Widows' Watch (15 page)

She glanced out at the crowd and saw Michael Futrell talking to his brother. Both were attractive. Of course, Dr. Futrell hadn't said anything about a date. He probably wanted to interview her for some crime book he was writing. Elena sighed. If you'd told her ten years ago that before she was thirty she'd be unmarried and without a date for three consecutive months, she'd never have believed it.

Tuesday, October 5, 8:25 A.M.

Elena sat in her gray tweed chair in her gray tweed partitioned cubicle on the last row in the Crimes Against Persons section. She was typing into the computer her report on the weekend spent guarding Lance Potemkin, excluding certain features of the adventure, such as her mother's quarrel with Joaquina. After receiving a report from Sarah Tolland's Santa Fe hotel room, Harmony had stomped off to confront the local curandera, who had evidently given Sarah something that had cleaned her system out completely.

“I cured her, didn't I?” said Joaquina indignantly.

There among the pots of herbs, the braided garlic and onion strings, and the chile ristras hanging from the vigas in Joaquina's kitchen, Elena's peace-loving mother had offered to punch the curandera in the nose.

“What do you care?” demanded Joaquina. “That woman was not one of ours.”

Narrowing her blue eyes, Harmony said, “Watch yourself, Joaquina. There is a curandera of great power in Los Santos where my daughter lives. Maybe I will go to her and have her put a curse on you.”

To which Joaquina replied, “Curses go both ways. I can put a curse on you or any of your family.”

“Not if this woman of power blocks you. She speaks with the old gods who still linger in Mexico.” Joaquina blanched. “She is a bruja known all over Texas and Chihuahua. She is a—”

“All right,” said Joaquina. “So I won't give purges to any more of your fancy Anglo friends.”

Elena finished the report, blanked the computer screen, and concentrated on the Potemkin case. At this point, she wasn't that sure of Lance's guilt. So she thought about T. Bob Tyler, with his long history of assault and womanizing. Then she considered the gossip her mother had relayed about some indeterminate number of old men who had died in recent years during unsolved daylight robberies, men whose wives were connected with the center.

How would she go about retrieving the information she needed from the I.D. & R. central filing system? She didn't want to look at every murder case in the last five years. She wasn't even sure how much she'd find previous to 1991, which was when they'd started putting everything into the computer. Then she snapped her fingers. Maggie Daguerre, if she was in today, could get the information.

“Where you going?” called Leo from across the aisle as Elena slung the strap of her bag onto her shoulder.

“To see Daguerre,” she replied and left Crimes Against Persons, heading for I.D. & R., and Maggie's small, glassed-in office. Lieutenants and sergeants got their own offices. Detectives had cubicles like Elena's. Officers on patrol used desks in some big room when they happened to be in the station houses. She skipped the elevator, took the stairs and, in two minutes, was knocking on the glass of Maggie's door, although she could see that Maggie's captain was there, embarked on a tirade. Maggie waved Elena in.

“Well, hell, Daguerre, can't you wash it off?” the captain was saying, pointing to her wildly painted leg cast.

“Sure, but the cast would disintegrate.”

“Then go to the hospital and have them tape over it.”

“It's a work of art,” said Maggie reproachfully. “Most of it was done by the daughter of a famous artist.”

“Shit! I don't care if it was done by Pablo Picasso.”

“He's dead,” said Elena helpfully.

The captain glared at her.

“Come on, Captain,” said Maggie. “When they cut it off in six weeks, I'm going to have it sprayed with plastic and hang it on my wall. Thirty years from now I'll sell it and become a world traveler with the money I get. I even bought this great rubber thing to protect it when I take a shower.”

“Well, wear the rubber thing when you come to work. Wait a minute.” He squinted at her. “It's not some kind of goddamn giant condom, is it?”

“Yeah, I guess you could call it that,” said Maggie, on the verge of laughter.

“Well, stay in your office,” the captain ordered. “What if we have visitors? How professional will they think we are if one of my officers looks like a goddamn Mexican souvenir shop?” He stamped out, treading on Elena's foot, and slammed the door so hard the glass rattled.

“I think he broke my toe,” said Elena as she sat down.

“In that case you want to file a worker's compensation claim.” Maggie smiled hospitably. “What can I do for you?”

“I need to run a computer search, and I'm not even sure some of the things I want to do can be done.”

Maggie clicked her tongue disapprovingly. “It's the age of electronics, kid. Get with it. You want me to give you some books?”

“I want you to give me some advice, or better, I want you to do it for me.”

“Forget that,” said Maggie. “Tell me what you need, and I'll type out directions on how to get it.” She swung her chair to face the computer keyboard and screen, leaving her cast propped on an open desk drawer.

Elena sighed. “I want to read detectives' reports and everything else connected with robbery-homicides—well, maybe just homicides—of men over sixty-five. Well, no, make that sixty-two.”

She watched Maggie think a minute, then attack the keyboard.

“Cases from the last five years,” Elena added.

“That's a problem. The older stuff—you can call up the cases, but you're not going to get a lot of information from the computer. You'll have to pull the written files.”

Elena nodded. “If it's possible, I'd like to narrow it down to men who were killed in their own homes, men who might have abused their wives and or even their children.”

“So you want to cross-reference domestic violence cases?”

“Yeah, I guess so. And I want to know where the wives were when the men were killed. Particularly, I want cases where the wives were at the Socorro Heights Senior Citizens Center.”

Maggie groaned. “I can give you some tips, but I'm not sure you can pull up cases that meet all those parameters without reading the files yourself.”

Elena nodded glumly. Still, how many old men could have been murdered in the last five years? Surely not that many. She hoped not, anyway. She had thirty-nine cases presently active. She'd be lucky to find time. “I bet you could do this in an hour,” she hinted.

“In an hour, I'm going home,” said Maggie. “My leg hurts like hell.” Even as she was talking, she continued to type. Her telephone rang; she picked it up, tucked it under her chin, and went on typing as she listened. “Leo wants you,” she said, passing the phone to Elena.

Leo said, “Lance Potemkin's here. Says he's got an alibi for the day of the murder, wants to talk to us both.”

Elena sighed. An alibi. If he really had one, she would have to run the computer search, check back with the pawnshops. They'd be scrambling for suspects. “I'll come right up.” If Lance had an alibi, why the hell hadn't he told them in the first place instead of insisting he'd been home by himself with the flu?

Tuesday, October 5, 9:15 A.M.

“He wouldn't say anything until you got here,” said Leo when Elena found them sitting silently in one of the small interrogation rooms.

“That way I won't have to keep repeating myself,” said Lance, “and you can tell your mother about the whole thing. I really hated her thinking I might be a murderer.”

“She didn't think that,” said Elena.

“Well, she must have wondered.”

“You're saying you're more worried about what Harmony thinks than us?” asked Leo. “She can't put you in jail.”

“No one should. I didn't kill him.”

“You going to tell us you were with someone on the day of the murder?” Leo looked as if he didn't believe it.

“Yes,” said Lance. “Not only that day, but Friday, Saturday, and Sunday before and Tuesday after. I took some sick leave.” He looked defensive. “Well, I've never taken any before, and everyone else does it.”

“So you weren't in your apartment at all?” Elena asked. Surely he hadn't lied because he was afraid the English Department would find out he'd taken a bogus sick leave?

“I wasn't even in Texas,” said Lance. “My friend has a place across the border in New Mexico. He grows grapes and vegetables, makes his own wine. Beautiful house.”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Leo. “What's your friend's name?”

Lance hesitated.

“Look, it's not going to do you any good unless we can check this out,” said Elena.

Lance sighed. “His name is Bayard Sims. He's the chairman of Gourmet Cookery at the university.”

“He's your lover?”

Lance nodded.

“So why didn't you tell us in the first place? It's not as if we didn't know you're gay.”

“Bayard's getting a divorce. His wife's a lawyer here in town, and he wants partial custody of the children. He was afraid, if it came out that he's bisexual, he couldn't even get decent visitation rights.”

“So he asked you not to—”

“No! It was my idea. I'd have felt terrible if he lost his children because of me.”

“You'd have felt worse if you were convicted of your father's murder because of him,” said Elena, frowning. Who was to say that this Bayard Sims wouldn't lie for Lance?

“There was a case where a lesbian mother lost her kids because of her sexual orientation,” said Lance. “And the divorce was Bayard's idea. His wife is really mad about it. She wanted them to move back into town and stay together. Neither one of us doubted that she'd use the children against him if she had any idea about—well, about me.”

“So how come you've decided to tell us now?” Leo asked.

Lance sighed again. “There's nothing to keep from her anymore. She left town on business and took the kids with her, so we thought—well, we thought we could have a long weekend together while she was gone, but she—she'd hired a private detective. When she got back Saturday she

told Bayard that he either stayed married to her and dumped me, or he'd never see the children again.”

“So Bayard dumped you.” Elena shook her head. Adultery had sure changed. She wondered if Mrs. Sims had been surprised to find that her husband's lover was male.

“He did,” said Lance sadly.

“And you were with him all day Monday? Never out of his sight?” asked Leo.

Lance nodded. “We were trying out recipes. Bayard is writing a cookbook. He's a brilliant chef.”

“What's his phone number?”

“Do you have to call him?”

“Of course we do.”

“Maybe you could call him at school. So his wife doesn't have to hear any more about me.”

“O.K. What's his number at school?” asked Elena.

Lance produced it. “Maybe you could avoid mentioning to his secretary that it's the police calling.”

“Does he know he's going to be hearing from us?”

Lance looked even more unhappy. “I'd have told him—after I decided I might as well admit where I was—but he doesn't want me to call him.”

“Does he know you're a suspect in the case?”

“Surely I'm not anymore.”

“You are until we talk to him,” said Leo.

“I told him about being questioned when he told me about his wife's ultimatum.”

“And he didn't offer to come forward for you?” asked Elena, thinking that was pretty tacky of the great chef.

“I'm sure he would have once he'd had time to think about it, but my mother—she's pretty upset about me being a suspect. I don't want her joining any more demonstrations. Maybe you could remind Mrs. Portillo that my mother isn't really up to—”

“Neither am I,” interrupted Elena dryly. “Is that Dr. Sims?”

Lance nodded. “Bayard has a doctorate in French literature, although his cooking these days is usually Southwestern with unusual ingredients. For instance—”

“That's O.K.,” said Leo. “You don't have to tell us about his menus.”

“Christ!” he said when Lance had left. “I've never been on a case where you can't shut up either the suspects or the witnesses.”

“What suspects?” grumbled Elena. “We're pretty much back to square one. Left with a thief or T. Bob Tyler, who swears he was at the center, or”—and she didn't believe this one herself—”or a serial killer.”

“I have no idea what you're talking about,” said Dr. Bayard Sims. “I was by myself on those dates. At my home in New Mexico.”

“You don't know Lance Potemkin?” Elena asked, amazed.

“We may have met,” said Sims cautiously.

“But he wasn't at your house Friday through Tuesday a week ago?”

“No.”

“Great!” said Elena after she'd hung up. “Now what?”

“Kind of dumb for Potemkin to feed us this story if his alibi was going to deny it,” said Leo.

“Telephone calls,” Elena mused. “Let's see if they called each other. That'll be easy since Sims lives in New Mexico and Lance lives here in Los Santos.”

“Worth a try.”

“You do it.”

“Why me?”

“Because I want to start a computer search.”

“You and who else?”

“Me and Maggie Daguerre's instructions.” Elena fished them out of her bag. “Unless you want to check for dead old men killed in their own homes while—”

“Not me. That's the dumbest theory I ever heard.”

“My mother doesn't think so.”

“Your mother isn't a cop. In fact, your mother, much as I like her, is kinda flaky. Auras, for God's sake?” Leo shook his head. “I'll take the telephone company.”