Holy Guacamole! (28 page)

“You have trouble sleeping?” Luz asked. She’d become quite alert when she heard that. I could see her chafing to break into the neighbor’s monologue.

“Sure do. Sleeplessness trouble you?”

“No, I’m used to it. You weren’t by any chance awake last Saturday night late, were you?”

“Yep. An interesting night, that was. That young man with the condo by yours—he came home drunk as a sailor. Staggering into the wrong yard. He fell into your bushes. Did you notice that? And he was throwing up from the bushes all the way to his own door. I reported him to the association. But I tell you, I had to laugh to see him trying to get out of those bushes. Men and alcohol are a bad combination. The fool didn’t even close his door.”

“Did you see anyone else go in his house that night, Mrs. Filbert?” I asked, now feeling that we were getting somewhere.

“Oh, yes. He must have called his doctor. Now most folks wouldn’t bother to call a doctor when they’re vomiting from too much alcohol, but sure enough a while later along comes this fellow with a doctor bag, finds the door open, goes on in, comes out maybe an hour later; no, probably a half hour. I was sorry I’d called the association on this young lady’s next-door neighbor if he was that sick, but then I heard he died, so I guess they never reported the complaint to him.”

I whipped out my picture and showed it to her. “Did the doctor look like any of these people?” I was thinking that this was the best we could do in the way of a lineup, not that Vivian, Jason, or I looked like Peter.

“Well, he wasn’t a woman, and he wasn’t the short fellow with the beard. Might have been the tall fellow in the tux, but the one in the picture isn’t carrying a doctor bag. That’s what I noticed. The bag. Why are you wearing a patch over your eye, young lady?” she asked me. “And don’t I see bruising spreading out from under that patch? My eyesight’s still good. My late husband always said I could spot the warts on a warthog from fifty yards away. Stupid thing to say. I never saw a warthog in my life.”

“She got slugged last night in a strip club,” said Luz, grinning.

Very funny,
I thought. If she’d been closer, I’d have kicked her.

“My land!” exclaimed our hostess. “You’re too old to be stripping, and you got that prissy look about you. Like you wouldn’t approve of strip clubs. Now me. Walter and me took in a few strip clubs in Juarez when we were younger. Chunky, brown-skinned girls taking their clothes off. Didn’t seem that much of a show to me, but one of the places had a fellow singing bullfight music. I liked that one.”

“Can you remember anything else about the man who visited my neighbor last Saturday, ma’am?” Luz asked. “Like his car. What kind of car was he driving?”

“Oh, it was just an ordinary car. I never pay much attention to cars. That’s a man’s thing. Walter could have told you, but he’s dead, more’s the pity. It was a dark color, or maybe it just looked that way because it wasn’t parked under a light. Doctor obviously didn’t know what house he was going to, parking two houses away. Not even in front of a door. His car was pretty long. Not one of those runty little cars they got these days. Course, him being a tall fellow, he probably couldn’t get into one of those runty cars.”

After we’d thanked her for the information, she said, “Well, it was my pleasure. Nice to have company from time to time. Wouldn’t like it every day, but now and then’s nice.”

“She’s going to have more company,” Luz said as she walked toward the street. “We’ll have to give her name to the police.” She sighed. “We need to get hold of Guevara. And what did I tell you? Prissy. She noticed it too.”

“Am not,” I retorted.

Going Behind Sergeant Guevara’s Back

C
arolyn didn’t want
to visit police headquarters at Five Points with a black eye and an eye patch. “They’ll take one look and arrest me,” she predicted. I pointed out that she was the person who discovered that Dr. Brockman had not been where he claimed while Vladik was being killed. Her testimony was important. “You could tell them about it,” she insisted. I got her there by the simple expedient of refusing to drive her home or let her drive herself, but I had to listen to her debating on whether or not she should wear the hat into the police station.

Personally, it cheered me up to go inside. Previously, I hadn’t wanted to. It would have been a reminder of what I’d lost to this damned disease, or so I thought. Guevara wasn’t there, but Lieutenant Robert Matalisse, a man I’d broken in in Narcotics, was and running Crimes Against Persons these days. Who wouldn’t rather talk to Rob, I thought, when the alternative was Art Guevara? I hustled Carolyn down the hall to Matalisse’s office and stuck my head in. “Got a minute for a retired cripple?” I asked cheerfully.

He stood up and ushered us in, smiling. To my surprise there was gray showing in his hair. I’d always thought of him as a young man. “Making waves again, Luz?” he asked. “Lots of cop gossip making the rounds. You and Chuy and some DEA agent bringing in a Juarez cartel guy. Heard you came across the border with the guy in the trunk of your car.”

“Trunk of Carolyn’s car,” I corrected, and introduced her. “And the two of us brought him in. Chuy and Parko from DEA just got us out of the hands of INS and into the jail with our prisoner.”

“And now you’ve got someone else in the trunk?” He motioned us to chairs and dropped into his own behind the desk.

“No, but we’ve got a suspect in a murder case. Of course, it could still be Ignatenko from Brazen Babes, but—”

“Hold on.” He studied Carolyn, with her eye patch and huge, floppy denim hat. “You the lady got knocked out by Gubenko last night?” He nodded. “I saw the assault report this morning. What are you two? A ladies’ detective agency?”

“Oh, that is a delightful series, isn’t it?” Carolyn exclaimed. Up till then she’d been silent and sulky. “But it’s called the First Ladies Detective Agency. Those books are so charming; they make you want to visit Botswana.”

Rob looked blank, and I said, “He doesn’t read books. Whatever you’re talking about, it’s not what he meant. Anyway, Rob, and before my friend here reviews the whole damn book for you, we’ve found a local doctor who told my ex the night it happened that they needed to get rid of Gubenko. Then he told his wife he had to go in for emergency surgery at Providence, only a night nurse who was on duty while Gubenko was being suffocated said the doctor wasn’t there—at the hospital. Then this afternoon we found an old lady who saw a tall guy with a doctor’s bag go into Gubenko’s house. That was after Gubenko staggered in.”

“Guevara’s case.” Rob squinted at me. “This wouldn’t be you trying to get your ex in trouble, would it, Luz? What’s his name?”

“Escobar. Francisco Escobar, and no, I don’t think he had anything to do with the murder.”

“He didn’t,” Carolyn chimed in. “Barbara, his present wife, said he was home in bed with her while Vladik was being killed.”

“And how did she happen to tell you that?” Rob asked Carolyn.

“Because our ad hoc ladies’ opera committee was trying to figure out who could have killed Vladik, and we started with our own husbands. That’s how I know that Vivian Brockman thought her husband was at Providence Memorial for emergency surgery when he wasn’t.”

“Carolyn was another person who heard Brockman say he had to get rid of Vladik, but you’ll want to talk to my ex as corroboration. Just don’t tell Francisco I was behind it,” I added. “I haven’t seen him in years, but we parted on good terms, and I’d just as soon keep it that way.”

Rob studied us thoughtfully, probably trying to decide whether we were both crazy or what. “Guevara says the guy died of food poisoning. In fact he got tox screens back today that say something bad was in the guacamole the victim ate.”

I could see Carolyn tense at the mention of food poisoning and guacamole.
Damn! What if she made the guacamole? Here she’d had me running around looking for a murderer, when she—

“He’s out trying to get his hands on the guacamole maker right now.”

Again I glanced at Carolyn, who was biting her lip. But then there was the pillow. I’m the one who said it had been used to smother a sick man. Was she just going along because she hoped it was true? I explained the pillow evidence to Rob, then the butt and handprints I’d had photographed. “Guevara knows about the pillow and the prints on the sofa. He just didn’t want to bother following up.”

Rob shrugged. “You and Art never did like each other.” “Doesn’t mean the department shouldn’t look into the lead,” I retorted.

“I didn’t say it did. What’s the doctor’s name?”

“Peter Brockman. The neurosurgeon,” said Carolyn. “He’s the current president of Opera at the Pass, which explains his association with Vladik Gubenko. He made the remark about getting rid of Vladik at the party where Vladik got sick and went home. If the guacamole made him sick, it was probably because he ate several pounds of it. As nice as guacamole is, and this was very good, it’s not meant to be eaten in such large quantities.”

Matalisse was frowning. “You couldn’t have found a suspect who was less prominent in the community?”

Carolyn, who had the bit in her teeth at that point, said, “Most of the people at that party are prominent in the community. They may not all like opera—they certainly didn’t like that particular performance—but supporting opera is seen in that group as a fashionable thing to do. Not Jason and I—we love opera—but—”

“Yeah, thanks. I’m getting the picture. We’ll definitely look into Brockman.”

“And don’t forget the butt print,” I reminded him.

Rob grinned. “We’ll ink his ass and make him sit down.”

Carolyn looked shocked. “I really need to get home now, Luz,” she said plaintively.

“I can believe it,” Rob agreed. “That’s some shiner you’ve got there. I can see it spreading out under the patch. Me, I’d take that patch off. It’s not like you need to wear it for us. We’ve all seen shiners before. Hell, a lot of us have had them.”

“Thank you for your concern, Lieutenant,” she replied. Prissy again. She probably felt like crap. I’d like to have stayed to be sure that they followed up on Brockman, but I figured I owed it to her to get her home.

“Okay, Caro. Let’s hit the road,” I agreed. “And Matalisse, don’t let Guevara talk you out of the follow-up on Brockman. I guess if you piss an opera lover off enough by screwing around with a good opera, you might get killed.”

“I wouldn’t have thought so,” said Carolyn. “Professor Gubenko presented
Macbeth
as a story about drug dealers, and it did offend a good many people, but surely killing someone over it is an extreme reaction. Perhaps the doctor is overworked and having a nervous breakdown.”

“I read
Macbeth
in high school. Pretty violent. I can see the connection to drug dealing,” said the lieutenant. “You might have got a few cops over to the performance if they’d known what Gubenko had in mind.”

“If it’s ever brought back, I’ll certainly advise the publicity committee to send flyers to police stations,” said Carolyn. She had risen and looked a little wobbly.
The woman is a wuss
, I thought.
A black eye isn’t that big a deal.
But it turned out that she wasn’t even wobbly. She insisted on dropping me at home and driving off on her own. Now what was that about? I’d pissed her off again? Or Matalisse had? She was a hard woman to please.

Anxious Relatives From Juarez

S
waying on my
feet had been a good move. It was obvious that Luz hadn’t wanted to leave, but she did when she thought I was ill. From the time I heard that the sergeant was after the guacamole provider, I couldn’t wait to get out of there. I was probably too late to defend Adela from him, but I had to try. I drove straight home and checked my answering machine. Nothing—not even from Jason. He hadn’t called in several days now, even to say for certain when he’d be back, which was very irritating, especially considering that he was in Austin with some young thing named Mercedes Lizarreta. Nothing from anyone else. I called the dormitory, but Adela wasn’t there. Had she been arrested? I couldn’t very well call Crimes Against Persons and ask. That wouldn’t be very subtle.

I ducked into the “maid’s bathroom” to examine my eye. My house has a room and bath for a live-in maid, which I don’t have; mine comes once a week but not that week because she was visiting relatives somewhere in Mexico. My eye was truly dreadful, all puffy and a rich, dark purple with red streaks and black edging. Driving home had been a chore because my vision on that side was pretty much obscured. I discovered that one’s depth perception is quite altered when only one eye is functioning. I had to start braking as soon as I saw a traffic light in order to avoid running into the back of the car ahead of me if the light turned red. I was standing sideways to the mirror over the little sink, trying to look at my injured eye from a side view, which, of course, wasn’t possible, when the telephone rang. While rushing into the kitchen to answer, I bumped into the side of the door. Consequently, I was wincing when I picked up.

My caller was Adela, in need of my advice. Her aunt and uncle from Juarez had come to visit, so she had spent much of the afternoon giving them a walking tour of the campus. When she returned to her dormitory, the student on desk duty told her that the police had been looking for her. “That horrible sergeant is going to arrest me,” she wailed.

I couldn’t tell her that was unlikely. He probably did plan to arrest her. Instead I asked where she was at that time, and she replied that she was in her uncle’s car, calling on her aunt’s cell phone. Would that be Tia Julietta, who had given her the guacamole additive? I asked. It was, and Tio Javier, the lawyer. I suggested that they leave campus immediately and meet me at Casa Jurado, where we could have a nice dinner—I had to eat, so why not in company? —and decide what to do. Adela agreed immediately, whispering that her relatives from Juarez had been suggesting all sorts of peculiar strategies.