The Corpse with the Emerald Thumb Read online

  I have no idea what came over me. Maybe it was the stress of the day, maybe it was the tequila, but I could feel myself fill up with tears. Not now, Cait! “It’s because of my mum. Her wedding bouquet was arranged by a woman who trained under Constance Spry herself, at her Flower School in London, England. The woman who made my mum’s bouquet, back in the 1950s, was known throughout South Wales, and my mum and dad had to drive into the wilds of the Welsh Valleys to collect the bouquet the day before their wedding. It was quite an undertaking, they said.”

  “They told you this?” Al seemed intrigued.

  I sighed. “Yes. My mum spoke of it often. They didn’t have much when they married—nothing, in fact, especially by today’s standards. But that was one thing she spent money on. I remember she had a pressed rosebud from her wedding bouquet that she would show me when I was a child.”

  “Are your parents . . . passed?” asked Al awkwardly.

  I smiled. “Yes, they are. They died quite a few years ago. A stupid, tragic accident. They were driving . . . oh, it doesn’t matter where they were going. All that matters is that I didn’t have a chance to say goodbye . . .”

  “I know how that feels,” said Al with obvious emotion. It seemed that my very personal revelations were allowing him to open up to me. Of course!

  “You and Margarita. You had feelings for her?” I knew the answer before I asked the question.

  “She was a very private person, as I have said. She didn’t have much room in her life for personal relationships, but I enjoyed her company, when I was able to share it. I had . . . maybe ‘hope’ is too strong a word, but I hoped for hope. Do you understand?”

  Al looked very vulnerable at that moment. His anger upon finding Bud kneeling over Margarita’s dead body made more sense. In fact, considering that he believed Bud to be the man who killed the woman for whom he clearly felt affection, Al had behaved in a very honorable manner toward Bud, clothing and feeding him in the jail as he had.

  “I’m sorry, Al. Loss is very difficult, and I know for a fact that there’s nothing I can say right now to help you deal with it. But I can try to help you work through your emotions by being proactive, and trying to solve this mystery.”

  “Yes,” said Al gently. “It will help me if I can find out who he is, and understand why he did this.”

  We were both silent for a moment. I didn’t look at Al—he deserved a little privacy. Instead, I took in all that I could about Margarita’s store. There was literally nowhere for anyone to hide. There was no way in or out, except by the front door. So how on earth had someone managed to get into the store, kill her, and get out again, unseen, within a three minute window, when there were two cops, and at least two other people, in the street outside the door? It was impossible!

  I noted that Margarita must have had a lot of money tied up in stock: the most valuable, and delicate, blooms were in the refrigerated unit at the back of the store. I noted the still-plump heads of the almost two dozen red and dozen yellow roses. Then I noticed something glinting between the dark green leaves.

  “What’s that?” I said, pointing at the shiny object and bobbing my head about to try to make it out.

  Al drew himself from his reverie and stepped forward. He slid open the floor-to-ceiling door of the refrigerated unit and moved one of the buckets of roses. There was a chrome handle in the back wall. He pulled it, and the wall swung out. A door! Yay!

  “It’s a door!” I tried to sound surprised rather than jubilant.

  Al stepped into the refrigerator, then right out through the narrow opening. It was tight, but it was clearly big enough for most people to fit through. Once he’d stepped out over the foot-high lip, he looked around. “It’s the lane. Her van is here. I guess this is where she loaded in her chilled stock,” he said. “I had no idea. I’ve driven along the lane many times, and it’s quite obvious that the spa, the bodega, and the restaurant all have rear entrances that lead out onto it, but I wasn’t aware that this existed. Not that it matters except . . .” he stepped back into the refrigerator, shut the door, then joined me in the store again, sliding the glass door shut, “that it means the murderer didn’t know about the way out.” He smiled. “That’s useful to know, right?”

  “I certainly think we’ve learned something very useful in the past few moments,” I replied truthfully, though, for me, the discovery of a way to access the crime scene that avoided the street meant I now had a way forward. I had to stop myself from getting overexcited. I took a deep breath, then one last long look around. I like gardens, but I’m not a big fan of cut flowers. The idea that Bud was coming to this store to buy flowers for me meant a great deal. It’s the idea of flowers that’s lovely, rather than having them. I hate to think of them dying, little by little, in the vase. As I looked about, I saw death all around me. There must have been hundreds and hundreds of dollars’ worth of flowers, all about to wilt, then rot. What a shame. Like Margarita herself. A terrible waste.

  As though he’d picked up on my feelings, Al said, “If you’re done, let’s go. I’d like to find out what it was that Margarita said to Callie. It might be nothing, but it could be something.”

  “Hoping for hope?” I said.

  He nodded. “We can at least do that,” he replied, and we left the store as we’d found it, full of death, decay, and silence.

  Too Late

  AL PARKED THE CAR AT the open back door of Amigos del Tequila. The kitchen was deserted, and there were no aromas of food—which was just as well because I was still feeling quite full.

  “Hello?” called Al.

  Footsteps descended the staircase in the corner of the kitchen, and Tony appeared, shh-ing us as he did so. “She’s asleep.” He nodded toward the apartment upstairs. “Let’s go into the bar,” he added, heading off through the swinging doors. We followed. Tony flicked switches, and the lighting behind the rows of bottles that stood in front of the mirrored bar came on. “Drink?” he asked us. “I’m having one, so, please, let me get one for you guys too.”

  “Pacifico,” said Al and I in unison. We all smiled.

  As Tony poured the beers, I could see that he seemed to have aged since I’d met him earlier in the day. Shock will do that.

  “How is your wife?” I asked.

  Tony smiled. “She’s fine, physically. They checked her out at the roadside, but she wouldn’t let them take her to the clinic. She hasn’t got a scratch on her, which is a miracle, but mentally, she’s a mess. She said she’d been crying as she was driving and just misjudged things a bit. She came off the road and crunched the car up. She called me when it happened and I just ran out of the place. I don’t even remember driving there. I saw her on the far side of the highway, but I had to pass her, because of the median, then drive back again. It was awful. I was so close to her, and yet she was out of reach.” I know that feeling.

  “You said she wanted to speak to me?” asked Al.

  “Yes. When we got back here, everyone was sitting around eating. Dean told me that, in my absence, they’d raided the kitchen and decided to eat. Which was fine, of course. But then Callie started crying all over again. I guess she felt relieved to be home at last, but she started blubbing that Margarita had told her something, and she needed to speak to you. Ada Taylor managed to calm her, and she and Jean took her upstairs. Dorothea went off to her house and came back with some sleeping pills. I wasn’t very keen on Callie taking them, but Dorothea insisted. She can be very . . . overwhelming. To be fair, I think she means well, but you’d think she’d have learned her lesson by now. I heard that she talked a lot of her friends who shared the gated community where she lived in Florida into investing with some guy she knew. Everybody lost everything. So she sold up, moved all the way over here, and sunk every cent she had into this place. But still she tries to bend everyone to her will. Callie finally agreed that taking something would help her relax, and she’s in a very deep sleep now, which I’m sure is a good thing. Would you mind dropping by in the
morning, Al? I’ve got to go to the market, and I thought I’d go visit Callie’s car and give it a good looking over. I got them to tow it into Bucerias. I think it might be a lost cause. It was old and battered anyway. I don’t know what we’ll do without it. The insurance won’t buy us a replacement. Oh well, Callie’s safe. That’s all that matters.”

  “I’m glad she’s okay,” said Al, draining his bottle.

  “Another?” asked Tony. Al nodded; I declined. I glanced at my watch. Almost midnight. That meant I’d already had a twenty-hour day, and I could feel myself flagging. It must have shown on my face as I drained my beer. Rutilio’s grill had made me thirsty.

  “How about I walk Cait to Casa LaLa, then come back and have that beer with you, Tony? You okay with that?”

  “Sure, go ahead. I’m not going anywhere, and I need to wind down before I hit the sack.” He, too, looked at his watch, then added, “I’ve gotta be out of here at 6:30, but I’ve got an hour in me yet.”

  I didn’t want to impose. “I’m sure I can remember the way; I can get there on my own, Al. You stay here. Tony, when we were in your kitchen earlier today, there were two pots full of boiling water and, I think, pepper. Why was that?” I hoped to solve at least one of the day’s mysteries.

  Tony smiled. “Don’t laugh—it’s a thing I do.” He looked embarrassed. “I’m not really a superstitious person, not in the way that some of the older generation can be around here. The things they get up to with their ancient sayings, habits, and beliefs. They seem to mix it in with Catholicism and it’s all accepted by the church. But I do have a few little things that I like to do, and one of them is to season new pots with white pepper. A Mexican guy I worked with in a kitchen years ago said it makes the pot ‘sweet’; in other words, everything it cooks will taste the best it can. You don’t want to get too near the pots when they’re boiling, though, ’cause the pepper in the steam can really do some damage.”

  So that was it. Instead of explaining that I’d learned that lesson for myself, I asked, “Do you have a flashlight I could borrow to help me on the track back to Casa LaLa?”

  Tony grinned. “I have a supply out back. Just a sec,” he said, leaving Al and me alone for a moment.

  “Could I meet you here in the morning, to find out what Margarita told Callie?” I asked. I was desperate to know.

  Al gave it some thought. When Tony reappeared, handing me a heavy flashlight, Al asked him if it was alright.

  “I don’t see why not. I suggest you give her a call around eight, or nine, and check? She should be awake by then, so if she’s okay with it, you guys can come over to talk to her.”

  Al and I nodded our agreement. We all said goodnight, and I made my way out into the night.

  Everything looks different by flashlight, so it took me about fifteen minutes to get back to Henry’s place. I got inside, turned off, then reset the alarm, and headed straight for the washroom. The bed looked very appealing as I changed, but I ignored the temptation to just slip between the sheets and sleep. I picked up the pad of paper I’d made notes on earlier in the day and curled up on the sofa. It was comfy. Too comfy. I got up, canceled the alarm again, and pulled open the doors to the patio and pool. I managed to find a dimmer switch for the lights and set them at just the right level to be able to sit and write. The metal chair wasn’t as comfortable as the sofa, but I needed to be alert—as alert as I could be. Come on, Cait—Bud needs you!

  I’m good with lists. They help me organize my thoughts. So that’s how I began. Having established that there was a rear entrance to Margarita’s store, I decided to begin with a list of those I believed had the opportunity to gain access to the flower shop undetected, in the few minutes before Bud had entered it.

  SUSPECTS WITH OPPORTUNITY

  Unknown persons: killer MUST have been on scene in the three/five minutes around time Bud entered flower shop, so MUST have been visible to me, or hidden from sight in roaring blue truck. Stick with the people I know were there.

  Ada and Dorothea: both were at the spa, but not in sight of each other. Spa has back door onto lane. Time and opportunity to change blood-spattered clothes inside the spa before they entered the street. (Note: Door from the refrigerated unit to the lane would be a very tight squeeze for Dorothea. Possible?)

  Dean and Jean: both appeared after the crime scene was discovered. Where had they been? Arrived from opposite ends of the building at different times. Had they been together, or not? Where would they have changed their clothes? FIND OUT!

  Rutilio: was in the lane behind the crime scene around the time of the crime. (Note: Did he see anyone in the lane at the time? Did Al even ask this? CHECK!) He could have changed his clothes inside the restaurant kitchen.

  “Truck driver”: the driver of the blue pickup truck that sped away just as Bud was discovered could have been Tony, Callie, Juan, or Greg. (Ada said Greg was in PV, might not have been.) Any one of these would have had the chance to clean themselves up before they were in public view. Also could have been total stranger in truck.

  OTHERS

  Bob and Maria: in the bodega at the time of the murder.

  I paused. I questioned my assumption. All I knew for sure was that both Bob and Maria had been in the bodega when Al and Miguel had entered. I didn’t know that they had both been there when Bud was buying our supplies. Either one of them could be providing an alibi for the other. I put a question mark beside their names. They had told me that Margarita was not the good person Al had thought her to be. Did their dislike of her run so deep that they might have wanted her dead? Had she “said something she was not saying” to them? Did they, or one of them, have something to hide that Margarita had found out about? Was there somewhere inside the bodega where they’d have had the opportunity to change out of blood-stained clothing before Al and Miguel saw them?

  Serena (the Screamer) and Frank Taylor: with each other in the street at the time.

  Al and Miguel: with each other at the time.

  Okay, that was opportunity sorted, and the field was narrowed a little. Now, what about motives for those with the opportunity?

  MOTIVES

  Bob and Maria: disliked Margarita’s lack of religious devotion, lack of a family life. They might have had secrets she knew about.

  Juan: probably inherits his daughter’s land. He and his daughter were already estranged. At loggerheads over his roles and responsibilities. LAND. WATER.

  Greg: what did Margarita mean when she said to him that he knew the value of a “reliable, good-quality supply?”

  Dorothea: what did Margarita mean when she mentioned “local milk from local cows” to her? Why did Dorothea lie about the time the crime took place?

  Ada, Dean, Jean, Tony, Callie, Rutilio: any one of them might have a secret that Margarita had found out about, maybe because of her photography, and she might have obliquely mentioned her knowledge to them. This applies to possible outsiders, too.

  Clearly I had more work to do in this area. Finally I addressed the question of the way in which Margarita had been killed. She was a small woman, but probably strong. That accepted, any one of my possible suspects could have slit her throat from behind, when she wasn’t expecting it.

  But who would?

  It was such a violent way to kill someone that it suggested the hand of a man, rather than that of a woman. That didn’t rule out a woman as her killer—the right woman, with the right motivation, could do it. Easily. It is a method that requires surprisingly little force, just accuracy and determination. So it didn’t eliminate anyone. The knife was found at the scene, but, because of the presumption of Bud’s guilt, Al wasn’t going to follow that as a line of inquiry. Even if it was plastered with the killer’s fingerprints, that wouldn’t be discovered until long after Bud had been transferred to a jail in Guadalajara full of vengeful drug dealers. Too late to save him, in other words. Without having seen it, I had to assume there was nothing particularly unusual about the knife itself or Al would have men
tioned it. Anyone can get hold of a knife, and it’s easy enough to conceal one in a pocket or a purse. I paused again and remembered I had two chefs in the frame. Chefs work at knife skills and are possibly less squeamish than others when it comes to slicing into flesh. Maybe the weapon pointed to Tony or Rutilio. Or Callie, who helped her husband in Amigos del Tequila’s kitchen, as well as doing people’s accounts. Ada was the daughter of a butcher. Juan worked with blades in the fields all day. And maybe Jean’s liking for tae kwon do suggested a violent streak. Dean might have retired from a boring government job, but in his spare time, he might be an avid hunter or fisherman, or he might pursue any number of hobbies that would allow him to sublimate anger, while developing good knife skills.

  I stood up, stretched my neck, and looked at my watch. It was one in the morning. I was exhausted and I was aware that I wasn’t thinking as clearly as I might. I pushed the glass doors closed, locked them, and headed for the bed. I could do a better job for Bud if I slept. I just hoped he was managing to get some rest himself.

  Thinking of Bud made me think of Jack. I sat up with a start: who was Jack’s contact? I hadn’t given that any thought. Who could be the “operative” with “good cover” that Jack had referred to? Someone I’d met already, or someone completely unknown to me? Was it important that I worked that out as well? Another thought occurred to me. Why on earth would there be an operative of any sort in the area? My mind was racing—in circles, as it turned out. Cait—rest!

  As I lay there on my back, looking at the inside of my eyelids, I felt hot tears start to trickle toward my ears. For the first time since I’d dragged myself out of my own bed in my little house on Burnaby Mountain back in beautiful British Columbia at 4:00 AM that morning, I felt as though I was living in the real world. It had taken that many hours of seeming unreality for me to get here: the worst possible place.