Holy Guacamole! (9 page)

Y
ou’d think with
all the frigging medication I take, I wouldn’t have to resort to smelly creams, but there I was, middle of the afternoon, hadn’t done anything but walk the dog and surf the web, and my knee was swollen and aching, so I was rubbing in some damn goop made from jalapeno chiles, hoping to get a little relief.

Of course, I shouldn’t have cut back on the shots, but the stuff costs a frigging fortune, and I was doing so well, I thought I could afford to take fewer. Now I’d have to go out bounty hunting again, catch myself someone with a big reward on his head, that or sell the condo, or end up a cripple like the first time.

“Get away, Smack. You know and I know that I’m not rubbing cocaine into my knee, and you’re not getting a reward for finding capsaicin cream.” The dog hung her head and sank down beside my chair.

Given the circumstances, I wasn’t in a very good mood when the phone rang and that asshole Guevara wanted to know what I thought I was doing screwing with his case by talking to the newspaper and siccing a bunch of dumb women on him when he had work to do. “Not like I get to sit around the house, watching TV and living off my retirement,” he snarled.

“Up yours, Guevara,” I replied, but I had to wonder who the dumb women were who’d come to visit him. Maybe the same one who came to visit me. She was the only person who’d shown any interest in my theory of Gubenko’s death. At the time Guevara had sneered and told me to mind my own business because I wasn’t on the force anymore, and good riddance. Nice guy. I should have shoved his ugly face into a puddle of vomit. God knows there was plenty of it around that morning. Problem was I know better than to screw up a crime scene. “I don’t suppose you thought to take fingerprints from his condo—just in case I got it right, and he had an unfriendly visitor that night,” I added.

“I got fingerprints up the wazoo,” he snapped. “They just don’t match nothin’.”

“So ask around,” I snapped back. “That wasn’t any ordinary barf-in-the-windpipe death. Either the killer gave him something to make him sick and then made sure he died of it, or it was a crime of opportunity, but it sure as hell wasn’t some bad-luck death. I saw that pillow. What’d you do? Throw it out so you wouldn’t have to work the case?”

“Screw you, Vallejo.”

“Back at you.” I was tired of this conversation.

“Say, how’s the joints? Looked to me like you was limpin’ Sunday. Hate to think you’re getting worse.” He laughed and hung up.

I threw the phone across the room. Smack, thinking the game was on, ran after it and brought it back, then shook her head playfully when I tried to retrieve the sucker. I raised my hands in surrender. “Keep it,” I said. She didn’t know what to do. I was changing the rules.

As I pulled out of the parking lot, I assumed that Sergeant Guevara wouldn’t even question Professor Collins, which was, perhaps, just as well. Although the geologist had threatened Vladik, it seemed to me that he was much more likely to have gone home and yelled at his wife than followed her lover to his condo and smothered him with a pillow. The couple had continued the argument after Vladik’s departure, at least for a while. All the rest of us escaped as fast as we could because the incident was so embarrassing. And maybe—what was her name?—Melanie hadn’t been unfaithful and had managed to convince her husband of her innocence and—oh well, I didn’t even know them. Olive had said the wife was a twit, which was probably true if she’d had an affair with Vladik, who had obviously been a one-night-stand sort of man.

Which reminded me of Adela. Perhaps I should stop by the dorm to see if she knew anyone who had hated him, besides herself, and she’d already confessed to her part in the crime, if it was a crime. I found North Mesa without getting lost again, then turned left at the light at Schuster, and drove to the back university entrance. Without argument, the guard gave me a pass to park and visit the dorm. He probably thought I was the mother of the Adela Mariscal I cited as my reason for coming on campus. Or maybe not. I was blonde and Adela had black hair and darker skin than mine. Also she was a graduate student. My children weren’t in graduate school yet, although Chris would undoubtedly follow that path. Who knew what Gwen, a drama student presently studying Miro sets in Barcelona, would do when she graduated. Anything but become an actress, if my mother-in-law had her way.

Adela was in her room and distressed to see me. “Something happen, no?” she cried.

“No. You missed a nice luncheon at the Magic Pan, and then we went over and picked on Sergeant Guevara for bothering us when there’s a murderer out there to catch.”

“Me?” she squeaked. “You told him that I—”

“The person in Vladik’s house. With the pillow.”

“Oh. Three, four months since I visit his house. Couldn’t be me.”

“The thing is, Adela, you did know him. You must have seen him every day.” She shook her head. “Well, often. At the department. Can you think of anyone who really disliked him?”

“Me,” she replied bitterly.

“Besides you. Maybe someone he got into a fight with. Or someone who complained about him.”

She shook her head.

“Can you think of anyone who might know? With whom was he friends? Anyone who might know his business.” I was beginning to think that it was hopeless. Adela, although formerly smitten, didn’t really seem to know much about the man who had made promises he didn’t keep. “Other students?”

She shrugged. “Maybe the Russian girls. Who sing with me in
trio de las brujas.”
I must have looked puzzled. “Witches,” she explained.

“Oh, yes. I know I was introduced, but I can’t remember their names. Do they live in the dorm too?”

“No, in trailer park, I think. Maybe Vladik get them place and car. They have old car. I don’t see them, only at music department. Polya and Irina.”

I took out my notebook and looked at her expectantly.

“Polina Mikhailov and Irina Primakov. Vladik get them visas and into school.”

 

As Adela had no more information for me and no address for the two young Russian singers, I reassured her once more about her own situation and went to the music department—what a rabbit’s warren the“new” performing arts building is! Once there, I told the secretary that I was a member of an Opera at the Pass committee and wanted to give little gifts of appreciation to the students who had sung in our production of
Macbeth.

“Oh, wasn’t it terrible about Professor Gubenko,” she exclaimed. “I couldn’t believe it when I heard he was dead. Those Russian girls must be feeling so sad and lonely. They were his protégés.” However, sympathetic as she felt, she wasn’t allowed to give out student addresses. She did tell me where they could be found tomorrow after their last class. Evidently they had the same schedule.

Miner’s Hall. Where was that? Probably one of the old buildings, the first of the Bhutanese structures suggested by some lady who read a National Geographic article about Bhutan and got hooked, or some such thing. The thick walled structures with their slanting, stuccoed exteriors and tiled roofs do go well with our desert mountain terrain, and the decorative tiling is a bit Southwestern. In fact, the university has a compact and pretty campus, with little gardens of desert vegetation here and there and hundreds of little white lights strung everywhere at Christmas.

I’d catch the Russian girls tomorrow at eleven-thirty and offer to take them out for lunch. Did they like Mexican food? I was doing a series of columns on it, so the lunch would be tax deductible if they were agreeable.

 

I asked Jason at dinner that night if he’d witnessed the scene between Vladik and Melanie and Brandon Collins. He hadn’t. Then I asked if he knew Collins. He did. Finally, I asked if he thought Collins could have murdered Vladik over his wife’s alleged infidelity.

“I wouldn’t think so. He seems a nice enough fellow,” said Jason. “The administration loves him because he does all this community outreach work, but why don’t you ask him yourself? Geology is in the old library. The big building across Hawthorne from the Student Union.” I must have given him a look of astonishment because he added, “Oh, I can imagine what you’re up to. You feel you have to find out just what happened to Vladik.”

“Well, I—just thought I’d ask around. The police don’t seem to be—”

“Feel free,” said my husband, the worrywart, waving a hand. “I’ve given up thinking I can tell you what to do.”

“Well, Jason, it’s not as if—”

“It’s okay, Carolyn. And now I’ve got to get back to the lab.”

“Again?” I asked, disappointed. I’d had all sorts of historical tidbits I wanted to pass on from my reading of El Paso history—for instance, the fact that students at the School of Mines, an early university incarnation, had crossed the river in 1929 when General Jose Escobar and his rebels were attacking Juarez. The students acted as volunteer stretcher-bearers. Evidently young men, even intelligent ones, just can’t resist a war. I’d have to keep my eye on Chris. The students weren’t the only people not satisfied to observe the fighting from the north side of the river; reporters and ordinary citizens with Kodak cameras crossed the Rio Grande to get in on the excitement. They had to be quick about it because that particular rebellion was a very short one.

Talking Dirty

I
was in
bed asleep before Jason returned home, which was unusual.
His research must be going badly,
I had thought drowsily before drifting off again. Still, when I awoke, he was already up and gone, as attested to by his cereal dish in the sink. I was up a little early myself and decided to pay a call on Professor Brandon Collins before catching the Russian girls outside their last morning class. After all, hadn’t Jason said at dinner, “Why don’t you ask him yourself?”

Why not, indeed? I replied to my absent husband, and drove off to the university after a breakfast of toast, yogurt, and coffee, which seemed a better choice to me than the typical ancient Aztec breakfast of maize porridge with chile peppers and honey. They ate this meal at around ten in the morning after having been up working on empty stomachs since sunrise, or earlier. The idea of getting up at sunrise is even worse than their breakfast, in my opinion. I never can understand why people are given to saying how much they’d rather have lived in some earlier century. Obviously, they never read any history.

I found a parking place on the university campus in the area reserved for visitors to the Administration Building and walked across the street to what is now the Geology Building. It has a sort of Florida art deco look, while still retaining some of the Bhutanese features found elsewhere on campus. On one of the floors is a lovely meeting room at which I’d attended a reception. In the building’s previous life as a library, that room had been the reference section, or so I’d been told. It must have been very pleasant to peruse reference books in such an impressive setting. The reference section of the new library is rather utilitarian except for some comfortable seating, and the library itself is a large hulk that, for some reason, brings to mind a Southwestern-style prison, albeit decorated in front with a sculpture of organ pipes.

All this architectural ruminating accompanied my search for the geology secretary, who informed me that Professor Collins was in but, she warned, not in a very good mood. Perhaps, in that case, it was not a good time to confront him with questions as to whether he had murdered Vladik. On the other hand, if I delayed when I had gotten this far, I might never find the nerve again, so I followed her directions to his office and knocked on his open door, through which I could see that he seemed to be examining a chunk of nondescript rock with a magnifying glass.

“What?” he asked in answer to my knock.

I advanced into the office and replied, when he looked up, “My name is Carolyn Blue. I wonder if I might have a minute of your time.”

“Jason Blue’s wife?” He stared at me with a puzzled look, as if I too were a rock of some minor interest. When I nodded, he waved me to a chair. “What can I do for you, Mrs. Blue?”

There was a bigger rock resting on the visitor’s chair. I had to remove it before I could sit, but once I had lifted it, with some difficulty, I didn’t know what to do with it.

“Oh, sorry,” he muttered. “Just put it down—” He looked around his cluttered office space. “Put it down on those papers,” he suggested, pointing to a haphazard pile on one corner of his desk. “I’ve seen you somewhere, haven’t I?” He was still staring quizzically. “Oh God, you were part of that crowd at the opera do when my wife and I got into it.”

“Yes,” I admitted. “When you threatened to kill Professor Gubenko.”

“Did I?” he murmured, frowning. “My memory of that night is sort of vague, but I suppose I might have.”

Did he mean he might have killed Vladik? Or that he might have threatened to do so? I took a deep breath and came out with my question. “This may seem rather rude, Professor Collins, but I’d like to ask if, in fact, you did follow Professor Gubenko home and carry out your threat.”

“You mean kill him?” he asked, looking astonished. “Of course, I didn’t kill him, although I do think there ought to be a law against men who seduce women as half witted as my wife. But then there ought to be a law against supposedly intelligent professors who fall in love with their students when they have perfectly good wives at home, especially students dumb enough to make a D in Geology. I must have been out of my mind.” He put down his rock and his magnifying glass.

“Now my two perfectly nice children are living in Oxford, Mississippi, in the home of their stepfather, who teaches botany at Ole Miss. Probably studies kudzu. It’s a plant that’s completely taken over the northern section of the state. And my perfectly acceptable first wife lives there as well and has actually taken an interest in football. The whole family attends the football games of—I’ve forgotten what Ole Miss calls its football team. Probably Kudzu. The Rampaging Kudzus, or some damn thing. My kids are going to wake up some morning and find they can’t get out of the house because the kudzu has walled them in. Then I won’t get to see them even two times a year.”