Bread of the Dead: A Santa Fe Cafe Mystery Read online

  “Please,” I begged again, trying to keep my voice from dissolving into sobs.

  The scary visitor fixed me with pale eyes, then turned and stabbed the knife, hard, into a nearby cutting board, keeping his hand on the handle. Through the blurriness of fear, I realized that I knew him. Broom, I thought his name was, or maybe Broomer. He was the neighbor to our west, the relatively new owner of a rose-­hued adobe hidden behind high walls. I’d seen him a few times at the café. Once, I’d seen him tearing up our narrow, no-­sidewalk road in a baby blue Porsche convertible, his strawberry-­blond hair whipping in the wind. He waved but never slowed down, forcing me to jump into whatever cactus or other hazard happened to be beside the road. I’d always suspected I didn’t like him. Now I knew for sure.

  With the knife out of his face, Victor turned to his brother. “Put the gun down, Gabe,” he said, placing a steady hand on the barrel and lowering it gently.

  Gabriel’s hands remained shaky. He sputtered in anger. “Get out of my kitchen, Broomer. Send your lawyer if you want, but if you or that bulldozer touch our property, this’ll be waiting for you!” He swung the gun upward. For a moment I thought he was going to fire it, straight into the wood beams and a crystal chandelier . . . or a person.

  Broomer had the bravado to laugh. “You don’t scare me, Gabriel. I know what I bought. My lot extends beyond your fence and that’s exactly where I’ll be digging. No more delays.”

  He yanked the knife from the cutting board. As he passed me, gripping the blade by his side, he leered, his pale eyes roving my body. “Sorry I scared you, honey,” he said, putting his lips uncomfortably close to my ear. I could sense the knife blade and feel his hot breath as he whispered, “I’ll drop by and make it up to you sometime.”

  I was still shaking after Broomer left and Victor pointed out the least of our problems. “Hey, Gabe, did he steal your knife?”

  I know an awkward silence when I’m in the midst of one.

  “Right,” I said, adding to the awkwardness. In the absence of the knife-­wielding neighbor, neither brother was saying anything. Victor stared at Gabe, who glared out the window in the direction of the disputed fence.

  I shifted from foot to foot. “Okay . . .” I said, drawing out the word. “I should be going.”

  “You know what we have to do,” Victor said, eyes fixed on his brother.

  Gabe sighed heavily. “Vic, go back to your spirits and let me handle this world and Laurence Broomer.”

  “The spirits are what I’m worried about!” Victor’s voice wavered. He seemed on the edge of tears. I moved to comfort him, but he rushed from the kitchen, mumbling prayers in a jumble of Spanish and English.

  His brother didn’t appear eager to chat about fences or fancy French stoves.

  “Ah . . . okay . . . gotta go,” I stammered, backing away.

  Gabe set the weapon on the kitchen island and rubbed his temples. “Thank you,” he said, halting my retreat. “You’re kind to my brother. It’s good for him to have you living here. He struggles, you know, with his depression and his fantasies. I want him to get help, especially now with all this talk of spirits.”

  I didn’t know that about Victor, and I didn’t know what to say either. Gabe hardly seemed to care. He picked up the gun and walked off down the dark hallway.

  Alone in the kitchen, I had two choices. The logical one was to get the heck out. The self-­indulgent one was to check out the kitchen details. Still feeling creeped out about armed men in murky corridors, I chose to stay in the kitchen. I toured the island, noting the built-­in wine chiller and the deep sink, perfect for filling pasta pans. I lingered a moment by the stove, trying to calm my nerves.

  “Someday,” I told the Lacanche, and imagined it mocking me in a French accent. Yeah, right, someday. My fantasy range cost around $10,000. To get one, I’d have to win the lottery (which I don’t play) or gamble Celia’s meager college fund at one of the tribal casinos (which I would never do).

  I took a final look and then quickly retraced my way back to Victor’s comforting world of eclectic art.

  “Victor?” My calls brought no response. He probably wanted to be alone. I understood that. I blew out a melting candle on the altar and found my coat and bag of library books. Inside the tote was a plastic sack tied with a red ribbon and filled with bizcochitos.

  The casita was dark and chilly when I let myself in. And empty. In the old days I’d have been greeted by a cursing parrot or griping husband. I sometimes missed the bird. I thought again that I should get a pet, preferably one in the feline family. Who was I kidding? I barely had the time and money to take care of myself and Celia, let alone a furry bundle of vet bills.

  I switched on the overhead light, illuminating the main living space. Santa Fe takes its architecture and its architectural terminology very seriously. Flori, insisting that I’d never be considered a local if I didn’t talk like one, coached me in vocabulary. The round logs extending across my ceiling were vigas, not beams. Similarly, the small finger-­width branches that lined the ceiling between the beams were not lathe or thatch or ceiling twigs. These were latillas. By any name, they were some of the first things I loved about this place, after looking at many bland apartments and seedy duplexes. I also adored the beehive-­shaped kiva fireplace tucked into a corner. Adobe benches called bancos curved out from either side of the fireplace, perfect for lounging with a good book and cup of tea.

  I rarely went to the trouble of lighting a fire, except when friends came over, but after the night’s strain, I craved something warm and comforting. I placed a hickory log in the kiva and topped it with chunks of piñon for a piney perfume.

  The piñon lit easily. I watched the wood spark for a few minutes before fixing the fire guard and walking the few steps to the kitchen. There, I found something surprising.

  Mom, the note read. Studying at G’s. Back by 10??

  A note. My daughter had actually left a note. I felt absurdly buoyed. Celia is a good kid and smart. However, her teen years have strained all of us, especially since her dad and I split. Some of her rebellion is typical, like dyeing her hair black and getting a cut that looks weed-­whacked. She’s also mastered surliness, one-­word conversations, and resisting curfews and mealtimes and pretty much anything with a time requirement, although she never misses school.

  Her other rebellion is creative. She paints pictures of wide-­eyed fairy girls. The fairies are the cute, doe-­eyed kind that might populate Japanese comic books, only hers exist in desolate southwestern landscapes and are in perpetually bad moods. They’re often weeping black or red tears and can be rather disturbing, as confirmed by her school counselor who called me in a few months ago. Ms. Dean showered me in pamphlets on depression, anxiety, low self-­esteem, divorce stress, bullying, and gang membership. When I broached these possibilities to Celia, she’d laughed until she began hiccupping, and then proceeded to merrily paint anxious fairies loitering by graffiti-­tagged cacti. Since then I’ve worried less about her art.

  I poured myself a glass of wine, another indulgence for the night’s stress, and settled in by the fireplace with new cookbook finds from the library. As I flipped through pictures of Tuscan landscapes and mouthwatering pastas and almond cakes, I wondered who “G” might be. I couldn’t think of anyone with a G name, but then I didn’t know all of Celia’s high school friends.

  I sipped and flipped, vowing to stay up until ten to greet—­or track down—­my daughter. By nine-­thirty the warm embers and zinfandel had lulled me into a head-­bobbing sleep, broken occasionally by pops of firewood. By ten I’d stopped resisting and let sleep take over, my head wedged into the wingback chair, the cookbook sprawled across my chest.

  “Mom!”

  I woke with a start. The fire had turned to glowing charcoal. I had no idea what time it was. For a moment I wondered if I’d dreamt my daughter’s cry.

 
“Mom, help!”

  The cry was real and coming from outside. Shaking off sleep confusion, I dashed out the door. Stones and twigs jabbed my socked feet as I sprinted through the dark.

  “Celia! Honey? Where are you?”

  A response came from up the hill. I ran toward the main house, where a jacked-­up orange Jeep idled next to Victor’s VW.

  “Over here, Mom, look!” Celia and a twenty-­something woman I didn’t know pressed their faces to the picture window that looked into Victor’s sunroom and beyond to his living room. I joined them, smooshing my nose against the already steamy glass.

  “Oh no, no . . .” I grabbed my daughter and twisted her away from the view.

  “God, Mom,” Celia sputtered. “Be careful.”

  I didn’t have time to deal with her manners or what might have been a whiff of alcohol on her breath. I pounded at the window, praying that Victor would get up, even as I knew he wouldn’t. He was slumped in the flickering lights of the altar candles, a wreath of marigolds around his chest, a gun in his hand and blood trailing down his temple.

  Chapter 4

  We’ve gotta call Dad.” Celia punched numbers into her phone.

  My mind spun. I couldn’t fully comprehend what had happened, but I knew I couldn’t cope with Manny. Not now, not for Victor.

  “No!” I said, too loudly, and then registered the hurt and anger on my daughter’s face. “I mean, call 911, honey. The dispatcher will send an ambulance and whoever’s on duty. It’s fastest.”

  “It’s okay, Cel,” the young woman standing beside us said. A streak of blue ran through her cascade of shiny black hair. A tiny jewel sparkled on her left nostril and a curvy tattoo peaked out from her cleavage. “I just texted him.”

  She texted Manny? Manny texts? What sort of person texts a suicide? Suicide. My whole body trembled. Poor, dear Victor. I should have checked on him after the argument. Gabriel outright told me that Victor was depressed. Why hadn’t I checked?

  “Go over by the car,” I urged Celia and her text­ing companion. “Keep together and wait for the police.”

  My daughter narrowed eyes lined in thick, Egyptian mummy-­style makeup. “Where are you going?” she demanded as I started toward Victor’s door.

  “I’m going to check on Victor . . . I have to check.”

  “There’s nothing you can do, Mom. I should have called Dad first.” Celia’s shoulders heaved in the motions of exasperation, but her voice cracked and tears glistened behind her harsh eye makeup. She and Victor had talked art together. He encouraged her to paint, morose fairies or anything else she wanted to. She’d be crushed by this.

  I hesitated, torn between helping my daughter and helping a friend who was likely beyond help. I had to know for sure. Hoping that my sock feet wouldn’t land on a cactus, I cut across the rocky garden to Victor’s front door. It was locked, as I expected, but I twisted the knob and pounded the wood anyway until my palms throbbed.

  Then I remembered Gabriel. Maybe he could get in. When I reached his side, I rapped the metal knocker and held down the doorbell, pausing occasionally to listen for movement inside. I heard none. What if something had happened to Gabe too? Thinking of Broomer and his threats, I banged harder, gripping the metal door handle to brace myself. Surprisingly, it moved, and not merely a wiggle. The latch opened and the door swung inward silently.

  “Hello?” I called, stepping into the foyer. “Gabriel?” When no one answered, I tried the door to Victor’s hallway. It was locked, but why was the front door open? Had someone broken in? Fear buzzed through my body. It wasn’t the only buzzing. From the other side of the foyer came the fuzzy sound of an off-­air TV station.

  I followed the noise across the living room and down a hallway to a closed door. Although I tried to tell myself that Gabriel probably fell asleep with the TV on, my brain churned awful possibilities, especially when I cracked the door and peeked inside. I could make out a bed and on it a figure that had to be Gabriel. He was flat on his back, arms straight down at his sides as if laid out in a coffin. The blur of noise harmonized with the blood swooshing through my head, and I fumbled to find a light switch. Finding none, I took a deep breath and tiptoed toward the bed, stealing myself to feel cold, unresponsive flesh.

  Tentatively, I reached for Gabriel’s neck to check for a pulse. To my relief, he turned out to be very much alive. To my horror, I’d discovered that he slept with a white noise machine and a gun on his nightstand.

  At my touch, he jolted upright. His hands flailed, pushing me away as he yelled like a zombie Clint Eastwood. “I’ll shoot! Holy Mary, Mother of our Lord, I’m armed!”

  I fell backward, grasping for the nightstand. Instead, I latched onto the noise machine. I punched its buttons, frantic to turn it off. Not a good idea. The white noise changed to the roar of a flooding stream and screaming crickets.

  “Gabriel, it’s me—­Rita, your renter,” I yelled above the raging chirps, pressing more buttons. Crashing ocean waves filled the room. Another press brought the thump of a single heartbeat. Dum dump, dum dump, dum dump. My sister had used a mechanical heartbeat to soothe her newborns. Here, it sounded like the dreaded heart of Edgar Allan Poe.

  My own heart outpaced the mechanical one. In the din, I imagined I heard the cocking of the gun. I screamed and scrambled toward the door. Despite the darkness, I squeezed my eyes shut, dreading the imminent blast, thinking of my daughter. Would she have to find my body too? Would she paint I told her so on my grave? She’d have the right to. If I got out alive, I vowed I’d be a better, unshot mom.

  “Rita, you fool, what were you thinking?”

  Blinding light and a hand came from above. A handsome face frowned down at me. It wasn’t a heavenly helper with a five o’clock shadow. It was my ex and he wasn’t happy.

  Manny dragged me upright as his partner, a muscle-­bound woman named Bunny, calmed and disarmed Gabriel.

  Gabriel was swearing and demanding answers as he yanked pink foam plugs from his ears and mercifully pulled the plug on his infernal noise generator.

  “Gabriel, I’m so sorry,” I said. “It’s Victor, he’s—­”

  Manny clamped a hand over my mouth. The hand smelled gross, like fried food, a major component of Manny’s diet.

  “Quiet,” he demanded. “Stay out of this.” To indignant, sputtering Gabriel, he said, “Sir, I apologize for this woman. There has, however, been an incident involving your brother.” That said, he pushed me out the bedroom door. “Go outside and don’t even think about meddling. I’ll take your statement later at the station.”

  Flashing lights illuminated the pathway and Celia, flanked by a small cluster of hand-­wringing neighbors. She wiped her eyes quickly when she saw me coming and stiffened when I hugged her.

  “Dad’s here,” she informed me, unnecessarily.

  “Yeah, I saw him.” I dreaded seeing more of him. I released her, feeling my limbs sag, heavy from the realization that Victor would never serve cookies or make beautiful art again.

  “Oh Rita!” Dalia Crawford, a neighbor from across the street, stepped up and enveloped me in a bone-­crushing hug. She didn’t let me go until I’d sobbed out the barest explanation of what I’d seen.

  “Sorry,” I said, wiping at the soggy spot I left on her shoulder. Dalia didn’t care. A forever flower child with a tech-­wizard’s income, she wasn’t one to worry about her clothes, which she wore in floaty tie-­dyed layers.

  “I warned him . . .” she murmured. “I said there was danger . . .”

  Her words stopped me mid-­dampening of my own sweater sleeve. “Warned him?” Why was Victor in danger?

  Dalia stared up at the night sky, sparkling with constellations you only see away from city lights. “I sensed a negative aura,” she said, her tone as dark as the heavens.

  I let out the breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. Dalia and her
divinations. She was a certified tarot master, as she pointed out frequently, and a little too eager to offer her celestial ser­vices. I tended to politely fend her off. So did Victor. Perhaps we should have listened.

  Dalia tugged her long chestnut braid across her chin. “He should have let me read his cards. Maybe I could have foreseen his inexorable forces.”

  Maybe I should have seen them myself. I might not be certified in anything but pastry, but why didn’t I notice that my friendly neighbor was hurting? Dalia’s husband Phillip moved in to comfort her, giving me the chance to slip away. Celia stood in front of the ambulance. Its lights flashed, but the siren and engine were silent. There would be no desperate race to the hospital.

  “Hey,” I said, touching my daughter’s elbow.

  She flinched.

  “Come on, sweetie, let’s wait inside. The police will know where to find us if they need to.”

  “I want to see what happens,” Celia said, without conviction. She stared toward Victor’s house. The living room was bright with lights and camera flashes.

  No you don’t, I thought, and I didn’t want to see either. I made her an offer that even her teen self usually can’t resist. “We’ll have some cookies. Your friend can come too if she wants.”

  My daughter twisted her spiky hair. “Okay, if you want, but you, like, know who she is, don’t you?”

  Your father’s girlfriend?” I failed to keep a snarky emphasis off girl.

  The woman in question sat in her orange Jeep a few yards away, seemingly texting and singing along to music. This is not how you behave at a tragedy, I thought. Then I acknowledged that at least she hadn’t barged in and terrified the victim’s brother.

  “Yeah, whatever,” my daughter said, in classic teen understatement. “She’s cool.”

  She might be cool. She was definitely young. I’d guess she was a good fifteen years younger than Manny or, put another way, not that much older than Celia.