Widows' Watch (18 page)

Wednesday, October 6, 4:42 P.M.

Elena got home from her shift to find Harmony weaving in the living room and Jose Ituribe repairing the love seat. At the large window that looked out on the front yard, Juanita Ituribe was perched on a kitchen step-stool, measuring. Her position looked so precarious that Elena dashed across the room and grabbed Juanita around the waist.

“You shouldn't be climbing ladders,” she cried. “What about your knees?”

“I'm fine,” said Juanita. “I've had four Ibuprofen since breakfast.”

“The Ituribes are here to help me with your living room,” Harmony explained as she started a new row.

Juanita jotted a number down on a pad of paper, retracted the long, flexible arm of the metal tape measure she had been using, and said, “If you'll let go of me, dear, I can climb down. I'm doing your draperies,” she added, taking a seat on the step-stool.

“And I'm doing the upholstery,” said Jose. “Que lastima, what a mess you've got here, but your mother's made almost enough fabric for me to do this love seat—shouldn't take me more than two days.”

“Are you and Juanita up to this?”

“Of course we are,” said Juanita. “I worked in the pants factories for years. A few draperies won't be nuthin' for me. They'll be a—how do you say it? A wind for me.”

“A breeze,” said Jose.

“Anyway, lots more interesting than putting in them studs on jeans. I've done some bartacking in my day. And if your mama weaves you up some more of the material, I can make you matching pants.”

Elena smiled weakly. She couldn't see herself going to work in a pair of pants that matched the colors of her upholstery and draperies. Coral, Hopi green? No way. “Thanks, Juanita,” she said tactfully, “but I can't afford the cleaning bills.”

Jose said, “You're going to have the finest living room on the block, muchacha.”

“I've had the most wonderful idea,” said Harmony after dinner. “You're going to love it.”

Elena groaned.

“I've signed us up for the police talent show.”

“Mom, you're not a member of the department.”

“I called Chief Gaitan this afternoon, and he liked the idea. We'll bill ourselves as the new Judds, a new mother and daughter sensation.”

“Mom, this is a small talent show in Los Santos, not Nashville, Tennessee, and the Grand Ole Opry.”

“Umm. Now, we have to decide on our numbers and start practicing. Where's your guitar?”

“I don't have it anymore.”

“You sold it?” Harmony looked shocked.

“No, it disappeared. I figure Frank took it with him for spite.”

“Did he?” Harmony looked rather grim.

“So you see, Mom,” said Elena, feeling a lot less angry with Frank than she usually was, “you'll have to withdraw our names.”

“Ummm,” said Harmony and resumed her weaving.

Elena went to answer the telephone in the kitchen, taking her time, hoping she wasn't being called out, since she'd been planning an early night.

“This is Colin Stuart,” said the pleasant, formal voice at the other end. “I'm checking to be sure that we're on for Saturday night.”

“Oh.” Elena had forgotten about that.

“I thought we'd go out for dinner and then some music.”

“Fine,” said Elena, hoping he wasn't thinking of anything classical, like the Los Santos Symphony. She'd sat politely through classical music at Sarah's apartment when Sarah was trying to inject a little cultural sophistication into Elena's life, but she could usually divert Sarah with conversation so the CD never got changed. Elena had a feeling there was no way she could manage to drag Colin Stuart out of a symphony at intermission, short of telling him she'd just developed acute appendicitis.

“I wonder whether you'd mind if we take Lance along?” Colin was saying. “He's offered to show us a few jazz places in Los Santos that aren't after-hours clubs.”

“Oh.”

“I guess that seems strange, inviting someone else along on our first date.”

“Not at all,” mumbled Elena, glad Lance was no longer a suspect.

“Poor Lance is feeling rather blue over this business about his father and—ah—other problems.”

“Well, he's off the hook as far as the murder's concerned.”

“I'm glad to hear that. Why don't you invite your mother? We'll make it a foursome. Shall I pick you up at seven o'clock Saturday?”

“Fine.” Now she understood. Colin Stuart was actually taken with her mother, just asking Elena out to please Sarah. “Well, I'll see you Saturday.” Elena shook her head as she replaced the receiver on the wall bracket. Amazing. Gaitan knew her mother was married. Colin Stuart, having met the sheriff, definitely knew it, but he still wanted to spend the evening with Harmony, in return for which Elena would get to spend the evening with a homosexual. Lance was nice enough, but if anyone from the department saw her, they'd say, “Poor Jarvis. She's reduced to dating gays. Can't get a straight date.”

“Mom,” she called. “That was Colin Stuart. He and Lance have invited us out to dinner and an evening of jazz.”

“How thoughtful. Lance and I can talk poetry.”

“Uh-huh.” Elena figured that her mother's attention would be monopolized by Colin, and what the hell was Elena going to talk to Lance about? “Mom, if you don't mind, I'm really tired.”

“Then I think you should go straight to bed,” said Harmony.

“You do?” Elena looked at her suspiciously.

Wednesday, October 6, 8:45 P.M.

Harmony delayed forty-five minutes before digging out Elena's address book. Then she leafed through to “J” and called her daughter's ex-husband.

When a gruff, blurred voice answered, Harmony said, “Is this Frank Jarvis?”

“Who wants to know?”

“Harmony Portillo,” she replied sharply. “Your ex-wife's mother.”

“Mrs. Portillo? I didn't mean to sound like a shit—I mean—well, I was asleep.”

“I'd like you to return my daughter's guitar,” said Harmony. “If possible, please bring it to the house tomorrow afternoon. I'll be here by two o'clock.”

“What? What?”

“The guitar you took when you moved out. I want it returned.”

“Hey, I don't have—”

“Of course you do. Unless you've sold it. Have you?”

“No.”

“Good. Then return it, please.”

“Look, Mrs. Portillo, Elena's always saying crazy things about me.”

“You mean like your coming into her house without her permission and playing tricks on her.”

“Hey, I don't—”

“You're the person with a key.”

“Not anymore,” he muttered.

“There, you see. You could and did get in before she changed the locks. I saw you do it. Now Frank, I gave that guitar to Elena, and I don't see any sense in your having it. You don't even play.”

“Maybe we could make a deal,” said Frank. “If I could find the guitar. You know—look around the pawnshops. Probably someone stole it the night her place was broken into and trashed. She probably didn't tell you, but I took care of the guy who did it.”

“That's commendable, Frank. So you're saying you can locate the guitar?”

“I might be able to, but I'd like you to do me a favor.”

“What favor?”

“Well, Elena's got this restraining order. I can't even talk to her anymore, and I was hoping to get back together. Maybe you could put in a good word for me. Like tell her we ought to start dating again. I wouldn't mind dating. And then we could—”

“I'm not sure anything I say will help, Frank. It's your aura.”

“My what?”

“Your aura. It's very bad. I noticed the day you let me into the house. My goodness, you project bad vibrations even over the telephone.”

“What's an aura?”

“I suggest, Frank, that you go to a curandera. She might be able to help you with herbal medicines.”

There was a silence. Then Frank said, “You mean one of those crazy old women who grind up weeds and—”

“The one I have in mind is a woman of great power. Whether or not you consult her, I'd advise you not to say anything unpleasant about her. She might put a curse on you.”

“Yeah, right,” said Frank and laughed.

“Well, that's my suggestion. You certainly don't have to follow it.”

“Hey, I'll go. What's her name?”

Harmony gave him the name.

“Address? Phone number?”

Harmony provided those. She had visited the woman herself, just in case Joaquina, back in Chimayo, decided to take amiss the scolding she'd received for giving Sarah Tolland that purgative at the barbecue.

“O.K., listen, I've got it,” said Frank. “You think this will help me with Elena, right?”

“I really can't promise anything, Frank,” said Harmony, “and I don't think even the curandera can help you unless you return that guitar.”

“The guitar. Right. I'll look into it tomorrow. And the curandera.”

“You do that. A man with an aura like yours needs all the help he can get.”

“But you'll tell Elena I'm having my aura fixed? What is it?”

“The colors projected by your soul. Good night, Frank.” She hung up before he could say anything else. Harmony didn't truly think the curandera could help Frank where Elena was concerned. She wasn't even sure she'd want that, although Elena had been evasive about why they'd broken up. Harmony did believe in lifetime commitments, having contracted for one herself and been very happy with it. However she hadn't always been such a strong advocate of marriage, not when she was a young woman who believed in free love, free speech, and the freedom to smoke a little pot when she felt like it.

The important thing was that they'd get the guitar back and win first place in the police talent show. Harmony was very proud of Elena's voice. The girl could have been a second Joan Baez. Humming “House of the Rising Sun,” Harmony resumed weaving.

Thursday, October 7, 8:05 A.M.

As soon as she got to her desk, Elena called Socorro Heights to find out how long T. Bob Tyler had been on their rolls. Six years, they said. That put him within her time frame. Now if she could just take to heart the idea of an old cowboy as serial killer. Glancing across the aisle, she caught sight of Leo rising to leave.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“Taking some personal time.”

“What about interviewing the widows?”

“It's not as if talking to old ladies is a dangerous assignment. You can go on your own. I've got something important to do.”

“Like what?”

“Like I'll tell you if I get it off the ground,” said Leo mysteriously. “You're going to love it.”

“That's what my mother said last night,” Elena muttered, “and it turns out she entered us in the talent show. Fortunately, Frank stole my guitar.”

“Too bad. I know you can't beat me, but I'd like to see you try.” He ambled off, lanky and cheerful. Elena consulted her next-of-kin list. The telephone directory showed no number for Mercedes Castro, but the late Jose had had a son, and the directory listed seventeen Jose Castros.

On Elena's fourth try a surprised voice said, “I'm Mercedes Castro.”

Elena introduced herself, explained that she was looking into the unsolved murder of Mercedes' husband, and asked for an interview.

“He's been dead a year now, and we told the police everything we knew when he was killed,” said Mrs. Castro.

“Still, ma'am, there might be something we missed.”

“Come over, then. I've just finished making empanadas. Maybe you'd like one with a cup of coffee.”

“Thank you. That sounds wonderful.” Elena loved the small fruit tarts so popular among Mexican-American families. Aunt Josefina had made them every Tuesday of Elena's childhood, and every Tuesday Elena had stopped by after school. “I'll be there in about half an hour.”

She couldn't find a number for Marcia Cox, whose husband, Porfirio, had been murdered four years ago. However, Chantal Brolie, a widow of three years, was in the book. Elena called and left a message on an answering machine. Then she drove to the Upper Valley.

Surrounded by trees, flowers, and bushes, the Castro house had evidently received its water allotment from the canal, because the yard was flooded. To get to the front door Elena had to hop from stepping stone to stepping stone. The lush shrubbery concealed peeling paint on the window frames and front door. Rusted tricycles, wagons, and toy cars littered the porch.

Mercedes Castro answered the doorbell and ushered Elena into a cluttered living room, explaining that her son and daughter-in-law were at work, her grandchildren at school, and she hadn't yet found time to pick up. Elena had to work hard to keep the shock off her face. Mrs. Castro was dark-skinned with heavy, dark hair shot through with white and a good figure, but a terrible scar ran from the corner of her mouth across her cheek—deep, jagged, and disfiguring. Elena doubted that it had been stitched at the time of injury, but surely the poor woman could have gotten plastic surgery. Her husband would have had insurance from the school district.

If not for the scar, Mercedes Castro, who was probably in her sixties, would have been a beautiful woman. And how had she gotten that scar? Elena wondered. From the late Jose? If so, the evidence in this strange case was accumulating, the parallels doubling and redoubling. Mrs. Castro excused herself and went out to the kitchen. Elena moved a teddy bear and three coloring books off a wildly flowered chair and sat down. Mrs. Castro returned almost immediately with a tray containing empanadas on a blue-rimmed plate and coffee in matching stoneware cups. Elena recognized the pattern. Her supermarket had sold it last year at five dollars a setting with a twenty-five-dollar grocery purchase.

Taking a sip of her coffee, Elena said, “I understand you were at the Socorro Heights Senior Citizens Center when your husband was killed.”

“That's right.” Mrs. Castro put two empanadas on a plate and passed it to Elena.

“Do you remember what you were doing that afternoon?”

“How could I ever forget? That was the afternoon I lost my dear Jose.”

Forking up a piece of empanada, Elena nodded sympathetically. Pineapple filling. Not her favorite, but the crust was delicious. Mrs. Castro plucked a Kleenex from a fake marble box on the coffee table, which was strewn with small plastic spacemen and brown flower petals from a bouquet of dying roses. The widow dabbed her eyes. “You were saying—” Elena prompted.

“Surely, you don't think I lied about being at the center?”

“No, I don't.”

“Then why do you want to know what I was doing?”

Elena sighed. “I've discovered by going back through the files that at least four older men have been killed in their homes during daylight hours while their wives were at Socorro Heights.”

Mercedes Castro looked astonished. “Jose was killed by a robber.”

“Maybe, but nothing of great value was taken.”

“The things were precious to Jose,” the widow protested. Her hand was shaking, and the cup rattled against the saucer as she put it down. “They took the watch the school system gave him. The ring that had been in his family for many years. The Empress Carlotta gave that ring to an ancestor of Jose's, and his father brought it with him from Mexico when they emigrated. He was very proud of it.”

Elena didn't know many Mexican-Americans who wanted to claim the patronage of the French colonialist government. “Did you ever talk about the ring at the center?”

“I—I'm not sure,” Mrs. Castro stammered. Her fingers went to her cheek, touching the scar. Then she dropped her hand quickly. “You think someone at the center—because of something I said, someone—” Tears gathered in the woman's eyes.

“We don't know, but with four deaths, possibly five, we're trying to make connections, so if you could tell me who you were with and what you were doing that afternoon—”

Mercedes inspected her bright, shapely fingernails. Elena looked at the nails too, wondering if they were plastic, the kind stuck on at nail shops with trendy names. A friend had told Elena it cost forty dollars to get that done, and then your real nails developed fungus infections underneath. Yuck. She finished off her first empanada.

“I was playing bridge,” said Mercedes Castro.

Two wives playing bridge when their husbands died! “Do you remember who your partners were?”

She shrugged. “Some Anglo women.”

“You didn't know them very well?”

“I knew Portia Lemay because she was a realtor; she found this house for my son. The others, I don't remember. I didn't play much bridge.”

“How did you happen to be playing that day?”

“I think—” She paused. “One of them had an appointment, and so—maybe, Portia suggested I sit in, and I agreed because she was a nice woman, and she got my son such a good price on this house.” Mercedes nodded. “But I felt sort of uncomfortable. Anglo strangers—and me with—” She touched the scar again. “I guess it's silly to be embarrassed, but afterwards I was sorry that I'd agreed to play. If I'd been home, maybe Jose, my husband, wouldn't have been killed.”

Two widows who had sat in! “You don't remember the names of the other women?” Elena decided against mentioning the names of Dimitra's bridge partners. If there was a connection to the bridge group, and she couldn't imagine what it would be—Portia Lemay, Margaret Forrest, Emily Marks, and Lydia Beeman, co-conspirators with a serial killer? A bizarre idea. Still, if there was some sort of connection, she didn't want to screw up her case by suggesting testimony to a witness. Thinking of Dimitra, she asked, “Did you ride with any of the women—there or back?”

“No. I drove Jose's car. If I hadn't, he might have gone out himself, and then—” Mrs. Castro blinked back more tears.

“Do you remember anyone else who was there that afternoon? T. Bob Tyler, for instance. Do you know him?”

“The ranchero?” Mercedes smiled through her tears. “That one is such a flirt. Always calling me pretty.” She flushed. “Before. When I was pretty.”

“Was he there that afternoon?”

Mercedes didn't remember.

“I have another question, and I hope you'll answer me truthfully. Mrs. Castro, before the death of your husband”—Elena heard the front door open and hurried on—”were you a battered woman?”

“What?” Mrs. Castro looked confused, even frightened.

“Did your husband ever abuse you, hurt you?”

“What kind of a question is that to ask my mother?”

A slender man, late thirties or early forties, stood in the doorway. He looked tired and grumpy; his chinos and sport shirt were wrinkled. Shift-worker, Elena guessed. “We're investigating the death of Mrs. Castro's husband,” she said to the newcomer.

“My father was the victim,” said the man angrily.

“My son, Jose, Jr.,” said Mrs. Castro, her fingers twisting in her lap.

“A whole year you haven't solved my father's murder, and now you come around upsetting my mother.”

Very defensive, thought Elena. “We're following new leads.”

“What do new leads have to do with the question you asked my mother?”

Elena said quietly, “Other men have died under much the same circumstances as your father. There's reason to believe that their wives might have been abused.”

“Mother wasn't,” said the son.

Elena reached out to take Mercedes' hand. “Is that true, ma'am?”

Mrs. Castro snatched her fingers away. “It is as my son said.”

“Again, I hate to ask rude questions, but that scar on your face—how did you—”

Again Mercedes' hand rose compulsively to the scar, the slender fingers and beautiful fingernails covering it. “Just an accident,” she said, brown cheeks flushing.

“What kind of an accident?”

“A kitchen accident,” snapped Jose.

“Please let your mother speak for herself.”

“It's as my son says.”

“My mother was always clumsy with knives. Now, why don't you leave? Can't you see you're upsetting her? She still hasn't recovered from my father's death.”

“That's true,” said Mercedes. Tears slipped down her cheeks as the son stood glowering.

Elena sighed. If there were secrets here, she wasn't going to get them from the mother or son. She'd have to try the neighborhood where Mercedes and Jose had lived before his death. “Thank you for your time,” said Elena, rising.

The son looked smug. Why? Because he'd gotten rid of Elena without giving anything away? She left, checked for the address of the old family home, which was in East Central, not that far from her own neighborhood. It would take twenty minutes to get there. She drove out of the water-soaked Upper Valley onto Doniphan and from there to the freeway, which took her around the mountain to the other side of town. As she drove, she thought about Mercedes Castro's face and couldn't imagine any scenario involving a housewife and a kitchen knife that would produce a scar like that.