Scent of Murder, page 20
First, I copied each person’s name in alphabetical order and left a few spaces to register new information and my thoughts. I crossed out Michael’s name, even though he could have killed Eddy because Elsbeth, Olivia, and I had already hashed out enough about him. I reminded myself that I could be dealing with two killers because the methods had been quite different. At least, this is what Conventional Police Wisdom claims. But this case was not conventional.
Baldomero Vigil
I remembered his and Eddy’s grim faces the day they left the chairman’s office. Had they been talking about Eddy’s tenure bid? Baldo may have killed Eddy because he wanted or needed to bring in the relative of a friend. I’d also observed him at the door to the department that evening, so he had opportunity.
As to a reason for murdering Michael, perhaps the chairman harbored some dark secret that Michael uncovered and threatened to tell his parents about unless Baldomero coughed up a lot of lana and/or graduated him with honors. A fancy car was seen leaving the scene of the second murder. The only person I knew with such a vehicle other than Michael was the Chair. But would Vigil know how to make a hot water heater malfunction? If he were like some male academics I’ve known, he could be mechanically challenged.
Bibi Pomodoro
Uma Clone could have set her cap for Eddy. Not accustomed to rejection, she cracked. The long-limbed Amazon looked strong enough to strangle him. I’d seen her sneak up the back staircase on the night of Eddy’s murder, so she was in the right place at the right time.
Why kill Michael? Maybe he found out something about her that he could use as blackmail. But I couldn’t even guess what that could be.
Clive Strange
If he’d stolen the clock, and Eddy and Michael knew about it, he could have killed them both out of fear of losing his job if word got out. Eddy already harbored suspicions, and Michael, with his Nederland connections, could have found out. The repairman could be wrong in his appraisal; the clock could be worth enough to put Clive on Easy Street for a long time. Anyway, Carrot Top might not have needed a logical motive. As a true believer in astrology, it seemed he let the stars guide his life. He didn’t like Eddy because their signs clashed. Maybe his and Michael’s signs were also incompatible. I’d seen him at the door to the department on the night of the first murder, so he had opportunity.
Dolores Lopes
When she thought Eddy was going to throw her over for Suzanne, she might have confronted him, flown into a green-eyed passion, and lashed out. However, if she and Javier had been together the entire time after the rehearsal, she had an ironclad alibi. Did she possess enough muscle to strangle Eddy? Maybe. Never underestimate the strength that adrenalin-fueled wrath can pump into a person’s system. Eddy was probably taken by surprise, which made him a relatively easy target.
Dolores could have killed Michael for the same reason. Michael had rejected her and blabbed about it. If Suzanne had gone off with him on the night of the first murder, Dolores could have killed Michael out of revenge. She did her own sewing and decorating and had plenty of experience taking care of a home for her brother, so she probably was handy enough to fiddle with a hot water heater. I sucked on my pen. When I thought back on it, Dolores, with her unassuming demeanor, lurked everywhere.
Olivia Oakes
As much as it pained me, I had to list my friend’s name, too, if for no other reason than to exonerate her. Maybe her relationship with Eddy blossomed into more than friendship when he comforted her after her husband’s death, and their affair had continued into the present. She could’ve been envious of the attention he paid others. And she was on campus the night of the murder.
Olivia made no bones about being angry with Michael and his accusations, but had she been irate enough to kill him? What linked her in my mind to Michael’s murder was the carbon monoxide, which could be a coincidence. Taking another tack, someone who knew about her husband might have been trying to implicate her. Who would want to do such a nasty thing to a nice woman like Olivia?
Georgina Rampage
She had both the opportunity and strength to strangle Eddy. Having grown up on a farm, she also probably understood how hot water heaters work. Only after Eddy’s death did she indicate that Michael had claimed Eddy was going to ruin her reputation with the play he was writing. She could have killed Michael for the same reason: he knew about her family background and threatened to expose it.
Javier Malecón
I remembered a proverb Doña Isabella had spouted earlier that “two sparrows on one ear of corn cannot agree.” Did he kill Eddy because he resented the professor’s interest in Dolores?
Ditto as a reason for murdering Michael, with the addition of what in his mind might be justifiable homicide over Michael ruining Dolores’ reputation. My mind drifted back to the scene in front of the department when the two grad students had come to blows. It appeared that Javier and Michael hadn’t gotten along well since childhood. He, or any of the suspects could have sneaked to Michael’s apartment and tinkered with the hot water heater. However, if Javier and Dolores had gone back to her office together, then he, too, had an alibi for that evening.
Suzanne Selos
I wished Suzanne were the killer because the woman was so annoying. But I knew I had to analyze this suspect’s motives as impartially as the others. Suzanne could have killed both victims because they rejected her. According to Javier, on the night of Eddy’s murder, she and Michael had gone off together. If they had, they didn’t stay together long because later, Suzanne turned up at Dolores’ office alone. The question was, how much later? I wouldn’t put it past La Celosa to sneak to Michael’s place and do something heinous to make him pay for rejecting her.
I was chewing my pen and contemplating my list when a noise in the kitchen startled me.
Chapter Thirty
“Choices are the hinges of destiny.” –Pythagoras (c 570 BCE-c 490 BCE), Greek Philosopher
I dropped the pen and wracked my brain to remember where I’d parked my cell. Caray! In my purse in the bathroom where, it wouldn’t do me any good. I eased myself off the couch and crept toward the kitchen, pausing on the way to heft a Mexican onyx paperweight from a table. If such a weapon was good enough for Lupita González, it was good enough for Issy Castillo. Raising my arm with the paperweight, I tiptoed to the doorway.
My ancestor stood hunched over the kitchen stove, clad in her familiar tattered, plum-colored skirt and rough cotton blouse. Over this ragged ensemble, she’d donned an incongruous-looking, white, ruffled 50s housewife apron. With a wooden spoon, she stirred a big black pot steaming with something so yummy it made my mouth water despite my recent scare.
Then Doña Isabella sang out in a high, reedy voice something about senses reeling in a wind-swept field. She called over her shoulder,
“Quit skulking around in the doorway like a mangy dog that ain’t ‘et in three days and get your buns in here! You can lose the paperweight, too, Chica. I ain’t gonna attack ya.” She kept stirring and humming. “Dum-deedle-dee-dum. How d’ya like my new duds? They make me feel all domestic.” She turned toward me, with a spoon in one hand, the other on her hip, and struck a model’s pose.
“Impressive,” I said with a lift of my eyebrows. I entered the room, plunked the paperweight in the center of the kitchen table, and took a seat. “I thought you were an intruder.”
“If you’d trust your sniffer,” my ancestor huffed, “you’d know better. What intruder rustles you up a pot of scrumptious Make the Right Choice Soup?”
I slumped in my chair, and my spirit granny clicked her tongue in disapproval.
“Tsk! Tsk! You even look like a mangy dog and no wonder. You don’t eat real food.”
“I do eat,” I protested and stifled a yawn. “I eat food every day.”
“Not today, you haven’t,” my ancestor grumbled. “You call that dog’s dinner you dumped food?” She wrinkled her nose. “How can you expect to solve this mystery on such a puny diet?” She wheeled back to the pot and stirred furiously.
I was too done in to argue. “Bien, so my eating habits haven’t been all that great.” I wrinkled my nose, too, but with hungry anticipation. “What’s in the soup?”
Doña Isabella ladled some liquid into a bowl and brought it to the table for me to inhale the rich aroma. “A lot of stuff that’s good for you,” she replied, “and which, not incidentally, will also help you finger the right suspect in your little murder investigation.”
“It looks like bean soup,” I said, ignoring the last half of my ancestor’s comment. I picked up the spoon and dug in.
“No kidding, Sherlock. It’s a fifteen-bean soup, which I gotta say is a lot easier to assemble now that it comes packaged at the supermarket. In my day, we had to plant and harvest each crop. Sometimes, we foraged far and wide to gather fifteen different kinds of beans.”
The spirit shuffled over to the sink, leaned against it, and folded her arms. “Beans, m’hija, are one of the best divination vegetables that exist, especially if the results of your prestidigitation”—she drew out each syllable long for emphasis—“require swift action. I sprinkled a little ranchero cheese on top to give your brain an added boost of protein.”
I stopped with my spoon half-raised to my lips. “Where did you find the ingredients?”
“I told you, at the supermarket.”
“But how did you pay for everything? I mean, nobody but I can see you, verdad?”
“Oh, I took care of that,” the old lady said loftily as she opened the refrigerator door and began poking around. She brought out a frothy glass of a dark, purplish-colored liquid, set it before me, and dropped down in a chair.
“When you’re done with the soup, I’ve whipped up this juice potion to open your paths to Spirit so you can discover the truth about who’s knocking off all of your friends in the good ole Spanish Department. It’s got good stuff in it to buck up your body, mind, and spirit.”
I looked up, spoon poised in the air, and jutted out my chin. “Michael Kent was no friend of mine.”
“Maybe not when he was alive, but now that he’s Up There—” she glanced piously toward the ceiling — “he’s one of your biggest fans.”
“He went Up There?” I gestured vigorously with my free thumb. “Not Down There?”
“Simmer down, Sweetie Pie. It’s not for you to judge another’s life.”
I put down my spoon, folded my arms across my chest, and glared at my ancestor.
The old lady’s smile was beatific. “He’s rooting for you to discover who did it.”
“That sounds more like him,” I said in a sour tone, but unfolded my arms. “I imagine he wants vengeance.”
“No,” my ancestor said in an uncharacteristically low and serious tone, “he doesn’t want you to become Victim Number Three. And neither do I. So there!”
She took her shawl from her shoulders, draped it across the back of a chair, and gave me a broad grin. “I don’t want to be reduced to communicating my teachings to Angela. You’re a hard enough nut to crack. Are you going to polish off that fortifying soup I slaved over, or do I have to spoon-feed it to you?”
Too confounded to react, I did as I was told.
Doña Isabella began humming, breaking into song again, warbling something about earth-bound misfits.
“Isn’t that an old Pink Floyd tune?” I remarked between mouthfuls. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was, and the soup was delicious.
“Good for you, Chica! You should go on Jeopardy.”
I rolled my eyes. “Except I can’t even remember the name of the song you’re hamburgering, let alone the album.”
Doña Isabella answered quickly, “What is ‘Learning to Fly’ from the album A Momentary Lapse of Reason, 1987?” She leaned across the table and winked like Beulah the Witch. “I’ll clue you in on something: I ain’t singin’ it for no good reason. Nor am I winkin’ at ya ‘cuz I got sand in my eye. And here’s another song for you to put into your pipe and smoke, that is, if you smoked a pipe. These lyrics are from the tune ‘One Slip’ on the same album.”
She got up, arranged her shawl around her shoulders, and swayed as she crooned about being in love and fate intervening to keep a lover from fulfilling a desire.
By now, she’d hiked up her skirt to reveal thick, gray woolen socks and moccasins. She swirled around the room, screeching about a person with a sudden lapse of reason falling down a hole. With that, she fell into a chair.
“Ay!” she panted. “All that twisting and turning takes it out of you when you’re a little old lady of a hundred and fifty.” She wiggled her Groucho-like eyebrows. “And if that Pink Floyd lullaby didn’t reveal the murderer to you, I’ve mixed up some Concentration Bath Salts for you to use tonight to help you ponder things. Now, where did I put them?”
While she groped in her capacious skirt pocket, I finished the soup and started on the fruit juice potion.
“I appreciate the hints you’re giving me with all the proverbs and songs,” I said, “even if I don’t have the foggiest notion what they all mean.”
“That’s because you don’t eat enough protein. Ah, here it is! No, that’s my pipe and tobacco.”
She took out the old cherry wood pipe and worn pouch, along with some matches, and laid them on the table. Then she fumbled inside her pocket again, and her eyes lit up.
“There you are, you rascal. I knew you were hiding somewhere.” She produced another pouch and tossed it on the table.
I picked it up, opened it, and breathed in the refreshing, slightly sweet scent of perfumed, orange-colored salts. “Aah! They smell wonderful.”
“The ingredients will help you clear all that library book dust from your noggin and give your undivided attention to the matter at hand.”
How I wished I could reach over and hug my granny. But I suspected the little Native woman only existed in my mind, as ephemeral as a white contrail left by an airplane on the blue horizon. I bit back a tear that was threatening to well in my eye.
“Ay, abuelita, you’re so good to me. I want you to know how much I appreciate your assistance and encouragement, even though you can’t interfere in the course of events on Earth. But…but….” I felt my lip tremble and could no longer hold back the tears. One by one, they dribbled down my cheek and landed in my empty soup bowl.
“It’s all been too much. I can’t seem to get a handle on things. I even suspected my friend Olivia. And then, for a moment, I wanted to give it all up, including teaching. Am I losing my mind?” I implored.
“No, Chica. You just suffered a momentary lapse of reason, as the song says. You wouldn’t be human if sometimes you didn’t question your motives and the path you’re on. What you briefly lost were your self-confidence and trust in your intuition. Yet you’ve trusted Eddy, Olivia, and Elsbeth. Ask yourself, what is the one characteristic they share?”
I dabbed my eyes with my napkin and sniffed. “I don’t know. Unless maybe it’s because I see in each of them an independent streak, which I admire.”
Doña Isabella clapped her hands in delight. “Right on, Chica! You’re a chip off the old totem pole, that is, if we had totem poles in our pueblo, which our tribe did not. But there’s more to it than that.”
“Oh?”
“As you said, you’ve trusted them ‘cuz, like you, they’re independent-minded. They also possess another quality which you esteem but haven’t yet fully developed in yourself.”
I wasn’t sure I liked where this was going. “What do you mean?”
“Take Eddy, for example. He never hesitated to tell people what he thought as long as he believed it would do them some good. Even if it meant the person wouldn’t like him as much. He didn’t curry favor with The Powers That Be to help him get ahead, either.”
“I guess you’re right. His attitudes probably would never have gotten him tenure.”
“Same thing with your other friends, only different. Olivia’s been known to stand up to your Chair when he starts spluttering nonsense like all that about the department letterhead. She speaks her mind if she believes she’s right despite the fact it doesn’t show her to be a player.”
“That’s true, but I don’t understand where you’re going with this.”
Doña Isabella ignored my comment and went on. “Your new friend Elsbeth is a woman from another culture whose husband left her flat. Somehow, she’s managed to overcome the double stigma of being abandoned and a single mom. She’s built a career teaching about alternative healing techniques, a field often pooh-poohed by many of the more uptight elements of your society. You admire these three because they’re not bothered by what others think of them. They’re concerned with doing the right thing and helping others.”
“And I am not?”
She shrugged. “To put it bluntly, you’re too self-conscious of body image and the face you portray to the world.”
“Not me!” I protested but knew in my heart my spirit granny was right.
“It’s okay, Chica. I like your caramel-colored, moisturizing lip-plumper and little sandal heels. I really do. Even if those shoes are going to end up giving you corns. By the way, I have a recipe to cure corns, if you’re interested. And I know you’re still trolling around for Prince Charming, so you’re fanatic about watching your weight.”
“It’s better for my health to be thinner.”
“It’s better for your health to eat better.”
I stared at the dregs of my juice and fell silent. Was I a shallow person? If I weren’t so concerned with body image, would Dolores and Suzanne not dislike me so much? Would I not have sent the wrong message to Michael? Would Eddy not have considered me to be naïve? And the way I treat my sister, is that more about how Angela affects my life rather than how I can help her?
