpy. It was like a good meeting, short enough to—“

  She held up a palm. “I know, short enough to be interesting but long enough to cover the subject.” She shook her head. “Saying things like that dates you, Hubie.”

  I thought it was funny, but maybe she’s right.

  “She was angelic in that white dress with a stem of yucca blossoms in her hand.”

  “She brought you a stem of yucca blossoms? That is so romantic. What happened next?”

  The only thing Susannah likes better than a mystery is a romance.

  “I wowed her with my savoir faire.”

  “A side of you I don’t know? Come on, Hubie – details.”

  “For starters, I cleaned and pressed these Levis.”

  “A ripped pair of old Levis you’ve worn every day for two weeks hardly qualifies as savoir faire.”

  “You should have seen them with that razor-edged pleat I ironed in. And contrasting them with my favorite dress shirt was chic.”

  “I’ve never understood what that means.”

  “Me neither. But Sharice said the Levis looked cool over my cast. When I removed the clay from the truchas en terracotta, she said, ‘Makes beautiful bowls and cooks’. So I figure a guy who can make old Levis seem chic, throw a beautiful bowl and serve a fancy meal must have savoir faire.”

  “Sheesh. Did you tell her you’re a pot thief?”

  “She already knew that. But we did talk about it. I think she liked the fact that I returned the sacred pots to the Ma, but she wondered how that fits in with keeping other pots I dig up.”

  “I hope you didn’t drag out any of your Anthropological Theses.”

  “Would a guy with savoir faire do that?”

  “So she’s okay with what you do.”

  I took a sip of my margarita. For some reason, the ones Dos Hermanas makes on Mondays seem to be the best. “She’s fine with it. I’m not so sure I am. I’ve been bouncing between happy and sad. I would fret about the dead guy. Then I’d think about my upcoming date with Sharice and be happy. It was fun being with Tristan who has to drive me everywhere. Then I got depressed about all the criminal types who are also pot hunters.”

  “Hmm. Mood swings and a lot of sweating. Must be menopause,” she said, putting the stress on ‘men’.

  “And you think my good meeting joke is bad?”

  We both chuckled. The past few days had been out of character for me. I’m almost always happy, especially when I’m with Susannah. Even our corny jokes make me laugh.

  “Still worried about the dead guy you desecrated?”

  I laughed some more. “Thanks for putting it so delicately. Martin came by yesterday. Something he said got me to thinking about the black market in antiquities, and I began to feel dirty.”

  “What was it he said?”

  “He came up with a new theory about the body above the Rio Doloroso.”

  She straightened in her chair, and her big eyes grew even larger.

  “He said it’s possible a pair of pot hunters were there. They got into an argument over splitting the loot, and one of them killed his partner.”

  “That’s brilliant. You had a good point, Hubie, that a murderer wouldn’t carry his victim’s body along a narrow dangerous path just to bury it in an old cliff dwelling. But Martin’s explanation blows your point right out of the water.”

  “No it doesn’t. It explains how a murderer could bury the guy there without having to carry him down there. But it does so by substituting one wacky story for another. Two guys in the middle of pillaging a cliff dwelling breaking into a fatal argument is just as unlikely as a murderer carrying his victim’s body down there.”

  “No it isn’t. Most pot hunters are not as genteel as you. I can see them getting into a fight.”

  So now I was back to the evils of the antiquities trade and the ethics of my being involved in it.

  “That’s what I meant about me not being comfortable with what I do.”

  I told her about the thugs who carry guns and work with
crews, construction equipment and large vans to carry away the loot.

  “Guns? They would shoot a park ranger?”

  “I wouldn’t doubt it. But the primary reason they carry guns is to fend off other looters. And here’s what’s really sick. The thing they most like to find is an infant’s grave.”

  “Oh, ick. Why?”

  “Because infants were buried with cradle boards, blankets and amulets, all of which bring big bucks from collectors.”

  “That is sick. I hope the amulets work and the people who dig up babies and the people who buy from them find tarantulas in their sheets.”

  “A lot of people believe disturbing graves puts an evil spell on you,” I said, “like the curse of King Tut’s tomb.”

  “I saw that film. It was great. Casper Van Dien is hot.”

  “I meant the real curse.”

  “There really was a curse on Tut’s tomb?”

  “Maybe. Right after the tomb was opened, the guy who financed the expedition, Lord Carnarvon, died.”

  “People die all the time, Hubie.”

  “From a mosquito bite?”

  “He really died of a mosquito bite?”

  “Yep. And there was an inscription on Tut’s tomb saying that anyone who disturbed it would be visited by ‘winged death’ which could be a mosquito.”

  “Wow.”

  “And his dog dropped dead the same night.”

  “The mosquito had a dog?”

  “No, Lord Carnarvon had the dog. Of course his death and his dog’s death could be coincidences,” I said and pointed at her.

  She took the cue and said, “There are no coincidences, Hubert.” Then she asked if I believe in curses.

  “Sort of. I like to think that evil comes back on those who do it.”

  “But you don’t think digging up old pots will curse you?”

  “I think the potters want me to find their work. But lately I’ve been wondering whether my actions are somehow part of the ugly side of the antiquities trade.”

  She was looking right into my eyes. “I love that you question your own ethics. That alone shows you’re not the sort to do anything wrong. You can’t compare yourself with those criminals.”

  “I’m a criminal, too, Susannah.”

  “Well, technically. But what you do can’t really be called looting. You don’t destroy sites. You’re careful about how you dig. You revere what you find. You don’t dig on reservations. You don’t dig in graves…”

  We stared at each other. Then we broke out laughing.

  When we finally stopped, she said, “Hey, one little accident can be overlooked.” Then she grew serious again. “So what are you going to do?”

  I took a deep breath.

  My resolve was weak. Telling her would reinforce my decision to go back. I was satisfied with that decision ethically, But I was still struggling with it emotionally. I didn’t want to do it.

  But I had to.

  “I’m going back to the cliff dwelling to examine that hand. If it’s an ancient hand, I’m going to leave something to atone for disturbing the site and then let the body rest in peace. If it’s the hand of a contemporary, I’m going to report it to the police.”

  She smiled. “See, you are a good person. I knew you’d do the right thing. When will you go?”

  ”In a month or so.”

  “You are such a procrastinator.”

  “No I’m not. I’m waiting a few more years before becoming a procrastinator.”

  “Be serious. Why not go now?”

  I pointed down to my cast.

  “Oh,” she said.

  “Koehler said I should wear the cast for six weeks. It’s been about two already. That’s why I said a month.”

  Her wheels were turning. “I think you should go now.”

  “I can’t maneuver that rugged path with a cast.”

  “I know that. I also know you don’t want to do it even without a cast. So why not go down the way you did the first time?”

  “The Bronco was stolen, remember?”

  “My dad and both brothers have pick-ups with winches. I can borrow one.”

  “Thanks, but that won’t work. I can’t drive.”

  “But I can.”

  16

  Which is why the next morning found us on our way to Willard, forty miles due southeast from Albuquerque as the crow flies.

  But even a crow would have trouble getting there directly. It would need to rise above 10,000 feet to clear the Manzano Mountains.

  There’s no road over the Manzanos, so you have to go around them on the north or the south. We decided to go one way and return by the other.

  A coin flip had us headed south to Belen in Susannah’s 1995 Ford Crown Victoria. It was just past eleven in the morning and already in the nineties. The Crown Vic’s electric windows died years ago and are permanently stuck in the open position. It’s not a problem because it rarely rains here, and no one is going to steal the thing. In fact, having the windows open is an asset since the air conditioning doesn’t work.

  But a dry wind coming at you at seventy miles an hour is hardly cooling. And it wasn’t helping the parchment that was on my face where my skin used to be. It felt like a rebar could easily poke a hole in it.

  We made Belen in thirty minutes. Susannah insisted we stop at Harla May's Fat Boy Grill. I was skeptical until I saw that the eatery is located in an abandoned movie theater. At that point I abandoned skepticism in favor of defiance.

  But Susannah is hard to resist, especially when she has the wheel. I knew we were in trouble when I spotted their slogan, “We relish your buns.” I am not making this up.

  Susannah ordered a Holley’s Hawaiian burger with pineapple and green chile, a combination I couldn’t get my mind around.

  And didn’t want to get my mouth around.

  I went for the Flame Thrower, a burger with hot green chile from the village of Jarales just down the road and grown by the Padilla family.

  The server must have taken us for tourists because she asked me if I liked hot food.

  I smiled at her and said, “Would I order something called a Flame Thrower if I didn’t?”

  The burger lived up to its name. My failure to finish it was not owing to its heat. It was because its full pound of ground beef didn’t fit my diet plan.

  I put down the unfinished half of the burger and said, “I think there’s a flaw in Martin’s two pot hunters scenario.”

  Susannah had a mouthful of Hawaiian burger and signaled with her eyebrows for me to continue.

  “I can buy two guys working as a team. I can even buy them getting into a fight that leads one of them to kill the other. What I don’t buy is the murderer hanging around to dig a two-foot-deep grave.”

  I waited for her to finish chewing, but I already knew from the expression on her face that she had a rebuttal.

  “That’s what murderers do, Hubie. Disposing of the body is one of the major components of a murder mystery.”

  “This is real life, Susannah.”

  “I know, but murder mysteries have to be true to life or no one would read them.”

  “Then how do you explain science fiction?”

  “That’s also true to life.”

  “Huh?”

  “The science may be fiction, but the people aren’t. Take Star Wars. The love story between Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia was just like true romance.”

  “Except for the fact that they were twins.”

  “They weren’t twins in Star Wars. That happened later in one of the sequels.”

  I opened my mouth but closed it again when I realized no good could come from pursuing that line of reasoning.

  Then I opened it again and asked, “Why waste all that time and effort digging a grave? Why not just toss the body over the ledge?”

  “Someone might find it.”

  The conversation had a familiar ring to it. “So what? The corpse isn’t going to sit up and announce who killed it.”
>
  “But if the person who finds the body – unlike someone I won’t mention – reports it to the police right away, at least they’ll know the guy is dead.”

  “The guy is going to be dead for a long time, Suze. What difference does it make how soon it’s reported?”

  “If it’s reported early, the CSI guys might be able to find clues that will identify the murderer.”

  “CSI?”

  “Crime scene investigation.”

  “Oh, right. Well, the clues are just like the dead guy – they aren’t going anywhere either.”

  “They might. Buzzards could carry some away. Ants could—“

  “Stop. I just ate half a pound of meat and hot chiles. I don’t want to hear this.”

  I took a gulp of water and said, “From what you said, burying the guy is more likely to preserve clues than is throwing him into the gorge.”

  “Well, we won’t know why he buried him until the police catch him.”

  “I don’t think there’s a him to catch.”

  “You think the murderer was a woman?”

  I chuckled. “No, I don’t think there is a murderer. I think the dead guy died of natural causes a thousand years ago.”

  “Well, Hubie, that’s what you’re going to find out when I winch you down that cliff.”

  My stomach turned.

  17

  New Mexico Highway 6 southeast out of Belen crosses dry desolate country, but I love it because it follows along the railroad route called the Belen cutoff, a major part of railroad lore.

  The cutoff was built by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway in 1908 to bypass the steep grades of Raton Pass. As many as 150 trains a day roll past the southern end of the Manzano Mountains. That’s one about every ten minutes.

  Unfortunately, not a single one of them is a passenger train.

  New Mexico now has its own passenger train, the sparkling Railrunner that shuttles passengers to points between Santa Fe and Belen, but Belen is the end of the line. You can’t take the Belen cutoff around the south end of the Manzanos and on to the rest of the country.

  Since losing the Bronco, I’d been thinking about public transportation. Susannah and I were cruising along NM 6 consuming a dollar’s worth of gasoline every four miles. A current ad for a train company claims they can move a ton of freight five hundred miles on a single gallon of fuel. I did the math in my head. They could move Susannah and me from Belen to Willard for thirteen cents!