The Pot Thief Who Studied Pythagoras (19 page)

“Even when they renege?”

He thought about it for a moment. “Maybe he’ll come around and do the right thing.”

Wilkes and I chatted a while longer, and after he left, I endorsed the twelve-thousand dollar check to the IRS and mailed it to them. It didn’t cover my tax bill, but it whittled it down considerably. What really galled me, though, was having to put a stamp on it. I know it’s only forty-two cents, but aren’t the IRS and the Postal Service part of the same government? When you’re sending them twelve thousand dollars, the least they could do is pay the postage.

After I got over my petty pique, I noticed the laptop under my counter. The camera was still in my kitchen, so the most recent picture on the computer was of Doak coming in. I had gone out and in the door the camera was watching to do things like empty the trash, but of course I had removed the remote and plug thing to my bedroom, so those trips had not been captured for posterity. But before Doak’s visit, I’d had two customers that afternoon while the camera was still watching the front door, and I decided to take a look at them. When you have as few as I do, you cherish each one.

I powered up the computer. That’s what Tristan tells me we say these days instead of ‘turned it on’. I double clicked the door icon and got the list of times. I clicked on the most recent one and saw Doak again. Then I clicked back and saw the second customer leaving, the second customer entering, the first customer leaving, and the first customer coming in. I may have been distracted at the time, but I did recognize both their faces in their coming-in shots. If they came back, maybe I could sell them something.

On the list of times, I noticed one that read 03:35. The list uses military time, so I knew it was three thirty five in the morning, and I also knew it was on the same day the two customers had come in and Doak had kept his late night rendezvous with me.

I also knew it was the second time in two weeks I’d had a late-night prowler. At least this time I would have a picture of the skulker. I clicked on that time and saw in my doorway none other than agent Guvelly.

39

It was just past two in the afternoon, but I locked up the shop anyway. There was a chill wind, so I put on a red sweatshirt with ‘Lobos’ in silver across the front. I’m not a fan of my alma mater’s sports teams, but I do like the look of red and silver. Or cherry and silver as the Lobos’ PR office likes to call it. I walked west to the Rio Grande. When I got to the river, I turned north and walked briskly along the levee.

I have never understood the fascination most people have with batting a ball over a wall or putting it into a small hole in the ground, through a net, or between goal posts. I enjoy walking as a means of transportation and it’s also great exercise. When the mood and circumstances are right, you can also get some serious thinking done, and that’s what I needed.

I needed Whit Fletcher’s help, but I couldn’t get it unless I helped him. The best help I could offer him was solving the murder in the Hyatt. I didn’t even know who the victim was, and, as far as I knew, I was still a suspect.

The spring melt had started in the mountains to the north and the river had enough flow that I could actually hear the current. My thinking wasn’t getting anywhere, so I just let the sound of the river relax me as I walked along.

Then it started snowing. It was early May, which tells you how late my payment to the IRS was and also how fickle springs are in Albuquerque. Soft flakes fluttered around me and disappeared as they hit the ground. I tried to catch a few on my hand, but the warmth of my palm melted them as they landed. The smell of the salt cedars along the river and the sight of the snow put me in mind of Christmas, but just as that pleasant thought was settling into my mind, the snow stopped and the sun came out. I don’t own an umbrella or a snow shovel and neither does anyone else in town. Of course it does rain and snow here. It just doesn’t do either long enough to justify buying the equipment.

At least I was relaxed and my mind had cleared. I decided to retrace my movements on the night of the murder. I remembered Martin telling me how his grandfather taught him to see himself as a bird would see him, how he learned to drift out of his body up into a bird’s body and see down on his human body through the bird’s eyes. I imagined myself as a bird looking down on myself as I walked east on Central the night of the murder. For me it was just a technique to focus my memory. Maybe Martin’s grandfather believed it was an actual migration of his spirit into the bird’s body.

I chose a hawk. If I was going to be a bird, why be a sparrow or a wren? By the time I saw myself arrive at the Hyatt, I had become comfortable in the hawk’s body and I followed myself inside. I watched myself ride the elevators and walk the halls. I concentrated on seeing every detail no matter how small. I saw the elevator buttons. They were the size of quarters with bronze edging around a white circle. I spotted the camera, a white rectangle on a white mounting arm with a black cord disappearing into the wall. I saw myself going back down to the lobby to call Wilkes. As I started to dial Wilkes’ room, I used my bird’s eyes to zoom in on the number pad and saw my finger touch the three numbers.

Then I stopped thinking, turned around, and walked back home to shower and walk to the police station. I did not go to turn myself in.

40

“You come to turn yourself in like a good citizen, Hubert?”

Well, you already know that was not the plan.

I said, “You remember you told me you had a piece of evidence that tied me in with the murder at the Hyatt?”

“Course I remember, Hubert; I’m the one told you that.”

“I think I know what it is.”

“You was always good at makin’ up stories. Give it your best shot.”

“I know the security camera near the elevator on the eleventh floor taped me coming and going. That’s how you knew I was on that floor. I never entered the murder room, but there’s no camera in the hall, so you don’t know that. But there are cameras everywhere in the lobby. Immediately after I left the eleventh floor, I went down to the lobby to call the person I had come to see. Here’s your secret piece of evidence: I think you have a tape of me dialing. You think I’m placing an anonymous call to report the murder. But in fact, I was calling the person I came to see in the first place. I can understand why you thought I was calling about the murder because I dialed 9-1-1, but I wasn’t making an emergency call. I was calling room 9-1-1.”

He didn’t even blink. “Did the person in 911 answer?”

He was testing me.

“No, I realized as I was dialing that it was a pay phone, not a house phone, so I hung up.”

“That’s pretty good, Hubert. But maybe you just figured out we had that tape and made up the part about the room. Who was in 911?”

There was no reason not to tell him; he could get the registry if he had to. “His name is Carl Wilkes. He’s a dealer in antiquities.”

“Why did you want to see some guy who sells brass beds and old wash stands?”

“No, he buys old pots.”

“Then why don’t he call himself a dealer in pots instead of a dealer in antiques?”

I stopped trying to improve Whit’s English years ago, so I just said, “I guess he likes old pots.”

“Real old? Like a thousand years?”

I saw where he was going but said nothing.

Fletcher continued, “Sounds like you were probably planning on selling him that pot from Bandelier. You know the one I mean, Hubert, the one you didn’t steal.”

“That’s right; I didn’t steal it. I have many pots for sale.”

“That’s a fact. But if he wanted a pot from your shop, why not just go down to Old Town? Why meet in a hotel room? Of course if I was buying or selling stolen goods, I’d probably want to do it in a place no one else would be at.”

“I’ve already told you that if I happened to get the Bandelier pot, I would give it to you to turn in for the finder’s fee.”

“What I figure, Hubert, is the sale to this Wilkes person fell through, and then you decided to salvage what you could and settle for the finder’s fee, and that’s where I come in. Normally, that wouldn’t bother me much. What do I care if you steal a pot from Bandelier? I’d be glad to get half the finder’s fee, let them put the pot back for the tourists to see, and nobody’s got any beef. But on the same night you were trying to make this sale, someone got murdered in the same hotel, and you were on the floor where it happened.”

He put his feet up on his desk and leaned back in his chair. “Now, I’ll level with you; I don’t think you did it. But I think you know more than you’re telling me. It wouldn’t be the first time, and I can’t do business with you while this murder case is open.”

“I understand that, and maybe I can help. Can you at least tell me the name of the person who was killed?”

He did, along with a few details.

Then I pulled some hinges out of my pocket and asked him to have them checked for fingerprints.

“Sure, Hubert. We can do that. Got any blood samples you want analyzed? How about comparing bullets? We do that, too.”

“Just the fingerprints, Whit. It could help solve a murder.”

41

“Guvelly’s alive,” I told Susannah as I sat down at our table.

“Alive?”

I nodded. “At least he was at 3:35 morning before last. He was captured on film by the security camera Tristan installed for me”

“I don’t think it uses film, Hubie.”

I shrugged.

“So someone else was dead in Guvelly’s room,” she said.

“Right. Except it wasn’t Guvelly’s room.”

“But he wrote that room number on his card.”

“Yeah, which I don’t understand, but I know it wasn’t his room. Remember I tried to get Fletcher’s help the first time by telling him about Guvelly? But he’d never heard of him at that point. Obviously, the police would have checked the registration for the room the body was in, so it couldn’t have been Guvelly who signed in.”

“Well,” she said, “he may not have been in that room, but he was in your shop, so he really does think you stole the pot.”

“He must,” I agreed. “I can’t think of any other reason why he’d be snooping around my place.”

“Did Fletcher tell you the name of the person we thought was Guvelly but wasn’t who was in the room we thought was Guvelly’s but wasn’t?” She hesitated for a moment. “Did I say that right?”

“I think so. Anyway, his name was Hugo Berdal.”

“What kind of a name is Berdal, Hubie? It sounds like a generic bird call for hunters.”

“So it does. Why don’t you look it up on the internet and tell me what you find.” I was beginning to develop a theory.

“I will,” she said.

“Fletcher also told me Berdal lived in Los Alamos and worked as a security guard at Bandelier.”

“I’ll bet he stole the pot.”

“Almost certainly,” I agreed. “But for whom?”

“Why not for himself?”

“If he took it himself, what was he doing in Guvelly’s room?”

“Maybe he had agreed to give it back. That’s what Guvelly wanted you to do. He even hinted at a finder’s fee. Maybe Berdal was trying to get the finder’s fee.”

“Maybe. But why kill him?”

“Maybe Guvelly never learned to share.”

“Somehow I can’t see a federal agent killing someone for half a finder’s fee.”

“People have killed for a lot less.”

“Unfortunate, but true.”

“So what are we going to do, Hubie?”

“We?”

“Yes. We’re partners in crime, remember? Now that we have this new information, we need to do something. I just don’t know what.”

“I think I do, but I don’t like it.”

“Sounds exciting. What is it?”

“I need to break into Berdal’s house.”

She plopped her drink down on the table. “Geez, Hubie, for someone who isn’t a burglar, you’re becoming quite a break-in artist.”

“I’ve never broken in to anything,” I protested.

“I guess that’s true. You didn’t break into the Valle del Rio Museum, you just tricked the director into letting you walk in after hours and steal the pot.”

“I suppose it comes down to the same thing, doesn’t it?”

“Well, I’d have a hard time seeing it as mining the riches of the earth. And I’d have to say the same about Berdal’s house.”

“I’m not breaking in as a burglar, Suze. I’d be going in to look for clues, not to steal anything.”

“And what if you just happen to find the Bandelier pot?”

“I’m sure the police have searched the place; the pot can’t be there.”

“But suppose they missed it. Just hypothetically, Hubert, what would you do if you found it there?”

“I’d take it.”

“I thought so.”

“Well, the guy’s dead, Suze; he has no need for a pot.”

“He has no need for furniture either; are you going to take that?”

“Could you use a new couch or lamp?”

“Hubie!”

“I see what you mean, though.” I took a sip of my margarita. I must not have been paying attention—that happens when Susannah and I get caught up in conversation—because I had run out of salt on the rim and still had liquid in the glass. “Maybe I’m just a common burglar who tries to rationalize away his thievery.”

“Would you ever do something you thought was really wrong?”

“No.”

“You wouldn’t murder, rape, or pillage?”

“No to the first two. Does taking pots from protected sites fall under pillaging?”

“I’m not sure. You don’t hear much about pillaging these days. When do we go to Los Alamos?”

42

The trip to Los Alamos had to be postponed because Layton Kent summonsed me to his table at the country club. I had been demoted from a lunch appointment to a cup of coffee, maybe because my celebrity status as a murder suspect was yesterday’s news.

“I know this is unpleasant for you, Hubert, and unseemly for me—I never discuss fees with clients—but I find I must make an exception in your case.”

“This latte won’t be added to the fee, will it?” The coffee was $4.95.

“Certainly not,” he said and smiled. “You can pay for that separately.”

Layton folded his napkin neatly and placed it on the table next to his cup. I noticed that my napkin was nice—white cloth and larger than normal. His, on the other hand, was light yellow, seemed to me made of linen, and was the size of a pillowcase.