The Pot Thief Who Studied Einstein (9 page)

On Monday morning I took the dog shopping. He picked out a bowl and a collar. He didn’t want the bandana, but I bought it anyway.

I thought the bandana might make his neck appear less elongated.

We rode in my new Cadillac. I wanted to put the top down but couldn’t figure out how to do it. But it was fun to drive even with the top up, and I was feeling pretty smug when I drove back into Old Town until I saw Whit Fletcher down the street in an unmarked police car.

“You keep funny hours for a merchant, Hubert,” he said in greeting as he walked over from the car and met me at my door.

“My business is based on high mark-up,” I replied, “not volume.”

“We both know your business is based on selling illegal pots, and you probably do that at night, but the shop makes a nice front. Anyway, it’s none of my concern. I got enough to worry about what with murderers on the loose. Speaking of which, Hubert, I need you to do a favor for me.”

Whit and I are friends. After a fashion. We’ve known each other a long time. He doesn’t care about my illegal digging, and he’s helped me get out of a couple of jams when I was the suspect in a murder. Of course he’s also the one that made me the suspect, but I don’t think he ever thought I was guilty. He knows I’m a pacifist.

I’ve also helped him out financially. Not bribes. I wouldn’t offer that and he wouldn’t take it. But if there’s money to be made on the side and no one gets hurt, he’s always interested. So I figured this was another deal like that, something, for example, where I would claim a reward because he wasn’t eligible to receive it because of him being a policeman and then we’d split the money. I was totally unprepared for what he wanted.

“What I need,” he said, brushing his always-in-need-of-a-haircut silver hair off his forehead with a big meaty hand, “is for you to identify a body.”

A shiver ran down my spine, or up my spine, or whichever way it is they run. “A dead body?” I asked.

He gave me one of his patient looks. “If it was a live one, Hubert, we wouldn’t need you to identify it. We could just ask it who it is.”

“I don’t know, Whit. I’m kind of squeamish, and the idea of looking at a dead body…Well, I’m not sure I could do that.”

“You never been to a funeral? This here’s the same thing ‘cept the stiff’s in a metal drawer instead of a casket. We slide it open, you tell us who it is. Takes ten seconds.”

“But why me?”

“We think you might know the deceased.”

“Why?”

“Police business, Hubert. Nothing you need to know.”

“But surely someone else could do it. I’m sure I don’t know who it is, but even if it’s someone I know, I can’t be the only person who knew him. I’ll bet there’s not a single guy on the planet who is known only by me.”

“What makes you think it’s a guy?”

“Why, is it a woman?”

“Why don’t you just come along and see?”

While I was thinking about it, he said, “You got a license for that animal?”

“He’s a dog,” I said.

“That a fact?” He sounded dubious.

“Do I need a license?”

“I have no idea. I guess I could check the ordinances.”

Then he said, “You get a new car?” He had seen me drive up in the Caddy.

“It belongs to an acquaintance of mine,” I said.

I didn’t want to go to the morgue. I didn’t care whether the dead person was a man or a woman. I didn’t even care if it was someone I knew. That sounds callous, but that’s not the way I mean it. If it was someone I knew, then I’d find out eventually through the usual means, and I’d feel sad. But I couldn’t help the dearly departed by telling the police who it was. Couldn’t they check fingerprints or something? Why involve me?

But failing to cooperate with a Detective First Grade of the APD is not prudent, especially considering that he was intimating he might poke into the issue of my new dog and my new car.

In Whit’s car on the way to the morgue, I practiced glancing. I would imagine Whit as the dead guy. I’d stare straight ahead and then on the silent count of three, I’d glance at him and then look away as fast as possible. Then I’d ask myself if I had seen enough to make an ID. I wanted to do it so fast that the image of the dead person wouldn’t be burned indelibly into my memory. But I didn’t want to do it so fast that I couldn’t make an ID and then would have to do it over again. That’s why I was practicing. I tried it several different times.

Finally, Whit asked, “You got a crick in your neck or something?”

“Just a nervous tick,” I answered.

Then I sat quietly and tried to imagine who I might know who might now be dead.

The room with the metal drawers was bigger than I had imagined. A lot of people die in a city the size of Albuquerque, but unless you know one of them, you never think about it. At least I don’t. I’ve been told there are people who read the obituaries every day. I suppose they have a reason for doing that, but I don’t think it’s a reason I would understand.

It’s bad enough finding out someone I know has died without finding it out by seeing his or her name at the top of an obit: “Lucretia Melendez, 1962 – 2008.”

“God, I went to high school with her!” I would utter aloud as I choked on my morning coffee.

Not really. I don’t know anybody named Lucretia Melendez. But if I did and she died, I’d much prefer for someone to call me and say, “I have some sad news about Lucretia…” And if no one thinks to call, then I probably wasn’t close enough to her to be deeply affected by her passing.

Why am I running on about this? Oh, right, I was thinking about who might be dead.

Well, they slid the drawer open like Whit said. I made the quick glance I had practiced for.

And it worked. It was so quick that I barely had the chance to react. I didn’t become nauseous. I didn’t get light-headed. In fact, the two feelings I had were relief that the task was over and surprise that I recognized the face.

Not the whole face. Mainly the forehead. Especially that occipital ridge. The guy in the drawer was the one who had been in Cantú’s house and had counted into my hand the twenty-five hundred dollars that I was now trying to recover by holding a Cadillac for ransom.

It came to me that it was probably the dead guy’s car, the one I rode to the appraisal in with a blindfold on, and that’s why Cantú hadn’t taken it with him along with the coffee table, the Danish modern couch, his twenty-two Anasazi pots and my three copies which I was still angry about.

Then I remembered that Susannah and I had seen the registration of the Cadillac and it did belong to Cantú.

O.K., I knew who owned the car. But who was the dead guy? And more troubling, how in the name of all the stars and planets did the police know I could ID him?

As all these thoughts were running through my mind, I heard a faint voice in the background. Then I realized it was Whit.

“Sorry,” I said, “Could you repeat that?”

“It’s a simple question, Hubert, especially considerin’ you and me are standing here in the morgue. Can you tell me the stiff’s name?”

I looked him straight in the eye. Whit that is, not the stiff. “I have absolutely no idea.”

He stared at me. “You don’t know his name?”

“Nope.”

“You sure, Hubert? Because I thought I saw a little glimmer of recognition when you glanced down there.”

“Probably just a little glimmer of happiness that the task was over.”

“Why don’t you take another look, make sure you can’t ID the guy.”

I turned my head in the direction of the body and then back at Whit. “Sorry. I definitely have no idea what his name is.”

“Try it again, Hubert. And this time keep your eyes open.”

So I looked again, thinking that this image was going to be stuck in my brain despite my best efforts to avoid it.

But once again it wasn’t as bad as I had anticipated. All that practice had paid off. And since I already knew it was the guy in the house, I didn’t have to pay attention the second time. I had to keep my eyes open of course because Whit was watching. But I had something to focus on. So I looked at that forehead with as much tunnel vision as I could muster.

And that’s all I saw.

I didn’t even see his eyes or his mouth, much less what he was wearing. Well, now that I think about it, he was wearing a sheet. I guess I did notice that. And his eyes were closed. I guess I noticed that too. And I think his mouth was closed, but I’m not sure because… I’m not going to talk about this anymore because the image of the dead guy is reforming in my brain and I don’t want it there.

But I did look a second time, and then I took a deep breath, tried to sound disappointed about my inability to help and told Whit I was absolutely certain I didn’t know the name of the deceased.

“I’ve never been in a morgue, Hubie. What’s it look like?”

“Just like in the movies or on television. There’s a couple of rooms with big glass windows where you can see a steel table and a bunch of stuff like scalpels you’d see in a hospital operating room, except I don’t think they’re as careful about how they make the incisions.”

“Yuk.”

“Exactly. Then there’s the room with the metal drawers that hold the bodies. It’s very cold in there.”

“Probably a good thing.”

It was the evening after I’d visited the morgue, and the first question she’d asked when I got to
Dos Hermanas
was what Whit Fletcher had wanted. I’d told her about going to the morgue and seeing the weird looking guy who had been with the pot collection.

We were on our first round, and I could see she was thinking about what I had told her. I expected her thinking would lead to the same questions mine had.

“Why did they ask you to make the ID?”

“That’s what I thought about last night instead of sleeping. I only came up with two possibilities.”

“Wait, don’t tell me; let me guess.” She thought briefly and then said, “The driver told them you were there?”

“That’s one.”

“So all you have to do is find the driver.”

“We’ve already been over that. There’s no way to find him.”

“Or her.”

“It was a him. He spoke to me, remember?”

“It could have been a woman impersonating a man’s voice.”

“O.K., there’s still no way to find
her
.”

She thought for a moment. “The second possibility is that the police thought you knew him because of his connection to pots.”

“Two for two. But how would the police know he had a connection with pots?”

“They saw the collection in his house, Hubie,” she said as if I were slow-witted.

“The collection is gone.”

“Oh, right,” she said and thought for a moment. “Maybe there were some more pots in another room.”

“No, I asked him before I started the appraisal so I’d know if there were more pots to record, and he told me all the pots were on the shelves.”

“Maybe he lied or maybe there were some other pots that weren’t part of the collection. Did you search the whole house when you burglarized it?” She asked with a smile.

“I didn’t burglarize it. I just went in to make sure it was the right house. If I’d known there was going to be a murder, maybe I would’ve looked around. But I don’t think it would’ve done any good. The other rooms are no doubt just as empty as the living room.”

She loves murder mysteries. I’ve read a couple only because she urged me to. They’re not my cup of tea. But I hate it when I end up in one. I guess I shouldn’t complain. In all other respects I have a great life. I’m healthy, I have good friends, I love my work, and I’m footloose and fancy free. Well, at least I’m footloose. I didn’t know what fancy free means, so I looked it up in my Oxford English Dictionary. It’s great to have around because unlike other dictionaries, it contains all the words in the English language. All half a million of them. It’s also useful in New Mexico for holding the door shut on a windy day.

Susannah interrupted my musings. “I’ve got it! You weren’t alone. There was someone else in the house you didn’t see. Let’s call him the Third Man. That’s the title of a famous Carol Reed film. After the murder, the Third Man told the police you were there.”

“Then why wouldn’t the police have the Third Man ID the body? They would know for certain that he could do it if he’d been in the house with the dead guy.”

“Maybe they did.”

“Then why ask me?”

“See, Hubie, this is why you should read murder mysteries. If you did, you’d know why they asked you.”

“But if the Third Man had already identified—”

“Even
after
the police know the identity of a body, they sometimes ask other people to identify it in order to see how they react.”

“Why would they do that?” I asked naively.

“Because those people are suspects.”

“Thanks for telling me that,” I said as I felt my stomach knot up.

“I’m just trying to help, Hubie. If you are a suspect, it’s better for you to know so you can be prepared and not let the police trip you up.”

“Why should I be a suspect?”

She shrugged in a fashion that was rather too nonchalant in my opinion. “You’ve been a suspect before.”

I started to complain that there was no reason for the police to suspect me, but then that had been true in the other cases as well, hadn’t it? But surely it couldn’t be happening again. I decided not to worry about it.

“Let’s forget the Third Man,” I said. “This is giving me a headache.”

I waved to Angie. I hadn’t slept the night before, and one margarita was not enough to help me sleep tonight. I figured three, maybe four were in order.

After our fresh drinks came, Susannah said, “O.K., I’ll change the subject. What did you do about the dog?”

“I fed him before I came over here,” I said evasively.

It had been almost a week since he’d dropped in on me, and my ad in the lost dog section of the newspaper had resulted in only two calls, both from functional illiterates. Despite the excellent description of the dog I had put in the ad, one guy was looking for a lost dachshund and one woman was searching for her darling poodle.

“I meant what did you do about getting rid of him,” Susannah clarified. “Have you called the shelter yet like you said you were going to?”

“Umm, not exactly.”

“What do you mean, ‘not exactly’? Either you called them or you didn’t.”

“I looked up the number.”

“And that was as much as you could accomplish today, so you’re putting off the actual dialing until tomorrow?”

“There’s no need to be sarcastic.”

“Admit it, Hubie, you’re stuck with him.”

“I am not stuck with him. I don’t want a dog. I don’t need the commitment. I want to remain fancy free.” I had been waiting for an opportunity to use that phrase.

I told Susannah I had looked up ‘fancy free’ and discovered it was first used by Shakespeare, no less, in a line from
Midsummer Night’s Dream.

“I wrote this down,” I told her and then read the passage where Oberon says:

Cupid all arm’d: a certain aim he took

At a fair vestal throned by the west,

And loosed his love-shaft smartly from his bow,

As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts;

But I might see young Cupid’s fiery shaft

Quench’d in the chaste beams of the watery moon,

And the imperial votaress passed on,

In maiden meditation, fancy-free.

“You know, Hubie, I always love the sound of Shakespeare, but I never know what it means. To start with, what’s a ‘votaress’?”

“A female voter?”

She ignored that. “Who was Oberon in the play?” she asked.

“I have no idea. I just found the passage in the dictionary. I didn’t read the play.”

“I’ve always liked that name. When I was a little girl, I asked my mother if I could change my name to Oberon.”

“You read Shakespeare as a little girl?”

“No, silly. I loved Merle Oberon.”

“She died years before you were born.”

“I know, but her movies were on late night television –
The Scarlet Pimpernel
,
Dark Angel
,
Wuthering Heights
,
A Song to Remember
,
Désirée
. She was so glamorous. And exotic, too. I read an article about her in one of those movie magazines –
Motion Picture
,
Modern Screen
,
Screen Romances
– my mom had boxes of them in the attic.”

“So that’s why you like old movies so much.”

“Yeah, and you like them because you saw them when they were new releases.”

I ignored that.

“She always claimed to be Australian,” Susannah said.

“Your mother claimed to be Australian?”

“No, Hubert, Merle Oberon did. In fact, her mother was a Sinhalese teenager and her father was unknown, probably a British soldier. She actually grew up in India. But she always tried to hide her true ethnicity. Her dark-skinned mother lived with her, but she pretended to be the maid.”

“That’s awful!”

“Yeah, and it gets worse. After her mother died, Oberon commissioned someone to do a painting of her.”

“There are artists who paint dead people?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. He worked from a photograph but painted her with light skin at Oberon’s instruction.”

“Oberon is one of the moons of Uranus,” I said. It just sort of popped out.

She gave me a funny look. “Oh, right. You and your telescopes. What’s it look like?”

“Grey, lifeless, and pockmarked. Sort of like the dead guy.”

“Why are we talking about this?”

“Because I was curious about the phrase ‘fancy free’ and looked it up. It came from a passage in Shakespeare—”

“And you don’t want to talk about the dog because you won’t admit you’re stuck with him.”

“I am not stuck with him.”

“Of course you are. Let’s give him a name.”

“He already has a name.”

“What is it?”

“He refuses to tell me, but he must have one. His owner must have named him.”

“He doesn’t have an owner. He doesn’t have a collar and no one is looking for him because you’ve had him in the paper for a week and no one has answered your ad.”

“Only six days,” I corrected.

“So it’s your job to name him.”

I threw up my hands in resignation. “O.K., Fearless.”

“Fearless?”

“What’s wrong with ‘Fearless’?”

“Have you looked at him, Hubie? He should be named after one of the Muppets. Maybe Ernie.”

We went around and around about a name and finally agreed on Geronimo. I liked it because that’s what parachuters yell as they jump out of the plane, and he had come down into my patio from out of the sky. She liked it because she said the dog looked like that sad picture of Geronimo after he was captured and looked subdued.

I don’t know why we both had to agree on a name. After all, he’s my dog.