Scent of Murder, page 7
My eyes widened. “What did you find out?”
“The owner was at an antiques fair in Denver and the assistant didn’t know zip.” He sighed and went back to his search. “I must have a man-to-man with Clive soon, no matter how much our signs clash. I think he’d rather deal with me than with Baldo.”
I remembered Vigil’s accusatory eye. “If Clive publicly admits to the theft,” I said, “won’t that put a black mark on his record?”
“Oh, it will do more than that. He’ll probably lose his job. I’ve tried to catch him all week, but the party wasn’t the right place to—Epa! Here it is!” From the back of a drawer, he extracted an old black-and-white framed photograph.
Photo in hand, he got up and came to sit beside me. As I bent to better see, we almost touched heads. With a grin showing a missing front tooth, a young boy posed next to a little girl on the sidewalk in front of an old adobe-style house.
“She’s my sister,” he said. “I’m the runt with the skinny legs. Sorry, I’ve never been able to snap a photo of the ghost.”
I admired the photo and listened to Eddy spin several yarns of spirit visitations until I stifled a yawn.
“Looks like somebody needs to get to bed,” he remarked.
“I guess I’m tired from the week’s activities,” I admitted. “Besides school and moving into my condo, I’ve had a few family issues to deal with.”
“Let’s pack you off to your place.”
I stood and gathered my purse. As Eddy opened the door, he moved close. Again, I caught his indefinable musky scent. “You know, Issy,” he said in a husky voice, “you’ve brought a ray of much-needed sunshine into the dark corridors of this department.”
I started to deny it, but he pressed his index finger to my lips. “Really, you have. I hope you’ll be very happy here.” With that, he lifted my chin and kissed me.
Chapter Nine
“La vida es sueño.”
“Life is a dream.” — Pedro Calderón de la Barca, 1600-1681, Spanish Dramatist
Even at this stage I hadn’t an inkling of the horror about to unfold. I thought the alarm bells had to do with dating, not murder. Híjole, was I wrong!
It took me a while to fall asleep. What to make of Eddy Calderón? As flattered as I was by his attentions, I couldn’t help thinking this was a case of too much too soon. Not to mention, I had no idea about university rules regarding faculty fraternization. I needed to know a lot more about Enigma Eddy before I’d consider getting intimate. That he often didn’t answer my questions directly and didn’t always look me in the eye puzzled me. Was he serious or joking with some of his off-the-wall comments, such as the one about Boulder being a good place to hide one’s identity? Or how faculty members were harmless “most of the time.”?
Also, he seemed to want to control people and situations, including Dolores, Suzanne, Clive, and, to some degree, Javier and even Georgina. He carried a chip on his shoulder about the chairman. For that, I didn’t blame him. But what was up between him and Juventino? Something to do with Uma Clone? Bibi was with Juventino at the party but kept stealing glances at Eddy. Were the two men rivals for her attentions? The attentions of an undergraduate? Where were the morals there?
I punched my pillow and rolled onto my side. I was making a mountain out of a molehill; worse, seeing wedding bells from one little kiss.
I lay on my back and stared at the ceiling. My poor attitude isn’t all my fault. With Mami going on about my high school friends who are married with kids, and Papi, the “Build the Wall” Trump man, hinting that he hopes his daughter hasn’t been infected by what he considers the Ivy League diseases—Lesbianism and promiscuity—I’ve been feeling more pressure than ever to find a mate. But I refuse to be pushed into marriage so I can settle down and conform to the dictates of the conservative branch of Latino society. Despite Enigma Eddy’s attractions, I’ll go into this dating thing with caution.
The last image I registered before falling asleep was the picture of the New Mexico pueblo I’d taken from the living room and rehung on the wall opposite my bed. It reminded me of Eddy’s conversation about living in a haunted house in Santa Fe.
* * *
I must be having another bad dream because something is terribly wrong. I feel paralyzed, unable to move or cry out. I’m wrapped tight as a mummy in a threadbare orange blanket, hunched immobile over the long-extinguished ashes of my kiva. The icy wind from a sudden spring storm is dumping heavy snow on my pueblo to the depth of a third of a full-grown pine tree and is moaning outside. Little fingers of frost are creeping down the walls from cracks in the closed ladder opening in the roof.
Except for the wailing wind, everything, including me, lies still, both inside and out. Not a crow, jay, or magpie, let alone a human being, is foolish enough to venture forth in this blizzard. Mountain Lion waits out the storm with her pride. Black Bear, snug in his cave home, has not yet awakened from winter’s slumber.
I clutched at my sheet. Where was this place? So familiar, yet so alien to me. Besides, I don’t have a kiva.
The bleak afternoon has changed to night and plunged my little adobe into darkness. Neither the blanket nor the gray ashes warm my body, which, by now, looks purplish-brown and wrinkled like a dried-up plum. I still can’t move, but no longer care because I know I’m dead. That’s right! Dead as the flies that hatched around the remains of my last meal, only to be frozen by the abrupt drop in temperature.
Dead? I can’t be dead! I’m home in bed, tangled in the covers. Why can’t I move?
Now, I’m hovering near the ceiling, observing the scene with an eerie air of detachment. I no longer feel involved with my withered, contorted shell. Nor am I engaged with the oddly familiar dwelling and its hard-packed dirt floor that smells of Mother Earth. Even the pueblo and its brown-faced people, who I’ve known so well, have ceased to engage me. The fabric of emotional attachments has separated from my essence along with my life like cottonwood fluff. Without a body, I no longer experience pain, only lightness and buoyancy. If I had a mouth I would giggle like when my mother tickled me.
Yet I’m aware of an uncomfortable thought persisting somewhere in the depths of my being. I remain suspended over the scene instead of moving on, as I know I should. Slowly, the pattern of my life is coming into focus.
Whose life? Am I really not asleep in bed in my condo but instead, hovering somewhere in the sky?
Life in the pueblo, where I lived as a child of Earth, has been good. I know every plant, animal, and particle of soil, from the red clay of the riverbanks to the smoky candle-gray rocks of the canyon walls and the yellow dirt of the cornfields. My mother, also an herbalist, taught me the basic properties of botanicals—what can cure and what can harm. Always inquisitive, I’ve made many experiments and soon became adept at healing my people of their physical and emotional ills. Over time, I’ve also contemplated the larger questions of life, death, and the role humanity plays in the world.
It doesn’t surprise me that I’ve lived most of my life as a hermit except for my animals and clientele. Yet I also have known love—the love of my parents who died too soon, and the brief but passionate love of a man—a stranger and a Spaniard, who long ago passed through the region searching for gold. From our union was born my daughter, whom I adored beyond all else and to whom I expected to pass my accumulated herbal wisdom.
No, no! It’s all wrong! Mami and Papi are alive and well. I barely know Eddy. And I know for a fact that I’ve never had a baby. I struggled to free myself from this state of suspended animation and wake up, but lethargy took over, and I plunged back into the depths.
The atmosphere around me is trembling almost imperceptibly now. I find myself outside my adobe, above the red-tiled roofs, eye-to-eye with the foam-capped mountains. Below, the rutted mud path that surrounds the pueblo and the stream that separates the north and south halves of the settlement glitter under a pale moon traveling across the midnight sky. Nearby, I sense the subtle rustlings of another world urging me to merge with it.
But the niggling thought still shimmers in my mind like too much sparkling snow on a sunny day. I need to tidy this loose end before I can leave.
Leave for where? What have I been thinking?
Oh yes. My daughter showed no interest or aptitude in the healing arts. She grew up, married, and moved away. Not even to a neighboring pueblo, no, but far away to a place called Colorado, where her family sought work.
I remained in the pueblo, isolated by the reverence of my people. They always held me aloft with respect like the statues of the saints they parade in front of the church on festival days. Without anyone on whom to confer my knowledge and continue the healing, my bloodline will die out.
“Isabella,” the stars are twinkling a message, “it is time to come with us.”
If I had a chin, I would stick it out stubbornly. “No, it is not ended. I must stay!
What? I’m Isabel—Issy, not Isabella. Stay where? Here in Colorado? I fought even harder against the all-consuming light, feeling myself reel from side to side.
One of the stars is glimmering bigger and brighter than the others, and I’m aware of a voice pulsating from its glow.
“Isabella, you who so often have witnessed the flux and reflux of life, know that the time has come for transformation. This does not mean that all is finished, for in our endings, we find beginnings.”
The light is swelling, pushing away the black night from the sky. “Listen to us, Isabella. All is not over. You still have an important mission to accomplish. Your inheritor needs you. Have faith! You will see!”
* * *
A bright flash and a loud crack made me sit bolt-upright in bed. Sweat was pouring down my face, and I was staring straight ahead at the picture of the pueblo I’d hung on the opposite wall. My heart raced, and I trembled from the dream, or vision, or whatever it was. It took me five minutes to quiet down and reengage with this time and this place. I realized that the flash was from the lights of a police car that had stopped a car on the road above my street, and the crack was the closing of a car door.
When I was able to move, I staggered out of bed, flung open the curtain, and stared out my bedroom window. Even though my feet were still tingling, I knew I was alive and in Boulder. It was the twenty-first century, as I could tell from the streetlights and the police stopping a motorist for a traffic violation.
Hombre, either you’ve been drinking way too many espressos, or the glass of wine you had at the chairman’s party disagreed with you. You’d better cut down on both.
I stood in front of the open fridge and extracted a bottle of milk. Warm milk, that’s what I needed to put that terrifying nightmare behind me. And that picture of the pueblo, as intriguing as it was, had better go back into the living room. Or maybe I’d donate it. I’d think about that and the dream tomorrow. Right now, I needed to get some rest.
Chapter Ten
“Un buen amigo es mejor que una relación cercana.”
“A good friend is better than a near relation.” — Spanish Proverb
“What about a doppelganger?” — Issy Castillo
After last night’s excitement, I slept poorly, obsessing over what it all meant and coming up with no explanation. So I faced Monday morning with nervous tension rattling around in my head like the coffee beans in my espresso machine. Nevertheless, I took a deep breath of the musty air emanating from the department basement and marched downstairs to begin my workday. When I approached my office door, I noticed something tacked under my nameplate. In the dim light, I bent close to identify it. Reeling back, I hit the wall on the opposite side of the hall and let out a shriek. Impaled on the door like specimens in a butterfly exhibit were two scorpion corpses. And this was no dream.
The office door across the hall groaned open, and Dolores Lopes stuck out a sour face. “I thought I heard a commotion.” She spoke in a tired voice like an ancient Victrola winding down.
I felt like the little girl who, on opening her desk during third period, screamed at the sight of the rubber spider a boy had flopped there. “It’s only me. Sorry to disturb you. Somebody left two dead scorpions on my door, and they startled me.”
Having recovered from my momentary jolt, I decided Dolores had offered me the ghost of an opportunity. If I ever wanted to get on this senior instructor’s good side, now was the time. Acting more breathless than I was, I panted, “M-may I come in and sit for a minute?”
Dolores deadpanned from me to her office interior and back to me again. She shrugged and cracked her door a smidgen wider. I followed her in and sank into an easy chair.
“Sorry to be such a pansy,” I apologized. “I need to catch my breath.”
Dolores shuffled over to her desk and slumped in her chair, facing me.
“It was probably students,” she said in a monotone. “They can be quite cruel.” Hers sounded like the voice of experience.
Speaking of pansies it dawned on me that her chair had a cushion with a slipcover of cheerful violet printed chintz, and that drapes of the same material with dainty, scalloped edges hung at the window. Taking the throw pillow with its contrasting nightshade-purple floral design, I wedged it behind my back.
“What a pretty office!” I commented. “It looks fresh as a spring morning.”
The shadow of a smile skittered across the instructor’s lips. “I don’t have much money to spend on decoration. I pick up things at thrift stores and do my own sewing.”
I smiled in encouragement. “Maybe you can give me some ideas on how to redo my own office. It’s a real dungeon.”
“I’m sure you don’t need help in that department.” Dolores’ voice now held a curt edge. She picked up a red marking pen and poised it over a pile of papers on her desk. She may have opened her physical door but letting me into her personal life wasn’t going to be so easy.
“I see you’re busy grading papers,” I said and stood to leave. “Thanks for letting me rest here a minute.”
Frowning at the stack of papers as if she were obliged to discover the key to the Rosetta Stone hidden somewhere in the pile, Dolorous Dolores nodded. And so, I was dismissed.
I went to the bathroom for paper towels so I wouldn’t have to touch the offensive little carcasses. Returning to the door, with trembling fingers, I removed the scorpions and tacks, then walked back to the bathroom and dropped the mess into the wastebasket.
* * *
After teaching my morning classes, I felt too spooked to go back to my office. Finding myself at a dead end in more ways than one, I left the university and wandered home. During the night, the rain had stopped. Now, the sun shone bright in the newly washed blue sky, exuding with its warmth the promise of summer around the corner. I drank in the sharp, piney scent of the Foothills forest to help chase away the stink from the department. Unlocking my front door, I tossed my keys and briefcase on a side table and flopped down on my living room sofa, another thrift store purchase.
I’m not a doom-and-gloom type by nature. Really, I’m not. But with a couple of notable exceptions, the picture painted so far by the department and its inhabitants would have challenged both Coco and Cantinflas to put on a happy face. The more I thought about the fusty reception I’d received from some of my colleagues, the near collision with Juventino’s van, and now the scorpion incident, the more edgy I got.
Had Juventino meant to run me down, as Eddy implied? Had he learned that Angela was my sister and that I’d object to the impressionable teen taking too active a part in FLA activities? Would that provide enough motive for Juventino to want to kill me? Scare me, maybe. But kill me? I couldn’t fathom that.
Whose nose had I put out of joint enough to pull the scorpion prank? Surely not a student. None of them knew me very well, and I hadn’t had time yet to dole out any failing grades. How about Clive? He’d babbled on about Eddy and me being Scorpios, the sign of the scorpion. Could Carrot Top hold that against me? Eddy might know in the same way he knew that Dolores resented my presence.
Dolores could have done it, although I didn’t see her as the type to play such a trick—it would sap too much of her strength. There was La Celosa Suzanne. She appeared to brim with what, in a kinder mood, I might have termed “misdirected energy.” Jealousy could be her motive, but again, jealous of what? It wasn’t as if I were climbing into the sack every night hot and heavy with Eddy.
Eddy. Hmm. He might possess the makings of a good friend and provide an island of protection in a stormy sea of envious women, subversives, and thieves. But I hesitated to express my concerns to a man. What I needed was a female friend to confide in. And no way was I going to discuss this with my family. They’d insist I quit teaching, move in with them, go to work at the restaurant, and marry some nice Latino businessman. Olivia seemed a good sort, but our friendship was still in the bud phase. I found myself rubbing my sore neck muscles.
Struggling to my feet, I went to the window and pulled open the drapes. Buttercup-yellow sunshine cascaded into the room along with a Chamber of Commerce view of the Flatirons thrusting up against the sapphire sky. Essences of mountain sage, lavender, and wild geranium released from their leaves a warmth that wafted through the screened window like fragrant smoke from Aladdin’s lamp. The Foothills, as mysterious and iconic as the Great Pyramids, beckoned. Maybe a change of scenery would kickstart my flagging intuition.
I scrounged around for my backpack, threw in a bottle of water, a chocolate bar—a promiscuity substitute, I told myself—and my journal. I exchanged my teaching clothes for cutoff jeans and a red tank top and added socks and running shoes. As I passed from the bedroom to the bathroom, I paused to glance at the picture of the pueblo. Such a bizarre dream I’d had. At the time, I felt I was two people: myself and some ancient Indian herbalist with a very strong personality. I shivered at the thought, then shook my head and brushed it off. In the bathroom, I wound my hair into a thick black braid to keep the curls out of my face, scooped up my pack, blanket, keys, and wallet, and sped out the door.
