Widows' Watch (23 page)

“I don't have any children,” said Elena. “I'm divorced.”

“Oh, I'm sorry, dear. So many young people are. I think it's sad.”

“Well, thank you for your time, Mrs. Ramsey.” Elena rose from the glider.

Mrs. Ramsey rose with her, picking up her trowel. “Back to the geraniums,” she said cheerfully. “Now, you plant those bulbs in November, and next year you'll have wonderful spring flowers.”

“It's really kind of you.”

“Not at all. It does my heart good to see young people taking an interest in growing things, when you're all so busy. Jobs and homes and children. I don't know how you do it.” Mrs. Ramsey preceded Elena down the steps toward the geranium bed. Elena climbed into the Escort, hoping it wouldn't quit on her before she got back to headquarters and switched to her own truck, carrying all those bulbs. Red-brown iris. They were going to be a real joy next spring.

Frances and Herbert Stoltz—he drove her crazy for years and then shot her when she wanted to leave. A wonderful woman, according to Mrs. Ramsey. Probably well-loved by her friends at the center. But would they murder for her? It was hard to believe. They didn't seem like crazies, those women she'd interviewed between hands of a bridge game. Had T. Bob been a friend of Frances Stoltz?

Saturday, October 9, 7:30 P.M.

“I planned something a little more upscale in the way of dinner,” said Colin Stuart as he popped a blob of sticky rice covered with raw fish into his mouth. “However, this sushi is excellent. Won't you try one?”

“No thanks,” said Elena, having read in the newspaper that sushi caused horrible diseases. Of course, she'd once read that broccoli could kill you, so it was hard to know what to believe. Still, the idea of raw fish didn't appeal to her. She didn't eat ceviche in Mexico, although the lime juice was supposed to “cook” it, and she had turned down the opportunity to try beef tartare, which was raw meat with raw eggs. Sarah Tolland had tried to introduce her to beef tartare on one of their weekly dinners out. Elena had a paper plate that contained Tandoori chicken, which was quite nice and unquestionably cooked. It came with a small mound of bright yellow rice.

She and Colin were sitting on a bench in San Jacinto Plaza, waiting for the tap dancers to appear, and sampling the wide array of ethnic cuisines. On the other side of Colin, Elena's mother and Lance Potemkin sat discussing modern poetry and eating spicy Mongolian beef. Colin devoured the last piece of raw fish and rice, then said he'd go for more food and was taking orders. Elena asked for nachos from the G & R booth. Her mother said she'd try the Tandoori chicken this time, plus any vegetarian dish they offered at the Delhi Palace booth.

Lance wanted sushi, having sampled Colin's. “Beer all around?” asked Colin and off he went.

Lance turned to Elena and said, “I hope now that I'm off the hook in my father's murder—I am, aren't I—?”

Elena nodded and forked up the last piece of chicken.

“I hope that you haven't gone back to thinking my mother killed him. The way he treated her while he was alive was bad enough without her getting blamed for his murder.”

Elena's mouth was full of chicken so she couldn't answer, but Harmony said, “I'm sure no one thinks your mother did it, Lance. She was at Socorro Heights.”

Elena swallowed. “Do you think she killed him?”

“Of course I don't!” Lance exclaimed.

Elena wondered if that was why Lance had wanted to come along. So that he could argue his mother's case with her, not to mention give his poetry a boost with Harmony.

“Here we are,” said Colin Stuart, distributing food from a shallow cardboard box.

“Oh, good,” said Elena. “You brought me some of their hot sauce. It's the best in town.”

“Really? What makes it the best?”

“A lot of cilantro, for one thing,” said Elena, “maybe garlic, besides the usual tomatoes and jalapeños. You want a bite?” She was applying salsa to a nacho with a white plastic spoon. Once she finished, she held the nacho out to Colin. Looking somewhat surprised, he opened his mouth. The salsa dribbled onto his chin and from there onto the lapel of his sport coat.

“Elena, look what you've done,” cried Harmony. She poured beer onto a paper napkin and rubbed the stain off the lapel, leaving the dignified Colin smelling like a brewery.

“The sauce is excellent,” he said politely. Having ordered a tortilla and a small helping of fajitas from Wings, the restaurant at the Ysleta Pueblo, he offered Elena a bite, and she accepted. She'd only eaten once at Wings, when she and Leo were on an agg assault out east. She had thought the fajitas were great.

“I wonder when the tap dancers will arrive,” said Colin.

Elena peered into the street. “I don't hear any tapping. Maybe they had trouble at the library. It gets kind of sleazy over there after dark.”

“At a library?” Colin looked surprised.

“Prostitutes of both sexes hang around there, particularly the transvestites from Mexico.”

Harmony quirked her eyebrows. “Elena, I really don't think that's a proper—”

“Good grief, Mom, I'm sure Colin's heard of prostitutes.”

“I meant that it sounds racist to say the cross-dressers come from Mexico. The universities are into political correctness these days, you know.”

“My mother once belonged to a church group that was trying to find new occupations for prostitutes,” said Lance. “You can tell from that that she's a good woman and would never—”

“I'm really sure, Lance, that nobody thinks Dimitra a murderer.” Harmony patted his arm. “I told Elena the first time I met Dimitra that your mother didn't have the right aura for murder.”

“You see auras?” asked Lance.

“How do they look?” asked Colin. Immediately he, Lance, and Harmony became involved in an aura discussion while Elena finished off her nachos and filched fajita meat off Colin's plate, along with a tasty fried green onion. She'd like to have taken his tortilla and added onions, salsa, beans, and guacamole. Earlier Colin had been taking separate samplings of each item with a plastic fork. He should have been mixing everything into the tortilla and rolling it. Maybe he was worried about getting more food on his sport coat. Suddenly Elena heard a sound that cut through the crowd noise on the plaza.

“I think they're coming,” she said. The aura discussion ended abruptly as the tap dancers erupted onto one of the streets edging the square. There were silken banners attached to poles carried by the dancers: NORTHEAST TAPPERS ASSOCIATION; TIPTAP CLUB. They weren't dancing in unison, so the sound was chaotic, like many snare drums, each going its own way. Elena watched as various dancers leapt out in front and did fancy steps while their cohorts cheered. A sort of contest, she thought.

“Look, there's the Socorro Heights group,” cried Harmony, standing up because other people had crowded in front of them. Lance helped Harmony onto the bench. In seconds they were all teetering on the wooden slats. Elena spotted five or six dancers who appeared to be over sixty-five.

“I didn't know they had a tap-dancing class at the center,” said Elena.

“Oh, yes,” said Harmony. “When you go on the twelve-to-eight shift next week, you can come with me mornings.”

“Good idea,” Elena agreed. She'd ask questions about the five murders, the bridge group, and T. Bob Tyler—but discreetly, under cover of spending time with her mother. Undercover at a senior citizens center—she bet that didn't happen too often.

“As soon as Concepcion told me about Leo's event, I told Mrs. Galindo. She's had her own tap-dancing school for the last ten years,” said Harmony. “She calls it Elder Terpsichoreans, but she donates her time to the center. She's sixty-nine.”

Elena watched Mrs. Galindo, attired in a red, white, and blue satin jogging suit with U.S.A. embroidered on the front. Twirling small American flags, she broke ahead of the procession, danced alone for about thirty seconds, then clicked her heels in the air on the left while crisscrossing the flags with her upper body leaning to the right.

The crowd roared appreciatively, and a young man standing in front of Elena shouted, “Viva, Abuelita!” As she picked out another strip of Colin's fajitas, Elena wondered whether Mrs. Galindo was really the young man's grandmother.

“Have you spotted your partner?” Colin asked.

Elena studied the oncoming phalanx of tap dancers. A young woman in a tutu was now at the point doing her solo. As the dancers turned to pass her vantage point on the bench, Elena said, “There he is.”

Leo was tapping along the edge of the group, keeping the dancers in order, doing some step in which his feet were twinkling while he flung his arms out periodically. He wore, of all things, a tuxedo, and carried a cane in one hand and his flashlight in the other. He did a sort of tap-dancing bow to various lady performers, top hat held over his heart, the cane now tucked under his arm.

Elena grinned. Gallant Leo! If Concepcion was somewhere in the crowd, watching, she just might give him a kick in the shins for his mobile flirting techniques. “That's him in the tuxedo,” Elena murmured to Colin.

“And who's that woman in the garish outfit that just grabbed him?” asked Colin.

Elena had seen it too. The woman had shiny black hair, blunt-cut at her shoulders, long bangs, heavy eye makeup, a short black leather skirt, and red knee-high boots with black mesh stockings. The stockings were dotted here and there with red rosebuds, and she wore a black satin blouse with a red rose at the low V-neck. Very exotic. She looked as if she should be holding a rose between her teeth as she gave Leo an unsubtle, come-hither look from under long, patently false eyelashes.

To the astonishment of both Elena and the watching crowd, Leo grabbed her arm and twisted it up behind her back. She shrieked. They were now close enough that Elena could hear Leo roaring angrily, “You're under arrest for offering to commit an unnatural sex act with a police officer.”

“You're a cop?” yelled the woman. “Is this a sting?”

Leo whipped his handcuffs out from under his cummerbund and cuffed her, bringing the whole tap-dancing procession to a halt. Camera units from three TV stations were whirring. A reporter from the Los Santos Times jogged over to Leo and shouted, “What's up?”

“Goddamn transvestite prostitutes,” Leo muttered.

“Can I quote you on that, sir? What's your name?” asked the reporter.

“Bug off!” said Leo and gave the transvestite's arm a yank. “Hey, Officer,” he yelled to a cop standing by his patrol car blocking off traffic from one of the streets that fed into the plaza.

The patrolman sauntered over. “What's up, mister? You making a citizen's arrest here?” He grinned.

Leo produced his detective's badge. “Take this prisoner over to Central and book her, or him, or whatever the hell it is. You better check the sex before you put it in a cell.”

“I'm not an it,” snapped the prostitute. “I've probably got a bigger dick than you, you asshole,” and he burst into a stream of vituperative Spanish.

Harmony jumped off her bench and said to Leo's prisoner, “I consider myself a fairly broad-minded woman, and I do consider prostitution a victimless crime, but there are children in this crowd, and I think you should watch your language.”

“Some victimless crime,” said Elena. “You can bet he/she's got AIDS.”

“I do not. I'll sue you for slandering me and causing irreparable damage to my source of income,” said the prisoner.

“O.K., dancers,” shouted Leo. “Once around the plaza.” The tap dancers, now looking confused, tapped away, the patrolman hustled Leo's prisoner across the street, and the newspapers interviewed Harmony. Elena didn't want to hear it. She shuddered to think of what

inappropriate thing her mother might say, like introducing her daughter as the partner of the officer who had stopped the parade by making an arrest.

“My husband is the sheriff in Rio Arriba County, New Mexico,” Harmony was saying, “where people, happily, seem to have less trouble with their sexual identities. I think the Los Santos police need to take a much more tolerant view of sexuality. This young man, for instance, was a murder suspect”—Lance looked horribly embarrassed as she pointed to him—”although he's a noted bicycle racer and poet. One has to suspect that he was harassed because he's gay.”

“Mom, we didn't harass him,” Elena muttered, tugging at her mother's elbow. “For God's sake, we escorted him up to Chimayo to the damn race.”

“Would you care to make a statement, ma'am?” a reporter from the Herald Post asked Elena. “What's your connection with this incident?”

Elena cast a look of frustrated appeal at Colin Stuart, who promptly and gallantly said, “I think we've enjoyed most of the entertainment available here. Let's go to the Border Folk Festival. Lance tells me there'll be jazz groups there that we wouldn't otherwise get a chance to hear.” He gathered his party together, cold-shouldering the reporter, and herded them off before Harmony could make any more inflammatory remarks about the Los Santos Police Department and Lance's gay-ness.

Saturday, October 9, 9:00 P.M.

“For Pete's sake, Mom,” Elena muttered once they'd climbed into Colin's Oldsmobile. “Do you have to keep criticizing the department?”

“Public scrutiny is what keeps public servants on their toes,” Harmony replied. “That was certainly a memorable finale to Tap Night, don't you think?”

“Stunning,” said Elena, giggling. Leo's picture would be in the paper, along with the transvestite he'd arrested. A memorable finale indeed. The whole city ought to turn up next year if Leo could get permission to hold Tap Night again. As Captain Beltran always said, an officer was never off duty. She wondered how he'd like the television coverage of Leo's particular off-duty police action.

They drove to the Chamizal National Memorial's Folk Festival, where tents and stages perched all over the grassy, almost treeless hills that surrounded the building. Lance and Colin accepted programs from a ranger and located the area where a jazz performance was to take place.

“This is a Boston group,” said Colin knowledgeably. “Very avant garde.”

Lance agreed. Elena groaned, but silently. She wasn't into avant garde music, things you couldn't sing along with.

“Oh, we must stop and hear these folk singers,” cried Harmony. “And just look. At nine-thirty there's a storyteller. Indian myths. I don't want to miss that.”

Lance and Colin looked unhappy. They had come for the jazz, and Harmony's choices overlapped theirs. “If you wouldn't mind,” said Colin, “perhaps we could all separate, hear our choices, and meet back at—how about the Lone Star stand at ten o'clock?”

Some date, thought Elena and trailed off with her mother. Evidently Colin Stuart found Lance a more interesting companion than her. Or maybe he was just a music fanatic. Not that she cared; Colin was nice, but she didn't feel any overwhelming attraction to him.

“You really ought to talk to your date more, Elena,” said Harmony.

“It was your idea to listen to stuff he didn't want to hear.”

“Well, I didn't mean for you to come along with me.”

“I think he did.” They took folding chairs in a tent where a bluegrass singer was plunking on a banjo while another strummed a guitar and a third played a fiddle, elbows flying. They all sang in nasal tones, but Elena agreed with her mother; she did like folk music—all those maidens pining for dead lovers. An hour and a half later, having crossed paths on the grass several times, the foursome met at the beer stand and walked to Colin's car, a long hike away in the Bowie High School parking lot.

Colin dropped Lance off first, then drove to Elena's house where he asked if she'd like to go out for a drink. Elena was surprised. At first, when he suggested that she bring her mother along, she thought he had the hots for Harmony. Then she thought, during the evening, that he was basically indifferent to both Portillo women. Now it occurred to her that he intended to ask her out again. Did she want to go? All she had to do was say no to the drink, and that would take care of it. Still, they hadn't had that much time to talk, and Sarah was hoping that they'd be friends. “Sure,” she said.

“Goodnight, children. Have a good time,” said Harmony when Colin had unlocked the door for her.

Children? Harmony was closer in age to Colin Stuart than Elena was. They drove off toward the Camino Real bar downtown.

“I wanted to talk to you privately,” said Colin once they were sitting in comfy leather chairs under the Tiffany dome and drinking Bailey's Irish Cream.

“Uh-huh.” Elena took a handful of tidbits from the dish on the table.

“My guess is that you're not particularly interested in me,” said Colin.

Now what was she supposed to say to that?

“The truth is, I was married for a long time to a woman who, unfortunately, decided to divorce me several years ago.”

Oh lord, thought Elena, another unhappy divorced man about to tell her his problems.

“Looking back, I have to admit,” said Colin, “that the marriage was never very successful. There just wasn't any—I don't know—spark between us. We had a lot in common professionally—my wife was an engineer too—but personally—”

He shrugged.

“That's too bad,” said Elena, but none of my business, she added silently.

“And strangely enough, it was pretty much the same with Sarah and me. You know we dated for several months.”

Elena nodded. Sarah had noticed the same thing. No chemistry. Now what's he going to say: “I've finally developed a great lust, and you're its object? Let's hop into bed together.”

“And I think I've finally figured out why my relationships with women have been so unsatisfying.”

“Oh?” She crunched another tidbit.

“Yes, I think all these years I've been repressing a homosexual proclivity.”

Elena blinked. Now, that had to be a new topic of conversation on a date. A first for her, at any rate.

“I find myself—well—amazingly attracted to Lance. And the feeling seems to be mutual.”

“I see.” Elena had to suppress a giggle. Laughter would not be politically correct under these circumstances. “Well, I—ah—wish you both the best.”

“That's very kind of you,” said Colin. “I'm sure many women would be highly offended to hear my explanation of why I wasn't going to ask them out again. And it's certainly not that I didn't enjoy your company this evening.”

What company? thought Elena. He'd spent his time with Lance. “Well, that's great. You have a lot in common—bicycle racing, jazz.”

“Yes, we do.” Colin beamed at her.

“Good luck.” Elena didn't know what else to say.

“Thank you. Would you like another drink?” Colin now looked quite cheerful.

Elena wondered whether he was a virgin—homosexually speaking. Not that it was any of her business. “No thanks,” she said. If he took her home right now, he'd have time to go over and visit Lance. They left the bar, and she bade him goodnight twenty minutes later.

She wondered whether he expected her to pass the big news on to Sarah. What a time to change your sexual orientation, Elena thought wryly. Right in the middle of the AIDS epidemic. Although she remembered Lance telling Bayard Sims's wife that he didn't have AIDS. Of course, probably you couldn't tell that from one year to the next unless you were into chastity.

Her mother had already gone to bed, so Elena went into the kitchen and fixed herself a cup of herb tea, sitting down to think about the visit she was going to make Monday to the Socorro Heights Senior Citizens Center. She had to do it without spooking the serial killer or killers.

What a strange case! What a strange evening! She washed out her cup and went to bed. She'd spend Sunday digging irrigation ditches. You always knew where you were with a shovel in your hand.