The 27-Ingredient Chili Con Carne Murders: A Eugenia Potter Mystery Page 14

  Mrs. Potter watched Ken riding ever closer to them, and she recalled other conversations with Ricardo.

  “You spoil him,” Mrs. Potter had chided her manager, and suspected his wife scolded him also. “You let him come and go as he pleases, you let him off to fulfill his other responsibilities, while you take up the slack here—which you’re getting too old to do, compadre—and now he thinks he can get away with murder.”

  “I don’t want to hold a young man down,” was Ricardo’s defense, “but all right, if he gets too busy with his other jobs, I’ll tell him he’ll have to choose, either cut back on his outside employment or quit his job here. I’m not about to hire a second man to help do the job that one man ought to be doing for me.” Having Linda on the ranch eased the strain; she was an excellent cowhand and slipped easily into the holes Bandy and Ken left in the operation. Mrs. Potter didn’t think that an ambitious young man like Ken Ryerson would be satisfied to continue as everybody’s hired hand for the rest of his life. Not like Bandy.

  The horseman was approaching slowly, his horse picking his way carefully. When they drew nearer, Mrs. Potter was the first to see they were carrying a burden, one that was wrapped in black tarpaulin and slung lengthwise across Palo Alto’s wide rump.

  “Oh, no,” she breathed, “no, please.”

  Jed reached out his hand to her, and she grabbed it.

  CHAPTER 16

  Mrs. Potter got out of her car on wobbly knees, and let Jed lead her by the hand along a narrow path through the cactus and boulders to meet the rider and his burden.

  Ken Ryerson pulled his horse to a halt in front of them, without even a curious glance at the stranger. “I found him a couple hundred yards down the canyon.”

  Mrs. Potter gently freed her hand. She managed to say, “What about Linda?”

  Ken shook his head.

  “Their horses?”

  Again, he shook his head.

  Mrs. Potter raised her right arm and pointed midway up the slope of El Bizcocho. The two men turned their heads to look at the birds she had noticed before. They were still swooping and soaring. Ken nodded again as he acknowledged what they recognized: the ugly, enormous black creatures were vultures.

  “I’ll ride up there and take a look, but I’ll have to leave his body here.”

  Finally, he glanced, incuriously, dully, at the man who stood just behind Mrs. Potter, and she managed to introduce them, though her throat was swollen with grief. Jed moved quickly to help Ken lower Ricardo’s body from the back of Palo Alto onto the ground.

  “How did he die?” Mrs. Potter wiped her cheeks with the backs of her hands, but tears kept falling, as if she had no control over them.

  Ken looked up at her and shrugged. “Dunno. He’s pretty beat up from the fall or the flood carrying him down the valley. Hard to tell what got him.” He was soon back atop his horse, and heading toward the lower slopes of El Bizcocho.

  Mrs. Potter and Jed stood guard over the body on the ground, both of them silent except for the sound of her weeping. She couldn’t bear the thought of leaving Ricardo’s body alone under its tarp, looking so forsaken, like something of no value tossed aside by people who didn’t care. Feeling kin to women through the ages, Mrs. Potter sensed that somebody needed to stand near the body, to guard it, to show some respect for the remains of a great man. Jed waited with her, his neck craned, too, as they watched Ken Ryerson wind up the steep and narrow paths of El Bizcocho.

  She felt Jed’s hand touch her shoulder.

  “Andy, I’m so very sorry.”

  Her own hand went up to press his and she turned her face gratefully up to his, but didn’t speak, as she knew she couldn’t yet, without breaking down in tears.

  Jed put an arm around her, and she leaned into him.

  Ken was out of their sight by the time he reached the vicinity where the vultures circled, but they heard his rifle shot when he scattered the birds, and they saw the vultures lift off and fly away with their great wings flapping, their voices screaming furious protests at being interrupted at their feast.

  “Patches is up there,” Ken informed them when he pulled his horse up in front of them again. Mrs. Potter’s knees buckled and Jed used both of his hands to steady her. She’d been so afraid Ken was going to find Linda’s body. Palo Alto moved restlessly, seeming to sense his rider’s emotions. “No sign of Linda or Taco. I didn’t ride on up, but I took a good look. From the way the rocks are scattered and some cactus are broken, I’d say Patches did a houlihan up there.”

  “A houlihan?” Jed murmured.

  Mrs. Potter found her voice, although it sounded strange to her, weak and far away. “Ranch lingo, Jed, for a fit of bucking. Can we get Patches down from there, Ken?”

  “Nope,” was the answer, uttered with an air of unarguable finality. “Not worth riskin’ another man’s life over. The buzzards’ll be back. The earth’ll clean him.”

  The earth will clean him.…

  The homely phrase echoed in Mrs. Potter’s heart.

  She felt an eerie calm descending on her. Her tears ceased as silently and as abruptly as they’d started. There were things she had to do now. Things they all had to do. Ken must ride on to headquarters with the body. She must return Jed to her own home, and encourage him to drive back to the C Lazy U. She herself must then drive down the hill to inform Juanita and the Ortega children. The sheriff must be called, and she must inform the funeral home that she wished to pay for all arrangements.

  “I think you ought to bring the search party over here,” she said.

  Ken handed the reins of his horse to Mrs. Potter, who took them in her right hand while she began to stroke Palo Alto’s soft nose with her left. Ken climbed down from his horse and then loosened his rifle from its moorings behind his saddle. He cocked the rifle back, and propped the butt of it against his right leg. “I gotta tell you, Mrs. Potter, this don’t make no sense. If Ricardo got bucked and killed, that’s one thing. But that don’t answer where Linda is.” He walked several yards away from them and they watched him point the rifle high into the air.

  At the first shot, Jed put his arm around Mrs. Potter’s shoulders. When the second shot echoed through the canyon, Jed tightened his grip and she leaned into his side again. Ken’s horse, superbly trained, didn’t do anything more than flinch and whinny softly, though Mrs. Potter was only loosely holding his reins. The sound of the shot was still whining in their ears as Ken walked back. Jed helped him lift Ricardo’s body back onto the horse and tie it securely behind after it was decided that that would be better than transferring his body to the car. While the men accomplished that, Mrs. Potter trudged back to her car. She got in on the driver’s side again, put her hands on the wheel and lowered her forehead onto them.

  But when Jed climbed in on the passenger’s side again, her eyes were dry and clear and determined as she looked over at him.

  “I’m awfully glad you’re here, Jed.”

  He reached over and gave her hand a quick, comforting squeeze.

  “There are things I have to tell somebody,” she said.

  “Tell me, Andy.”

  She swallowed. “I think Ricardo was murdered, Jed.”

  CHAPTER 17

  Jed looked shocked, but that didn’t stop her.

  She told him about Ricardo calling her in Maine and asking her to come home two weeks early. She told him about Ricardo calling the Amorys, Steinbachs, McHenrys, Charlie Watt, and Che Thomas. And how Ricardo made those calls from her house instead of his own, in her office, at her desk, with her phone, and how he used one of her yellow notepads to list them. And about the notation that led her to believe he had an appointment to keep at El Bizcocho at five o’clock Sunday morning. And how he must have died sometime between then and Sunday night, because if he got bucked on El Bizcocho it was Sunday night’s rain that washed him down the canyon. And how Linda would never have abandoned her grandfather unless something awful had happened to her as well. And how secretive he’d bee
n, not even confiding in his wife, and about how he had leased the services of an aerial photography company. Telling it all to Jed was almost as helpful as summarizing it on one of her yellow pads. He listened intently, without question or comment, until she wound down. Then he simply asked, “What’s your conclusion?”

  “I think it was one of those people on his list. I believe he was going to meet one of them yesterday morning. Why there, and why five o’clock in the morning, I don’t know.”

  “Why, Andy? Why would one of them kill him?”

  She wondered if Jed thought she was crazy, or hysterical.

  But that didn’t stop her either.

  “I think Ricardo suspected one of them of something, Jed, or he was a threat to one of them in some important way.” She began to recite a litany that felt like a betrayal of her friends and neighbors. “There’s Walt and Kathy Amory, for instance, who want to refinance their ranch through a bank in Nogales where Ricardo was chairman of the board, only they weren’t going to get the loan because he was going to make sure the bank turned them down.”

  “So with him … gone …” Jed said carefully, “they’ll get the money?”

  “Possibly. I don’t know. But that’s not all. Kathy Amory is rumored to be having an affair with Gallway Steinbach, and I know that Ricardo made no secret of his disapproval of that relationship.”

  “But where’s the motive there for any of them, Andy?”

  “I don’t know that either, I’m just throwing it out as one of the convolutions of the situation, Jed.”

  “Yes, I see, go on.”

  She glanced at him as she directed the car toward home. “Then we have your McHenrys.”

  “Not mine, Andy, although I may be theirs before the week is out.”

  “You mean they want to buy your company, it’s that kind of merger?”

  He nodded. “What’s their motive?”

  “Oh, probably none at all! I feel bad even suggesting the possibility. But, you see—oh, Lord, I wasn’t going to mention this!—Marj and Rey are rather mysterious, even sinister figures here in the valley. They sit up there on the side of their mountain, surrounded by bodyguards and electric fences, and nobody knows why, Jed.” She waited, pointedly, for him to offer some bit of inside information that might ease her suspicions. But when she looked over at him again, she saw that he had turned his face to the window and seemed only to be staring at the scenery. Oh, Jed, she thought, are you part of their secrecy, do you know something you’re not telling me? Feeling suddenly alone and terribly sad, she couldn’t speak until she forced herself to continue, and her voice quavered as though she might lose control of it at any second.

  “I feel so bad saying anything against Che or Charlie, but there is the suggestion that Che appears to have more wealth than a dude ranch could produce. I suppose it’s possible that Ricardo knew something incriminating about her source of income.…”

  He had turned around to face her again once she got the conversation off the McHenrys. “Any idea what that might be?”

  “None. And Charlie, well, there’s always been his opposition to Ricardo helping shelter Mexicans who came over the border. Charlie would probably say that if anybody killed Ricardo, it was one of the illegals.”

  “Why would this Charlie person have any motive to kill him?”

  “Again, I don’t know. It’s only another point of contention, if you will, and another person with whom Ricardo crossed swords. It just seems more than merely coincidental that that’s true of nearly every person on his calling list, and that he was going to meet one of them the morning of the day he died, or at least, I think he was.”

  “But Andy, he got bucked off his horse. Not shot, not stabbed, not beaten up—”

  “We don’t know that, Jed.”

  He looked startled. “I guess we don’t. Is that everybody who was on his list?”

  “His wife, Juanita, but he had crossed her out, so I think we can too. And Ken, the cowboy you just met, and Bandy Esposito, who’s another of our hands and who’s been on this ranch longer than I have.”

  “Their motives?”

  “Ken’s very ambitious. And now the obvious thing for me to do is to offer Ricardo’s job to him.” Mrs. Potter couldn’t go on for a few moments. She couldn’t get out the words to tell Jed that Ken had another possible motive, too, which was the probability of Ricardo’s opposition to his engagement to Linda. “Bandy,” she said, after she had dabbed at her eyes and cleared her throat, “may be afraid that Ricardo was going to pension him off. Bandy is an old man who doesn’t have any life but”—with her left hand, she gestured as though to encompass all that lay outside the vehicle—“this life.”

  “But what about the girl? If Ricardo was killed, do you think she’s been kidnapped?”

  It sounded so melodramatic, stated boldly like that, that Mrs. Potter felt almost embarrassed even to entertain these terrible thoughts. But she plunged on, trusting her instincts. “I have no idea about that, Jed, but I would suspect not, or we’d have heard from the kidnappers by now. No, I’m afraid that she’s dead, too, and we’ll find her body soon.”

  “Will anybody else think as you do?”

  “If it turns out he was shot they will, although even then they may think it was hunters, and an accident. In any case, it may be better if most people don’t think as I do.”

  “Yes, I see what you mean.”

  “You do?” She looked at him and discovered that he wasn’t staring at her as if he thought she ought to be locked up. His gaze was full of intensity, yes, but his thoughts seemed to be right with her, keeping pace with her, understanding her. She began to feel less alone. “Really?”

  “Absolutely, so the killer will think he … or she … got away with it. We’ll have to talk to the sheriff, though, won’t we? Or the highway patrol, or whatever it is you have around here?”

  Mrs. Potter couldn’t help but notice how easily he had slid into the plural “We’ll have to … won’t we?” and she didn’t resist the pleasure of it. She needed a friend at this moment, and Jed was being a wonderful one indeed, sympathetic, attentive, helpful. The black hole inside her shrank back down to a size only big enough to contain her grief over Ricardo and her fear for Linda. Fate was such a funny thing. So odd for Jed to come along again, after forty years, right at this strange and terrible time; and how right for him to come along again, after forty years, at this time.…

  “Yes,” she agreed, and hoped she didn’t place any emphasis on her next word, “we will. Jed, do you mind if I drop you off at my house? You can drive back to Che’s place, can’t you?”

  “I’ll wait at your house, if you don’t mind.”

  She glanced at him. “Wait?”

  “For you. You have to tell Ricardo’s wife, don’t you?”

  She nodded, again amazed at his easy understanding. Jed seemed to know what she was going to say, what she was going to do, before she said it or did it.

  “And I can’t very well go with you,” he continued. “They don’t know me. I’d be an awful intrusion on their privacy. But I don’t want to leave you alone, either, Andy. So I’ll wait for you at your house, if that’s all right. They’re not the only ones who’ll need the support of their friends today.” He reached over to touch her hand again, only this time she reached out her own hand and grasped his. They clung together for a moment, before she withdrew her hand in order to shift gears.

  Mrs. Potter wanted to say thank you, but once again she couldn’t speak for fear of all the tears that might pour out with the words. She had a feeling, however, that she didn’t need to say it. Jed knew. She managed to be practical instead. “Good. Perhaps you’d like to examine that list of Ricardo’s while I’m gone. It’s on a yellow pad on top of my desk, in that little study I showed you, to the left, off the front hall. There’s still coffee in the pot, Jed.” She hesitated. Now here came a test of a man’s good intentions: “And if you wouldn’t mind, I’d appreciate it if you would check th
e chili pots. Give them a stir, make sure the burners aren’t too hot, I don’t want it to stick and burn.”

  His smile was quick and warm. “I think I can do that.”

  She let him out at her front door, told him where to locate the “secret” key, and then she bravely drove on down the hill to the Ortegas’.

  The search for Linda “Ortega” Scarritt continued all the rest of that Monday. Mrs. Potter stayed for hours with the grieving Ortega family while Ricardo’s body was carried away to be examined by police and doctors. “It looks as if he was bucked,” Mrs. Potter carefully, gently, informed Juanita. “It appears that Patches fell halfway down El Bizcocho and that Ricardo fell on to the bottom and then the flash floods carried his body down the arroyo.”

  Once, having stepped outside the house to escape the smoke from the cigarettes of visitors, Mrs. Potter overheard Sheriff Ben Lightfeather say to Ken Ryerson: “Dammit, Ken, I wish you’d left him where you found him, it’s against all procedure to move a body like that. You should have left him for us to examine on the site.” And she heard Ken’s reply: “There wouldn’t have been anything left of him if I had, Ben. You saw him. Something’d already been at him, coyotes, probably.”

  She knew then why Ken had refused to allow anyone—even Juanita, who had demanded and pleaded before she was led back into her house by her daughters—to remove the tarp from around Ricardo’s body until the sheriff arrived and took over.

  The two men didn’t appear to know how close behind them she stood.

  “Well, I don’t think we’re going to find a bullet in him,” the sheriff said. “The man died falling down that mountain. But we better get somebody out to examine that damned horse, see if there’s a bullet in him. Some blind hunter probably took the horse for a deer. This search for the girl has got to get serious now. I’ll get you all the assistance I can, Ken. But my personal opinion,” the sheriff added, “is that you’ll find her body washed downstream too.”