Bread of the Dead: A Santa Fe Cafe Mystery (3 page)

Victor returned with a cookie-­laden plate and I was reduced to moans at my first bite.

“My nana's recipe,” he said, a note of pride sneaking through his humbleness.

“You could win contests with these!” I exclaimed, before clamping my mouth shut. Flori would bristle like an angry horned toad if another top competitor entered local contests.

He shook his head. “No, it's enough that special ­people enjoy them.”

“Lard,” I said, determined to wheedle out the recipe. “You have to use lard to get them this delicate.”

Victor liked to share treats, yet rarely gave up family secrets. I'd begged, unsuccessfully, for the recipes behind his green chile stew and skillet corn bread with brown butter and red pepper.

He rewarded my guess with a little smile. “Yes, lard. Of course.”

Okay, lard was too easy. It may not be the go-­to ingredient in modern cookies, but
bizcochito
purists swear by the melt-­in-­your-­mouth texture lard imparts. I got Victor to reveal a splash of wine, a somewhat unusual ingredient, and dashes of anise, cinnamon, and ginger. I was lobbing other guesses when I noticed that my host had zoned out. He stared at the altar, his mug of chocolate raised to his lips but not sipped. I wondered if he was sad, thinking of lost family members.

“Flori says this is a time to celebrate,” I said, sounding like a perky cheerleader for the dead.

My landlord nodded, eyes still fixed on the altar. “She's right. The spirits of the peacefully resting will be welcome visitors. It's the others that haunt us.”

Worried, I put down my cup, prepared to ask him what he meant. However, his look had morphed to one of panic. Angry voices echoed through the house, followed by Victor's pounding footsteps running toward them.

 

Chapter 3

S
howing surprising speed for a retiree weighed down by a big belly and heavy metal jewelry, Victor ran down the dark corridor leading to his brother's side of the house. I hesitated, unsure of the etiquette of charging through someone else's home and into an argument. Then I heard Victor yell, “Stop! No!” and I sprinted down the dark hall.

I'd never been in his brother's side of the house. In fact, I'd rarely made much more than small talk with Gabriel at the mailbox or the rare times he stopped by the café. A hospital administrator, Gabriel always seemed polite yet hurried, a habit I assumed he had acquired in his earlier career as an emergency room doctor.

The open door at the end of Victor's hallway led to another world. There were no bones here, no eclectic folk art. Instead, oil paintings in gilt frames hung on pale plaster walls, lit by museum-­style lighting. Three doorways opened in different directions, all dark. Unsure which way to head, I stood for a moment beside a life-­size portrait of an Indian woman collecting water, wishing she could tell me what to do. Then I heard Victor's voice rising above the rumble of an argument. Moving tentatively through the dark, I followed the sounds down a short arched hallway.

It led to a bright kitchen. I glanced at the white marble countertops and the pounded copper vent hood over a gorgeous Lacanche range. Under other circumstances, I would have studied the kitchen details and especially the French fantasy range, with its shiny dark blue enamel and array of burners. Not now. A man stood next to it brandishing a butcher's knife. Victor was in front of him, sandwiched between the blade and the shotgun held by his brother Gabriel.

“It's okay, Rita,” Victor said, not taking his eyes off the man with the knife. “A neighborly spat over fence lines. My brother here is a little upset, that's all.”

Gabriel looked a whole lot more than a “little” upset to me. His eyebrows, dark and thick like Victor's, furrowed into a scowl. Erasing the scowl and adding a handful of years and thirty pounds, he could have been Victor's twin, although I doubted that Victor ever wore pressed khakis and a button-­down shirt without a speck of paint on them.

Glancing at me, Gabriel said, “You best leave, Ms. Lafitte. This is none of your concern. You too, brother. I'm going to handle this now. This man is threatening us and I'll have none of it.”

No way was I leaving, unless I dashed for a phone. My cell phone languished in my purse in Victor's side of the house. That was too far away, and I feared that a sudden move might startle the weapon wielders.

“Please,” I pleaded to the man with the knife. “Let's talk this through.”

He made a scoffing sound. “Ha! Talk? I'm done talking, except through my lawyer and bulldozer driver! You'll be meeting them soon.”

He raised the weapon, holding it in the classic horror-­movie stabbing pose. I felt queasy. If he slashed downward, his first point of contact would be Victor's broad chest.

“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
.

T
he 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.