Fool's Puzzle (12 page)

“Where are we?” I asked. It was obvious once I looked around. The cold, bland air, the beige walls, the fingerprinting equipment, the Breathalyzer, the DMV-like photo setup and a long hall of open metal doors revealing small rooms with single attached bunks. Detention in its highest life form.

“I wanted you to see where you’ll be staying if you pull one more stupid stunt like last night.”

“Very funny.” I crossed my arms. “Isn’t psychological intimidation a form of police harassment?”

“We can only hold prisoners six to eight hours.” He studied the blue card in his hand with exaggerated interest. “We have no facilities for food or clothing, although I do have the authority to make an exception. We could send out for food.” He leaned against the door and stuck his hands in his pockets. “Tell me, do you prefer Taco Bell or Burger King?”

“You’re not scaring me.” I glanced around, noticed a phone in the narrow white room where they took mugshots. I was tempted to go over and use it.

And what, I said to myself, call the police? I felt a hysterical laugh gurgle at the back of my throat. I turned my head in an effort to hide my smile.

“I’m glad you find this so amusing,” Ortiz said mildly. “You know, this isn’t college high jinks. It’s a bit more serious than locking a goat in the science lab.”

I looked at him, incredulous. “How do you know about that?”

“I know a lot about you, Ms. Harper.”

“Why me? I’m not the criminal here.”

“All information ends up somewhere. You must know that. As for why?” He slipped the blue card in the slot and pushed the door open. “I think that’s obvious. You’re involved in this up to your”—his eyes did a quick scan—“fairly attractive neck, so it behooves me to know about you.”

I pushed past him and headed up the stairs. “Believe me, I didn’t choose to find Marla’s body or be related to Rita. I’ve been dragged into this from the beginning, and as of now, I’m out of it.”

“I’m glad to hear that.” He opened the last door and we were back in the hallway leading to his office. “Then I can count on you to call me the next time you talk to your cousin?”

I contemplated whether I should lie or not.

“Ms. Harper?”

“She probably won’t call,” I said. “She’s very flaky.”

“Ms. Harper.” His voice held a warning.

“Okay, okay,” I said. “You’ve had your fun. Can I go now?”

“Certainly. You’re not under arrest. You’re free to leave whenever you like.” He smiled widely, with incredibly white, slightly crooked teeth. “Have a nice day.”

Same to you, bud. I walked back to my truck lambasting myself on my knee-jerk obedience to authority figures. The bright pink parking ticket fluttering under my windshield made me kick the driver’s door with my boot, adding one more dent to its pebbled complexion.

“Great,” I said, ripping it off. I leaned against the truck and read it. The instructions on how to pay were incomprehensible. I turned it over to see if a secret decoder ring was attached. I’d had one or two tickets since this whole program started, but I couldn’t remember how I’d handled them. A car swung into the empty parking space next to me.

“Having car problems?” Ortiz asked.

I shook the ticket at him. “This is all your fault. Don’t I get some kind of validation? I was talking to you the whole time. Isn’t that considered city business or something?”

He gestured for me to hand it to him, scanning it as he unbuttoned the top button of his shirt and loosened his tie. After a few minutes, I began to wonder if he couldn’t figure it out either.

“Well?” I demanded. “Are you going to do something about it?”

“Certainly.”

“Good.” My anger at him dissipated a millimeter.

“If you write out a check for twenty-five dollars, I’ll be happy to stick it in the mail for you.”

I grabbed the ticket back. “Thanks a lot.”

“Maybe you should pay the other two while you’re at it,” he said amicably.

That’s why I couldn’t remember what to do with them. “Don’t worry about it,” I snapped.

“I’d hate to put out a warrant for your arrest.”

“I bet you would.” I crumpled the ticket and tossed it over my shoulder into the bed of my truck.

“You look like a Whopper, small fries, diet Coke kind of person to me.” He removed his wire-rims and slipped on aviator sunglasses. “But I could be wrong. I guess I’ll have to do a little more research.” He flashed a smug smile and left me with a lungful of exhaust.

I stood there, trying to think of a snappy comeback, when a remark I’d made to J.D. about knowing your enemy sparked an idea. I reached for the crumpled ticket, flattened it out and stuck it back under my windshield. Hopefully, Ortiz and I would never have the opportunity to talk again. But if we did, I was going to be prepared.

San Celina’s city government offices were a short block from the police station. The three-story Mission-style building, with its rough, gray-white walls and red tile roof, housed Public Works, the City Clerk, the Mayor and all his entourage and the Personnel office. There’s one good thing about growing up in a fairly small town: you end up with friends in a lot of convenient places.

The long, gray terrazzo-tiled hallway gave me time to think about how to phrase my request. I pushed open the bumpy glass door labeled “Assistant Personnel Director.”

“Hey, Angie, I’ve come to collect on an old debt.”

Her milky-pale face lit up with surprise. A huge pair of tortoise-shell glasses slipped down her thin nose. With her middle finger, she shoved them back up with a quick, darting motion.

“Why, you little shrimp.” She gave a high, feminine laugh that didn’t match her intellectual looks. “Where have you been hiding? Do I owe you money? My mom’s just hatched a whole bunch of Rhode Island Reds. Would a couple of chickens cover it?”

Angie and I were 4-H partners through two calves, one goat, one lamb and numerous fowl during our pubescent years. We’d spent countless sticky, humid afternoons at the Mid-State Fair perched on our animal pens, boot heels hooked in the rungs, dropping peanuts in our icy Cokes and grading two-legged beef as it swaggered by.

“I’m collecting for the time that I told your mother you were spending the night at my house when in fact you went down to Eola Beach with—What was his name?”

She laughed again, gestured for me to take a seat and used her eyeglasses as a headband for her long, sand-colored hair. “Ricky Dean Abbott.” She rested her pointy chin on her hand. “Shoot, I haven’t thought of him in years. Last I heard, he moved to Oklahoma and was raising turkeys.”

“Appropriate occupation if I remember him correctly.”

“I don’t know where my mind was. He kissed like a vacuum cleaner set on thick plush.”

“I don’t think your mind was what you were thinking with.”

She shook her head, pushed the folder in front of her aside, and folded her hands. “Wasted the best two months of my life on him. Okay, I owe you. We don’t have any openings, not that I see you as the civil servant type. What can I do for you?”

When I explained what I wanted, she grinned. “Feels like high school again,” she said. “I could get in real trouble for this and I don’t mean picking up trash in the schoolyard.”

“You won’t get in trouble, I promise.”

She twisted her face in a wry expression and stood up. “Seems to me I’ve heard those words before.”

Five minutes later she came back with a thin blue file.

“This is grade A prime cut here,” she said with a chuckle. “He’s single, got a steady job and certainly isn’t hard on the eyes. As the girls in Maintenance say—give him a blood test and call the preacher.”

“Single?” I said. “I didn’t even think about that.”

“Divorced, actually. You’ve been out of circulation a long time, honey. That’s the first thing you look for.”

“Anyway, I don’t care about that. This is a defensive action.”

“Sure.” She winked and stuck the folder in her top drawer. “Look, I can’t actually let you read this, that would be unethical, but I am going to lunch, so feel free to use my office as long as you like. Just don’t get caught, okay?”

“Me? You were the one who almost blew it when we found out Ricky Dean was cheating on you with Leeann Riley.”

“Can I help it if night air makes me sneeze? You made me sit in the bushes with you outside his parents’ house until two in the morning to catch them. To this day I blame my bladder problems on that night.”

“But we didn’t get caught.”

“Can’t call you a liar there.” She pulled her glasses back down and looked at me intently. “I’m glad to see you taking an interest in something finally. He’s not a bad start.”

“I told you that isn’t the reason.”

“Right.” She stood up and picked up her purse, patting my shoulder as she walked out the door. “And good ole Ricky Dean Abbott’s favorite holiday is Fourth of July.”

“YOU LOOK LIKE you’re a million miles away,” Meg said. She walked into my office carrying a large manila envelope. The small room was filled with the earthy scent of her patchouli perfume. It reminded me of high-school dances, Brut cologne, the press of damp hands against the small of my back.

I had been sitting for the last hour tossing pencils at my pencil cup thinking about the last few days up to and including what I’d just read about Ortiz. What a surprise he turned out to be.

“Just thinking about tonight,” I said. “What’s up?” Meg, our resident potluck organizer and general busy-body, usually dropped by my office only when being pressed into service as an emissary.

“It’s about Marla.” She placed the envelope on my desk, pushed it toward me. “Or rather about her funeral.”

“What about it? Does anyone need directions?”

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.” She bent over and pulled up the knee socks she wore under her gauzy Indian skirt. Something was always off kilter on Meg: a torn pocket, curly bangs cut too short, eyeglasses taped in odd spots, but her quilts, exquisite copies of Georgia O‘Keeffe paintings, were always perfect.

“No.” She hesitated for a moment. “We, that is the rest of the co-op, were wondering if you were going.”

“Of course. Isn’t everyone else?”

She pushed the envelope closer to me. I peered inside. It was full of crumpled bills and some change. “We collected some money for flowers. Could you get them? I don’t think anyone else is going to make it.”

“No one?” I looked at her, perplexed.

“Oh, Benni,” she said. “I know you got along with her okay, but she wasn’t real well-liked by the rest of us.” Her laugh was high and strained. “Except for a few. She was real well-liked by a few.”

“What’s that suppose to mean?”

Red-faced, she fanned thin fingers as if to cool herself. “Oh, forget I said that. That was horrible.”

“Quit playing games, Meg,” I said irritably. “Just tell me what you mean.”

She dropped her head and studied her reddish hands. “It’s just that she had a thing about other women’s men, if you know what I mean.”

“Marla?” I knew she was a flirt, that seemed to come with her bartending job, but she didn’t seem the type to steal another woman’s man. But then, since I’d known her, I hadn’t had a man. That certainly opened up some possibilities of people who might want her dead.

“Anyone I know?” I asked.

“You didn’t hear it from me.” She leaned over my desk, giving into the temptation to spread a little gossip. “Ray,” she whispered. “And Eric. And who knows who else?”

“Oh.” Things were starting to get clear. In a murky sort of way. “Did anyone tell the police?”

She shrugged. “I didn’t, but I can’t say what anyone else said. I figure who people sleep with is their own business. I know Ray or Eric didn’t kill her.”

“And just how do you know that?” Great, I thought, I’m beginning to sound like Ortiz.

“I know them. They wouldn’t kill anyone. Ray’s a big teddy bear, you know that—and Eric, well, you know.” She gave a nervous laugh. His laziness was well-known in the co-op. Of course, it doesn’t take that much effort to stab someone, especially if you’re angry.

“I hope you’re not going to make a big deal about this.” She stood up, tugged at her thin skirt as she went out the door. “Really, I think it was probably some homeless person looking for money. Or one of the guys she goes out with from Trigger’s.”

After hearing Meg’s weak defense of Ray and Eric, I realized how naive I must have sounded to Ortiz when I defended Rita.

Ray and Eric. Each a very strong possibility. I laid my head down on my desk, my mind reeling with questions. How much of this did the police know? What should I tell them? If Ray didn’t have anything to do with it and his wife found out about him and Marla, it could ruin their marriage. But what if he did do it? And what about Eric? Where was he, anyway? A sharp knock on the door interrupted my jumbled speculations.

“Got a headache?” Ray asked. His gentle concern and easy smile made him seem about as likely a killer as Mr. Rogers. Then again, I was never quite clear on exactly what it was he did in Vietnam.

“No, just tired.” I smiled back, but couldn’t help regarding him in a new light. I hadn’t even suspected anything sexual going on between him and Marla. Of course, Jack always said I was the densest woman he’d ever seen when it came to male-female relationships. I was always the last one to figure out among our friends who was interested in whom. No feminine intuition whatsoever.

“It’s four o‘clock. We’re all going home now. You need anything else done for tonight?”

“No, I’ve got a few more quilt histories to frame, then I’m leaving, too. Then I think I’m going to sink into a long, hot bubble bath.”

“Just remember to come up for air,” he teased.

Ten minutes later, my mind was on that hot bubble bath when I climbed the stairs to the second floor of the museum to look for some frames for the last two quilt histories. I had searched through the storage room, certain I’d ordered enough, but in an artist’s co-op, frames of any size or condition always seemed to sprout little legs and walk away.